Rebecca Reisner, Author at Forensic Files Now

Barbara Stager: Spendthrift and Murderer

A Baseball Coach Makes a Fatal Error
(“Broken Promises,” Forensic Files)

Barbara Stager demonstrated a recurring Forensic Files theme: People who get away with murder once just can’t stop pushing their luck.

Like fellow Forensic Files hall of shamers Jill Coit and Mark Winger, Barbara Ford Stager killed a spouse for financial gain and didn’t face any legal consequences at first. But, like the other two, she was too greedy to stop scheming and eventually landed behind razor wire.

Russ and Barbara Sager with her sons from a previous marriage — Happier days: Russ and Barbara Stager’s family

Four-eyed girl. For this week, I checked around to find out whether Barbara, whose two marriages ended in gunfire and insurance claims, is still in prison and whether she has a chance of getting out on two feet. I also looked into what the North Carolina native, who looks more like a librarian than a free-spending femme fatale, did with the money she squeezed out of both of her husbands.

So let’s get started on the recap of “Broken Promises,” along with extra information culled from internet research:

Barbara Terry was born in Durham, North Carolina, on Oct. 30, 1948, the daughter of a secretary and a longtime Duke Power Company employee.

She had to wear thick eyeglasses from early childhood and was described as shy and sexually repressed, according to the book Before He Wakes by newspaper reporter Jerry Bledsoe, who viewers may remember from his appearance on Forensic Files.

Open house. Barbara married at a young age and had two sons. She crossed paths with Allison Russell Stager III, known as Russ, after her first husband died.

Photo of the book Forensic Files Now — Book in stores and online

Russ was a well-liked driver’s ed teacher and baseball coach at Durham High School. He cared about the school kids and even paid for some of his students’ baseball uniforms himself, according to a 2015 Fatal Vows episode titled “No Accident.”

His first marriage, to Jo Lynn Snow, didn’t work out, but the two of them remained friends after their divorce.

Barely a year later, Russ met Barbara when she came to look at a house he had on the market.

Newly formed family. No real estate transaction occurred between them, but a red-hot romance did after Barbara, 31, ended up buying a place near Russ’ house. Russ proposed after just a couple of months and they married in 1979.

Duke University's campus — Residents of Durham, home of Duke University, were not accustomed to sensationalized black-widow trials in their community

Russ adopted her sons, ages 6 and 11, from her previous husband.

The newlyweds were both devout Baptists and involved in their local church’s activities.

Auto lovers. Although Forensic Files portrays Barbara as the spendthrift of the pair, Fatal Vows depicts both of them as frequent and enthusiastic shoppers. They loved outfitting themselves in new clothes and even sported matching Rolex watches, according to the show.

They liked larger items as well. Friends joked that instead of changing the oil, the Stagers would get a new car. The couple also bought a beach getaway.

Barbara, who was in charge of the couple’s finances, worked as a secretary at Duke University and an ad salesperson for a radio station. She was also an aspiring author.

Regular June Cleaver. Except for the fact that friends couldn’t figure out where the couple’s seemingly limitless supply of disposable income came from, everything seemed great on the surface.

Neighbors described Barbara Stager as a “perfect homemaker, loving mother of two, valued employee, and staunch Baptist,” according to a Knight Ridder account.

Russ Stager with first wife Jo Lynn — Russ and first wife Jo Lynn had a short marriage but a long friendship

At some point, however, Russ discovered that he and Barbara were deeply in debt. Barbara, it turned out, had been running a mini-Ponzi scheme, whereby she’d borrow money from a bank, then pay it off with a loan from a different bank. Russ found out that she had been forging his name on financial paperwork.

Paper hanger. She had also lied about the manuscript of her novel being purchased for $100,000. The letter from a publishing house that Barbara showed off to Russ turned out to be a convincing fake — she’d created it by cutting out a logo from a rejection notice and then used the document as collateral of sorts to secure bank loans.

Barbara also wrote a lot of bad checks, according to Before He Wakes.

It’s not clear how she duped Russ into thinking the family could afford the many extravagances, but my guess would be that she exaggerated the amount of the windfall from her first husband’s estate.

Cover story accepted. Whatever the case, Russ reportedly forgave Barbara for botching their finances — but he insisted on taking control of the couple’s bill-paying himself. To get back on their feet budget-wise, the Stagers quit their country club and moved to a smaller house. As for the existing debt, Russ’ parents agreed to help the couple pay it off, according to Fatal Vows.

Then, on Feb. 1, 1988 — shortly after the austerity plan went into effect — Barbara Stager called 911 to report that she’d accidentally shot Russ. He kept a loaded gun under his pillow for protection and it went off when she tried to move it because she thought she heard an intruder.

Russ was still alive when the EMTs arrived, but died hours later from a bullet wound to the back of his head.

Barbara’s story about the gun accident sounded plausible enough to police, who had all but closed the case until Jo Lynn came knocking at the lead detective’s door.

Jo Lynn filled in a little history about Barbara — namely, that the grieving widow’s first husband, James Larry Ford, known as Larry, had died of an accidental shooting in High Point, North Carolina, where the couple were raising their sons. They’d been married for nine years.

Victim’s premonition. Barbara claimed that Larry’s gun had gone off while he was cleaning it.

At the time, Larry Ford’s parents encouraged the police to investigate the shooting extensively, but they declined. The authorities bought Barbara’s explanation that it was a tragic mishap and closed the case.

After Russ’ death, Jo Lynn told police that Russ had confided in her that Barbara mistreated him and he was afraid of her.

Now, armed with the knowledge of Barbara’s track record, the police began to dig a little deeper into the circumstances surrounding Russ Stager’s death.

‘Wake up, you need to sleep.’ Fortunately, a tantalizing piece of evidence came to light, and it backed up Jo Lynn’s claims.

A student cleaning out a locker at Durham High came across an audiocassette that Russ had recorded on Jan. 29, 1988 — just three days before his own death.

In a voice from the grave, Russ Stager explained that Barbara had been cheating on him (by this time, she had apparently broken free of any sexual inhibitions of her youth) and that he suspected Barbara’s previous husband’s death was no accident. And Barbara’s behavior had been suspect. Russ recounted that, on two occasions, Barbara woke him up during the night to offer him some pills to help him sleep.

On a prior occasion, Russ had told Jo Lynn that if anything awful happened to him, Barbara probably did it.

Friends blindsided. After a thorough investigation of the forensics, police theorized that Russ’ pistol was actually kept in a drawer — he belonged to the army reserves and knew better than to leave a gun under a pillow. He also didn’t keep his guns loaded.

Barbara Stager in her youth — Barbara Stager, seen here in her youth, may have looked like a reference-desk aide, but she reportedly had a tawdry streak

Ballistic tests showed that pulling the trigger on that particular .25-caliber model would require 4 pounds of pressure — way too much to have occurred accidentally as Barbara contended.

Police noticed the placement of the casing didn’t jibe with Barbara’s version of how the shooting took place.

Nonetheless, friends and neighbors of the couple were “astonished” when the seemingly ideal wife and mother in their midst was arrested for murder, according to a Knight Ridder account.

The Stagers’ church held a fundraiser to pay Barbara’s bail.

No agonizing wait. The prosecution contended that Barbara sneaked the gun out of the drawer, loaded it, shot Russ, lay a shell casing near his pillow, and called 911.

Barbara was in a hurry to rid herself of Russ because she wanted his $170,000 life insurance payout fast, investigators believed. Apparently, the lower-budget lifestyle the couple had adopted was cramping her style.

After a highly publicized trial in May 1989, a jury deliberated less than an hour before convicting Barbara Stager of murder.

She received a death sentence and the execution date was set for just two months later — they like to do things speedily in North Carolina, or at least try to.

Possibility of release. The state Supreme Court later voided that death sentence over a technicality. At the 1993 resentencing trial, Barbara’s younger son, Jason Stager, testified that he felt his mother was innocent.

This time, she got a life sentence, which allowed for the possibility of parole. (North Carolina lawmakers revoked parole eligibility for lifers the following year, but Barbara was grandfathered in.)

Sources vary as to the reason the authorities decided not to try Barbara for Larry Ford’s death. Either they thought it unnecessary under the original death sentence or they didn’t have enough evidence.

So where is Barbara Terry Ford Stager today?

She’s safely tucked away in the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women in Raleigh.

Not walking the line. The facility notes that she’s committed a few infractions while incarcerated.

She disobeyed orders in 1989. In 1994, she attempted an unspecified “Class C offense,” a category including such misdeeds as failing to show up for work or fighting with other inmates. In keeping with her pattern of not learning her lesson the first time, she disobeyed orders again in 2017.

Barbara Stager in two mug shots — Barbara Stager in prison mug shots

In 2018, she was denied parole.

As for what happened to Barbara Stager’s sons after her imprisonment, the younger one went to live with an uncle and the other was old enough to get by on his own.

Russ Stager’s first wife, Jo Lynn Snow, married again, to a kitchen remodeler whom she helps run his business, according to the News & Observer.

Blast from the past. In an interview with the Raleigh-based newspaper, Jo Lynn said that she’s haunted by the fact that Larry Ford — whom she didn’t know — never got justice.

Jo Lynn went on to appear in Fatal Vows. Unfortunately, there aren’t any quality uploads of the Fatal Vows episode available online for free, but you can see a decent upload of the made-for-TV movie version of Before He Wakes on YouTube.

The dramatization got so-so reviews, but it stars Jaclyn Smith — that’s right, one of the original Charlie’s Angels — as the character based on Barbara Stager.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

Walter Leroy Moody: Tristate Terrorist

A Bomber Murders a Judge and a Lawyer
(“Deadly Delivery,” Forensic Files)

Nothing made Walter Leroy Moody more angry than authorities who held him accountable.

Helen Vance and Judge Robert Vance Sr — Helen Vance and Robert Vance Sr.

It never seemed to occur to Moody that, if he stopped committing more and worse crimes, the law would stop showing up at his door with arrest warrants.

His criminal record started with an accidental maiming and ended with lethal bomb attacks that created a panic throughout Alabama, Georgia, and Florida.

Moody also directed his rage at his victims for having the audacity to seek justice. Forensic Files didn’t mention it but, somewhere in the middle of his criminal years, Moody allegedly attempted to drown three of his own business associates, then sued them for pressing charges against him.

In the final tally, he killed two innocent people, destroyed his own life, and made some FBI agents put in a lot OT.

Mail aggression. For this week, I searched for any clues from Moody’s personal history to explain what made him turn into a terrorist and murderer.

So let’s get started on a recap of the Forensic Files episode “Deadly Delivery,” along with information culled from online research:

On December 16, 1989, a package arrived at the brick mansion owned by Robert and Helen Vance in Mountain Brook, a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama.

When Robert, a federal court judge, untied the string on the box, it exploded and sent him flying across the room.

He died on the scene.

Here come the feds. One of the nails that came spewing from the package pierced Helen’s liver, but she survived.

Robert and Helen Vance’s house, the scene of Walter Leroy Moody’s first homicide

Days later, a security guard at an Atlanta courthouse spotted a bomb during a routine X-ray of mail.

By this time, federal authorities, who don’t particularly like it when people send explosive devices through the U.S. Postal Service, had come out in full force to help local law enforcement.

Uncivil attack. ATF investigators determined that the two bombs came from the same individual. They were meticulously constructed and had been sprayed with black paint to cover any fingerprints.

The bombs resembled a device that had exploded four months earlier at an NAACP office in Atlanta. Fortunately, it held only teargas — not nails — and no one died. A letter enclosed with the teargas bomb wrote of unfairness at the 11th Circuit Court

Then, on Dec. 18, 1989, Savannah alderman and civil rights lawyer Robert Robinson — who had been one of the first black students to integrate Savannah High in 1963 — opened a package he found on his desk. It exploded and Robinson, 42, died three hours later.

Saved by the bell. In just a few days, the anonymous bomber had the 11th District states of Alabama, Florida, and Georgia gripped by fear.

Rep. Willye F. Dennis, who was president of the NAACP in Jacksonville, Florida, received a package shortly after Robinson died, but a friend called to warn her before she had a chance to open it. It contained a bomb like the others.

Inside the box, the sender placed letters taking credit for the NAACP teargas attack and the other bombs. The killer said he was hunting NAACP officers.

Murder victim civil rights lawyer Robert Robinson — Murder victim Robert Robinson

Declaration of vengeance. His motive, it seemed at first, was revenge for a case that had no connection to him whatsoever — the rape and murder of preschool teacher Julie Love by Emmanuel Hammond on July 11, 1988.

“Anytime a black man rapes a white woman in Alabama, Florida, or Georgia, Americans for a Competent Federal Judicial System shall assassinate one federal judge, one attorney, and one officer of the NAACP,” one of the bomber’s letters stated.

He sent around 30 threatening letters to various federal judges, civil rights groups, and news organizations, including one to popular local TV anchor Brenda Wood.

‘One’ holds the key. The U.S. Marshall Service spent nearly $5 million on 24-hour bodyguards to protect Helen Vance and federal judges in the district and to upgrade courthouses’ video and X-ray equipment.

Noting that the typewriter the bomber used to write his letters and address the mailing labels had a replacement “1” key, the FBI put a huge effort into searching for the machine. In fact, the Feds nearly hectored an innocent junk dealer named Robert Wayne O’Ferrell to the point of suicide after they found out that he once owned a similar typewriter.

The big break in the case came when an ATF chemist named Lloyd Erwin remembered a bomb discovered by a Georgia woman in her home 17 years earlier, in 1972.

Charismatic at times. Hazel Strickland Moody had opened a still-unmailed box she found in her home. It was addressed to an auto dealership that repossessed a car belonging to her husband, Walter Leroy Moody. The explosion blew away parts of her finger and thigh and wounded her face and shoulder. She needed six operations to recover.

So who was Walter Leroy Moody, commonly known as Roy? Born the son of an auto mechanic on March 24, 1935, in Rex, Georgia, Moody was alternately depicted as a charmer and a loner.

The Atlanta Constitution, which covered the bombing cases extensively, noted descriptions of Moody as an obsessive and manipulative man who could “sell you the Brooklyn Bridge.”

Certifiable. As a young man, Moody studied chemistry and physics at Mercer University and enrolled in John Marshall Law School. He never finished at either school but enjoyed successful stints in the army and air force and received honorable discharges.

Susan McBride Moody and Walter Leroy Moody — The May-December marriage of Susan McBride and Walter Leroy Moody benefited neither of them in the end

In 1967, psychiatrist Thomas M. Hall diagnosed Moody as having “ambulatory schizophrenia” and general trouble readjusting to civilian life, according to reporting from the Atlanta Constitution. Moody “knew right from wrong, but couldn’t seem to keep from impulsively going ahead and doing whatever he thought of,” according to the analysis.

Multiple media sources give Moody’s latter occupation as “literary consultant.” Although he didn’t exactly seem like someone Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis met for high tea at the Plaza, Moody had founded an organization called the Associated Writers Guild of America. For a fee, he offered to publish writers’ work in a book called Authors to Watch. The Better Business Bureau received complaints from consumers in 48 states about the organization, which Moody claimed was a nonprofit.

According to Deadly Vengeance: The Roy Moody Mail Bomb Murders by Ray Jenkins, it was Hazel Moody who provided the more steady income to the couple and their son, Mark, via her job with Ralston Purina.

POTUS plea. When he was tried for creating and possessing the bomb that injured his wife in 1972, Moody strenuously denied the charges, but was convicted anyway. Judge Robert Vance Sr. sentenced him to six years. (Hazel divorced him despite his legal salvos to fight the split, according to Deadly Vengeance.)

He served his time at a state penitentiary and spent the latter 1970s and early 1980s trying to get his conviction overturned, fighting bitterly with the 11th District Court to no avail. He wrote to President George H.W. Bush for help, but had no luck there either.

Sprung from prison after two years, Moody started a boat equipment company, then allegedly tried to drown three of his employees — he had taken out life insurance policies totaling $2.2 million on the men — whom he tasked with shooting underwater photos, according to the New York Times.

One of the men claimed that Moody had stomped on his hand while he was desperately trying to climb the ladder to get back on the boat. After a 1983 trial, the jury couldn’t reach a decision and prosecutors declined to retry the case against Moody.

Race or restiveness. Moody filed lawsuits against the three former employees plus law enforcement involved with the case. A panel including Judge Vance scuttled the suit.

Now it was 1989, and Moody — a free man — was the No. 1 suspect in two fatal bomb attacks.

It seemed that he was so indignant about being accused of making one bomb that injured his wife back in 1972 that he decided to make more bombs to hurt more people.

Scattered living quarters. Or were the bombings motivated by the racist reasons Moody proclaimed in his letters? Like Robert Robinson, Judge Vance had a long history of supporting civil rights.

We’ll get to that question in a minute but, first, the takedown: Investigators yielded a suspicious number of typical bomb-making items while searching three locations — Moody’s antiseptically clean house in Rex, an apartment he rented in Chamblee, and an airplane hangar he somehow had access to.

Robert S. Mueller III circa 1991 — Long before his special counsel gig, Robert S. Mueller III was an assistant AG who helped prosecute Moody

Investigators also found a letter-folding machine. The bomb letters had been perfectly folded.

Spouse starts spilling. On July 13, 1990, authorities arrested Moody, who looked as though he used leftover Rust-Oleum to paint his own mop top.

What really sealed his fate was information from the one person he probably never expected to betray him: his mousey second wife.

Susan McBride Moody, 28, was arrested along with her husband, but she got out on bail.

Dressed to kill. At the federal trial in 1991 — which was held in Minnesota before a sequestered jury — Susan testified about the couple’s special shopping trips, when he would instruct her to fill a cart with such items as metal pipes, nails, safety glasses, gloves, and shower caps. He figured no one would suspect the innocent-looking Susan of anything.

Authorities believed that, to avoid leaving evidence, Moody outfitted himself like a surgeon while making the bombs.

Susan, who allegedly suffered from Battered Woman Syndrome and received immunity, testified that she had purchased a secondhand typewriter for Leroy like the one used to write the threatening letters; the machine was later thrown away and never recovered.

Solitary conversations. The prosecution, led by future FBI director Louis Freeh, had plenty more ammunition in store: The authorities had matched a fingerprint on one of the bomb letters to an employee at a copy shop in Kentucky where Susan said she had Xeroxed documents related to the bombings.

Plus, the authorities had surveilled Moody at home and in jail (where he talked to himself) and picked up some incriminating utterances, according to the FBI’s website.

Although Forensic Files and Moody himself portrayed his string of 1989 bombings as racism-motivated, in the end, the FBI concluded that it was just a ruse to throw off investigators so no one would suspect him of killing the primary target of his resentment: Judge Robert Vance.

Not doing himself any favor. Meanwhile, Moody blamed the exploding packages on the Ku Klux Klan.

Against his lawyer’s advice, Moody took the stand as the only defense witness, giving “rambling, sometimes bizarre testimony during which he interspersed details of his sex life,” according to an AP account.

As for the shopping trips for the bomb components, the defendant explained that he had been duped into buying them for someone else.

On June 28, 1991, the jury found Moody guilty of 70 charges, including the murder of Vance and mailing threats to Vance’s colleagues as well as to area journalists.

Ultimate punishment. Judge Edward J. Devitt sentenced Moody to seven life terms plus 400 years.

Because Moody’s second murder victim, Robert Robinson, was a local official rather than a federal one, his case was a state action. Moody argued loudly and created disruptions toward the beginning of the trial but, by the time it wound down, he was quietly reading a paperback, the Atlanta Constitution reported.

William C. Holman Correctional Facility is notorious for understaffing but managed to hold onto Moody for two decades

In 1997, Moody received a sentence of death by the electric chair.

By this time, Susan Moody had divorced him.

The four children Walter Leroy Moody had accrued over the years weren’t in his corner either. They wanted nothing to do with him and refused to use his last name, according to Ray Jenkins’ book.

Moody denied his guilt right up to the end, claiming a government conspiracy framed him. He appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the federal court had no right to hand him over to Alabama, which was slated to carry out the execution.

Feigned empathy. His lawyers took a stab at persuading Alabama’s governor to grant Moody clemency because the murdered judge wasn’t a fan of capital punishment.

Moody even tried to get Robert Vance Jr. — the son of the murdered judge — on his side, claiming that Vance deserved to see the “real killer” of his father revealed.

Those bids were unsuccessful.

And with an IQ of 130, Moody couldn’t play the last-resort “no execution because I’m retarded” card (Ronnie Joe Neal and John Lotter).

Murderer Walter Leroy Moody at age 82 — Walter Leroy Moody Jr. in a mug shot taken shortly before his death

In the end, Walter Leroy Moody succeeded only at postponing justice — until April 19, 2018, when was 83 years old.

Moody declined to order a last meal, although he had earlier enjoyed cheesesteak sandwiches and Dr Peppers with some visiting friends at William C. Holman Correctional Facility.

He refused to give any last words.

By this time, Alabama was offering death row inmates a choice of lethal injection or the electric chair.

Moody took the needle.

Newspapers all over the world reported on the “execution of the oldest inmate in modern times.”

Widow’s mixed feelings. It’s not clear whether or not homicide victim Robert Robinson’s family witnessed the event. Robert Vance Jr., who by this time had become a judge himself, didn’t attend.

Neither did Helen Vance, who opposed the death penalty but admitted she wasn’t too sorry to see her husband’s assassin exit this world.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Tubi

Update on Gene A. Brown Jr.

Where Is Tommy Smith’s Killer from Peoria?
(“A Wrong Foot,” Forensic Files)

Dangerous criminals seem to get out of prison too often and too early — Forensic Files killers Ron Gillette and Caleb Hughes come to mind, for example.

So a check on the incarceration status of knife-wielding intruder Gene A. Brown Jr. seems in order.

Like the others, he’s just the kind of bad guy we all fear will slip through the justice system’s fingers.

Impromptu trip. “A Wrong Foot” tells the story of the Illinois home invasion waged by Brown, which left one dead and put two others in an intensive care unit.

So, let’s get started on a recap of the episode along with additional information drawn from internet research. This will be a quick one (for me, that means 1,000 words) because the Peoria Journal Star is the only newspaper that carried detailed accounts of the case:

On July 19, 1991, Gene A. Brown Jr., a married dad out on parole for a burglary conviction, grabbed a kitchen knife, removed his shoes, put socks on his hands, and entered his next-door neighbors’ house through an open window at around 3 a.m.

Chilling with pals. He probably didn’t realize that his fellow Peoria residents Kasey Johnson, 17, and roommate Jennifer Logsdon, 19, weren’t alone.

Jennifer’s fiancé, Richard T. “Tommy” Smith, 20, was visiting.

The two women and Tommy had been lounging around in what looks like everybody’s first post-school rental, with ugly wall-to-wall carpeting and a mattress on the floor doubling as a couch. The three watched a movie together and fell asleep in front of the TV.

Brown would later tell police that he had just enjoyed a rock of crack cocaine and went over to Logsdon’s house with the intent of stealing money to buy more drugs.

Scene of Tommy Smith's murder on W. Proctor in Peoria — Scene of the crime: The 2-bedroom house at 3007 W. Proctor last sold for $31,000 in 2006, according to Zillow

Went down fighting. He used his knife to attack Tommy Smith, who fought back with his bare hands and attempted to restrain him in a chair. That gave Kasey Johnson an opportunity to run into a bedroom and call 911.

When Tommy fell to the floor from loss of blood, Brown went after Kasey and Jennifer, slitting both their throats. He left them for dead and stole Kasey’s purse on the way out.

Neither woman was sexually assaulted, and emergency services arrived quickly enough to save their lives. They recovered from their wounds in Saint Francis Medical Center.

Tommy died at the scene.

Jennifer Logsdon Updike during her 2003 appearance on Forensic Files

Zero cleanup effort. Although it was too dark inside the house for the women to identify the killer — despite that he was their next-door neighbor — testing confirmed that a footprint at the scene matched Brown’s.

He hadn’t made much of a cover-up effort at home. Police found a trove of incriminating blood and weapon evidence at Brown’s house.

Brown didn’t even bother to shower. He had blood from all three victims in his hair.

After a horror story like that, let’s get right to the welcome news: Gene A. Brown Jr. is still in prison and has virtually no chance of getting out on two feet.

Remorse spoken. After authorities arrested Brown and set his bail at $1 million, the 27-year-old agreed to a plea deal.

Judge Robert Manning gave Brown a sentence of life in prison with no possibility of parole for murder, two 30-year sentences for the attempted murders, and 15 years for residential theft.

He apologized for killing Tommy Smith. “I wish I could take my own life and give it to that young man,” Brown said in court, the Peoria Journal Star reported. “If I had known drugs could do that to me, I would have never got involved.”

Hidden agenda? Judge Robert Manning’s words which, like Brown’s, referenced drugs, may have been less relevant than they seemed: “If there is anything to be gained from these senseless acts, it is the message to those who play the dangerous game of drugs to stop that game,” the judge said.

Gene Brown in 1991 and in a recent mug shot — Gene Brown in 1991 and in a recent Illinois DOC mug shot

Drugs surely played a role in the ferocity of the attack, but did Brown really go next door with the primary intent of stealing money for crack cocaine?

Murderous intent. A rental unit occupied by two struggling teenagers seems an unlikely target for someone hoping to nab a pile of cash.

Plus, in his shoeless state, where was he going to buy drugs?

It seems more likely that, as Forensic Files contended, he went next door with sexual assault and murder on his agenda. He covered his hands to prevent fingerprint evidence, but he didn’t worry about his face being ID’ed — the victim or victims would be dead.

Fortunately, Tommy Smith’s presence at the apartment prevented any rape plans that Brown had in store.

Safely tucked away. The most recent mention of Brown in the media was in a 2016 obituary for his father, Gene Autry “Sonny” Brown Sr., a U.S. Air Force veteran who worked at Caterpillar.

It gives Gene Jr.’s locale as Menard — the same Illinois prison that houses another Forensic Files killer who’s never getting out, Mark Winger.

But today, the 6-foot-tall 220-pound Brown is locked up in the Western Illinois Correctional Center, according to state records.

Mother’s illness. No recent information came up about Jennifer Logsdon Updike, who had married and had kids by the time Forensic Files produced the episode, or Kasey Johnson.

Tommy Smith, lower right, with his sisters and parents

Tommy Smith’s sweet-natured mother, Cornelia “Connie” Smith, who viewers will remember from her appearance on Forensic Files, died of multiple system atrophy at the age of 65 in 2014, leaving a husband and two daughters.

She seemed to take comfort in knowing that her son fought back instead of running away, and saved two women’s lives.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Amazon Prime

Paula Sims: A Mother Snaps Twice

Update on a Grim Tale
(“Similar Circumstances,” Forensic Files)

Note: Updated with news from 2021

This week’s post tells the story of a woman who reversed a common Forensic Files equation. Usually, it’s one spouse killing another to ensure access to the children.

Paula Sims murdered her kids to — allegedly — gain access to her spouse.

Neighbors described Robert and Paula Sims as quiet

Unusual folks. Actually, she killed only her daughters, allowing her son to live, because her husband wanted male children exclusively, or so she believed.

For this week, I looked for biographical information that might hold clues as to why life at the Sims household went so horribly wrong.

And because prisoners guilty of harming children tend to get the harshest treatment from other inmates, I also checked into how Paula, who’s serving a life sentence, is faring in captivity.

Athletic kid. So let’s get started on the recap of “Similar Circumstances” along with extra information from internet research:

Paula Marie Blew came into the world on May 29, 1959, the youngest of three children born to a middle-class Missouri couple, Nylene and Orville Blew. Orville worked as an operator for Amoco Pipeline, according to the Alton Telegraph.

Growing up, Paula acquired a reputation first as a tomboy and later as a partyer, according to The Encyclopedia of Kidnappings by Michael Newton.

Pain and loss. Overall, Paula had an unremarkable youth until tragedy struck.

Her brother Randy, with whom she was close, died in an auto accident. Paula sustained facial lacerations in the wreck.

Paula and Richard Sims house in Alton, Illinois — Robert and Paula Sims lived in a well-maintained house in Alton, Illinois

Paula’s other brother, Dennis, wasn’t hurt in the crash, but he already lived with disabilities resulting from childhood seizures.

Husband’s checkered job history. It’s not clear what Paula’s educational background was, but media sources list her occupation as supermarket worker or cashier.

As for Robert Sims, he graduated from Alton High School, where he played the tuba in the marching band.

In adulthood, he hit some sour notes, however. Robert served in the Navy but was declined when he sought to reenlist. He worked as a loan collector but left the job amid allegations of misbehavior.

Earlier marriage. His relationship status wasn’t wonderful either. Robert’s first wife divorced him on charges of “extreme and repeated mental cruelty,” according to the Encyclopedia of Kidnappings.

He also had a tiny bit of legal trouble, having paid $115 to settle a shoplifting charge in 1979, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

But he got his act together soon after.

Robert found steady work at the Alton Box Board Co., a paper products manufacturer that employed many locals in Alton, Illinois, a St. Louis suburb.

Paula and Robert got married in 1981 and later settled into a picturesque wood-framed house in Alton. Robert was a few years older than Paula, so perhaps she was looking to replace her deceased big brother.

Or maybe she hoped to compensate for her brother’s loss by creating a household full of male children.

Terrifying story. On April 29, 1989, Robert Sims came home after a late shift and found Paula unconscious on the floor and their 6-week-old daughter missing from her crib. The couple’s 2-year-old son, Randall, known as Randy, was fine.

Paula, a slender 29-year-old Amelia Earhart lookalike, said that a masked intruder knocked her out and took her baby daughter, Heather Lee.

During the ensuing effort to find Heather, reporters camped out at the Sims house constantly. The FBI, state law officers, and trained dogs were brought in to help local police with the frantic search.

No sign of an invader. It came to a halt four days later, when a fisherman found the baby’s body in a trash barrel.

Medical examiner Mary Case determined someone had suffocated Heather.

Meanwhile, police couldn’t find any forensic evidence of a stranger at either crime scene.

He said what? Soon, investigators started realizing something was awry inside the Sims household and it didn’t have anything to do with an anonymous intruder.

For one, Robert volunteered that he and Paula had been having great sex since the baby’s disappearance.

Yikes.

It got more bizarre. Police found out that the Simses’ first baby, a girl named Lorelei Marie, had been kidnapped in 1986. Paula had given a similar story about an unknown home invader. Lorelei’s remains turned up, but no one was ever charged.

In the bag. After Heather disappeared, investigators noticed the Simses had pictures of their son displayed in the house, but none of her.

Detectives got a break when an FBI lab matched the plastic bag used to discard Heather’s body to one found in the Sims household.

Then, it came out that Robert Sims had banned Paula from the bedroom after she gave birth to Lorelei, her first child. She had to sleep in a separate room downstairs with the baby.

Contradictory evidence. After Paula brought home her infant son, her husband allowed her back on his mattress again — but he banished her a second time, after she had Heather.

Robert would later explain that he needed his rest because of his work schedule — that’s why he liked to sleep alone.

Prosecutors alleged that Paula murdered Heather while Robert was at work, then disposed of the body in the trash barrel.

At the trial, which took place in the same Peoria court house where nurse killer Richard Speck was convicted in 1967, Paula testified that she loved having daughters and had saved her old Barbie clothes for them. Other witnesses said the Simses were “thrilled” and “walking on air” over Lorelei’s birth.

Orville Blew testified that the babies’ deaths devastated his daughter.

The Robert Wadlow statue in Alton — Long before the sensational Sims murder trial, Alton was famous as home of *world’s tallest man* Robert Wadlow, seen here in a statue at Southern Illinois University

Husband stands by her. During the legal proceedings, which were so packed with spectators that the court had to bring in extra chairs and turn away some people, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Paula appeared frail, sickly, and weak and “walked into the courtroom with her arms hanging limply at her sides” every morning, and rarely spoke to her defense lawyer during the proceedings.

Robert Sims testified that Paula was a good mother and he didn’t believe she was involved in the homicides. He also said that the FBI had lied in an attempt to make him turn against his wife.

But a maternity ward roommate testified that she overheard Paula making a “tearful apology on the telephone to her husband for having a daughter,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

Coming clean. Nurses present around the births of all three Sims babies at Alton Memorial Hospital said that Robert ignored the girls but was ecstatic over Randy.

Robert Sims admitted that the couple had hoped to have a boy first, but said that he was happy about the girls just the same.

When prosecutor Don W. Weber grilled Robert Sims over his remark about the couple’s sex life, Robert explained that it was a stress reliever and a comfort to his wife, adding, “What are we supposed to do 24 hours day?”

On Jan. 30, 1990, a jury found Paula guilty of murder.

After receiving a sentence of life in prison without parole, she admitted to killing both her daughters.

Court of public opinion. Amid the requisite flood of outrage at a mother who would murder her own children, there was a bit of sympathy in the community.

“We ignore heart-breaking problems,” read a St. Louis Post-Dispatch letter from Margaret B. Phillips of University City. “Then, when a tragedy happens, we rush to assign blame.”

Paula’s defense lawyer Donald E. Groshong vowed to fight to overturn the conviction.

Although Robert Sims eventually divorced Paula and remarried, the couple never turned against each other in legal proceedings (another deviation from the Forensic Files norm).

Psychiatric factors. Robert Sims later said he believed Paula had killed both infants by accident.

In a 2006 interview with St. Louis TV station KSDK, Paula refused to talk about her former husband. She blamed the murders on postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis and said that she loved and missed both her daughters.

According to a segment on a Deadly Women episode, Paula Sims fed her postpartum depression with marijuana and alcohol, which made her problems worse.

Male mystery remains. Many online commenters expressed frustration that Robert Sims was never charged in connection with the murders, and an officer who appeared on Forensic Files hinted that Robert remained under investigation.

It’s still not clear why Robert didn’t want daughters — or whether that contention was true in the first place.

The state gave Robert custody of Randy, who had been placed in a foster home during the trial. It was a controversial decision, but they went on to lead a pleasant life together — until another horrible tragedy.

More loss. In 2015, an intoxicated Volvo driver clipped Robert Sims’ Jeep and sent it flying off an Interstate 55 overpass. Robert, 63, and Randy, 27, were ejected from the vehicle, and they both died.

A local office holder expressed sympathy for Paula, as the Belleville News-Democrat reported:

“The whole history is sad to me. It’s very sad when people die tragically. It’s very disturbing,” said State Sen. Bill Haine, who was Madison County state’s attorney when Sims was prosecuted. “My heart goes out to Paula. The poor woman is still in jail and now will grieve the loss of her only child.”

Blood money refused. Around the same time, a supporter started a Change.org petition asking Gov. Bruce Rauner to free Paula Sims based on a diagnosis of postpartum psychosis. It collected 178 signatures.

Paula herself has requested clemency from the governor because of her mental illness.

The efforts have been unsuccessful.

Paula Sims’ name surfaced in the media again in 2017, when the Belleville News-Democrat reported that she signed away any rights to her late son’s $900,000 estate; the money came from a car insurance settlement. Robert Sims’ widow, Victoria, was pegged to get the jackpot.

The kitchen has deteriorated in the 30 years since the Sims lived in their house in Alton, Illinois — The house at *1053 Washington Avenue* has deteriorated in the 30 years since Robert and Paula Sims lived there. Realtor.com lists its value at $26,600

Fading scar. Today, Paula is an inmate at the Logan Correctional Center. Her profile mentions no disciplinary problems and she has resisted the siren song of prison-yard tattoo artists.

There’s no indication that she’s faced abuse from other inmates. In recent mug shots, she appears healthy and unmarked. (The prison record mentions one facial scar, but it’s faint and probably came from the car accident in the 1970s.)

Although Logan offers courses like hair braiding and cake decorating, it’s a rough place.

Guards gone bad. A 2016 study for the Illinois Department of Corrections found the prison to have unnecessary use of harsh isolation “cages” and “few chances to prepare for community re-entry, contributing to a recidivism rate of 50 percent.”

In 2018, five male Logan employees were accused of sexually abusing female inmates.

Candice DeLong, a former FBI profiler who hosts Deadly Women, said she believes Paula would no longer be a danger to society. DeLong also said that a woman with postpartum depression should not have been left alone to take care of a baby.

Deserving of reconsideration. And it should be noted that, in another departure from the typical Forensic Files motives, Paula clearly didn’t commit her crimes out of ill will or pursuit of money.

At age 62 today, Paula doesn’t face the risk of postpartum mental illness.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker commuted Sims’ reduced Paula’s life without parole sentence.

Paula Sims in mug shots taken shortly before she won parole

In October 2021, a board voted to give Paula parole. (Thanks to reader TJ for sending in the scoop.)

Her lawyer, Jed Stone, pointed out that she had committed no infractions while in prison, regretted the murders, and thought about her lost daughters every day.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Paula had a job on the outside and would continuing living in Illinois after her release.

In addition to the Forensic Files and Deadly Women episodes, there’s a mediocre (despite a good cast) Lifetime movie based on the case, Precious Victims.

There’s also a Belleville News-Democrat article with photos of the Sims daughters and video interviews with acquaintances of Robert and Randy Sims.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Amazon Prime

Lana Tisdel and Her Mother: An Epilogue

What Happened to Brandon Teena’s Most Famous Ex?
(Boys Don’t Cry and The Brandon Teena Story)

The last time Lana Tisdel’s name came up in the press was the year 2000, when she settled a lawsuit with movie distributor Searchlight Pictures for an undisclosed sum.

Although she came off as a protagonist in the 1999 film Boys Don’t Cry, Tisdel didn’t care much for the Hollywood treatment.

Dramatic-license violation: She alleged that the movie used her life story without her permission and unfairly depicted her as a habitual drinker and drug user.

Tisdel (pictured above in her 20s), who had dated Brandon Teena — who was born a girl named Teena Brandon but dressed and lived as a man — also called out Boys Don’t Cry for falsely portraying her as having been present during the shootings that killed Brandon, 22, and witnesses Lisa Lambert, 24, and Phillip Devine, 22, just before New Year’s Day of 1994.

Ex-cons John Lotter and Thomas Nissen had targeted Brandon Teena for murder to quiet a rape case against the two ex-cons.

Maury comes knocking. A year before Boys Don’t Cry, Tisdel herself had appeared in the documentary The Brandon Teena Story, and she seemed like a sympathetic character there, too.

Shortly after the movies came out, Lana and her mother appeared on A Current Affair and The Maury Povich Show.

So what’s become of the hardscrabble, karaoke-loving Nebraska girl portrayed by actress Chloë Sevigny on the big screen?

Pretty as ever. Today, she maintains a presence on the internet, but she uses her married name, Lana Bachman, and probably isn’t looking to satisfy curiosity seekers.

She has a daughter and two sons and at least one grandchild.

Lana, who in her youth resembled actress Jodie Foster, still has long beautiful strawberry blond hair. She has become more striking with maturity.

It’s not clear what type of work she does or whether she and her husband are still together. (She hitched up with a guy from her hometown of Falls City on Dec. 6, 2001, according to Douglas County records.)

Linda Gutierres, who is Lana Tisdel's mother — Linda Gutierres was Lana Tisdel’s mother

Struggle to survive. Sadly, her mother, Linda Gutierres, who came off as a flawed but not irredeemable character in the documentary, died in 2003 at the age of 54.

Her obituary didn’t disclose her cause of death.

Linda Gutierres had a rough life. She was wounded in a stabbing attack by an ex-husband and supported her family on a monthly disability check of less than $400, according to an account by writer Eric Konigsberg, who grew up in Omaha.

Including Lana, Linda Gutierres left four children behind.

Unwitting accomplice. Lana’s father, L.L. Tisdel, was not included in either film but inadvertently played a role in springing Brandon Teena from jail.

He gave Lana a blank check for a perm, but she used it to pay Brandon’s $250 in bail instead.

L.L. Tisdel died in 2007 at the age of 71.

In August 2020, Lana suffered a new tragedy when her Ford pickup crossed a center line and fatally injured Chrysler minivan driver Glenn D. Aston in a head-on crash in Fairview, Kansas. Lana herself suffered injuries requiring hospitalization, but she has since recovered. (Thanks to reader Charlene for writing in with the update.)

You can watch the interviews with Lana Tisdel and Linda Gutierres in the documentary on YouTube.

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

Read Part I: Brandon Teena’s Killers: 25 Years Later

Jason MacLennan: Bad Memories

A Scrapbook Executive Dies at His Son’s Hand
(“Shoot to Thrill,” Forensic Files)

Note: This post was updated in October 2020.

When children kill their parents, money is usually the primary motive and the secondary one is a desire for freedom (Sarah Johnson).

Jason MacLennan as a young man — Jason MacLennan

Forensic Files killer Jason MacLennan had a third reason and, while it doesn’t justify shooting his father seven times, it makes the crime a little easier to comprehend: Jason resented the way his dad had neglected his mom while she was terminally ill.

For this week, I checked into where Jason and the buddy who helped him orchestrate the murder are today, and also looked for more family history.

Started up north. So let’s get going on the recap of “Shoot to Thrill” along with additional information drawn from internet research:

Jason MacLennan was born in Canada to Betty Irene Relf and Kenneth MacLennan on Feb. 22, 1985. The family moved to Orlando in 1997.

Kenneth traveled extensively for his job, often leaving Jason to care for Betty during her treatments for breast cancer in the late 1990s.

She had two mastectomies.

Jason would sometimes fall asleep in school because he had been up all night tending to his mother, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

That was fast. The family relocated to Oviedo, Florida, where Jason played lacrosse at Oviedo High School. Toward the end of Betty’s life, the MacLennans temporarily moved back to Canada so she could be close to relatives.

In 1999, shortly after — accounts vary as to whether it was two weeks or four months — his mother’s death, Kenneth’s girlfriend, Laurence Morand, moved into the MacLennans’ house.

The house where Jason and Kenneth MacLennan lived in Walden Woods — The murder scene on Chelmsford Lane in the Walden Woods neighborhood

Laurence had to fly back to Switzerland after every 90 days because of a visa problem, but she lived with Ken and Jason off and on for years.

Nostalgic work. Jason didn’t appreciate the Swiss businesswoman’s presence, and the two argued often. (Note: Forensic Files refers to her by the pseudonym “Alessandra.”)

In 2002, the MacLennans moved to St. Cloud, Minnesota, where Kenneth, a former Tupperware executive, nabbed a high-level management job at a scrapbook and photo album company called Creative Memories.

The family had a Jack Russell terrier named Mac, which probably made for some nice Kodak moments, but it didn’t compensate for Kenneth’s long absences. When he was in town, he often didn’t come home until 9 p.m., according to Star Tribune reporting.

Variety of bullets. Around midnight on Jan. 14, 2003, Jason called 911 to report that he’d discovered his father shot to death at the base of the stairs.

Responders found Kenneth MacLennan, 53, bloodied on the hardwood floor of the family’s house. His gun wounds came from four different types of ammunition, lab tests would later show.

Matthew Moeller, age 17 — Matthew Moeller circa 1999

At first, it looked like a robbery. Kenneth’s watch and cash were missing.

Outside, police found an unexplained set of footprints from Lugz boots, “popular in the world of hip-hop,” according to Forensic Files.

Jason, 17, said that two additional sets of tracks belonged to him and Matthew Moeller, a classmate from St. Cloud Technical High School. They had gone outside to smoke, Jason said.

Girlfriend abroad. Police found no gunshot residue on Jason’s hands.

Laurence Morand stood to collect $100,000 from Kenneth’s Creative Memories life insurance policy, but she was in Switzerland at the time of the shooting, so police ruled her out.

Soon, Jason’s classmates began speaking with the authorities.

He had been asking around for help killing his dad and told friends they would be rich and free of rules with Kenneth out of the way, the students said.

Partner cracks. Under police questioning, Jason stuck to his story that he had gotten out of the shower and then found his father dead on the floor.

Matt on the other hand, held back for a short time, then started singing like an American Idol contestant.

He said Jason had given him $1,000 for procuring the rifle used in the murder. Matt also mentioned using four types of ammunition — a fact that police hadn’t released to the news media.

Matt explained that the third set of footprints came from his own Lugz, which the two conspirators used in a bid to throw off investigators.

Firearm forensics. On a rural property owned by Matt Moeller’s parents, police found Jason’s bloody clothes, Kenneth’s charge cards, and $1,255 in cash. A glove had Jason’s DNA inside and gun residue on the outside.

A drop of blood inside the barrel of Matt’s 22-caliber rifle came from Kenneth MacLennan, who probably tried to grab the weapon in self-defense.

Matt and Jason were charged with murder just two days after the crime, on Jan. 16, 2003.

Prints in the snow. Prosecutors believed the motive was Kenneth’s $1.4 million estate and Jason’s hatred of his dad for being an absentee father and husband.

They alleged that on the night of the murder, Jason and Matt waited until Kenneth fell asleep. Then, they made the fake Lugz-footprints and Matt rang the doorbell. When Kenneth came downstairs, Jason fired repeatedly at close range.

Jason pleaded not guilty and changed his story, alleging that he feared his father and shot him in self-defense.

The judge refused the defense’s request to present testimony from a battered-child syndrome expert, but the jury did hear that Kenneth burned his son’s arm with a cigarette to punish him for smoking and threatened him with a knife during an argument.

Parent remiss. At the very least, there was alienation between Kenneth and Jason, according to reporting from the Orlando Sentinel: “‘There was no communication,’ said Bonnie Kulpak, whose daughter had gone to the prom with Jason. ‘This boy was a lost soul.'”

Jason and Kenneth MacLennan shown in a newspaper clipping — Minneapolis Star clipping of father and son

Matt Moeller described Jason’s father as “like a ghost figure,” the St. Cloud Times reported.

It came out at the trial that Kenneth had made 26 business trips for Creative Memories during the nine-month period leading up to the murder, the Star Tribune reported.

No husband of the year. Police found a suicide prevention card and Betty MacLennan’s death certificate in Jason’s basement bedroom.

One witness testified that Jason had begged her to take him away from his dad. Marie Buenrostro, the wife of Kenneth’s former tennis partner, told the Star Tribune that Ken acted like John McEnroe on the court and had a worrisome temper in general — which contributed to his firing from his Tupperware job.

Jason alleged that his dad physically abused his mother.

Betty sometimes locked herself in Jason’s room and slept on the floor, according to Buenrostro.

At the very least, Kenneth mistreated Betty emotionally, according to acquaintances who recounted Kenneth openly watching pornography at home — to the extent that a neighbor forbade his children to visit the MacLennans’ house — and he left Betty to drive herself to chemotherapy sessions, the Star Tribune reported.

Eyes on the estate. Meanwhile, Debbie Harris, the mother of Jason’s girlfriend Molly, described Jason as “the most nonaggressive teenager you could imagine … polite, sweet, loving” and said that he spent his spare time playing chess and watching the History Channel, the Star Tribune reported.

McCloud Tech High School — *Jason and Matthew* attended St. Cloud Tech High School together but ended up in separate Minnesota prisons

But friends testified that Jason frequently spoke of the wealth he would inherit upon his father’s death (although there was a contention that he was speaking of money he would receive from a trust when he turned 18, the St. Cloud Times reported). One acquaintance said Jason used Kenneth like “a bank,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.

Laurence Morand maintained that Jason and Kenneth both had bad tempers and argued frequently, according to court papers.

Time to pay. The prosecution called the attack on Kenneth a “premeditated ambush execution” and noted that both Matt and Jason had prior criminal records. Jason had a restricted license because of street racing in his Hyundai; it’s not clear what Matt’s offense was.

The jury agreed with the prosecution and convicted Jason of first-degree murder. He received life in prison.

Matt, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, got 30 years.

Recent mug shots of Jason MacLennan and Matthew Moeller — Jason MacLennan and Matthew Moeller
in recent mug shots

In 2005, the Minnesota Supreme Court denied Jason’s request for a new trial, rejecting his repeated contention that he was a victim of battered-child syndrome.

Grandmother faithful. Today, Jason lives in the Minnesota Correctional Institution – Stillwater, where custody level ranges from minimum to close.

He acquired a large neck tattoo while behind bars.

Jason’s paternal grandmother, Margaret MacLennan, either forgave Jason or thought he was innocent. Her 2010 obituary described her as the “loving grandmother of Jason MacLennan.”

Matt has moved from the Minnesota Correctional Institution – Moose Lake to Stillwater. The prison website lists his anticipated release date as Jan. 17, 2023.

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

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

Billy McFarland: Fyre Fraudster Update

The Latest on the Con Man and His Victims
(Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, Netflix)

These days, when I’m not rewatching Forensic Files on TV, I’m restreaming Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened on my MacBook.

Fyre investor Carola Jain, Billy McFarland, Jason Bell (who was not involved with Fyre), and Ja Rule — Happier times: Fyre investor Carola Jain, Billy McFarland, Jason Bell (not involved with Fyre), and Ja Rule

You can see the Netflix Fyre documentary half a dozen times and pick up something new every time.

Blue-eyed bandit. The 97-minute original production tells the excruciating story of a music festival founder who believed that a high-profile social media campaign would magically compensate for severe unpreparedness and underfunding.

Billy McFarland promised ticket buyers private-jet transportation, ahi sliders, luxurious villas on a nirvana-like private island in the Bahamas, and performances by 10 major recording artists.

The Fyre Festival failed on all accounts.

Most of the well-to-do millennials who spent upward of $4,000 per person to experience a luxurious bacchanalia ended up receiving no-frills flights, sleeping on rain-soaked mattresses in FEMA tents on a gravelly construction site, scrounging for food, and listening to excuses from McFarland instead of performances by Blink-182 and Tyga.

Infernal mess. In a way, even the locale for the festival didn’t exist. McFarland said he had purchased Pablo Escobar’s island, where organizers shot a promotional video featuring such supermodels as Emily Ratajkowski and Hailey Baldwin — who then publicized the upcoming event via Instagram — but the sale never actually happened.

The organizers then arranged to have the festival on Great Exuma, a Bahamian island that isn’t private, so they photoshopped out parts that weren’t.

Before Fyre, McFarland, then 25, probably imagined himself as the next under-30 entrepreneur headed for the Forbes 400 list.

Note the FEMA tents on the Netflix film promo

Card game. Described as charming, intelligent, and persuasive, the towering and slightly tubby New Jersey native first made a name for himself by establishing Magnises, a credit card whose fee included perks like discounted Beyoncé tickets and social events at a Manhattan townhouse.

That venture, targeted at millennials, got off to an impressive start, then fizzled after not delivering on promises. But it didn’t get enough bad press to cloud McFarland’s image as a young visionary.

It was the Fyre Festival flameout that exposed McFarland as a fraud for all the world to see. Virtually every major news media outlet covered the April 2017 disaster.

Schadenfreude samba. The public delighted in watching video footage of privileged 26-year-old attendees having to practically beg just for drinkable water.

“Every time a rich kid gets scammed, an angel gets its wings,” tweeted @snarkycindy, one of many Fyre detractors.

Fyre: The Greatest Pary That Never Happened offers a look at the timeline of the disaster and the financial dealings behind it.

The chronology actually starts before Fyre became synonymous with a fiasco in the tropics. McFarland and Ja Rule created the Fyre brand as an app for anyone who wanted to book musical talent — the “Uber of entertainment.”

Naysayers shrugged off. The Fyre Festival was intended as a vehicle to promote the Fyre app. McFarland’s company, Fyre Media, planned the event.

For the most part, Ja Rule came off as an innocent dupe who believed McFarland’s assurances that he could assemble infrastructure for a new music festival in just four months.

Hailey Baldwin Bieber and Emily Ratajkoweski were among the supermodels who promoted the Fyre Festival — With publicity like this, what could possibly go wrong?

Others, like consultants Marc Weinstein and Keith van der Linde — both featured in on-camera interviews in the Netflix documentary — were either rebuffed or fired when they warned McFarland that his brainchild was looking less like a hedonistic fantasy and more like a dream about having final exams when you haven’t gone to class all semester.

Locals stiffed. Fyre recounts how McFarland lied on financial statements, paid some vendors via a Ponzi-like scheme, and cheated others.

It’s sad to hear Bahamian catering contractor Maryann Rolle talk about losing $50,000 because of Fyre.

The most upsetting part of the saga is that some or all of the Bahamian construction workers who labored under the hot sun for Fyre didn’t get paid.

Still, the documentary leaves open the possibility that McFarland was just a dishonest but well-intentioned kid who got in over his head and lied out of desperation.

William tell. That is, until the last 15 minutes, which shows footage of McFarland gleefully perpetrating a new con — selling phony tickets to events like the Met Gala — while he was free on bail after the FBI arrested him over Fyre offenses.

He attempted some semi-honest hustling, too. According to the LA Times, McFarland told Fyre director Chris Smith he would appear on camera for a $125,000 fee, but the filmmakers declined because “it wasn’t right for him to benefit when other people had been hurt by his actions.”

Prosecutors said that McFarland cheated 80 investors out of $26 million. Victims of the Fyre fraud filed a $100 million class-action lawsuit against McFarland and Ja Rule.

From sell to cell. McFarland pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud related to Fyre in 2017. The following year, he pleaded guilty to additional wire fraud charges plus bank fraud and making false statements to a federal law enforcement agent regarding his fake-ticket business, NYC VIP Access.

In October of 2018, a federal judge sentenced McFarland to six years in prison.

Here’s an update on McFarland as well as others depicted on the documentary:

• BILLY McFARLAND, now 27, resides in the Federal Correctional Institution at Otisville, a medium-security penitentiary known for housing white collar criminals. The Orange County, New York, facility offers bocce ball, horseshoes, handball and tennis courts, a baseball field, and cardio equipment. Otisville has a satellite camp for minimum security inmates.

In May 2019, New York magazine reported that McFarland has started a memoir, “Promythus: The God of Fyre,” to explain his side of the story, which he was planning to self-publish. McFarland’s girlfriend, Russian model Anastasia Eremenko, was coordinating the effort.

McFarland has said he’d like to use the proceeds toward the $26 million in restitution he’s been ordered to pay.

As far as McFarland’s quality of life today, it’s not clear whether he lives in minimum security or medium security in Otisville. He’s inmate No. 91186-054, in case that’s a clue to anyone.

From the list of commissary items, it looks as though McFarland has access to more and better food than the festival attendees did.

The Otisville website lists his release date as September 1, 2023.

There have been reports that McFarland wants to try for another Fyre Festival when he gets out.

Update to the update: McFarland may have his bocce balls taken away. On Sept. 24, 2019, the Daily Beast reported that he violated Otisville’s rules by obtaining a recording device and he will likely be sent to a less-luxe higher-security prison, according to the story, which cited two unnamed sources.

• JA RULE didn’t face SEC charges over the Fyre Festival. He has started his own talent-booking business, ICONN, which offers access to such luminaries as Ashanti, DJ Connor Cruise, Alexander Great, Nazanin Mandi, and Ja Rule himself.

Maryann Rolle, who lost money on the Fyre Festival — Maryann Rolle

• MARYANN ROLLE, the cheated owner of Exuma Point Bar and Grille, tallied up $231,000 in donations from a GoFundMe campaign set up after she appeared in Fyre. According to Marie Claire, Rolle had made 1,000 meals a day for workers connected with the festival and housed some attendees in villas she and her husband own. (The $50,000 loss she mentioned in the documentary went toward paying extra food service workers hired for the festival, but her total losses were in the six-figure range, Marie Claire reported.)

In January 2019, Maryann Rolle announced her intention to share the crowdfunding windfall with other locals who worked on the Fyre Festival, according to Bahamian newspaper Tribune 242.

In May 2019, the Daily Mail reported that Pamela Carter, the friend who set up the GoFundMe account for Rolle, attempted to steal half the proceeds.

When she’s not grappling with dubious characters, it sounds as though Rolle knows how to have a good time. She’s a singer and songwriter and her husband, Elvis, is a dancer.

• GRANT MARGOLIN, the Fyre marketing executive who viewers may remember as the guy who said he wanted a “big, big, big, big, big bonfire,” was apparently no innocent victim. He settled SEC charges that he “induced investors to entrust him with tens of millions of dollars by fraudulently inflating key operational [and] financial metrics.” Margolin avoided jail time but had to agree to not serve as a company director or officer for seven years and pay a $35,000 penalty.

• ANDY KING, the gray-haired event planner who appeared on camera in Fyre, told Vulture in February that he had received offers to star in his own reality TV series.

• MARC WEINSTEIN, the young Sacha Baron Cohen lookalike who warned McFarland he needed to abandon the notion that Fyre was a luxury festival and uninvite some of the social media influencers who had been promised free housing, started an LA-area venture capital company called Wave Financial in 2018, according to his LinkedIn profile.

I had no luck finding an epilogue for Keith van der Linde, the pilot whose practical advice about capacity and logistics was ignored. A different Keith van der Linde (there are a few out there) seems amused about being mistaken for him by online researchers.

Hulu has also produced its own documentary about the debacle, Fyre Fraud, which features a post-disaster interview with a slimmed-down McFarland as well as input from his girlfriend. It’s not as absorbing as Netflix’s offering but is definitely worth a watch or two, and you can take advantage of Hulu’s free one-week trial offer.

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

Watch Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened on Netflix. Watch Fyre Fraud on Hulu.

Each of 40 chapters is a blog post — plus new research. Book in stores or online

Jack and Linda Myers: Killed for the Farm

The Good Son Goes Bad
(“In the Bag,” Forensic Files)

Jack and Linda Myers were an enterprising couple who operated a food market and pizza shop in tiny Houston, Ohio.

Linda and Jack Myers at their wedding — Linda and Jack Myers found each other later in life

Serving up hot fresh slices of extra cheese with mushrooms can be an amiable business, but the Myers had two sidelines that tend not to create many fans.

They rented out residential properties they owned, and Jack fixed up used cars and resold them, often on credit.

Smallest victim. So when the Myers’ great-grandson discovered the couple murdered in their own bed, investigators wondered whether an evicted tenant or a repossessed-vehicle owner pulled the trigger.

But, as it turned out, the killer was someone the Myers trusted and knew far more intimately than any of Jack’s buyers or renters.

For this week, I looked for information about what happened to the great-grandson who lived with Jack and Linda and was just 4 years old when they died. I also checked on where the murderer is today.

So let’s get started on the recap of “In the Bag,” the Forensic Files episode about the case, along with extra information from internet research:

Strange story. On March 27, 2003, a sweet little guy in bloodstained pajamas and boots showed up an hour late for preschool.

Dameon Huffman (Forensic Files used the pseudonym “Johnny Huffman”) had run a mile to get to the classroom, which was part of the Oakland Church of the Brethren.

Jack and Lindy Myer's great-grandson, about age 4 — The Myers’ resident great-grandson

Staff member Marlene Harris would later testify that Dameon said his great-grandparents were “melting.” She called the sheriff’s office.

Police found Jack and Linda Myers shot to death inside their farmhouse on Martin Road in Darke County, Ohio.

Monster’s not just a nightmare. It looked as though an intruder had disconnected the phone lines, shot Jack in his sleep, and then turned the gun on Linda after she woke up. She had a defensive wound, and the gunshot to her face made her unrecognizable.

The couple had been happily married for seven years and had full custody of Dameon. His mother, Linda’s granddaughter Amber Holscher, was too young to care for him and had put him in foster care at one point.

Dameon said that the night of the murder, a “green monster” had looked in on him in his bedroom and apparently thought he was asleep. The only other eyewitness was a neighbor who remembered seeing an unknown minivan in the Myers’ driveway before dawn.

Cash and valuables untouched. Worried that the perpetrator would try to find and kill Dameon, the authorities placed him in protective custody in a secret location, away from all family members, according to “The Green Dragon,” an episode of On the Case with Paula Zahn.

The killer hadn’t stolen anything valuable, so an outsider’s grudge seemed like a probable motive — until police started investigating the family.

Country Side Market and pizzeria, the business owned by Jack and Linda Myers — The Myers owned the Country Side Market and pizzeria in Houston, Ohio

Suspicion first fell upon Andrew Huffman, Dameon’s dad, after Amber told investigators there was a custody dispute between him and Linda, and he had threatened her.

But he was in Kentucky when the murders took place, and his employer confirmed his alibi.

Alienated son. Next up on the list came Jack’s first-born son.

Travis Myers, 28, and his father had warred over some financial matters, and Travis moved to Arizona to put as much distance between them as possible, according to On the Case.

Travis had returned to Ohio shortly before the murders, but he also had a solid alibi.

Surprisingly, investigators found a better suspect in Jack’s younger son, Gregg Myers, 25.

Forty acres and a fool. The mild-mannered Gregg had no criminal record, got along well with his dad, and was best man at his wedding, but had reportedly been rebuffed when he asked Jack for a loan to save his home.

Due to a bank foreclosure, Gregg was either scheduled for eviction the following month or had already been evicted (media accounts vary) from his house in the town of Piqua.

Gregg, who was the father of two small children, needed a new place to live pronto, and he conveniently stood to inherit Jack and Linda’s farmhouse and its 39 acres upon Jack’s death.

Evidence against Gregg began to stream in.

A family friend named Jon Helmandollar promptly ratted out Gregg, telling authorities that Gregg had asked him where he could get a gun to shoot his father.

Superstore spree. Gregg’s girlfriend, Jennifer Brown, told investigators that when she woke up on the morning of the murders, Gregg was already out of the house. It was earlier than he usually left for his job at NK Parts — when he showed up, that is. According to Forensic Files, Gregg had an absenteeism problem as well as a substance habit.

Gregg Myers (right) was heir to his father’s farmhouse at 7632 Martin Road

But it was the physical evidence that really made the case. A Walmart in the town of Sidney had receipts showing Gregg bought ammunition, masking tape, and batting two days before the homicides. Police had found remnants of tape and batting at the crime scene and believed the shooter used them to make a silencer.

A week before the killings, Gregg, who drove a van like the one spotted in Jack and Linda Myers’ driveway the day of the murders, had purchased latex gloves, a pair of Route 66 brand shoes two sizes too small, a green windbreaker, green pants, and black stockings.

After the murders, police discovered those items in a bag discarded in the Stillwater River, downstream from where they recovered a 12-gauge Winchester shotgun with the serial number rubbed out.

Firearm floating. One of the gloves had Gregg’s fingerprint inside, and the old “make foot impressions with the wrong shoe size” trick didn’t fool anyone for long.

Investigators uncovered enough of the gun’s serial number (Gregg clearly should have watched more Forensic Files) to trace it to a private owner named Eugene Adams who said he sold it to Gregg for around $175 on March 25, 2003.

Police arrested Gregg and set his bail at $500,000.

Image of Forensic Files Now book cover next to logos of places that wil be selling it — Book in stores and online!

Taking his chances. Darke County Prosecutor Richard Howell offered a deal that would take the death penalty off the table in exchange for a guilty plea to aggravated battery and two counts of aggravated murder.

Gregg chose to go to trial.

Defense lawyer L. Patrick Mulligan said Gregg had the moral support of many people — even as they had to look at Linda Myers’ family members who came to court dressed in T-shirts with tribute silkscreened pictures of the murdered couple.

The jury convicted the baby-faced defendant on all charges after deliberating for eight hours.

Penalty phase. Travis Myers “buried his face in his hands” when he heard the verdict against his little brother, the Dayton Daily News reported.

“It tears us apart because we were close with Gregg,” said Linda’s daughter Kim Hudelson, according to the Dayton Daily News. “We got along with Gregg.”

At the sentencing hearing, defense lawyer George Katchmer played the unhappy childhood card.

He said Travis and Gregg “grew up in an abusive household without their father’s support,” the AP reported in a story dated May 2, 2004.

Gregg A. Myers in a recent mug shot — Gregg Myers in a recent mug shot

May Williams, Jack Myers’ sister, testified that Jack was the “family bully” and didn’t nurture his sons, the AP reported.

Spared the ultimate. It probably wasn’t much of a stretch to believe that a man who repossessed cars could be intimidating.

The jury spared Gregg the death penalty.

Instead, Gregg, then 26, received life without the possibility of parole plus five years for aggravated burglary and six years for use of a silencer.

The Ohio Supreme Court later upheld the conviction after Gregg filed an appeal alleging unfair jury selection in 2006.

Today, Gregg resides in Marion Correctional Institution, a severely overcrowded medium-security facility.

Marion was built to accommodate 1,452 inmates but has a population of 2,550, according to PrisonPro.

On the bright side for Gregg, who has no chance of parole, the facility “is known as having some of the most innovative programs of all institutions” and has a high percentage of inmates who complete certification programs.

Tedx even hosted an event, which inmates helped to plan and host, at Marion.

Littlest survivor. As for Linda’s granddaughter Amber Holscher, she had gotten married shortly before the murders and had been preparing to regain custody of her son.

Dameon Huffman during a TV interview in 2017 — Dameon Huffman circa 2017

Amber, who appeared on both Forensic Files and On the Case, said little Dameon had persistent nightmares about a green monster or green dragon during childhood but felt safer as time went on.

He got counseling to cope with the traumatic events of his youth and, at age 16, was doing well, according to the On the Case episode from 2014.

As of 2019, Dameon is a motorcycle enthusiast who works for a manufacturing company in Ohio.

Although he’s kept a low profile over the years, Dameon spoke on camera about the murders for “The Green Monster,” an episode of American Monster.

It includes never-before-seen home movies of family life with Jack and Linda Myers. You can watch the “The Green Monster” on the ID Network if you subscribe to cable. Amazon has the episode, too, but you have to pay, even with Prime.

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

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

Jack the Ripper: Q&A with a Scholar

Historian Richard Jones Answers Pointed Questions

The Jack the Ripper mystery dates back to 1888, too early for help from mitochondrial DNA or AFIS.

A photo of Richard Jones, who has studied the Jack the Ripper crimes extensively — Richard Jones

But that’s not why Forensic Files never produced an episode about the mystery man who stabbed and mutilated as many as eight prostitutes on the mean streets of Whitechapel, a poor section of London’s East End.

Faceless and nameless. The Jack the Ripper case didn’t receive the benefit of Peter Thomas’ narration because the authorities never solved it, and Forensic Files insisted on resolution.

Speculation about the killer remains widespread today. Popular theories include that he was a slaughterhouse worker, medical professional, or Leather Apron — a local known for extorting money from prostitutes.

A documentary produced by British historian Richard Jones explores not only the possible identity of Jack the Ripper but also the sociological and physical backdrop of the crimes.

Cops scared. According to the documentary, some of Whitechapel’s 76,000 residents were so impoverished that they slept standing room only in packed lodging houses.

And the squalid streets of Whitechapel were so poorly lit and full of drunken brawlers and violent thieves that police officers would enter the area only in groups of four.

But once the murders started, police got a little creative, sometimes dressing as women in an attempt to draw out the sadistic killer.

Queen’s land. The homicides stopped within a year, and the law never came close to catching Jack the Ripper.

For this week’s post, Jones, who narrates The Unmasking of Jack the Ripper and also gives walking tours of Whitechapel — which take place regardless of weather conditions and “especially in thick, thick fog” — answered questions about the Jack the Ripper case in the context of the latter part of the Victorian era as well as the true-crime culture of the U.S. today:

Do you find it ironic that society cared more about the slain women after they were murdered than before? Very much so. It is interesting to note the way in which the murders were reported by the press. At first, there was the scare factor, very visible in the Leather Apron scare of early September. But, following the murder of Annie Chapman, on 8th September 1888, the newspaper reporting was far more sympathetic and questions were being asked about why these women had been murdered because they lacked the fourpence to pay for a bed in a common lodging house.

Whitechapel street scene. Courtesy jack-the-ripper-tour.com

Do you think the authorities would have invested more money and resources into the investigation had the victims been middle-class married women rather than prostitutes? This was a question that was brought up time and time again, and it was openly wondered if the murderer would have been caught had his crimes occurred in the wealthier quarters of London. To be honest, this may have been the case early on in the investigation, but by mid-September 1888, I think maximum resources were being devoted to the hunt for the killer.

Did the terror caused by Jack the Ripper grip middle-class and affluent parts of London — or was the fear contained in White Chapel? The fear, thanks largely to extensive press coverage afforded the crimes, gripped all classes of society, and many other countries around the world.

In the documentary, there were a few words toward the end I wasn’t able to hear clearly — does it say that Queen Victoria demanded that more lights be installed around White Chapel to ward off the killer? Yes. One of the reasons that policing the area was so difficult was the fact that the backstreets and narrow passageways that riddled the district were not lit by night. So, later on in the investigation, there were many calls for better lighting in the darker recesses of Whitechapel, and this was the point that Queen Victoria picked up on and commented on.

Is White Chapel still, as mentioned in the documentary, constructed like a rabbit warren? No. Whitechapel was gradually improved in the 30 to 40 years after the killings, and the labyrinth-like layout of the backstreets had become a thing of the past by the mid-20th century. There are, however, a few passageways that still survive that give us an idea of what the area must have been like.

The documentary mentioned that the murders sparked anti-Semitism, because Jewish immigrants were seen as competition for jobs. People speculated the killer was among them. Did the anti-Semitism die down afterward? It was always present, and the fact that you had many Jewish anarchists in the East End of London throughout the 1890s and early 20th century meant that it would erupt every so often.

Which, if any, technology or forensic advancement available today would have helped solve the Jack the Ripper murders? Possibly CCTV.

If the murders happened in the U.S. — with its homicide rates disproportionately high compared with England’s — do you think they would have become a sensation? It is difficult to say. The murders certainly did become a sensation in the U.S., and the American newspapers gave a huge amount of coverage to the crimes. One interesting thing is that many American police chiefs were commenting in newspapers about how their police forces would have no trouble catching the perpetrator if the murders happened in their jurisdiction. This is one of the reasons, when the Carrie Brown murder occurred in New York, in April 1891, the NYPD was so quick to bring a suspect to justice and secure a guilty verdict. As it transpired, their suspect was pardoned a decade later, and it transpired that one of the reasons for the pardon was that Inspector Byrnes had allegedly been too anxious to do better than the London Police.

Photos of the body's of murdered prostitutes Martha Tabram and Frances Coles — Murder victims Martha Tabram and Frances Coles were prostitutes. Courtesy jack-the-ripper-tour.com

However, the Jack the Ripper crimes had such a dramatically large impact because he was seen as being representative of all the evil, vice, and degradation that the East End wallowed in.

Can you compare the terror wreaked by the Jack to Ripper murders to any similar crime spree in the U.S.? Son of Sam in New York City comes to mind. It is safe to say that Jack the Ripper made an impact on society in a way that no murderer had done before and no murderer has done since. I don’t think the universal fear that the Jack the Ripper murders generated has been equaled since.♠

You can watch the documentary The Unmasking of Jack the Ripper on YouTube.

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

Betty Wilson and Peggy Lowe: Twin Tales

Two Elegant Sisters, One Murdered Ophthalmologist
(“The Wilson Murder,” Forensic Files)

Technical problem: If the photos of Betty Wilson and Peggy Lowe aren’t showing up in this post, please try viewing it here.

Forensic Files doesn’t always feature suspects who look like middle-aged belles from a Tennessee Williams drama.

But when it does, they’re twins with refined Southern accents that make you wonder what deviousness could be hidden inside.

Betty Wilson and Peggy Lowe probably conspired to kill Betty’s husband, but only one of them has to rely on the prison commissary for pomegranate iced tea today.

Jack Wilson, an ophthalmologist who had been married to Betty for 14 years, ended up dead on the lacquered floor of their brick mansion in Huntsville, Alabama, in 1992.

More to the story. At first, figuring out who murdered him and how seemed like a matter of connecting a few numbered dots.

But over the course of the separate trials, conflicting forensics experts, a hit man whose story kept changing, and the pristine reputation of one of the sisters made things go askew.

For this week, I searched for more information about murder victim Jack Wilson, whose importance gets lost amid the intrigue surrounding his colorful wife and sister-in-law.

So let’s get started on the recap of “The Wilson Murder,” the Forensic Files episode about the case, along with information culled from internet research:

Two weddings. Betty Joy and Peggy Gay Woods were fraternal twins born in Gadsden, Alabama, on July 14, 1945. They were both popular in school.

Betty was a student council officer and performed in plays and talent shows. Peggy was a homecoming queen and considered the class beauty, according to an AP account.

They both got married immediately after high school, had children, and divorced within a few years.

The sisters seemed to do better on their second marriages. Peggy, a first grade teacher, hitched up with a Baptist deacon named Wayne Lowe and became lead singer of the church choir. He adopted her two kids and they had another one together.

Loving the life. Betty took up with Jack Wilson, a doctor she met at Huntsville’s Humana Hospital, where she worked as a nurse specializing in kidney dialysis.

After they married, the social-climbing Betty quit her job and enjoyed the perks of being an eye surgeon’s wife. She wore a Rolex watch and cruised around town in her burgundy Mercedes convertible. The couple also owned a black BMW.

On May 22, 1992, Jack Wilson was looking forward to leaving on a trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico, with Betty the next day. He hoped it would rekindle his relationship with his wife, whom he still loved and would reportedly do just about anything to please.

Shocking discovery. The doctor, 55, was generous to others as well, sometimes waiving the charges for struggling patients. “They were always treated the same, if they had $5 or $500,000,” one of his office staff members told WAFF 48 News. “He treated me like a daughter. He treated everyone who worked here as family.”

And he kept them entertained with his “unapologetically cornball sense of humor,” according to People magazine:

“He wore Christmas ties in the summer. Even the way Wilson concluded his will was meant to be funny. ‘To be used only if absolutely necessary, i.e., if I am dead,’ he wrote. ‘Try real hard to revive me if I only look dead.’”

His sister-in-law said he was fun to be with, sincere, kind, and “didn’t have a pretentious bone in his body.”

Noncommittal crime scene. Betty had just returned home from an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting when she discovered Jack’s lifeless body in a pool of blood on the hardwood bordered by two Persian rugs and pale blue wall-to-wall carpeting. A metal baseball bat was lying next to him.

Betty ran to a neighbor’s house and dialed 911. She sounded convincing enough on the call.

At the murder scene, police couldn’t find any helpful fingerprints or signs of a burglary. All of Jack’s credit cards were in his wallet and there was nothing much in the way of ransacking in the house.

The Wilsons’ four-bedroom four-bath house on Boulder Circle in Huntsville

But investigators soon learned that things weren’t exactly in order between the victim and his pretty wife. The couple slept in separate bedrooms.

Salacious revelations. Numerous sources reported that Betty had a distaste for Jack and the surgery he’d had because of his Crohn’s disease. Witnesses would later testify about the various unkind things she said to and about him. (Although, to her credit, she accepted Jack’s marriage proposal the day he told her he needed a colostomy.)

Another prospective motive for homicide: Jack’s will left the bulk of his $6.3 million estate to Betty.

There was also the matter of her extra-marital lifestyle.

A New York Daily News report would later describe her as a woman with a “thriving sex life that rarely involved her husband.” The AA meetings she attended regularly — she’d been sober for five years — made for convenient hookups.

With only gossip and speculation and minimal forensic facts, however, investigators couldn’t build a solid case against her.

Then, a police informant came forward.

None-too-reputable. The tipster said that James White, a 41-year-old handyman at the elementary school where Peggy Lowe taught, had been hired to kill Jack Wilson for $5,000.

White, described by a reporter as a “dirty man with ungroomed hair and bad teeth,” had a dishonorable discharge from the military and a record with the law.

Detectives found Betty’s revolver in an abandoned house next to White’s trailer as well as a library book of poetry signed out by Betty in White’s truck. He later said that Betty placed his cash advance in the book after Peggy negotiated his fee for the murder.

Police arrested Peggy Lowe and Betty Wilson. Peggy got out on $300,000 bail, but her sister was stuck in jail.

Hitman cooperates. The murder charges against twin sisters — with their smooth, articulate speech, tasteful wardrobes, and commercially attractive facial features — made news around the country.

The Boston Globe sent a reporter to Alabama to cover the case.

So many spectators flocked to the ensuing trials that the courthouse had to assign admission tickets to tame the chaos.

Betty and Peggy Woods Pictured in yearbook photos — Growing up, Betty and Peggy were constant companions

James White made a deal for a lighter sentence in exchange for implicating Betty and Peggy.

He said that he knew Peggy Lowe from the school in Vincent where he did some carpentry work. They had struck up a friendly relationship, speaking on the phone regularly.

Contract taken out. White found Peggy enchanting and wanted to win her favor — the eighth-grade dropout loved that she came from the right side of the tracks.

After confiding in him that she “had a friend who was in a bad marriage and whose husband mistreated her,” Peggy Lowe agreed to pay White $5,000 for a hit, with some of the money up front so that he could pay off debts and help his four children, White said, according to court papers.

White said that on the day of the murder, he hid upstairs in the Wilsons’ house until Jack Wilson came upstairs.

But White would later claim that he had already decided not to use the gun for the murder — and then realized that he didn’t want to kill him at all.

Boyfriend obligated to testify. Unfortunately, White testified, when he encountered Jack Wilson in the hallway, there was a struggle and White beat Wilson with the bat and stabbed him twice in the abdomen. Then, he said, Betty met him outside and drove him to his truck.

Police found no evidence he’d been inside Betty’s vehicle, so prosecutors took what forensics they had plus Jack’s testimony — and threw in some character assassination.

The state subpoenaed one of Betty’s lovers, an African American city official named Erroll Fitzpatrick, to testify about their relationship. Defense lawyer Buck Watson complained it was a maneuver to play upon racism.

The prosecution also presented numerous witnesses who attested to demeaning comments Betty had made about her husband.

Despite that Betty had four defense lawyers, including courtroom star Bobby Lee Cook — allegedly the inspiration for Andy Griffith’s character on Matlock — the prosecution had the edge.

Twin with the halo. After deliberating for two days, the jury convicted Betty of capital murder. She received a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

Eight months after Betty’s trial, it was Peggy Lowe’s turn. The prosecution alleged that the poised and proper twin was a conspirator who hired killer James White.

But Peggy Lowe’s encounter with the judicial system was markedly different from her sister’s modern-day stoning.

First off, there was little leeway to assassinate Peggy’s character. She was a happily married first grade teacher known for her kindness toward people in need. Her husband was minister of music at their church.

The defense made a point of introducing the jury to Peggy’s husband, three daughters, and son, who were in the courtroom to support her.

Teflon defendant. Dozens of her fellow First Baptist Church parishioners, some carrying “Free Peggy Lowe” signs, showed up at the courthouse to support her innocence.

There was a bit of salaciousness during the trial, however. White claimed that Peggy Lowe used sex to seduce him into the murder plot.

But Peggy denied the accusation, and it seemed to bounce right off of her.

The defense trashed White — whose lawyers had given him a makeover including new teeth — maintaining that the kind-hearted Peggy Lowe met with White to help him get carpentry work at the Wilsons’ house, and also lent him money to help his four kids.

White had a long history of abusing drugs and alcohol and a criminal record that included an escape from jail. He had even attacked his own troops while serving in Vietnam and sexually abused his daughter, Peggy’s defense team told the jury.

Two-assailant theory. Oddly, at the same time, the defense made a case that White wasn’t the murderer, noting that White had never actually admitted he killed Jack Wilson.

His original story didn’t make sense either, according to a forensic specialist who testified for the defense, because the murder weapon was probably an implement like a fireplace poker, not a baseball bat.

And, the defense alleged, the homicide required two people, who probably attacked Jack Wilson in the garage, beat, stabbed, and strangled him, then wrapped his body in a tarp, carried it upstairs, dumped it on the floor, and smeared blood on the bat so it looked like the murder weapon.

The jury took less than three hours to return a not guilty verdict.

Back to the routine. ″I asked the Lord to send me a good lawyer and he did,″ a teary Peggy Lowe said after the verdict, according to an AP account.

A prosecutor grumbled that trying to convict Peggy Lowe was like “fighting God.”

After the trial, Lowe returned to her respectable life, telling a newspaper reporter she was looking forward to attending a high school football game to watch her teenage daughter, who was a cheerleader.

As for Betty, she still resides behind razor wire, in Julia Tutwiler Prison, which Mother Jones magazine once named one of the 10 worst prisons in the U.S., although the facility has since been overhauled.

In 2006, Betty snagged herself a new husband, a former Green Beret named Bill Campbell who had become fascinated by her plight after watching a 48 Hours episode about the case.

Sister act still strong. They had a traditional wedding ceremony, although the wedding cake had to be sliced before it was allowed in the prison, the Gadsden Times reported.

Alabama does not allow conjugal visits.

Betty’s twin, known as Peggy Peck after she remarried, to a University of Alabama professor, was maid of honor at Betty’s jailhouse wedding.

Today, in addition to the support of her newest husband, Betty has the comfort of knowing that the murder and its aftermath didn’t drive a wedge between her and her sister – even when they both faced the prospect of Alabama’s electric chair and police falsely told each of them that the other had blamed her.

As for convicted hitman James White, he later changed his story — saying that he had never met Betty Wilson or slept with Peggy Lowe. He recanted his claims that Lowe ensnared him in a murder-for-hire plan. He also said that he blacked out during the time of the murder.

He later changed his story back to the original.

No country club. White resides in Limestone Correctional Center in Harvest.

It’s a maximum security prison recently targeted by Alabama’s Civil Rights Division for alleged cruel and unusual punishment, including subjecting some men to bucket detail.

White is up for parole consideration on March 1, 2020.

Judging from online comments, there’s not a whole lot of sympathy out there for James White, but many viewers are bothered by the lack of forensic evidence against Betty Wilson — and believe she was railroaded.

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

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

Author: Rebecca Reisner

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