Q&A on Forensic Files Cases Solved on America’s Most Wanted
Before Dirty John or Jodi Arias or Steven Avery — even before Forensic Files and Dateline NBC — there was America’s Most Wanted.
So great to meet John Walsh at IDCon 2019
With his weekly true-crime show, host John Walsh produced segments on violent felons with one particular circumstance in common: They were on the run.
America’s Most Wanted got off to a modest start in 1988, then exploded in popularity after leading authorities to John List, an accountant who killed his family in Westfield, New Jersey in 1971 and then vanished for 18 years.
In the long-running series, Walsh asked viewers to call in with tips, which ultimately helped law enforcement capture 1,200 fugitives and find dozens of missing kids. In 2019, the Investigation Discovery network collared him for a new show, In Pursuit with John Walsh.
While typical true-crime fans like me enjoy the genre because of the drama and intrigue, Walsh has always had a dog in the race. In 1981, his son Adam, age 6, was kidnapped from a Florida mall and murdered, and Walsh wanted to help authorities stop other predators.
I got a chance to meet Walsh at IDCon 2019 in New York, and he indulged my curiosity about John List and John Hawkins — AMW bad guys who Forensic Files ended up profiling on favorite episodes.
Here are edited excerpts of our conversation:
How did the John List case end up in your hands?I had received letters and a petition from friends of John List’s children in New Jersey, begging us to take the case.
We had already captured someone on the 10 Most Wanted List, and the FBI came to me and said, “How about trying a cold case? We’ve spent over a million dollars and not one clue.”
We were turning down 150 cases a week then. I picked John List because of the way these wonderful people and the FBI challenged me.
What were the obstacles?This was back in 1988, so there was no internet, no computer-aging. The FBI only had a photo of John List from 20 years ago.
So I went to Frank Bender, a sculptor friend of mine in Philadelphia who put together clay re-creations of dead children when we would send him their skulls.
I said, “Frank, this is a guy named John List who murdered his mother, his three children, and his wife. He’s been out there for years.”
He said, “John List will be balding and probably have had skin cancer. These are the glasses I think he’s got.” And he went to an antiques store and picked out these round glasses.
He spent three months making an age-progressed bust. We showed the sculpture on TV and got 20 calls from Richmond, Virginia, saying he’s here.
When the cops and FBI went to arrest him, John List had on the round glasses like the ones on the bust. He was still an accountant, still belonged to a Lutheran church, and he was remarried.
The apprehension of John List enthralled the world. What was that like?It was our first big capture. It was on the front page of the New York Times — it ran a picture of the bust. People in New Jersey were thrilled. It launched the show.
Were you satisfied with the sentence List received?List made this plea at the trial — “I’m old and feeble” and all this crap. And the judge was fantastic. He said, “Here before the jury, you might see an older man, but this is the time for the List family to talk from the grave. You’re going to jail and you’re never getting out.” He died in jail.
A clipping from The (Bergen) Record in 1989
Shifting to a criminal who’s still among the living, do you remember John Hawkins? He was the sweatpants retailer-con man who conspired in a murder-insurance fraudplot. A brilliant guy, a very tough capture. I almost caught John Hawkins 10 times. I never gave up.
It was the only case where people sent pictures of themselves partying with the fugitive all over the world. I got pictures of him with men, with women. He was engaged to a woman and living with a guy.
He was hiding in plain sight. He was teaching skiing in Canada. He went to England. He went to the south of France.
He was so smart, so handsome, so charming. Once, he claimed he was a movie producer, rented a hotel suite in London, and threw a party. He told everyone to put their coats in a room and then stole from all of them.
How did you finally catch him?Oprah started airing my most wanted. A woman called from Holland. She said, “I’m so mad. I’m engaged to John Hawkins, and he left me.”
John Hawkins
She gave us the clue that he bought a catamaran with the name Carpe Diem and was sailing in the Mediterranean and heading to Portofino.
So I got hold of the navy, which had spy satellites in the Mediterranean, and the navy police were there when he landed in Portofino. That night, he put a bed-sheet ladder together in the little jail in Portofino and escaped. One of the guards spotted him walking down the street.
Today Hawkins is out of prison and still saying he didn’t know the plot called for a murder.What do you think?That is bull — he arranged the whole thing. He was the brains behind it. He cashed the insurance check.
You should see the letters Hawkins sent me, “Go fuck yourself. I would have never been caught if not for you.”
What a moron — why try to provoke someone from a prison cell? Because his ego is as big as this building.♠
A Newscaster Becomes the Story (“News at 11,” Forensic Files)
Bradford J. King had a halfway decent career as a part-time professor, but he didn’t harbor aspirations of rising much higher.
Diane Newton King was a local celebrity
He didn’t have to. He had a wife in a high-paying profession. Diane King was a morning anchor at station WUHQ-TV in Battle Creek, Michigan.
For Brad, her salary meant a comfortable life and sharing in her perks, including a company-paid rafting trip and occasional meet-and-greets with B-list celebs like Ted Nugent.
Party’s over. Brad’s uncluttered work schedule also allowed him plenty of free time to socialize outside the marriage.
That little arrangement threatened to come undone, however, because Diane, 34, wanted to quit her job and stay at home with the couple’s 3-month-old daughter, Kateri, and 3-year-old son, Marler.
Like so many other Forensic Files bad guys, Brad, 44, decided on murder and insurance fraud instead of divorce and starting over — and believed he could outfox the law.
For this week, I looked into where Brad is today and what happened to the children. But first, here’s a recap of “News at 11,” the Forensic Files episode about the case, along with additional information drawn from internet research:
Native American heritage. Diane Marler was born in Detroit on April 4, 1956, one of five children. She later took her stepfather’s last name, Newton. She served in the army’s signal corps and earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from Wayne State University.
A member of the Mohawk Nation, Diane wanted to one day make documentaries about Native American people, according to a newspaper account. She also thought about capitalizing on her striking features with modeling work.
In 1984, she married Bradford King, a divorced father of a teenage daughter named Alissa.
Brad King circa 1992
Brad had first declared his love for Diane at an EST meeting in Colorado. At their subsequent wedding, she pledged herself “to having this marriage be magical and fun,” according to the book The Eye of the Beholder: The Almost Perfect Murder of Anchorwoman Diane Newton King by Lowell Cauffiel.
The couple eventually moved from Denver to a rented house with a rustic barn on Division Street in Marshall, Michigan.
In addition to her job at WUHQ-TV in nearby Battle Creek, Diane helped out at a local soup kitchen and did volunteer work with disadvantaged children.
Laboring in academia. Brad had been a police officer in Pontiac, Michigan, from 1969 to 1983. After that, his job history gets a little patchy. At some point, he earned a degree in criminal justice and then taught college classes on the subject.
He was dismissed from an instructor job at Western Michigan University because he was “unable to meet his class on two occasions,” according to a Battle Creek Enquirer story from Feb. 1, 1992.
Although media accounts vary on Brad’s job status around the time of the murder, one source reported that he was entirely unemployed by the winter of 1991.
Diane’s career in broadcast journalism was sturdy thanks to her diligence in researching stories and her telegenic voice and appearance.
Bad hombre. Michael Moran, a colleague from Diane’s previous job at station KJCT in Grand Junction, Colorado, would later describe her as at times “abrasive and pushy” and “domineering,” according to a Battle Creek Enquirer story following the murder.
Maybe Diane was a bit difficult, but it’s also possible that a man with those same qualities would be described as a go-getter with a commanding presence.
Marshall, Michigan, is known for its small-town charm
Whatever the case, her work was well-regarded in the industry and community.
Precautions failed. Unfortunately, an anonymous fan admired her so much that he began leaving disturbing messages for her. She eventually received the kind of letter usually seen only on 1970s detective shows — with lettering cut from magazines and then pasted on paper. “You’ll be sorry you didn’t have lunch with me,” it read.
That threat rattled Diane’s nerves, so WUHQ-TV beefed up security around the station. Brad installed extra lighting at home.
But the worst case scenario came true on February 9, 1991, when emergency services received a hysterical-spouse call from Brad, who said he’d found Diane dead in the family’s driveway.
Diane had two bullet wounds, a fatal one to her heart and another in the pelvic area.
Brad said he’d heard shots earlier while he was taking a walk in the woods but figured they came from hunters.
Ginormous story. For the village of Marshall, known for its antiques shops and annual Victorian house tour, it was the first murder in recent memory.
“The cold-blooded killing of a woman in a glamorous, high-profile occupation was a shocking anomaly in this community of 6,800,” the LA Times reported on March, 29, 1992.
Sniper’s lair: Police theorized Brad King fired the first shot from the loft in the barn
It was “Marshall’s crime of the century,” according to Suburban Secrets, a series produced by Court TV and Sirens Media that covered the case in a 2008 episode.
Police began a slow but steady investigation.
Shell game. It was noted that Brad’s anguish over his wife’s death quickly gave way to stoicism, according to Suburban Secrets.
Brad explained that, as a former law officer, he was accustomed to talking about crimes while keeping his emotions in check, according to detective Jim Stadtfeld, who appeared on Suburban Secrets.
At the Kings’ property, police found a shell casing in the loft of the barn, about 70 feet from the driveway.
Investigators wondered why a Doberman pinscher who they believed was in the barn at the time of the shooting, didn’t raise a fuss about an intruder. (Media accounts vary as to whether the dog belonged to the Kings or was “borrowed” from a relative.)
Let’s paws here. The Doberman couldn’t answer any questions for investigators, but the police found another one to help with forensics: Travis the tracker.
The German shepherd followed a scent from the loft through the woods, and then to a .22-caliber Remington Scoremaster rifle discarded in a creek bed. Brad owned the same type of gun, and boot prints that matched his own were found nearby.
Travis then traced the killer’s path back to the spot where Diane died in the driveway.
While investigators were still working on the case, Brad scooped up his two younger children and moved to Colorado, saying he was tired of facing police questioning, the AP reported.
The threesome didn’t get much time to relax. In early 1992, Michigan authorities arrested Brad, charged him with murder, and set bail at $750,000.
He raised the money but ended up stuck in jail because he didn’t meet other conditions for release.
Twin rifles. At the trial, prosecutors contended that Brad had expected Diane to be alone in the car on the day of the murder. The couple had planned on leaving Kateri and Marler with their grandparents for the night. But one of the kids got sick, so she brought them both home.
The prosecution also alleged that Brad was lying about having sold his Scoremaster rifle in 1984. The police found seven witnesses who said they’d seen the gun in Brad’s possession in the intervening years.
Diane Marler Newton and Brad King in their respective high school days
Oddly, there was a second Scoremaster to the story. A neighbor said he found one in his attic when he moved to Division Street, but ballistics tests determined it didn’t fire the fatal bullets.
Much ado about nothing. Investigators believed Brad planted the rifle there to deflect suspicion away from himself.
And they suspected Brad sent the threatening note to Diane — and had used cutout letters because she could have identified his handwriting. In fact, the authorities wondered whether the whole stalker saga was a hoax staged by Brad.
The defense suggested that a burglar killed Diane — there was a broken window at the house. But the glass fragments were on the wrong side. Thieves generally break in, not out.
And damning intelligence about Brad’s character started rolling in.
Promiscuous man. Cauffiel, who appeared on Forensic Files, said that Brad, 44, enjoyed hanging around with college kids at a fraternity house and liked doing shots of tequila at Waldo’s, a bar where students drank.
Two students told police that they were having affairs with Brad shortly before the murder, the AP reported on Jan. 6, 1993. One of the liaisons, Anne Hill, 34, said Brad felt cut off from the family’s finances, the Battle Creek Enquirer reported on Nov. 13, 1992. Diane had reportedly frozen their checking account.
Police learned that Brad had set up a date with one of his girlfriends the day after the murder, according to Suburban Secrets.
One of Diane’s sisters, Denise Verrier, said that Diane wanted a divorce — apparently the magic and fun were waning — and Brad was “enraged” by the notion of getting a full-time job and paying child support.
False sense of security. Media accounts didn’t mention the total amount of life insurance payouts Brad had to gain by his wife’s death, but Cauffiel’s book pointed to a $54,000 policy from WUHQ-TV.
In 2011, an online commenter identifying herself as a co-worker of Diane’s said she recalled Brad’s going to the manager’s office to ask when he would get the money.
Prosecutor Jon Sahli contended that on the day of the murder, Brad left a light on inside the house so Diane would think he was home. (Because of the alleged stalker, Diane had been afraid to exit the car without anyone around to protect her.)
The Kings’ house on Division Street
Brad waited in the loft, then shot Diane after she pulled into the driveway and emerged from the car, investigators believed.
Kids left at crime scene. Next, he walked over to Diane’s body and shot her at close range — before he realized the kids were in the car — Sahli alleged.
Investigators believed he then returned to the woods and did a quick 180 back to the house to “discover” Diane’s body. He couldn’t wait around for someone else to find it because the kids were strapped in the car on a wintery Michigan day (although Brad reportedly left them in the vehicle while waiting for emergency services).
Cauffiel believed that Brad, with his law enforcement experience, figured he could outwit the police via the fatal attraction-style messages and the decoy gun.
He also portrayed himself as a victim. His lawyer, John Sims, characterized the whole case as “the power of the state arrayed against Bradford King,” the Battle Creek Enquirer reported.
Sorry, no buttoneering. But Judge Conrad Sindt granted many concessions to the defense. He banned one of Diane’s BFF’s from testifying that Diane suspected Brad of having an affair while she was pregnant with Kateri and that he had lost interest in her sexually — it was hearsay, the judge ruled.
Sindt also forbade Diane’s friends and family from wearing buttons with her picture in the courtroom, and ordered her brother Allen Marler to stay away from Brad, who felt “stalked” by him; Marler denied the allegation.
In another win for the defense, Julie Cook, a college student Brad allegedly had an affair with, wasn’t allowed to testify.
But in the end, the jury had heard enough evidence to convict Brad King of first-degree murder. The Detroit Free Press reported that Brad “grabbed the table and appeared pale” when hearing the verdict.
Denise Verrier read a victim impact statement about her nightmares of her sister in the “cold gravel driveway — all alone with only the sound of her crying children to be heard.”
Forensic Files fellas. On Jan. 6, 1993, Brad received life in prison with no possibility of parole.
Today, Brad King occupies a cell in Thumb Correctional Facility in Lapeer, Michigan, the same prison occupied by another Forensic Files wife killer, Michael Fletcher.
Brad King in a circa 2018 mug shot
The Kings’ small children lived with grandparents during the courtroom proceedings.
Now young adults, both Kateri King and Marler King still live in Michigan.
She works as a nurse assistant and medical technician, and he has a career as a detailing designer in the automotive industry.
Appearance-wise, the kids take after their mother.
And one more update, KJCT-TV ended up firing Michael Moran for publicly trashing Diane King after her she died. He works as a lecturer at Colorado Mesa University today.
Sample the book. In addition to Forensic Files and Suburban Secrets, A&E series City Confidential covered the case in an episode titled “Bad News in Battle Creek.”
You can read generous excerpts of Eye of the Beholder online and scroll through the book’s photos.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
So, you’ve just finished an entire Serial or In the Dark podcast series — and now you want to put your AirPods back in their case and bask in the afterglow for a few days.
Just kidding.
Pedal pusher. If you’re like most true-crime devotees, you’re ready for the next big fling right away. And, as it turns out, Pandora wants to play matchmaker.
Aware that fans of Serial’s juggernaut Adnan Syed series might need something new to power themselves through elliptical machine workouts, the digital-streaming service plucked some data to determine which other podcasts are the most popular with Serial listeners.
Here’s a list of true-crime podcasts that Pandora (no myth) has deemed binge-worthy:
1. True Crime All The Time 2. The Minds of Madness 3. The Vanished Podcast 4. Dirty John 5. Someone Knows Something 6. The Generation Why Podcast 7. True Crime All The Time Unsolved 8. Unsolved Murders: True Crime Stories
To download the Pandora app, see instructions for your iPhone (or other Apple device) or your Android device.
A Charming Grifter Goes Down Conning Watch Dirty John online, hear the podcast, and read the stories
The story of John Meehan would have made a great Forensic Files episode.
Debra Newell (left) and her youngest daughter, Terra
The show always did an efficient job of sorting through the truths and lies con men incorporate into the life histories they present to their victims.
Unfortunately, the grand denouement for Meehan, a handsome 6-foot-2-inch ex-con posing as a hopelessly romantic doctor, didn’t happen until 2016, five years after Forensic Files stopped production.
If you’ve heard about the popularity of the Dirty John podcast but have never listened to it or read or watched anything else about the case, you might feel as though you’ve missed your chance, too.
But you haven’t — there’s still time to join the Dirty John party.
The story, first brought to mass audiences by the Los Angeles Times, has been keeping writers and producers of true-crime entertainment busy and probably will for years to come.
Here are a few options for getting some Dirty John into your life pronto:
• Dirty John (podcast that started it all). LA Times journalist Christopher Goffard persuaded a wide array of people connected to John Meehan to give interviews for the six-part series, which has racked up 30 million downloads. First and foremost, there’s Debra Newell, the wealthy interior designer who married John two months after meeting him on OurTime.com. She believed his story about being an anesthesiologist who participated in Doctors Without Borders missions. In reality, he was a Mortal Kombat-playing gigolo with a string of restraining orders in his wake. Unbeknownst to Newell, his previous residences included an RV park and a Michigan prison. Newell, 59, found out the truth only after Meehan, 55, had burrowed deeply into her finances and started making threats, like the time he told her half-orphaned nephew, Shad, he deserved to be shot. Shad gave an interview for the podcast, as did Newell’s daughters. The producers even tracked down such far-flung associates as a classmate of Meehan’s from the University of Dayton, where Dirty John flunked out of law school. How to listen: If you don’t want to download the podcast, you can listen to it on your computer via the link above (and read some of Goffard’s reporting on the case). Otherwise, you can get the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher (iOS or Android), iHeartRadio (iOS or Android) or TuneIn (iOS or Android).
John Meehan in his youth and around the time he met Debra Newell
• The True Story Behind Dirty John (article) This People magazine piece starts with the story of Meehan’s first wife, Tonia, a nurse who discovered that the charismatic father of her two daughters had earned money via staged personal-accident lawsuits and dealing cocaine.
• Dirty John: The Dirty Truth (Oxygen TV documentary) If you’ve listened to the podcast and want to see what the cast of characters looks like, you’ll enjoy this production. It’s packed with photographs and even has some old-time home-movie footage of John Meehan, who started out as a cute tyke and progressed to a popular school athlete before becoming a nurse who stole Versed and fentanyl from hospitals to feed his own habit. The link to the program on YouTube no longer works, but Oxygen is offering it online for cable subscribers for a limited time.
• Dirty John (Bravo TV miniseries) After looking at John Meehan’s full record, Bravo decided it needed an eight-part dramatization based on the real events. The 2018 offering, starring Connie Britton and Eric Bana, got mixed but mostly favorable reviews. You can see the series on Netflix. Watching on Amazon costs $1.99 an episode (even if you’re a member). You can see previews on the Bravo site and then decide whether to take the plunge.
John Meehan lived in a cell before meeting Debra Newell and moving to Newport Beach
• A Complete Timeline of the Events of Dirty John (article) Harper’s Bazaar ran this chronology of the real story behind the fictionalized miniseries on Bravo TV. It includes such milestones as the murder of Debra Newell’s sister in 1984, Meehan’s loss of his nursing license, and his attempted incineration of his wife’s Jaguar. It’s meant as a companion to the miniseries.
By the way, please don’t consider this post a spoiler. The sources above offer volumes more to discover about Dirty John and the lives he tried to ruin.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
An Accountant Murders His Wife and Burns His Boat (‘Sex, Lies, and DNA,’ Forensic Files)
Ruby Morris survived childhood trauma and fell into the arms of someone who seemed like a great catch.
Ruby and Earl Morris
She met Gaylynn Earl Morris, known as Earl, at a Memphis bar in 1959, and he adopted Ruby’s little son, Randy, when they married.
Happy home. After moving to Arizona, Ruby and Earl built an accounting business successful enough to land them in Cave Creek, a Phoenix suburb where school kids score above average on college admissions tests and zoning rules prevent Walmarts and Burger Kings from sullying the landscape.
By 1989, in addition to their sprawling house on five acres, the couple had acquired a cabin cruiser docked in San Diego and a motor home.
They had also added two daughters to their family.
Dawna, 28, was an aspiring country and western singer who used the name Dawna Kay Wells professionally. Her dad was managing her career. Cyndi, 23, worked as a waitress and lived near her parents.
Their son, Randy, 32, had a wife and three kids by then and worked in the service industry.
House of cards. The Morrises looked happy and well-adjusted on the surface, but in reality, the family was a volcano waiting to erupt.
Things started to rumble on June 3, 1989, when Ruby, 47, didn’t show up for a shopping trip she had planned with Cyndi — and Earl was nowhere in sight either.
He soon materialized, but the kids never saw their mother again.
Like lava, lurid stuff started spewing out. The case soon included a burning pleasure boat, an affair with an in-law, and DNA evidence that revealed the existence of an additional bad guy — someone almost as bad as the killer.
Missing mom and dad. “Sex, Lies, and DNA,” the Forensic Files episode about the case, dates back to the 1997 season so, for this week, I looked around for information about where wife-killer Earl Morris is today and what happened to the children.
So let’s get started on the recap along with additional information drawn from internet research:
The house the Morrises shared on East Sierra Vista Drive in Cave Creek, Arizona
On June 4, 1989, Cyndi Morris summoned police to her parents’ house when she couldn’t find her mother or father.
Suspect scene. Ruby’s yellow 1984 Cadillac was still in the driveway.
Her purse and a gun the Morrises kept in their house had disappeared, but there was no sign of a struggle or anything else valuable missing.
As soon as he heard his mother was missing, Randy jumped on an all-terrain vehicle and desperately searched for her in the desert, according to an Arizona Republic column by E.J. Montini from March 21, 1990. Cyndi went out on foot and looked for her mother in the hills around her parents’ house.
Dawna distributed leaflets asking for help finding Ruby and offering a $1,000 reward.
Blood evidence. Meanwhile, word got to Earl, 48, that his wife was missing, and he headed home from a Los Angeles trip related to Dawna’s music career. He said his car had broken down on the way back from LA and he hitchhiked the rest of the distance back to Arizona.
Police didn’t see any blood in the house, so they sprayed luminal.
The carpet and headboard in Ruby and Earl’s bedroom lit up like Times Square at night.
To find out whether the blood came from Ruby, a lab studied samples from each family member. The report confirmed it was Ruby’s blood.
Ill-fitting genes. There was more bad news. Randy, whose parents had never told him he was half-adopted, learned for the first time that not only was Earl not his biological dad but also that his real father was a sex criminal. DNA revealed that Ruby had been the victim of incest — raped and impregnated at age 14 by her own father.
After giving birth to Randy, Ruby passed him off as her little brother until she married Earl. He brought up the little boy as his own, according to Earl’s defense lawyer, as reported by the Arizona Republic on January 23, 1992.
And there was another jolt for the family: Cyndi’s DNA proved that Earl wasn’t her real father either.
What a mess.
Sordid doings. Meanwhile, detectives searched Earl’s El Camino and found more of Ruby’s blood, enough to conclude that she’d been injured too greatly to survive.
With a confirmed murder case on their hands, police dug deeper into the family’s life and found that Earl had been having an affair with Ruby’s sister, Peggy Williams Hinton.
There had reportedly been an ugly incident at an airport where Ruby confronted her husband and Peggy. Ruby threatened to reveal that Earl had been skimming money from the accounting business. She demanded a divorce and a hefty portion of the marital assets.
Fake alibi. The couple’s fortune totaled $1 million to $2.1 million, according to various media accounts.
By the October following Ruby’s disappearance, Earl had stopped talking to police without a lawyer present.
Investigators soon discovered that Earl hadn’t actually been on a trip to Los Angeles, as he claimed, around the time Ruby died. He had gone to San Diego, where his boat was docked, and returned to Phoenix via an airline. He used the pseudonym G. Norris on the ticket, but the flight crew picked his photo out of a lineup and “one of the flight attendants remembered him distinctly because of the poor quality of his toupee” (not sure how Peter Thomas read that part without snickering).
San Diego surprise. Dawna, the musical daughter who once “idolized” her father, ended up helping the police find evidence to convict him, according to a People story from May 11, 1992.
She headed to San Diego, where news crews had recently spotted a burning cabin cruiser more than 10 miles from shore. After asking around, Dawna learned that Earl had rented a speedboat on June 4, 1989.
The authorities theorized that Earl shot Ruby to death in the couple’s bedroom, loaded her body into his El Camino, then headed to San Diego, where he transferred the body to the Hi Lo, the family’s cabin cruiser, and set it on fire to destroy the evidence. (It worked — no one ever found Ruby’s body or recovered the boat). Then he fled the fire scene in the rented boat and flew back to Phoenix.
The boat sank in water more than 2,000 feet deep. Finding and extracting it would have cost too much.
Revised script. Earl was indicted in March 1990.
The prosecution, led by Maricopa County Deputy Attorney William Clayton, contended that the couple had argued about his affair and his alleged shady business practices — and then Earl killed her. Blood spatter patterns on the headboard proved that Earl shot Ruby twice in the head, the prosecution contended.
At the trial in 1992, Earl Morris changed his story. He acknowledged transporting Ruby’s body to San Diego by propping it up in the passenger seat of his vehicle, but claimed that he had found Ruby dead from suicide (Cynthia McDonnell) in their Arizona house. He covered it up because he feared police would mistakenly blame him for her death (Brad Jackson), he said.
Killer takes the stand. Defense lawyer Tom Henze suggested that horrible memories of sexual abuse in her youth and financial worries — Henze contended the couple had spent a fortune promoting Dawna’s singing career — pushed Ruby to the edge and she shot herself.
Earl Morris, who remained free on $548,000 bond during the trial, held himself together in the courtroom. As the Phoenix New Times reported on February 26, 1992:
“A former Marine pilot, the six-foot-tall Morris dresses neatly, has good posture and a sense of timing. His taste in some areas is questionable. His jet-black toupee, for example, is much too obvious … On the witness stand, Morris often hesitates briefly before answering … It never fails to bring the jurors into a forward lean, awaiting his answers.”
Spectators might have enjoyed hearing Earl Morris tell his side of the story, but that didn’t mean they bought it.
Macabre trip. Meanwhile, newspapers around the U.S. ran the AP story about the man who drove 300 miles from Arizona to California with his late wife riding shotgun with a baseball cap pulled over her eyes.
After a six-week trial, the jury found Earl guilty of murder.
Judge Brown gave him a minimum of 25 years and fined him $205,500 for court and investigative costs.
Peggy Williams Hinton
“There’s really no winners or losers in a situation like this,” Dawna Kay Wells said, as reported by the AP. “I’m relieved that it’s finally done. We’ve gotten through this.”
Slight pay cut. Today, Earl Morris occupies a cell in the Stiner Unit of the Arizona State Prison Complex in Lewis.
The once-prosperous accountant appears to have worked hard during his long incarceration, occupying such positions as food service worker and painter, with pay ranging from 20 cents to 50 cents an hour.
The Arizona Department of Corrections notes that Earl has committed no infractions while behind razor wire.
Not daddy’s girl. Nonetheless, he was denied parole in July 2018.
He has outlived Peggy Hinton, the sister-in-law who went to her grave denying that she ever had an affair with him. She was buried next to Ruby in Bellevernon Cemetery in Friendship, Tennessee, 2003.
As far as the children, Cyndi Morris appears to be married and still living in Cave Creek. Randy Morris has also remained in Arizona.
Randy told columnist E.J. Montini that Earl Morris had never cared much about him and Cyndi because they weren’t pursuing high-paying professions — Dawna was their dad’s favorite.
But Dawna remained faithful to her mother. She appeared on the Maury Povich show to talk about the murder case in 1992 and also gave the People interview. (You can see the accompanying People magazine pictures in a pdf.)
Grandparent a sex criminal. No recent information about Dawna or her career turned up on the internet. She has probably changed her name (or maybe Dawna Kay Wells was just a pseudonym used in the media).
Gaylynn Earl Morris in a recent mug shot
In addition to watching as their father was made to pay for Ruby’s death, the children saw charges brought against their grandfather, Clyde B. Williams, for raping Ruby, according to Forensic Files.
It’s not clear whether or not he was convicted and served jail time.
But it was a little bit more justice for Ruby Charlene Williams Morris, who despite being saddled with a disloyal sister, depraved father, and sleazy husband, achieved success as an entrepreneur and brought up three nice children who loved her.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
P.S. The story became the basis of a 1997 made-for TV movie called “Deep Family Secrets.” It got mediocre IMDB reviews, but you can watch it on YouTube and form your own opinion.
This week, we’ll take a little sabbatical from Forensic Files to observe the 25th anniversary of Brandon Teena’s murder — a true-crime case little known outside of Nebraska until Hollywood came knocking.
Brandon Teena, right, dated a number of women but reportedly cared the most about Lana Tisdel
Brandon died at the hands of two lowlifes named John Lotter and Marvin “Thomas” Nissen just before New Year’s Day of 1994.
Dissolute youths. The underachieving trio met while they were couch-surfing and partying in the town of Falls City and other spots in Richardson County.
Lotter and Nissen, both 22, were ex-convicts with insurmountable pasts. As writer John Gregory Dunne described them in The New Yorker:
“Their sociopathic curricula vitae were so similar as to be almost interchangeable. Psychiatric instability, tumultuous family lives, absentee parents, trigger tempers, suicidal tendencies, foster homes, a fascination with lethal objects, juvenile detention, sexual promiscuity, substance abuse, crime (theft and attempted burglary for Lotter, arson for Nissen), prison.”
Although Brandon was born to a teenaged widowed mother, he grew up in a relatively stable home.
Name switch. His main problem was having a gender identity crisis in an era when people didn’t talk about that kind of thing openly. He was born a girl but cut his hair short and styled himself as a boy.
While friends would later describe him as sweet, clean cut, and respectable, Brandon did acquire some legal troubles of his own. He used stolen checks and credit cards to pay for flowers and stuffed animals for the women he dated; he was a romantic.
At traffic stops, he tried to skirt the law by giving the pseudonym “Charles Brayman” to police.
Turned to savages. When Lotter and Nissen found out that their recently acquired drinking buddy — who was dating Lotter’s former flame Lana Tisdel — was actually a woman whose real name was Teena Brandon, they became enraged.
They beat up and raped Brandon one night in December 1993.
After Brandon, 21, filed sexual assault charges, Lotter and Nissen decided to kill him in a case that became the subject of the 1998 documentary The Brandon Teena Story and the 1999 movie Boys Don’t Cry starring Hilary Swank.
Scene of the triple homicide in Humboldt, Nebraska
Dramatization on big screen. The latter film, a surprise hit, helped raise awareness of the intolerance faced by people in the LGBT community.
Lotter and Nissen, portrayed by actors Peter Sarsgaard and Brendan Sexton III, were already in prison for murder by the time the movies came out.
In addition to stabbing and shooting Brandon, whom they found hiding beneath a blanket in a farmhouse in Humboldt, the duo murdered witnesses Lisa Lambert, 24, and Phillip Devine, 22.
The killers spared the life of Lambert’s baby son, Tanner. They deposited him in his crib before they fled.
Nissen later admitted that their original plan was to dismember Brandon, but they didn’t have a chance to go through with it, according to court papers.
Ice going, guys. The murderers attempted some precautions. They took a circuitous trip back to Falls City, so no one would see them returning from Humboldt’s direction.
Lotter and Nissen disposed of the murder weapons, a stolen .380-caliber handgun and a knife with “Lotter” written on its case, by throwing them into the Nemaha River. But the water was frozen, and police found the items the next day.
So where are Lotter and Nissen today?
Lotter, whose criminal record traces back to a 1987 theft and escape conviction at age 16, occupies a cell on death row in the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution.
A youngish John Lotter and in a recent mug shot
He has kept busy with appeals, all rejected, over the years and recently came up with a new defense tack — that the state can’t execute him because he’s intellectually disabled.
Point person. As a boy, Lotter scored 76 on a school IQ test, but he got only 67 on the one he took while incarcerated.
The latter would land him below Nebraska’s cutoff of 70 points for death chamber eligibility.
But it’s hard to imagine that the justice system would give more credence to an intelligence test taken in prison than one given during childhood — when the taker had no reason to deliberately appear compromised.
Judges unsympathetic. Plus, it’s possible that Lotter is just bad at taking written tests. He’s no Neil deGrasse Tyson, but he speaks distinctly, enunciating “evidentiary hearing” perfectly well, for example.
Whatever the case, in 2018, Nebraska Supreme Court, turned down Lotter’s appeal. In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take Lotter’s death penalty appeal.
His ex-pal Thomas Nissen is serving his sentence of life without parole plus 24 years at Lincoln Correctional Center.
Interestingly, although Nissen reportedly has an IQ score in the 80s, Dunne, who corresponded with him in prison, said that Nissen read and understood books written by Dunne’s wife, the literary journalist Joan Didion.
New development. In 2007, Nissen made a surprise announcement that he, and not Lotter, actually fired the bullets that killed Brandon Teena, Phillip Devine, and Lisa Lambert.
Lotter demanded a new trial on that basis, but he never got one. Regardless of who pulled the trigger, Lotter helped plan the murders, which makes him legally accountable just the same.
Brandon’s mother, JoAnn, won $80,000 in a civil suit against the county for failing to arrest Lotter and Nissen immediately after the rape charges were filed.
No visible means of support. But a court later reduced Richardson County’s liability. JoAnn received only $17,000, according to an account from writer Charles Laurence that ran in the (Ottawa) Citizen’s Weekly on April 2, 2000.
The killers, who reportedly had a total of $5 between them at the time of their arrests, would have to pay the balance, the court decided.
It’s unclear whether Lotter and Nissen were ever employed or what they did otherwise to obtain beer and gas money before their arrests for murder.
Their reduced circumstances, however, haven’t stopped the pair from snagging love interests while behind bars.
Thomas Nissen in court and in a recent mugshot
Not in the social register. Nissen became engaged to a pen pal from Chicago in 2006, according to the Omaha World Herald.
Lotter applied for a license to marry Jeanne Bissonnette, 50, of Lakewood, Washington, in 2013, according to the Omaha World Herald.
The newspaper story mentioned that Nebraska state prisons don’t keep records of inmate weddings, so there’s no way to find out whether the men followed through and actually got married.
But Lotter and Nissan don’t have a whole lot at stake in that regard. Nebraska isn’t one of the six states that allow conjugal visits.
A Cheating Husband Is Oblivious to Electronics “One for the Road” (Forensic Files)
Mike Garvin is memorable for something he forgot or maybe was unaware of in the first place — a little piece of modern-day technology known as the security camera.
Mike and Shirley Garvin
The video clips that contradicted the Florida real estate agent’s account of his wife’s disappearance helped authorities win a murder conviction against him. They also made it fun to watch “One for the Road,” the Forensic Files episode about the case.
Gone girl. For this week, I checked into where the killer is today and also looked for details about homicide victim Shirley Garvin’s life.
So let’s get started on the recap of “One for the Road,” along with additional information drawn from internet research:
In January 2003, Michael Jay Garvin reported that his wife, Shirley, had vanished from their hotel room in Key West, Florida.
Life of the party. Shirley Garvin, 55, was born in Washington, D.C., the only child of Robert and Cecilia Fleming.
She met Michael Garvin when they both lived in Virginia Beach, and their 14-year marriage looked happy enough from the outside. Mike had no record of domestic violence or other prior criminal behavior, according to an AP account.
None of the newspaper coverage about the murder mentioned an occupation for Shirley, but she was described as a socialite and probably didn’t have to worry too much about money. Her parents, who died in 2000 and 2001, had left her around $900,000, according to Missing Persons Unit, a Court TV series that produced an episode about her murder.
Shirley and Mike lived on the 9000 block of Whittington Drive in Jacksonville, Florida, and both enjoyed serving on the board of the Mandarin Community Club, where Shirley was the “driving force” behind organizing parties and other get-togethers, according to a Florida Times-Union account.
Emergency search operation. Mike Garvin told police that he thought his wife went out for a walk and he had gotten worried when she didn’t return.
Shirley often wore a Rolex watch and other expensive jewelry that could have made her a target for thieves looking to prey on tourists. She also had high blood pressure and became disoriented without her medication, her concerned husband told police.
Local and state law enforcement sprang into action, searching every corner of the Quality Inn — where no one remembered seeing Shirley — and then mobilizing tracker dogs on the ground and a helicopter over the Atlantic Ocean in an effort to find her.
On the beach a mile from the hotel, a citizen found a pair of sandals that looked like ones Shirley owned, so perhaps she’d accidentally drowned.
Trouble in paradise. The authorities considered suicide as a possibility, too. Maybe she just walked into the sea.
The Quality Inn in Key West has since closed
But her friends told investigators she wasn’t depressed — quite the opposite, she was a live wire. But she’d grown disenchanted with Mike and was thinking about breaking up.
Detectives tracked down security footage from a rest-stop convenience store along the 500-mile route from Jacksonville to Key West. It showed Mike Garvin entering and exiting the Pilot Foodmart without Shirley in tow.
A woman who doesn’t hit the restroom during a long road trip? Definitely suspicious.
PC problem. Mike’s account of stopping at a local eatery to pick up two meals for the couple to eat back at their hotel room fell apart, too. A bartender said Mike only bought one sandwich, and a receipt proved it. As YouTube commenters summed it up:
Corey HodgesAll that money and you stay at a Quality Inn. RedGibsonsRockWhat can you expect from a guy who’s too cheap to buy a second meal for the sake of his alibi?
The authorities, who seized Mike’s computer, found out that he not only had a girlfriend on the side but was also trolling for other date mates on Match.com during the time police were searching for Shirley. (The tech-illiterate Mike didn’t know homicide rule No. 1 — destroy the hard drive.)
And the cameras implicated him again when authorities found tollbooth footage that showed him driving alone in a white Jaguar during the time he was supposed to be heading toward Key West with Shirley in the passenger seat.
Former Garvin house in Jacksonville
No explaining this away. In hopes of finding more evidence, the authorities did something that ultimately guaranteed Garvin would be saying goodbye to romantic trysts with mysterious women and hello to uncomfortable encounters with male career criminals: They secretly attached a GPS device to his car.
The GPS — which at the time was relatively new technology, so we can’t blame Mike for being blindsided by it — tracked him to a remote site on Jacksonville’s Hecksher Drive, where authorities later found Shirley’s body wrapped in plastic in a very shallow grave, according to a Florida Times-Union story. She had died from two bullet wounds to the head from a .22 caliber pistol, probably fired while she was asleep.
Police found traces of her blood at the couple’s home.
Over-extended husband. At that point, police already had a solid case that Mike Garvin had made the trip to Key West alone, as a cover story. But the incriminating evidence kept rolling in.
Shirley’s close friends — the gals she met for ladies night every week — told investigators that she hadn’t mentioned anything to them about a trip to Key West.
Mike’s finances gave him a motive for the crime. He was $80,000 in debt and had bounced checks, according to Forensic Files and Missing Persons Unit.
Most of the couple’s assets were in Shirley’s name. And, as mentioned, she was thinking about divorce. What did the popular, fun-loving Shirley need with a promiscuous spendthrift of a husband?
Police arrested Mike Garvin and charged him with first-degree murder.
He took a long hard look at the pile of evidence against him and did something rarely seen on Forensic Files.
Instead of changing his original story, he pleaded guilty.
Friends’ perspective. Defense lawyer Mark Miller said his client wished to “spare his family” of a potentially “high profile trial,” according to an AP account from Aug. 27, 2004.
Shirley Garvin
Judge Karen Cole listened to victim impact statements before the sentencing.
“She tried and tried and he murdered her,” said Shirley’s cousin, Ellen Fleming, according to a Florida Times-Union account from Sept. 1, 2004. “Why could he not be man enough to just walk away?”
It also came out that Shirley had helped finance Mike’s daughter’s college education.
“Shirley was a good wife,” said friend Wilma McLaren, as reported by the Florida Times-Union. “She created a beautiful home for her and Mike. She did not deserve this horrible ending.”
Slammer city. Judge Cole gave him life without the possibility of parole on a charge of second-degree murder.
Up until recently, Garvin was better known as No. 126380 in the South Unit of the South Florida Reception Center (a rather friendly-sounding name for a state prison) in Doral, about 10 miles from the Orlando International Airport.
He didn’t have a chance to fly the coop — the Florida Department of Corrections kept him in “close custody,” making him ineligible for work camps outside a secure perimeter.
As of March 2020, Florida no longer listed him as a prisoner, and a Forensic Files Now reader (thanks, Marcus) wrote in to say he died after serving 17 years.
Mike Garvin in a 2019 mug shot
Mystery remains. Forensic Files mentioned that, before Shirley, Mike had a wife who had died by hanging herself.
Media accounts didn’t reveal her name or any other information about her.
Garvin had her body cremated, so police couldn’t go back and look for forensic evidence of foul play.
It’s lucky the Florida authorities did such a good job of building a case against him for Shirley’s murder and put him in a place where security cameras — and bulked-up inmates with neck tattoos — discouraged him from harming anyone else.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
A Survivor Needs Rescuing (“Up in Smoke,” Forensic Files)
The story of the house fire that made Paul Camiolo into an adult orphan is a horrible tragedy, but it’s free of evil or scandalous behavior.
Paul Camiolo
“Up in Smoke” doesn’t offer up a wife having an affair with a young janitor or a funeral director who took out five life insurance policies on the kid who washes the limousines. The closest thing to a bad guy is an anonymous flooring contractor who was probably just being a little bit cheap.
And the crucial forensics in the episode aren’t your typical gruesome Forensic Files evidence — no bone fragments or blood splatter. You can watch the show while you’re eating. It even has some fun facts.
For this week, I looked for an epilogue for Paul Camiolo, who Forensic Files portrays as a devoted son transformed into the No. 1 suspect for a double homicide that never happened.
Although I agree with the conclusion that he was innocent, online research yielded some information not mentioned in “Up in Smoke” that makes it easier to understand why the authorities believed in his guilt at first.
Multigenerational home. So let’s get started on the recap, along with additional facts drawn from the Web:
Software technician Paul Camiolo lived with his parents, Rosalie and Ed Camiolo, in a Colonial-style house in Upper Moreland, Pennsylvania.
Rosalie, 57, worked in the computer industry, and Ed, 81, was a retired government employee.
She had suffered a number of strokes along with other health woes, and he had one leg that was shorter than the other because of childhood bout with polio, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer account. He had also recently battled cancer.
The medical problems limited the couple’s mobility, so Paul, their only child, helped with tasks like shopping.
Horrific scene. In the wee hours of September 18, 1996, Paul called emergency services to report a fire in the living room.
Willow Grove volunteer firefighters arrived to find him getting dressed on the front lawn. He told them that his parents escaped through the backdoor.
Rosalie and Edward Camiolo’s May-December marriage was apparently a happy one
They discovered Rosalie severely burned on the back porch and Edward in cardiac arrest inside the house.
He died that night. She succumbed to her injuries 10 weeks later.
Wavering story. Paul, who was around 30 years old at the time, explained that his mother was a chain-smoker and had probably set the couch on fire accidentally. He threw a pitcher of water on the flames, but instead of smothering them, it fed them, he said.
According to Forensic Files, Paul said that he told his parents to go out the back door, then phoned for help and left via the front door.
What the show didn’t mention was that Paul allegedly gave shifting accounts about whether he was asleep or awake when the fire broke out and changed his story about the logistics of his attempts to save his parents, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Worrisome labwork. Former Assistant District Attorney Timothy Woodward, who appeared on Forensic Files, pointed out that Paul was the beneficiary of his parents’ six-figure life insurance payouts. Woodward wondered whether Camiolo was tired of caring for his mom and dad.
Tests on the flooring near the couch showed traces of gasoline. The authorities built a case around their theory that Paul used the accelerant to start a fire while his parents were upstairs, then escaped and left them to die.
Montgomery County, Pa., where Paul Camiolo and his parents lived
In January 1999, Paul was charged with first degree murder, arson, and insurance fraud and held without bail in the Montgomery County jail.
Excruciating aftermath. Thus Paul Camiolo traveled from a literal burning hell to a figurative one of public infamy. As the Philadelphia Inquirer reported on January 21, 1999:
“Paul Camiolo wanted money, Montgomery County authorities say, and he didn’t want to pay the health-care costs of his sick parents…Camiolo took care of both problems…[He] inherited more than $400,000 and moved to Bucks County.”
The article noted that he purchased a house for $77,000 in the town of Holland, Pennsylvania, after his parents died.
Fortunately for Paul, his extended family — including nephew Vince Camiolo, who appeared on Forensic Files — believed in his innocence. More than a dozen of his relatives showed up to support him at his preliminary hearing, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Loving kin. Vince Camiolo noted that his uncle Paul was “unusual,” but that didn’t make him guilty. Relatives attested to the fact that Paul was happy to transport his parents to family picnics and the annual Polenta Night at the Sons of Italy, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer story from March 30, 1999.
Bill Burns, who was Paul’s boss at Shopman Inc., a software business in Ivyland, called the charges against him “outrageous” and spoke of his patient, empathetic approach to helping customers. He said that Paul had never once complained about his parents.
Burns continued to pay Paul his salary while he was in jail and vowed to keep his job open for him until his release, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer piece.
Investing in quality. Paul had another supporter in Steve Avato, one of the volunteer firefighters who had responded to the blaze. Avato also worked as a special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms — and he doubted that the traces of gasoline found on the floor added up to arson.
During his Forensic Files appearance, Avato also noted he didn’t find it suspicious that Paul escaped via the front door — instead of the backdoor, with his parents — because people tend to flee fires through the door they normally use to exit.
Camiolo enlisted Thomas S. Cometa and William Ruzzo to defend him and paid $65,000 to hire “five respected fire experts,” according to a Times Leader report from 2000.
Heavy hitters weigh in. One of the experts, Richard Roby, PhD., built a replica of the house. After some testing, he determined that an intentionally set fire would have spread faster than the one in the Camiolo’s house that night in 1996.
In custody, Paul Camiolo faces reporters
Here’s where the interesting trivia comes in. John Lentini, another of the fire investigators hired by the defense, said that in the 1970s — when the house was built — some flooring contractors thinned out varnish with gasoline because it cost less than higher-quality agents.
That explained why the lab found traces of gasoline on the floor but not the rug.
Flare up. Also, tests had pegged the gasoline as leaded, a type of fuel not sold in Pennsylvania in more than a decade at the time of the fire. How could Paul have used leaded gasoline as an accelerant when there was no place to buy it?
And the most useful fact: Polyurethane, a material used in the Camiolo’s couch, burns more fiercely when it comes into contact with water. (One more reason to keep a fire extinguisher handy. Actually, I need to go to the hardware store.)
The episode contains a great quote from Lentini, who called arson investigation a “profession largely controlled and dominated by hacks. They make complicated decisions about chemistry and physics and they never took chemistry and physics.”
In other words, they weren’t bad guys — just wrong guys, whose overconfidence ended up saddling an innocent fire survivor’s life with an awful stigma.
180-degree turn. The defense theorized that Rosalie accidentally dropped a match on the polyurethane sofa. Like a grease fire, the flames on the polyurethane responded to water by getting bigger, lending credence to Paul Camiolo’s statement to investigators.
The prosecution did its own test with polyurethane and got similar results.
The Montgomery County attorney general’s office — which had announced in March 1999 that it was seeking the death penalty — reversed itself, dropped the charges against Paul Camiolo, and set him free in the fall of that year after 11 months of confinement.
He returned to his software job at Shopman Inc.
A new legal fight. In July 2000, Camiolo filed a lawsuit against the Upper Moreland police, fire investigators, and State Farm insurance for false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, bad faith, and even some RICO offenses. He asked for $150,000 in damages.
Three years later, a federal appeals court ruled that Camiolo couldn’t sue the authorities or the insurance company (which had settled with him for $240,000 in 1998). The decision, dated June 30, 2003, noted that there was no scheme “to defraud or to deprive Camiolo of something by trick or deceit.”
Although he didn’t win any money as a result of his legal ordeal, on January 14, 2007, Paul got the satisfaction of having the Philadelphia Inquirer — the same newspaper that ran numerous articles about him as a murder suspect — include him in a feature story about the havoc that shaky arson investigations can wreak.
“Where do you go to get your name back?” Paul told the paper. “The mere accusation is so disgusting.”
Conflict of interest? He also got to vent in a Tribune Review story that questioned the practice of insurance companies paying law enforcement to conduct arson investigations.
The Camiolos’ gravestone reveals they had a second son, who died at 21
“It’s sad,” Paul told the Tribune Review, “that there are cases all throughout this country where insurance companies function as police in a district attorney’s case.”
He got additional support from John Lentini, who dedicated the reference book Scientific Protocols for Fire Investigation to Paul Camiolo and others “for whom a second look at their fire made all the difference.”
And the court of public appears to have migrated over to Paul’s corner, as numerous online comments indicate.
So where is Paul today?
According to an internet posting dated 2016, he has moved to Argentina.
It’s not clear why he relocated to South America, but his presence on social media affirms that he still has the support of the large extended family of Camiolos, who knew firsthand of his kindness to his parents and always believed in his innocence.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Before launching into the recap, I wanted to mention that forensicfilesnow.com is on Instagram. It’s my first foray into posting on that particular platform, so if anyone has any suggestions, I’m all ears (or eyes).
Sally and Harry Weiner
Anyhow, this week’s episode takes us back to a time before social media, when most people weren’t even tech-savvy enough to know that the stuff they erased from their computer hard drives could land them behind razor wire one day.
Sally Weiner’s kidnapping, the subject of “The Stake-Out” on Forensic Files, took place in 1988.
Bad blood. David Carl Copenhefer harbored a massive grudge against Sally’s husband, Harry Weiner. He abducted Sally in a bid to extract money from Harry.
Like virtually all kidnapping-for-ransom plans, it backfired.
But Copenhefer was incorrigible. While he was awaiting trial, he came up with a new scheme.
In fact, researching Copenhefer was kind of like cleaning out the garage — there’s that last box buried way in the back with some disgusting old forgotten project inside.
In this case, the unpleasant discovery was something that happened in Copenhefer’s young adulthood, years before the Weiner case shook up a little town in the hinterlands of Pennsylvania.
Small-town folks. More on that and epilogues for the principles are coming up, so let’s get started on the recap of “The Stake Out,” along with other information drawn from internet research:
Sally Elaine Stough graduated from Strong Vincent High School in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1969. She married Harry Weiner, and they had two children.
The Weiners lived in Corry, a town of 6,500. Harry was the branch manager of a Pennbank in the Corry Plaza, the same shopping area where David and Patricia Copenhefer operated Corry Cards and Books.
Why, that’s wonderful. The Copenhefers and Weiners belonged to the First Presbyterian Church of Corry, although the Weiners later switched to the Corry Missionary Alliance, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Both couples had also participated in Marriage Encounter weekends.
But media accounts vary as to whether the Weiners and Copenhefers were close friends or just acquaintances.
One day in June of 1988, Sally, 37, got a call from a man identifying himself as an aide to U.S. Rep. Tom Ridge. Her husband, Harry, who was a civic leader in addition to a bank manager, had been chosen as Corry’s man of the year, the caller said.
Reconstructed ransom note
Big anticlimax. After asking her not to divulge the great news to anyone, the caller made an appointment for Sally to meet him so they could secretly plan the surprise award ceremony in Harry’s honor.
Harry Weiner never saw his wife again.
He got a phone call with an audio recording of Sally asking him to follow the instructions in a bag under his car — otherwise, a kidnapper would cut off Sally’s hands.
Calling in the pros. A note said to fill the bag with “90 percent of the money stored at his bank,” pick up walkie talkies at Radio Shack, and deliver the cash at a secret location, according to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story from March 18, 1989.
Weiner immediately went to the authorities.
He already knew about the “man of the year” meeting — Sally, bless her, hadn’t been able to keep it a secret from him.
No payoff. The police and FBI arranged for a sharpshooter to hide in the backseat of Harry’s car and for agents to conceal themselves in the woods for the big meeting.
It would have been exciting to watch the confrontation unfold, but the bad guy never showed up.
David Copenhefer, looking like Ted Bundy in these circa-1999 shots, was motivated by greed.
Harry might have missed a second note, with additional instructions that Copenhefer had dropped near the scene, according to Forensic Files.
Also, as investigators later learned, a local journalist with a police scanner had inadvertently leaked news of the police’s involvement to Copenhefer, which spooked him.
Tragic development. Nevertheless, Copenhefer persisted. Harry received other notes, including one with a directive to look for him near an abandoned church a few miles from town, but a face-to-face meeting never happened at all.
In the meantime, Sally’s body turned up. Someone had shot her in the back of the head and thrown her into a farmer’s field. According to Forensic Files, the killer used a Glaser bullet, which made it impossible to determine the caliber of the murder weapon.
The Weiners had no known enemies, but police were able to zero in on a suspect fairly quickly.
Type of crime. Investigators found out that Harry Weiner had recently turned down the Copenhefers’ application for a $25,000 loan they needed to expand the bookstore and open a Rax fast-food franchise.
Next, a sharp-eyed police officer noticed that a sign posted on the door of the Copenhefers’ bookstore had a border design and typeface similar to those used in the ransom notes.
From there, the evidence slowly crept in. Tire tracks near Sally Weiner’s body matched those on Copenhefer’s van.
Investigators found a rough draft of one of the ransom notes in Copenhefer’s trash. Inside his house, they discovered Glaser ammunition and metal filing-cabinet rods that matched a rod the kidnapper had tied a ransom note to.
FBI bytes back. Next, they carted away Copenhefer’s PCs which, viewers may recall, looked like items from a $5 table at a yard sale today. But they were state of the art back when computers were called word processors.
Although helpful programs to recover deleted files didn’t exist in 1988, the FBI managed to resurrect a draft of another ransom note and a to-do list that suggested Copenhefer planned to kill Harry after he got the ransom money.
Corry Plaza, site of Pennbank and Copenhefers’ store
Investigators theorized that David Copenhefer hatched the kidnapping plan while stewing about the loan refusal.
Loyal spouse. When Sally went to the designated locale to discuss the bogus awards ceremony, Copenhefer showed up, overpowered her, forced her to record the demand message to Harry, and then killed her, investigators contended.
Copenhefer denied everything.
His wife, Patricia, stood by him, saying the charges were “180 degrees off the mark” and her husband was a “kind and generous man” who did “a lot of things anonymously to help other people,” according to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story from June 22, 1988.
She also said that her husband was either with her or their 9-year-old son, Paul, in Erie at the time the crimes occurred.
Sally Weiner
Diabolical. The defense lawyer contended there was no link between the notes and the murder — and emphasized that David Copenhefer had no prior criminal record.
But Copenhefer more than made up for that while in Erie County Prison awaiting trial. He and fellow inmates Walter Koehler and Daniel Verosko came up with a plan to kill three people: Harry Weiner, Erie FBI agent Kim Kelly, and Verosko’s wife.
Fortunately, those murders never happened and Verosko agreed to testify about the plot when David Copenhefer went on trial.
Wacky story. David Copenhefer took the stand in his own defense — and got creative.
He explained that he handled some of the ransom notes and followed some of the instructions because he wanted to help Harry Weiner. Patricia Copenhefer testified that her husband had spoken of the case but only because he viewed it as an interesting “puzzle,” according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Nonetheless, a jury convicted David Copenhefer of first-degree murder in March of 1989, and he received the death penalty.
Wife in on it. Sadly for the Copenhefers’ son, Patricia Copenhefer ended up getting her hands dirty, too.
In October 1988, she was arrested for sending “coded messages” via classified ads and greeting cards to intimidate Verosko out of testifying at her husband’s trial.
Patricia’s messages to Verosko sounded more like desperation than intimidation, but a jury found her guilty of a misdemeanor charge related to the notes.
Pottsville Republican clip about Patricia Copenhefer
After she asked for mercy because of her little boy, Erie County common pleas Judge Shad Connelly gave her one to two years in prison and a $500 fine, and ordered her to pay prosecution costs, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported in November 1989.
Secret past. Epilogues about those parties are coming up in a minute, but first I need to share the bombshell from the reel-to-reel tape era.
The Weiner case was not the first time David Copenhefer had been charged with a homicide.
On January 9, 1971, a Copenhefer associate turned up dead in Kettering, Ohio.
John L. Calkins and Copenhefer had allegedly planned to open a computer-repair business together. Copenhefer was managing the gubernatorial campaign for Roger Cloud, who he hoped would award him state tech-maintenance contracts, according to the Dayton Daily News. (Cloud lost the election.)
Gory murder. A few days before the murder,Copenhefer had taken out $550,000 in life insurance on Calkins — who was only 24 years old — and named himself the beneficiary of $400,000 of the payouts, according to the Dayton Daily News, which covered the ensuing murder trial extensively.
Prosecutors believed that Copenhefer, also 24 at the time, tried to kill Calkins by running him over with his car on Mud Run Road, then discovered he was still alive and shot him nine times, nearly severing his head.
At least one witness reportedly spotted Copenhefer’s blood-stained Opel GT near the crime scene, but others said they heard gunshots at times that contradicted the chronology the prosecution laid out.
After a 22-day trial, the longest in Greene County history, a jury found Copenhefer not guilty in August 1971.
Doubly loyal. Apparently, prosecutors couldn’t use this against Copenhefer during the Weiner murder trial because an acquittal doesn’t count as incriminating evidence. So, technically, Copenhefer did have the “clean record” he liked to emphasize.
Patricia and David Copenhefer were already married at the time of Calkins’ murder, according to the Dayton Daily News, although it’s not clear whether any of the couple’s friends from church or customers at the bookstore in Corry knew about his history.
As to why Patricia stood by David during not one but two murder trials, newspaper accounts describe him as coming from a prominent, well-to-do family in his native Ohio, so maybe she thought he deserved a supersized benefit of the doubt.
Copenhefer’s mother, Doris, who underwrote the cost of her son’s defense in the Calkins’ trial, was chairperson of the Miami County Republican Party and ran for a seat in the Ohio House of Representatives in 1972. His father, Carl, who died before either murder, had founded the Copenhefer Meat Co.
Sentence ends abruptly. So, skipping ahead to the age of edge-to-edge smartphone screens and gluten-free bagels, where are all the parties today?
After many unsuccessful swings at appeals, including claims that investigators invaded his privacy, Copenhefer’s legal counsel persuaded a district court judge to throw out his death penalty sentence.
But in 2012, a circuit court trio of judges voted 2-1 to reinstate it.
It mattered little, however, because Copenhefer soon died of natural causes at the age of 65 while on death row.
Patricia Copenhefer lives in Ohio today. It’s not clear what her marital status is now, but she remarried at least once after parting with David. Her former mother-in-law, Doris Copenhefer, died in 1983.
Corry, Pa., population 6,500, during a Furry Friends Friday in October 2018
Son rises. Harry Weiner stayed in Pennsylvania but left his bank job shortly after the trial and became an assistant director for the Christian Coalition, according to his LinkedIn profile. He later worked in management for Burton Funeral Home and Crematory in Erie, Pa., and today is semi-retired.
The two kids he shared with Sally Weiner have had their privacy guarded over the years, and no information surfaced about them.
But some intelligence turned up about the Copenhefers’ son: Paul went into the business of saving lives via a long career in the paramedical field.
That’s all for this week. Until next time, cheers. — RR
They Made Heists a Family Affair (“Cloak of Deceit,” Forensic Files)
A wave of North Carolina bank robberies got so big in the 1990s that the New York Times took notice.
The average haul was $11,722 per job, oftentimes the criminals were too high on drugs or too impulsive to take the necessary precautions, and authorities usually were able to catch them quickly, according to the NYT story by the late financial journalist David J. Morrow.
Claude, Alvin, and Larry Bellamy
The Bellamy brothers, who created their own Carolinas bank-robbery spree during the same time period, accrued a much better record.
Elusive threesome. They averaged around $75,000 per job, carefully concealed their identities, got in and out of the banks in no more than five minutes, and didn’t leave any forensic evidence.
It took nine years and the FBI, but the law finally caught up with the masked brothers and put them behind razor wire.
For this week, I checked to see where the Bellamys are today and looked for any clues as to what made three gainfully employed middle-aged men suddenly turn into felons.
Trusty formula. But first, here’s a recap of “Cloak of Deceit,” the Forensic Files episode about the Bellamys, along with extra information drawn from internet research:
Beginning in 1991, a trio of robbers began hitting banks in and around Calabash, North Carolina, and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
In each robbery, two armed masked men would corral customers and employees, demand cash, and escape via a waiting car driven by a third accomplice.
Hot cars. After one robbery of $175,000, a good Samaritan wrote down the license plate number and chased the vehicle, but the robbers confronted him with a gun, and he fled.
The license plate number didn’t help because the getaway car was stolen and later abandoned. The mystery men never seemed to use their own vehicles.
Bank robberies stirred up a tiny North Carolina town
Although the assailants never shot or killed any of the bank employees, one of them held a gun to a worker’s head and threatened to pull the trigger if she couldn’t remember the safe’s combination.
And Sandra Campbell, a teller at First Atlantic Bank, would later testify that one of the men had grabbed her by the throat, dragged her across the floor, and kicked her repeatedly, according to court papers.
Prospective giveaway. The band of brothers accumulated a total of $600,000 to $700,000 in the course of eight bank jobs. The threesome enjoyed holding up one particular branch of the North Carolina National Bank in Calabash so much that they did it three times, in 1991, 1992, and 1996.
Meanwhile, investigators struggled to identify the thieves. The fact that one of the robbers used a Weaver stance, commonly adopted by law officers when pointing their guns, made them wonder whether he was one of their own, according to Myrtle Beach Police Chief Warren Gall’s Forensic Files interview.
The authorities’ big break came in 1998.
Another good Samaritan, this one at Branch Banking and Trust in Calabash — where the brothers got away with $63,000 — scribbled down a getaway car’s license number and tried unsuccessfully to chase it.
Bad way to become a film star
Police traced the speeding 1997 Nissan pickup to a local landscaper.
Face to face at last. His name was Alvin Bellamy, age 41, and he had two strikes against him. First, in his wallet, he had $117 all in crisp new fives and ones, suspicious because $12,000 consisting of only fives and ones had been nabbed in a recent bank robbery, according to court papers.
And second, Alvin, who worked for Coastal Landscape and Maintenance, had two brothers in law enforcement.
Claude Wendell Bellamy, 44, was a former patrolman first class who worked for the Horry County Police Dept. in South Carolina for 12 years.
James Larry Bellamy, known as Larry, 48, was none other than a lieutenant with the Myrtle Beach Police Department who specialized in investigating crime scenes, including robbery sites. Larry had a good reputation and, at first, Police Chief Gall refused to believe he was involved, according to Gall’s Forensic Files interview.
Family of 14. The fact that the three Bellamys were modest probably made it harder for those who knew them to entertain the notion that they robbed banks. They “didn’t flash a lot of cash, buy fancy cars, or live in a rich neighborhood,” according to a Sun News article from August 18, 1999.
The trio came from a family of 12 siblings born to Lucille and Clifton Bellamy Sr. in Little River, South Carolina. The Sun News story noted Clifton Sr.’s occupation as “successful farmer.”
Clifton Sr. also taught Sunday school, was a deacon at the St. Joseph Missionary Baptist Church, and served on the board of cable company HTC Inc., according to his Sun News obituary from 2008. He and Lucille were married for 59 years.
The Bellamys were well-respected in town and one of their children, Margie B. Livingston, was and still is a South Carolina judge-magistrate. In a statement to the Sun News, Livingston said:
"No family has control of what other family members may encounter or make decisions about today. [The family is] experiencing shock, disbelief, disappointment and concern. [Our parents] have taught strong moral values to each of the 12 of us, and lived by them in county and community."
Additional bad seed. So what made Alvin, Claude, and Larry Bellamy suddenly turn into Ma Barker’s boys? A case of profound mid-life crisis? Or maybe, as hard as their parents tried, some of those kids had an innate wayward streak.
Margie Livingston is a longtime magistrate in Horry County
Forensic Files didn’t mention it, but while Alvin, Claude, and Larry were perfecting post-robbery escape routes, a fourth Bellamy brother was already sitting in jail for a way more serious offense.
Clifton Bellamy Jr., a 36-year-old married North Myrtle Beach police officer, killed girlfriend Patricia Adams with a hammer and a pointed instrument on October 1, 1986. Adams worked at the Surf Golf and Beach Club’s snack bar and was pregnant. She and Clifton Bellamy had been fighting about child support, according to court papers.
Vanishing loot. Alvin, Claude, and Larry’s motivations were less clear. Police never figured out why they wanted the money badly enough to risk ruining their own lives and mortifying their parents. Authorities also never found out where the brothers stashed or spent the stolen cash.
But the prosecution had plenty of other evidence to work with, and the three Bellamys were arrested in 2000 and charged with bank robbery, assault with a dangerous weapon, and other related crimes.
Bank security footage showed a checkered jacket and leather holster used during a robbery that were later discovered in possession of the Bellamys. One bank used high-resolution cameras that allowed police to identify Claude’s browline and nose via an excessively large eye opening in his mask, according to court papers.
Rich case. Also to the Bellamys’ detriment, Alvin had changed his story a number of times under FBI questioning.
More bad publicity for the brothers: The FBI was investigating a group of unidentified men who had tried to stop a witness from testifying against the Bellamys by threatening to “cut his eyes out and kill his family.”
The intimidation didn’t work.
After two weeks and 70 witnesses, a jury convicted the brothers on February 22, 2000.
Little brother Alvin received 15 years. Larry and Claude got harsher sentences — 50 years each in a federal penitentiary — because they betrayed their badges.
Where are they now? So far, the only one who has gotten out on two feet is Alvin, who left USP Atlanta on July 3, 2008.
Claude died while incarcerated at the age of 61 in 2016. His daughter, Nissa Bellamy, described her dad as “the strongest man I know,” in a comment left at an obituary site for him. Ironically, the 300-pound Claude was regarded as the violent member of the trio, according to Forensic Files.
The third bank robber, Larry Bellamy, is 67 and resides in FCI McDowell in Welch, West Virginia, along with 1,300 prisoners mostly in medium security.
Courts rejected Larry’s appeal attempts in 2009 and 2011, and he is scheduled for release in 2042 at age 90.
Clifton Bellamy Jr in a 2016 mugshot.
Clifton Bellamy Jr., the aforementioned killer in the family, is serving his life sentence for homicide in Kershaw Correctional Institution, which lists him as having no escape attempts or disciplinary problems.
He has a shot at parole in 2020.
Two-thirds turned out fine. The Bellamys’ mother, Lucille, died in 2015 at the age of 81. Her obituary didn’t include any biographical information about her, but raising 12 kids probably took up the better part of her bandwidth.
Creating eight law-abiding children is not a bad record.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
