Rebecca Reisner, Author at Forensic Files Now

Walter Scott: A One-Hit Wonder Silenced

Greedy Lovers Kill a Once-Famous Singer
‘The Cheater,’ Forensic Files

Black and white picture of young Walter Scott — Walter Scott in his prime

Forensic Files went all in on “The Cheater,” the episode about the rise and fall of vocalist Walter Scott.

The producers scored interviews with the victim’s mother and father — plus Bob Kuban, the leader of the group that Walter helped to land on the Top 40 list. Forensic Files even got the man who murdered Walter to speak on camera.

Before seeing the episode, I had never heard of Walter Scott, but the show’s portrayal made me want to learn more about his trajectory from blue-collar worker to nationally known celebrity to wedding singer — and ultimately to homicide victim.

Making the band. So let’s get going on the recap of “The Cheater,” along with extra information from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch‘s great reporting as well as other internet sources:

Bob Kuban, the founder of Bob Kuban and the In-Men, was a DuBourg High School music instructor who once studied under the head percussionist of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.

Drawing upon his most promising former students, Kuban formed the eight-piece group in 1964.

Hygienic youths. Although a musical act with more than five people — including brass instruments, no less — seemed a little anachronistic in the age of the Beatles, the group did well.

Black and white photo of Bob Kuban and the In-Men in the mid-1960s — Bob Kuban said the Vietnam War hurt the act as two of its horn players were drafted

In a 1966 interview, Kuban lauded the group’s wholesome image. He noted that the members styled themselves in a clean-cut manner, took baths daily, and in general distinguished themselves from the rock musicians who were “long-haired freaks” and wore Victorian costumes (not sure who he was taking a swipe at on that one).

According to Forensic Files, the band owed much of its appeal to its blond frontman, Walter Scott. Born as Walter Scott Notheis on February 7, 1943, he grew up in St. Louis and married when barely out of his teens. He and wife Doris had two sons, Wally and Scott.

When Walter joined Bob Kuban and the In-Men, he was working as a crane operator during the day.

Tuned up. The group first gained fame in their native St. Louis. The boys “cast a spell over teenagers” around town and spread the magic around the country, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Walter Scott's parents Kay and Walter Notheis Sr. — Kay and Walter Notheis Sr.

In 1966, the band created the song that would become its legacy.

“I remember a couple of the guys came up, and they were working on this tune,” Kuban would later tell the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “It was a rough version, but it sounded great. It just needed an intro and needed a driving beat. We put it together, recorded it, and it went crazy.”

High note. The lyrics to “Look Out for the Cheater” warned about a “guy known as the cheater, he’ll take your girl, then he’ll lie and he’ll mistreat her.”

On April 30, 1966, Bob Kuban and the In-Men performed “Look Out for the Cheater” on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.

The record reached No. 12 on the Billboard chart and stayed in the Top 40 for seven weeks. It would go on to sell a million copies.

In their heyday, the boys appeared on a soap opera called Never Too Young and continued to play at many St. Louis-area venues. The normally quiet Catholic Youth Council dances became all the rage when Bob Kuban and the In-Men performed there.

Lightning not striking twice. Walter, who had azure eyes and sometimes wore a blue tuxedo on stage, acquired many female fans. “Take a good-looking guy and he was like a movie star back then to a lot of women,” Kuban told Forensic Files. Locals who knew Walter described him as a nice person, too.

The band followed up with the songs “The Teaser” and “Drive My Car,” but they didn’t make it into the Top 40. Bob Kuban and the In-Men never had another hit like “Look Out for the Cheater.”

St. Louis arch — The boys in the band stayed true to their St. Louis roots

Walter quit the band and continued on his own, hoping to become the next blue-eyed soul phenomenon, according to a Daily News story. Many people who heard his disembodied voice assumed he was African-American, a 2016 retrospective in The Australian said.

Holding his own. His solo records didn’t sell well and he never became a singular sensation, but he made a living for himself for 17 years singing with cover bands that played at private events and street fairs. St. Louis Post Dispatch stories from 1967 note “Walter Scott and the Guise” appearing at Stoppkoette Roller Rink and Christ the King Parish Hall.

By 1975, he had formed a band called Walter Scott and the Cheaters, playing at such venues as the Harbour House Hotel in Lynne, Massachusetts. He might not have been a major star anymore, but his voice still sounded great as evidenced by a 1980 recording of Walter Scott performing live.

Walter’s career required a lot of time on the road and, as Forensic Files pointed out, he was not only singing about a cheater but also becoming one.

Scandalous goings-on. After years of being unfaithful to Doris, Walter divorced her. He then married his mistress, the olive-skinned Joann Calcaterra — described as one of Walter’s starstruck fans by an Exhumed: Killer Revealed episode titled “Murders on the Edge of Town.”

Walter’s parents, Kay and Walter Notheis Sr., told Forensic Files that Joann, who worked as a secretary at a TV station, was selfish and untrustworthy.

Things got more sordid and sad from there.

Walter, who shared a twin son and daughter with Joann, had an affair with a dancer from his act. Joann cheated with a sloppy-looking electrician named James “Jim” Williams — who was married.

Joann Calcaterra Scott Williams — Friends and neighbors of Joann Calcaterra Notheis Williams helped fund her $500,000 bail

“It was like Peyton Place,” said Kay Notheis. “Everyone was running around with each other’s wives.”

One last chance. In October 1983, Jim’s wife, Sharon Almaroad Williams, with whom he shared two sons, died at the age of 42 after her Cadillac Seville crashed into a ditch.

That same year, there was some good news. Bob Kuban decided to get his original band back together, and signed Walter on.

But the reboot was not to be.

Taking a break from a gig at a Playboy Club in Hershey, Pennsylvania, Walter returned to St. Louis to spend Christmas of 1983 with Joann — and promptly vanished. He left the house to replace a car battery and never came back, according to Oxygen.

Badmouthing a dead man. Wally Notheis, one of Walter’s sons from his marriage to Doris, first heard the news from his stepmother that his dad was missing. “I just didn’t know what happened,” Wally told Exhumed. “His life was pretty secretive.”

When reporting Walter’s disappearance, Joann immediately went into smear-the-victim mode (Ken Register, John Boyle). She told police that Walter was involved in the drug trade, associated with underworld figures, and tended to carry a lot of cash, according to Autopsy 3: The Cheater.

Police found the car he was using, a dark green Lincoln, abandoned at the St. Louis Airport. And, yikes, when Kay and Walter Notheis Sr. stopped by the house that their son shared with Joann, they found Jim Williams — a bear of a man at 6-foot-6-inches and 300-pounds — sitting at a table with Walter’s jewelry spread out in front of him. He was inspecting it with a magnifying glass.

That was fast. Within 24 hours of Walter’s disappearance, Joann canceled all of Walter’s singing engagements. Jim Williams began spending the night at Joann’s; she told police that Jim slept on the couch and they were just friends. Jim said they were merely consoling each other.

Nine months later, Joann divorced the still-missing Walter on grounds of adultery, abandonment, and emotional abuse. She married Jim Williams in April 1986.

Kay and Walter Notheis Sr. were not thrilled to see Jim Williams move into the house on Pershing Lake Drive where their son and Joann once lived together. They also had to contend with the enduring mystery of their son’s disappearance when the case turned cold.

Crypt located. In 1987, investigators finally got a break, from one of Jim’s sons, who was in prison at the time. Thanks to Jim Jr.’s tip, deputies zeroed in on a cistern on his father’s property. Little Jim recalled that his father had covered it with a wood-lined concrete planter around the time that Walter disappeared.

Sharon and Jim Williams with their two small sons — Homicide victim Sharon Williams with husband Jim Williams and their sons in happier times

Law enforcement officers quickly converged on the structure and pried open the cistern. They found what was left of Walter’s body, dressed in a blue jogging suit, floating in the water. Someone had tied him up and put a bullet through the heart. When the deputies lifted out his corpse, the head — a skull by this time — tumbled away from his spinal column. Medical examiner Mary Case, who had arrived at the scene minutes earlier, quickly retrieved the skull and made sure police carefully handled his torso, which had some delicate flesh attached.

Police arrested Jim Williams Sr. for Walter’s murder. Investigators built a case that he also killed Sharon Williams. Investigators found evidence suggesting that Sharon’s car accident was staged; her exhumed body showed injuries inconsistent with what the auto wreck would have caused. She had gasoline on her body, which they attributed to a failed attempt to incinerate the car.

It took years for the justice system to build a solid case against Joann and Jim Williams.

Major irritant. In the meantime, Walter’s father took comfort in driving past Jim and Joann’s house from time to time. “I think he just wants them to know we’re still around,” Kay told the St. Louis-Post Dispatch in 1990. “We’re still watching them.” Sometimes, Jim would come out of the house and stare at the car until they drove away.

Neighbors said that Joann usually stayed inside the house, but they would see Jim doing woodworking projects outdoors or fishing in the backyard on the banks of Pershing Lake.

”To see that guy in your own son’s house, it just gripes me no end,” said Walter Notheis. “I’d like to go in there and blow his head off.”

Book cover of Forensic Files Now — Buy the book, in stores or online

Wheels of justice. Members of the community were frustrated, too, as evidenced by a letter to the editor in the Christmas Eve 1991 edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Walter Notheis Jr. died a cruel and violent death. His family and friends have suffered too long. The suspects should be tried and, if found guilty, they should be executed. Then and only then may our wounds start to heal. — Jack W. Geer, Kirkwood

The trial finally kicked off in 1992.

Authorities theorized that Jim got in an argument with Sharon at home and used an implement to strike her head. He staged the auto accident and set a fire near the car to cover up the murder, they alleged.

Not an agonizing decision. As for Walter, the prosecution made a case that Jim shot him in the back before burying him on his property where, Jim thought, no one would find him. One witness told the court that, before Walter’s body turned up, Jim Williams said that Walter was gone and never coming back. There was testimony that Jim had tried to hire hitmen to kill Walter.

The jurors quickly found Jim guilty, but they rejected prosecutor Thomas Dittmeier’s request for the death penalty. Jim Williams, then 52 years old, received two sentences of life without the possibility of parole for 50 years for the murders of Sharon Williams and Walter Scott.

Joann had been arrested, too, although investigators didn’t have quite enough evidence of her involvement to guarantee a murder conviction. She would later say that her only crime was falling in love with the “kind and gentle” Jim Williams, but she pleaded guilty to hindering prosecution. She received a five-year prison sentence, served 18 months, and then disappeared from public view. (There’s a 2015 obituary on the internet for a Joann Calcaterra, but it’s not the same woman.)

Walter Scott with two Playboy bunnies — Despite his cheating, Walter Scott for years felt reluctant to divorce his first wife because of his Catholic upbringing

Time for the finale. During his Forensic Files interview, Jim Williams denied committing murder and tried to cast blame on his own son, Jim Jr., for Walter’s homicide (Stacey Castor).

Williams served time in maximum security at Missouri’s Potosi prison. He died of cancer in an infirmary hospice at the age of 72 in 2011.

Bob Kuban called Walter’s mother to give her the news of Jim Williams’ death. “I was wishing he would live longer so he would have to suffer a little longer,” Kay Notheis, then 88, told Stlouistoday.com. “But you don’t always get what you want.” (Walter Notheis Sr. had died in 2003 at the age of 81. )

Band plays on. Sadly, a 2014 newspaper story told of how a caregiver hired by Ron Notheis — Kay’s well-meaning surviving son — stole her jewelry and cash.

At least the unscrupulous employee didn’t try to kill her.

Kay lived until she was nearly 100, dying in 2022.

Bob Kuban’s musical act lived a long time as well. After Walter’s death, Bob took over lead vocals and changed the group’s name to the Bob Kuban Band. He acknowledged that the latest incarnation struggled a bit.

As recently as 2019, however, the group was still playing, and had an invitation to perform at the annual Pointfest rock festival in St. Louis. Kuban told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the band would play a medley of 1960s hits as well as “Look Out for the Cheater.”

Wait, there’s more. He also said he’d rather be a one-hit wonder than a no-hit wonder.

Walter got a lot of mileage from that song as well, but he didn’t learn much from it and, unfortunately, he was cheated out of everything in the end.

You can watch the Autopsy episode about the murder on YouTube. The Exhumed episode is also on YouTube, but it’s behind a paywall and mostly concentrates on the murder of Sharon Williams.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

What Happened to the O’Farrell Theatre?

Update and Timeline for the Mitchell Brothers’ Pornography Palace
(‘Sibling Rivalry,’ Forensic Files)

The last post covered the story of Jim and Artie Mitchell, the California brothers who progressed from small-time pornographers to famous showmen before becoming tragic figures.

The O'Farrell Theatre's colorful marquee advertising adult sex entertainment — The O’Farrell Theatre sat close to San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood

Much of the Mitchells’ glory centered on the O’Farrell Theatre, where they staged the most-graphic live sex shows San Francisco had ever seen. But older brother Jim Mitchell had a “knack for seeming more naughty than nasty,” according to Los Angeles Times writer Garry Abrams.

The business, housed in a structure built in 1924, drew serious devotees of adult entertainment as well as folks who were just a tad curious. Many Japanese tourists made the O’Farrell a stop on their itineraries, according to the San Francisco Examiner. The theater’s hardcore productions also drew attention from the San Francisco Police Department. The local government wanted to shut the O’Farrell down.

The Mitchell brothers spent millions defending the O’Farrell and other California theaters they later opened. They paid the legal costs for employees arrested in raids, according to San Francisco Gate. (For the most part, however, the performers didn’t face prosecution.)

For this post, I looked for more details on the O’Farrell’s history and what’s shaking with it today. So let’s get going on a timeline with more information than Forensic Files could fit into “Sibling Rivalry”:

The Mitchell brothers at a press conference in the 19702 — The Mitchell brothers during a press conference in the early 1970s

1969: The Beginning
Jim and Artie Mitchell turn a building that had most recently housed a Buick dealership into the O’Farrell Theatre. The adult-entertainment venue, at 895 O’Farrell Street in San Francisco, shows short pornographic movies and clips that the brothers produce.

The building features a huge lighted marquee projecting from the front entrance. A video of a 1969 police raid shows the interior as having typical cushioned cinema-style seats and a wall with a dark red curtain.

A San Francisco Gate article would describe the O’Farrell’s later decor as more lavish, with disco balls, mirrored walls, rotating red lights, and velvet curtains.

Police repeatedly raid the theater. Thanks to an ACLU suit filed on Jim Mitchell’s behalf, a federal judge rules in August 1969 that it was unconstitutional to arrest patrons at the O’Farrell.

Patrons shield their faces from TV cameras during a raid of the O'Farrell Theatre — Guests shield their faces from a KRON 4 news camera during a police raid in the early days of the O’Farrell Theatre

The combat-ready brothers make sport of their conflicts with authorities. On their marquee, they display, “For a good time call” followed by the unlisted phone number of then-San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein. She is intent on chasing the O’Farrell and the Mitchells out of town.

1972: Riding to the Top
The brothers produce the feature-length X-rated movie Behind the Green Door, which debuts at the O’Farrell. The creative effort, lauded as the “Gone With the Wind of X-rated films,” ushers in the short-lived age of porno chic. It brings mainstream recognition to the Mitchells and leading actress Marilyn Chambers.

1974: Everyone wants to get into the act
KRON 4 news reports that the Mitchell brothers have made some 500 hardcore porn films and “they’re always looking for fresh, errrr, faces” for new projects. In the past eight weeks, the station reports, O’Farrell staff members have interviewed 500 applicants for jobs as actors and actresses. They would choose only 50 or 60 of them for roles.

1977: Animal Attraction
The owners have the O’Farrell’s exterior walls painted with gigantic blue-toned murals featuring sea creatures.

1980s: Business Evolves
The advent of the VCR forces the Mitchells to think beyond adult films, which consumers can now watch at home. They begin staging live sex shows featuring themes like lesbian bondage.

The theater becomes the birthplace of the lap dance.

In 1985, police arrest Marilyn Chambers for allowing men to touch her when she mingled with the audience during a live performance. Afterward, the Mitchells agree to have women wear shorts when they visit the seating area.

But the O’Farrell continues its commitment to clothing-free entertainment. A 1988 classified ad in the Sacramento Bee solicits nude dancers and promises a clean, safe work environment and “good $$$.”

The theater’s renowned Shower Show features naked woman dancing around a set that looks like a locker room. Afterward, for $5 tips, they “assumed positions that wouldn’t be out of place in a gynecologist’s office,” the Los Angeles Times reports.

1991: Unimaginable Crime
The Mitchells once again attract worldwide attention, when Jim shoots Artie to death. Jim said that he went to Artie’s house to force him to go into drug and alcohol rehab, and the confrontation turned deadly. He is convicted of voluntary manslaughter and serves three years. He then returns to the O’Farrell.

1994: Employer Out of Step
Former O’Farrell dancers Ellen Vickery and Jennifer Bryce sue Jim Mitchell. They allege that the only pay they received came from tips and that performers had been charged stage fees of $100 to $200 a month, the Associated Press reports. It comes to light that the Mitchells’ entertainment company shifted dancers’ status from employees to independent contractors to justify making them pay fees and not giving them benefits. Eventually, 500 former employees join the suit and the O’Farrell settles the case for $2.85 million, according to the San Francisco Examiner.

In 1999, the O’Farrell’s 30th anniversary, Marilyn Chambers announces that she will be returning for some live performances. Chambers, who is 47 years old and three-times divorced with an 8-year-old daughter, tells San Francisco Gate that being at the theater is strange without Artie Mitchell there.

2000: O’Farrell Enters the Millennium
Hollywood actor Emilio Estevez produces the movie X-Rated in 2000. The film depicts the events leading up to the shooting, with Estevez and brother Charlie Sheen portraying the Mitchells. The real Jim Mitchell bans the film from the O’Farrell Theatre and asks Estevez how he would like it if Charlie died and someone made a movie about it. Jim doesn’t have to worry; the Esteves-Sheen film is an utter failure.

A 1994 newspaper clipping shows two former O'Farrell employees suing the thaeater — A 1994 newspaper clipping shows former dancers who were suing the O’Farrell

In 2007, history repeats itself when a group of former dancers files a class-action suit alleging that the O’Farrell took a portion of their tips, a violation of California law. The plaintiffs say that when they didn’t attain their quota of dance fees paid by customers, they were obliged to pay the O’Farrell to make up the difference, according to the San Francisco Examiner. Again, the dancers win the suit. Superior Court Judge Mary Wiss rules that, in addition to other compensation, the theater has to reimburse dancers for the purchase of required costumes such as nurse and policewoman uniforms.

Jim Mitchell dies of a heart attack at the age of 63 on July 12, 2007 at his ranch near Petaluma. He leaves behind four children and wife Lisa Adams. His mother, Georgia Rae Mitchell, survives, bearing the sadness of outliving two sons. The McClatchy-Tribune Regional News reports that Jim’s memorial service included a profanity-laced tribute from Michael Kennedy, Jim’s longtime lawyer. Kennedy (not related to the famous Kennedy clan) lauds Jim as a first-amendment protector.

In 2009, Jim’s son James Raphael Mitchell, 27, kills his estranged girlfriend Danielle Keller, 29, by beating her with a baseball bat. Just as his father had claimed in Artie Mitchell’s death, James says he didn’t mean to kill anyone but a situation spun out of control and he loved the victim very much.

Jasmine Mitchell in a mugshot — Jasmine Mitchell

2010s: New Generation of Mitchells
Artie’s daughter Jasmine Mitchell is arrested in connection with an identity-theft ring in 2014.

Around 2018, with Jim’s daughter Meta managing the business, the family puts the 12,920-square-foot O’Farrell up for sale, marketing it as office space. They seek $10 million for purchase or $39,000 a month to rent, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The newspaper notes that real estate agents show the property only during morning hours, before the $60 nude lap dances commence.

No deal materializes.

Even as business slims down, it continues to attract celebrities, including Trevor Noah and Justin Bieber, according to SFist.com.

The 2020s: Curtain Comes Down
In 2020, family members of the Mitchell brothers close the O’Farrell amid the covid pandemic. “We all kind of grew up there in a sense,” a 35-year-old dancer tells San Francisco Gate. “We went from being teenagers up to no good to women with purpose. It’s a sisterhood I’ve never experienced with any other job I’ve ever had.” She also says she could make $1,000 a night at the O’Farrell.

Colorful murals on the exterior walls of the O'Farrell Theatre — The mural on the O’Farrell’s exterior

In December 2022, the O’Farrell is listed for sale for $12 million as residential space with the potential to develop it into 339 units.

In 2024, Corcoran touts the O’Farrell as a commercial redevelopment opportunity that “promises to redefine the city.” Sale price is $4,950,000.

There are no takers to date.

Finally, as a side note, it should be mentioned that longtime O’Farrell detractor Dianne Feinstein, who went on to become a U.S. senator, got the satisfaction of seeing the theater close before she died at the age of 90 in 2023.

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

Read Part I of the Mitchell brothers’ story.

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Tubi or Amazon

Jim and Artie Mitchell: X-Rated Brothers Flicker Out

Adult-Entertainment Kings Clash
(‘Sibling Rivalry,’ Forensic Files)

In the 1970s, the world’s most famous purveyors of adult entertainment were Hugh Hefner, owner of Playboy magazine and clubs, and Bob Guccione Sr., founder of Penthouse magazine.

Artie and Jim Mitchell, wearing caps, huge 1980s-style glasses and lots of facial hair — Artie and Jim Mitchell

Around the same time, another pair was making a splash in the industry. The Mitchell brothers didn’t lounge around in silk bathrobes in a mansion the way Hefner did. And they couldn’t carry off unbuttoned shirts and gold chains the way Bob Guccione did.

Jim and Artie Mitchell looked more like birthday clowns than emperors of erotica.

‘Two’ much? But they offered a type of pornography that Playboy and Penthouse didn’t: hardcore, both live and on film. And while the Mitchells never attained status equal to that of Hefner or Guccione, they had some glory days just the same.

The Mitchells built a profitable adult-entertainment empire including one particular movie that crossed over into popular culture and elevated their status from mere porn peddlers.

Their own story, however, ended in tragedy. Jim Mitchell killed Artie, the younger brother he once cherished.

Skin in the game. The “Sibling Rivalry” episode of Forensic Files covers Jim and Artie’s rise and fall. Because it was the first time I’d heard of the Mitchells, I looked for more details to flesh out their story. So let’s get going on the recap of the episode along with extra information from internet research:

Marilyn Chambers giving the camera a come-hither look — Marilyn Chambers

James Lowell Mitchell and Artie Jay Mitchell were born in 1943 and 1945, respectively, in San Joaquin County, California to Georgia Mae and James Robert Mitchell. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Georgia Mae was a teacher and James Robert was a card shark. The New York Times described him as someone who “tried poker for a living.”

Growing up, Artie was the outgoing son, Jim the serious and reserved one. Jim loved his younger brother and tried to look out for him all of their lives. Once, when Artie was trapped by riptides while swimming off of Ocean Beach, Jim jumped into freezing-cold water alongside rescue workers to help save him.

Brotherly love. After Jim finished high school, he studied cinema at San Francisco State College. He supported himself by giving women $10 to pose nude for photographs, and then selling the pictures at a profit to local pornographers, according to the New York Times.

Later, Jim and Artie produced peep shows — the short sexually explicit films that customers viewed via coin-operated devices at adult-entertainment establishments.

As they branched out into owning the kind of venues that bought their films, Jim and Artie remained an inseparable team who worked in harmony for many years. “They shared business decisions, friends, fishing expeditions, drugs and a desire to set staid San Francisco society on its ear,” the Globe and Mail wrote.

Fertile ground. At one point, they operated 11 adult movie theaters in California. Their jewel in the crown was the O’Farrell Theatre in San Francisco. The establishment, nicknamed the Carnegie Hall of Sex and the Cadillac of Whorehouses, kicked X-rated entertainment up a notch with nude cabaret and live in-person sex shows. It was the pornographic toast in town.

The marquee for the O'Farrell Theatre offering movies, private booths and a continous live shower show — The O’Farrell Theatre marquee trumpets its mention in Playboy magazine

As Forensic Files noted, San Francisco was a good territory for the brothers because of its longtime tradition of tolerating sexual expression and offering adult entertainment, dating back to the Gold Rush, presumably to serve the desires of lonesome prospectors. The San Francisco Examiner would later say that the brothers “reigned over San Francisco’s flourishing pornography market.”

In fact, the Mitchells came along at the right time for the entire United States. The sexual revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s made pornography closer than ever to mainstream entertainment. Women were even starting to accompany their husbands to erotic fare.

Great exposure. Jim and Artie began producing longer adult films. The peak of their careers came in 1972, when the Cannes Film Festival showed their 72-minute X-rated movie, Behind the Green Door. It was hardcore but, unlike most such films, this one had a plot. It portrayed a woman’s abduction and sexual awakening amid interracial and group encounters, some of which took place on a trapeze.

Behind the Green Door got an extra dose of publicity thanks to some irony. Marilyn Chambers, the star of the movie, had recently posed as a mother holding an infant for the cover of the Ivory Snow detergent box.

The Mitchells created the movie on a budget of $60,000 and it initially grossed $25 million, according to The New York Times. Despite that she had no dialogue in the movie, Marilyn Chambers became a household name.

A photo of Marilyn Chambers posing with a baby on the cover of an Ivory Snow box next to an ad for Behind the Green Door — Marilyn Chambers quickly progressed from Ivory Snow model to X-rated film star

Tied up in court. These were the glamor years of porno chic. “We were superstars,” Marilyn Chambers later told San Francisco Gate. “We rode around in limos, drank Cristal champagne and stayed at the Plaza Hotel in suites.”

The Mitchells maintained a relationship with celebrated journalist and book author Hunter S. Thompson, who worked as a night manager at O’Farrell Theatre early in his career. According to the LA Times, Robert Crumb, the cartoonist who created the Keep on Truckin’ drawing, enjoyed cordial relations with the Mitchells, and Black Panther leader Huey Newton was known to drop by the theater, which had card games and pool tables in addition to the sex shows.

Not everyone felt warm and friendly toward the Mitchell brothers, however. They had to defend themselves against almost 200 obscenity and prostitution cases from local and state governments and law enforcement, according to San Francisco Gate.

The late Senator Dianne Feinstein, who served as mayor of San Francisco early in her career, tried to shut down the O’Farrell. Local station KRON News recorded a police bust of the theater, with patrons shielding their faces from the camera.

Leading lady remunerated. By 1981, the California city of Santa Ana had filed several court actions against the Mitchells in attempts to revoke the license from their adult theater in Honer Plaza Shopping Center. As part of the trial proceedings, Judge Claude Owens had to watch such explicit films as Teenage Pajama Party and The Devil in Miss Jones, according to the LA Times. The Mitchells managed to keep the Santa Ana theater open until 1990.

In fact, they successfully defended themselves in most of the cases.

So how rich did Jim and Artie get from their films and string of theaters?

The Mitchells didn’t get to keep all of the Behind the Green Door millions. Marilyn Chambers had negotiated for a cut; it’s not clear whether or not there were outside investors who needed to be paid off as well.

Advent of video. The value of Cinema 7 Inc., the Mitchells’ entertainment company, ranged from $50 million to less than $1 million over its lifetime. According to the San Francisco Examiner, Jim Mitchell at one time drew a salary of $150,000 to $200,000 a year from Cinema 7, when it was grossing more than $3 million a year.

The 1980s brought the threat of the VCR, which enabled seekers of adult films to watch them in their own bedrooms. Still, the Mitchell brothers had a lock on live sex shoes — few consumers could stage those in their own homes.

Perhaps the real threat to having a stable business, however, was the younger Mitchell’s growingly reckless lifestyle.

“Party Artie” was overindulging in alcohol and drugs and sadomasochistic sex. Artie once took out a pistol and waved it around during lunch at a restaurant, a friend of his would later testify. He got the gun away from Artie, but Artie choked him until he agreed to give it back.

Home invasion. Jim would later say that Artie, 45, had threatened Jim’s girlfriend as well as their own mother. In an interview with Forensic Files, Artie’s former wife Karen Hassall said that Artie had refused urgings to seek help for his problems. Artie had been having violent thoughts but said he’d rather die than go to therapy.

By 1991, Artie was living in a tract house in San Corte Madera, about 30 miles from San Francisco, with 27-year-old girlfriend Julie Bajo. They met during her employment as a nude dancer at the O’Farrell Theatre.

On the night of February 27 that year, Julie heard someone enter the house while she and Artie were in bed. Sources vary as to how the intruder got in. He either kicked in the front door or walked through it because it was unlocked. Whatever the case, Julie got scared, grabbed a phone, ran inside a closet, and dialed emergency services. The recording picked up the sound of gunfire.

Julie screamed in terror.

Martyr mission? Police arrived to see Jim Mitchell, 47, limping away from the scene with a .22-caliber rifle in his pant leg. He had a revolver in a shoulder holster, according to an Associated Press account. The officers arrested Jim.

Artie and Jim Mitchell posing with their arms around each other — The Mitchells in happier times

Artie, 45, lay inside with three bullet wounds including a fatal one to his head.

Jim claimed that he went to Artie’s place to force him into drug and alcohol treatment because he was out of control. He said that he took the firearms for self-defense and that when Artie approached with what looked like a gun, Jim pulled the trigger of one of his own. Jim fired seven shots. Three of the bullets hit Artie.

Inevitable end. The story made for numerous front-page headlines such as “S.F Porn King Jailed in Slaying of Brother” and “A Tale of Sex, Drugs and Brotherly Love: Dead Reckoning.”

Marilyn Chambers said that Artie’s death came as no surprise to her given his risky lifestyle. She expected him to overdose or kill himself in a car accident, she said. On the night Artie died, his blood-alcohol level was at 0.25 percent, triple the legal limit.

Yet others never saw trouble brewing. “Everyone is distraught. Everyone is just flabbergasted,” a Mitchell brothers employee told the Los Angeles Times. The employee said that he sensed no discord between the brothers.

Foolish with firearms. Regardless of any culpability, Jim Mitchell grieved his lost brother. He organized a bereavement ceremony for Artie’s friends at the O’Farrell. “As journalists, politicians, and the rest of the brothers’ coterie … nibbled on finger sandwiches, nude ‘exotic dancers’ undulated to canned music and simulated sex on a fur rug,” the New York Times News Service reported.

Jim went on trial for murder in 1992. The Mitchell brother’s mother, Georgia Mae, testified that Artie’s life was spiraling out of control. Jim’s girlfriend, Lisa, said Artie had made threatening phone calls.

Artie’s friend Donald Dossett told the court that Artie often went on alcoholic benders but the most recent one, right before the shooting, was the worst, the San Francisco Examiner reported. Artie’s personality had changed and he had grown more violent, said Dossett, a physician from San Francisco.

Animated argument. Ballistics tests as well as the audio tape analysis from the 911 call indicated that the gunfire came from Jim’s gun and suggested that Jim shot Artie in the shoulder and abdomen before Artie took refuge in the bathroom. For 28 seconds, the shooting stopped. Investigators believe that, during that time, Jim crouched down and then took aim at Artie’s head when Artie opened the bathroom door and peered out to see whether the coast was clear.

The prosecution showed computerized animated re-creations of the shooting. The defense, led by New York lawyer Michael Kennedy, countered that the video added subjective elements and that the ballistics tests used for the re-creation weren’t conducted in Artie Mitchell’s house.

A Spanish-language poster for Behind the Green Door — Behind the Green Door’s popularity spread beyond the U.S.

Jim’s lawyers implied that Artie had a gun that night (none was found) and suggested that Artie was holding a beer bottle that Jim mistook for a gun.

Over the course of the proceedings, jury members listened 11 times to the 911 call, which demonstrated that there were enough pauses in between the gunshots to discredit any accidental shooting theory.

Sacrificed bonus. On the stand, Jim said he didn’t remember shooting Artie although he recalled firing one shot into the ceiling.

Jim cried and said he wished that he had died instead of Artie.

Kennedy also played up the love between the brothers. “Science doesn’t tell us of the workings of the heart, the workings of the mind,” Kennedy said. He countered the contention that Jim wanted Artie’s $1 million life insurance policy. The brothers’ accountant, Ruby Richardson, testified that Jim had once used his own $50,000 bonus from the O’Farrell Theatre as a gift to Artie because he needed the money more. A secretary at the law firm used by the Mitchells testified that Jim sought legal help to forcibly place Artie in rehab for his own good.

Lesser charges. Prosecutor John Posey, on the other hand, argued that brotherly concern wasn’t Jim’s motivation for his visit to Artie’s house that night. “He was tired of Artie Mitchell, his antics over the years,” Posey said. “He didn’t want to deal with him anymore.”

A jury declined to convict Jim of first-degree or second-degree murder but found him guilty of voluntary manslaughter, meaning that it was a crime of passion or perceived as self-defense. The jury also found Jim guilty of brandishing a firearm and discharging a gun in a house.

Perhaps trying to save face, Posey noted that at least the jury didn’t deem the killing a mere accident.

Here come the suits. At the sentencing hearing, Jim, who had gone free on $500,000 bail, received six years. He got out of prison in three years for good behavior. He went back to running the O’Farrell Theatre and later devoted himself to a ranch he owned near Petaluma, California.

Meanwhile, the murder prompted what the San Francisco Examiner called a cottage industry of lawsuits. It included a demand against Jim from Julie Bajo for $450,000 for her trauma from having to hide in the closet during the shooting. Artie’s children sued for an unspecified amount. Life insurance company Summit National wanted to prevent Cinema 7 from getting the $1 million dollar life-insurance award, according to the San Francisco Examiner.

Artie’s estate, which he left to his six children, included a 45% stake in Cinema 7 Inc. (worth about $270,000 at the time of his death), $38,000 in cash and bank accounts, $200,000 in pension funds, and a life insurance policy, according to the San Francisco Examiner. It’s not clear whether the $1 million policy the prosecution implied served as a motive for the murder was meant for the business or for Artie’s heirs. Legal fees to fight bids from local governments to close down their theaters ate into the fortunes of both brothers during their careers. According to the LA Times, law enforcement had been trying to shut down the O’Farrell Theatre since it opened in 1969.

Jim Mitchell in a shirt, tie, and blazer during a court appearance — Jim Mitchell in court

Daughter’s perspective. Artie’s children eventually settled their claims out of court. Julie Bajo received at least $6,000, but it came from her appearances on tabloid TV shows Hard Copy and Inside Edition. (The Chicago Tribune reported that she made $500,000 from the shows.)

Jim Mitchell died of natural causes in 2007 at the age of 63. Two years later, Marilyn Chambers succumbed to heart disease.

In 2014, Artie’s daughter Liberty told her story via a stage show, The Pornographer’s Daughter, set in the 1970s.

By 2020, Behind the Green Door‘s gross had risen to $50 million, according to San Francisco Gate. It’s the second-highest-grossing X-rated movie of all time, right behind Deep Throat.

More on the Mitchells. The O’Farrell Theatre, the showpiece of the Mitchells’ empire, has gone through many changes over the years. I’ll write an update on its history in a future column.

In the meantime, you can read the book X-Rated: The Mitchell Brothers by David McCumber.

The Showtime movie version of the brothers’ lives, Rated X, starring Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez, got bad reviews from newspapers and magazines and, perhaps as a result, doesn’t stream anywhere except possibly Showtime; you can buy the DVD version on Amazon. Or save your money and enjoy the Forensic Files‘ episode, with Peter Thomas lending his tasteful narration to the sordid saga of Jim and Artie Mitchell.

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

P.S. Read Part 2: Whatever Happened to the O’Farrell Theatre?

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Tubi or Amazon

6 Best True-Crime Books of All Time

Titles You’ll Recognize And Some You Won’t

A good true-crime book takes you inside a world you’ll probably never enter and acquaints you with people you might best avoid. Here are six that I’ve read more than five times each and think that you’ll enjoy at least once.

1. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (1966)
This is ground zero of true-crime entertainment. Truman Capote, who first made a splash at age 23 with the novel Other Voices, Other Rooms, spent years researching the buildup to the 1959 collision between the clean-living Clutters of Kansas and Perry Smith and Richard Hickcock — who cut the Clutters’ phone line, broke into the house, and killed four members of the family.
Claim to fame: The book created a genre, the nonfiction novel. Oh, and it has sold 100 million copies.
Infamy: The surviving Clutters hated In Cold Blood because of the way it portrays the family’s mother.

2. Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family by Nicolas Pileggi (1985)
The basis for the movie Goodfellas, the book describes the improbable marriage and the rise and fall of Mafia associate Henry Hill. True-crime writer Nicholas Pileggi said that, before he started the book, he had grown tired of hearing “illiterate dons” portraying themselves as “benevolent godfathers” — but he found Henry Hill fascinating because he was articulate and intelligent and had an outsider’s eye for the workings of mob operations from the ground up.
Fun fact: The author is the widower of Nora Ephron, who wrote feel-good comedies When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle.
Misdemeanor: Wiseguy ends with Henry Hill becoming law-abiding. He did no such thing in reality.

3. Fatal Vision by Joe McGinniss (1983)
Handsome, overachieving Special Forces surgeon Jeff MacDonald seemed to have an ideal life until his wife, Colette, and little daughters were slaughtered in their house in Fort Bragg in 1970. Jeff, 26, said that acid-crazed hippies did it, but he ultimately was found guilty of the three murders. The author gives the backstory of the MacDonalds’ blond-on-blonde union as well as the transition of Freddy Kassab — Colette’s stepfather — from defender of his popular son-in-law to the driving force behind his conviction.
Controversy: Jeff MacDonald successfully sued Joe McGinniss, to whom he had given access to his life because he thought the writer would portray him as innocent.
Intrigue continues: Now past 80 years of age, MacDonald is imprisoned in FCI Cumberland but still has many supporters. The late New Yorker magazine journalist Janet Malcolm advocated for MacDonald’s innocence.

4. Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas by Nicholas Pileggi (1995)
If you liked the movie version of Casino and are interested in how betting emporiums worked back when men in pinky rings owned them and people wore gowns and suits to play slots, you’ll want to read the book version. It traces the life of Frank Rosenthal, an oddsmaker who looked nothing like Robert De Niro but nonetheless ingratiated himself to organized crime figures by giving them sports-betting tips that paid off. They, in turn, recruited him to manage the Stardust and two other Las Vegas casinos with mob ties. The book also details the early life of Geri McGee Rosenthal, the showgirl who entered into a mostly dreadful marriage with Frank.
Definitely an antihero: The real Frank Rosenthal was more pompous and egotistical and abusive to his wife than “Frank Rothstein” was in director Martin Scorsese’s film.
Power trip: Rosenthal really did micromanage his employees in a quest for quality control. He fired a union-protected kitchen worker for undercooking eggs.

5. Bloodletters and Badmen: A Narrative Encyclopedia of American Criminals from the Pilgrims to the Present by Jay Robert Nash (1973)
You have to love a writer who tells you what color Al Capone’s eyes were and how tall Bonnie Parker was. The physical descriptions of the criminals are fun, but the big draw is Nash’s storytelling. The encyclopedia includes many now-forgotten offenders, like Ernest Ingenito, who gunned down seven of his in-laws dispersed around southern New Jersey in 1950, and Earle Nelson, “who made a habit of strangling landladies in the late 1920s.” The hard-covered edition of the book has more pictures than the paperback.
Summary offenses: Nash clearly takes dramatic license in some of his vignettes.
Difference of opinion: Unlike Truman Capote, Nash had no compassion for Perry Smith.

6. On the Run: A Mafia Childhood by Gina and Gregg Hill (2004)
Although they rejected his criminality, the children of Henry Hill inherited his ability to describe an esoteric world from the inside and out. Their side of the story reveals more of Henry’s id than Wiseguy and Goodfellas did. Gina and Gregg write about a life of garbage bags full of marijuana, adult sex parties that took place in front of them as kids, the uncertainty of having an alcoholic dad whose cash reserve could go from five figures to zero in a day, and the heartbreak of having to move around the country after the family entered the witness protection program.
All in the picture: The book reveals early family photos that satisfy readers’ curiosity about how they looked.
Quite a racquet: The son was a USTA-ranked tennis player as a teenager.

That’s all for this post. Please make sure to leave a comment or share the post on social media.

Until next time, cheers — Rebecca Reisner

Judy Bruce: Murdered in Her Second Act

Larry Bruce Goes Unpunished — But Only for Two Decades
(‘Soiled Plan,’ Forensic Files)

Stories about people who overcome obstacles a bit later in life offer hope to others. Such was the case with Judy Bruce, who had a severe speech impediment. It didn’t stop her from getting married or having children, but she stayed close to home and remained in the background socially.

Then, at age 34, the Ohio housewife had surgery that made her feel more comfortable going out and meeting new people.

Combined family. Unfortunately, the inspiration that husband Larry Bruce drew from Judy’s transformation was negative. With Judy able to speak more easily, she might get away from him and tell authorities about things he wanted to pretend never happened.

For this week, I looked for more details on Judy Bruce’s mysterious life. So let’s get going on the recap of “Soiled Plan” along with extra information from internet research.

Judy Ann Phillips came into the world in Bucyrus, Ohio on December 23, 1941, a daughter of Robert and Edna Phillips. She had varied siblings including one full brother named Robert Phillips, a half-brother, a stepbrother, and a stepsister, according to family obituaries.

A set of twin sisters died at birth.

Odd sequence. Judy had a cleft palate, a common birth defect, but her parents didn’t get corrective surgery for her despite that it had long been available by the 1940s.

Somewhere along Judy’s trajectory, she met Larry Dean Bruce, a delivery driver two years her junior. He also came from Bucyrus.

Larry and Judy had a son together, LeRoy Harvey Bruce. Here’s where things get strange. Judy’s younger child, Melody Phillips, was described as Larry’s stepdaughter.

Book cover — *BOOK IN* STORES AND ONLINE

Not all bad. Forensic Files didn’t mention it, but Larry and Judy had been married for less than three years before her death, meaning that the couple had LeRoy circa 1965, and then Judy produced Melody with someone else around 1967 before getting officially hitched to Larry in the 1970s. (Not that there’s anything wrong with all that, but it’s unusual.)

The family lived on Lindaire Lane in Ontario, Ohio.

In some ways, the kids had a conventional childhood. During her Forensic Files appearance, Melody spoke of outdoorsy family fun like riding on pontoon boats on Charles Mill Lake.

Guerilla warfare. But there was also the physical abuse Larry inflicted on Judy, who was less than 5 feet tall and had a slight build.

She fought back as well as she could. According to court papers, Judy set Larry’s boat on fire and broke one of his fingers by throwing an ashtray at him. She once changed all the locks to the house, Gannett News Service reported.

Larry didn’t exactly make life at home any more peaceful by allowing Judy to find out that he accompanied Milena Davey, a former girlfriend, and Milena’s daughter on a school trip to Cedar Point, a popular amusement park in Sandusky.

A transformation. But amid all the tumult, something wonderful happened for Judy. The Ohio State Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation in conjunction with the United Way paid for her to have surgery to repair her cleft palate in 1976.

After the operation, the United Way helped fund speech therapy for her.

“A new confident woman has emerged from the tiny, silent victim of cleft palate congenital defect,” the Mansfield News Journal wrote in a human-interest story about Judy.

Changes for the better. Judy could speak clearly and she felt more comfortable talking to people outside her family. She applied for a job for the first time in her life and ended up taking a position in housekeeping at Mansfield General Hospital. Soon, she got a driver’s license and started forming new friendships.

Family portrait of Judy, Larry, and LeRoy Bruce and Melody Phillips — The Bruces’ children sided with their mother

“I like working,” Judy told the paper. “I bought a car and the job helps pay the bills.”

But Judy only got a couple of years to enjoy her second act before the curtain came down.

Something’s not right. On the morning of November 2, 1978, Larry told the kids that Judy didn’t feel well. Melody, 11, glanced into the bedroom and saw Judy lying down with her face turned away from the door. Melody and LeRoy left for school on foot. Larry drove to work, waving to them as he cruised by.

Judy, 36, went missing that night.

Ontario Village police officer Ronald Dille searched for any strange tracks around the property but found none. No money or property was missing from the house, and Judy’s Mercury Bobcat remained in the garage. “My impression at the time was one of extreme suspicion,” police officer Denny Reid would recall at the trial.

“It appears that the only thing missing from the house was Mrs. Bruce and the clothes she was wearing,” investigator Scott Reinbolt would later tell Forensic Files. “Her car was still there. Her purse was still there. Her prescription drugs were still there.”

Suffocated. Later that day, a maintenance worker reported seeing a dead body in a dry creek bed at a local Girl Scouts campground. Police found a pajama-clad Judy Bruce wrapped in a blanket, which still had a sticker on it from a garage sale the Bruces once held. Larry allowed the police to search the house.

They found a little blood and urine on a blanket in the Bruces’ bedroom, but the DNA testing needed to identify it didn’t exist at that time. Police officers noticed parts of the mattress in the Bruces’ bedroom were soaked with urine.

A coroner determined that Judy had died of suffocation, which causes the bladder to empty. But there was no urine at the dumping site. Police believed someone killed her in one place and then took the body to the campground.

Mansfield Ohio county courthouse — The Bruces lived just west of Mansfield, the seat of Richland County, Ohio

Another wife. Two days after Judy disappeared, her former co-worker James Isaac died in a traffic accident. In a classic Forensic Files red flag — shifting blame to somebody else (Tim Permenter, Bill Lipscomb) — Larry said that Isaac, age 22, had been having an affair with Judy and that perhaps Isaac killed her and then committed suicide via automobile.

That theory didn’t get any traction.

Judy Bruce’s murder case turned cold.

Larry went on with his life. He married Milena Davey in 1981 and moved her into the same house he once shared with Judy.

Starting around 1983, Larry spent a year in prison for the sexual battery of stepdaughter Melody Phillips (more on that in a minute). Milena divorced him in 1984.

Second look. But, back in those days before Google and the national sex offender registry, Larry managed to put some shade on his terrible crimes against Melody. He snagged another wife, a woman named Jill. At some point, Larry moved to 126 Buckeye Road in Mansfield.

He continued his existence undisturbed until 2000, when Richland County established its Unsolved Homicide Unit, funded with $25,000 from the local government and headed by Scott Reinbolt.

Investigators from the unit took a new look at Judy’s murder as their first case. They didn’t exactly find a smoking gun, but they discovered smaller things that added up to a lot.

Troubled soles. LeRoy Bruce told investigators that Larry had burned a bed sheet shortly after Judy disappeared; Larry said the dog had an accident on it. (Burning stuff, another red flag, Ken Otto.)

Former co-workers at Roadway Trucking remembered hearing Larry brag about knowing how to commit the perfect murder.

Larry’s shoes, which police had hung onto since 1978, had traces of calcium carbonate. The material is found in the limestone gravel used to pave some streets, including Walker Lake Road, situated next to the campground where Judy’s body turned up.

Special attachment. Infrared spectroscopy identified synthetic fibers from the death blanket as matching those from the trunk lining of Larry’s turquoise 1971 Cadillac.

On January 10, 2002, a Richland County grand jury indicted Larry for the murder of Judy Bruce.

Larry remained free on $100,000 bail on the condition that he wear an electronic monitoring device. The trial took place from May 14 to May 17, 2002.

Judy Bruce with her school-aged kids — LeRoy Bruce said it seemed strange that his mother didn’t stir at least a bit when he entered her bedroom on the morning before she vanished.

Explosive information. It kicked off with the bombshell of Melody’s testimony that Larry had molested her repeatedly from ages 5 to 14. “If I wanted to go do something, he would tell me that I had to do something for him first,” she said in court.

According to the prosecution, Judy had once walked in on Larry when he was sexually abusing Melody. The couple had a horrible argument during which he took a swing at Judy but missed and hit his hand against the wall, breaking a bone in his arm.

The fact that Judy knew about the sexual abuse gave Larry a reason to silence her. She could use it in any upcoming divorce proceedings.

How the homicide happened. Some YouTube commenters criticized Judy for not reporting it to the police immediately. But the molestation started around 1972, long before the sexual abuse of children was discussed in school, at home, or in the media. And perhaps Judy herself suffered sexual abuse in her youth — she would have made an easy target — and thought of it as horrible behavior but not an actionable violation of the law.

Prosecutors made a case that Larry wanted Judy dead either to cover up the sex crimes or so that he could marry Milena Davey without the hassle of dividing up money and property in a divorce.

Investigators believed that, during the night, Larry killed Judy on their bed, causing urine to soak into the mattress. After the kids left for school, Larry quickly loaded Judy’s body into the trunk of his Cadillac. As he drove past his children, he made sure to wave goodbye as an alibi. He left Judy’s body in his parked car during his entire workday, then drove to the campground to dispose of it.

Curiously still. The prosecution took 40 minutes to lay out its case. Bob Castor and James J. Mayer portrayed Larry as a gambler, wife-beater, adulterer, and child molester.

The defense only filled up 90 seconds with its refutation, Gannett News Service reported. “Is this Unsolved Mysteries or unsolved homicides?” defense lawyer Steve Cockley said. “It’s built on a house of cards. Pull one card out of the bottom and it all falls down.”

LeRoy testified that the day of his mother’s disappearance, she lay motionless in bed when he entered the bedroom to ask his father to sign a school permission slip. Larry told him not to bother his mother because she was sick, but LeRoy had a second look and noticed she had boots on. LeRoy also said he heard the sounds of choking and medicine bottles being knocked over coming from his parents’ bedroom the night before Judy disappeared. But he thought his mother was simply getting up to find some medicine. Investigators alleged that what LeRoy heard were the sounds of Judy being asphyxiated and that Larry placed her in bed with her face away from the door to make it look as though she were just sleeping.

Two witnesses reported seeing a car similar to Larry’s in the vicinity of the campground on the night of the murder, according to court papers.

Brutal attack. Milena Davey served as a witness for the prosecution. Frank Myers, Judy’s uncle, testified that Larry had once said that Judy was hard to kill.

The trial got theatrical at times.

“In the summer of 1978, he grabbed this little woman with force and violence and pitched her down the basement stairs,” Mayer said while recounting instances of Larry’s violence.

Not noisy enough? Mayer called out the Cedar Point trip as the tipping point, when Judy decided to get out of the marriage.

“That man right there has escaped justice for 23½ years, but he is guilty,” Castor said.

The defense team, consisting of James TyRee as well as Cockley, countered that, if someone tried to kill Judy in her bedroom, LeRoy would have heard louder noises because Judy had the gumption to fight back. TyRee also said that there shouldn’t have even been a trial — evidence was too old or had been lost and too many of the witnesses, including one of Judy’s brothers and her mother (then known as Edna Myers Leadingham), had died.

The defense presented no witnesses.

Capital punishment not happening. When the jury announced its guilty verdict, Larry’s mother, Annabelle Bruce, broke the silence in the courtroom by starting to sob. Outside, Jill Bruce and Larry’s brothers, Roger and Kenny, consoled Annabelle.

Melody later told Forensic Files that it had been hard for her to admit to herself that the sexual abuse really happened, but she was glad to see justice done.

Larry didn’t qualify for the death penalty because it wasn’t part of Ohio law when he murdered Judy. Instead, he got a sentence of 15 years to life.

Larry Bruce's last mug shot — Larry Bruce in his final mug shot

In 2003, a three-judge panel rejected an appeal from Larry.

Inglorious end. Two years later, Forensic Files made a stir in the Mansfield area when it produced “Soiled Plan,” the episode about the case. The News Journal reported that Randy Bruce said he would be watching the show despite that he believed in his brother’s innocence. “I’ll probably even record it because [Larry] wants to see it, too,” Randy told the paper. “We go out and see him every two weeks.”

Larry Bruce died at the age of 76 on April 23, 2020, while serving his sentence at Marion Correctional Institution. Newspapers didn’t give a cause of death, but the News Journal reported that it was unrelated to Covid.

Sadly, it looks as though Judy and Larry’s son has passed away as well. A 2022 obituary for Randy Bruce mentions the death of his nephew, LeRoy Bruce.

Melody Phillips, the only surviving member of the immediate family, has kept a low profile over the years.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

Bill Lipscomb: Crucial Test

Kathleen Lipscomb Dies for Learning a Secret
(‘True Lies,’ Forensic Files)

Kathleen Lipscomb’s life was going off-kilter. A respected nurse, Kathleen had separated from William “Bill” Lipscomb, an Air Force sergeant with whom she shared custody of two children. That wasn’t going smoothly.

Kathleen Lipscomb smiling in happier times — Kathleen Lipscomb

To complicate matters, the attractive platinum-haired Kathleen had fallen in love with a co-worker, a handsome gynecologist. He planned to leave his wife for her, he said. Kathleen probably didn’t know that, over the years, he had made that same promise to other women and not kept it.

Dangerous tale. Bill Lipscomb, who was blond and good-looking, had been cheating with one of his colleagues as well.

Still, the Lipscombs’ marriage could have given way to a functional, albeit acrimonious, divorce. And at barely 30 years of age, Kathleen had time to reroute her romantic trajectory — or she should have.

She learned of a secret about her husband that was way more explosive than any gossipy workplace affair, and it led to her doom on June 8, 1986.

For this week, I looked for more information on Kathleen’s young life and an epilogue on Bill. So let’s get going on the recap of “True Lies” along with extra information from internet research:

Nursing career. Ella Kathleen Adams was born on September 1, 1956 in Shreveport, Louisiana. She and Bill Lipscomb went to New Caney High School in Texas together, and both of them came from military families who had moved around a lot. Bill could be charming, said Darlene Koons, Kathleen’s sister. Kathleen and Bill were high school sweethearts, according to the Houston Chronicle, although the Military Murder podcast says they merely knew each other in high school and started a romance later.

After graduation in 1974, Bill joined the Air Force. Kathy took classes at Steven F. Austin University and then West Texas University but left school when she and Bill got married, according to the Houston Chronicle. They had two children, Karl and Laura. Kathleen returned to college to study nursing, getting a bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas San Antonio.

She worked for the UT Health Science Center in San Antonio. Bill was an instructor assigned to Lackland Air Force Base.

Different kind of G-man. The marriage started to go askew after the children came along. Bill became verbally abusive to Kathleen and used harsh corporal punishment on the kids.

For Kathleen, things were going much better at work than at home. She excelled at her work in the gynecology department and hit it off especially well with a colleague, a doctor whom Forensic Files calls David Pearle. “She loved what she did, she absolutely loved it,” Darlene Koons said in an interview on “Worth Killing For,” an episode of My Dirty Little Secret. “I think that, because he was a doctor in that field, it added to her infatuation with him. I think he was a very astute individual. He knew the words women like.”

Whereas Bill felt threatened by Kathleen’s success, Dr. Pearle took pride in her accomplishments and encouraged her, according to an interview with Houston private investigator Tom Bevans on “Sex, Secrets and Sergeants,” an episode of Scorned: Love Kills. Kathleen and Dr. Pearle spent time together at his apartment

Big man on base. But Dr. Pearle had another home, a house he shared with his wife. She probably didn’t know about the apartment. Or perhaps she accepted a story about his using it on late nights when he needed to collapse into bed.

Kathleen believed that the Pearles had separated.

Meanwhile, Bill was deriving plenty of ego-gratification at his job. He had been promoted faster than any master sergeant in Air Force history, according to Forensic Files. His colleagues respected and feared him as the one who gave orders to new recruits and put them in their place.

No show. In 1985, Kathleen filed for divorce. Bill scooped up the kids and fled across state lines. Kathleen dropped the divorce and the family reunited briefly.

She refiled in 1986 and they began living separately.

Medical school attached to the hospital where Kathleen worked — The medical school attached to the UT Health Science Center where Kathleen Lipscomb worked changed its name after a couple donated $25 million in 2017

But there would be no divorce. On June 6, 1986, Kathleen’s colleagues grew concerned when she didn’t show up for work on time. As Forensic Files viewers have observed, victims on the show tend to be prompt and reliable. (No word on whether she also had a smile that lit up a room).

The kids were staying with Bill, and he told police that Kathleen didn’t come to pick them up when expected.

In the fold. Later that same day, a passerby spotted a woman’s body lying near a road northwest of San Antonio in Bexar County. She was naked and posed in a suggestive way, perhaps the work of a sex criminal — or a killer who wanted police to assume so.

“Someone wanted her found,” said Bexar County Deputy Sheriff Dalton Baker.

Her clothing had been rolled up neatly in military fashion and left at the scene. Police recovered some strands of dyed-red hair there as well. Kathleen’s legs were folded as though she had lain in a cramped space.

A medical examiner determined that Kathleen had been strangled to death shortly after eating Chinese food, that the murder probably took place somewhere other than the site where her body turned up, and that she had intercourse within 24 hours of death. The presence of sperm indicated that the person she’d had sex with wasn’t Bill; he’d had a vasectomy.

Red herring. The Lipscombs’ children backed up Bill’s alibi that he was with them at the time of Kathleen’s disappearance.

Neighbors said they saw a suspicious person, a red-haired woman, exiting Kathleen’s apartment around the time of the murder. It made for tantalizing theories. Perhaps it was a man dressed as a woman to throw off suspicion.

Bill told investigators that Kathleen had frozen him out sexually and might have been having a lesbian affair — and maybe that’s where the red hairs originated.

Police brought the doctor in for questioning. Accounts differ as to whether he came in alone or brought his wife with him. He admitted that he saw Kathleen shortly before she died. Then, he clammed up and called his lawyer.

Smooth operator. I’m not sure how the doctor pulled it off, but he did a great job of keeping his name out of the press amid all the scandal. Forensic Files calls him David Pearle, and a couple of other television sources mention “Dr. Pearle” without giving his first name. But newspaper articles I found mentioned “a doctor” but didn’t give any name at all. It’s not clear whether part or all of the names that Forensic Files and other TV shows assigned to the doctor were pseudonyms.

Kathleen Lipscomb holding one of her babies — Kathleen Lipscomb

“He had everything to lose, his career, his family,” Darlene said. And he probably had no intention of leaving his wife. Kathleen was being played, according to Darlene.

But the doctor didn’t have red hair, and police found no forensic or circumstantial evidence linking him to Kathleen’s death. Over the years, he’d had affairs with other women without harming them, except perhaps for breaking their hearts.

Nice try. For a time, investigators considered the doctor’s wife, who might have wanted to get rid of the other woman, as a suspect. But that theory went nowhere.

Next up, one of Kathleen’s neighbors got an anonymous phone call, a man who said, “You’re next.” Could a serial killer have murdered Kathleen? No more calls took place and no serial killings happened.

The police kept searching for Kathleen’s killer, but had little luck for two years.

Lady’s home journal. In the meantime, Bill found a new wife, Beverly, and transferred to Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, where he served as a motor pool chief. The couple lived in Poquoson as a combined family with Beverly’s child and Bill’s son and daughter from his marriage to Kathleen, according to newspaper accounts.

Kathleen’s family members still suspected Bill. About two years after the homicide, they hired Tom Bevans to investigate.

The big break came when Bevans took note of an entry written in Kathleen’s diary: “baseball tournament” and “Shannon Gilbert there.” (Again, that name might be a pseudonym. My Dirty Little Secret calls her Teresa.)

Other woman. Kathleen had attended one of Bill’s baseball games and seen him and Shannon engaging in PDA like a couple of newlyweds. Others later corroborated the story.

When Bevans, who described Shannon as good looking and well built, showed up at her door, Shannon immediately said she needed a lawyer. She arrived for questioning in full military dress, and her lawyer made sure she won immunity from prosecution before she divulged anything.

Shannon said that Bill had told her he wanted to kill Kathleen.

Soon all sorts of evidence came tumbling out.

Second failure not an option. Bevans found an entry in Kathleen’s diary mentioning WAPS, the Weighted Airman Promotion System, a test that encompassed career skills and overall military knowledge — and counted toward 43 percent of the points needed for a promotion.

The private investigator looked into a theory that Bill had cheated on a test to move up the ranks. Early in his Air Force career, Bill had failed a test for a promotion — and wanted to make sure that never happened again, Bevans suspected.

Darlene Adams Koons, sister of Kathleen Lipscomb — Darlene Adams Koons made a number of media appearances to discuss her sister’s murder

It turned out that Bill had not only cheated on the test for his own advantage but also created what the Daily Press called a cheating ring. Bill was paying informants for answers to various tests and collecting them in a study book. Bill presumably sold, or planned to sell, the answers to other test takers, according to the San Antonio Express-News.

Child speaks up. Bevans believed that Kathleen planned to use that information to give her an advantage in the custody dispute. If Kathleen disclosed the cheating, it could ruin Bill’s career and anger colleagues who took part in the scam.

Bill also had a financial motive as he had raised the amount of life insurance on Kathleen, to about $315,000, shortly before her death. He had already collected most of it.

Word of more deception surfaced: Kathleen’s daughter, Laura, told her grandmother, Nadine Adams, that Bill lied about having her and her brother the whole night on the evening their mother disappeared. Up until that time, the children had feared Bill’s temper too much to implicate him. A friend of Bill’s — whom Forensic Files calls Tony Barello but whose real name appears to be Staff Sgt. Clint Nicholas Richards — took the kids out to dinner that evening, according to Laura.

Off his chest. Thanks to a new girlfriend, Richards had started going to church by the time the investigation heated up. His conscience began to bother him, or maybe he just wanted a deal. Richards told investigators that, while he and the kids were at McDonald’s, Bill killed Kathleen and stored her body in a cedar chest — her legs stayed folded because of rigor mortis.

After Richards brought the children home and Bill put them to bed, Richards returned to collect Kathleen’s body and then left it by the side of the road. Although accounts don’t elaborate, he probably rolled up her clothes neatly out of force of habit, then posed her body to suggest someone had perpetrated a sex crime against her. More important, he left the body where someone would find it — proving Kathleen was dead and paving the way for Bill to collect on her insurance.

Bill asked Richards to dispose of the chest. Sources vary as to whether Richards neglected to do so or dumped it at the Scenic Loop off of Texas 16 highway. Regardless, investigators found it and recovered Kathleen’s blood inside.

Caught off guard. Investigators believed that, on the night of the murder, Bill asked Kathleen to pick up the kids at his place earlier than usual — when in fact they were still at McDonald’s. When Kathleen arrived, they argued and he strangled her to death.

During Bill’s questioning, an investigator asked him why he killed Kathleen; Bill said he didn’t know. Realizing what he had blurted out, Bill leaned forward, crossed his arms and said, “I did not kill my wife.”

His arrest on July 10, 1989 brought some relief to Kathleen’s family. “It’s been a nightmare that’s almost over,” Nadine Adams told the Houston Chronicle.

Admits to rape. Bill cracked and starting telling the truth. He admitted that when Kathleen came to pick up the children, “we entered into a conversation, sir, and during the course of that conversation, I used the cable,” according an AP account.

He confessed to sodomizing Kathleen before killing her, although My Dirty Little Secret says that the two of them had been dividing up family photographs when he sneaked up behind her with the cord and choked her, which meant that he sodomized her after the murder.

As for the sperm found in Kathleen’s body, a lab mishandled the specimen and could never determine the source. It presumably came from consensual sex with the doctor.

Husband stands alone. A judge sentenced Bill Lipscomb to life for rape, murder, and obstruction of justice. He was transferred from the barracks at Ft. Leavenworth in Kansas to a federal lockup in Pennsylvania. The Air Force demoted him, dishonorably discharged him, and canceled any future pay.

His prison sentence was shortened to 60 years.

Kathleen and Bill Lipscomb at their wedding — Kathleen and Bill Lipscomb

In return for his cooperation, Clint Nicholas Richards got immunity and an honorable discharge. Shannon Gilbert changed her name and went into a witness protection program.

Unrepentant widower. The red hairs at the murder scene, investigators believe, were placed there to throw off investigators. And the mysterious flame-haired lady was just a concerned co-worker who stopped by Kathleen’s apartment to check on her. She had nothing to do with murder.

In 2004, Darlene and Nadine appeared on the Montel Williams Show. Darlene said that Bill never apologized for what he did. “I think Bill needs to realize that he’s very selfish,” Darlene said. “For a very selfish reason, he affected so very many lives.”

Below the radar. As for the cheating scandal that set the homicide plot in motion, it didn’t do enough to discourage others. In 2006, Capt. Rhonda McDaniel of the 45th Aeromedical-Dental Squadron faced court martial for allegedly compromising controlled test material before her promotion to commissioned officer. The scam resulted in charges against other Air Force personnel and was believed to have been going on for 10 years in the U.S. and overseas.

As for Bill, the Federal Bureau of Prisons lists three inmates named William Lipscomb, all of them released. It looks as though Kathleen’s former husband, William T. Lipscomb, got out at the age of 68 in 2021, and is keeping a low profile.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or TubiTV or Amazon Prime

Rhoda Nathan: Tragedy Before a Bar Mitzvah

Elwood Jones Surprises a Hotel Guest
(‘Punch Line,’ Forensic Files)

Back in 1996, the case against hotel worker Elwood Jones seemed as solid as cast iron. The handyman had prior convictions for theft and possessed a master passkey for rooms at the Embassy Suites in Blue Ash, Ohio.

Rhoda Nathan

Two years after guest Rhoda Nathan was discovered beaten to death and a piece of her jewelry turned up in Elwood’s car, Judge Ralph Winkler sent him to death row.

But in a surprising development in 2023, Elwood exited prison on two feet after a different Hamilton County judge ordered a new trial.

Social gal. A look into the reasoning behind that decision seems in order — but first, here’s a recap of the Forensic Files episode “Punch Line” along with extra information from internet research:

Rhoda Silverman was born in the Bronx on January 15, 1927 and then lived in New York City for 18 years, according to her obituary in the Asbury Park Press. She married Robert Nathan and had two sons, Valentine and Peter.

By 1994, she was a 67-year-old widow, but still a livewire. Rhoda lived in Toms River, New Jersey and enjoyed local theater, tennis, golf, travel, and orchestrating family celebrations, according to the Justice for Rhoda Nathan website. An Asbury Park Press story described her as a popular member of the Dover Township retirement community.

Friends up in the air. She also stayed close to her old acquaintances, including childhood friend Elaine Shub. In September of 1994, Rhoda flew to Ohio to attend the bar mitzvah of Elaine’s grandson.

On the airplane, a married couple named the Cantors who were headed to the same bar mitzvah introduced themselves to Rhoda and ended up dropping her off at the Embassy Suites, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Exterior shot of the Embassy Suites in Blue Ash Ohio — Cincinnati hotel rooms were in short supply during the Labor Day weekend, so Rhoda Nathan and her friends stayed at an Embassy Suites outside of town

Rhoda and Elaine shared Room 237, along with Elaine’s boyfriend, Joe Kaplan.

Egg in the a.m. The hotel was configured with an atrium surrounded by guest rooms. No one could slip into a room without chancing detection.

Or so it seemed.

According to the Cincinnati Post, unlike other rooms, Rhoda’s had an exterior door partly blocked by plants and a low wall.

On the day of the event, September 3, 1994, Elaine and Joe left the room early in the morning to grab a bite in the atrium — where the hotel had an omelet station — and give Rhoda a chance to shower and dress in privacy.

Sudden terror. Unfortunately, it was just enough time to allow a thief to sneak into what he probably thought was an empty room.

When Joe, Elaine, and Elaine’s daughter Cynthia Kirsch returned from breakfast, they allowed Cynthia’s 6-year-old son to turn the key in the lock. The door opened to the sight of Rhoda on the floor.

Elaine screamed in horror.

Guests try to help. Although Season 4 of the Accused podcast said that police at first thought Rhoda had simply suffered a heart attack, her friends described her as having a face so swollen and battered that they could barely identify her — far more physical trauma than a cardiac arrest would cause. Rhoda had a shattered jaw and broken ribs. Investigators would later identify door chains and a walkie-talkie as objects possibly used in the attack.

Elwood Jones wearing tinted aviator while under arrest — Elwood Jones, seen here under arrest, was known for being arrogant and wearing cologne

“They just beat the living daylights out of her,” police chief Michael Allen said, as reported by the Associated Press.

A cardiologist and a nurse staying at the hotel tried to revive Rhoda, with no luck.

Emotionally scarred. Dorothy Cantor told the Cincinnati Enquirer that she was stunned to learn that the nice woman she and her husband had just met was now gone.

Cynthia would later tell the Accused podcast that Elaine Shub was never the same after that day.

Rhoda’s son was devastated. “As she passed away, so did my family,” recalled Valentine Nathan in a video on the Justice for Rhoda Nathan website. “We drew apart. There was nothing there to draw us back in together. It was horrible.”

Dental damage. Because of her facial injuries, the Nathans had to give Rhoda a funeral with a closed casket. “My baby, my baby,” said Rhoda’s 92-year-old mother, Sarah Silverman, as she looked at the coffin.

Meanwhile, the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office had sent detective Peter Alderucci to the crime scene. He found one of Rhoda’s teeth on the floor; another would turn up in her stomach. A necklace given to Rhoda by her husband, who had it custom-made with diamonds once belonging to his mother, was missing and so was $500 in cash from Elaine’s purse.

The Hamilton County Coroner declared Rhoda’s death a murder. Because she had few defensive wounds, prosecutors believe someone overpowered her completely. She was naked, making it unlikely that she opened the door to let the anonymous killer in.

Handy clue. Investigators turned their attentions toward Elwood Jones, a 42-year-old handyman for the hotel. He started work at 6 a.m. on the morning of the homicide. Later that day, he acquired a bandaged wound on his left hand, and he went for treatment four days later.

When hand surgeon Dr. John McDonough cut into Elwood’s severely infected finger, blood and tissue spurted 10 inches across the operating room table. The doctor took photos of the wound to show students because it was so unusual. (Warning: Between those photos and the autopsy pictures, you probably shouldn’t plan on dining while watching this episode.)

Elwood’s hand injury required antibiotics, two operations, and a five-day stay in the hospital.

“The virulence of that infection was a clue to the mystery,” intoned Forensic Files narrator Peter Thomas.

Violent provenance. Elwood told the doctor that the cut came from a trash bin lid, but hotel employees recalled that he blamed it on metal stairs. Another version had Elwood saying he got the cut when he fell onto a garbage bag containing glass and later aggravated the wound while breaking down a dance floor at the hotel, according to a Northeast Suburban Life article from June 5, 2019.

Closeup of Rhoda's pendant featured a bar with five diamonds flanked on each side by two other bars — Rhoda’s necklace had five heirloom diamonds

Lab tests revealed the infection came from eikenella corrodens bacteria, found in oral plaque. The doctor identified the wound as a “fight bite” — from a fist coming into violent contact with human teeth.

So who was this man who quickly became the chief suspect in a beloved grandmother’s murder?

Respectable beginnings. Elwood “Butch” Jones came into the world in 1952, born to schoolteachers in Ohio. In addition to their own seven children, Elwood’s parents took in kids who didn’t have good homes.

At some point in Elwood’s life, he started accruing theft convictions — at least one of them for a burglary.

Having already married and divorced once, Elwood was living with his girlfriend, Yvonne, in the East Walnut Hills neighborhood of Cincinnati at the time of the homicide. He was also having an affair with a co-worker named Earlene Metcalf.

Sharp-dressed man. A search of his and Yvonne’s apartment turned up the Embassy Suites master passkey in Elwood’s possession, even though he no longer worked at the hotel by that time. A toolkit in the trunk of his car contained the necklace given to Rhoda by her husband.

Rhoda’s son became the family’s most vocal spokesperson

Police arrested Elwood, and he was indicted in 1995. With his sleek physique and tinted aviator-style frames, he looked more like an opening act for Sammy Davis Jr. than a maintenance man gone homicidal.

Alternate suspects? Prosecutors believe Jones saw Elaine Shub and Joe Kaplan leave for breakfast on that morning of September 3 and thought the room was empty. He took along his toolkit so he could say he was doing maintenance work if the occupants returned unexpectedly. When Rhoda surprised him by emerging from the bathroom, he beat her with his fists, door chains, and possibly his walkie-talkie and stole the necklace plus Elaine’s cash.

Elwood’s defense team argued that police, who had access to his car keys, planted the necklace in his toolkit to frame him.

Tow-truck driver Jimmy Johnson said that, in the course of doing repair work on Elwood’s car on September 4, 1994, he dumped out all the tools in Elwood’s trunk and saw no necklace like the one that detective Mike Bray said he later discovered.

There was also the matter of a local jailbird named Linda Reed who said that a woman she met while locked up admitted that her husband murdered someone and then framed a Black man.

Typical accusation. The defense contended that investigators launched the case against Elwood because of public pressure to solve it after they muddied up the murder scene.

Rhoda's battered face — Rhoda Nathan sustained injuries to her neck and chest in addition to those on her face

(I’m always skeptical about contentions that police erred by failing to keep crime scenes pristine. In the case of Rhoda, first responders didn’t know a murder had taken place. And even if they did suspect it, they had to walk into the room and move things in the course of trying to revive her and then removing her body.)

In 1996, a jury found Elwood guilty of aggravated murder and he received a death sentence. He stayed on death row for 27 years, all the while claiming innocence and writing letters to ask for help.

Steadfast story. On September 10, 2000, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported seeing court papers suggesting that Ohio judges had criticized prosecutors for using improper courtroom statements to win death-penalty convictions in numerous cases, including that of Elwood Jones. Among the prosecutors’ offending statements was that Elwood valued a stolen necklace more than Rhoda Nathan’s life. But that revelation didn’t lead anywhere for his case.

It wasn’t until 2022 that Elwood had some real luck. Pro bono defense lawyers, including Erin Barnhart, who called the prosecution’s evidence junk science, persuaded Hamilton County Judge Wende Cross to rule that he deserved a new trial because 4,000 investigative documents, including 400 hotel guest surveys, had been withheld from the defense during the trial.

Criminals aplenty. According to reporting from WLWT, the defense lawyers’ salvos included the allegation that some hotel guests said they saw a white man dashing out of the building and into the woods around the time of the murder and that the local police reported that they received a confession to the crime from someone other than Elwood Jones. There was also a confusing contention that Rhoda Nathan’s necklace was merely a piece of mass-produced jewelry.

“I’m not a murderer,” Elwood said in an interview. “I was a thief and I’m the first to tell you I’ve got a past.” According to the Accused podcast, the Embassy Suites in Blue Ash employed other people with police records — the hotel was having a tough time filling positions and it qualified for a tax credit for employing those who had trouble securing jobs. Over the years, the property had received many complaints of items disappearing from their rooms, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

His defenders also pointed out that Elwood’s narrative has remained the same since the murder happened in 1994. “A few stories have changed since then, but not Jones’,” the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote.

Rhoda Nathan’s family begged Judge Cross to keep Elwood in prison until the new trial. The state of Ohio tried to persuade her, too. “He’s 70 years old,” said assistant prosecutor Seth Tiger. “He’s got a lot of crime left in him.”

Elwood won. Wearing an electronic monitoring device on his leg and having posted no bond money, he emerged from razor wire on January 14, 2023

Comfort and reunions. “Because of all the bad rulings that have come out over the years,” Elwood told USA Today, “it’s kind of hard to comprehend when something good happens.”

In a March 2023 interview with USA Today, Elwood said he’s grateful to be able to make his own coffee and enjoy the company of his sister’s American bulldog while staying at her home on house arrest. Other family members come to visit him.

He spends some of his time sewing stuffed animals to give to people who have helped him, according to USA Today.

Fans materialize. The Nathans and prosecutors dismiss Elwood’s plea of innocence as a typical attempt at a SODDI (some other dude did it) defense.

Bar mitzvah taking place as Torah scroll is taken out — Elaine Shub had to borrow a dress because her hotel room was sealed off with police tape

“The issues Judge Cross rested her decision on have been decided on by the sixth circuit court of appeals, the federal court, at the district level and at the court of appeals, and all were rejected,” said Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters, adding that it’s a rare day that he doesn’t think about Rhoda Nathan.

Chief Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor Mark Piepmeier complained about the existence of what he termed Elwood Jones groupies.

Kickoff coming in 2024. “Now, thanks to misleading TV crime shows and inaccurate podcasts, Elwood Jones has gained enough support to be granted a new trial,” Valentine Nathan said in a video interview on the Justice for Rhoda website. “My mother is not here and this guy is still breathing and still appealing. Him constantly trying to do these appeals and bring everything back is torment of me and torment of my family.”

Elwood’s adversaries and supporters await his new trial, originally scheduled to begin on February 5, 2024 — but now delayed with the possible start time of summer or fall 2024 (thanks to reader Marcus for sending in the update). Because of a medical condition, he no longer has to wear an electronic monitoring device.

In the meantime, rewinding all the way back to 1994 for a moment, what happened with the bar mitzvah plans that prompted Rhoda’s fateful visit to Cincinnati? The ceremony actually did take place right after the tragedy, according to Dorothy Cantor, who cited the Jewish tradition of using happy occasions to help people celebrate life amid horrible events.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Tubi or Amazon

Shamaia Smith’s Killer: An Update

Ken Otto Tries to Obliterate His Victim
(‘Best Foot Forward,’ Forensic Files)

Shamaia Smith in a white tank top and black and white hairband — Shamaia Smith

A disheartening aspect of updating Forensic Files cases is finding out that, between the time the episode was produced and the present day, a person who committed a gruesome murder has been released from prison.

Take Richard Crafts (please). In a case that made headlines around the globe in 1986, he killed his wife, Helle Crafts, placed her in a freezer, and used a wood chipper to dispose of her body.

He’s out.

Then there’s Fred Grabbe. In 1981, he killed wife Charlotte Grabbe after repeatedly choking her until she passed out, waiting until she regained consciousness, and then starting the process over. He disposed of her body in an unthinkable way.

He’s out, too.

Young homebody. Thus a check on the incarceration status of another sadistic criminal, Ken Otto, seems in order. He enjoyed harming living things, starting with animals and ending with a human being. So let’s get going on the recap of “Best Foot Forward,” along with extra information from the Hartford Courant and other internet research:

After opening with an especially long montage of strippers, the episode introduces us to Shamaia Smith, a 22-year-old dancer at the Kahoots club in East Hartford, Connecticut.

Despite her risqué vocation, Shamaia lived at home with her parents, Gloria Frink and Barry Smith Sr., on Indian Hill Road in East Hartford. Shamaia hoped to attend Goodwin College and open her own hair salon someday, according to her obituary and the Hartford Courant. In the meantime, she was making a living under the stage name Unique.

Ken Otto in court in an orange prison uniform in 2012 — Ken Otto in court in 2012

Moneyed barfly. When Shamaia didn’t come home from work on March 14, 2007, her mother reported her missing to the East Hartford police. Shamaia’s boyfriend, Jamel McDonald, said he hadn’t seen her since she caught a ride to work at 3 p.m. with someone he didn’t know. It sounded suspicious, but investigators quickly cleared him.

They then turned their attention toward Ken Otto, 56, a well-to-do local man who frequented Kahoots. Ken said he gave Shamaia a ride to the club and then headed home and went to sleep the night she disappeared.

Security footage, however, showed that Shamaia never entered the club on that day.

No free lunch. Kahoots employees told police that they knew Ken Otto as a frequent customer who paid a lot of attention to Shamaia. He would later tell investigators that he suffered from erectile dysfunction and couldn’t have sex with her. Ken admitted that he gave her $500 — “to continue her education.”

Monique Frink, Shamaia’s sister, said that she told Shamaia to be careful because Ken would be expecting something in return (Rachel Siani) for the $500. On a hunch, after Shamaia disappeared, Monique called Ken, identified herself as Shamaia, and left a message asking Ken to give her a call back.

He never did.

Colleagues like the guy. So who was this affluent strip-club denizen? Kenneth John Otto Sr. was born on January 4, 1951. He and his wife, Kathleen, married in 1974 and went on to have a son and daughter. The family lived in a four-bedroom house at 21 Windmill Road in Ellington, Connecticut. Kathleen worked as a pharmacy technician. According to the Hartford Courant, Ken was a manager for Bodycote Thermal Processing, a metallurgical-services company in South Windsor. A Boston Herald story described Ken as an engineer. Whatever the case, during each of the three years leading up to Shamaia’s disappearance, Ken earned about $230,000, according to court papers.

The suburban home that was the Ottos' principal residence — The Ottos’ former principal residence is worth around $500,000 today

His co-workers had no inkling of any brutality on his part. “He was outgoing and jovial, a very friendly guy,” Alan Madden, a company HR director, told the Hartford Courant.

Ken had no criminal record.

Grisly hobby. Descriptions of his relationship with Shamaia vary according to the source. The two were dating or he was paying her for sex or they were just friends.

Cell phone pings from days before Shamaia went missing indicated that she had been near a 75-acre plot of wooded land that Ken Otto and his son owned in the town of Stafford. When Ken allowed law officers to search the property, they took note of a burn pit with the smell of gasoline. After cadaver dogs came on the scene, they picked up a scent of bodily remains at the burn pit.

Ken explained that he had recently killed a beaver, chopped it up, and burned the pieces. He liked to cut dead animals into pieces, he said.

Vandalizes own property. He then revoked his permission for the search, and sent the police team home.

By the time police got a search warrant to study the land again, Ken had torched some of the property and used a backhoe in an attempt to bury his newly wrecked trailer.

Investigators found a piece of carpet that looked as though a human body had once made an impression on it. A mop recovered from the trailer contained Shamaia’s blood, according to the Connecticut Law Tribune.

Firearm evidence. In the burn pit, they recovered small pieces of human bones without enough DNA to test — before finding a burned human foot with some flesh still attached. Its DNA matched that of Shamaia’s relatives. A torched key at the alleged crime scene opened the door to Shamaia’s residence.

Ballistics tests linked three cartridges found on the property to a semiautomatic pistol in Ken’s safe.

Exterior of the newly reopened Kahoots lit up with a neon sign — Kahoots reopened as a restaurant and event space after the original business closed amid charges that employees sold drugs and a dancer worked as a prostitute

As detectives continued their sleuthing, the Ottos made some crafty moves of their own. After the East Hartford police interviewed Kathleen in April 2007 and told her that Ken had paid Shamaia Smith for sex — and was being investigated in Shamaia’s murder case — Kathleen and Ken headed to Tewksbury, Massachusetts. There, Ken transferred ownership of a condominium to his wife. Back in Connecticut, he signed over his 2004 GMC Envoy to her as well, and then, with his support, Kathleen consulted a divorce lawyer, according to court papers filed by a representative for Shamaia’s family.

Big bail. Meanwhile, Monique Frink complained that her sister’s disappearance got only scant coverage in the media. But she soon received some satisfaction, when authorities arrested Ken Otto at Bradley International Airport in May 2007. He was carrying a suitcase with $10,000 and foreign currency, according to the Hartford Courant. He also had Cialis and condoms with him.

Ken said that he was headed to a business meeting and needed the cash for legal fees, according to information available on CrimeLibrary.org.

A judge set his bail at $5 million cash, although prosecutors had asked for $10 million after calling Ken an extreme flight risk.

Trailer terror. Bodycote Thermal Processing suspended Ken and extended condolences to Shamaia’s family. (The company also employed Kathleen and Ken’s son, Kenneth Otto Jr., and he continued working there.)

While awaiting trial, Ken received three disciplinary tickets in jail, including one for possession of a key to handcuffs, according to the Hartford Courant.

At the court proceedings, prosecutor Kenneth Zagaja contended that Ken, as he admitted, picked up Shamaia for work. But, he alleged, instead of dropping her off at Kahoots, he took her 30 miles away to his property in Stafford. In Ken’s trailer, they had some type of exchange that culminated in his shooting her twice, rolling her in a piece of carpet, and burning her body for days in the pit.

Some other dude. At the trial, police said Ken Sr. admitted to dating Shamaia but not to murdering her.

His lawyers offered up the SODDI defense. An Otto family friend testified that many people used the Stafford property for recreational purposes — dirt biking, camping, and target shooting — and that parties other than the Ottos sometimes used the burn pit.

The defense also had an explanation for the abused trailer. Kenneth Jr. said that he and his father partially buried it because they planned to use it as the base of a log cabin.

Ken Otto's intact trailer — Ken Otto’s trailer was intact the first time the police searched his property

Tapped out. Unimpressed by the defense’s argument, the 12-member jury convicted Ken Sr. of murder and tampering with evidence. Superior Court Judge Thomas O’Keefe Jr. called him a cold-blooded killer and gave him a sentence of 60 years.

“It’s life,” said Gloria Frink, as reported by the Hartford Courant. “That’s what we were looking for.” Monique Frink said it still haunted her that no one knew the reason for the murder or what Shamaia’s last words were.

In 2012, the Connecticut Supreme Court unanimously rejected Ken Otto’s claim that the state didn’t have enough evidence to prove he intended to kill Shamaia. By this time, Ken had public defender Adele Patterson — rather than a private lawyer — representing him. He had already used $264,000 from his retirement accounts to pay for legal representation, according to the Hartford Courant.

Million-dollar judgment. The following year, Ken tried the ever-popular “ineffective counsel” claim, but the Superior Court of Connecticut shut it down.

In the meantime, Stephen McEleney, a lawyer for the victim’s family, successfully argued that the Ottos violated the Uniform Fraudulent Conveyance Act by transferring property to Kathleen before their divorce and thus conspiring to deprive Shamaia’s estate of compensation. It was ruled that the family should receive a remedy of $670,000.

Shamaia’s family also won a $9 million claim against Otto.

Stuck behind razor wire. It’s not clear whether Shamaia’s survivors actually received any of the money.

“The guy’s locked up for a significant period of time and obviously doesn’t have any income,” one of Ken’s lawyers, Richard Brown, told the Connecticut Law Tribune. “It isn’t just about economics always. I assume the plaintiffs did it for reasons other than just the money. They’re extremely angry about what my client was convicted of and felt the need to seek civil damages.”

But Shamaia’s family is, so far, seeing justice done to the killer. Ken, now 72, resides along with 1,329 other inmates in MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield, Connecticut. The state Department of Corrections lists a release date of May 15, 2067 — when he’s 116 — and makes zero mention of parole eligibility.

Memorial classified ads taken out by Shamaia's family members — Newspaper tributes for Shamaia Smith

Business gets makeover. As for an update on the victim’s family, Gloria Frink died at the age of just 53 in 2014. Her obituary mentioned that, in addition to Shamaia, her son Barry Smith Jr. preceded her in death. Shamaia’s sister Monique Frink, who Forensic Files watchers will remember from her on-camera interview, has since married and is known as Monique Cooper. She has a career working with people with autism.

The club where Shamaia and her killer met has changed over the years. Kahoots adopted a no-touching policy in 2010, meaning no lap dances or tips placed in dancers’ clothing. The establishment closed amid legal problems in 2013, but has since reopened as a restaurant trumpeting attractive waitresses, not exotic dancers. Let’s hope the business also has no obsessive customers who cause tragedies like Shamaia Smith’s death.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

The Harshmans and Snyders Square Off

A Love Rectangle Turns Lethal
(‘Buried Treasure,’ Forensic Files)

What could be more innocent than a square dance? No grinding, no twerking, just wholesome family-friendly fun.

Unfortunately, at just such an event in 1984, a couple of participants from Franklin County, Pennsylvania got a little too friendly amid the do-si-dos and allemande lefts.

Side by side headshots of Ron Harshman and Melvin Snyder — Ronald Harshman and Melvin Snyder

Emotional wound. Their affair led to hurt feelings, homicide, and imprisonment. The case is unusual in that most Forensic Files murders involving people who know each other are motivated by greed (Tim Scoggin), a financial crisis (Amy Bosley), or a child custody dispute (Denise Davidson).

Ron Harshman, on the other hand, acted out of jealousy and resentment when he turned Melvin Snyder into a missing-person case in 1985.

For this week, I looked for more details about the love rectangle that spurred the killing, so let’s get going on the recap of “Buried Treasure” along with extra information from internet research:

Tools in disarray. Melvin and Joan Snyder and their son lived on a farm on Grant Shook Road in Greencastle, Pennsylvania. It’s not clear how much the farm contributed to their income, but Melvin and Joan both had outside jobs.

On Saturday, May 25, 1985, Joan returned home around noon from her shift at the Sunnyway Diner, where she baked pies.

Melvin, age 42, and his Chevrolet truck were gone.

Nothing stolen. The normally tidy Melvin had left his tools scattered outside. A .25-caliber shell casing lay on the floor of the Snyders’ barn.

Two days later, Joan filed a missing person report.

By this time, Melvin’s white pickup had turned up 60 miles away in a shopping-center parking lot in Reisterstown, Maryland. It appeared that someone had wiped the interior clean. Because Melvin’s wallet, checkbook, and loaded .22-caliber rifle were left in the car, police didn’t suspect robbery.

A sign welcoming visitors to Greencastle — Greencastle has about 4,000 residents today

Work buddies? But Melvin’s recent past served as a clue. Joan and Melvin Snyder and another couple, Teresa and Ronald Harshman, had begun taking square dance lessons in Hagerstown in 1983.

Both Melvin and Ronald worked at Grove Manufacturing, a maker of mobile hydraulic cranes. It’s not clear whether or not the two men already knew each other from the factory—the company at one time had as many as 1,000 employees—but it was at the square dance lessons that the couples became close friends.

At one of the dances, Melvin told Teresa that he had feelings for her, she would later testify. “One thing led to another,” Teresa said. “But we didn’t have a sexual relationship until May 1984.”

Heading way north. As a Forensic Files commenter wrote on YouTube, “When the square dance caller called ‘Change partners,’ Mr. Snyder and Mrs. Harshman took it too literally.”

Although media sources vary as to the sequence of the following events, they all seem to agree that they happened:

Melvin thought his new relationship with Teresa might have staying power and told his boss, John Carmack, that he planned to go to Montana with her and possibly live there permanently.

Scare tactic. One day, while still in Pennsylvania, Melvin was on his way to pick up Teresa for one of their trysts when Ron caught up with him and deliberately banged his vehicle into Melvin’s truck and fired a gun at him.

Neither man got hurt, and Melvin chose not to press charges of reckless endangerment.

A shot of downtown Greencastle with a sign for the Echo Pilot newspaper — Local paper the Echo Pilot covered the case

But the incident frightened Melvin enough that he began carrying a gun with him at all times — and it spurred him and Teresa to leave their jobs and families and flee 1,800 miles away together, to Billings.

Swap meet. In the meantime, the two abandoned spouses did a little promenading of their own. According to Forensic Files, Ron and Joan had a full-blown affair.

But they didn’t have much time to test its strength. After approximately three weeks, Melvin and Teresa realized they had made a mistake. According to court papers cited in the Evening Sun, Melvin said he feared something horrible would happen if they didn’t return to Pennsylvania.

Melvin and Teresa came back from Montana and moved in with their original spouses.

Marriage not healed. On the surface, things seemed to go back to normal for the Snyders and Harshmans, or as normal as things can get after married couples from small town U.S.A. suddenly switch partners and then switch back.

But the Harshmans’ reunion was more difficult than the Snyders’. Teresa eventually served Ron with divorce papers and moved away. They sold the farm.

Ron was bitter.

On the one-year anniversary of the start of Melvin and Teresa’s affair, Melvin disappeared.

Melvin and Joan Snyder in happier days — Melvin and Joan Snyder

Firearm sale. Forensic Files described Melvin as someone who wouldn’t just desert his wife and son — an assertion that many viewers mocked: “Melvin ‘wasn’t the type of guy to just run away,'” wrote a YouTube commenter. “Isn’t that literally what he did with the other woman?”

Shortly before Melvin disappeared, Ron had purchased a .25-caliber handgun from a Western Auto store. Ron said he no longer had the gun because Teresa took it, a contention she denied.

A neighbor reported seeing a two-toned brown truck — that looked like one Ron owned — parked near Melvin’s pickup on the day Melvin disappeared.

Widow acquires new husband. But investigators couldn’t find Melvin’s body or prove that he had died, and the case went cold.

Joan had Melvin legally declared dead in 1993. She remarried and was afterward known as Joan Snyder Hall, according to court records, as reported by the Echo Pilot.

Interest in the case revived in 1999, when an unlikely hero emerged in the investigation: Donald Hinks, a Civil War buff who owned Gettysburg Electronics, a store specializing in metal-detecting equipment.

Old-guy hero. While metal detectors make most people envision retirees combing Florida beaches for lost coins or pawnable jewelry, Forensic Files said they are often used to find military artifacts.

Investigators knew that Ron Harshman test-fired his gun (the one he denied owning anymore) on his property shortly before Melvin disappeared.

Just 90 minutes into the search of the Harshmans’ former property, which covered hundreds of acres, Hinks unearthed a shell casing that matched the one found in Melvin Snyder’s barn 15 years earlier.

On the cycle. Investigators believed that on May 25, 1985, Ron went looking for Melvin, found him in the barn, and shot him with his new .25-caliber gun.

Cover of Forensic Files Now book — Book available online and in stores!

Then, they contended, he disposed of the body at an undetermined location. Later, Ron went home, rode his motorcycle to Melvin’s property, put the motorcycle in Melvin’s pickup, abandoned the truck 60 miles away in Maryland, and drove home on his motorcycle, investigators believed.

Here’s the part of the story that the show didn’t include. Joan — who said that she and Ron spoke by phone on the day Melvin disappeared — admitted that she saw Melvin’s dead body at Ron Harshman’s home.

Takedown at eatery. And, back in 1980s, she had been angrier about Melvin’s affair than she let on. According to The Evening Sun, Joan told police that she wanted Melvin dead.

In March 2000, District Attorney Jack Nelson charged Ron Harshman with murder in the first degree and conspiracy to murder.

Nelson charged Joan as well. In what must have been quite a scene for eaters, police arrested Joan in the Sunnyway Diner.

Ron and Joan both went free on $100,000 bail.

Wife cleared. Joan’s lawyer argued that a trial shouldn’t happen. “How can anyone say he was murdered if there’s no body?” Patrick Redding said.

Exterior shot of Sunnyway Diner — Joan started work at the Sunnyway Diner at 5:30 a.m. each day

The legal proceedings continued nonetheless, but Nelson relented on the case against Joan. He decided that Joan was an unwitting participant and lacked genuine intent. She faced no charges.

During Ron Harshman’s trial, former wife Teresa — by that time known as Teresa Young and living in Orrstown with a new husband — admitted to her affair with Melvin and said that she and Melvin were both afraid that Ron Harshman would kill them.

Relatives testify. The prosecution rolled out a series of jailhouse snitches. One of them, Randi Kohr, testified that Ron told him he had killed a man by shooting him five times and that the body wouldn’t be found.

Members of Melvin’s family contradicted the defense’s contention that Melvin, 15 years after his disappearance, could be alive and well in parts unknown.

“We wouldn’t have gone this long without talking to each other,” said Wanda Hann, Melvin’s sister. It was noted that Melvin normally visited his mother often and helped her around the house — but he didn’t materialize when her cancer returned or when her funeral took place in 1994.

Boy dragged into it. Ron Harshman’s defense lawyer, David Keller, said that Melvin Snyder might have left the area voluntarily — despite that the president of CBA Credit testified there had been no activity on Melvin’s credit cards for years.

The Snyders’ son told the court that shortly after the lovers ran away to Montana, Ron Harshman told him that Melvin would pay for what he had done if he ever came back to Greencastle.

In July 2001, after deliberating for less than four hours, the jury convicted Ron Harshman of murder. He got a life sentence.

Newspaper clipping of Jack Nelson and Angela Krom — Assistant DA Angela Krom, who viewers will remember from her appearance on Forensic Files, is now a judge

“It was a difficult case because we had no body and no weapon,” Nelson told the Public Opinion of Chambersburg as reported by the AP. “It’s a rewarding feeling to have achieved justice.

Snitch sings new song. Ron Harshman went off to prison.

After Ron spent a dozen or so years behind razor wires, things started going his way.

In 2012, a witness named Keith Granlun recanted his testimony that Harshman told him where he disposed of Melvin’s body.

Another shot. Chief Judge Christopher C. Conner declared that Ron deserved a better opportunity to challenge the motives and veracity of jailhouse witnesses crucial to his conviction.

Ron’s supporters accused Nelson of offering those witnesses incentives to testify. Nelson had written a letter to the parole board asking its members to keep in mind the testimony that Randi Kohr gave toward Ron Harshman’s conviction. (Nelson wasn’t around to explain himself — he died in 2009.)

In 2019, the board declined to grant Ron Harshman parole, but in the same year, a federal judge ruled that he deserved another trial.

He ended up pleading no contest to third-degree murder.

Women out of spotlight. Following the plea, Cumberland County Court of Common Pleas Judge Edward Guido resentenced Harshman, to 10 to 20 years in prison. He received credit for time already served.

Today, Ronald Harshman is free and has a presence on social media.

As for Joan Snyder Hill and Teresa Harshman Young, they have kept out of the public eye and presumably away from diversions that involve switching partners.

Melvin Snyder’s body was never found.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube
Subscribe to get new blog posts

Mia Zapata: Murder of a Front Woman

A Singer Dies in Seattle, But Not in Vain
(‘The Day the Music Died,’ Forensic Files)

Mia Zapata might have joined the 27 Club, but her death at age 27 was different from those of Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, and the rest: It had nothing to do with drug or alcohol abuse.

The lead vocalist and songwriter for the Gits — a band variously described as grunge, punk, or rock — Mia died in 1993 when an ex-convict randomly spotted her walking alone late at night in Seattle.

Mia Zapata

Awful discovery. But the tragedy of Mia’s demise gave rise to purpose. It brought out the best in her family, friends, and members of the community who were frustrated by a lack of evidence that made the case difficult to solve. They worked together to search for clues to the killer’s identity and also to safeguard other local women from crimes of opportunity.

For this week’s post, I looked for more details on Mia’s biography and the case. So let’s get going on the recap of “The Day the Music Died”:

Just before 3:30 a.m. on July 7, 1993, a sex worker stumbled upon a brutalized woman lying in the streets of Capitol Hill, a lively but rough section of Seattle popular with aspiring musicians. The victim’s body was still warm, but paramedics couldn’t revive her.

Up and coming. An attacker had raped, bitten, and choked her with a cord from her sweatshirt, and beaten her to death.

The medical examiner, who followed local bands, recognized the deceased woman as Mia Zapata, the front woman of the Gits.

Amid the city’s music scene, which had recently given rise to Nirvana and Soundgarden, Mia and her band had a large following and were on the verge of winning a contract with one of the Top 10 record labels in the world.

Classmates click. The Gits — consisting of Mia, drummer Steve Moriarty, bass player Matt Dresdner, and guitar player Andy “Joe Spleen” Kessler — had already enjoyed successful tours up and down the West Coast and in Europe and had played on the same bill as Green Day and Nirvana.

The Gits in a black and white photo — The Gits

The four had originally met and formed the band as students at Antioch College. After graduation, they relocated to Seattle and moved into an abandoned house in Capitol Hill.

It was a departure from the singer’s comfortable upbringing.

Mia Katherine Zapata was born on August 25, 1965 and grew up in a suburb of Louisville, Kentucky. She went to private school, and her family belonged to a tennis club.

Trio of tikes. Her mother, Donna Zapata, was a station manager for WHAS radio and TV, and her father, Richard, worked as a media executive as well.

Both of Mia’s parents earned six-figure incomes.

They had three children. Kristen was preppy, Eric was cool, and Mia was arty, according to Kristen.

Demure girl. Despite showing signs of dyslexia, Mia liked to write poetry. She learned to play guitar and piano and enjoyed painting and listening to Janis Joplin records.

“Mia was the best of our family,” Richard Zapata told the Seattle Times. “She had a complete and total social conscience. She cared about people. She would see people on the street, homeless, and tell us that it wasn’t their fault.”

Still, she was shy and didn’t call attention to herself, her father said in an interview found on YouTube.

The Comet Tavern sign lit up in neon at night — Mia Zapata was known for liking a drink.

Off to university. Although she grew to 5 feet 8 inches in height, people described Mia as petite or slight.

As a high school senior, Mia toured Antioch College, where a school director assured her that learning disabilities could be overcome, according to an interview with Donna Zapata in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Mia enrolled at the school, which is located in Yellow Springs, Ohio and known for encouraging students to explore their own improvised paths.

No inhibitions. She impressed other students with her vocal skills.

“I was transfixed and overcome,” Matt Dresdner told Rolling Stone about hearing Mia sing for the first time, at an open mic event in 1986. “I cried. It was raw, honest, to the bone, and from the heart. No music or musician had ever affected me like she did that night.”

LA Weekly would later say that Mia could “belt not unlike Bette Midler gone bananas.”

Dresdner told Unsolved Mysteries that once he, Mia, and the other two formed the Gits in college, people didn’t even notice him on stage because everyone was watching Mia.

“She couldn’t spell worth a darn,” Andy Kessler told the Plain Dealer. “But she could rock brilliantly.”

On the cusp. Still, the band didn’t make enough cash to pay expenses, so Mia, whose style of dress was grunge-utilitarian — tank tops, T-shirts, shorts, mini-skirts, combat boots — did restaurant work as a waitress or dishwasher.

Just before her death, everything seemed to be falling into place for the Gits. The band’s first album, Frenching the Bully, got good reviews, and a representative from Atlantic Records had taken the band out to lunch in Los Angeles. MCA (today part of Universal Music Group) was reportedly interested in signing the group as well.

Richard Zapata remarried after he and Donna Zapata divorced when Mia was a teenager

On July 6, 1993, Mia’s father drove two hours from his home in Yakima to take Mia out to lunch in Seattle. They had Thai food and visited a museum. That night, Mia had drinks at a popular bar, the Comet, and visited a friend. Mia was wearing headphones and listening to music when she headed home.

Meh prophesy. The murder took place during 80 minutes of unaccounted-for time after she left her friend’s place.

News of her death horrified and shocked the community, although some would say that she already had a fatal vision — expressed in an original song called Sign of the Crab. Her lyrics included, “Go ahead and slash me up and throw me all across town because you know you are the one that can’t be found.”

Of course, it seems as though when any notable person dies young, journalists dig up something foreboding the person said about death. Mia said she wrote the song in response to the violent crime happening everywhere. Her own murder was only one of 33 that had taken place in town in roughly the first half of 1993, according to the Seattle Times.

Outpouring of grief. But it was also the highest-profile crime Capitol Hill had suffered.

“A thousand people attended her dusk-to-dawn wake in Seattle — a thousand tattooed, pierced, wailing, fringe-dwelling, guitar-banging friends,” the Seattle Times reported. “Her father paid for the beer.”

Police kicked into high gear, following hundreds of leads and tips and interviewing dozens of prospective suspects. They included Mia’s on-and-off boyfriend, a Vietnam vet who played with a band called Hell’s Smells. But he had a solid alibi.

TV comes knocking. Because Mia’s body was reportedly found in a crucifix-like pose, with her ankles crossed and arms outstretched to the sides, some theorized that an unknown religious zealot committed the murder. That idea went nowhere and, according to one report, rescue workers had placed her arms in that position while trying to save her.

America’s Most Wanted threw its hat into the investigative ring, traveling to Capitol Hill to produce a segment on the case.

Downtown Capitol Hill today — Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood today

“Host John Walsh paced on the sidewalk outside the Comet while cameras recorded his earnest narration,” according to the News Tribune of Tacoma.

No fading. Robert Stack also got in on the act, when his show, Unsolved Mysteries, included a vignette about the murder.

Still, no one could find a viable suspect. The chalk outline drawn around Mia’s body remained visible for years, but the case went cold.

Here’s where the best of human nature took over.

Hired help. The Gits drummer Steve Moriarty spearheaded fundraising efforts to hire a private detective to investigate the case. The band held benefit concerts, joined by the likes of Courtney Love and Joan Jett & the Black Hearts.

Picture of Forensic Files Now book — Book available online and in stores!

Joan Jett — already a huge star thanks to MTV and the hit “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” — even recorded some of her own versions of songs written by the Gits for an album called Evil Stig that was produced to benefit the investigation.

After raising $80,000, the band engaged private investigator Leigh Hearon, a former journalist. When the money ran out, she continued to work on the case pro bono.

Personal safety. In the meantime, Richard Zapata had rented an apartment in Seattle so that he could retrace Mia’s steps and look for clues.

Mia’s death spurred the creation of Home Alive, an effort to protect women against predators. It offered self-defense classes priced at a sliding scale depending on what participants could afford to pay, according to All Things Considered.

“I lived in downtown Seattle a few years after her murder and Home Alive was a blessing!” said a YouTube reader comment left at Murder in Seattle: The Mia Zapata Story. “They would come and walk you home if you didn’t want to walk home alone.”

Jesus Mezquia in prison uniform seen in court with Kristen Vittitow and Steve Moriarity in the background — Jesus Mezquia in court with Mia’s sister, Kristen Vittitow, and Steve Moriarty in the background

CODIS ‘winner.’ As the murder case wore on, something significant happened in the field of forensics. A Nobel prize-winning breakthrough from U.S. chemist Kary Mullis enabled forensic scientists to identify the DNA in amounts of genetic material normally too small to test — including the foreign saliva found on Mia Zapata’s body. A specimen had been saved and kept refrigerated since 1993.

In 2003, the Combined DNA Index System, commonly known as CODIS, matched the specimen to Jesus Mezquia, a 48-year-old ex-con working as a fisherman in Marathon, Florida.

He was a tall, large-handed Cuban exile who was living in the Seattle area at the time of Mia’s murder.

Justice and joy. Investigators believed Mezquia caught sight of Mia walking home, stopped his car, abducted her, raped and murdered her, and then dumped her body.

On March 24, 2004, a jury convicted Mezquia of murder. The verdict elicited cries of “Viva Zapata” in the courtroom. Some of the jurors shook hands and hugged Mia’s loved ones in court, the Seattle Times reported.

Mia’s sister, Kristen Vittitow, was so excited about the verdict that she did handstands, according to Donna Zapata. Mia’s mother told the Seattle Times that she didn’t attend the trial of her daughter’s killer because “I never wanted to lay eyes on the person.”

Gone guy. Mezquia received a sentence of 36 years.

Steve Moriarty told the Courier-Journal of Louisville that he was glad Mezquia would rot in jail and that people could live more freely. (Mezquia died in a prison hospital in 2021 at the age of 66.)

The surviving Gits went on performing under the name the Dancing French Liberals of ’48, but eventually broke up and went their separate ways. “We lost our sister together,” said Moriarty. “We always will be brothers even if we’re in different parts of the country.”

Mia as a child carrying a small guitar — A wee Mia Zapata

‘Concerted’ effort. Mia Zapata’s memory has never flickered out. You can watch the The Gits documentary on Daily Motion. A Phoenix New Times article in 2023 quoted singer Kayla Long as citing the way Mia de-evolved on stage as an influence.

On July 7, 2023, the 30-year anniversary of the murder, a Mia Zapata tribute concert called Viva Zapata was held at The Skylark in Seattle.

As for Mia’s father — who didn’t appear on Forensic Files but gave interviews to other media outlets — he is still heartbroken but says he tries to use humor to cope with the loss of his youngest child.

“She was on loan to me,” Richard Zapata said, “and she now belongs to all of you.”

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

Author: Rebecca Reisner

Walter Scott: A One-Hit Wonder Silenced

Like this:

What Happened to the O’Farrell Theatre?

Like this:

Jim and Artie Mitchell: X-Rated Brothers Flicker Out

Like this:

6 Best True-Crime Books of All Time

Like this:

Judy Bruce: Murdered in Her Second Act

Like this:

Bill Lipscomb: Crucial Test

Like this:

Rhoda Nathan: Tragedy Before a Bar Mitzvah

Like this:

Shamaia Smith’s Killer: An Update

Like this:

The Harshmans and Snyders Square Off

Like this:

Mia Zapata: Murder of a Front Woman

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: