An Ex-Bartender Spills About Having a Con Manas a Boss (‘Past Lives,’ Forensic Files)
Everyone has a story about a crazy boss, but few have worked for a grave robber who faked his own death — and became the subject of a Forensic Files episode.
Bey’s, located on Harden Street, reportedly stayed open until the clock struck 2 a.m. or the police showed up
After serving his time for fraud convictions related to his failed scheme to collect $7 million in insurance funds, Connecticut financial adviser Madison Rutherford started using “Bey” as his first name and opened Bey’s Sports Bar in Columbia, South Carolina.
Maybe the place seemed like paradise compared with the federal lockup where Rutherford served his time, but even the beer-swilling college kids who helped keep Bey’s in business bristled at the unsanitary conditions there.
Bey’s shuttered in 2013, but a former bartender named Lex — who asked that only her first name appear in print — recently talked to ForensicFilesNow.com about her wild ride at the sports bar:
Were most of the customers students?A group of guys between 21 and 35 who were called the wolfpack started going to Bey’s. Some underage people drank there. I had just turned 22 when I started working there.
Madison Rutherford conned a lot of people over his lifetime. Was he charming?No, he was mission-bound. Every time he came in, he did what he had to do and left. He was standoffish with girls. He was an alpha toward guys.
Did he seem legit?He seemed like what a crime boss was, for a lack of a better phrase. I heard that everything was under his dad’s name.
Did you know about his past?We all knew about his Forensic Files episode, but I didn’t watch it until later. We knew he wasn’t a good person, but there was something almost attractive about how he would just do what he wanted. The bar was wild west.
Is it true that he stole his employees’ tips?On St. Patrick’s Day, I worked early morning until 1 a.m. the next day. I made about $200 in tips. We pooled all tips and agreed we would split them evenly. He took them into the dishwashing room and took out whatever he wanted for himself. He took about half our tips.
What did you think when you finally watched the Forensic Files episode?Just very justified in thinking he was a crappy person.
What was the bar like toward the end? By 2013, we started seeing Bey a lot less. Business dropped. We had a manager who really tried to keep the bar afloat but we almost never saw Bey. Business just dropped and dropped and no one wanted to work there or go there.
Do you have any fond memories of Bey’s? Even though it was working for this crazy bar for a crazy person, it was truly one of the most fun times. There was music. I met lots of people there. The experience I had atthatbar was a diamond in the rough.♠
That’s all for this post. Until next time cheers. — RR
A Storm-Tossed Marriage Ends at a Lakeside Vacation Spot (‘Drowning Sorrows,’ Forensic Files)
Florence ‘Flo’ Unger
For a long time, the Ungers looked like an enviably high-functioning family.
Florence stayed home with the kids and enjoyed photography and decorating. Mark was a banker who served as the base coach for their sons’ ball teams.
Every year, the family enjoyed a vacation at a charming resort town in Western Michigan.
Boiling point. But on the first night of their 2003 trip, something went horribly awry between dinner and bedtime, and Florence didn’t make it home alive.
According to Forensic Files, the tragedy was the culmination of Mark Unger’s downward spiral into gambling and substance abuse.
For this week, I looked for clues as to why Mark sank to such depths. I also searched for more background on Florence. So let’s get going on the recap of “Drowning Sorrows” along with extra information drawn from internet research:
Mark and Florence Unger in happier times
Style sense. Born in Detroit on March 16, 1966, little Florence Gabrielle was adopted by Claire Stern and her husband, Harold, a successful lawyer
Florence, known as “Flo” to friends, enjoyed hiking, horseback riding, and interior design, according to the Detroit Jewish News. She had an eye for beauty and “was the person you’d want to be with at a flea market,” her older cousin Elizabeth Stern told the DJN.
Mark Steven Unger came into the world on Nov. 29, 1960. He enjoyed an affluent upbringing in Huntington Woods, Michigan, thanks to his mother, Bette Rosenthal, who owned successful restaurants in the Florida Keys, according to the book Afraid of the Dark by Tom Henderson.
Radio days. As a student at the private Detroit Country Day School, Mark belonged to the swim and football teams and advanced to the state tennis championships in his junior and senior years, according to Afraid of the Dark.
In his young adulthood, Mark had gigs as an ad-copy writer, a restaurant manager, and a bartender before winning a spot as a WJZZ radio sportscaster, a job he loved.
Mark met Florence at the University of Michigan, where she majored in fine arts. After two years of dating, he proposed by hiding an engagement ring in her brownie sundae, according to Tom Henderson’s book. They married on Feb. 24, 1990.
Glamour gal. Once the couple started a family, Florence wanted to stay home, so Mark — who already had to supplement his income with a job at the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame — traded his sportscaster gig for a better-paying career as a mortgage banker.
Friends described the Ungers as a happy couple. With her delicate good looks, charm, and elegance, Flo was “like a movie star,” according to “Lady in the Lake,” an episode of Dark Waters: Murder in the Deep. And the athletic-looking 6-foot-tall Mark was crazy about her and their little sons, Max and Tyler.
Trouble in paradise reportedly began in 1998. Mark became dependent on Vicodin and Norco after back surgery for an old sports injury. A drinking problem soon followed. After an MGM Grand casino opened in Detroit, he took up gambling.
Emotional instability. The couple was already a bit house-poor. They had bought a 3,355-square-foot home in Huntington Woods, Michigan. The fact that Mark lost $7,000 at a betting parlor didn’t exactly help.
According to Dark Waters, he was letting his family down in other ways, too. On one occasion, he blew off their sons’ swim meet. Mark hated his job — which involved extending loans to low-income customers in a way that he felt exploited them — and it showed. He could be angry and hostile at home.
Real estate websites vary on the particulars, but the Ungers’ house at 26104 Huntington Road had at least four bedrooms and three bathrooms
To his credit, Mark recognized he needed help. His father was a heavy drinker who went off on benders, and Mark wanted to break the cycle, according to his older sister, Connie Wolberg, who appeared on Dark Waters.
Sudden hardship. He spent months at a residential rehab facility in late 2002, according to Dark Waters. But he didn’t go back to work when he completed treatment, according to 2008 court papers. Sources vary as to whether he was fired or just refused to return to the bank.
Florence struggled without Mark’s income.
“Her normal was pulled out right before her eyes,” a friend told Dark Waters. Florence took a job as a loan officer at Flagstar Bank to support the family
Show us the money. By this time, the marriage had nearly collapsed under the weight of Mark’s disgruntlement and weaknesses. The once-fit outdoorsman had acquired a double chin and a paunch.
Florence, 37, began an affair with family friend Glenn Stark.
She filed for divorce in August 2003. Mark, 42, wanted to stay together and refused to sign the papers. She and her lawyer reportedly roiled Mark by demanding a full accounting of his gambling losses and the amount spent on his long stretch in rehab.
A Detroit Jewish News clipping from Oct. 31, 2003
Where is she? Although angered, Mark still loved Florence desperately and insisted they take Max, 10, and Tyler, 7, on their annual family vacation to the Watervale Inn resort in the lakeside town of Arcadia, Michigan.
Mark would later tell police that on Oct. 24, 2003 – the first night of the trip – he and Florence spent some time together on a boathouse roofdeck.
The next morning, Mark told resort owners Maggie and Linn Duncan that he had awakened to find Florence gone.
Suspicious precision. When the Duncans went to the cottage to break the news to Mark that they found Florence’s lifeless body in Lower Herring Lake, Mark “went ballistic,” started “crying and screaming and hollering,” and “went diagonally down to the water and jumped right in, right next to [Florence],” according to 2008 court papers.
But Linn hadn’t told Mark where Florence’s body lay in the water, and it wasn’t visible from the cottage.
According to Mark, that night on the roofdeck, Florence asked him to check on the kids, so he went back to the cottage, read them a story, and put them to bed.
What a heel. When he didn’t find Florence back on the roofdeck, he figured she was visiting the Duncans or other friends. He watched a movie and went to bed, only to wake up alone in the morning.
The Watervale resort gives each of its cottages a name. The Ungers stayed at the Mary Ellen
The police found it interesting that, by the time they first arrived at the scene, Mark had already packed up the family’s 1999 Ford Expedition and was getting ready to head home with his sons.
Police saw some broken railing on the roofdeck and noted a large bloodstain on the cement 12 feet below. A search of Mark’s car yielded a pair of his shoes smeared with white paint similar to that on the deck railing.
Perfect storm. Mark hired a team of his own forensic investigators who made a case that the wooden slats cracked after Florence sat on them and she fell to the cement, then rolled into the water.
Investigators didn’t buy it. “Bodies don’t bounce,” the medical examiner said.
They believed Florence and Mark fought that night over her refusal to reconcile with him. Perhaps the rejection awoke his anger over having to sacrifice his sportscaster job as well as his self-loathing over his weight gain and his frustration that he could no longer use substances as a crutch.
Today, the Mary Ellen rents for $3,835 a week
Placement off. Mark’s emotions exploded and he threw his wife over the railing, then kicked in some wooden slats to make it look like an accident, the authorities theorized. After 90 minutes — long enough for the pool of blood to form on the concrete — Mike checked on Florence and discovered she was still breathing, so he pushed her body the three feet from its resting place into the water, the forensics suggest.
Testing revealed the fence would remain intact under Florence’s weight of 110 pounds. (I’m a little suspicious of experiments like that — it could be that the particular section she sat on was already damaged or otherwise weakened.)
More telling was the finding that she had no drugs or alcohol in her system that night, making it unlikely she’d carelessly sit atop a fence 12 feet in the air. Plus, the spot where she landed didn’t align with the broken slats.
Her policy. And numerous friends noted that Florence was profoundly afraid of the dark, and wouldn’t have stayed on the roofdeck alone at night. Fred Oeflein, a boater who stopped by the roofdeck that night and offered the couple a ride, said that Florence declined because she feared the dark.
There was also the matter of Mark’s having $750,000 in insurance payouts to gain from Florence’s demise.
In May 2004, seven months after Florence’s death, Mark was charged with murder. Max and Tyler went to live with their maternal grandparents.
The boathouse railing was too low to meet building-code requirements, which the defense contended contributed to Florence Unger’s ‘accidental’ fall
Toon time. In the run-up to the trial, Oakland County Circuit Judge Linda Hallmark declined Mark’s request to have the boys returned to him. Claire Stern declared the prosecution “my heroes” and “my daughter’s heroes.”
But Judge Hallmark also admonished both sides for trashing each other publicly.
At the 2006 trial in Benzie County Circuit Court, Mark’s defense trotted out a theory that Florence may have had a seizure that propelled her from the cement into the water. They also showed an animated rendering of how she could have fallen and then tumbled.
Boyfriend spills story. The prosecution accused the defense of trying to paint the dead woman as a “shopping-crazed adulteress” after Glenn Stark, who had moved to Montana by the time of the trial, testified.
Glenn acknowledged that he and Florence exchanged romantic emails for two years and had sex on four occasions — one of them a week before her death, the Detroit Free Press reported. (Still, he seemed to validate Mark’s claim that he didn’t know about the affair until after Florence died. Glenn called it the “best-kept secret in Huntington Woods.”)
Jurors deliberated for 26 hours over a period of four days before finding Mark guilty of first-degree murder.
Dueling matriarchs. Although defense lawyer Robert S. Harrison said the decision stunned him and his client, Mark Unger showed little emotion as he was handcuffed and taken away, according to a Detroit Free Press account.
“Thank you, God,” Claire Stern said after the verdict.
Mark’s mother expressed disbelief. “My son is innocent,” Bette Rosenthal said, according to an AP account. “He would never hurt anyone. I think the world knows that except those people.”
Mark Unger in a 2019 prison mugshot
None-too-‘appealing.‘ In 2006, Max and Tyler won a $10 million suit against their father for Florence’s “projected lifetime earnings as a bank loan officer and the personal loss to her survivors.” It’s not clear whether Mark had enough money to pay off on any part of the award, but the boys’ lawyers also pursued claims on property and insurance.
In 2019, their father lost a bid for a new trial on the basis of ineffective counsel. Mark complained that his lawyer didn’t object to “provocative comments in the courtroom,” according to Michigan Live.
Mark is presently offender No. 611081 in the Chippewa Correctional Facility in Kincheloe on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Children successful. Florence is buried at Clover Hill Park Cemetery, which according to the Detroit Jewish News, is known as the “final resting place of Metro Detroit’s most prominent Jewish figures.”
Although she never got to fulfill all of her own promise, it looks as though her sons are on track to realize their potential.
Max Unger earned an MBA from the University of Michigan and has a management job with Spurs Sports and Entertainment. Tyler Unger followed in his mother’s footsteps to a career in design.
You can watch the “Lady in the Lake” episode of Dark Waters: Murder in the Deep on Amazon, but it costs $1.99 even if you have Prime.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
An Intoxicated Boater Kills a Local Hero (‘Dark Waters,’ Forensic Files)
Harry Uhl raced his Chevy Malibu in stock car competitions, but he didn’t meet his end in a fiery crash on a track crowded with speeding autos.
Harry Uhl Jr.
It happened on a boat barely moving on Lake Cayuga on a quiet August night.
His death at age 27 involved no malice or other ill intent, but it turned into a criminal case because the boater who accidentally hit him fled the scene.
Forensic Files mentioned that Harry was a celebrity around Tompkins County in the Finger Lakes region of New York, so for this week, I looked for more background on his life as well as that of passenger Nasreen Raza, who suffered a mangled arm in the accident.
Suds and fins. So let’s get going on the recap of “Dark Waters” along with extra information drawn from coverage of the story in the Ithaca Journal and other internet research as well as a phone interview with retired prosecutor Gary Surdell.
Harry Allen Uhl Jr. came into the world on December 20, 1974, one of seven children born to Delores Leopolski Uhl and Harry Uhl Sr., in Ithaca, New York.
As a child, the outdoorsy Harry enjoyed fishing with his older sister and would sometimes wash her car to thank her for taking him, according to the Ithaca Journal.
The little guy also “grew up with a wrench in his hand” and loved automobiles.
No grudges. It was a family affair. His brother, brother-in-law, and father — who also raced — would “go over the car with a fine-tooth comb,” Harry Jr. told the Ithaca Journal. “Every week we’d find stuff. Sometimes they were silly things we didn’t ever think were broken, but we’d find it.”
Cayuga is the longest of New York’s Finger Lakes and a big draw for tourism.
Harry graduated from Lansing High School and worked as a machinist at Borg Warner Automotive. In the first years of the millennium, “Hurricane Harry” earned a championship at Skyline Raceway and placed at Thunder Mountain in Center Lisle.
“He was a fierce competitor,” rival Ward Harrison of Groton told the Post Standard/Herald-Journal. “He was hard charging and he’d get mad like the rest of us. We’d rub cars and banged them, but we’d still talk to each other — just maybe not that night.”
Like mother, like son. Harry was popular for his warm personality as well as his exploits on the track. He “couldn’t walk more than 50 feet without bumping into someone who knew and loved him,” according to the Ithaca Journal.
At some point during his racing career, he changed the name of his car to No. 55 as a tribute to his mother, who died of cancer at age 55.
Little did Harry know that he would die even more prematurely.
A photo from Harry Uhl’s Findagrave page.
Fateful foursome. On August 17, 2002, Harry attended the Groton Old Home Festival, played a little pool, and then took his just-purchased fishing boat out on Cayuga Lake for its maiden voyage.
His pals Kristy Williams, Troy Maybee, and Nasreen Raza joined him. Forensic Files watchers will remember Nasreen — and her regal-looking face — from her appearance on the show.
Around 2 a.m., Harry steered to shore so Kristy and Troy could use a bathroom or a phone (media accounts vary) at Myers Point.
Demolition on the lake. Harry and Nasreen waited on the boat, which drifted a short distance from shore.
Suddenly, another vessel came out of nowhere like a demented dolphin.
Harry stood up and took a direct hit from the hull. A propeller tore into Nasreen’s arm.
Early newspaper reports described Nasreen Raza’s injury only as “a cut”
“I heard a blood-curdling scream,” Jason Hutchings, a sailor on the lake that night, would later testify. “To be honest with you, [Harry’s boat] didn’t even look like a boat to me — it looked like a paper box in the water.”
Jason saw Nasreen with her right arm “ripped to shreds” and Harry “bent over in a fetal position.”
Jumped and ran. Another eyewitness, Joseph F. Knight, who was swimming in the lake that evening, recalled that the offending vessel “hopped up in the air a little bit” over Harry’s boat, then circled without stopping and zipped away.
Harry died of head trauma that night, and Nasreen was airlifted to University Hospital in Syracuse, where doctors saved her arm, although it would be disfigured.
The Uhls held Harry’s funeral at the Lansing United Methodist Church, with his coffin draped in a checkered flag.
Tragedy for many. In a letter to the Ithaca Journal printed on Oct. 30, 2002, Harry’s nephew Timothy Lane wrote:
Harry’s calling hours were a wakeup for me. How could a man who was still so very young…have an impact on so many people’s lives? Goodbye to my uncle, my role model, one of my best friends that would do anything to help me and vice versa.
Harry Uhl’s sister Yvonne Bartlett said that she had “seen grown men break down when describing the accident scene.”
A memorial stock car race was held in honor of Harry, and the Uhls created a $500 scholarship in his name for local vocational program graduates.
Harry’s brother-in-law Dick Stark changed his own racing car’s number to 455 (“for 55”) as another tribute to Harry.
Hauled not floated. Meanwhile, the community was demanding action on the hit and run.
“This was the biggest boating case we’d had in a long time and to come,” Gary Surdell told ForensicFilesNow.com. “We didn’t have forensic reconstruction experts on staff. We had to reach out to the state.”
Because Harry’s wounds had no marine life in them, investigators thought that the boat that hit him might have recently been transported via an automobile and not kept docked in the water.
Quick cover-up. They also considered the possibility that the guilty pilot sank the boat.
Fortunately, a passenger from the mystery boat came forward. Construction worker John Ottenschot told police that his coworker Floyd Wright, who had been driving the boat, might have hit something on that night of August 17, but they didn’t know what — it might have been a log.
Investigators examined the vessel in Floyd’s garage. They eventually determined that someone had made an effort to repair the damage, cleaning blood off the hull and spray-painting it white.
A tiny crack in the propeller held a bit of foam.
‘I had no sympathy for Floyd Wright,’ said former Assistant DA Gary Surdell. ‘No one did.’
Alcohol aplenty. They made a case that the foam came from upholstery on Harry’s boat and paint chips found in wounds to Harry’s back, chin, and leg originated from Floyd’s boat.
Floyd, 35, was charged with failure to stop and report the accident, a misdemeanor, plus tampering with evidence, a Class E felony, because he repaired his boat.
John Ottenschot testified that he and Floyd drank at lakeside bars the Haunt and the Tradewinds on the fateful night, but they had Pepsi in addition to beer on the boat and Floyd didn’t seem intoxicated.
Bulb possibility. Defense lawyers Thomas Cramer and Andrew Bonavia insisted Floyd didn’t know what he hit because the other boat had no light on and its engine was off.
One prosecution theory held that Harry actually did have some form of illumination, but it broke off in the collision. “If Harry had his light on, that would have counted more against Floyd,” said Gary Surdell, who appeared on Forensic Files. “But that lake is so deep you would have needed Jacques Cousteau to find it.”
A jury convicted Floyd on all charges in April 2003.
On the spot. In June 2003, Judge M. John Sherman gave Floyd Wright — who already had a suspended driver’s license for operating a car while intoxicated — 16 months to two years in prison.
An Ithaca Journal clipping shows Floyd Wright, far right, with his lawyers
John Ottenschot faced no charges. “He clearly had bad feelings about the incident — what was he going to do, get into a fist fight with his friend?” Gary Surdell told ForensicFilesNow.com. “But he did the right thing in the end, although he didn’t give the whole account until he was on Forensic Files.”
Floyd served his time and then dropped out of sight. (New York’s Department of Corrections website lists other men named Floyd Wright currently in prison, but their descriptions don’t match his.)
Earlier episode. As for Nasreen Raza, it turns out that the boating accident wasn’t the first time she had made local headlines.
In 1998, at the age of 14, Nasreen was reported missing by her mother, Nancy Raza, after skipping school. After an anonymous caller tipped off police, they found her in the Courtyard Apartments on James Street in Syracuse. Nasreen was with an 18-year-old man she met on a phone chat line (remember those?) Nancy said that her daughter told her of sleeping in places where people woke up with roaches in their hair.
The guy was charged with endangering a minor.
Low profile. Nasreen apparently got her life back on track. In 2000, the local paper listed her as on the high honor roll at T-S-T Community School. In 2010 and 2011, she made the dean’s list at SUNY Courtland, where she studied anthropology.
There’s no word on what she’s doing today. (“Nasreen Raza” is a fairly common name — a lot of them are on social media.) But she’s probably happy to steer clear of drama and media attention.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Todd Boczkowski Discusses His Break With His Father (“All Wet,” Forensic Files)
After entrepreneur Tim Boczkowski went to prison for killing both of his wives — one in a bathtub in 1990, the other in a hot tub in 1994 — the story of the children he left behind was one of unity.
Todd Boczkowski is the youngest of three
Randy, Sandy, and Todd sought out and found foster parents who took in all three of them so they could stay in the same school district.
Sandy became a corporate HR executive for a logistics company, Randy got a job in crowd control at a Philadelphia stadium and started a family, and Todd served in the military and co-founded an online marketing company.
They all publicly supported their father’s innocence in the “accidental” deaths of their mother, Elaine Pegher Boczkowski, and stepmother, Maryann Fullerton Boczkowski.
That is, until now. Todd Boczkowski has changed his mind about his father and is preparing to tell his story via the upcoming book My Two Angels.
Todd, a 36-year-old Pittsburgh resident who lives with his long-haired cat, Mr. Puffers, recently talked to ForensicFilesNow.com about his relationship with his imprisoned father and late mother and stepmother and why he broke ranks with his older sister and brother:
You were 5 when your biological mother died. What do you remember of her?I was the mama’s boy. My mother provided the care, the love, the nurturing. My siblings were in school and my father was at work.The majority of my life was being around her. I got away with a lot. I always wanted to go to the candy store and would throw an absolute tantrum and I wouldn’t stop until my mom took me to get candy. My siblings still tease me about it.
Did you like your stepmother, Maryann, from the beginning? I did. I had a déjà vu moment because of how strikingly similar she and my mother looked. As a kid, I didn’t have an understanding of death. I remember meeting Maryann and thinking, “Mom, is that you?”
A clipping from a story about the Boczkowskis’ search for a foster home
When did you first start to suspect that your mother’s and stepmother’s drownings weren’t really accidental? It was at the age of 19 or 20, when I joined the military and was on my own and thinking for myself. I went through some formal law enforcement training. That’s when things started to not add up. Just the unusual circumstances, with both happening around tubs. My stepmother’s autopsy showing signs of strangulation. That’s tough evidence to refute.
Any other signs that concerned you? I believe that Maryann started to discover things about my father, ugly things and she was about to blow the lid off them. The week of her death she had reached out to my aunt — my father’s sister — and her friend. She wanted to meet up with them separately because she had something she wanted to talk about. She died before she had those meetings.
Tim Boczkowski, seen here in a 2021 prison photo, is serving his time at SCI Greene in Pennsylvania
How did your brother and sister react when you began to doubt your father’s innocence? We all accept one another’s opinions, views. We all have different perspectives. They respect my speaking out and writing a book.
What did you think about your father winning parole in 2018 from North Carolina (where Elaine died)? I’m sure the parole board thought, there’s another conviction in another state, so why do we still have to pay for him? Now he’s serving time in Pennsylvania for Maryann’s death.
To win parole, some prisoners have to admit to the crime. Is that the case with your father? He actually came out and verbalized that back in 2007. He said, “I’m responsible for your mother’s death.” But it didn’t seem genuine — it was like when someone drives drunk and kills someone by accident. That made me see who he was.
So the implication is that he didn’t mean to kill your mother? Yes. Now he’s serving his sentence for my stepmom, but he hasn’t admitted to his guilt in that – so that he can try to get his conviction overturned in Pennsylvania.
Is there anything else that influenced your perspective on your father? I was a guard at a prison camp in Iraq— it was so bare. It was a game changer for me. I realized I’d served harder time then my father had.
What’s your relationship with your father like today? I stopped talking to him in 2007. He’s attempted to make contact with me via letters to other people. My relatives know I feel this way. I said, don’t give him my address. I have a pretty good understanding as far as who my father is and that’s not the kind of thing I need in my life. I think he’s like a cancer. And I do think if he got out, he would kill again.♠
That’s all for this week. Until next time, cheers. – RR
A Parolee Kills California Farm GirlMarlene Miller (“Paintball,” Forensic Files)
When an individual has spent decades in prison, sometimes the case against him or her weakens whether it deserves to or not.
Marlene Miller
Unless it’s a serial killer or Nazi war criminal, the public loses interest in the crime and transfers its outrage to a newer case.
See Jane go. Turnover in the criminal justice system also can mean new officials who reweigh the credentials of courtroom experts. Or they might pay more attention to evidence that didn’t exist than the evidence that did.
It happened in the Jane Dorotik case even though police found her fingerprint in her husband’s blood and her tire tracks near his body. Her supporters pressed for her release because investigators didn’t find her DNA at the murder scene, and now she’s a free woman.
In the case of Booker T. Hillery’s conviction for Marlene Miller’s murder in 1962, racism in jury selection spurred the criminal justice system to take another look.
Named for historic figure. Booker deserved a new trial because of the systemic exclusion of blacks from grand juries at the time. But he also deserved his second murder conviction because, well, he sure seemed guilty.
Booker T. Hillery circa 1962
That was back in 1986. For this post, I researched whether the legal system has once again looked favorably upon Booker T. Hillery.
I also went back further in time to find background information on Booker — whose name indicates his parents had much higher aspirations for him than jailbird — and to learn more about the prior rape conviction mentioned on Forensic Files.
Water bearers. So let’s get going on the recap of “Paintball” along with extra information from internet research:
Marlene Elinor Miller, born March 8, 1947, was a high school sophomore living with her parents and brother, Walter, near Hanford, California. She got good grades, belonged to the 4-H Club, and liked to sew so much that she owned scissors engraved with her name.
The Millers were responsible for tending to the area’s water supply. A canal used to irrigate local farms was located behind the Millers’ white framed house.
Essence of innocence. At least one member of the family had to be at the house at any given time in case problems came up with the canal, also known as the People’s Ditch.
On March 21, 1962, Marlene was at home sewing a dress to wear to a party or to wear on a date or her very first date — or maybe all three. (Media accounts vary.)
“The lights were on, the window shades were up, and the doors were unlocked” as Marlene worked alone in the house, according to court papers.
Horrifying discovery. When her parents got home, they found Marlene gone, the TV blaring, and the iron hot. Someone had opened a window in Marlene’s room and placed the screen on the grass.
Investigators believed Marlene didn’t hear the break-in over the whir of the sewing machine.
In the moonlit backyard, Kings County Deputy Sheriff O.R. MacFarlane found blood on the ground.
The next day, authorities drained some water from the ditch, revealing Marlene’s body.
Still chaste. Someone had violently ripped open her Levi cutoffs, torn her underwear, and tied her wrists. “A pair of large sewing shears bearing the name ‘Marlene M.’ was embedded up to the handles in her chest,” court papers say. Most other sources reported she was stabbed in the throat.
She had defensive bruises and had died of drowning, according to Forensic Files. But early court papers indicated that hemorrhaging from a punctured lung caused her death.
In a sign of the times, the court papers note that “the hymen was intact.”
Made it into ‘print.’ One of Marlene’s high school classmates reported seeing a black and turquoise car on March 21 near the same part of the ditch where Marlene’s body had turned up the next day.
Central Valley cotton fields like this one relied on the irrigation system that the Millers helped manage
The distinctive-looking 1953 Plymouth belonged to local farmhand Booker T. Hillery, age 35. He worked at the Ferreira family’s ranch, where Marlene occasionally babysat.
Police found his tire tracks and bootprints along with prints from someone’s bare feet, probably Marlene’s.
Transplanted Texan. So who was Booker T. Hillery?
According to the New York Times, Booker was the son of a sharecropper whose family moved from Texas to California sometime after World War II. A Hanford Sentinel account indicated he moved to California with his mother only in 1949.
As I suspected, Booker made an attempt at higher education. A 1954 Fresno Bee item identified him as a 23-year-old part-time student at Fresno State College.
Unfortunately, the article also named him as a suspect in a rape.
Phone ruse. On Nov. 30, 1954, Booker had gained entry to the home of the victim — a housewife of just 19 or 20 years of age with an 8-month-old baby — by asking to use the phone. He then pulled a knife and sexually assaulted her.
The police already had Booker’s picture on file because he had been briefly held on suspicion of manslaughter in 1953, according to an account in the Hanford Sentinel.
The rape victim picked Booker out of a lineup. So did another woman, who recognized him as the man who knocked on her door and asked to borrow tools, then threatened her when she said no. (She escaped unharmed.)
Back to the clink. Booker had a halfway-decent alibi. He was visiting his friend Louis Scott when the rape occurred, he contended, and his buddy backed up his claim. Nonetheless, he was convicted and ultimately served six years of his sentence.
He won parole from San Quentin in 1961 —only to become the No. 1 suspect in Marlene Miller’s murder in 1962.
The evidence against him piled up fast and high.
Gloves fit. There was the matter of a pair of damp mismatched milking gloves found outside the Millers’ house. One of them had a red lining that jogged Booker’s girlfriend’s memory. Allean Stallworth said she was with him when he bought the same gloves.
The other glove came from a pair sold for $1.29 at a local army surplus store, where the manager knew Booker as a customer. Police found a sales slip from the store dated January 22, 1962, in the backseat of Booker’s car.
Booker’s employer, Joe Ferreira, remembered hearing him say that he had lost a glove.
Drive-by. Walter Miller Jr. testified that money found in Booker’s possession matched a $10 bill, $1 bill, and nickels stolen from his room on the night of the murder. (Granted, that part of the evidence sounds a little shaky, unless Walter actually memorized the serial numbers.)
A witness saw Booker, who was staying in the Royal Hotel in Hanford, driving in the direction of the Millers’ house on Tenth and Elder avenues on March 21.
The defense argued that Booker always drove that way to and from work — and on the night of the murder, Booker’s car was following co-worker Frank Costa’s car. But Costa couldn’t verify his alibi because Booker’s car dropped out of sight during the drive that evening.
Some other dude did it. Booker admitted to police that he washed his clothes and a white leather jacket (Caleb Hughes) at a laundromat at 10 p.m. on the night of the murder. Manure had spattered his clothes while he was milking a cow, he explained.
It’s unclear why a criminal like Booker T. Hillery chose to drive such a conspicuous car
Frank Costa, who worked with Booker on the ranch that day, said no such thing had happened.
Still, the defense pushed a theory that the killer was one of Marlene Miller’s classmates and that she willingly left the house with that individual.
Courted. After nine hours of deliberations, a jury convicted Booker T. Hiller of the murder.
Judge Meredith Wingrove sentenced him to death in the gas chamber.
From his cell, Booker worked furiously on writs and appeals. A radio interview referred to him as a “self-trained prisoner lawyer.”
Meanwhile, in 1972, Booker got a lucky break. The California Supreme Court ruled executions cruel and unusual punishment, and all death sentences in the state were converted to life in prison.
A clipping shows a middle-aged Booker T. Hillery
Poor composition. The state later revived capital punishment, but previous death sentences weren’t reinstated —there would be no date with a potassium cyanide pellet for Booker T. Hillery.
Booker got another big break, this one of his own making, in 1986.
Twenty-four years after Marlene Miller’s murder, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction, ruling that Kings County’s systematic exclusion of blacks from grand juries like the one that indicted Booker was “a grave constitutional trespass.”
Notoriety problem. Of the 49,000 Kings County residents at the time, about 2,000 were African Americans who were mostly “poor farm-workers” like Booker. The justice system presumably could have found at least one or two jurors from his peer group for the 1962 grand jury, had it made an effort.
For the 1986 retrial, there would be three black jurors — and a change of venue.
“There’s not a 5-year-old down there [in Kings County] who hasn’t been told who Booker Hillery is,” defense lawyer Clifford Tedmon argued.
Booker’s trial took place in Monterey County. His bail was set at $500,000.
Play ball. His personal appearance made a splash in court. “Booker wore a cardigan, tie, and horn-rimmed glasses” making him look “more like an attorney than an accused killer.”
Marlene Miller lived in a small, trusting community. There were just 18 students in her eighth-grade graduation class
But a spiffy exterior couldn’t compensate for the forensics. The old footprint and tire track evidence held up.
Plus, debris from the Millers’ carpet — vacuumed up right after the murder and kept in police storage — held microscopic football-shaped particles identical to those found in Booker’s Plymouth. They were identified as spray paint on fiber.
New witness. The defense suggested the “paintball” evidence could have been contaminated over the years.
But the prosecution had another bombshell. A surprise witness, former sheriff’s deputy Lowell Reightley, testified that he overhead Booker telling another prisoner, “I didn’t mean to kill that girl.”
Send him back. Jurors had trouble making a decision at first, but Monterey Superior Court Judge John M. Phillips insisted they keep trying.
They ultimately found Booker guilty, and he got 25 years to life.
By 1989, Booker had been denied parole 10 times. Before one of the hearings, 15,000 people signed a petition asking the board to keep him behind razor wire.
Hillery was “the bogyman incarnate here — the guy parents would tell their kids about when they were warning them about not talking to strangers,” said Kings County prosecutor Patrick Hart.
High marks. But the general public’s conviction eventually began to wane. According to a 1993 LA Times article:
The clean canvas that made Hillery’s violence look and feel so shocking is quite splotched. Murder is no stranger anymore, and that, combined with the perpetual dose of mayhem delivered by television from nearby Fresno and the world beyond, has finally ended Hanford’s rural innocence.
Despite that he attempted to rape a male cook in San Quentin in 1976, by the time he came up for parole on July 29, 1993, there were reports from California State Prison Salerno that Booker was a model prisoner. His lawyers maintained that he made a good candidate for release because he had a supportive family and job skills.
The Hanford area is known for pick-your-own fruit farms
Record setter. But Marlene’s brother, Walter, sent a video-recording about the pain the murder and perpetual court actions caused his family.
Regardless of whether or not his story inspires any new sympathizers, his final chapter did play out in the custody of the California Department of Corrections — in a prison medical care facility in Stockton.
He died at the age of 91 on January 16, 2023, according to Find a Grave (thanks to reader Sister Veronica for sending in the tip).
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
A Marriage Takes More than One Wrong Turn (“Seeds for Doubt,” Forensic Files)
Peter Wlasiuk changed the story he told police about how his wife ended up at the bottom of a lake in Guilford, New York.
Patty and Peter Wlasiuk enjoyed some sunny days before things went horribly awry
A spouse with a revised narrative is always highly suspect in a death investigation, and there was no shortage of other negative indicators.
At Peter’s subsequent trial, the prosecution called 50 witnesses and the jury took less than four hours to convict the tavern owner of murdering Patty Wlasiuk.
So when I first plugged “Peter Wlasiuk” into Google, it surprised me to see that advocacy for his innocence has begun springing up all over the internet.
Why are people championing a guy who tried to collect on his wife’s insurance policy less than nine hours after she died?
For this week, I looked for some answers, but first here’s a recap of the 2004 Forensic Files episode “Seeds for Doubt,” along with extra information from internet research:
Patty Schoonmaker came into the world on February 19, 1967, in Lakenheath, England. As a small child, she moved with her family to Sidney, New York. She grew up to become a registered nurse who worked at The Hospital at Sidney.
Peter Wlasiuk, born on February 9, 1969, spent his early life in New Jersey. After high school, he joined the army and later worked as a driver of the giant trucks that transport new cars, according to the Press and Sun-Bulletin.
Peter and Patty Wlasiuk in happier times.
The mullet-wearing guy and petite gal first met when Peter was visiting relatives in Sidney. He moved to the area and the pair eloped in Las Vegas in 1996. She brought a son, William Schoonmaker, from a previous relationship into the marriage.
The couple went on to have three daughters, Ashlee, Jolynn, and Rebecca.
In 1997, the Wlasiuks paid $82,000 for a house with a backyard swimming pool at 633 New Virginia Road.
Although Forensic Files made it sound as though Peter was the sole owner of the Angel Inn bar, he and Patty actually bought the business together.
The Guilford Center building that housed the tavern dated back to 1806. Peter installed knotty-pine cabinets in the establishment, which had a dance floor and hosted bands.
According to a Press and Sun-Bulletin account, Peter and Patty both liked to flirt with bar patrons but also seemed to have fun together. Tavern goers would later recall how “generous and happily married they were.”
In fact, in February 2002, just a few weeks before Patty died, Peter went out of his way to find a new state-of-the-art stethoscope and blood-pressure device to give her at a surprise birthday celebration he staged at the inn.
Little did Patty know that just a few weeks later, the party would be over for good.
On April 3, 2002, when Patty got home at 11 p.m. after her late shift at the hospital, she found the children gone, according to Peter. Each spouse thought the other was picking them up at the babysitter’s house, he explained.
On their way to retrieve the kids, Patty tried to flick a cigarette ash out of the window when suddenly a deer appeared, Peter said.
She swerved to avoid it and plunged the 1996 GMC truck into Guilford Lake, Peter told police. He said that he escaped and made a failed attempt to help Patty, then ran to the home of Thomas and Jessica Becker of Norwich for help. Thomas called 911.
Peter Wlasiuk used the family’s house, right, to pay for his defense. Patty’s mother said that he was profiting from a murder
While waiting for the rescue workers, Thomas Becker, his friend Steven Schweichler, and Peter drove out to the lake, where the white truck was visible about 35 feet from shore. Thomas dashed home and returned with a wetsuit, swim fins, and a rowboat, then paddled out to the vehicle, but it had traveled deeper into the chilly water, according to an Oneonta Daily Star account. He couldn’t reach Patty.
Professional divers ultimately pulled her from the cold lake and took her to the same hospital where she had worked for 17 years. Her colleagues couldn’t revive her.
When explaining what happened that night, Peter was quick to volunteer that Patty’s one flaw was that she drank too much.
True, Patty had racked up some DWI violations. But her blood alcohol content on the night she died tested at o.4 percent to .055 percent, below the legal limit.
Patty had many loyal friends at work.
And police had additional reasons to investigate further.
The truck took an unusual path into water, through one of the only spots without a guardrail or other obstruction. There were no skid marks to suggest the driver slammed on the brakes. When they pulled the truck out of the water, they saw that the door Peter claimed to have used as an exit was locked. (Peter had alternately told police he climbed out through an open window.)
And curiously, in Patty’s hair and on her clothes, there were seedpods known as burdock despite that it didn’t grow near the lake. Investigators found some near the Wlasiuks’ house. There was a burdock plant with a broken branch and strands of Patty’s hair on it. Peter had some burdock on his shoes.
Patty had scrapes and petechial hemorrhages on her body, although Broome County pathologist James Terzian at first signed off on drowning as the cause of death.
But the case took a prurient turn thanks to some entries in Patty’s diary. She had written about three-way sex that she and Peter had with babysitter Joyce Worden.
Patty worried that Joyce had replaced her as the object of Peter’s affections.
And, as earlier mentioned, Peter was in a hurry to collect on Patty’s life insurance. By 2002, the Wlasiuks owed about $70,000 on their mortgage and $86,000 on a business loan they took out to buy the Angel Inn, according to an AP account.
Patty Wlasiuk
Police believe that on the night of April 3, 2002, Peter left the kids with the babysitter so he could kill Patty at home. After she had one or more alcoholic drinks, he murdered her outside the house, where she picked up the burdocks in her hair and he got them on his shoes. The petechial hemorrhages — as Forensic Files fans know well —suggested death by strangulation.
Then, he placed her in the truck, drove to the lake, steered the vehicle toward the water, and jumped out while it was still on dry land.
The motive? Peter wanted Joyce as his new girlfriend, sole custody of the kids, and the life insurance money to pay down his debts.
On April 8, 2002, police arrested Peter and held him without bail.
The trial kicked off just a few months later. Patty’s mother, Joyce Cardozo, attended every day along with her adult children, Laurie and Manny, and grandson William Schoonover.
For the court case, Peter amended his original story: Patty was drunk — he could smell alcohol on her breath, he told Reasonable Doubt — so he asked her to pull over, which made her so angry that she intentionally drove into the lake and refused to exit the sinking car. He made up the deer tale out of concern for his wife’s reputation, he claimed.
“The whole story is I was protecting Patty,” Peter said on the witness stand — he didn’t want the police to know she drank and drove.
Joyce Worden
The defense, led by lawyer Frederick Neroni, hired a scuba diver who said he discovered burdock in the lake.
Joyce Worden, the babysitter who participated in the sex trios and allegedly became Peter’s girlfriend, “shocked the courtroom” by testifying that Patty had initiated the three-way arrangement. But Joyce admitted she’d had sex with Peter alone as well.
She refuted reports that Peter abused his wife. According to an account from the Press & Sun-Bulletin:
“Worden contradicted earlier testimony that Peter Wlasiuk had kicked his wife so hard he left the imprint of his cowboy boot in her chest. Worden said Peter Wlasiuk actually lost his balance and stepped on his wife’s chest after his wife kicked him in the genitals.”
Peter said that prosecution witnesses fabricated the wife-beating stories after “the media pounded me.”
During testimony from a rescue squad member who tried to revive Patty, Peter dabbed his eyes.
Peter’s mother, Gail Wlasiuk, testified that Patty drank a lot and she once found 20 jumbo Budweiser cans in a gully near the couple’s house.
Gail said that Peter had called about the life insurance pronto because she urged him to do so.
Among the dozens of witnesses District Attorney Joseph McBride called for the prosecution was Patty’s supervisor, Patricia Howard, who said that Patty “came to work perky but went home to horror” and that colleagues encouraged her to leave the marriage. But Patty said she still loved Pete.
The Angel Inn once had a wooden angel that the Guilford Historical Society calls “one of the most valuable pieces of American Folk art”
Patty’s coworker Patricia Cretien-Grant testified that Patty said Peter held a gun to her head during an argument.
Jessica Becker told the court that when Peter showed up at her house seeking help, his hair was dry despite that he supposedly had just been submerged in the lake.
The prosecution also trotted out heavy hitter Dr. Michael Baden, an O.J. Simpson trial vet. He testified that Patty had no water in her lungs and someone had likely choked her before she entered the lake.
Broome County pathologist James Terzian ultimately concurred that she had died from asphyxiation.
The prosecution also held that wet burdock wouldn’t stick to hair or clothing — she must have picked them up before she plunged into the water.
Accident reconstruction expert Andrew Frate said that the car didn’t sustain enough damage to support Peter’s claim that Patty hightailed it into the lake.
A bar patron named Brenda Golden told the court that Peter had once said he knew how to kill someone and make it look like an accident. (Neroni countered that Peter was just bragging.)
Rescue worker Marlene Martin testified she believed that Peter feigned hypothermia on the night of the accident. He was sitting still until he saw her, then started shaking and speaking in a stuttering voice, she said.
Manny Cardozo III acknowledged his sister struggled with a drinking problem
The prosecution pressed the theory that an argument Peter said arose from Patty’s drinking had more to do with Peter cheating on her with Joyce Worden.
The jury delivered a guilty verdict after deliberating for two and a half to four hours (accounts vary on the time).
Many in the courtroom hugged and shook hands, including law officers and Patty’s nursing colleagues.
“I’m still pretty rocky,” Joyce Cardozo told the Press and Sun Bulletin. “I didn’t suspect Peter until after they actually arrested him. I just couldn’t believe it.”
Peter got 25 years to life in prison.
Chenango County Judge W. Howard Sullivan appointed Joyce Cardozo as administrator of Patty’s $284,000 estate.
As far as the children the Wlasiuks shared, a 2002 newspaper item advertised a “benefit for the children of Patty Wlasiuk” at the East Park Supper Club with food, soda, raffles, and door prizes for $10 a person.
A 2008 Press and Sun Bulletin story reported that the girls lived with Peter’s father, Thomas Wlasiuk. According to information available on social media today, Ashlee recently got engaged, Jolene works at a preschool, and Rebecca is or was in the military.
Patricia’s son, William Schoonover, died in 2023 at the age of 38. “Despite having a difficult childhood, he was a ray of sunshine to many people,” notes his obituary. He worked as an addiction counselor, according to the obit. (Thanks to reader Jen Y for writing in with the tip.)
Meanwhile, his mother’s killer is still fighting for exoneration and release.
During his interview with Forensic Files, Peter Wlasiuk said he couldn’t get justice because he wasn’t wealthy. But he managed to get his conviction voided at least twice amid claims he didn’t receive a fair trial.
Both times, he was found guilty again.
An Albany appeals court rejected Peter’s 2016 appeal, which alleged the prosecution’s narrative was “pure speculation.”
One judge referred to Peter as a “sick and evil man” who “society should be protected from.”
So, who or what is the driving force behind those advocating to free Peter Wlasiuk today?
Peter Wlasiuk gets a visit from his older daughters.
Well, there’s no mention of any major organization such as the Innocence Project taking up his cause. The key seems to be that the imprisoned Peter scored himself a new wife, Heather — I wasn’t able to find her maiden name — who originally came from Milton, Delaware.
Now known as Heather Wlasiuk, she had taken criminal justice classes at Sussex Tech High School and Delaware Tech Community College and became interested in Pete’s case after reading about it on social media, according to Heather’s interview with Forevermedia in February 2021.
She sent him a birthday card in Attica in 2015 and offered help as an innocence advocate. He proposed a year later and they married in 2019.
Heather and Peter’s other supporters believe that Patty died of drowning, but CPR released some of the water from her lungs.
Plus, the crime took place in an election year with a lot of “tough-on-crime spiel,” Heather said during the interview. “The DA is now a state supreme court judge, so it’s all about advances and putting somebody in jail.” She also feels the trial should have had a change of venue because Patty had influential relatives in town — a cousin who worked in the DA’s office and a mother with a high-level position at the local hospital.
Heather, who has a monotone low-key voice — not what you might expect from a rabble-rousing crusader for justice — got a legal team together for Peter and started the Operation #FREEPETE fundraising page as well as Twitter and Instagram accounts and a YouTube channel to advocate for his innocence.
In 2021, Heather told the Cape Gazette that Peter was the victim of 300 Brady Violations — incidences of the law withholding information that might help the defendant prove innocence.
The nonprofit Center for Factual Innocence has also taken up Peter’s cause and added “Pete Wlasiuk” to the hood of a racecar with an image of a justice logo and the names of 14 others who the organization believes were wrongly convicted.
Oh, and Peter’s camp also points to true crime shows’ desire for ratings as part of the problem. Heather says that a group of people are planning a class-action suit against either Forensic Files or Reasonable Doubt — Peter appeared on both, but Heather wouldn’t say which was the offending series — because of unfair portrayals of suspects.
Despite his wife’s efforts, as of this writing, Peter M. Wlasiuk is inmate #03B0130 at the Greene Correctional Facility, aka, Coxsackie, where COVID concerns have kept him and Heather from visiting as much as they’d like and they have to stay six feet apart when they see each other. The New York Department of Corrections gives his parole hearing date as sometime in November 2026 and parole eligibility date as March 26, 2027.
“It’s difficult, not for the meek or the weak,” Heather said of marrying an incarcerated individual, but “I’m going to do life with him no matter where he is.”
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
A Husband Tries Murder, Insurance Fraud, and a Little Forgery (‘Hunter or Hunted?’ Forensic Files)
Forensic Files has introduced us to many a dimwitted killer.
There was Ron Gillette, who sent out invitations to his second wedding while still married to his first wife.
Judy Blake and Bruce Moilanen in their youths. Bruce belonged to the track and field team at Ontonagon Area High School
Creative effort. And let’s not forget Ronnie Joe Neal, who told police he just happened to find his victim’s Cadillac with all her valuables inside and the keys in the ignition.
Well, Bruce Moilanen was none-too-bright either, but he went even bigger than stupid: He was a buffoon.
Maybe he deserved a little credit because his ploy to win the affections of his late wife’s friend wasoriginal, but it was laughable just the same and investigators saw through it immediately.
That one, really? Bruce also did some more-typical dumb criminal stuff, like trying to make a premeditated murder look like a hunting accident (Janice Dodson).
And like Forensic Files killers Brenda Andrew and George Hansen, Bruce never imagined investigators would look into previous near-deadly “accidents” that befell the victim.
For this week, I searched for some background on Judy and Bruce Moilanenand checked on where he is today.
So let’s get going on the recap of Forensic Files episode “Hunter or Hunted?” along with extra intelligence from internet research:
Minutiae machine. Judy Diane Blake was born to a conservative, outdoorsy family in Hancock, Michigan, on Oct. 16, 1957. She had two brothers, Jerry and David. The Blakes belonged to the Redeemer Free Lutheran Church, and Judy’s parents, Mary Ann and Dale, operated a business called Dale’s Service, according to FindaGrave.
Bruce Moilanen
In 1976, Judy met Bruce Moilanen, who came into the world on March 29, 1954, the son of Mr. and Mrs. William Moilanen.
Thanks to the Iron Daily Globe, a newspaper that pretty much documented every time a local changed his or her vacuum-cleaner bag, some anecdotal intelligence about Bruce popped up.
Finn folk. He received an appendectomy in 1959, his confirmation in the Apostolic Lutheran Church in 1969, and a number of traffic citations, including two for speeding and one for improper overtaking, in the early 1970s. He sustained minor injuries both as a passenger in an accident in 1974 and as a driver when he lost control of his own vehicle in 1976.
Like many residents of Michigan’s rugged Upper Peninsula, the 6-foot-tall Bruce had Finnish ancestry. At some point, he worked as a support staff person at General Hospital in Marquette, Michigan. Forensic Files gives his job title as insurance adjustor.
The murder shook up the Upper Peninsula including Ontonagon, Michigan
As for Judy’s occupation, a Battle Creek Enquirer item identified her as a nurse at the same hospital.
The couple married in 1978. According to American Justice, Judy’s parents didn’t entirely approve of the union. Perhaps the loudmouthed Bruce seemed too different from their quiet daughter. Or maybe they read about the speeding tickets in the IDG.
Chasing big bucks. Judy and Bruce stayed in the Upper Peninsula. In 1989, they had a daughter named Elise. By this time, the Blakes had taken more of a liking to their son-in-law.
Everything seemed fine until November 29, 1992, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, when Judy, Bruce, and Elise were visiting the Blakes.
It was the last day of hunting season and a large party, including Bruce and some of the Blakes, went out looking for deer.
Separately, Judy Moilanen took a group of her own Springer spaniels plus her parents’ dog, Streak, for a walk in the woods behind the property the Blakes owned on Highway 38 in Ontonagon.
Worst case scenario. Although Forensic Files says that all the dogs returned home without Judy, the book The Sweater Letter by Dave and Lynn Distel maintains that only Streak came home alone.
Judy Moilanen was a dog trainer as well as a medical professional
When two and half hours passed with no sign of Judy, family members got worried that she was on a fool’s errand searching for Streak.
Mary Ann and a family friend found the dogs by themselves in the woods. Farther out, they saw Judy lying motionless on her side.
When they turned her on her back, they saw a bloody chest wound, and Mary Ann screamed, according to the The Sweater Letter.
Part of a trend? The bullet had traveled through Judy’s heart, exited her body, and landed somewhere in the woods. Investigators couldn’t find it at first.
In the meantime, the authorities took the scene at face value as an accident, believing that an unknown hunter’s errant bullet killed Judy.
In fact, an Associated Press article titled “Carelessness, hunters equal a deadly season” pointed to Judy’s death as one of many accidental deer season tragedies around the country in 1992:
“Judy Moilanen, 35, was walking her dogs last weekend in a wooded area frequented by hunters when she was struck by a bullet. She was the fourth hunting-related fatality in Michigan this season.“
Gayle Lampinen
Local color. But detective Bob Ball didn’t buy it. He felt uneasy about the way Bruce Moilanen behaved, according to both Forensic Files and American Justice.
Bruce seemed to blame Judy for her own death because she didn’t wear an orange jacket.
And Bruce didn’t observe much of a mourning period. Within a couple of weeks of Judy’s death, he was gallivanting around on ski trips, and he tried to pick up Judy’s longtime friend Lee Anne Wysocki Jessop, according to her Forensic Files interview.
But Bruce seemed to have even more interest in another woman, the happily married Gayle Lampinen, 35. He had started hitting on her before Judy died. According to American Justice, Gayle considered him irritating and “kept ignoring him” and “hoped he’d go away.”
Odd present. After his wife’s death, Bruce reportedly bragged to Gayle that he’d soon have a financial windfall thanks to Judy’s life insurance policies, which would total $330,000 because of double indemnity clauses.
Gayle and Judy had met each other, but they weren’t close friends. So it seemed strange when Bruce presented her with boxes of Judy’s old clothes as a keepsake gift.
Mixed in with some second-hand sweaters, Gayle found a letter — supposedly written to her by Judy — that said her marriage to Bruce wasn’t working.
“After 14 years, we don’t see things the same anymore,” the note explained. “You are the only woman he trusts.”
Ya’ gotta be kidding. It also said that Bruce needed a new girlfriend.
And in an attempt to entice Gayle that redefined the word “buffoon,” the writer ended the letter by noting that Bruce “is incredible in the sack.”
Oh, for goodness sake.
Handwriting analysis showed that the writing was slow and deliberate like that of a forger, and ultimately determined that Bruce, not Judy, had written the letter.
Detectives found a ‘practice’ letter in addition to the one Bruce made for Gayle Lampinen to discover
Meanwhile, investigators found out that in 1991, an 85-pound chimney block “accidentally” slid off a roof where Bruce was working and hit Judy’s head. She got medical treatment and survived.
Hunting buddies. After the brick incident, the Moilanens’ house caught on fire. Judy escaped unharmed.
As for the completed murder of Judy in the woods, Bruce immediately named more than two dozen people as alibi witnesses. But they couldn’t say exactly where he was during a window of time around Judy’s death.
Police found one witness who saw Bruce hunting alone near the scene of the shooting.
Investigators believed that Bruce hid in the woods and shot Judy.
When a diligent investigator finally located the fatal bullet on the forest floor, Bruce said he didn’t own a .30 caliber rifle that could fire it, but detectives found some of Bruce’s paperwork listing such a gun as collateral on a bank loan.
Suspect cracks wide open. By this time, detectives had ascertained that Gayle Lampinen had no romantic interest in Bruce whatsoever regardless of how great his sexual prowess was or wasn’t.
When the police broke the news to Bruce that his silly device had failed and Gayle considered him little more than a nuisance, it crushed his ego and he confessed.
Judy was a tyrant at work and at home and a bad cook, Bruce claimed.
The crime scene
He said that on the fatal day in the woods, the first two times he spotted Judy through the trees, he aimed his gun but couldn’t bring himself to shoot. The third time, he closed his eyes and pulled the trigger, delivering the deadly wound.
Police pressure. Bruce also said Judy had threatened to divorce him and he didn’t want to split everything.
“That was Bruce’s downfall — he was cheap,” Bob Ball said.
Bruce was arrested and charged with premeditated murder. He pleaded not guilty and said cops coerced the confession from him. He tried to hide his face behind some papers on his way into the Ontonagon courthouse.
To prepare for the trial, investigators had re-created the chimney block incident. Bruce had said that he accidentally moved it with his foot, but they determined it was too heavy and needed a deliberate push in order to fall off the roof.
Weepy woe. Fortunately, prosecutor Beth Paczesny, just 26 years old and new to criminal trials, had plenty of other witnesses to help sway the jury, too.
During Gayle Lampinen’s testimony, Bruce reportedly began crying.
The defense didn’t have a single person to put on the stand. Bruce’s lawyer, the seasoned Thomas Casselman, claimed that all of his witnesses canceled because of fear. He portrayed the investigation as a witch hunt.
Casselman pressed the false-confession claim. “Those of you who are combat veterans or prisoners of war might understand,” he offered.
Foreman not fooled. When the jury came back with a guilty verdict on Dec. 15, 1993, Judy’s parents — who initially supported Bruce — hugged. Some in attendance cried.
Forensic Files chose police officer Linda Culp (above in a newspaper clipping) from an open casting call to play Judy Moilanen. Producers used a plastic chimney block so she wouldn’t get hurt during the ‘accident’ re-creation.
Jury foreman Jeff Vlahos, who later appeared on American Justice, seemed just as amused as everyone else by the “incredible in the sack” aside. He said he couldn’t imagine a grown woman writing something like that.
On Jan. 21, 1994, Bruce received a sentence of life without parole.
Judy’s brother and sister-in-law, David and Yvonne Blake, adopted 5-year-old Elise.
Too many roomies. Bruce went off to prison, but has made some attempts to get out on two feet, including an unsuccessful 1996 appeal claiming police shouldn’t have interrogated him without counsel.
Some disagreeable experiences have allegedly befallen Bruce while behind razor wire.
During his time at E.C. Brooks Correctional Facility, he claimed an employee retaliated against him for filing a grievance by moving him from a two-prisoner cell to a seven-man open dorm area, which caused mental stress and sleep deprivation. He also implied that staff members damaged his word processor and cassette player.
‘Volumes’ of info. Today, Bruce is better known as inmate #235252 in Lakeland Correctional Facility in Coldwater, Michigan, at security level II. He has no chance at parole.
Gayle Lampinen, the woman he found so captivating, appears to still live in the Upper Peninsula and participate in equestrian events.
If you’d like to know more about the case, you can find the book The Sweater Letter, later retitled Hunt to Kill, on Amazon.
It’ll cost you. “The Deer Hunting Murder,” the American Justice episode about the homicide, is available online but tricky to access. I ended up having to pay $4.99 for an A&E Crime Central subscription to watch it on Amazon, even though I have Prime.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
A Mechanic Preys on His Kids and Makes His Wife Disappear (‘A Daughter’s Journey,’ Forensic Files)
The Marlene Major case is a study in both the grimly expected and the pleasantly surprising.
Marlene Major
After Marlene, a 25-year-old mother of two, went missing, Bill Major gave the classic Forensic Files “my wife just got in her car and drove away forever” explanation (Jack Boyle, Richard Nyhuis).
And sadly, a revelation toward the middle of the story isn’t out of the ordinary either: Bill was sexually abusing the couple’s kids (John Schneeberger, Fred Grabbe).
But two other aspects of the case were unusual and uplifting.
First of all, the stepmother whom LaLana and Donald Major acquired after Marlene disappeared was not only kind to them but also placed them ahead of her husband in importance.
Second, two decades after her mother vanished, LaLana began investigating the cold case herself and helped to solve it.
For this week, I looked into whatever happened to Bill Major.
So let’s get started on the recap of “A Daughter’s Journey,” along with extra information from online research:
Marlene and Bill Major lived in a trailer in the tiny Kentucky town of Verona and made a cute couple on the surface. She had shoulder-length blond hair and pert features. He had darkish hair and Marlboro Man eyes.
Donald, Bill, and LaLana Major
Bill, born on Jan. 6, 1944, worked as an auto repairer. His father, Jim Major, would later describe his son as a “charmer” who could “talk the pants off anybody” — but “you couldn’t believe a word he said,” according to South Coast Today.
Only a few bits of intelligence on Marlene surfaced. She came into the world in Lincoln County, Kentucky, on Dec. 7, 1955, the daughter of Willie “Billy” Craig Oakes and Lorraine Mildred McQueary, according to Find a Grave.
By 1980, whatever luster the Majors’ marriage once had was gone. Marlene became romantically involved with Glenn St. Hilaire, a former welder who lived in his camper on the Majors’ property and did some work for Bill’s business.
Glenn, who had French Canadian roots, told Cold Case Files that Bill actually encouraged the affair.
Apparently, it gave Bill more time alone with the children, yikes. Or perhaps Bill was planning to kill Marlene all along and wanted to set up Glenn as a suspect.
On October 15, 1980, Glenn overheard Marlene and Bill arguing. Glenn stepped out for coffee, and never saw Marlene again.
Like manyother deadly Forensic Files spouses, Bill didn’t keep his story straight. He told Glenn that Marlene took the children and left — but told a neighbor that she had gallivanted away with Glenn, according to court papers.
Bill informed LaLana, 4, and Donald, 8, that their mother was a prostitute who ran off and didn’t care about them.
Motorists who broke down on I-75 provided a lot of business for Bill Major’s garage
Glenn went to the Florence police department to report that he suspected foul play in Marlene’s sudden absence.
A newspaper article about her disappearance noted that Marlene had hazel eyes, wore glasses while driving, and was last seen in jeans and a blue-and-green plaid flannel shirt.
But there was no sign of her.
Meanwhile, Bill quickly got rid of his guns and sold his tractor, then scooped up his kids — but abandoned the family dog — and headed to Rhode Island to be closer to his parents, who lived in East Providence. Bill bought a trailer and settled with the kids in Pawtucket, a city known for having a high crime rate by Rhode Island standards.
One year after Marlene’s disappearance, Bill remarried.
The kids confided in their stepmother, identified only as Pauline in a media account, that their father had been beating and sexually abusing both of them. He also would coerce them into obedience by threatening one sibling that he would kill the other, they said.
Fortunately, Pauline was no evil stepmother. According to Cold Case Files, she confronted Bill and he promised to stop. When that didn’t work, she notified the authorities.
In 1985, LaLana and Donald got to witness law officers pull up in cars with flashing lights, handcuff Bill, and haul him away.
A court sentenced him to up to 15 years in a Rhode Island state prison for his sex crimes against his children. He served about 12 years before winning release.
Somewhere amid all this mess, Bill married at least once more. Claire Bailey, a bus monitor, reportedly believed Bill’s time in prison resulted from an armed robbery conviction, according to South Coast Today.
In the meantime, Donald and LaLana had moved in with their maternal grandmother, Lorraine Oakes, in Kentucky.
Marlene was still missing.
Glenn St. Hilaire met the Majors when he had car trouble on his way to Texas to search for work as a welder
Lorraine told LaLana that Marlene was dead, that Bill did it. She had no proof, though, so LaLana, at 20 years old, decided to investigate.
She got her hands on the cold case file, including Marlene’s diary — Marlene had told her sister as well as Glenn to look at it in case anything happened to her.
LaLana found a passage Marlene wrote about the sexual abuse suffered by Donald.
“He tried to hide what they were doing, but I know what I saw,” Marlene wrote. “I guess I died inside.”
(Forensic Files didn’t mention it, but at some point during her marriage, Marlene learned that Bill had a 1975 conviction for molesting two boys, according to Cold Case Files.)
Marlene also noted in her journal that Donald said Bill had been molesting him for four to five years. She wrote that she planned to use the allegations to gain custody of the kids in a divorce.
A number of YouTube commenters criticized Marlene for not going to the police immediately. But if Forensic Files got its numbers right, Marlene married at age 16. She hadn’t lived much and, back in 1980, the societal framework for discussing and reporting sexual abuse of children hadn’t developed as it has today.
Glenn St. Hilaire told investigators Bill said that if Marlene ever tried to leave and take the kids, he would kill her — and that he knew how to commit the perfect crime.
LaLana Bramble during her appearance on Cold Case Files
Bill had even told people of how he would dismember Marlene’s body, remove her jaw, and destroy her teeth to prevent identification, Detective Tim Carnahan said during his Forensic Files interview.
LaLana learned that, on a farm in Boone County, Kentucky, about a mile from the Majors’ old homestead, a hunter had found a human skull with a bullet hole and missing jaw in November 1981.
After digging in the ground near the skull site, LaLana found nothing more. Nevertheless, she persisted.
Forensic scientists had developed mitochondrial DNA testing, so LaLana spearheaded a fundraising drive for the $20,000 lab fee. Her aunt offered to donate her retirement fund to the cause, but fortunately, the state of Kentucky decided to pay.
The DNA from the skull matched LaLana’s DNA, proving it came from Marlene.
LaLana said she wanted the whole world to know that her mother didn’t abandon her kids. Someone murdered her.
And in another action to restore some faith in humanity, Bill’s father, a retired trucker, began working with investigators.
They set up a secret recording on which Bill confided in dad Jim Major that he murdered Marlene, buried her body in a sinkhole, pushed her 1972 Ford Pinto into the Ohio River, and threw away the gun. Bill also said the homicide didn’t bother him one bit.
Marlene, right, with her children and her sister
Investigators used an airplane to search for the blue car, but it never turned up, and Bill had only laughed at LaLana when she asked him what he did with the rest of Marlene’s body.
But Bill started talking soon enough.
After his arrest on June 25, 2001, he switched to blame-the-victim mode and told police that Marlene had threatened him with a gun, and he lost his temper and shot her twice in the face and four times in the torso.
By the time the case went to trial in Boone Circuit Court in July 2003, Bill, 59, was barely recognizable. He aged prematurely. He used a wheelchair because of a 1995 stroke.
Judge Jay Bamberger declined a request from Bill, who authorities extradited from his home in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, to skip the trial because of ill health.
The children testified about their abuse, with LaLana describing how Bill pointed a gun at her and said he would kill her if she didn’t keep it a secret. Donald told the court that Bill’s sexual assaults on him took place “in the trailer, in the truck, in the warehouse, at work, wherever.”
A newspaper clipping shows Bill Major in court
As for Marlene’s death, defense attorney Edward Drennen argued that Bill’s earlier confession wasn’t entirely valid because the stroke scrambled his memory. Drennen suggested that Bill acted out of “extreme emotional distress” because of jealousy over Marlene.
The Cincinnati Enquirer described the courtroom scene in the trial’s final hours:
“After Drennen’s closing arguments, Major leaned to his attorney and complimented him on a job well done. Major then wheeled around in his wheelchair and smiled at his two children, who were in the gallery. As the guilty verdict was read a short time later, [Donald] Oakes leaned to his sister and said, ‘It’s finally over.'”
LaLana “pumped her brother’s hands, a satisfied smile on her face,” the Cincinnati Post reported.
“Good-bye, Dad. I hope you spend the rest of your life behind bars,” Lalana, 27, said. “You deserve it.”
Bill got a life sentence and went off to Kentucky State Reformatory in LaGrange in August 2003.
Meanwhile, although the balance of her body was never found, Marlene, whose full maiden name was Helen Marlene Oakes, got the burial she deserved. “You just couldn’t believe how hard it was for us to know our daughter’s skull was sitting in a forensic lab somewhere for all those years,” Lorraine Oakes told the Cincinnati Enquirer.
So where is Bill Major today? The Kentucky Department of Corrections no longer lists him as an inmate, and according to a reader comment — possibly written by Donald — on the Raving Queen blog, Bill died in prison on October 15, 2017.
Bill Major in an undated mugshot
Donald and LaLana have kept a low profile over the years. They both long ago jettisoned the “Major” from their personal identification. LaLana was last known as LaLana Bramble and her brother began using his mother’s maiden name, calling himself Donald Oakes.
A 2003 article mentions Donald was living in Washington state. A 2004 article in the Cincinnati Enquirer notes LaLana’s occupation as beauty shop manager.
It’s sad that their mother never got a chance to experience life on her own and away from Bill, but the diary she left behind helped make it possible for her children to escape him forever.
The Cold Case Files episode about the homicide, “Daddy Knows Best,” is no longer on YouTube, Daily Motion, or Amazon Prime. If anyone knows of another way to view it, please write in with a clue.
P.S. Thanks to reader Sean in Tampa who emailed with a tip that you can watch “Daddy Knows Best” on the Cold Case Files Presented by A&E channel on Pluto TV.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Prescription-Drug Addicts Annihilate a Community Asset (‘Partners in Crime,’ Forensic Files)
All murder victims make for sympathetic characters (well, Michael Prozumenshikov is marginal), but Charles “Jack” Lynch seemed especially deserving of a much better fate.
The Forensic Files episode about the case kicks off with an interview with Kim Arwin, who sounds as though she’s had a hard-knock life. Kim lived in Jack’s neighborhood in Danville, Illinois, and tells Forensic Files about his kindnesses to her family, such as the time she was having financial problems and Jack bought her daughter a dress for eighth-grade graduation.
Jack Lynch made his neighbors his family
Code 911. For this week, I looked into where Jack’s killers are today, so let’s get going on the recap of “Partners in Crime” plus extra information from internet research.
Jack Lynch, who was unmarried and lived alone, acted as a benevolent father and grandfather figure to neighbors for decades.
Those relationships ended on July 16, 1992, the day a passerby reported a fire at Jack’s house. His car was missing from the driveway, so neighbors assumed he wasn’t home.
Death by bloodbath. Then, responders pulled a charred body from the blaze.
Dental records confirmed the victim’s identity as Jack Lynch. An autopsy revealed no smoke in lungs. He died from 24 stab wounds, one of which cut his jugular vein, before the fire started.
Jack’s injuries came from two different knives, which police believed meant two killers.
Van abandoned. Rope left at the scene suggested someone had tied him up.
Kim Arwin, left, had known Jack Lynch since her childhood
Although they found no sign of forced entry, investigators could see that one or more people had ransacked the house, taking a TV, VCR, microwave, gaming unit, .357 magnum, and small amount of cash. The fire that ravaged Jack’s home originated from three separate places in the structure, a clear sign of arson.
Jack’s car, with his TV inside, turned up in a housing project’s parking lot.
Bandits on the loose. As far as suspects, a neighbor named Ed Kramer put himself front and center early on. Ed had a career-criminal mullet and was a bit of a drama king — talking to reporters and demanding to be let into the house. He was also the last person to see Jack alive, and had just borrowed money from him.
But police soon had reason to look in a different direction. They suspected a tie between the fire and a string of thefts in the area.
Just days before the murder, a gunman had robbed two area drugstores and stolen large quantities of prescription medicines. And a number of neighborhood houses had recently been burglarized.
Dregs of society. Hours after the murder, police stopped motorist Robert Moore and found in his van a .357 magnum like the one stolen from Jack as well as a sack of cash from a local Comfort Inn that had just reported a robbery.
A photo from Danville’s website belies the hardscrabble lives of some of the city’s residents
Robert and his wife, Jamie L. Moore, both 30 years old, were drug dealers addicted to prescription pills and well-known among locals. The Moores didn’t have legitimate jobs, and they collected welfare.
In the Moores’ bedroom, investigators found two knives covered with Jack’s blood. (As YouTube commenter Jay Brown wrote: “Quick! Hide the knives behind the bed! No one will EVER think to look there…”)
Worse than expected. The weapons came from a wooden holder in Jack’s kitchen.
Still, the Moores’ neighbors “probably were surprised by this,” State’s Attorney Craig DeArmond said, according to an AP account. “I don’t think that anybody saw them as being that violent.”
But at the very least, no one could deny the two were highly unstable. When the authorities arrested Jamie, she swallowed pills in a suicide attempt or maybe a bid for sympathy. She also deliberately cut herself with broken glass while waiting for police to take her fingerprints.
Spouse spills it. Meanwhile, her husband immediately started blabbing.
He told police that he got the .357 magnum when he “killed that guy.”
A circa-1993 newspaper clipping shows Jamie and Robert Moore in custody
Robert admitted that he went to Jack’s house, tied him up, and began gathering his possessions. He said that Jack freed himself, they fought, and he stabbed the older man to death and set the house on fire to cover up the crime.
Jamie’s talkin’. In an instance of rarely seen semi-honor among thieves, Robert insisted that “Jamie didn’t have no part of it” and that she was asleep on the couch during the crime.
(He probably wanted the children the couple shared — a daughter, 9, and son, 6 — to have a mother.)
But Jamie implicated herself. She told police she knocked on Jack’s door to gain entry and allowed her husband to come in behind her.
Hotel hit. She maintained, however, that Jack was still tied up and alive when she exited his house.
Prosecutors made a case that both Moores stabbed Jack.
A vintage photo shows Jack Lynch seated at right
They used Jack’s car to haul the stolen goods, then abandoned it and robbed the Comfort Inn because they didn’t get enough cash from Jack’s house, the prosecution contended.
Robert continued to insist that he alone killed Jack.
Setting low expectations. Jamie pleaded guilty to armed robbery and agreed to testify against her husband.
She attempted suicide yet again. Prosecutors decided not to put her on the witness stand.
Robert’s testimony at his own trial didn’t help his case much. He admitted that he went to Jack Lynch’s house to get money to buy drugs and said he didn’t know why he stabbed him to death or set the place on fire. He also declined to fight off his affinity for drugs — he said if he had any, he’d take them.
Kim Arwin testified for the prosecution, telling the court about Jack’s dedication to his neighbors.
Odd man in. In February 1993, a Vermilion County jury found Robert Moore guilty of murder, home invasion, armed robbery, and arson.
An undated prison photo of Jamie Moore from Mugshots.com
One of the 12 jurors felt Robert deserved a shot at rehabilitation. He voted against the death penalty, so Robert got life in prison instead of a lethal injection.
After a separate trial, Jamie Moore received a sentence of 39 years.
She’s free. The children stayed with relatives, and Robert’s father pursued custody.
Jamie spent time in the Decatur Correctional Center, where she availed herself of the prison’s social media platform to seek an “honest, serious and dependable man” for friendship.
In 2011, Jamie Moore won release with three years of parole, which she successfully completed, according to the Forensic Files Facebook page.
She has maintained a low profile since then.
Behind razor wire. Robert Moore, 59, resides in Menard Correctional Center in Illinois.
Robert Moore Jr. in recent mugshots
The facility was once home to two other Forensic Files killers, Mark Winger and Gene A. Brown Jr. (Both of them have since moved to Western Illinois Correctional Center.)
In Robert’s mugshots, it looks as though someone propped him upright to take a last picture, much like the ones sheriffs in the Old West took of dead outlaws after a gunfight.
Robert’s inmate profile notes that he is ineligible for release and has “Jamie” tattooed on his upper left arm.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Tubi
Logan Was Just a Baby When His Father Killed His Mother (“Wired for Disaster,” Forensic Files)
Kem Wenger
Before tragedy struck, Kem Wenger was heading toward a more stable life. The Illinois hairdresser had become engaged to a student-minister who wanted to adopt her baby son, Logan, so she could distance herself from his unreliable father.
But the biological dad didn’t like that idea, so he planted a bomb in Kem’s house in Bloomington. Her fiancé, Kurt Simon, survived the blast, but it killed Kem, age 29.
Assorted siblings. For this week, I looked into how Logan — who was a toddler when his mother died and his father went to prison — survived this whole mess and what he’s doing today. I also searched for updates on Kem’s daughter as well as Kurt Simon.
So let’s get going on the recap of the 2006 Forensic Files episode “Wired for Disaster,” along with extra information from internet research.
Kemberly Sue Dohman came into the world on Sept. 25, 1963, in Bloomington, Illinois, the daughter of Wilma and Richard Dohman. She had three sisters and a brother, although it’s not clear how many of them arose from Wilma and Richard’s union — they split up.
Equipment maker. Only a couple bits of information about Kem’s early life turned up online. According to a 1976 Daily Leader story, Kem was a cheerleader in junior high and got to attend cheerleading camp. Her obituary mentions that she worked as an extra on Grandview, U.S.A., a movie shot in Pontiac, Illinois, circa 1983.
In 1985, Kem married a man whom Forensic Files calls Paul but other media accounts identify as Todd Wenger. They had a daughter, Kelsey, before divorcing.
Kem then started dating Dale Fosdick, a dark-haired furry-browed machinist who appropriately worked at Caterpillar. Dale would later admit that he backed away from Kem when she told him they were expecting a child.
New flame. Feeling alienated and worried, Kem considered terminating the pregnancy on two occasions but changed her mind both times, her friend Terry Hoffman said.
Once Logan was born, Dale contributed some of his income to support him, but it was insufficient and often late. In addition to her work as a hair stylist, the glamorous-looking Kem did housecleaning and babysitting to make extra money. Still, she needed to use food stamps.
While Logan was still a baby, Kem met Kurt Simon, a counselor studying to be a Presbyterian minister.
Goodwill tour. “Both of us were poor as church mice, but we were two of the happiest people,” Simon would later tell the Bloomington newspaper The Pantagraph.
Rev. Kurt Simon
As Forensic Files viewers will remember, Kurt sounded like good father material. Logan had already started calling him Daddy.
At around 10:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 22, 1993, Kem and Kurt returned to Kem’s house from a trip to Iowa, where Kurt lived and attended the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. Friends had thrown the couple a surprise engagement shower at the Golden Congregational Church on the day before they headed back to Illinois.
Huge shakeup. The couple planned to attend Kelsey’s piano recital the next day.
Kurt entered the house first, taking in some luggage and then returning to the car to unload more items. “It’s a lot warmer here than it was in Iowa,” were the last words he heard Kem say before she went inside the residence.
Then, an explosion rocked the house and woke the neighbors. It was so powerful that shrapnel hit nearby houses.
Kurt found Kem lying on the floor dead. The blast had destroyed the right side of her skull.
Smoking guns. Investigators determined that in the hallway, Kem had used her left hand to pick up some type of package hiding a bomb, which detonated via a motion-activated switch.
Police found bomb-making components such as wires and fuses in the basement and battery wrappers and rubber gloves in a wastebasket upstairs.
Death and indignity. The evildoer apparently finished making the bomb on-site so it wouldn’t accidentally go off in transit (Mark Hofmann) and thought the explosion would destroy the entire house and leave no evidence.
Because the blast happened close to Kurt but left him unharmed, police at first considered him the chief suspect.
The three-bedroom house at 1301 North Roosevelt Avenue where the crime happened
In front of the neighbors, officers placed Kurt in handcuffs, ordered him to sit on the ground, and hauled him in for questioning. They released him after a few hours, and he didn’t hold a grudge — they were just doing their jobs.
Insect activity? Kurt later spoke to The Pantagraph about his grief:
“It goes from uncontrollable sobbing to numbness to bouts of denial, bouts of anger. … It sounds cliché, but she was just a gem. She was one of the most soft-spoken, sensitive people. And she was gorgeous, but that was almost secondary.”
As far as a suspect, Kurt looked toward Kem’s mother, who by then was known by the name Cricket Lewis.
“If you take every kind of evil, roll it up into a ball, there you have Cricket Lewis,” Kurt said in one of Forensic Files‘ Top 10 best quotes.
Convenient passing. He deemed Cricket “terribly depraved” and capable of such a horrible act.
Kem’s friend Terry Hoffman seconded that motion.
“Cricket made her money on her back,” she said during her Forensic Files interview. “I mean, yes, she had a bar, but I think that the bar that she had was bought from the inheritance of an old lady that she took care of and that, of course, died under her care.”
Tax woes. Kurt noted that at Kem’s funeral, Cricket primarily mourned not her daughter but rather the loss of any insurance payout because Kem let her policy lapse.
(My research didn’t uncover any concrete evidence of wickedness attributable to Cricket, although apparently she was a bit of a tax cheat. In 1988, the Pantagraph noted that Illinois revoked her license because she failed to pay $1,545.95 in taxes and neglected to file returns for Cricket’s Tap, the bar she owned in Forrest, Illinois.)
Investigators considered Cricket a suspect in the homicide as well but ultimately concluded that neither she nor Kurt Simon had the mechanical wherewithal to create the pipe bomb that killed Kem.
Todd’s all right. Another suspect, Kem’s ex-husband, Todd, had reportedly had some custody disagreements over Kelsey. He worked at Mitsubishi Motor Manufacturing and lived just two miles away.
But Kurt Simon said that he and Kem got along with Todd, and Todd had a solid alibi anyway.
A Pantagraph clipping from April 17, 1996, shows Michael Costello and Cricket Lewis. Dale Fosdick’s people came up with $72,000 to pay Costello for the first trial, but taxpayers footed his $18,000 bill for the next go-around
Next up on the suspect list came a former co-worker Kem had filed a sexual harassment complaint against. But he supplied proof that he hadn’t been anywhere near Bloomington in months.
Tinkerer. That left Logan’s father, Dale Fosdick, 31, who lived in an apartment on the east side of Bloomington.
Dale didn’t lack for technical skills. In addition to his work at Caterpillar, he constructed model airplanes and played with motors.
In Dale’s basement, law officers discovered a huge inventory of components used in explosives. Wire cutters from Dale’s residence made distinctive marks similar to those found on bomb fragments at Kem’s house. He had Walmart receipts for .25-caliber BBs like those used in the deadly device.
Jury divided. Officers arrested Dale Fosdick and charged him with first-degree murder.
Over the course of two trials — the first ended in a mistrial with one juror a holdout and another too ill to continue — the defense portrayed Dale as a devoted father incapable of violence.
Dale’s supporters asserted that he was too “wimpy” to murder anyone.
Hopping up. And he defended his performance as a parent. Dale admitted that he shrank back after he learned of Kem’s pregnancy but claimed he did a 180 later and embraced fatherhood.
Terry Hoffman acknowledged that Dale eventually decided he wanted to marry Kem.
And Dale had the homicide victim’s own mother on his side. Cricket portrayed Kurt Simon as the villain. She said that she and Kem had a good relationship until Kurt ruined it and robbed Kem of her joie de vivre.
Hit record. Cricket told the court about Dale’s impressive feats, like picking up Kem from the hospital after she gave birth and sticking around to watch her feed the infant.
(Cricket’s daughter Joni Bailey also supported Dale, but it’s not clear whether or not she testified.)
Dale Fosdick
Defense lawyer Michael Costello tried to shame Kurt Simon, asking, “Why did you think you could take away someone else’s children? Think that was Christian?”
But the prosecution had plenty of ammunition on its side, too. McLean County State’s Attorney Charles Reynard pointed to Dale as a bitter malcontent who caused Kem’s life to be “vaporized in a violent, bloody explosion.”
Stingy dad. Reynard played a tape recording between Dale and Kem. She sarcastically said Dale wasn’t really dedicated to their son “until about the time I started dating Kurt — then the love started pouring out.”
Todd Wenger testified that Dale once told him he would rather quit his job than give Kem “a dime” in child support.
Dale’s former colleague Todd Grafelman said Dale worried that Kem would take their son and move to Iowa. (Actually, Kurt was reportedly planning to move into Kem’s house in Bloomington.)
Prosecutor pounces. It came out that Dale allegedly told associates that he was documenting Kem’s appointment books as evidence of fraud against the Department of Public Aid — and he was plotting to gain custody of Logan.
Reynard also remolded the testimony about Dale’s alleged meekness.
“How would a wimp kill someone?” Reynard asked. “Would he confront the person and do it face to face or would he do it coldly, sinister and secretive?”
Near the scene. Caterpillar colleague Harvey P “Sunny” Sturdevant — who had served in Vietnam — testified that Dale had asked him to kill Kem, although he didn’t take it seriously at the time. The two discussed bomb-making and the fact that BBs are hard to trace, according to Sturdevant.
Evidence showed that Dale mail-ordered hollow grenade material and waterproof fuses, although he claimed the fuses were for a Fourth of July celebration.
Neighbors testified to seeing Dale near Kem’s house within 12 hours of the explosion. Kem kept a spare key under the front steps and the backdoor screen had a hole in it, so Dale had easy points of access.
And Bloomington detective Dan Katz testified that Dale wasn’t always as responsible as Cricket alleged — Cricket had once admitted that she sometimes had to call Dale and yell in order to extract the child support he owed Kem.
Much contemplation. In the second trial, McLean County Circuit Judge William Caisley forbid the defense to use innuendo to cast suspicion upon Kurt Simon or Todd Wenger unless it had solid evidence.
The Horseshoe Saloon takes up the space at 201 E. Krack Street that once housed Cricket’s Tap in Forrest, Illinois. She put the bar up for sale in 1988, noting it had an upstairs apartment
After deliberating for 43 hours, a jury convicted Dale Fosdick of first-degree murder on February 26, 1996.
At the sentencing hearing, Cricket said that Dale, who had 25 supporters with him in court, could come live with her anytime. She held Dale’s hand and “tearfully kissed his cheek,” according to an AP account.
Epilogues. A single juror had voted against the death penalty, so Dale received 55 years.
“The rest of us have been sentenced to life without Kem,” Kurt Simon told The Pantagraph.
So, what happened to the principals in this drama?
Grandson is motivation. Cricket Lewis continued to advocate for Dale Fosdick. In May of 1996, she wrote a letter to the editor restating that Dale helped Kem financially. She complained that she had been “treated like a criminal because of my belief in Dale” and that Kurt Simon’s father — also a minister — “called me evil in front of the world on television.”
The grieving mother said that her “heart aches for Kem every day” and that the real killer was still out there.
Whether she really believed in Dale’s innocence is unclear — but she undoubtedly thought she’d have greater access to Logan with Dale, rather than Kurt, as his custodian.
Man of the cloth. Cricket died at the age of 65 on Dec. 19, 2003. Her obituary noted that she ran Cricket’s Tap from 1983 to 1988.
The would-be son-in-law Cricket so despised has done well for himself. Today, Kurt Simon who, except for some gray hair, looks pretty much the same as he did on Forensic Files, is a minister at First Presbyterian Church in Vandalia, Illinois. He has two “incredible daughters, Sadie Joe and Greta,” according to his bio for an article he wrote about meditation.
The children who Kem Wenger left behind have taken up careers in public service. After her mother’s death, Kelsey went to live with Todd Wenger and later became a case manager supervisor for the Salvation Army and has also worked in shelters for homeless people, according to her LinkedIn profile. (Todd died at the age of 52 on Nov. 27, 2003.)
Early exit. Kelsey’s brother goes by the name Logan Fosdick and appears to have a relationship with his sister despite that they grew up in separate households.
Logan Fosdick is second from left
Beverly and Sylvester Fosdick, Dale’s parents, brought up Logan — Kurt Simon never had custody of him.
Meanwhile, Logan’s imprisoned father died of natural causes at the age of 48 in 2010. Dale Fosdick’s obituary noted he was a muscle car and aviation enthusiast, and asked that donations be made for Logan’s education.
Survivors club. Now 29, Logan graduated from Eureka College in 2014 and joined the Bloomington police force in 2016. A 2017 video shows him and another officer having fun singing a Christmas carol.
Logan is married and has a baby.
Incidentally, Logan Fosdick is in good company in the Forensic Files “family” — there are other episodes featuring children who attained stable lives despite having fathers convicted of killing their mothers.
