Folks, It Doesn’t Get Much More Sordid Than This
(“Fate Date” and “Double Cross,” Forensic Files)
The Forensic Files episodes about James Kidwell and Eddie Makdessi — unconnected except that they both committed especially lurid homicides — might tempt you to fast-forward past the TMI and get right to the parts about how the authorities caught them. Here are quick summaries, plus updates that you can skip ahead to if you like:
JAMES KIDWELL
Episode: Fate Date
DOB: 12/10/71
Appearance: 6-foot 7, 209 pounds, hazel eyes.
Facility: Mack Alford Correction Center, Stringtown, Okla. Medium security.
Outlook: Life without parole, three counts. Virtually no chance of getting out on two feet.
CRIME: After Rebecca Barney declined Kidwell’s advances, he raped and killed her, shot her husband, Fred, set their house on fire, and murdered a good Samaritan named Kenneth Maxwell who stopped to report the blaze on Feb. 22, 2003. The salacious part of the case, which was tried in 2004, revolved around Kidwell’s pride in his alleged natural assets. It’s not clear whether he gave himself this nickname or others dubbed him so, but here it is: Ten-Inch Cowboy.
UPDATE: Life in prison has not been kind to this buckaroo. By 2006, he had lost all his teeth — he only had 14 to start with — and has been fighting to get dentures. In 2014, the state rejected his request because he’s managed to eat enough to maintain a weight between 209 and 252 pounds. To be sure, Kidwell doesn’t deserve a Hollywood-quality smile at taxpayers’ expense, but everybody needs at least some teeth, so maybe Oklahoma will consider footing the bill for a strictly utilitarian set.
TAKEAWAY: Avoid prison unless you have plenty of Ben & Jerry’s commissary cash.
EDDIE MAKDESSI
Episode: Double Cross
DOB: 9/3/63
Appearance: 5-foot-4, dark eyes.
Facility: Red Onion State Prison, Pound, Va. Supermax.
Outlook: Two consecutive life terms for two first-degree murders and a $202,500 fine. Victim Information and Notification Everyday, aka vinelink.com, makes no mention of his being eligible for parole.
CRIME: Virginia Navy man Adibeddie “Eddie” Makdessi collected a $700,000 life insurance payout on his wife, Elise Martin Crosby Makdessi, before authorities figured out he killed her and an innocent colleague named Quincy Brown in Virginia Beach on May 14, 1996, as part of a ridiculously complicated scheme to sue the Navy on (false) sexual assault charges. Both victims worked at Oceana Naval Air Station. It took authorities 10 years, during which time a news reporter tracked Makdessi down in Russia and lured him back to the U.S., but he finally paid for his horrible deeds.
UPDATE: Makdessi’s efforts to break free include an unsuccessful 2014 lawsuit alleging authorities discriminated against him because of his Lebanese ethnicity. In 2016, a U.S. Magistrate Judge ruled against him in a suit claiming Wallens Ridge State Prison staff failed to protect him from assaults from a cellmate. On Oct. 31, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court denied his habeas corpus petition, noting that Makdessi “has repeatedly abused this Court’s process” and it would deny any subsequent such attempts. (Thanks to reader Patrick Wood, who tipped me off on this new development.) Meanwhile, although the name of Makdessi’s current home sounds whimsical, it’s actually quite grim. Virginia’s “worst-behaving” prisoners end up there, according to HBO’s Solitary: Inside Red Onion State Prison. Makdessi isn’t in the documentary, but it offers a glimpse of the daily life faced by him and other inmates housed in the prison’s 8×10 cells.
TAKEAWAY: If you have teenage sons you’d like to scare straight, stream the HBO documentary today.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
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Cool stuff. Love your takeaways.
The Donald could use the Makdessi saga…
What do you mean?
I wholeheartedly agree with you Marcus. The former guy deserves that kind of treatment.
Wow thank you Rebecca for the update. I never thought you would consider it when I requested you do a post on James Kidwell and the triple homicide he committed. Thanks once more.
Sure — glad you suggested it. Kidwell’s story is quite the cautionary tale.
I never forget an innocent bystander who was killed in the night of three murders. This story taught us how our actions influenced other people’s lives. Rebecca’s decision to meet the perpetrator by internet costs not only her untimely death but also two more innocent people. Thank you for update.
Kidwell has seriously aged in 14 years, looking more like 60 than 47. Bad nutrition, drugs, and stress, maybe…
I think his appearance of senility is as a result of his numerous missing teeth that causes the gradual loss of surrounding bone tissue. If you look at the photo, his cheek muscles have a sunken appearance giving him a sullen look. But any changes in his countenance brought about by the missing teeth pale in comparison to the horrific crimes he committed. Maybe that is why Oklahoma state is disinclined to offer him the requisite dentures
Although not deserving of the execution Elise Makdessi got from her husband Eddie I find it nice to know I no longer have to check that she is not out scamming someone or some institution like the Navy ever again.
After all, there are too many private contractors scamming the Navy as it is. I operated the SLQ-32(V)3 aboard my ship as an EW in the early 1980s. The ECM capability it was supposed to have it didn’t. It was not quite as bad as mentioned in the Bill Kurtis Investigative Reports “Military Weapons: Buy Now, Test Later” episode. But significantly bad enough to make it fraudulent.
An inmate with no teeth? I bet he’s popular in prison!
Naughty!
Hahaha. That’s priceless.
There is another series that does a decent job of cover the Makdessi murders: Murderous Affairs, and the episode is actually, ‘Double Cross,’ too! It’s on Netflix.
Thanks – I’ll look for it.
I wanted soooo badly to hear Peter Thomas say “Ten-inch Cowboy.” Sigh, alas it wasn’t to be. I know it doesn’t deserve the dignity of being uttered by his sonorous voice but I think Thomas would have seen the irony.
10 inches? That’s big in any language…
I’m pretty sure Mr. Paul did utter the moniker during the bar scene when he was being introduced around during the voice over. It was like a heavily ironic description of a rotting squid.
No teeth at taxpayers expense. In 3 days this woman sends him salacious pictures. Then he drives all that way. She introduces him as the 10 inch cowboy to the bartenders. Most likely she said no because she was on her cycle. Any guy would be mad, but this guy was just plain psycho.
Oh, stop with the “cycle” scenario. There isn’t a man anywhere who could handle the pain and emotional upheavals that a woman has to go through at that time. They aren’t strong enough. If these “trans” guys who want to be women, they should be given a cycle. They would then run back to their true male selves.
Isn’t one of the commandments to love your neighbors yet you speak so ugly about trans people? By your own standards you’ll be burning in hell before them lol.
Both should had gotten the death penalty, since both were serial killers.
I live 3 miles from the Stringtown, OK prison housing Kidwell. I am surprised he is in a medium-security prison. Men escape from here regularly.
Yikes, hope they can hold onto Kidwell. He clearly has no qualms about killing — he did it three times in one night.
I’m sure Kidwell was the toast of his cellblock’s shower facility and once he became dentally challenged attracted an entirely new cohort of stalwart admirers.
Instead of new teeth the warden can undoubtedly improve his comfort by tossing him a gratis set of knee protectors. At 240+ lbs he seems to be doing just fine with whatever liquid diet he’s on.
Imagine being so sick in the head that you being told “no” to sex causes you to coldly kill three people.
Rebecca: A by-the-by to your tidbits re Kidwell: in the Barney’s home police found several emails Rebecca B had printed out. The username she’d been been writing to was ‘cowboy4you67.’ Communications between them were highly sexual, inc porno photos: ‘cowboy’ had sent her one of his ‘thang’ with a ruler adjacent. Hence he supplied at least half the moniker – and the information for the dimension she may (or may not) have ascribed as the other half!
Of course there’s nothing to say it was a picture of *his* he sent. Maybe when she saw the real thing and realised he’d exaggerated she made the mistake of laughing… But seriously, we can only surmise why he killed Rebecca – he felt slighted in some way – and that having done so he ‘had’ to kill the others. He had some violent history with women, and he was with a ‘g/friend’ when arrested for this crime he’d met just 12 hrs after committing the murders. That alone suggests psychopathy: triple murder then immediately carry on regardless for more sex or whatever.
The circumstances were strange (and dysfunctional): going on a date, taking your soon-to-be-divorced husband with you as chaperone (probably, but…), and somewhat humiliating the husband with public reference to the sexual potential of the boyfriend. Not that it would likely have changed the appalling outcome, but I can’t comprehend why the husband would remotely have agreed to attend – the whole thing being humiliating / embarrassing. Did she really want him there or did he insist – if he could – on attending? So weird was the scenario, could there have been some aspiration for a ‘threesome’ on the Barney’s part (quickly dispelled by Kidwell, thus engendering Mr B’s apparent ‘boredom’) – or is that just my dirty mind?
It was one strange scenario, to be sure — too bad that no one thought twice and called it off before it started.