Rebecca Reisner, Author at Forensic Files Now

John Maloney: Cop Botches an Arson

Sandy Maloney’s Troubled Life Ends at Her Husband’s Hand
(‘Burning Desire,’ Forensic Files)

While watching Burning Desire, I was waiting for Peter Thomas to remind us that “fire doesn’t destroy evidence, it creates new evidence.” But maybe that rule isn’t so important in Sandy Maloney’s murder case.

Her husband, John Maloney, killed her in a fit of anger and tried to burn the house down to cover up his crime. But the evidence didn’t consist of newly created clues — the fire left enough pre-existing things partially intact to reveal what happened at the Green Bay, Wisconsin house.

Investigators found, for example, remnants of tissues stuffed into the cracks of the sofa, presumably to help spread the flames. The biggest smoking gun was what they found on Sandy’s body.

Loyal progeny. Marks on her back and neck and a blunt-force wound definitely didn’t come from the fire.

Prosecutors connected the dots persuasively at the subsequent murder trial, where a jury convicted John.

But the case was never strong enough for three observers: Sandy and John’s sons. One of them, Matt Maloney, appeared on the Forensic Files episode in 2004.

Horrifying discovery. For this post, I looked for the reasons Matt and his younger brothers defended their father and whether John has attracted any other supporters over the years. I also checked on John’s incarceration status.

So let’s get going on the recap of “Burning Desire” along with extra information from internet research:

On February 10, 1998, Lola Cator went to visit her 40-year-old daughter, Sandy Maloney. She found Sandy’s living room filled with soot from a fire and Sandy dead on a couch. “My daughter is all burned up,” Lola told the 911 operator.

A good start. Sandy’s oldest son, Matt Maloney, learned about the tragedy when he came home from school and heard his father, age 41, crying.

It was a sad end to what had begun as a solid relationship. John and Sandy met and dated in Preble High School and then married when they were around 21. John started in the police cadet program in 1979 and later became an arson investigator for the Green Bay police.

It’s not clear whether Sandy worked outside the home, but she and John had three sons to occupy her bandwidth.

Desperate game. By the 1990s, Sandy had developed psychiatric problems and had become addicted to painkillers after a back injury, according to Forensic Files, although 48 Hours said that it was neck pain that drove her to abuse pills.

Matt, Sean, and Aaron Maloney in their early teens — *Matt Maloney with younger brothers Sean and Aaron*

The depth of Sandy’s addiction wasn’t a secret. After she could no longer obtain medication legally, she would ask her sons to supply her when they were sick — and the pharmacist insisted on supervising the kids while they swallowed the pills.

But Sandy persuaded Matt to hide the pills under his tongue and give them to her later, according to to his interview on the 48 Hours episode ” A Question of Murder.”

At some point, Sandy started drinking heavily too. She liked vodka.

Disapproving mother-in-law. Matt told Forensic Files that her substance abuse was swallowing the family’s budget and that Sandy cut herself off socially. In 1997, she totaled the family car. That’s when John moved out and took Matt, Aaron, and Sean with him.

Lola Cator, however, pointed to John’s temper as at least part of the problem in the marriage. She said that John hated Sandy.

At the time of the fire, Sandy was living alone at the family’s former house on Huth Street.

Medical examiner Greg Schmunk determined that someone who died in a fire would have a higher carbon monoxide level and more soot in her lungs than Sandy did.

Not highly intoxicating. The bruising on her back and neck suggested someone had been applying pressure there. The bruise on the back of her head could have come from an ashtray that was found broken at the crime scene.

Investigators believed Sandy was dead before the fire. And it wasn’t drinking-related. Tests revealed that Sandy had a blood alcohol level twice the legal limit — but not enough to cause fatal alcohol poisoning.

Houses in the Huth Street neighborhood where the Maloneys lived — *The Maloneys and their sons lived on Huth Street in Green Bay*

A bloodstained shirt belonging to her was found under some other clothes in the laundry room, a good clue because Sandy had only a bra on when her mother found her body. There were no signs of a break-in, and the only two keys to the house belonged to Sandy and John, investigators said. John, however, said he didn’t have a key.

Problematic household. But he did have a motive. The divorce would have meant $450 a month in alimony plus half of all monetary assets for Sandy. Special prosecutor Joe Paulus would later allege that John was tired of paying Sandy’s mortgage and other bills and he was deeply in debt.

Aside from John’s three sons, not many people were feeling particularly protective of him.

“Everyone in the community just turned against my dad,” Matt Maloney told 48 Hours.

According to the Green Bay Press-Gazette, some neighbors found the Maloneys’ household troublesome well before Sandy’s death. Officers were called to the house 16 times over the years, sometimes because Sandy phoned them about a domestic row or a prowler. Other times, folks who lived on Huth Street summoned police because of concerns about what was happening inside the Maloney household.

Co-workers distance themselves. Still, they didn’t expect anything like a homicide. “We thought we had a decent neighborhood, a safe neighborhood because we had the police living just a couple doors away,” one resident told the Press-Gazette.

John’s colleagues at the Green Bay police had to conduct the investigation — and they seemed more concerned about the harm to their reputation than about their co-worker’s predicament.

“The acts of one person shouldn’t be reflective of the other 250 who work down there,” Steve Darm, president of the local police officers’ union, would later tell the Press-Gazette.

*Sandy Cator and John Maloney in happier days*

‘It’s all bunk.’ John was sometimes uncooperative with police investigating Sandy Maloney’s murder. The department deemed him insubordinate and put him on paid suspension.

State authorities came in to help with the investigation.

John claimed he wasn’t inside Sandy’s house the night of the fire. His sons Sean and Aaron would tell 48 Hours that their father was with them, putting together bunk beds for their room at their new home on Menlo Park Road.

Secret tapes. John’s girlfriend, Tracy Hellenbrand, a 28-year-old IRS agent, at first provided an alibi for John, but once police started talking about her as an accessory, she said she was asleep on the night of Sandy’s death, and she didn’t know where John was then.

She agreed to record her conversations with John. At first he denied involvement in Sandy’s death. Later, when police put video recording equipment in Tracy and John’s room at the Lady Luck Hotel in Las Vegas, John admitted he was in the apartment the night of the fire; he had entered via a side door around 3 a.m.

The video from the hotel shows John repeatedly calling Tracy a bitch and looming over her in a menacing way. His ugly side was on full display.

In July 1998, after prosecutors reviewed the tapes, they called for John Maloney’s arrest. When John opened the door to his room at the Continental Hotel in Las Vegas and saw cops, he appeared ready to make a run for it. They sprayed him with mace and then arrested him without further incident.

Completely overpowered. Led by prosecutor Joe Paulus, the authorities laid out a case that the night Sandy died, she and John argued about the terms of their split — and specifically the fact that Sandy was delaying the divorce by not showing up for court dates.

John hit her over the head with an object — possibly a broken ashtray found in the living room — in anger and then panicked. The 6-foot-1-inch-tall John strangled or otherwise suffocated her by pressing on her back and neck face down on the couch and set the fire to hide the evidence, the prosecution contended. John stuffed tissues in the seams of the sofa and staged the scene to look as though a cigarette dropped by accident caused the flames; he might have used vodka as an accelerant.

Matt Maloney defended his father, saying that Sandy often had bruises from falling when she was drunk. Sean said that if anyone was violent in the relationship, it was Sandy, who would sometimes strike out at John in anger.

Sons distraught. Defense lawyer Gerald Boyle contended that Tracy Hillenbrand killed Sandy to eliminate her as a rival. Retired investigator Randy Winkler testified that the fire was the work of an amateur. The flames did, afterall, burn themselves out before they destroyed the evidence.

In his closing argument, Boyle referred to Tracy as a liar, fraud, and scum bag.

It was a daring ploy that didn’t work.

A jury found John guilty of first-degree intentional homicide, arson, and mutilation of a corpse, and he received a life sentence. Courtroom footage showed his two younger sons crying when they heard the verdict.

Shifting story. Gin Maloney, John’s sister, cared for Matt, Sean, and Aaron after John went away, according to Cinemaholic, which reports that the boys are keeping a low profile but have continued to believe in their father’s innocence.

John’s own legal salvos over the years have included the ever-popular ineffective counsel; he said his lawyers should have done more to block the showing of the hotel video.

In 2007, he tried switching up the narrative presented at the trial; he claimed Sandy’s death was an accident rather than a murder.

*Sandy Maloney toward the end of her life*

Bullied into talking? He nabbed the help of innocence advocate Sheila Berry — who also advocated for Steven Avery of Making a Murderer fame and founded the Truth in Justice organization. Berry had worked with the flamboyant Joe Paulus earlier in her career and believed that he enjoyed sensationalizing the Maloney case. (Reporters called Paulus “Hollywood Joe.” It was thought that he was aiming to become a U.S. Attorney with all his theatrics.)

As for the videotaped footage, John would later tell 48 Hours that Tracy browbeat him into saying that he was at Sandy’s house the night of the her death, and it wasn’t true. At some point, John’s supporters claimed that Paulus had manipulated the tapes to make it sound as though John confessed to being in the house.

Truth in Justice also put forth a theory that Sandy was trying to commit suicide the night she died. Sandy, the group suggested, tried to hang herself with a cord found hung up like a noose in the house. After that effort failed, she died from an accidental fire caused by her smoking, Truth in Justice contended.

Staying put. By 2020, John had scored another advocate — his new wife, Kimberly Bostwick. She defended him via a Change.org petition, which reads in part: “A corrupt prosecutor, Joseph Paulus, transformed the sad death of a suicidal alcoholic/addict into media-driven murder and an arson case which turned the justice system upside down.”

So far, Kimberly’s efforts haven’t hit pay dirt. And John won’t be receiving more help from Sheila Berry. She died at the age of 74 in 2021. Truth in Justice no longer maintains a website.

John was turned down for parole 2024.

Today, he resides in the OshKosh Correctional Institution in Waupun, Wisconsin. All three of his sons still live in the state.

A little satisfaction. The Department of Corrections says that John is eligible for parole consideration on February 10, 2027.

Although it didn’t ultimately do anything to help John’s case, John did get to see prosecutor Joe Paulus go down in flames, when Paulus pleaded guilty to accepting bribes for fixing cases after an FBI investigation in 2004. Paulus had to serve jail time.

Sandy’s mother, Lola Cator, is 93 years old today. Sadly, she lost another child, Brad Cator, in 2014. Lola has a presence on social media and posted a tribute to her late daughter on Facebook two years ago.

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

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Who Committed the Rape That Sent Ed Honaker to Prison?

Theories Lead to One Man
(‘Crime Seen,’ Forensic Files)

Before launching into Part 2 of the Ed Honaker story, I want to ask subscribers whether they’ve liked receiving links to new posts via MailChimp — or whether they preferred the old way, directly from me. Please leave a comment below or email forensicfilesnow@gmail.com. Now, on to Part 2 of ‘Crime Seen’:

When Ed Honaker walked out of prison in 1994 after serving a decade for a sexual assault he didn’t commit, he received favorable media coverage and sympathy from the general public around Nelson County, Virginia. He eventually got a settlement of half a million dollars, too.

Photos of Michael Nicholaou and Ed Honaker next to each other — Michael Nicholaou, Ed Honaker

But what about the real rapist? On June 3, 1984, the unidentified attacker had ordered a 19-year-old woman and her fiancé out of their vehicle near the Blue Ridge Parkway. He sexually assaulted her repeatedly for two hours.

Still open. Unfortunately, after Honaker’s exoneration, the authorities lacked the resources to leave no stone unturned in the case. “The big outfits can put somebody on cold cases,” said commonwealth attorney Phil Payne. “We can barely handle our hot cases.”

But they never officially closed the Blue Ridge rape case and, along with a crusading private eye, they eventually arrived at an intriguing theory. Here’s the story on the investigation after Ed Honaker’s release:

As of 2005, Nelson County authorities had followed up on several leads on the Blue Ridge case, but they never amounted to anything.

Knifing terror. Two years later, however, Nelson County authorities began looking into Michael Nicholaou. Private investigator Lynn-Marie Carty believed that Nicholaou was responsible for the abductions of six women in New England in the 1980s as well as the Blue Ridge rape.

In the New England attacks, a killer stabbed the women to death, except for one, Jane Boroski, who survived. She had been drinking a soda while sitting in her car in a parking lot in Keene, New Hampshire in 1988. The attacker forced Jane, who was six months pregnant, out of the vehicle, stabbed her 27 times, and left her for dead.

She sustained a severed jugular vein and a collapsed lung, but medical attention saved her life. Her baby was born with cerebral palsy.

Checkered past. Jane later told a local Fox TV news station that the attacker resembled photos of Michael Nicholaou.

So who was this guy?

Michael Andrew Nicholaou was born circa 1949 and, according to information available on Murderpedia, his father was a sex offender.

Nicholaou served in Vietnam as a helicopter pilot with the 335th Aviation Company during his stint in the army from 1968 to 1971. He won 15 medals, including two Purple Hearts, for his bravery, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Fellow soldiers later recalled that Nicholaou would go off on his own, armed with a knife, to seek out hand-to-hand combat with the enemy. There were allegations that he tried to kill Vietnamese civilians by strafing, but he never faced charges.

Adult entertainment. After the army, Nicholaou worked restaurant and construction jobs. He would later say that he had post-traumatic stress disorder.

In 1983, he opened a pornography store called the Pleasure Chest in a shopping center in Charlottesville, Virginia. It had its share of police raids. At the same time, Nicholaou reportedly did some undercover work for the police.

Nicholaou’s wife Michelle Ashley, with whom he shared a son and daughter, went missing in 1988. Carty got involved in the case when Michelle’s family hired her to search for Michelle. Nicholaou claimed that Michelle abused drugs and ran off with a Cuban drug dealer.

Around 1998, Michael Nicholaou married a woman named Aileen after meeting her via a personal ad.

Florida Murder-Suicide. At their home in Georgia, Nicholaou attacked Aileen, breaking her shoulder. She fled to her sister’s house in West Tampa, Florida, but he followed her there and shot Aileen and himself on December 31, 2005.

Aileen and Michael, 56, died at the scene. One of the bullets had hit Aileen’s 22-year-old daughter, Taryn Bowman. (Sources differ on the spelling of her first name — at least one newspaper called her “Terrin”). She lived long enough to be taken to Tampa General Hospital, but succumbed to her wounds the next day.

Many aspects of Nicholaou’s history suggested he was not only responsible for the Florida murder-suicide and the New England serial killing spree but also the Blue Ridge rape.

Victim sees a resemblance. First off, the Blue Ridge attacker initially impersonated a law officer. Nicholaou at one time wanted to become a police officer but failed the background check.

And the Blue Ridge victim said that the rapist intermittently ranted about the Vietnam War. As noted, Nicholaou served as a combat soldier in Vietnam; Honaker was never there.

What’s more, Nicholaou reportedly looked like Ed Honaker and was living in Virginia at the time of the Blue Ridge rape — and he sometimes would go camping in the woods near where the victim and her fiancé were sleeping in their car.

Nicholaou smoked marijuana as did the Blue Ridge attacker.

‘Phil’ us in. Aileen’s brother-in-law told the Richmond-Times Dispatch that Nicholaou admitted to him that he had killed before. Nicholaou also claimed to be in the Mafia.

But by the time investigators weighed Nicholaou as a suspect, he had already been dead for nearly two years.

At some point, Dr. Phil got into act, orchestrating a meeting between Michael Nicholaou’s son and New England victim Jane Boroski for an episode titled “Sins of the Father.” They embraced and she assured him that he took after his mother and not his father.

So 20 years after Michael Nicholaou’s death and 40 years after the Blue Ridge rape, is there any chance of proving in court that he committed it?

Shared pain. According to Carty, DNA is the last hope. When ForensicFilesNow.com contacted her via social media, Carty said that she had identified a living Nicholaou relative who was willing to contribute a specimen of DNA for comparison. Carty fought for a DNA test, but it never happened and she had to move on to other cases.

After his exoneration, Ed Honaker told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that the sexual-assault victim remained convinced that he was the Blue Ridge rapist. He would later express compassion for her, saying that they both ultimately endured a horrible ordeal. Honaker died in 2015.

Let’s hope that his and Nicholaou’s deaths brought the victim the consolation of knowing that her rapist would never prey on her or any other woman again.

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

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Ed Honaker: Life After Exoneration

A Sex Crime Ends With a Wrongful Convicted
(‘Crime Seen,’ Forensic Files)

Ed Honaker at approximately 34 years of age with dark hair and a white T-shirt — Ed Honaker

In 1984, Ed Honaker was in his early 30s and at a low point. His wife had recently packed up their three children and left. He was suffering from depression. And he already had a few scrapes with the law on his record.

No one could have imagined how much worse things were about to become.

Ed had the misfortune of looking like a police sketch made from a rape victim’s memory. And he had a vehicle, jewelry, and clothing that resembled those described by the teenager, who had been sexually assaulted for two hours.

Bad luck. Soon, Ed would hear himself referred to as the “Blue Ridge rapist” and go to prison for nearly a decade for a crime he didn’t commit.

Ed, who gave an on-camera interview to Forensic Files, talked about the harshness of life behind razor wire and the joy he felt when the governor of Virginia called to say he was free.

The episode about Ed first aired in 1998. Ed next made national headlines in 2015, when he died two weeks after receiving a cancer diagnosis at the age of just 65. It was another rough break.

But Ed did have 20 years of freedom in between his release and his untimely passing. For this week, I looked for news coverage about his life during that time.

So, let’s get going on the recap of “Crime Seen” along with extra information from internet research.

Nightmarish ordeal. In 1984, an engaged couple on a camping trip to Crabtree Falls got lost and decided to sleep in their car off the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia. They awoke to a man, who they assumed was a law officer, aiming a flashlight at them.

He pointed a gun at the man, 22, and told him to run into the woods. He abducted the woman, 19, and raped her repeatedly at a campsite.

Then, he let her go.

The woman, who lived in Newport News, described the attacker as a white male wearing camouflage pants and a necklace with a cross and having a scar on his chest. During the attack, he chain-smoked, drank whiskey, and ranted about the Vietnam War. She said he drove a yellow truck.

Meanwhile, in Roanoke, another sexual assault took place, and the victim implicated her neighbor Ed Honaker.

Flawed past. So who was this fellow? Edward William Honaker was born on February 20, 1950 in West Virginia to Anna Mae Ripley and Virgil Honaker, a police officer. He grew up in White Sulphur Springs.

His previous legal trouble included a “breaking and entering conviction, drinking, and some fights,” according to the Roanoke Times. He received a dishonorable discharge from the military. A newspaper account gave his occupation as laborer; Forensic Files said welder.

Fortunately, he had a solid alibi for the time when his neighbor’s attack took place. But the accusation turned investigators’ attention toward Ed because the composite drawing of the Blue Ridge rapist looked like him.

Visual evidence. His vehicle had rust damage and no backseat, like the one driven by the Blue Ridge rapist. In a photo lineup, the Blue Ridge victim and her fiancé pointed to Ed, then 34. At his residence, police found a necklace and fatigues like the ones the attacker had been wearing. His hair samples supposedly matched the ones found on the victim’s shorts.

His truck, however, was blue, not yellow as the victim described. Ed was 5-foot-11, whereas she had estimated 6-foot-4. But the fact that it was dark and she was subjected to trauma could explain the discrepancies.

When first asked about the Blue Ridge rape, Ed didn’t immediately provide an alibi. Later, he said he was sleeping at his mother’s home in Montvale that night.

Roanoke's 100-foot-tall star structure and scenic overhook — *Roanoke, former home to Ed Honaker, is known for its 100-foot-tall star, top, and scenic overlook.* Credit: Star City Skycams

Convincing testimony. At the trial, it came out that Ed had a vasectomy, which meant he couldn’t have been the source of the sperm specimens from the rape, but they could have come from the victim’s fiancé.

A juror who gave an on-camera interview to Forensic Files, recalled how sure the victim sounded when she pointed to Ed Honaker as the attacker. The fiancé also identified Ed in the courtroom.

After deliberating for two hours, the jury found Ed guilty of rape, sodomy, aggravated sexual battery, and use of a firearm in the commission of an abduction and rape.

Ed later said that he wanted to scream out in the courtroom that he was innocent and not a horrible monster.

He received a sentence of three life terms plus 34 years.

Life in lockup. Hence his life as an inmate began. “It was a sad day when he went in,” his brother Wayne Honaker would later tell the Times of Roanoke. “I cried.”

To avoid appearing weak in front of other prisoners, Ed acted tough during the day, then cried himself to sleep, he later told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. He saw a man stabbed in the cafeteria line and heard the screams of an 18-year-old inmate who was being raped.

Ed’s family stayed faithful, writing him letters, visiting, and helping him financially.

He spent years writing to anyone who might help prove his innocence, but he had no luck.

By 1994, Ed’s seniority at the Nottoway Correctional Center had earned him better living conditions. As the Washington Post reported:

He enjoys a choice corner cell on the first floor of the model-prisoners wing. His living area is what you’d imagine officers’ quarters are like on a submarine: tiny platform bed, hot plate, portable TV, just enough maneuvering room to change clothes without bloodying an elbow.

But it was prison just the same. Fortunately, some good luck was coming his way.

Back to the drawing board. Ed got a positive response to one of his letters, from Centurion Ministries, a prisoner-advocacy organization founded by a former theological school student in Princeton, New Jersey.

Kate Germond, an investigator for Centurion, spoke of the flawed nature of the type of eyewitness testimony that helped convict Ed. She noted that eyewitness accounts aren’t like videotape. “Also mixed into that are memories, dreams, some little distractions,” Germond said. “It’s just a huge variety pack.”

She also disputed the hair evidence. “There is no such thing as a hair match,” Kate Germond wrote. The most you can say is that it’s similar or dissimilar, she told Forensic Files.

Forensic Files pointed out that, of the six photos in the lineup, Ed’s was the only one with a plain white background rather than a height chart. Research has suggested that an eyewitness is more likely to pick out a photo that has a conspicuously distinguishing trait.

Germond, whom Ed would later call his earthly angel, deemed it an especially tainted lineup.

Kate Germond in a recent phto — *Kate Germond continues to work for Centurion Ministries*

And the victim, who initially said she didn’t see her assailant well during the attack, had undergone hypnotism, reportedly to get help remembering the attacker’s face.

Hypnotism-influenced testimony has dubious integrity (Jim Barton).

From Simpson to Honaker. DNA testing paid for by Centurion found that some semen retrieved from the victim didn’t match the DNA of Ed, the fiancé, or a boyfriend the victim had. That meant it came from the real rapist.

At some point during Centurion’s investigation, Barry Scheck, the O.J. Simpson defense lawyer who created the Innocence Project, offered help, which was accepted.

“Scheck is fast-talking quick-stepped and can subtly introduce his own spin on an issue into the conversation,” the Roanoke Times wrote about the lawyer, who had offices in Lower Manhattan. Scheck emphasized that then-new DNA technology could expose the flaws in a well-meaning justice system.

In Virginia, prisoners have to appeal for clemency via the governor rather than courts. Gov. George Allen could either pardon Ed, which would wipe the rape conviction from his record, or grant clemency, which would reduce his sentence. Or he could choose to do neither.

Ed’s family waited for word from the governor. “My nerves are so bad I can hardly write my son a letter,” Anna Honaker said.

Fabulous phoning. At 10:28 a.m. on October 21, 1994, Gov. George Allen called Honaker in prison.

“He said, ‘As of this moment you are a free man,'” Ed, then 44, recalled. “What he said after that, I have no idea.”

Ed told the News & Advance that it was the greatest feeling in the world, and likened it to a resurrection.

The former Virginia governor, who appeared on Forensic Files, later said that the jurors weren’t at fault for the guilty verdict in the trial; DNA testing didn’t exist then and they didn’t know about the hypnosis.

So how did life go for Ed after the initial exuberance of freedom?

Mostly well, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

His first order of business was buying a tan sports jacket at a department store. He said he was enjoying the little things in life—like riding an escalator — and was looking forward to eating pizza again.

Ed Honaker is greeted by a supporter upon his release — Friends and relatives were waiting for Ed Honaker when he emerged from prison

Strangers who knew about his wrongful conviction would recognize him on the street and offer words of support. At Kmart, an elderly couple he had never met insisted on paying for his purchases.

Ed got a job doing ductwork for an HVAC service and also started a business of his own. In May 1996, he married Rosalie Opalka, a Roanoke Symphony Orchestra violinist he’d met at a prison dance.

He admitted it was awkward getting to know his children again after missing so much time with them; they were in grade school when he went to prison and in their teens when he got out. His 19-year-old daughter, Michele, told the Roanoke Times that, at first, she didn’t know what to say to him, but they soon began talking every three weeks or so. They spent her birthday together playing pool and going shopping at the Crossroads Mall.

In a pleasant surprise, another daughter — who he didn’t know existed — from a relationship in the early 1970s sought him out after seeing media coverage.

Sympathy from the press. And speaking of surprises, Ed and his lawyer asked the state government for relatively modest compensation, just $750,000, to compensate for his wrongful conviction.

They made a case that the deputy sheriff and commonwealth prosecutor had been overzealous because of pressure to find a culprit quickly. The Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial board published an opinion piece titled “Pay Ed Honaker.” It read in part:

It’s a miracle Honaker kept resentment from consuming him. And anyone who has squirmed through a two-hour committee meeting can only imagine what it would be like to be locked up not for another two hours but for another 10 years…with evil men who would casually kill for a pack of cigarettes.

In 1996, Virginia’s general assembly agreed to give Ed $150,000 immediately followed by $350,000 as an annuity.

The jurors who convicted Ed seemed amenable to his exoneration.”If the governor liked the new evidence enough to pardon him,” said Roy Bivens, “it must be right because Governor Allen doesn’t believe in parole.”

Hazel Hight, described as a housewife at the time she served on the Honaker jury, echoed that thought. “If he’s innocent, I don’t want to see him serving more time,” Hight told the Roanoke Times. “But we really thought he was guilty.”

As of 2005, Ed and Rosalie were living in Bedford County on a small farm.

“I won’t say there haven’t been emotional problems,” Ed told a reporter. “Not a day goes by I don’t think about prison.” The story notes that Ed largely beat the odds because many exonerees end up mired in dysfunction, often with drug problems.

Fortunately, Ed’s pastimes — fishing, riding his ATV, and writing a children’s book and a novel — were legal and safe. In a way, prison made him kinder, he told the Roanoke Times. His urge to shoot squirrels disappeared; he wanted to watch them play instead.

A gray-haired Ed Honaker in his 60s — *Ed Honaker*

Last chapter. Ed died on June 12, 2015. His obituary mentioned that he and Rosalie lived with two beloved German shepherd dogs, and suggested that mourners make donations to Centurion Ministries.

Thanks to DNA technology, innocence advocates, and a governor with a conscience, the headline of Ed Honaker’s obituary refers to him as an exoneree, not an ex-convict.

That’s all for this time. In a future post, I’ll look into what efforts law enforcement has made to find the real attacker in the Blue Ridge rape case.

Until then, cheers. — R.R.

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Janice Trahan and Dr. Richard Schmidt: An Epilogue

A Physician Deliberately Gives His Ex-Lover HIV
(‘Shot of Vengeance,’ Forensic Files)

Note: Updated on October 24, 2024

Forensic Files usually allows viewers to extract at least a little bit of levity from crime stories: “My name’s Ed Post and I’m going for a jog,” Jason Funk‘s signing his own name to a stolen credit card receipt, and “Let’s go after that bitch,” to name a few.

The attempted murder of Janice Trahan, however, is just plain grim all around. She had a turbulent relationship with a charming physician who deliberately infected her with HIV and hepatitis C.

Richard Schmidt, M.D., was jealous when Janice moved on with her life, and he wanted to ruin it — and end it.

Nagging problems. I’ve been putting off writing about “A Shot of Vengeance” because the episode is so sad. But after sucking it up and doing some research, I found that, while there’s still nothing amusing about the case, there was ultimately some justice and gratification for the victim.

So let’s get going on the recap of “Shot of Vengeance” along with extra information from internet research:

In 1994, Janice Trahan was a 30ish divorced nurse living in Lafayette, Louisiana, with two young sons. She sought medical attention for some persistent ills including eye pain, body aches, and swollen lymph nodes. Her gynecologist. Wayne Daigle, discovered she was pregnant.

And HIV positive.

Trash talk. Janice worked at Lafayette General Hospital, so perhaps she contracted HIV from a patient there.

Married doctor Richard Schmidt, who had a decade-long, off-and-on affair with Janice, told colleagues that she probably picked up the virus from some random guy. She was a barfly who slept around, he said.

In what must have been mortifying for Janice and frightening for them, the hospital asked her seven former boyfriends since 1984 to take AIDS tests.

They all came out negative.

Descriptions of Richard Schmidt’s head covering have included ‘toupee’

Mr. Wonderful. Janice told police she suspected that Richard Schmidt had intentionally injected her with HIV. It seemed farfetched to them, especially because of the gastroenterologist’s highly esteemed reputation.

Richard certainly seemed like a great guy to Janice when they first met, right after the attractive 20-year-old Louisiana native finished nursing school and got a job as a licensed practical nurse at Lafayette General.

Janice admired Richard, then 35, for his intelligence and kind treatment of his patients. His colleagues appreciated him too and vice versa. He kept a closet full of wine that he gave as holiday gifts to other physicians, according to author Stephen Michaud’s book The Vengeful Heart and Other Stories: A True Crime Casebook, excerpted on the Crime Library.

Serial rescinder. The charismatic doctor instigated the affair with Janice after he began hanging around the section of the hospital where she worked. One night, Richard, who had three children with wife Barbara, invited Janice to his office for a beverage. He kissed her, saying he’d wanted to do that for a long time.

Toward the beginning of their relationship, they decided they would leave their spouses and marry each other. She divorced her husband, but Richard stayed with his wife.

As if things weren’t complicated enough, Richard impregnated Janice. She had stopped taking oral contraceptives because of migraines, and Richard didn’t like to use condoms. She wasn’t sure what to do, but Richard went rogue and called Janice’s mother to tell her about the pregnancy. He persuaded Janice to have the baby, promising again to leave his wife.

More slander. But Richard reneged again, and obliged Janice to remove the surname “Schmidt” from their baby son’s birth certificate. Richard ended up paying $300 to $500 a month in child support.

Janice tried to break up with Richard, but he threatened to derail her career and annihilate her reputation. By this time, Janice had risen up the hospital ladder, becoming director of the medicine intensive care unit. Richard said he would put nude photos of her on the hospital’s bulletin board. At some point, he began saying that Janice cheated on a nursing exam at the University of Southwestern Louisiana.

When Janice started seeing other men, Richard stalked them. He threatened to kill at least one, and was physically abusive to Janice, she told the Daily Advertiser. She said that Richard told her that he would fix things so that no other man would want her.

Odd visit. Janice was finally able to leave Richard for good after dropping him as her physician.

Nonetheless, on the night of August 4, 1994, Richard called to ask if he could stop by. He gave Janice, who had been sleeping and was groggy, what he said was a shot of Vitamin B-12. It was something he had regularly administered to her in the past; she would later testify that he suggested the shots to combat fatigue so that she would have more time to devote to him.

Lafayette General Hospital served as the backdrop to Janice Trahan and Richard Schmidt’s relationship

This shot, however, was different from the others. It “radiated down my arm,” Janice told the Daily Advertiser. “It never hurt like that before.” After the injection, Richard hurried away, saying the hospital needed him.

Months later, Janice’s health began declining.

Surprise guests. The police started looking into her case. Phone records attested to Janice’s claim of the late-night call.

Richard’s wife, Barbara Schmidt, would later recall coming home one day to find plainclothes police officers inside her husband’s study. They said they were looking for “evidence of B-12.”

When police showed up at Richard’s office at work, he told them that Janice was his girlfriend, not his patient, and that their romance took place over a couple of years and he’d thrown away any mementos of it, according to The Vengeful Heart.

Denials disproven. But police found photocopies of sexually revealing pictures of Janice in an old pocket calendar belonging to Richard.

And when they looked under “T” in his file drawer, they discovered a thick medical file on Janice Trahan. Police Captain Richard Craft reminded Richard that he and Janice had a child together.

Contrary to Richard’s portrayal of it, his relationship with Janice was a highly consequential matter.

Potent parcel. Then, investigators hit more pay dirt in a hidden box of medical records. A list of blood samples drawn from patients on the day before the late-night injection showed that all of the dozen or so blood vials from that day were sent for lab analysis except for two, from patients Donald McClelland and Leslie Louviere.

Police went to see McClelland, a junior high teacher, to ask whether he had HIV.

“HIV positive?” McClelland said. “Hell, I’ve got full-blown AIDS.” They also found out that Richard Schmidt had specifically asked McClelland to take an unplanned blood test that day. Likewise with hepatitis C patient Leslie Louviere, who usually had her blood drawn at a different hospital for insurance reasons, according to The Vengeful Heart; Richard told her he wanted to use her blood for research.

Loyal love. It appeared that Richard had somehow combined the two patients’ blood in one syringe and injected it into Janice on that fateful night.

“Richard made a lot of promises to me that he did not keep,” Janice told Forensic Files. “But he did keep one, and that would be that he would kill me. And I feel like that’s a death sentence that I have.”

Fortunately, Janice’s boyfriend, Jerry Allen, stuck by her and they married in 1996. (It was his baby she was pregnant with at the time of her AIDS diagnosis. She had an abortion because she feared passing along the illness.)

Janice Trahan, about 18 years old, with a girlfriend — A young Janice Trahan, left. Little information came up about her early life, except that she was a columnist for her school newspaper and a majorette

Global sensation. Police charged Richard with attempted second-degree murder.

Media outlets from the U.S. and beyond trumpeted the story of the doctor who deliberately gave his lover HIV. London’s Evening Standard called it the ultimate fatal attraction. Many headlines referred to Richard as “AIDS Doctor.” Ranker would judge “Shot of Vengeance” as one of the 12 most WTF episodes of Forensic Files.

Still, it would be a hard case to prove. Prosecutor Keith Stutes told the Daily Advertiser that he probably lost 15 pounds while working at it.

Funny follicles. Janice would later say that she was terrified about exposing her personal life but that she hoped her story would help someone else.

As far as the court of hospital-employee opinion, most of the doctors sided with Richard.

The nurses were faithful to Janice. “Some were openly derisive about Dr. Schmidt’s comb-over haircut,” according to The Vengeful Heart. “Others used ‘creep’ to describe Schmidt to reporters.”

New tech. Meanwhile, Barbara Schmidt defended her husband. “He is not capable of doing this,” she said. “People won’t know all of the good he has done, and now this. He is ruined.” She said that on the night of the alleged injection, Richard was in the house with her when she started taking a bath and was right there in the bedroom when she finished it.

The prosecutors forged ahead, building a case that Richard — as he claimed — had spent the evening with his wife. But Barbara’s bath gave him a 20-minute window in which to stop by Janice’s place and inject her.

Phylogenetic testing, a new forensic technology, showed a relationship between the type of HIV found in Janice Trahan’s and Donald McClelland’s blood.

Janice Trahan wears a dark red suit to court accompanied by husband Jerry Allen in a tan suit — Husband Jerry Allen accompanies Janice Trahan to court

Subpoena snag. Furthermore, when Janice’s gynecologist told Richard about the HIV diagnosis, Richard didn’t seem worried for his own health or mention anything about getting a test.

The Associated Press described the trial as “played out as a soap opera-style drama.”

The defense implied that Janice dated other men to make Richard jealous. His lawyers won a small victory when, despite that Janice contracted hepatitis C, the judge would not allow related evidence in court, because the subpoena for Leslie Louviere’s medical records was improper, the Dallas Morning News reported.

Good kind of shock. Nonetheless, on October 23, 1998, Richard Schmidt was convicted of attempted second-degree murder and sentenced to 50 years of hard labor.

After hearing the guilty verdict, he showed no emotion and embraced his wife, who “collapsed in tears.” Barbara somehow stayed loyal to her husband despite his admission during his testimony that he had another extramarital affair after Janice ended theirs.

Overwhelmed by the drama in the courtroom, Janice clasped her husband’s hand, cried, and then fainted, according to the Daily Advertiser. Concerned courtgoers gathered around Janice and began fanning her. She left in a wheelchair.

How are you? District Attorney Michael Harson said that if Janice died, he would pursue a murder charge against Richard Schmidt.

The two patients whose blood Richard used to infect Janice filed civil suits against him. Don McClelland based his complaint on having been outed for having AIDS and also for the defense’s implication that he gave Janice hepatitis C. He had indeed had hepatitis, but it was a different form and he had recovered from it before the doctor drew his blood, the Dallas Morning News reported.

After the 1998 trial, Janice opened up to the Daily Advertiser about her life:

Everybody wants to know how I feel, how’s my health. HIV positive and hepatitis C is a deadly combination. I take 15 pills daily, which helps to keep the HIV under control. I have continuing problems with the hepatitis and particularly with the side effects of the medication.

She also thanked the DA’s office for believing in her.

Not in my vision. After taking a break from Lafayette General amid the trial, Janice returned to work but switched to an administrative role.

In 1999, the TV news-magazine series 20/20 made an episode about the case with journalist Cynthia McFadden reporting. Janice declined the ABC network show’s invitation to appear, noting that the trial was over and her family desired privacy. “There is no room in my heart or life for hatred or bitterness,” she wrote in a letter to 20/20. She called her current husband, Jerry Allen, a gift from God.

Barbara Schmidt accompanies her husband to court — Barbara and Richard Schmidt head to court in 1998. As recently as 2019, she told the media he was innocent

Richard Schmidt chose to appear on the 20/20 episode. He admitted to an affair with Janice but denied trying to kill her. McFadden skewered Richard by asking why, if Janice got HIV from someone other than him, he never got an HIV test himself. She also needled him about the test-cheating accusation he made against Janice; he couldn’t provide any basis for it. Richard, who cried during his interview, said he didn’t remember confronting one of Janice’s former boyfriends.

Denied in duplicate. Janice would later sue Richard as well as media outlets when they reported his claim that she stalked him. The circumstances and outcome of the lawsuit aren’t clear from the circuitously written court papers on the lawsuit.

Meanwhile, Leslie Louviere recovered from hepatitis and became an executive who works with healthcare organizations.

Donald McClelland died at age 54 in 2010.

After Janice testified at a 2015 parole hearing, the board rejected Richard’s application. In 2022, federal Judge Robert R Summerhays denied a petition for a second federal review of his case.

Plan backfired. While Richard sat in prison, Janice went on to have a full life with Jerry, her sons, and many friends. On a social media account, she noted Richard Schmidt’s death, on February 12, 2023. He passed away while serving his sentence at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center at the time.

“The target of his germ warfare attack outlived him,” the NY Daily News wrote.

Even if it was only figuratively, Janice got the last laugh.

Update: Sad to report that a news story dated October 23, 2024 says that Janice Trahan Allen has died. In addition to her other health problems, she was suffering from dementia. (Thanks to reader Janice B. for writing in with the tip.)

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Amazon

Karla Brown: Murdered at 22

What Happened to John Prante?
(‘Body of Evidence,’ Forensic Files)

Karla Brown in a frilly pink dress — *Karla Brown*

The popular kids seemed like gods and goddesses back when I was in school, and their lives fascinated me. So the episode about Karla Brown, a former cheerleader with Farrah Fawcett hair, drew me in.

Forensic Files portrays Karla’s homicide as happening after an old classmate, someone who wasn’t in her social circle, tried to chat her up on the street and she gave a less than enthusiastic response.

For this post, I looked for more information on Karla, the trial and whether a mild snub was really what motivated John Prante to prey upon her. So let’s get going on the recap of “Body of Evidence” along with extra information from internet research:

Seventies sweetheart. Karla Lou Brown was born to Floyd and Jo Ellen Brown on February 28, 1956, in Lima, Ohio. Her father was in the military and died young in an accident.

Definitely one of the cool kids at Roxana High School, Karla participated in not only cheerleading but also pep club, gymnastics, chorus, intramurals, fine arts council, you name it.

In addition to blond hair, she had a lovely smile and the thin arched eyebrows in style in the disco era. When she wore a bikini, her sister Donna Johnson said, “she was a knockout.”

It’s easy to imagine countless boys having crushes on her. There were probably some girl crushes (even before that term existed) on her, too.

Ups and downs. By 1978, Karla was finishing up her studies at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville while waitressing at an International House of Pancakes. Her boyfriend, who Forensic Files calls Mark Hart but other sources identify as Mark Fair, was an electrician who had served in the military. His job was described as apprentice construction worker by “Killer in the New Neighborhood,” an episode of A Body in the Basement.

She and Mark had a five-year relationship that was difficult at times, but they ultimately got engaged and decided to live together in a small house they bought at 979 Acton Avenue in Wood River, Illinois. The neighborhood was considered safe.

“She was happier than she’d ever been,” Donna told A Body in the Basement. “She was thrilled. She wanted to get married and she wanted to marry Mark. Things were finally falling into place.”

Karla Brown and Mark Fair's house — *The two-bedroom house that should have been Karla and Mark’s love nest sold for $102,000 most recently, according to Zillow*

Ringing off the hook. On June 21, 1978, Karla took the day off work so she could get things settled at the house. Media accounts vary as to whether the couple had moved in the previous day or they were just preparing to move in after they married.

A friend of Karla’s would later recall that they chatted on the phone that day and the last thing Karla said was that someone was at her door, according to Forensic Files. Karla actually spoke to two friends, Jamie Hale and Debra Davis, that morning, but she was talking to her boyfriend’s mother, Helen Fair, when someone came to the door, according to Circuit Court of Madison County papers.

At least one girlfriend stopped by the house that day, but no one answered the door.

Horror house. At around 5:30 p.m., Mark brought his buddy Thomas Feigenbaum over to show him the new place. After searching for Karla upstairs, the young men found her lifeless body in the basement, with her head in a bucket of water, her hands tied with an electrical cord, and Mark’s socks wrapped around her neck so tightly that police had to cut them off. She was dressed in only a sweater.

Donna remembers the phone call she got from her sister Connie Dykstra. “She said, ‘Donna, it’s worse than you could imagine. Get home.'”

Karla had linear bruises on her face and neck. Someone had bitten her shoulder and broken her jaw. Blood stained the nearby sofa cushions, according to court papers.

Double helix not handy. The killer had stowed the carafe from the couple’s Mr. Coffee in the rafters. It looked as though he poured water into the vessel and then used it in an attempt to clean the blood. The New Detectives, however, suggests that the murderer used the water in an attempt to revive Karla.

Then, the attacker moved her to the laundry area.

The killer spent a lot of time at the house arranging the scene in a perverted manner. The cause of death was strangulation or drowning. A blow to her neck came from a TV table in the house, it was later determined. Police found no foreign fingerprints at the scene. Forensic DNA testing didn’t exist yet, so investigators had no way of analyzing bodily fluids at the scene.

No concrete leads. Mark Fair was inconsolable with grief, according to The New Detectives. He cried and screamed. As the boyfriend, however, he was the chief suspect. During her appearance on Forensic Files, Connie said that she didn’t know Mark well.

But Mark’s colleagues confirmed his alibi, that he was at work when the murder happened.

“No one was a suspect and everyone was a suspect,” prosecutor Don Weber would later tell the Belleville News-Democrat. “I even looked into where Ted Bundy was at that time.”

There was also Karla’s mean, creepy ex-stepfather — he reportedly made a pass at one of her friends — but no evidence linked him to the crime.

Beers and blunts. The police found out that two men were sitting outside the house next door to Karla’s while she was movings things into her place.

John Prante and a friend Forensic Files calls Duane Conway but court papers identify as Paul Main were drinking beer and smoking marijuana at Main’s place.

Forensic Files suggests that John Prante called out to Karla, saying that they knew each other from school, and she answered him coldly. But John was six years older, so it seems unlikely they were high school classmates.

College in common. Court papers describe the encounter this way:

John Scroggins, who knew both the victim and the defendant, testified that on the afternoon before the murder, he and the defendant [John Prante] had been at Paul Main’s, at which time he introduced the victim and the defendant, who afterward on that same day expressed considerable sexual interest in the victim.

That description makes more sense. Prante told friends he knew Karla from Southern Illinois University. It might hurt someone’s feelings to not be recognized by a classmate from a small-town high school like Roxana — but it was entirely forgivable for Karla, who was attending a college with nearly 10,000 students, to not remember John Prante from there.

Above their pay grade. So who was this face in the crowd? John Prante was born around 1950 and lived in East Alton, Illinois. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch gave his occupation as unemployed barge worker. He had attended Lewis and Clark Community College as well as SIU. Prante said that he was looking for a job during the summer of 1978 and turned in an application at Shell Oil Company in St. Louis on the day of the homicide.

Police had nothing incriminating on him. The investigation stalled for two years.

Donna would later tell A Body in the Basement that she was frustrated that the police didn’t summon outside help. They were good at rescuing cats from trees, she said, but didn’t have enough experience for a murder case of this nature.

County gets in gear. Then, in 1980, Don Weber won an election for Madison County state’s attorney. On his first day, he summoned everything the office had on the Karla Brown homicide. “I put it on my desk and I said, ‘We’re going to solve this case,'” he told A Body in the Basement. Karla looked like a girl he’d gone to high school with, and the unsolved murder haunted him.

Downtown Wood River, Illinois, busy with traffic — *Downtown Wood River, Illinois*

Investigators turned their attention back to John Prante and Paul Main. Prante, it turned out, once told friends at a party that he saw Karla’s body while looking over the shoulders of police officers, and he spotted a bite mark. But police said Prante was never in the basement with them. And the public didn’t know about the bite mark; the authorities withheld that information.

In 1982, Karla’s mother agreed to let authorities exhume her daughter’s body for another autopsy. Dr. Mary Case found that the attacker broke Kara’s jaw in two places. But she believed Karla was still alive when the killer put her face in the water, and she drowned. She also believed that Karla had been sexually assaulted. There was a used tampon on the coffee table at the murder scene.

Got ’em. Weber brought in FBI profiler John Douglas, who thought the killer would be a single, young, and slovenly unemployed white male, a loser with women, and his car was a Volkswagen.

Sure enough, Prante drove a VW — a blue Beetle and possibly also a red VW station wagon belonging to his father.

Prante was working as a house painter by the time police charged him with murder and put him in the county jail in Edwardsville.

“I believe Karla Brown can rest in peace now,” said Wood River police chief Don Greer.

Attracted to wedded gals. Main told police that on the day of the homicide, Prante turned up at his house and looked flushed and out of breath. His T-shirt was wet.

He also said that Prante liked flirting with married women and would make inappropriate advances toward them. In other words, it was who Karla was — not how she acted — that spurred Prante to prey on her.

John Prante in a three-piece — *John Prante cleaned up nicely for court*

Investigators believe that Prante knocked on Karla’s door and, once inside the house, made an unwanted sexual advance. There was a struggle, and he overpowered Karla, who was 4 foot 11 inches tall and weighed 100 pounds, according to court papers. Prante then killed her and arranged the scene in a bizarre way for reasons never explained.

Couldn’t shut up about it. During the trial, the prosecution, led by Don Weber, heavily emphasized John Douglas’s predictions, including that the killer would contact the police to learn more about the investigation. Prante had called them to say that he was a witness but didn’t want to be considered a suspect.

Far more damaging was the testimony of Prante’s former friends, who said that Prante seemed to have inside information about the case and made incriminating remarks.

One witness, Vickie White, said that just days after the murder, Prante said that he had to get his story straight and leave town because the police were looking for him. Paul Main’s wife, Judy Main, said that Prante mentioned that Karla’s murder was a capital offense and that he or Paul could go to the gas chamber.

Old accounts. Susan Lutz, who once dated Prante, said he had bitten her during their relationship. She also testified that he told her that he had once killed someone, but he couldn’t talk about it because he could lose his freedom. Another witness recalled Prante’s having said that “a nice looking blond chick had moved in next door and that he wouldn’t mind getting some pussy off her.”

Karla Brown's senior yearbook portrait and list of activities — *Karla Brown*‘*s yearbook photo*

Prante’s lawyer, Neil Hawkins, countered that the friends’ memories were mixed in with later media reports; they were testifying four years after the crime. He also contended that police should have looked more closely at Main as a suspect.

A defense witness said that, while he was serving time in Madison County Jail, cellmate Joseph Milazzo admitted that he had killed Karla Brown by strangling her.

Cue up the violin. The defense trotted out a more respectable witness in Dr. Edward Pavlec. The orthodontist testified that the “bite” marks were useless because it wasn’t even certain that they came from teeth. Even if they had, someone could have pulled on the victim’s skin, which would make it appear that the teeth had extra space between them. He had a point — bite marks in general have since been widely discredited as forensic evidence (Ray Krone).

John Prante took the stand in his own defense. He calmly denied ever biting Susan Lutz or saying that he had killed someone.

Prante also played the victim card (Thomas Jabin Berry), saying that he had suffered abuse at the hands of Marine Corps Guards when he served in the military. He was handcuffed to a bunk and beaten and had his head bashed into a wall, he testified.

Relief, finally. In July 1983, after deliberating for four and half hours, the jurors returned to the courtroom — and none of them looked at Prante. He was convicted of first-degree murder.

Karla’s family members cried and hugged prosecutors and police, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

Karla Brown cheerleading in her early teens — Karla Brown’s gravestone says, ‘So lovely, so loving, so loved’

Prante, who showed little reaction to the verdict, was led away in handcuffs and leg shackles.

He’s out?! He got 75 years in state penitentiary.

Prante’s attempts to appeal the conviction over the years failed but—horror of horrors — he won parole in 2019.

He had earned days off on his sentence for good behavior.

Judges unmoved. Prante is still trying to clear his name, based on faulty bite wound evidence. The Innocence Project and the Exoneration Project have taken up his post-conviction cause.

In response to Prante’s petitions in 2020 and 2021, judges agreed about the bite wound evidence — acknowledging that the scientific community no longer deemed it as credible as fingerprints — but ruled that there was enough other evidence pointing to his guilt.

In 2022, Prante made the news again, when he was charged with DUI and going through a Stop sign while driving his 2005 Saturn in Bethalto, Illinois. He fell down several times during a field sobriety test.

Forensics in back pocket. Prante said that he hadn’t been “this drunk or high for 37 years,” according to local paper The Telegraph.

As for the town of Wood River, it has healed over the decades since the murder. “It’s a relatively peaceful community now where people don’t even know that that’s the house where it happened,” Weber said.

The field of forensic science, however, has changed forever and law enforcement now has ever-advancing DNA testing on its side should anyone — young or old, popular or not — fall prey to a killer in Madison County again.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Peacock or Amazon

The New Detectives episode including a vignette about Karla Brown’s murder is on YouTube. The A Body in the Basement episode is available on Amazon but there’s a fee to watch it, even if you have Prime

Guy Sileo and Jim Webb: Entrée to Murder

The General Wayne Inn Houses a Homicide
‘Murder on the Menu,’ Forensic Files

Most new restaurants fail within a few years, and when you throw an unrenovated historic building into the mix, the venture barely has a ghost of a chance.

Guy Sileo and Jim Webb smoking cigars together — Guy Sileo and Jim Webb were good buddies, but they fought

But not even the spirits who reportedly haunted the General Wayne Inn — built near Philadelphia in 1704 — could have imagined the horrible outcome when young entrepreneurs Jim Webb and Guy Sileo bought the place and made it into a fine-dining establishment in the 1990s.

When the venture faltered, Guy decided he’d rather collect the life insurance payout on his business partner than simply cut his losses on the restaurant and move on.

For this post, I searched for an update on Guy Sileo as well as more history on the General Wayne Inn and details about the murder trial. So let’s get going on the recap of “Murder on the Menu” along with extra information from internet research:

Specter center. The General Wayne Inn in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, had an esteemed, if fabled, history. Benjamin Franklin supposedly visited the inn, and George Washington is said to have spent the night there. Edgar Allan Poe wrote part of The Raven there in 1836.

The building was not only historic but also otherworldly. In modern times, a waitress said she encountered the ghost of a Revolutionary War soldier on the staircase. A deceased Hessian soldier allegedly showed up too.

Former innkeeper Barton Johnson told Unsolved Mysteries that minor supernatural shenanigans also happened on the property. For no discernible reason, a Cadillac parked out front started up by itself, TVs and adding machines would become possessed, and women at the bar would feel unseen entities blowing on their necks.

A long wooden dining room table — The General Wayne Inn played host to weddings and parties in its heyday

Stove unplugged. The restaurant also attracted the area’s well-to-do earthly eaters, who enjoyed old favorites like prime rib and sautéed flounder.

But palates changed over the years, with young professionals moving to the area and looking for more sophisticated cuisine. And at 291 years of age, the building needed a lot of work.

The General Wayne Inn went out of business in 1994.

Chefs Jim Webb and Guy Sileo, who had previously worked together at the American Bistro in Morton, bought it in 1995 for $1.2 million with the intention of restoring the building. Guy’s father gave them $100,000 to invest in the business.

Don’t wine so much. Guy and Jim, a rising chef who specialized in seafood, offered updated dishes, like lobster meat wrapped in chicken with a pistachio crust.

The amount of work the business needed was overwhelming and the partners often clashed. “They had their good days and their bad days,” Jim’s mother, Theresa Webb, told City Confidential.

Jim felt that Guy wasn’t pulling his weight. Guy, who was married, reportedly spent a lot of time drinking and flirting with women at the bar. He was having an affair with an assistant chef named Felicia Moyse who was barely 20 years old. Jim worried that Guy’s behavior would lead to sexual harassment lawsuits against the restaurant.

Exterior shot of the General Wayne Inn — The General Wayne Inn at 625 Montgomery Street

Grave injury. But Guy wasn’t the only employee to meet Jim’s disapproval. Many of the workers found Jim too demanding and hard to work with in general.

Still, it was shocking when Jim, a 31-year-old married father of two, turned up dead on the floor of his office at the restaurant on December 27, 1996.

Co-workers who saw the executive chef’s body thought he had somehow hit his head. There was a large knot on his forehead. It turned out, however, that someone had shot him in the back of the head and the bullet traveled to, but didn’t exit, his forehead.

Not a robbery. No one had stolen the gold chain from Jim’s neck or the cash in his pocket.

Police delivered the news of Jim’s death to his wife, Robin, who was a waitress at the restaurant.

“I cried. I screamed. I fell to the ground, I thought I was going to be sick,” she would later recall, as reported by the Times Herald. She and Jim had been together since high school.

Good policy. Still, investigators initially considered Robin a suspect because she couldn’t remember whether or not Jim came home that night.

But Robin wasn’t the beneficiary of any insurance policy on her husband, according to the Oxygen Network, and she had no other motive. Police also looked at a disgruntled waiter recently fired over a credit card scam, but he was in jail when the murder took place.

Then there was partner Guy Sileo, age 29. He and Jim had $650,000 insurance policies on each other to guard the business against hardship in case one of them died.

Jim Webb worked nonstop and expected perfection from others

Guy had recently bought a pistol.

Tragedy strikes again. But Felicia Moyse could, truthfully, tell investigators that on the night of the murder, Jim was still alive when she left the restaurant with Guy. She and Guy were together the whole evening, except for a short window when they took separate cars to Mulligan’s, a bar in Upper Darby.

Two months after the murder, Felicia committed suicide.

Felicia used her father’s gun and left no note. According to City Confidential, she had been hoping that Guy would marry her, and recently found out that he was planning to stay with his wife. Police didn’t know what to make of Felicia’s death.

Quite a slip-up. Solid evidence about Jim’s murder was also hard to come by. A .25-caliber bullet turned up outside the General Wayne Inn, but it didn’t match Guy’s Phoenix Arms .25-caliber handgun. Neither did the bullet that killed Jim.

A better lead came along when Robin Webb remembered that, right after Jim’s murder, Guy had said, “Who would have wanted to shoot Jim?” At the time, no one except the authorities and the killer knew Jim had died from a bullet wound; police withheld that information.

Investigators found out that Guy actually had two pistols. A leather gun case Guy owned contained impressions from his secret second gun, a Beretta Model 20.

Theory congeals. And Jim’s insurance policy was the only chance for Guy to enrich himself — or at least make himself whole — via the General Wayne Inn. The restaurant attracted plenty of diners, but it was losing money because of all the necessary repairs. Jim planned to close down, offload the inn, and end his partnership with Guy.

Meanwhile, Guy’s father was demanding the return of the $100,000.

Investigators believed that Guy took advantage of the window of time before he and Felicia met at Mulligan’s. He drove back to the restaurant, accidentally fired a bullet outside while checking his Beretta, and then climbed up the creaky steps to the third floor and shot Jim.

Mulligan stew. District Attorney Bruce Castor charged Guy with first-degree murder, announcing that he would aim for a sentence of life without parole. “There’s no legally recognizable aggravating circumstance that we could pursue the death penalty on,” Castor told the Associated Press. “If we could make it a death penalty case, we would.”

A photo of the General Wayne Inn taken in 1880 — The establishment opened as the Wayside Inn but changed its name to honor Revolutionary War figure General Anthony ‘Mad Anthony’ Wayne

The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that the most dramatic testimony in the trial —which featured more than a dozen witnesses for the prosecution — came from Mulligan’s bartender Chris Shuster. About a month before the murder, Guy asked him, “Chris, do you know any countries we [don’t] have extradition treaties with, where you could hide out if you wanted to kill somebody?”

Defense lawyer Richard Winters put Guy Sileo on the stand. Guy “gave answers and explanations that seemed plausible enough to cast doubt on his guilt,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Freedom lost. But he was no match for Castor’s three-hour cross-examination, during which he hammered into Sileo over his lies, including denying that he owned a Beretta. The prosecution also pointed out that the bullet’s trajectory, from the base of the back of Jim’s head to his forehead, suggested that Guy, who was around 5-foot-5, stood behind Jim, who was more than 6 feet tall, and fired the gun in an upward position.

In August 2001, after seven hours of deliberation, the jury convicted Guy. He received life without the possibility of parole.

Today, Guy Angelo Sileo Jr., 57, is incarcerated at the State Correctional Institution at Laurel Highlands in Somerset, Pennsylvania. The fact that he’s in a minimum security facility suggests that he has behaved himself while behind bars.

No respect. Guy has, however, continued to make work for the justice system. From his prison cell, he sought an appeal based on his claim that Felicia murdered Jim. Guy said that Felicia told him that she did it because Jim disapproved of her relationship with Guy.

Guy Sileo in a prison mug shot — Guy Sileo in a 2024 prison photo

“If this is the truth, why not say it from the beginning?” prosecutor Wendy Demchick-Alloy told the press. “How convenient. Now he’s blaming the dead woman.”

Jim’s mother, Theresa Webb, told City Confidential that it was a typical self-centered ploy on Guy’s part. “When he blamed Felicia, he was just ruining another family,” she said.

Not much appeal. Even Guy’s defense lawyer Richard Winters turned against him, after Guy accused him of giving ineffective counsel. Winters noted that Guy told him that he had no idea who killed Jim; he didn’t mention any suspicions relating to Felicia until he was locked away.

Judges shot down Guy’s contention about Felicia as well as his other legal salvos over the years. Police thought that guilt over being Guy’s alibi might have driven Felicia to take her own life. Some online Forensic Files commenters have suggested that Felicia’s death merits a murder investigation — maybe she knew about Guy’s Beretta and he wanted to silence her forever.

The reason for Felicia’s demise remains unknown.

Changing hands. So what happened to the General Wayne Inn after the scandal?

A restaurateur named Frank Cacciuti bought the place in 2001 but closed it after less than a year because it didn’t bring enough revenue. Another buyer came along and opened a restaurant there in 2004, but it didn’t last long either.

The building as it looks now with a sign for the Chabad Jewish spiritual group — The building as it looks today

Today, the General Wayne Inn’s tradition of wining and dining is over. The building belongs to a Jewish spiritual group, Chabad of the Main Line, which remodeled the exterior except for one outside wall with the original name and “1704.”

And speaking of things spiritual, in the end, it wasn’t paranormal activity that doomed the General Wayne Inn. It was a combination of high overhead costs and personal animosity, very much of this world and more threatening than any ghost.

That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — R.R.

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Peacock or Amazon

You can see the Unsolved Mysteries and City Confidential episodes on YouTube

Alvin Ridley’s Lawyer Explains It All

Q&A With McCracken Poston, Who Solved the Virginia Ridley Case
(Forensic Files, ‘Killigraphy’)

Book cover with Virginia and Alvin Ridley — Book available online

The strange and ultimately beautiful story of Virginia Ridley’s life with her oddball husband has captivated Forensic Files viewers since it first aired 25 years ago. A recent survey ranked “Killigraphy” in the top three favorites of all 400 episodes of the series.

But the narrative would have had a much different conclusion if not for McCracken Poston, the lawyer tasked with proving Alvin Ridley’s innocence in the 1997 death of the reclusive Virginia.

Alvin owned a television repair business in the town of Ringgold, Georgia. Everyone agreed that he did a great job of replacing cathode ray tubes, but few had anything else good to say about him.

He threatened people who came to the door of his house, hid in his own bushes to spy on passersby, and motored around town with a fake woman in his front seat.

Most troubling of all, he had a real wife at home who almost never appeared in public — and she cut off contact with her family members despite their attempts to reach her. When Virginia Ridley turned up dead with petechial hemorrhages at the age of 49, law enforcement concluded that Alvin had held her hostage for decades and then strangled her.

Fortunately, inside Alvin’s sloppy hovel of a house, Poston discovered evidence that Alvin and Virginia were just two unusual people who suited each other.

Virginia had hypergraphia — an affinity for constantly writing down the minutiae of everyday life.

Pieces of paper with her handwriting described a contented home life with Alvin. The topics included what she and Alvin ate for dinner and which TV shows they watched; one of the papers listed the cast of The Waltons.

McCracken Poston with his arm around Alvin Ridley — McCracken Poston named a downtown building after Alvin Ridley. *Photo by* *Emily Dorio*

At the trial, Poston argued that Virginia stayed inside the house because she wanted to — she had epilepsy and feared having seizures in front of anyone but Alvin — and that she died of natural causes.

In his 2024 book, Zenith Man: Death, Love, and Redemption in a Georgia Courtroom, Poston describes how Alvin Ridley, who died at age 82 on July 2, 2024, turned into a sympathetic character and how his own relationship with Alvin evolved into a friendship.

“Alvin was neurodivergent. That’s modern parlance for autistic,” said Poston. “I think Virginia was on the spectrum too. Alvin was her perfect partner.”

Poston, who is a former Georgia state legislator and a onetime candidate for U.S. Congress and now has a solo law office in Ringgold, indulged some of my curiosity about the case. Here are excerpts from our Zoom interview on July 22:

Alvin Ridley in his back yard with an old TV — Alvin Ridley was task-oriented in his work as a TV repairman,
according to his former lawyer. *Photo by Thomas England*

Did you know Alvin Ridley before the murder accusations? When I was growing up, he was our TV repairman.

Did he really hide in his bushes? I wouldn’t be surprised because he didn’t trust people and wanted to see who was there. He was hiding in his own bushes in his own yard.

Sorry, but I have to ask about the blowup doll of a woman Alvin reportedly drove around in his car. It was a mannequin from the late 1950s, a chalky broken mannequin, but because of the way people in town think, it became a blowup sex doll. When Alvin was in high school, people saw him with this mannequin in the passenger seat. He used it to make a woman he was interested in jealous. The mannequin made an appearance again after someone talked about it during jury selection and it reminded Alvin it was in his basement because he never threw anything away, and he broke it out again. I just thought, this guy cannot catch a break. People are talking about things that happened decades ago.

The Forensic Files episode prompted negative reader-comments about Virginia’s relatives, the Hickeys. Were they really the enemy for repeatedly trying to reach her? I don’t blame the Hickeys. It was a very unusual situation. I would have been as aggressive trying to contact my sisters. But Virginia quoted the Bible about being married, being one, and said she wished her parents would leave her and her husband alone. She persuaded a judge and courtroom officers that she was where she wanted to be. Virginia’s cousin showed up at one of my book signings and said that Virginia told her she wanted to stay away from her parents. The Hickeys were probably responsible for getting Virginia and Alvin evicted from public housing in the 1970s.

Reports describe the Ridleys’ house as cockroach-infested. It’s hard to believe a woman would live that way by choice. What’s your take? Virginia kept a neat home. The pictures of the house were taken after she died. Alvin was the one who ate and left half-eaten food around the house. He had a vehicle that he ate in, and a rat came in it. After the trial, I was in the house very briefly when we were doing media, and the house had gotten worse with hoarder-packrat stuff.

The house turned out to be a gold mine when you noticed that Alvin had covered the walls with papers with Virginia’s handwriting — describing a happy home life. Had you heard about hypergraphia before then? No. Shortly before I put the epilepsy expert on the witness stand, he asked if there was anything else strange about Virginia. I said, yes, she wrote down everything she’d ever done. He said, I’ve heard of that. A lot of my patients have hypergraphia.

[Poston also learned that epileptic seizures sometimes cause petechial hemorrhages — enabling him to counter the prosecution’s contentions that the marks came from manual strangulation; Virginia died from having an epileptic seizure during sleep, he argued.]

Did Virginia’s hypergraphia extend to the outside world? Yes, she corresponded with elected officials. She wrote to President Richard Nixon about being evicted from public housing, because the law is under HUD. U.S. Senator David Henry Gambrell wrote her back, noting her letter to President Nixon.

A tabloid story with headline calling Alvin Ridley a sicko and murderer — Virginia Ridley’s death made great tabloid fodder

How did you end up getting so close to Alvin? He felt comfortable in my law office. We began meeting for lunch regularly after the trial.

I knew he had a kidney problem and tried to get him help. When he went into the hospital, I said that they’d better keep him there for a few days. They got his kidney function up and he moved to a step-down facility, and then he allowed me to put him in another rehab-nursing home, so that Medicaid would kick in once his funds were exhausted. Then, he had a heart attack.

In the hospital, I said, did you ever think that Virginia and your parents are calling to you? He said, no, I want to stay here with you. He said he was going to live to 110. I said, you just want 30 more years of free lunches from me. I didn’t ever think he would die so soon.

The last time I saw him, he was in great distress. It looked like another coronary issue. I said, Alvin, I’m looking forward to meeting Virginia, and he said when we get up there, I’ll show you where you can fish and catch 30 fish an hour. Then he said, ‘Oh Lordy.’ I was holding his hand when died.♠

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

P.S. Read Part 1, Alvin Ridley: Hide Your Love Away

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Rev. Bill Guthrie: Nothing Sacred

A Pastor Drowns His Wife to Save His Job
(‘Ghost in the Machine,’ Forensic Files)

Early in life, Bill Guthrie acquired a way with all things biblical. While at Natrona High School in Wyoming, he took home the Outstanding Boy award at a local Christian service camp. He was later sent to Oklahoma to compete in a youth preacher contest at the Kiamichi Clinic, a religious retreat for men.

Sharon Guthrie in middle age with curly hair — Sharon Guthrie

He met Sharon Ann Provance at Platte Valley Bible College in Gering, Nebraska. They married in 1963 when they were both 20 years old. The nuptials featured an organist and a vocalist who sang “Whither Thou Goest” and the Lord’s Prayer. The wedding notice said that Sharon’s “only jewelry was a drop pearl necklace, a gift of the groom.”

By 1999, the couple had three daughters and Bill was serving as a pastor at two churches at the same time. Worshippers filled up the pews to hear his sermons.

But Bill didn’t always practice what he preached. He indulged in one of the Seven Deadly Sins (lust) and forgot about two of the Ten Commandments (adultery, murder). Unfortunately, it was his wife who paid the ultimate price for his waywardness.

For this week, I looked for more details about the case. So let’s get going on the recap of “Ghost in the Machine”:

On May 14, 1999, Bill Guthrie called 911 to report that he found his wife unresponsive in the tub. Bill said that when he left their residence to pray for 10 minutes at the United Presbyterian Church next door, Sharon was fine; she was drawing a bath. After returning home at about 7 a.m., he found Sharon, 54, unconscious and face down in the water.

Sharon’s friend Nancy Holst, who was on duty as an EMT that night, remembered that Bill sounded appropriately desperate on the phone.

Court papers say that first responders found Bill, also 54, on his hands and knees crying and asking for help — and Sharon was naked, face down in the empty tub. Bill had tried to lift her out but was unable, so he drained the water, he explained.

The EMTs revived Sharon’s heartbeat, but she had no brain activity and was pronounced dead the next day.

Picture of Bill Guthrie around age 23 and a wedding photo of Sharon Guthrie — Bill Guthrie a couple of years after his 1963 wedding to Sharon Provance, right

The loss of the popular and outgoing Sharon was a horrible tragedy for the family and the community around Wolsey, a South Dakota town with dirt roads and a population of fewer than 1,000.

Sharon had a way with children and she would tell them stories before her husband’s sermons. She had also been a teacher’s aide for handicapped young people and was working for the Reed Clinic in Huron at the time of her death.

“We lost that bubbly personality that she was,” Holst said during an interview on Forensics: You Decide.

Forensic pathologist Brad Randall, M.D., found no sign of trauma on Sharon’s body. She had low levels of antianxiety medications Diazepam and Lorazepam — which she had prescriptions for — in her blood. Tests also found that she had ingested the equivalent of as many as 20 Temazepam tablets, not a fatal dose but enough to cause unconsciousness.

Randall suspected murder but had no evidence, so he reluctantly gave accidental drowning as the cause of death.

Three weeks after losing her mother, middle daughter Jenalu decided to go ahead with her planned wedding because it was what Sharon would have wanted. Bill performed the ceremony.

But the authorities weren’t likewise committed to letting things continue as normal for Bill. Investigators found out that the Temazepam in Sharon’s system came from Bill’s prescription. In the weeks before Sharon’s death, he had filled his prescription at Statz’s drug store, and then lied by saying he lost his Rx so that he could get a second bottle, at a Kmart pharmacy.

Guthrie family portrait in happier times — Youngest daughter Danielle, who was adopted, has stayed away from the media

Bill said that perhaps Sharon had ingested the Temazepam by accident while she was sleepwalking.

Sharon had no confirmed history of sleepwalking.

And Bill had a mistress, who court papers identify as Debbie Christensen, a woman he knew from his previous job as a pastor for a church in Orleans, Nebraska. The affair with Debbie, a married elder at the church, had started in 1994. When officials learned of it, they suggested Bill resign.

The affair continued after the Guthries moved to South Dakota in 1996. There, Bill worked at the United Presbyterian Church and Bonilla Presbyterian Church.

Bill told his employers that he needed to travel to Nebraska periodically for treatments for impotence. In reality, he was going to the Cornhusker State to see Debbie, and they had plenty of sex, she would later tell investigators.

But Debbie was tired of secret rendezvous in motel rooms. She wanted to go out to a movie or dinner with Bill sometimes. She left her husband so that she and Bill could take their relationship public, but he was reluctant to end his marriage to Sharon because it would hurt his career and image.

Welcome sign for the town of Wolsey — Sharon was well-liked in the community of Wolsey, South Dakota

A frustrated Debbie broke up with Bill but, according to court papers, she mentioned getting back together if he divorced Sharon.

At some point, Bill decided to get rid of his wife without the hassle of dividing assets or changing jobs.

Sharon experienced a couple of suspicious brushes with death (Bruce Moilanen, Ted MacArthur) before the lethal drowning. Bill once asked Sharon to join him downstairs in the basement and she nearly tripped on a cord someone had stretched across the staircase for an unknown reason. Another time, Sharon was washing her hair in the sink or tub (accounts vary) while the bathroom light wasn’t working, and Bill brought in a corded powered-on electric lamp, which “accidentally” fell in the water.

Fortunately, Sharon wasn’t injured either time.

The drowning plan came next. Bill set the stage early by taking Sharon to a clinic on April 29, saying that he was worried because he couldn’t wake her up. She might have taken sleeping pills while sleepwalking, he said. The next day, Sharon felt well and remembered nothing of the incident.

Just two weeks later, Sharon was dead in the bathtub and police had a murder investigation on their hands.

Detectives found out that, while Jenalu Guthrie Simpson and younger sister Danielle supported Bill’s innocence, the eldest, Suzanne Guthrie Hewitt, had doubts.

Suzanne agreed to work with police by wearing a concealed recording device and confronting her father about the affair and Sharon’s death. At first, he admitted nothing. Later, he showed up at Suzanne’s workplace to say that, the night before Sharon’s death, he told Sharon of his affair and asked for a divorce, which caused Sharon to have an anxiety attack.

But Suzanne had talked to her mother that night on the phone and she was fine.

Bill Guthrie walking daughter Jenalu to the altar — Jenalu with her father at her wedding

Suzanne told investigators that her father might have used Sharon’s favorite beverage to convey the Temazepam. “Chocolate milk was her drink — everybody knew that, and she’d buy it by the gallon,” Suzanne told Forensics: You Decide.

A computer forensics expert discovered that a month before Sharon’s death, Bill had searched for information about sleeping pills and drowning in a bathtub. He had spent time on a website for the book Worst Pills Best Pills: A Consumer’s Guide to Avoiding Drug-Induced Death or Illness.

It’s not clear whether the Guthries’ younger daughters, Jenalu and Danielle, knew about the affair, but Bill was fairly open about the fact that he no longer loved his wife. According to court papers, he told Danielle that he found Sharon unattractive, that she was fat and ugly. (Apparently, Bill didn’t mind admitting that he was a man of the flesh as well as the spirit. He was also a hypocrite — he wasn’t exactly slim and handsome himself anymore.)

With all the tawdriness swirling about, the surviving Guthries issued a statement: “Please remember our family has lost a wife, a sister, a mother and a grandmother. We stand as a family and with God and ask the Christian community to be with us in prayer through this whole time.”

In August 1999, Beadle County charged Bill with murder and assigned prosecutor Mike Moore to try the case. Moore had originally been tasked with clearing Bill Guthrie, but incriminating evidence got in the way.

Suzanne Guthrie Hewitt testified against her father

The Committee on the Ministry of Presbytery of South Dakota, however, believed Bill was innocent and gave him indefinite paid leave.

Some towns folk restrained themselves from making the case too much of a sensation, according to the Associated Press. “There’s some that talk of it a lot among themselves, and others who are completely hush-hush,” George McDonald told the AP. “It’s a pretty amazing story. I guess most people would agree to that.”

The trial kicked off on January 10, 2000, and it turned out to be quite salacious just the same. People who once flocked to pews for Bill’s sermons now occupied seats in the Beadle County Courthouse.

The prosecution contended that Bill murdered Sharon because a divorce might cause him to lose his job (or jobs) again.

Investigators alleged that, on the day Sharon died, Bill sneaked a high dose of Temazepam into her chocolate milk. Lab tests showed that the drug doesn’t affect the beverage’s taste.

Then, he dashed out to the church to give the drug time to knock Sharon out. Upon returning, he dragged her unconscious body to the tub and let her drown.

Bill’s claim that he tried to get Sharon out of the tub didn’t make sense because his hair and clothing were completely dry by the time first responders came. Also, an expert noted that, when people drown in tubs, they’re rarely found face down.

One witness testified that Sharon told her that she and Bill hadn’t had sex since they moved to South Dakota. Apparently, Sharon bought her husband’s story about erectile dysfunction.

But Bill’s side came up with evidence that could have been a game changer for the trial: a suicide note from Sharon. Dated the day before her death, it was addressed to Suzanne and consisted of an apology for ruining her wedding and a pledge not to ruin Jenalu’s. The note had no signature by hand; it was entirely typed.

Bill said he found it hidden in a liturgy book in a church office.

The reference to ruining Suzanne’s wedding had to do with a 15-minute argument between Sharon and the mother of the groom. Suzanne testified that it was a family joke and no big deal.

Suzanne also said that she couldn’t believe her mother would take her own life. “My mom always taught me that there’s ways out of things,” Suzanne would later say during an appearance on the Montel Williams Show, “and suicide is not one of them.”

The prosecution had concrete evidence to back up Suzanne’s testimony. An old computer that Bill had given to Suzanne shortly before the trial contained a file named Sharon.doc, with some of the writing from the purported suicide note — and whoever composed the note interrupted it to write sermons.

Apparently, Bill worked on the note on the family’s home computer as well as the church’s machine — and it was written in August, after Sharon’s death.

Bill admitted to writing a suicide note in Sharon’s voice because he was “trying to bring some reason into what had happened,” according to court papers. He said it helped him work through his grief over Sharon’s death.

Close-up photo of Jenalu Guthrie — Jenalu Guthrie Simpson remains faithful to her late father— she posted a tribute to him online for Father’s Day last year

Defense lawyer Phil Parent continued to push the suicide theory. After Debbie Christensen told the court about her relationship with Bill, Parent contended that Sharon found out about the affair and that it threw her into a state of depression that spurred her to commit suicide. Alternately, the defense contended, Sharon intentionally took the nonlethal overdose of pills as a cry for help but then accidentally drowned herself.

Jenalu said that her mother had once overdosed on Benadryl and needed medical attention. She would later tell Forensics: You Decide that Sharon was stressed out about her weight and taking diet pills to slim down before the wedding. Jenalu also implied that her mother did dramatic things to get her husband’s attention.

But the jury of five men and seven women didn’t buy it.

In a crowded courtroom with his three daughters present, Bill heard the verdict of guilty of first-degree murder. He showed little reaction, the AP reported. When asked if he’d like to say anything to the court, Bill answered, “No, your honor.”

Bill received a mandatory sentence of life with no possibility of parole.

“We are deeply saddened by the guilty verdict issued to Rev. Guthrie,” said Rev. Bill Livingston, interim executive of the Presbytery of South Dakota. “We pray God’s comfort for his family as they live through these most difficult times.”

Sharon’s body was removed from its South Dakota grave and reburied in her native Nebraska. That gave investigators the opportunity to get her fingerprints. They didn’t match fingerprints on the suicide note.

The Nebraska Supreme Court rejected Bill’s appeal in 2001. A 2009 appeal also failed.

Bill died in the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls in 2011 at the age of 66 — a man of God who had a lot of explaining to do when and if he made it to the other side.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on Youtube
The episode of Forensics: You Decide about the case, ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill,’ is on Amazon, but it costs $1.99 to view it even if you have Prime

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Sheriff Charles Laux: An Epilogue

Did Brandon Teena’s ‘Third Rapist’ Pay for His Cruelty?

Newspaper photo of Sheriff Charles Laux — Sheriff Charles Laux

The story of Brandon Teena’s demise is full of brutality, most of it perpetrated by John Lotter and Thomas Nissen. The ex-cons, both 22, became indignant upon finding out that their new drinking buddy was not a man but rather a woman originally named Teena Brandon.

Brandon, 21, convincingly spoke and styled himself as a man and dated many women around Falls City, Nebraska. He told some of the women that he was a hermaphrodite, which wasn’t true — but at the time, it seemed better or easier than the truth, that he was transgender.

Bad signs. Back in 1993, people didn’t use the term transgender too often anywhere, let alone in Falls City, population 4,762.

Lotter and Nissen originally believed Brandon was a full-on man. Brandon was dating Lotter’s former girlfriend Lana Tisdel. It wasn’t until Brandon was arrested for forgery and placed in the women’s section in jail that his new friends began to suspect his identity.

At a Christmas party in 1993, Lotter and Nissen “de-pantsed” Brandon to show guests that he was a woman. Lotter and Nissen then abducted him, beat him up, and raped him. They took him to Nissen’s house, where he escaped through a bathroom window.

Boor with a badge. Had Brandon not reported the assault — and had the person taking the report not been Charles Laux — Brandon and two other innocent people would likely be alive today.

During a tape-recorded interview, Richardson County Sheriff Laux treated Brandon’s account of the rapes as a dirty story told for his entertainment. Laux asked the type of questions one might expect from a mean 11-year-old. (Read the transcript.)

He also taunted Brandon about concealing his identity as a woman — and suggested that the rape accusations were lies because Brandon lied about being a man. Laux also referred to Brandon as “it.”

Home invasion. Laux declined to arrest Lotter and Nissen, giving them time to make a plan to silence Brandon forever.

On December 31, 1993, Lotter and Nissen found Brandon hiding out at the home of friend Lisa Lambert. After shooting and stabbing Brandon to death, Lotter and Nissen killed Lambert, 24, as well as her visiting friend, Phillip Devine, 22, to eliminate them as witnesses.

Brandon Teena, Lisa Lambert, and Phillip Devine were murdered in this house in Humboldt, Nebraska, on Dec. 31, 1993 — The rented farmhouse in Humboldt where the triple homicide took place

It was only in death that Brandon received justice, when a court convicted Lotter and Nissen.

Sheriff Lousy. Today, Lotter sits on death row in Tecumseh State Correctional Institution and Nissen is serving life without parole at the NDCS Reception and Treatment Area.

But what about Sheriff Charles Laux Sr. — did he ever face repercussions?

Well, yes, but not quite enough, considering that many people likened Laux’s questioning of Brandon to a third rape. Here’s the story on Laux, before, during, and after he became a worst-case scenario for law enforcement:

Charles B. Laux Sr. was born in Verdon, Nebraska, on August 13, 1947. He married Georgia Tillman in 1968. They had two sons before divorcing in 1992.

The explanation. Early in his career, Laux owned Chuck’s Used Cars in Johnson, Nebraska. He last held a license for the business in 1978, according to the St. Joseph News-Press.

He became Richardson County sheriff in 1987.

As for his role in the Brandon Teena case, Laux would later say that he had to ask Brandon crude questions to prepare the case for the county attorney, according to court papers. He also contended that his office began investigating the rape claim promptly, despite that he felt Brandon might have been making the story up as he went along because he often paused during his narrative.

John Lotter and Thomas Nissen as young men and in recent mugshots — Then and now: John Lotter and Marvin ‘Thomas’ Nissen

By early 1994, Laux began to receive public criticism for his actions leading up to the triple murder. The January 13, 1994 Lincoln Journal Star editorial page included three letters from angered citizens. One asked “what spacecraft” the sheriff was “thrown off of” and another said the homicides could have been prevented “had the proper attitude prevailed.”

‘I’m the victim here.’ Laux, in turn, complained about comments from Brandon’s sister, Tammy, about his handling of the rape accusation. In reality, he had labored over the case during work hours and on his days off, he contended. “We work hard at what we do, and we take pride in what we do,” Laux said in 1994. “All I expect is a thank you.”

Some more-formal indignities were on their way for Laux, although they were unrelated to the rape and murders.

In July 1994, Laux was charged with acting as a motor vehicle dealer without a license — a felony in Nebraska. His dozens of alleged offenses included purchasing a car from the state’s surplus-equipment office. A St. Joseph News-Press photo showed Laux hiding his face behind a paper while exiting the Richardson County courthouse.

Back in the public sector. It’s not clear what, if anything, became of those charges, which could have landed him in prison for five years. But in November 1994, Laux lost his bid for a third term as sheriff. Gary Young, who was once Laux’s deputy, received 2,186 votes to Laux’s 1,870, according to the Lincoln Journal Star.

Laux grumbled that he was a victim of dirty tricks and that he might file a lawsuit related to the election loss, the Lincoln Journal Star reported.

He served on the Richardson County Board of Commissioners from 1997 to 2001.

Official condemnation. JoAnn Brandon sued Laux for as much as half a million dollars for not arresting Lotter and Nissan and for the emotional trauma his callousness caused Brandon, according to ABC News.

“It’s tragic when any parent loses a child to violent crime, but when that crime could have been avoided had law enforcement done its job instead of reacting with hate toward the victim, it becomes an outrage,” said David S. Buckel, a lawyer for JoAnn Brandon.

The killers shot Lisa Lambert and Phillip Devine but spared Lisa’s baby son

In April 2001, Nebraska Supreme Court Justice John Hendry said Laux’s tone on the interview was “demeaning, accusatory and intimidating” and “beyond all possible bounds of decency” and “utterly intolerable in a civilized community.” He awarded JoAnn Brandon $80,000.

Some justice for mother. The Nebraska Supreme Court also reversed a county judge’s finding that Brandon was partly responsible for his own murder because of his lifestyle.

The amount of the settlement presented a strain for Richardson County, whose treasury had already taken a beating because of floods in 1992 and 1993 and the prosecution of an unrelated 1985 double murder. Some of the financial obligation of the award was shifted to Lotter and Nissen.

Newspaper accounts don’t mention whether JoAnn Brandon received any of the money, but she did say that the court’s decision itself brought her some satisfaction. She also got to see Hillary Swank win an Academy Award for portraying Bandon in the 1999 Hollywood movie Boys Don’t Cry.

He ‘goes to prison.’ Apparently, the film didn’t hurt Laux’s self-esteem too much: In March 2002, Laux began a campaign for the sheriff job in nearby Johnson County.

That came to nothing and, as of December 2003, Laux had begun working as a corrections officer at Tecumseh State Correctional Institution.

Laux retired from law enforcement in 2013 and then drove a school bus for five years.

Unlikely driving-force. But he tried to re-enter public life by campaigning for a Dawson Village Board seat in 2018. A newspaper article about the outcome used the headline “Boys Don’t Cry Sheriff Loses Election.”

Charles Laux Sr. died on March 30, 2021 at the age of 73, leaving behind a girlfriend, his two sons, and five grandchildren, according to his obituary.

Photo of a gray-bearded Sheriff Charles Laux later in his life — Charles Laux in a photo from his obituary

Although it probably wasn’t the legacy Laux wanted, his mistreatment of Brandon Teena and Brandon’s subsequent murder helped bring about the transgender movement — the “T” in “LGBT” — which has fought to end discrimination against people whose identities don’t conform to the gender on their birth certificates.

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

You can watch the documentary The Brandon Teena Story, which includes audio of the police interview, on YouTube.

Boys Don’t Cry is also on YouTube, but it costs $3.99 to view, and on Amazon, also for a fee, even with Prime.

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Linda Sobek: Model Gone in a Flash

Photographer Charles Rathbun Is Secretly a Savage
(‘Photo Finish,’ Forensic Files)

Linda Sobek

Before jumping into “Photo Finish,” I want to let folks who watch Forensic Files on HLN know that you can find a daily list of updates and recaps on Facebook and Threads. Those who watch the show elsewhere can use the table of contents to find related blog posts.

And speaking of devotees of the series, I think most would agree that “Photo Finish” is about as Forensic Files as an episode can get: The deceased had a sunny personality and was known for reliability. The suspect changed his story during the course of the investigation and ultimately settled on “she died by accident and I covered it up out of fear” (John Boyle). Oh, and the sex was consensual. (Thomas Jabin Berry).

But wait, there’s more: The criminal had been arrested years earlier for another horrible crime and either gotten a light sentence (Clay Daniels) or beaten the charge entirely (David Copenhefer).

Sweet and friendly. For this post, I checked into whether killer Charles Rathbun has won any leniency of his own with the criminal justice system. I also filled in some biographical details about him and victim Linda Sobek. So let’s get going on the recap of “Photo Finish” along with extra information from internet research:

On November 16, 1995, Linda Sobek, 27, vanished on her way to a photo shoot. She was a busy model and aspiring actress living in a house just off the boardwalk in Hermosa Beach, California.

Linda made friends easily and was outgoing, but sometimes could be “as vulnerable as a wounded fawn,” according to the book Death of a Model by Clifford L. Linedecker. At age 17, she slit one of her wrists amid romantic problems.

The LA Times reported that she called her cat, Boo, her best friend.

Calendar girl. She was also spiritual and belonged to Baycities Community Church in Redondo Beach. She called her mother, Elaine Sobek, who lived in Lakewood with her father, every day.

A street lined with palm trees in Hermosa Beach, California — Linda Sobek shared a four-bedroom house with three other women in Hermosa Beach, part of Los Angeles County

From 1989 to 1993, Linda worked as a cheerleader for the Los Angeles Raiders. A friend recalled that, as a Raiderette, Sobek “was able to dress more quickly than others because she was so beautiful she didn’t have to spend much time putting on makeup,” the Press-Telegram reported.

At no more than 5-foot-4-inches, she wasn’t tall enough for the runways of Paris or Milan, but she was well-proportioned and looked great in a swimsuit. The Brand Model Agency in Irvine represented her, and she got gigs posing in bikinis for calendars and auto magazines and appearing at conventions, according to Death of a Model.

A no-show. Not all of Linda’s career consisted of wearing sexy clothes. Shortly before she died, she had plans to appear in a catalog featuring fashions of the 1940s.

On the day she went missing, Linda got a page directly from a photographer — not through her agency — for a last-minute shoot. She left a message for Elaine, an administrative assistant at Bechtel Corporation, that she would call her later to talk about a barbeque they had planned.

But she never did.

Weight for her. And the usually dependable Linda also missed a date with Married With Children that day. Forensic Files said that it was for an audition, but Death of a Model wrote that she had already won a small part on the TV show and it was a wardrobe fitting that she missed. The sitcom about a crass family of four never received critical acclaim, but it launched the successful careers of regulars Katey Sagal, Ed O’Neill, and Christina Applegate as well as then-unknown bit players like Matthew LeBlanc and Pam Anderson.

For Linda to willingly skip out on an appointment like that would have been unthinkable.

The last place anyone remembered spotting Linda was at a Redondo Beach Gold’s Gym, where she worked out in the morning.

Huge response. Elaine immediately reported her daughter missing. Linda’s roommates worried that some dodgy person she might have met at a trade show lured her to a photo shoot to get her alone, according to Death of a Model.

Linda Sobek poses in a green bikini in front of a truck on the cover of Truckin' magazine — Truckin’ magazine ran a tribute to Linda Sobek

Fortunately for the Sobeks, the disappearance of a popular and attractive young woman with long blond hair is no ordinary missing persons case, and they had plenty of help right from the start.

The Raiderettes publicist dashed off a press release asking for help. A reward fund for assistance finding Linda received $100,000 in pledges, the Associated Press reported. The boyfriend of Linda’s roommate Kelly Flynn made up 53,000 flyers. Tabloid TV shows like A Current Affair with Maury Povich ran segments about Linda.

Police started getting 100 calls an hour with tips, according to Oxygen. Law enforcement considered the Angeles National Forest ground zero for the search effort.

Final resting place. The National Forest Foundation describes the 700,000-acre expanse as the “backyard playground to the huge metropolitan area of Los Angeles.” But law enforcement knows it as a backdrop to homicide.

“Somebody once said, if all the bodies in the Angeles National Forest suddenly got up and walked out, the county population would jump by 10,000,” sheriff’s deputy Steve Crider told the Orange County Register.

Police mobilized dogs and helicopters to search the forest, but the first valuable clue came from a man serving community service as part of a work crew. Bill Bartling, 49, who was paying off traffic tickets by picking up trash, found discarded pictures of Linda as well as her day planner — with the date she went missing ripped out. A garbage can also held a contract to borrow a black Lexus prototype Lx 450 sport utility vehicle for an Autoweek assignment. The document bore the name of Charles Rathbun.

Linda Sobek dancing as a Raiderette — Linda Sobek as a Raiderette

Suspect makes a slip. A 38-year-old freelance photographer, Charles Rathbun told police that he met Linda for breakfast at Denny’s in Torrance on the morning she disappeared to discuss her portfolio, but he decided she wasn’t right for the shoot. He claimed that she drove away in her car, but police found her white Nissan 240-SX at 182nd Street and Crenshaw Boulevard, right near the restaurant.

According to Real Murders of Los Angeles, while speaking with police, Charles blurted out that he was the last person to see Linda alive. How did he know that? Her body hadn’t turned up. A crime lab that checked out the Lexus he’d borrowed found small amounts of blood despite that someone had cleaned the vehicle thoroughly.

While under surveillance, Charles fired a gun toward his driveway and one shot ricocheted and hit the arm of a woman friend. She wasn’t badly hurt, but it gave LA police grounds for arresting him.

In his home, police found more than 100 firearms and a bag with cords, tape, and alcohol.

So who was this No. 1 suspect?

Harrowing story. Charles Edgar Rathbun was born the last of four children on October 2, 1957. He grew up in Worthington, a section of Columbus, Ohio. According to the Los Angeles Times, he became interested in photography early on and started taking pictures for the school paper, The Chronicle.

He later took classes at the Ohio State University while working at a Kroger grocery store.

Charles Rathbun in court — Charles Rathbun (Photo used with permission from Filmrise)

Investigators discovered something alarming buried in his history: the alleged rape of a married co-worker in 1979. The woman, a clerk at Kroger, had given him a ride home from work because he had a flat tire.

No consequences. She was interested in photography and accepted his invitation to take a look at his work inside his home, where he attacked her, she said. She begged Charles to leave her alone, but he threatened to kill her if she cried out for help, and he raped her on the floor, she said.

But Charles claimed they’d had consensual sex, and the judge in the case believed him.

And, back in those pre-internet days, the story didn’t follow Charles. The young man, who loved cars as well as photography, moved to the Detroit area to get his fill of all things automotive. He then relocated to California circa 1987.

Charles gained a reputation as a talented photographer for car magazines. He could make sleek cars look even sleeker and he also understood the mechanics of the vehicles, according to the LA Times.

Man of dualities. The Ohio native’s work appeared in such publications as Car and Driver and Motor Trend. Steve Spence, managing editor of Car and Driver, told the LA Times that nothing about Charles suggested he was in any way capable of murder. The two men had enjoyed a visit to Sicily together so Charles could test out the tires of a new Mustang on the Targa Florio race course.

Other associates described Charles as friendly and sociable, and comfortable around women.

Yet a few people who spoke to the LA Times characterized him as a loner, someone who lived in Hollywood for eight years and never seemed to have a girlfriend. After the murder, some models he’d worked with came forward to say he’d gotten out of line with them.

Serial revisionist. According to Forensic Files, Charles harbored some hostility toward women with blond hair and didn’t like Linda, whom he had previously worked with.

Investigators found out that he had a bad temper that had cost him some freelance work.

During police questioning, Charles changed his story, admitting that he had hired Linda as a model to pose with the Lexus around a dry lakebed called El Mirage in the Angeles National Forest. The assignment required her to kick up sand by making doughnuts with the car, he said. While demonstrating how to drive the car in circles, he accidentally hit her with the Lexus, then panicked and buried the body in the forest, Charles claimed.

Flowers and tears. He agreed to lead police to her body, but a series of spots he pinpointed yielded nothing. Charles was stalling for time, hoping the body would deteriorate enough so they couldn’t find evidence on it, according to Forensic Files.

Finally, investigators told him that they believed his story about the accident and that recovering Linda’s body would help prove his innocence. On November 25, 1995, from a helicopter, Charles identified her resting place. Police found Linda’s body buried in a shallow grave near a rock and a culvert.

Because of the cold temperatures there, her body hadn’t decomposed.

Tie to OJ. Meanwhile, mourners began leaving floral wreaths and sprigs outside Linda’s shared house. The Los Angeles News-Pilot published a photo of Kelly Flynn tending to them.

Tanya Brown, the sister of Nicole Brown Simpson — whose murder led to the O.J. Simpson trial of the century — attended Linda’s funeral. “I feel like I know her, and it’s just as tragic as it was ours,” Tanya told NBC News: Today.

In fact, the funeral, at the First Baptist Church of Lakewood in Long Beach, drew some 1,000 people, including friends from Linda’s modeling career, Raiderette alums, and former running backs Eric Dickerson and Christian Okoye. A violinist and guitarist played “Over the Rainbow” and “Yesterday.” White doves were released.

Medical examiner’s report. The media was there too. “She was an angel when she was with us and she is an angel now,” one friend told the Press-Telegram.

The minister spoke of how there should be a buddy system for models so they don’t have to meet photographers alone. (He’s right, it’s a good idea, but to me, that’s a form of blaming the victim. Not every woman has a friend available to accompany her anywhere anytime.)

A stone monument in the Angeles National Forest — The Angeles National Forest includes deserts, mountains and woods

Soon, Linda’s family had to bear disturbing news from the autopsy results. Linda died of asphyxiation, not injuries from a car accident.

Cover-up effort. Investigators believed that Linda had refused sexual advances from the 6-foot-3-inch photographer and he then hit her on the head and sodomized with a foreign object, perhaps a gun. Linda had internal hemorrhages. Bruising on her legs pointed to sexual assault as well. Ligature marks matched the size of the rope found in his house.

To eliminate evidence, Charles had washed her — she had no makeup on when police found her — and changed her clothes before disposing of her body, investigators believed.

Charles was charged with first-degree murder and sodomy with a foreign object. A judge set his bail at $1 million.

Play-acting? Los Angeles County put a heavy hitter in charge of the prosecution, Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kay, who was part of the team that prosecuted Charles Manson.

By this time, Charles Rathbun had already tried — or wanted it to appear that he had tried — to shoot himself, according to CNN. He would later testify that he drank half a liter of Scotch, wrote suicide notes, cocked a handgun, and then passed out. When he awoke, his friends talked him out of it. He blamed the attempt on anguish over not finding good legal representation right away.

Then, while in custody, Charles cut his wrists with a razor and wrote in his own blood, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.” But the cuts were superficial and not life-threatening, and police believed it was a sympathy-seeking stunt, according to Oxygen.

Surprise pictures. Next up, Charles revised his story about Linda’s death again. After he accidentally hit her with the car, she started kicking and screaming and, while subduing her, he accidentally choked her.

At the trial in 1996, the court got to hear Charles Rathbun’s final narrative: Linda consumed half a flask of tequila and seduced him by flashing him. They had consensual sex during which she was accidentally asphyxiated.

Robert Rathbun, brother of the accused, claimed to have found five rolls of film in the desert that would prove Linda had willingly participated in sex. While the first four rolls showed her posing in dresses, the fifth consisted of double-exposed photos of female genitalia, which Charles said Linda willingly posed for.

Alcohol involved. The prosecution, however, found evidence that the explicit photos were taken in an Oldsmobile, not a Lexus, and they didn’t come from Linda.

Prosecutors contended that Linda fought back against the photographer’s advances. He forced her to drink tequila, resulting in her blood alcohol level of 0.13% when she died. (According to those who knew her, it wasn’t like Linda to drink on the job, or drink at all.) After the rape, Charles strangled her to death.

And there was also the matter of what Autoweek publisher Leon Mandel said: Rathbun’s assignment was to photograph the Lexus in a rural setting — not a desert forest — and the shoot wasn’t supposed to include any models, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Strong convictions. Models Tiffany Richardson and Amy Weber, who had worked with Charles Rathbun, testified that a year before the murder he had referred to Linda as a bitch. He told Weber that Linda “deserved what she got coming to her,” as reported by the LA Times.

In what must have been excruciating for the Sobeks, portions of Linda’s diary were read in court. They mostly portrayed her struggle to find and maintain true love. It came out that she had recently had renewed thoughts of suicide and that she had once allowed an admiring stranger to buy her a $1,000 bed.

“I don’t want to drag Linda Sobek through the mud,” defense lawyer Mark Werksman said. “But the fact is my client is facing the death penalty.”

The trial lasted six weeks, and it took the jury six hours to finish deliberations.

Charles closed his eyes to brace himself before the verdict was read, and the Sobek family broke into cheers when they heard the decision, guilty of first-degree murder and sexual assault.

The jury didn’t believe any of Charles’ story about the death resulting from consensual sex. “You couldn’t get me to believe that’s something any woman would agree to,” juror Greg Mars later said, as reported by the Daily Pilot, a news service owned by the LA Times.

Sheer scorn. The killer showed no reaction in the courtroom. Ann Rathbun, his mother, also stayed quiet, but she covered her mouth with her hand and the color drained from her face, and his father jerked, according to the Daily Pilot.

“I have never known what it was like to despise someone like I despise this person. God will punish you, Charlie,” Linda’s father, Bob Sobek, told the court, as reported by the LA Times.

As the jurors filed out of the courtroom, Linda’s parents and brother hugged each one, creating a “tearful, impromptu reception line,” according to the Daily Pilot.

Where the money went. Mark Werksman said his client had been afraid he would be wrongfully convicted. Robert Rathbun, himself a lawyer, said that his brother was a kind and gentle person who never wanted to harm others and that his family believed Linda Sobek’s death was a tragic accident.

The Sobeks thought that Robert Rathbun should have faced charges for providing false evidence to cover up the murder and rape. Sobek family lawyer Wayne Willette noted that Robert claimed to have destroyed maps that Charles had given him so that he could find the missing rolls of film. (I found nothing to indicate Robert Rathbun was ever criminally charged.)

A memorial life-size cutout of Linda Sobek, shown in a photo with her mother and brother, Elaine and Steve Sobek

The $100,000 in the reward fund would go toward helping abused women “so that Linda’s death will bring about positive change,” Willette said.

Remember the grocery clerk. Linda’s family took out an ad in the Mercury News a decade after the murder: “It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years since you left us. We’ll always remember your smile, contagious laugh, and the light you shed that is still spreading. The world will never be as good as it was before you left.”

It’s still galling today to remember that, had the judge believed the other, alleged rape victim back in 1979, Linda Sobek would probably still be alive.

Perhaps the Sobek family can also take comfort in the knowledge that Charles Rathbun’s life without parole sentence stands. The state corrections website notes that he remains incarcerated at the California Institution for Men in Chino.

For Forensic Files viewers, however, some loose ends to the story remain.

More felonies? The episode mentions that Charles Rathbun was at first suspected of involvement in the then-mysterious murder of another model, Kimberly Pandelios. She died after meeting a photographer at a Denny’s and her remains turned up not far from Linda’s.

Plus, the LA Times reported that authorities were investigating Charles for “unsolved slayings and disappearing young women from Michigan to California.” During the investigation into Linda’s death, police had found scores of photographs of models in “death poses” and attempted to contact them to ensure they were only play-acting for the camera, according to an Associated Press story.

For an upcoming post, I’ll check into an epilogue for those parts of the story.

In the meantime, you can watch the Real Murders of Los Angeles on the Oxygen network’s website if you create an account.

Until next time, cheers. — RR

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Author: Rebecca Reisner

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