Dana Ewell: $8 Million Motive

The Murders of Glee, Dale, and Tiffany Ewell
(“Two in a Million,” Forensic Files)

Forensic Files has introduced us to a number of heirs who tried to hasten their fortunes by killing family members — and ended up poor and incarcerated instead.

Dana Ewell suffered the same fate, but he distinguished himself from the others in two ways.

Haughty kid. First, he successfully completed all the intended homicides (Christopher Porco accidentally left his mother alive and Bart Whitaker did the same with his father).

Second, he was the most arrogant.

After the murders of Dana’s parents and older sister, word got out that the Mercedes-driving Armani-suit-wearing college student was referring to the lead detectives as Sesame Street characters incapable of solving the case.

Meticulous cops. Law enforcement professionals don’t particularly appreciate that kind of talk, and it made detectives Chris Curtice and John Souza more determined to find out whether Dana had anything to do with the shooting deaths that turned into Northern California’s version of the OJ Simpson sensation.

It took three years of surveillance work and a physical timeline as long as a red carpet, but the authorities eventually proved who plotted and carried out the murders of Glee, Dale, and Tiffany Ewell in a bid for an estate valued at as much as $8 million.

For this week, I looked into what happened to Dana Ewell in the three years between the murders and his arrest – specifically whether he actually got his hands on any of the money from his parents’ estate and whether he received moral support from his extended family during the trial.

I also checked into the whereabouts of Dana and his henchman today.

Happy family. So let’s get going on a recap of “Two in a Million,” the Forensic Files episode about the case, along with additional information from internet research and other true-crime shows:

Two days after Easter in 1992, a housekeeper named Juanita Avitia entered the residence at 5663 East Park Circle Drive in Fresno.

Avitia had worked for a number of wealthy families and found the Ewells unusual in that they all got along well, she would later say in an interview with Oxygen series In Cold Blood.

Sweet daughter. Inside the sprawling adobe-style house, Avitia saw Tiffany Ewell, 24, lying facedown with a gunshot wound to the back of the head. She had collapsed on top of a Foster’s Freeze cup she was carrying.

Tiffany, a graduate accounting student who lived at home, was shy and demure by all accounts.

Avitia fled and called 911. Police found Dale and Glee Ewell also shot to death in the house.

Congenial and thoughtful. Glee had suffered the most violent death. Someone had fired into her heart and face, and investigators would later say that her frozen expression of horror suggested she knew the gunman.

It was an unlikely end for a woman known for her big smile.

Glee, who worked as a translator for the CIA before she had her children, later served on the State Bar of California’s governing board. She was “one of the most well-liked people I’ve ever met,” according to Don Fischback, a friend who appeared on the show Solved. “If you saw her at an event, you’d get a card or a note a week later — ‘great to see you last week.'”

Midwestern guy. Her husband of 31 years, who had died from one bullet to the back of the neck, also knew how to chat people up, although at least some of the time, he had an ulterior motive. He was a salesman with an original way of introducing his product.

The son of Ohio farmers, Dale had studied aeronautical engineering at Miami University of Ohio and married Glee in 1961. They were soul mates, according to Dale’s brother who appeared on Power, Privilege, and Justice.

After moving to California, Dale bought an airplane dealership. He would, uninvited, land one of his small airplanes on a farmer’s field, charm the farmer into purchasing it, and then teach him how to fly it.

Last hurrah. Like any good investor, Dale diversified, buying up real estate and farmland, where he grew pistachios and figs.

One of the Ewells’ properties was a beach house in Parajo Dunes in Santa Cruz County, where the family spent its last weekend together.

The gathering included the one member of the Ewell nuclear family who would survive the slaughter, Dana Ewell, 21, a business student at Santa Clara State University.

Case of the Benz. Just earlier that day — April 19, Easter Sunday — Dana and his family had taken a walk on the beach together. But instead of heading home with the rest of the Ewells, Dana went 160 miles away to the Bay Area to have dinner with his girlfriend, Monica Zent, 24, and her FBI agent father, John.

Although by all accounts, Glee and Dale Ewell never flaunted their wealth, they enabled Dana to do so. They gave him an allowance of $800 a month and a status-symbol car. Dana liked to flash $100 bills at parties and wear imported Italian suits to class.

When Dana wrecked his gold Mercedes 190, Dale bought him another one identical to the first. It’s unclear why, but Dale reportedly considered the circumstances of the accident an embarrassment to the family and wanted to sweep it under the rug.

Strange bedfellows. Dana could be incorrigible in a number of ways. He lied to a school-newspaper reporter, saying that he owned a $4 million company and sold mutual funds.

The resulting article angered his father, but Dana continued to deceive, getting caught plagiarizing a business ethics paper in college. It was a strange choice because Dana supposedly had a genius IQ. During his Forensic Files appearance, Dana’s uncle said that Dana scored 160 points (or maybe that’s just family lore or Dana switched tests with the chess club president).

Dana was fascinated with people who broke laws in pursuit of wealth. He hung a picture of Michael Milken in his dorm room and openly admired Joe Hunt, the Ponzi schemer and murderer whose life served as the basis of the 1987 NBC series Billionaire Boys Club.

Alarm code handy. But whoever murdered the Ewells should have spent less time watching made-for-TV movies and more time viewing true-crime docuseries.

The killer or killers made a mistake well-known to Forensic Files viewers: excessively ransacking the house to make the murders look like a burglary gone wrong — but leaving behind valuable items a real thief would have grabbed.

The attacker also turned off the house’s security system, a sign of an inside job. And the bullets used to shoot the victims came from a stash Dale Ewell kept in the house.

Solid alibi. Police briefly looked into a theory that the previous owner of Dale Ewell’s airplane business had ties to drug smugglers who might have played a role in the crime, but that part of the investigation went nowhere fast.

Dana became the No. 1 suspect. Curtice and Souza knew he was nowhere near the house when the murders took place, but believed he had something to do with them.

The tall blue-eyed scion raised suspicions by immediately hiring lawyer Richard Berman to communicate with the police.

Post-homicide spree. Dana did make a token effort to convey bereavement, posting a $50,000 reward for information leading to the killer’s arrest, noting the “wonderful lives that ended in tragedy” and saying that “my world was shattered and my life was changed forever.”

In fact, the death of his family saddened him so much that he bought himself a $130,000 airplane and put his mother’s fur coat up for sale via a newspaper ad, the Los Angeles Times reported.

After quitting college briefly, Dana spent time at Western Piper Sales, his late father’s airplane business, where he got himself named vice president with a salary of $2,000 a month, according to court papers, but he mostly just sat around chatting on the phone, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Expensive whirl. Dana also seemed comfortable living in his parents’ house in Fresno despite that blood and other forensic evidence from the murders were never cleaned up.

His best buddy and former dorm roommate Joel Radovcich, the son of a church organist and an engineer, moved into the house with him for a time.

Investigators found out that Joel, who left school and had no job, had started taking helicopter flight lessons for up to $500 an hour shortly after the murders. A little forensic accounting showed that Dana was underwriting the cost of his buddy’s foray into piloting with Mazzei Flying Service.

Revealing reply. Investigators also found out that Joel had a fascination with lethal weapons and kept a stash of magazines about mercenary work.

And Joel had sent books, one of which gave do-it-yourself silencer instructions, to his friend Jack Ponce, a 23-year-old law student with a history degree from UCLA.

When police visited Joel to ask some questions, he immediately asked if they intended to arrest him.

They didn’t have enough evidence for that yet, but undercover cops staked out a public phone Joel used to call Dana. The two only communicated via pagers and pay phones and mostly spoke in code, but police heard Joel demanding $250,000. Investigators would ultimately conclude that Dana had promised Joel half of the estate.

Bromance, literally. They found tennis balls in Joel’s home that matched fibers on the floor of the crime scene and on the victims’ bodies. Police believed the attacker used tennis balls to make a homemade silencer — another sign that murder, not robbery, was the home invader’s goal.

At this point, police weren’t the only ones who suspected Dana. When Dale Ewell’s three brothers — who were so close that they all had followed Dale from Ohio to California — read the will, they saw a different side of their nephew.

Dale had stipulated that trustees give Dana the money in increments until he turned 35, when he would get all remaining assets, which in addition to the beach house and main residence in Fresno, included a cabin at Shaver Lake, the two 160-acre farms, and Dale Ewell’s $1.3 million retirement fund, according to a McClatchy News Service article.

Aunt marches in. When Dana found out that he wasn’t getting the millions he expected right away, he became infuriated and pounded his fist on a table — showing more emotion than he did when he found out that his family died in a triple homicide.

After Dana’s outburst, his paternal grandfather, Austin Ewell, tried to stop the trust from distributing any money from Dana’s late parents, although Dana ultimately got hold of around $800,000.

Austin would later make a point of leaving Dana out of his own will.

But not all the Ewells turned against Dana. His aunt — Dale’s only sister, Betty Ewell Whitted — would later fight to have some of the money from Dale and Glee Ewell’s estate pay for a lawyer to defend Dana, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Grandma in peril. Still, Dana’s actions continued to worry the rest of his relatives. Detectives and some family members grew concerned about Dana’s intentions toward his 90-year-old maternal grandmother, Glee Mitchell, who had Alzheimer’s.

Dana inherited the role of trustee of his grandmother’s $380,000 estate. He was suspected of not only misappropriating $100,000 for his own use but also of plotting with his buddy Joel Radovcich to murder her before the nursing home costs frittered away her fortune, according to the McClatchy News Service story.

At Dana’s insistence, Glee Mitchell switched nursing homes and moved into a room with a door opening up to the outdoors. Sheriff’s officials asked the staff to stop Dana from taking his grandmother on any trips outside of the facility.

Quick change of mind. Glee Mitchell died of natural causes, but a California Bar Journal account available on Murderpedia said that Dana actually succeeded in spending all his grandmother’s money except for $2,000.

In March 1995, police arrested Jack Ponce at the restaurant where he tended bar. They nabbed Joel at Taco Bell and took Dana into custody a short time later.

At first, the handsome olive-skinned Ponce refused to talk to the police, but once they let him know the death penalty was on the table, he made an immunity deal and started flapping his jaws.

Razor’s edge. Ponce said that he sold his AT-9 assault-style rifle — which the LA Times described as coming from “little-known Colorado arms manufacturer Feather Industries” and having a “one in 12 twist” (you’ll have to look that one up on your own) — to Joel for $500.

Joel, who clearly hadn’t read up enough about being a successful hit man, later blabbed to Ponce the whole story about how he killed the Ewells.

To avoid leaving forensic evidence, Joel shaved off every hair on his body and sat on a plastic tarp for hours while lying in wait in the Ewells’ house, Ponce said. Joel told Ponce that he shot Tiffany in the back of the head as she walked past him. (Dana wanted her dead so he would get her half of their parents’ estate.)

Glee tried to run, but he chased her down and stood over her as he fired the gun. Joel put on fresh gloves and changed the clip in preparation for Dale’s arrival — he had flown home, separately — and shot him in the back of the neck as he walked by carrying a stack of papers, Ponce said.

Unearthed evidence. Next, Joel said he made sure the victims had no pulse, then waited for dark and slipped out of the house. Oh, and Joel also said he hoped there was no God — because “if there is, I’m screwed,” the Chicago Tribune reported.

Investigators retrieved the gun barrel from where Ponce said he had buried it three years before, in a vacant lot in Reseda. A test showed the gun matched the bullets used to kill the Ewells.

Prosecutors maintained that Dana had agreed to split the entire estate with Joel and then the two of them planned to move to Europe with the funds. The two young men were described as very close.

Fresno’s 15 minutes. With Superior Court Judge Frank J. Freede Jr. officiating, the trial kicked off on Dec. 16, 1997, with KMPH-FM radio broadcasting the goings-on. There were no TV cameras allowed — but plenty of other fanfare.

The Chicago Tribune compared the case to the Menendez brothers’ murders and noted that the prospect of another rich kid killing his parents attracted “the predictable swarm of Hollywood agents, screen writers and would-be authors” to town. At least two books and four true-crime shows ultimately arose from the case.

During a five-hour opening statement, Deputy District Attorney Jim Oppliger alleged that Dana and Joel were obsessed with becoming millionaires by age 25.

Gratis help. Meanwhile, Dana, who by 1995 had squandered the six-figures he managed to squeeze from the estate, could no longer afford Richard Berman, who estimated the defense would cost $2 million.

But Dana was able to snag two lawyers for free.

They were court-appointed defender Peter Jones and the flamboyant private attorney Ernest Kinney, well-known for his ego and onetime friendship with OJ Simpson. Kinney undoubtedly wanted a part in the Ewell case to put himself in the spotlight.

Kinney argued that Jack Ponce and Joel Radovcich were responsible for the murders.

Unscrolled account. Joel’s lawyer, Phillip Cherney, said that Dana and Jack Ponce ensnared Joel in their own murder plan.

Meanwhile, FBI agent John Zent supported Dana’s innocence and called Dana a victim.

Detectives Curtice and Souza got a chance to present their 100-foot-long timeline, which minutely detailed the suspects’ movements before, during, and after the murders. It was impressive work from detectives whom Dana had called “Bert and Ernie” and “Mutt and Jeff.”

The trial lasted four months.

The accused speaks. On May 12, 1998, after deliberating for 11 days, a jury convicted both Dana and Joel of first-degree murder with the special circumstances of murder for financial gain, lying in wait, and multiple murders.

The same jury later deadlocked on whether to impose the death penalty, so the judge gave both the young men three life sentences without parole.

For the first time, Dana spoke out in court, saying, “I loved my family with all my heart and soul. We were so very close and happy and content.”

But it was detectives John Souza and Chris Curtice’s turn to feel happy now.

Family affair. “I envisioned the three victims in this case, which caused me to get real emotional,” Souza said after the verdict, according to an AP account from Nov. 19, 1998.

Dana continued to fight for a $500,000 trust fund originally set up for him and his sister. He reached an agreement over it with his three paternal uncles — Ben and twins Dan and Richard Ewell — in 1999, according to a wire story.

As if Dana’s uncles and aunt hadn’t lived through enough tragedy, in the middle of the investigation, Austin Ewell, 86, had died horribly in a house fire in Ohio.

Appeal fails. Ben Ewell, who gave interviews for several true crime shows, would later credit Austin for helping him cope in the wake of the murders, telling him “this too shall pass,” according to a Fresno Bee story from Feb. 15, 2004. Austin had ultimately left his $343,000 estate to Dale’s sister and brothers.

In 2011, a U.S. District Court in California rejected Dana’s writ of habeas corpus.

Today, Dana Ewell, 49, is prisoner No. P04759 with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. His status is still LWOP, life without parole.

The state website doesn’t reveal which facility is housing him, but a Fresno Bee story from 2017 identified it as Corcoran, where he lives in a special unit for those who need protection from other inmates.

Crazy neighbors. His fellow prisoners at Corcoran include Rodney Alcala (the Dating Game killer), Phillip Garrido (Jaycee Dugard’s kidnapper and rapist), and Michael Markhasev (murderer of Bill Cosby’s son).

Charles Manson, the cult leader who persuaded hippies to kill actress Sharon Tate and eight others, also lived in Corcoran, until his death in 2017.

Dana proclaimed that he found Jesus while behind razor wire, according to the Bee.

So many lawyers. Joel Patrick Radovcich, also 49, resides in Valley State Prison in Chowchilla and has LWOP status.

As for who benefitted from Dale and Glee Ewell’s estate, it’s not clear whether anyone came out ahead except for the various lawyers in the fight.

One of Dana’s uncles told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that the family had about 16 lawyers involved in criminal and civil actions related to the murders.

Ex-girlfriend unscathed. Monica Zent, on whom Dana had reportedly spent as much as $40,000 for a car and tuition, went on to do quite well for herself, although her success had nothing to do with the murder trial — she never testified and hasn’t spoken about it publicly.

She founded LawDesk360 and ZentLaw, according to her LinkedIn profile.

The criminal justice system also came out a winner in light of the Ewell trial. The LA Times noted the convictions were a reassuring counter to the controversial not guilty verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial and the initial mistrial in the Menendez brothers‘ case.

For more about the Ewells’ murders, you can watch Power, Privilege, and Justice on YouTube.

That’s all for this week. Until next time, cheers. — RR

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Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube