Amy Bosley: A Killing in Kentucky

She Followed a Pattern of Failure
‘Dirty Laundry, Forensic Files

Updated on May 13, 2022

Amy Bosley backed herself into a corner financially, then tried to finesse her way out with a homicide.

It’s a scenario Forensic Files watchers have seen many times.

This week’s post will explore elements of the “murder to get me out of a jam and keep me in  brioche french toast” plan that usually lands the culprit in a life of mystery-meat sandwiches on dry bread.

But first, here’s a recap of “Dirty Laundry,” the 2009 Forensic Files episode about the Bosley case, with additional information from internet research:

Married to a roofing contractor who built a multimillion-dollar operation, Amy Bosley, 37, handled the books for the business.

Her husband, Robert Bosley, 42, was no miser. The couple, who lived in Alexandria, Kentucky, had expensive cars and a vacation cabin and spent large sums of money on houseboat parties on Lake Cumberland.

But Amy wanted more of something — no one ever quite figured out what — so she began hiding away (or maybe spending) money that should have been used to pay taxes on Robert J. Bosley Roofing and Chimney Sweep Service Inc.

The company owed $1.7 million dollars by 2005, and the IRS made an appointment with Amy to look over records and get some answers. Meanwhile, her husband knew nothing about the financial misdoings.

On the night of May 17, 2005, hours before the meeting was to take place, Amy shot Robert six times, staged a break-in, and then used her best hysterical-spouse voice to tell 911 that an intruder had materialized in the couple’s bedroom and murdered her husband.

Apparently, she thought that with her husband dead, the IRS would forget about the tax bill.

But she soon acquired even bigger problems than the feds.

Local police saw through the phony home-invasion evidence and recovered the murder weapon, which Amy had hidden in her purse.

She got 20 years in exchange for pleading guilty to first-degree murder.

“There is really nothing else I can say that can express the shock and outrage of the community and the agony and hurt left behind,” Jimmy Bosley, the victim’s brother, said at the sentencing, as reported by the Cincinnati Enquirer on November 3, 2006. Upon exiting the courthouse, Amy faced a “jeering” crowd.

The murder of the roofing king and the aftermath were colossal news in the area but, as previously mentioned, Amy’s situation seems rather typical for folks who watch Forensic Files regularly.

The plot she devised wasn’t as elaborate as that of the Just Sweats gang or as diabolical as the one Craig Rabinowitz tried or as brutal as the method Christopher Porco employed, but it shared fundamental aspects with all of them:

1. Self-motivated financial straits. Like all the rest, Amy lacked a sob story. She didn’t need the money to save her mother’s house from foreclosure or finance a brother’s experimental cancer treatment in Germany. She got into trouble all by herself —just like Christopher Porco.

Christopher, a college student, started defrauding his way into cash because he wanted a new SUV and other possessions he thought would impress his friends. He ultimately attacked his parents with an ax in the hopes of inheriting their assets. It didn’t work.

2. Unwillingness to fess up and declare bankruptcy. The IRS and the courts are often lenient if the guilty parties admit what they’ve done and commit to working out some kind of resolution financially.

Amy apparently thought it easier to put Robert Bosley in a grave than to come clean and let him help decide what they should do about the tax problem.

Similarly, entrepreneurs John Hawkins and Gene Hanson desperately tried to hide the financial disaster engulfing their retail fiefdom. Instead of opting for Chapter 11, they tried out murder and insurance fraud. It did not end well for them.

3. No prior criminal record. When Forensic Files starts out with the search for killers from outside the family, you can almost hear the real murderer’s interior monologue: “I’m a respected member of the community with no record except for parking tickets. My in-laws love me, and my fake hysterics are fooling everyone.”

Amy Bosley was a bookkeeper married to a successful, well-known entrepreneur. They had two children, 7, and 10, and looked happy in photographs. Who would suspect her of a violent crime?

Likewise, Craig Rabinowitz, who was running a Ponzi scheme on the verge of collapse, had fooled everybody about his character. His friends poured money into his seemingly existent latex glove business. His in-laws mortgaged their house to help finance his venture.

Fortunately, forensic evidence doesn’t care how respectable the culprit seems.

In the Rabinowitz case, an autopsy of his wife’s body contradicted his accidental-drowning narrative and an audit revealed his “business” funds were lining the pockets of an exotic dancer named Summer.

Rabinowitz is in prison for life without parole.

As for Amy Bosley’s epilogue, the children she shared with her husband were placed in the care of relatives. Incidentally, the kids helped the investigation by volunteering that the gunshots took place before the glass-breaking Bosley did to fake the intruder scenario.

Amy was sent to the venerable Kentucky Correctional Institution for Women — but she won freedom after serving 85 percent of her sentence. As of this writing, she is scheduled for release on May 18, 2022.

By the way, no one has figured out what she did with the $1.7 million.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube