Rebecca Reisner, Author at Forensic Files Now

Paul Camiolo’s Trial By Fire

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, whose parents died in an accidental fire — 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.

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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 had a May-December marriage, but it was apparently a happy one — 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

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David Copenhefer: A Bookstore Owner Kills

Sally Weiner’s Kidnapper Hid a Scary Chapter
(“The Stake-Out,” Forensic Files)

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).

wedding of Sally Elaine Stough and Harry Weiner — Sally and Harry Weiner

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.

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.

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

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 from murderer David. C. Copenhefer — 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 pictured circa-1999 during the time of his trial for the kidnapping and murder of Sally Weiner — 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, shopping area in Corry, Pa. — 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.

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 Oct. 18, 1988 Patricia Cophefer — *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.

Furry Friends Friday in Corry, Penn., in October 2018 — 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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Amazon Prime

The Bellamy Brothers: Bank-Robbing Lawmen

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.

Bank robbers Claude, Alvin, and Larry Bellamy — 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.

Calabash, North Carolina, sign — 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.

Surveillance video of a Bellamy brothers bank robbery — 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., 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

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Janice Dodson: Husband Hunter

A Gold Digger Preys on a Lonely Guy
(“Muddy Waters,” Forensic Files)

Janice Dodson sneaked into a hunter’s camp, stole one of his guns, and shot her husband to death with it, then slipped away unseen.

It was a crafty plot to collect nearly half a million dollars in insurance payouts while deflecting suspicion away from herself.

But once it looked as though her plan was working, she knocked off the grieving-widow act way too soon.

Relentless greed. According to “Muddy Waters,” the Forensic Files episode about the Bruce Dodson homicide, on the day after the murder, Janice took Bruce’s name off the couple’s mailbox, got rid of his things, and (worst of all) had his dog put to sleep.

In addition to being a murderer, framer, and fraudster, Janice Dodson had serious trouble delaying gratification and was an enemy to dogs everywhere.

For this week, I looked around for an update on her.

But first, here’s a recap of the episode, along with extra information drawn from internet research as well as the mass-market paperback Dead Center by Frank J. Daniels, the lawyer who prosecuted her:

At long last love. John Bruce Dodson, known as Bruce, worked as a medical technologist at Delta Memorial County Hospital in Delta, Colorado. He was also a Navy veteran and a University of Maryland graduate.

The longtime bachelor was crazy about his new wife, Janice Dodson, a divorced registered nurse he met at work. Janice, who pronounces her name “juhn-eese,” liked to hunt game and wanted to interest him in the sport, too.

In fact, she was such an avid outdoorswoman that she wore a headdress shaped like a hunting hat, covered in lace and tulle, for her wedding.

I’ve seen a lot of regrettable bridal hat-veils, but Janice Dodson’s get-up deserved an “I object” more than any of them.

Bruce and Janice Dodson at their wedding. The front view, right, gives the full effect of the bride’s get-up

An actress, too. But back to the crime that’s actually illegal: On October 15, 1995, a hunter and Texas lawman identified as Doug Kyle on Forensic Files (the book gave his name as Brent Branchwater) found Janice leaning over the body of her 48-year-old husband. Bruce Dodson was bleeding from gunshot wounds, and his heartbroken spouse was screaming hysterically in shock and despair.

Janice made a good show of being loving. She placed Bruce’s vest and her sweatshirt over the body, wiped the dirt from his face, and straightened his glasses, Daniels details in his book.

At some point during the drama, she fainted convincingly enough that a helicopter was summoned to fly her to the hospital, according to book.

Different game. She told police that she went out looking for Bruce when he didn’t return to their hunting camp near Brushy Ridge Trail on western Colorado’s Uncompahgre Plateau. She found him wounded on the ground.

They had been hunting separately; she was looking for elk and he was hoping for a deer.

Medical examiner Tom Canfield, who already knew the victim from his work at the hospital, determined he had three bullet wounds, too many to call it a hunting accident.

Uncompahgre Plateau in Colorado — Colorado’s Uncompahgre National Forest

Police found a 308-caliber Nosling shell casing near the murder scene.

Former spouse suspected. Janice’s ex-husband, J.C. Lee, had been camping nearby the Dodsons. He told police his 308-caliber rifle and some of his Nosling shells were stolen from his tent the night before Bruce’s shooting.

Police learned that J.C. Lee and Janice Dodson had ended their 25-year marriage when he started dating their daughter’s best friend.

Police wondered whether Lee resented that Janice had moved on with another man.

Counting her money. Citing the unreliability of polygraph tests, Lee refused to take one, but he had a solid alibi. His girlfriend and a coworker vouched for the fact that he was hunting with them at the time of the murder.

Investigators soon turned their attention to the grieving widow from Cedaredge, Colorado. It turned out that she had purchased three insurance policies totaling $464,000 on her husband shortly before his death.

She may have wanted the money to pay off debts that piled up during her divorce, according to a Montrose Daily Press story dated November 23, 1998.

Mired in trouble. Investigators also discovered that while she was supposed to be visiting relatives in Texas to mourn Bruce’s death, Janice was actually gambling at a Louisiana casino called the Players Club.

No word on whether she won or lost on her wagers that night, but investigators started having good luck with the forensics.

Michael Dodson, left, and Janice and Bruce Dodson, far right — Michael Dodson, left, appeared on *Forensic Files*. Janice and Bruce Dodson are at far right

A NecroSearch International volunteer who helped search for the missing gun noticed an artificial pond lined with bentonite clay in the area where J.C. Lee had been camping.

Lurking in the distance. The mud that stained Janice’s clothing the day of the murder matched the bentonite clay from the pond — which placed her in Lee’s camp, where the gun first disappeared.

Investigators believed that she waded through the mud to sneak into Lee’s campsite and pilfer his Remington 308-caliber rifle and some of his ammunition.

The next day, she went hunting alone.

Investigators theorized that Janice found a hiding place and shot at Bruce at long range with the stolen gun. After the first bullet grazed Bruce, he thought a hunter had mistaken him for a deer, so he took off his orange hunting vest and waved it in the air, they believed.

Diabolique. Then Janice put two more bullets in him and disposed of the stolen gun, which the police never found.

Prosecutors suspect that Janice had planned to kill Bruce Dodson from the very start of their relationship — and conveniently pin the murder on her ex-husband, J.C Lee (the book gives his name as Mark Gordon Morgan).

It took three years to string the case together with ballistic evidence. In the meantime, Janice Dodson forgot about Bruce and started over. (As if throwing out his possessions weren’t enough of an insult, she allegedly dumped his ashes on the side of the road.)

Liquidating like crazy. She relocated to Nocogdoches, Texas, and married Bartlett M. Hall in Las Vegas on November 27, 1996. He took out $100,000 in life insurance to make sure his bride would be taken care of should anything happen to him, according to Forensic Files.

Fortunately, by the time the police arrested Janice in October 1998, no unlucky accidents had befallen Hall.

Maybe she still had enough money left over from pillaging Bruce Dodson’s assets. She had sucked the money from his IRAs, sold his horse, Glory, and put one of his two properties up for sale — he owned them before they met, but she persuaded him to put her name on the titles during their three-month marriage.

Her take. A jury found Janice Dodson guilty of first-degree murder after deliberating for three and a half days. On March 20, 2000, she received a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

The crime website Murderpedia has reproduced some hard-to-find stories about the case, including an ABC article with the following statement Janice Dodson made to Prime Time interviewer Chris Cuomo after the trial:

I still do [love Bruce Dodson],” Janice said. “The only way I can live with this, is that I have the peace of knowing I didn’t do it, and the prayer in my heart that some day the truth will win out.”

In a 2002, a three-judge Colorado Court of Appeals panel rejected her lawyers’ claim that Janice’s jury didn’t receive clear instructions.

Behind razor wire. Today, Janice is inmate #104430 at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility in Mesa County. Her profile still lists her sentence as life without parole.

It also notes that she stands 5-foot-8-inches and weighs in at 150 pounds — trim by prison standards. Facilities tend to serve heavy foods that bulk up the inmates.

The prison participates in programs allowing inmates to help train troubled and neglected dogs to become service animals for army veterans, but it’s doubtful that any animal would trust the likes of her.

The insurance jackpot she hoped to collect ended up going to Bruce Dodson’s brother, Michael C. Dodson, and sister, Martha E. Asberry.

Their mother, Ruth E. Dodson, lived until 2002, long enough to see her ex-daughter-in-law put away for good, where she can’t hurt anyone else’s son.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Amazon Prime

Madison Rutherford: Con Man Walking

He Swindled a Senior Citizen, Then Sold Pizza
(“Past Lives,” Forensic Files)

If Yelp existed back in the 1990s, maybe Brigitte Beck would have enjoyed the retirement she deserved.

Unfortunately, she had no way of knowing that Connecticut financial adviser Madison Rutherford was a con man born John Sankey.

Forgot to mention. He probably didn’t tell his clients about the six months he spent in prison for larceny in 1993, shortly before he persuaded Beck to let him take charge of her six-figure nest egg.

Rutherford ruined Beck’s finances as well as his own, then tried to fake his own death for $7 million in insurance payouts.

Like other Forensic Files fraudsters (Ari Squire, Molly Daniels) who thought they were smarter than the insurance companies and police, Rutherford was done in by the forensics.

“Past Lives,” the Forensic Files episode about Rutherford, first aired in 2004 while he was serving his second term in prison, so I looked around to find out what happened to him after he exited the federal lockup in 2006.

Madison Rutherford, aka, John Patrick Sankey — Madison Rutherford

I also searched for an epilogue on Brigitte Beck, the mild-mannered German immigrant whose Forensic Files appearance always makes me teary.

So let’s get started on the recap of “Past Lives,” along with additional information from internet research:

Going for snob appeal. John Patrick Sankey was born circa 1964, the son of a New York City police officer, according to the Hartford Courant. He started to use the last name Rutherford at some point during his adulthood and filed for bankruptcy under that name in 1990.

After his first stretch in prison in 1993, John Sankey legally changed his name to Madison Rutherford and worked as a financial adviser in Connecticut.

He had a talent for making good investments for his clients, according to Forensic Files. His friend and neighbor Beck, in her late 60s and with no family in the U.S., named him as her executor and gave him power of attorney over all that she owned.

Rubbed the right way. Beck had moved to the U.S. at age 24 and worked as a nanny, then as a massage therapist at Graf Studio, a Stamford business owned by an older German couple who had taken a liking to her. When they died, they left her everything and she took over the business.

She got to know Rutherford through his wife, an attractive older woman named L. Rhynie Jefferson who was a client at Beck’s massage studio. The three became trusting friends.

Beck was also a neighbor of the couple, who reportedly delighted in spending their newfound riches on cars, travel, and their huge colonial farmhouse on five acres in Bethel, Connecticut.

The house at 74 Old Hawleyville Road in Bethel, Connecticut, where con man Madison Rutherford and his wife L. Rhynie Jeffereson lived — The house Madison Rutherford and Rhynie Jefferson occupied on Old Hawleyville Road

Magic recedes. Multiple media sources list Rhynie Jefferson’s occupation as fortune teller.

If she had any premonitions about the stock market, she stopped sharing them with her husband.

His luck at picking winning stocks ran out in the late 1990s, and he eventually lost more of his own and his clients’ money than he could ever hope to recoup on Wall Street.

The 34-year-old Rutherford had also spent all of Beck’s savings and taken out a mortgage on her house.

South of the border. Instead of telling his clients the truth and starting over, he decided to chase after $7 million in payouts from CNA Insurance and Kemper Corp.

In 1998, police discovered his rental SUV ravaged by fire in a ditch near Monterrey, Mexico, where he traveled to either buy or sell (sources vary) an exotic dog.

At first, it looked as though the car had ignited after skidding off the road.

Inside the vehicle, first responders found a body reduced to charred bones. An inscribed wristwatch and a medical alert necklace enabled investigators to tentatively ID the victim as Madison Rutherford.

Pry before paying. Rhynie Jefferson gave police one of Madison’s teeth that she said was removed during a dental procedure. Its DNA matched that of the teeth from the burned-out Suburban.

Mexican authorities signed off on the case as an accidental death even though their forensic specialists had doubts.

One of Rutherford’s U.S. insurers decided to do some of its own sleuthing before forking over $4 million to the widow.

L. Rhynie Jefferson who was married to con man Madison Rutherford and went to prison for her part in his insurance fraud scheme — L. Rhynie Jefferson

Kemper Corp. hired private detective Frank Rudewicz to search for an alive Madison Rutherford and engaged forensics expert William M. Bass to study the bones. Bass found that the teeth weren’t consistent with those of a caucasian person and the skull fragments came from someone older than 34.

Mess gets messier. Before authorities blew the lid off the fraud, Rhynie confided in Brigitte Beck that Rutherford was still alive. Soon after, he even showed up at Beck’s house with an outrageous story — that the FBI had staged his death because organized crime figures wanted to kill him.

The kind-hearted Beck allowed him to hide at her house for a couple of weeks. She had recently had a windfall of nearly $100,000, and handed it over to Rutherford to manage.

Then he disappeared again.

When the FBI showed up at her house, Beck at first denied seeing Rutherford. He and Jefferson had manipulated her into opening a checking account in the name B. Beck & Associates, which the con man used to launder money.

Lair discovered. The authorities soon found Rutherford by tracing a car he owned to a “Thomas Bey Hamilton” who worked as a comptroller for Double Decker Studios in Boston.

Management liked his work and was considering elevating him to CEO.

FBI agents ambushed him in his apartment in Boston on Nov. 7, 2000, and arrested him.

His fingerprints matched Rutherford’s. Thomas Bey Hamilton — who had books about how to change one’s identity in his Boston pad — was Madison Rutherford. The court kept him in jail pending legal action.

Plot revealed. When authorities showed Rhynie Jefferson evidence that Rutherford was cheating on her with other women, she spilled the whole story: On July 11, 1998, he staged the accident with a body stolen from a tomb in Mexico and then pedaled away on a bike. He sneaked her a tooth from the pilfered corpse after returning from Mexico.

A year later, Rutherford had planted a bag of clothes stained with his own blood in Mexico as a back-up explanation for his “death.”

Finger-pointing. Once Rutherford was formally charged, Brigitte Beck revealed that, between spending her cash and mortgaging her house, he swindled her out of $782,000. She had virtually nothing left.

Meanwhile, Rutherford tried to blame everything on his wife.

Rhynie Jefferson, he claimed, had seduced him when he was a 16-year-old lifeguard and later “manipulated and pressured him to maintain a lavish lifestyle that included providing for all manner of pets and livestock, including scores of free-range chickens,” according to a Hartford Courant story from July 21, 2001. (A neighbor, who called the couple weird, said that Rutherford considered the birds to be his children.)

‘Pain and loss.‘ In a Bridgeport courtroom, Rutherford’s father, John Sankey Sr., pinned his son’s problems on Rhynie as well, according to a Connecticut Post story. The elder Sankey also mentioned that his other son had recently died of leukemia.

In the end, Rutherford pleaded guilty to fraud. Without going into detail, he apologized for his crimes and said his eight months in jail so far were “hell” and that he promised to make the rest of his life “worthwhile,” according to the Hartford Courant.

Madison Rutherford while under surveillance in Boston

U.S. District Judge Stefan R. Underhill gave him five years in a federal prison for fraud and “leaving a lot of pain and loss in his wake.” The authorities couldn’t charge him with embezzling Beck’s money because she’d given him power of attorney.

Rhynie Jefferson got 18 months in prison and three years of supervised release for her part in the scheme.

Epilogue for the cast. So what contribution to society has Madison Rutherford made since exiting the penitentiary?

Well, he’s not incinerating skeletons anymore, but he’s left a trail of disgruntled diners thanks to his foray into the restaurant business.

Rutherford, who now goes by the first name “Bey,” owned a restaurant called Pop’s NY Pizza that opened in Columbia, South Carolina, in 2006. By 2011, the place had a Yelp rating of one star and scathing reviews:

“If you care about your health PLEASE DO NOT GO,” Sam V. urged in 2011. Julie R. offered, “There was a hole in the door of the restroom, the toilet looked like it had never been cleaned and the toilet paper was on the floor with flies buzzing around it.” And Richard C. demystifies that the “god awful place…survives on drunken college students.”

Rutherford also allegedly neglected to pay his bills from local ad agencies, according to a post by writer Paul Blake in a blog dedicated to the now-defunct Columbia City Paper.

Not on the ball. Pop’s closed in shame, but Rutherford bounced back with Bey’s Sports Bar, also in Columbia. His Yelp rating rose to 1.5 stars, but customers scorched him and the place:

“Picture yourself in the worst bar of your life X 10,” writes Michelle M. “No mixers or straws, just liquor and beer.” Keith K. concurs, “There are really only 3 types of bars in Columbia: decent, crappy, and Bey’s.” And Keith S. confirms that the man with a fondness for the names of founding fathers took his standards of hygiene from their era. “Bathrooms are disgusting. There’s never been soap in the guy’s when I’m there.”

DirecTV sued Rutherford for allegedly pirating its services in order to broadcast games at Bey’s Sports Bar, according to the Columbia City Paper blog. Even worse, Rutherford routinely stole his waiters’ tips, according to a reader comment imported from the newspaper’s archives.

According to Lex, a ForensicFilesNow.com reader who was a bartender at Bey’s, the establishment closed in 2013 amid tax woes.

The shuttering of the business didn’t stop the Yelp reviews — people who watched the episode wrote in:

“What a piece of garbage this guy is,” writes Andy C., “stealing $500,000 from a trusting old woman.“

Bey's Sports Bar in Columbia, South Carolina, owned by Madison Ruthford, aka Bey Rutherford — Bey Rutherford’s place in Columbia, S.C.

More Epilogues. Regarding what happened to Rhynie Jefferson, the most interesting intelligence that came up was one of the reader comments also from Blake’s blog post (it’s a gold mine) from 2009. As of 2019, she lived in Oakville, Connecticut, was single and 75 years old. She died in May 2020, according to a reader who wrote in with a tip.

Finally, on to the emotional centerpiece of the story, Brigitte Beck. Once swindled out of everything and having had Chase Manhattan Bank foreclose on her house, she received some financial help from friends and continued to live in Connecticut, according to the Hartford Courant.

Beck died on January 18, 2008, at the age of 78. Two brothers and a sister, all living in Germany, survived her, according to her obituary. She’s buried in the East Norwalk Historical Cemetery.

At least she can rest in peace and be remembered. No one ever identified the deceased man whose grave Madison Rutherford desecrated.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

Also read a Q&A with a former Bey’s Sports Bar bartender

Daniel and Cynthia McDonnell: Good Cop, Bad Wife

Murder, Insurance Fraud — What Could Go Wrong?
(“Bed of Deceit,” Forensic Files)

As Forensic Files villains go, Cynthia McDonnell distinguishes herself as the queen of self-sabotage.

In a bid to collect on her husband’s life insurance policy, the freelance writer shot him as he slept in their Michigan house, then blamed the crime on an anonymous robber.

Quick revision. But Cynthia’s storytelling competencies didn’t exactly exceed expectations.

She staged the phony home invasion so poorly that she ended up having to fabricate a new explanation. She said that her husband killed himself — which meant no $300,000 insurance payout for her.

For this week, I checked into where she is today and looked for more information on Daniel McDonnell’s life.

American dream. So let’s get started on the recap of “Bed of Deceit,” the Forensic Files episode about the case, along with additional facts drawn from internet research:

Cynthia Lee Johnston and Daniel Joseph McDonnell married in 1975 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He originally came from Port Chester, New York.

By 1998, they had two children, a house in Bingham Township, Michigan, and what looked like a happy union.

Southwestern feat. Before Daniel moved to Michigan, he worked as a police officer in New Mexico and New York.

Forensic Files didn’t mention it, but the dark-haired blue-eyed Daniel was a local hero in Albuquerque, where he served as vice president of the Irish American Society and helped plan the St. Patrick’s Day parade.

On Christmas morning in 1978, while off-duty, he repeatedly crawled into a burning car in an attempt to reach a passenger trapped inside. After his second try, the gas tank exploded, but he slid into the overturned vehicle a third time. It was too late to save the woman, whose leg was pinned down, but McDonnell’s bravery was honored by numerous community groups, the Albuquerque Journal reported on January 17, 1979.

Little did he know that, two decades later, it would be his turn to become a victim of circumstance.

Diabolical plan. On the morning of December 31, 1998, Cynthia McDonnell took the couple’s daughter, Erin, shopping in Traverse City for several hours.

Their son, Patrick, 18, was at a buddy’s house; his father had dropped him off there the night before.

Cynthia said that when she returned from shopping, she found Dan, 58, in his bed with a bullet wound to the head.

Hole in the story. Judging from her hysterical-spouse routine on the 911 tape, police should have arrested her on the spot for bad acting alone.

But first responders usually start out by giving the survivor’s story the benefit of the doubt. They listened to her tale of shock and woe and missing cash from her husband’s wallet.

Investigators eventually noticed, however, that Cynthia didn’t have an explanation for how the intruder or intruders broke into the house.

Scene of the crime in Bingham Township, Michigan

Undeterred consumer. Cynthia then had no choice but to change her story, according to Forensic Files. The new version: She went into the bedroom to tell Dan she was going shopping and found him dead with a suicide note.

He had survived cancer but was depressed over the side effects of the treatments, she said. A note he left explained that he wanted Cynthia and the kids to get the insurance money — and instructed her to stage the scene like a murder so his policy would remain valid, she claimed.

So, Cynthia told police, she got rid of his note, then wiped his prints from his service revolver and threw it in a field. Then she went shopping.

Failing forensic tests. But Cynthia, who aspired to publish a murder-mystery novel, botched the plot in a number of ways.

The bullet wound was in the back of the victim’s head — people don’t generally shoot themselves that way. Blood evidence around his arm and pillow also contradicted her narrative.

And, as Forensic Files fans have seen many times, little things murderers inadvertently do or say often scream “guilty” even louder than the forensics (Ed Post and Brian Vaughn).

This speaks volumes. In Cynthia’s case, on the morning of her husband’s death, she went into the bathroom where Erin, 20, was showering and turned up the radio.

A mom who wants to pump up the volume on her child’s music?

It seemed fishy to Erin, too, who ultimately sided against her mother.

Clearly, Cynthia was attempting to mask the sound of the gunfire. A bullet hole in the pillow next to the body suggested another effort to muffle the noise, investigators believed.

The defense’s turn. In April 1999, Cynthia was arraigned on murder charges and held without bail.

At the trial in 2000, defense lawyer Pete Shumar argued for the suicide theory and said that Daniel had shot himself in the back of the head to make his death look like murder and hence eligible for the insurance jackpot.

Shumar also trotted out a couple of expert witnesses, including a psychologist who said that going shopping after a loved one’s death could be a reaction to trauma.

Cynthia McDonnell, who killer her husband, Dan McDonnell — Young Cynthia McDonnell

It’s only natural. As for Cynthia’s story shift from murder to suicide, the Record-Eagle reported Shumar’s explanation:

"I believe that all of us have changed our story at one point in time or another. It's human. She did it for her children."

(The Record Eagle article, from February 17, 2000, isn’t available on the paper’s website, but you can read it via a Google Group posting.)

Counter arguments. Leelanau County Prosecutor Clarence Gomery had plenty of ammunition for his side of the case.

In addition to changing the manner of the death, Cynthia couldn’t keep her story straight about what happened to the alleged suicide note, the Record-Eagle reported. She threw it in the garbage or burned it or shredded it and flushed it down the toilet.

There was also the fact that Daniel’s arms had no splatter, suggesting someone else fired the gun.

Retail report. And in the months leading up to the murder, Cynthia’s purchase of big-ticket items like new computers and furniture coincided with thefts of cash from a trust fund her husband was managing for a disabled relative, according to Forensic Files.

The bank had video footage of her multiple withdrawals, which added up to $50,000. She also forged her husband’s name at times.

The prosecution fought the notion that Daniel McDonnell would even consider suicide.

Lots to live for. He had beaten cancer, still worked part-time, was looking forward to a celebration for Erin’s 21st birthday, and was planning to buy a fishing boat.

Erin McDonnell, daughter of slain retired cop Daniel McDonnell — Erin McDonnell in court

After a trial that lasted a little more than a week, a jury convicted Cynthia, 45, of first-degree premeditated murder.

As Forensic Files fans will remember, her daughter, Erin, urged the court to give the maximum penalty. She got her wish, when Judge Thomas Power sentenced Cynthia to life without the possibility of parole. Off to prison she went.

Oh, come on. In a 2002 appeal, Cynthia claimed that her husband had been notified of the trust-fund theft — and his failure to take action right away was evidence that he was suicidal.

A three-judge appellate court panel unanimously ruled against the appeal.

Today, Cynthia McDonnell resides in Level II security in the Huron Valley Complex in Ypsilanti. It’s the same state prison Sharon Zachary calls home.

At 5-foot-3 and 240 pounds, Cynthia doesn’t appear to have participated in any hunger strikes. She’s resisted the siren song of any local artisans — she has no tattoos, according to the Michigan Dept. of Corrections.

Dubious career history. Incidentally, although Forensic Files gave her occupation as freelance writer, it’s not clear whether she ever had anything published. Nothing turned up online. (But, to be fair, back in the day, magazines and newspapers didn’t routinely slap stuff on the internet as they do now.)

Cynthia’s children maintain a Facebook page devoted to Daniel McDonnell’s memory including old photos of their happy childhood with their father.

Their kindly uncle, Kevin McDonnell, who appeared on Forensic Files and suggested he himself was ready to join his late brother soon, is alive and has a presence on social media.

(As if we needed more reasons to like the McDonnell family, they all appear to be animal lovers. Daniel’s obituary noted he did volunteer work for an Irish wolfhound rescue group.)

Cynthia McDonnell in an undated mugshot and one from 2019 (right)

The FB page doesn’t mention Cynthia or identify her in any of the pictures.

In an odd twist, the lawyer who prosecuted her, Clarence Gomery, pleaded guilty in 2015 to a murder-for-hire plot against a fellow lawyer he was warring with over a case.

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

Watch the episode on Amazon Prime

Molly and Clay Daniels: Some Body They Didn’t Use to Know

Sobering crime behind a laughable scheme
(“Grave Danger,” Forensic Files)

Anyone who watches the “Grave Danger” episode of Forensic Files can’t help but be taken aback by the ridiculousness of Molly and Clayton Daniels’ crime.

Molly, an office receptionist, and Clay, an unemployed mechanic, robbed the grave of Charlotte Davis — who had died at the age of 81 in 2003 — then placed her body in a Chevrolet Cavalier along with some of Clay’s belongings. They pushed the vehicle off the road and set it on fire on June 18, 2004, in the hopes of collecting $110,000 in life insurance money upon Clay’s “death.”

OMG, it’s working. At first, things went as planned for the Leander, Texas, couple. Family members identified items from the burned car as having belonged to Clay. Molly used her new status as a widow with two children to coax aid from sympathetic community members. Clay hid himself from public view.

But Molly, 21, and Clay, 24, had always intended to remain together. Instead of moving someplace far away where no one knew them, they stayed in the same area. Clay dyed his hair black, and Molly began introducing him as her new boyfriend, Jake Gregg.

That didn’t work out so well. The authorities caught on pronto. A DNA test proved the charred remains in the car belonged to someone other than Clay Daniels.

Worldwide ‘what?!’ The insurance company got justice at the subsequent trial, as did the late Charlotte Davis, when her former caretaker testified that the grave desecration made her heartsick.

The macabre element of Clay and Molly’s scheme may have made members of the general public shudder and grimace, but they still wanted to hear all the details. Prosecutor Jane Starnes wrote in an article in “The Texas Prosecutor” newsletter:

My sister-in-law in Hawaii called to say she read about me in the Hilo paper. Molly’s dirty deeds were reported in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland. A producer from CNN called. [A] People magazine reporter kept calling. A reporter from Tokyo called, asking insightful questions such as, “What color [was] Clayton Daniels’ hair before he dye[d] it black?” We got a call from a reporter in London from The Sunday Magazine.

Clay Daniels ended up receiving 30 years in prison for offenses including insurance fraud, arson, and desecration of a cemetery. Molly Daniels got 20 years for insurance fraud and hindering her husband’s apprehension. Molly’s family members took custody of the two small children the couple shared.

The redeeming part of this whole mess seemed to be that at least it didn’t cause bodily harm to any living person.

A live victim. But the motivation for the outlandish string of events had its roots in a real, devastating crime committed by Clay when he was 16 years old.

He raped a 7-year-old cousin of his circa 1996, although the assault came to light only years later. Clay pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault on a child and, under a deferred adjudication deal, had to serve 30 days in jail, to start on June 21, 2004, and then 10 years probation. His name would appear on the Registered Sex Offenders list.

Molly said on Dateline NBC that she believed the legal system had railroaded Clay and that a good man like him could have never molested a child. She wanted him to continue as a stay-at-home dad without any limitations on where they could live, and that’s why they hatched the insurance fraud plan, she explained.

Leniency…in Texas? Arson investigator Janine Mather, however, told Forensic Files that she believed Clay’s motivation was a reluctance to go to jail and appear on the RSO list.

But here’s the question that remains: Why did Clay initially get only 30 days in jail for rape? One third of the 30-year sentence he ultimately received was in connection to a “probation violation” for the aggravated sexual assault to his cousin — but that wasn’t handed down until after the burned-car caper.

I did a little nosing around online for information about Texas sexual assault laws and found that aggravated sexual assault on a child younger than 14 years of age, under certain circumstances, means a minimum sentence of 25 years. It’s automatically a minimum of 25 years if the child is under 6 years of age. But Clay’s little cousin was already 7 when the attack occurred.

The most recent U.S. Sentencing Commission fact sheet listed average sentences for sexual abuse offenders as 139 months to 235 months.

So had Clay Daniels done something to redeem himself in the years between the sexual assault he committed at 16 and his initial sentencing for that crime at age 24? It didn’t sound that way. “Grave Danger” mentions that, even during the eulogy at Clay’s funeral (held before he was discovered alive and raven-haired), his best buddy felt compelled to acknowledge that Clay was a seriously flawed character.

Minor on minor crime. The only, meager explanation I could find for the light sentence Clay received is suggested by a University of New Hampshire study commissioned by the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which suggests that the age of an offender can affect sentencing favorably.

Clay Daniels with colored hair — Clay Daniels, dye job

The research revealed that “juveniles account for more than one-third (35.6 percent) of those known to police to have committed sex offenses against minors” — but that “a large majority (about 85–95 percent) of sex-offending youth have no arrests or reports for future sex crimes.”

That doesn’t mean, however, that these folks stay on the right side of the law: According to the UNH research, “[Of the youths who do] have future arrests, they are far more likely to be for nonsexual crimes such as property offenses.”

There’s one area in which Clay, with Molly’s help, exceeded everyone’s expectations.

Today, he’s an inmate in the Wallace Unit in Colorado City, Texas.

Molly served at least 12 years of her sentence and exited prison sometime after 2016. She is keeping a low profile. — RR

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

P.S. Below, please see a different explanation for Clay’s sentencing from reader Ash.

Debbie Dicus: A Deejay Signs off Too Soon

Ronald Blanchard Murders a Local Celebrity
(“Garden of Evil,” Forensic Files)

Gardening offers a break from the stress of commuting, worrying about money, and listening to your boss hear himself talk.

The city of Hampton, Virginia, provides community gardens for locals who want to rent a parcel of land for growing flowers or vegetables.

For Debbie Dicus, once a popular radio host on WWDE-FM in Norfolk, Virginia, the plot she used to grow vegetables in the community garden was probably a nice change from the sterile confinement of the studio.

Bad seed. Ronald Earl Blanchard enjoyed open spaces, too, but he paid homage to them in a different way.

When a housing development in Poquoson threatened to crowd out the woodlands around the trailer park where he lived with his grandparents, he and an associate set fire to one of the offending homes, the Daily Press of Newport News, Virginia, reported.

He got himself a suspended sentence for that stunt, a surprisingly meager punishment in light of the fact that Blanchard, his two brothers, and their father, Joseph, were well known to local law enforcement.

Young felon. But nothing suggested that Ronald Blanchard would turn into a murderer and would-be rapist until May 9, 1987, when Blanchard either happened upon, or set out to ambush, Debbie Dicus as she was tending to her vegetables in the community garden.

Blanchard was barely out of his teens when he committed the homicide, so for this week, I checked to see whether he’s still in prison.

So let’s get started on a recap of the Forensic Files episode “Garden of Evil,” along with information drawn from internet research.

Ronald Blanchard, who murdered Debbie Dicus — Ronald Blanchard

In May of 1987, Hampton police got a phone call reporting the body of a woman in a ditch near the community garden.

Violent struggle. The call came from Ronald Blanchard, a 20-year-old married father who said he stumbled upon the body while hunting for birds nearby.

First responders found Debbie Dicus, 31. She’d been beaten with a rifle and the wooden handle of a hoe and strangled. Some of her clothing had been ripped off, but she hadn’t been raped.

Dicus, a native of Greensboro, North Carolina, lived in downtown Hampton. She worked as a DJ for about three years at WWDE-FM and before that at station WTAR.

Sweet disposition. The late-night radio show that Dicus hosted was a mix of personal talk and music.

Her boyfriend, William Campbell, also worked as a DJ at the same station.

She liked her job but told friends she worried that one day a deranged listener would break into the studio and rape and kill her, according to Forensic Files.

When her murder premonition came true (except that it happened far from the radio station and it wasn’t clear whether the killer was a listener), it shocked locals in the friendly low-crime area around Hampton.

Dicus’ mother, Jean Reece Willison, heard the tragic news on Mother’s Day. She told the Daily Press that Debbie “loved everyone, people, animals, nature. She wouldn’t even kill a fly.”

Speedy police-work. Fortunately, investigators were able to solve the case quickly. A tracker dog named Rody sniffed the hoe handle used in the homicide and picked up the same scent on one of the bystanders near the crime scene: Ronald Blanchard.

Police arrested Blanchard four days after the murder, and a judge set bail at $130,000. A group of supporters came up with the money for Blanchard, whose own finances were a mess.

Thanks to the earlier arson incident, Blanchard owed Hartford Mutual Insurance $68,671 and he and his wife had to declare bankruptcy, the Daily Press reported on September 30, 1987. Paperwork listed the total value of the couple’s assets at $597.

Rape suspect. But Blanchard’s motive for the attack on Debbie Dicus wasn’t robbery. He didn’t steal the handbag sitting in her unlocked car.

He got to enjoy seven months of freedom between his arrest and the conclusion of the trial, which kicked off on October 27, 1988.

Prosecutors alleged that Blanchard intended to rape Dicus and killed her when she fought back. When he returned home to his wife, also named Debbie, she saw the blood on his hands and clothing, so he told her that he had found a body, and then called 911 to substantiate his story, prosecutors contended.

Murderer Ronald Blanchard and his wife, Debbie, during his trial for the homicide of Debbie Dicus — A *Daily Press* clipping

Odd demo. Investigators think that Dicus and Blanchard might have exchanged unfriendly words on at least one prior occasion. She once mentioned that she argued with a man about his hunting for birds too close to the garden.

To prove the prosecution’s theory that blood splatter on Blanchard’s white T-shirt came from beating Dicus, the prosecution performed a test using a hoe handle and a helmet with a blood-soaked sponge attached. Thankfully, the test took place outside and not in the courtroom.

Other evidence included fragments of the victim’s hair on Blanchard’s rifle, which police believed he used to beat her. They also found a broken-off piece of its cocking mechanism at the scene, more evidence of violence.

On the witness stand, Blanchard said that the damage to the gun happened when he dropped it at the scene in his rush to help Dicus.

Plaintive request. His testimony didn’t impress the jurors. On April 8, 1988, they convicted Blanchard of first-degree homicide, attempted rape, sexual assault, abduction, and use of a gun in a crime.

Blanchard’s wife, Debbie, burst into tears and cried out, “Can I give him a hug?” as deputies escorted her 21-year-old husband out of the courtroom, the Daily Press reported.

Mark Dicus, the victim’s father, told reporters that Blanchard deserved the electric chair, according to the Daily Press/The Herald Times on April 9, 1988.

Hefty sentence. Virginia allows capital punishment, either by electrocution or lethal injection — the condemned individual gets to choose — but it wasn’t on the table in the Dicus murder case because the rape was attempted rather than completed.

Blanchard received the maximum allowed for his crimes, two life sentences plus 12 years.

Ronald Blanchard, killer of Debbie Dicus, in a recent mugshot — Ronald Blanchard in a recent mugshot

Today, Blanchard resides in a State Farm, Virginia, prison.

Stay in the pen. He no longer looks like Heath Ledger, but he appears healthy and well fed at 5’8 inches and 190 pounds.

In 2006, Blanchard wrote a letter to Forensic Files producers that admitted his guilt in the murder and expressed regret for his crimes. Perhaps that explains why he hasn’t appealed his conviction over the years.

The possibility of parole remains, but it’s unlikely in the near future. In 2018, Virginia declined to grant Blanchard parole, noting his “history of violence” and “prior failures” while “under community supervision” and that parole would “diminish [the] seriousness of the crime.”

As far as updates for Debbie Dicus’ parents, there’s no recent information on her father, Mark, on the internet. As of 2009, her mother, Jean Willison, was living in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Her husband, Myron Willison — Debbie’s stepfather — died in 1997 at the age of 81.)

Good shepherd. Glennell Fullman, the K9 unit officer Forensic Files fans may remember from her appearance on “Garden of Evil,” has since retired.

Rody Von Braninck, the German shepherd who helped Fullman identify Ronald Blanchard as the killer, died at just 9 years of age, in 1989.

Rody, a German shepherd tracker dog, worked on hundreds of murder cases in Virginia — Rody on the case

But Rody accomplished a great deal in his short life.

The 110-pound canine operative worked on 700 cases, according to a Daily Press article about Rody, which also notes that, although he learned to attack viciously on command at a Swiss academy, he was kind and sweet to humans and other animals while off duty.

He even rescued a baby rabbit that strayed from its nest.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Amazon Prime

In Cold Blood’s Newest Infusion

Q&A with ‘And Every Word Is True’ Author Gary McAvoy

Just a quick post this week about a new book related to the bestseller that helped lay the groundwork for Forensic Files and all other true-crime entertainment: In Cold Blood.

Gary McAvoy, author of "And Every Word Is True," a new book about the Clutter murders and "In Cold Blood" — Gary McAvoy

Truman Capote’s tome about the murders of four members of a wholesome Kansas farm family created the first nonfiction novel.

In Cold Blood demonstrated how character development, recalled conversations, a sense of place, and a narrative thread could make a real-life crime story as absorbing as a work of fiction like Tom Sawyer or a movie like Gone with the Wind.

The immediate success of In Cold Blood elevated Capote from a darling within literary circles to the most famous author in the U.S. He died in 1984, but his book never will.

Ever since it debuted in 1966, In Cold Blood has invited conjecture about what Capote left out of the story and whether it was really the definitive account of the shotgun deaths of Bonnie and Herb Clutter and their teenage children, Nancy and Kenyon, at the hands of intelligent lowlifes Perry Smith and Richard Hickock.

The ex-cons robbed the Clutters on November 15, 1959, because they mistakenly believed the house contained a safe with $10,000. Instead, they found barely $50 in cash.

A widely distributed picture of the Clutters, minus their surviving elder daughters, Beverly and Eveanna. Clockwise from bottom left: Nancy, Bonnie, Herb, and Kenyon. — The four victims.

The latest development in the In Cold Blood saga comes from Gary McAvoy, a writer and dealer of literary memorabilia who freaked out Kansas officials when they learned he was planning to auction off two notebooks that belonged to Harold Nye, a KBI agent who worked on the Clutter case.

Nye’s son, Ronald, wanted to help defray his ex-wife’s medical expenses with the proceeds of the sale, according to McAvoy. While Kansas did everything possible to stop his plans, McAvoy used the notebooks as part of his research for a book, And Every Word Is True, about hidden evidence and alternative theories related to the Clutter murders.

“Reading material from various sources just doled out shock after shock,” McAvoy says. “I saw information that showed there was so much more to the story than Capote wrote. And the fact that the state of Kansas sued us after 50 years shows there are still secrets being kept.”

While In Cold Blood makes KBI agent Alvin Dewey into the humble central hero of the investigation, the notebooks show the importance of Harold Nye’s work on the case, according to McAvoy.

Harold Nye Notebook Page — One of Harold Nye’s notebooks

The unsung Nye reportedly didn’t care much about the spoils of association with the glamorous Capote. On the other hand, Alvin Dewey and his wife, Marie, attended Capote’s Black and White Ball and dined with the likes of Gloria Vanderbilt. Marie Dewey received a $10,000 consulting fee for the movie version of In Cold Blood, according to McAvoy’s book.

With six years of legal battles having ended, And Every Word Is True will debut March 4, 2019.

I was glad to get an early look at McAvoy’s book. I became an In Cold Blood fan after coming across an ancient hardcover version in a Florida vacation rental years ago. Since then, I’ve read and watched everything I could find about the case.

And Every Word Is True has some new and salacious revelations.

The author answered my questions in a phone interview on January 13. Edited excerpts of the conversation follow:

When did you first hear of the Clutter killings? In the late 1960s. I was in Germany after being drafted for the Vietnam War and started reading In Cold Blood. The book was gripping. I could not stop turning pages.

Both killers suffered severe accidents in their youth. A car crash left Hickock with askew facial features (Capote noted that he looked normal when he smiled). Smith’s legs were damaged so badly in a motorcycle wreck that some sources describe him as “crippled.” But he could walk and do manual labor despite chronic pain. — Richard Hickock and Perry Smith

While researching your own book, what was it like to see the 17 original crime scene photos, with the victims shot in the head? I’m not someone with morbid curiosity but I’m also not squeamish, and I was honestly revolted by the photos. I was unprepared for them. It’s hard for me to square that Perry Smith was a part of this, as brutal as these images are.

Does that mean you agree with Capote’s portrayal of Perry Smith as a sensitive self-educated victim of a horrific childhood? Having read Perry’s writing, yes. He left a notebook with tabs from A to Z. He drew the Earth under “E” and writes about meteors under “M.” It was just an amazing font of knowledge. He wrote poetry and musings on life, and none of it said anything that would indicate he was a killer. Smith always referred to the Clutter murders as a horrible nightmare that should have never happened.

KBI agents Alvin Dewey and Harold Nye both worked on the Clutter murder case portrayed in "In Col Blood" — Alvin Dewey and Harold Nye

Were you surprised to learn that Perry Smith had a son?
I knew this years ago through my own research, but Jewell James doesn’t want to talk about it to writers. There’s a scene in the Sundance special [Cold Blooded: The Clutter Family Murders] where he’s walking along Puget Sound.

Your book says Capote took Harold Nye and his wife to gay-friendly nightspots, some with drag shows — in Kansas, no less. What’s the backstory? Capote was back in Kansas in the early 1960s and wanted more information for his book and wanted to open Nye’s eyes — Harold was homophobic. According to Ron, his mother, Joyce, was furious and she must have been hoodwinked to go there.

And Every Word Is True Cover by Gary McAvoy — Coming soon

In Cold Blood portrayed Herb Clutter as an ethically and morally perfect man — church-building, 4H-leading, cookie-baking, anti-tobacco, anti-drinking. Your book presents some other intelligence. Nancy wrote in her diary that Herb had started smoking. He was also said to be having an affair with the wife of a business associate. And Herbert Clutter had made enough enemies that Dewey, who was good friends with him, at first thought the murders were grudge killings. I leave it to readers to draw their own conclusions.♠

And Every Word Is True, published by Literati Editions, will be available on Amazon and everywhere books are sold on March 4.

David Draheim: Uniformly Dangerous

A Flex-Cuf Solves Jeanette Kirby’s Murder
(“Bound for Jail,” Forensic Files)

It was an unlikely person who took down David Draheim — and for a reason that’s kind of, well, quaint.

Authorities desperately needed something to tie Draheim to Jeanette Kirby, a jogger found stabbed to death in a sprawling Michigan park in 1986.

There were no eyewitnesses, and heavy rainfall had washed away any forensic evidence. Twelve years passed before police got a solid lead — and when they did, it came from none other than Draheim’s best buddy.

Bromantic story. Mark Greko and Draheim had once shared an apartment. Here’s the cute part: Greko was a self-admitted pack rat. He plucked an old item out of storage that shifted the stalled investigation into overdrive.

For this week, I looked around to find out what’s happened to Draheim and Greko since the Forensic Files episode “Bound for Jail” first aired in 2003, and also to learn a little bit more about Jeanette Kirby. Forensic Files mentions that she was in her mid-30s and divorced, but that’s about it.

Cause for alarm. Here’s a recap of the episode along with extra information drawn from internet research:

A retired nurse named Muriel Kirby got worried one day after her daughter missed their breakfast date on June 11, 1986.

No one had heard from Jeanette Kirby since she went for a jog in Riverbend Park in Ingham County, Michigan, on the previous day.

Murderer David Draheim as a young man — David Draheim

Twist of fate. Jeanette hadn’t shown up at her job as a Medicare analyst and didn’t call.

According to the Investigation Discovery network’s Stolen Voices, Buried Secrets, Jeanette had once hoped to embark on a career in law enforcement.

But she suffered from rheumatic fever as a child and missed a whole year of school. She recovered, but her heart wasn’t quite strong enough to do whatever one has to do to graduate from a police academy, according to “A Walk in the Park,” the ID network series’ episode about her murder.

Her cousin Nancy Bishop remembered Jeanette as kind and loving.

Awful discovery. The area where the Kirbys lived in Ingham County was known for being safe — until Jeanette went missing on June 11, 1986.

Jeanette’s empty car was discovered near Riverbend Park. A search party formed and, on June 12, 1986, Jeanette’s friend James Hornyak spotted what he at first thought was a mannequin in a ravine a half-mile away.

Hornyak later said on the A&E series Cold Case Files that nothing he’d witnessed in combat during the Vietnam War was as frightening as Jeanette Kirby’s murder scene.

Unfortunately, the site surrounding her body didn’t yield much evidence. The storm had obliterated any footprints or fingerprints.

Jeanette Kirby as a child with her mother Muriiel Kirby, father Paul Kirby and brother Joe Kirby — Jeanette, Paul, Muriel, and Joe Kirby

Work of a pro. The killer had cut off Jeanette Kirby’s clothes and tied her wrists with Flex-Cufs — the plastic hand restraints police often use. He had strangled Kirby and stabbed her to death.

Media accounts vary as to whether or not she was raped.

Because of the Flex-Cufs, local police wondered if one of their own could be responsible for the crime.

“This is someone with training, knowledge, and expertise in how to attack, disarm, and handcuff and then kill an individual in rapid succession,” Detective Pete Ackerly of the Ingham County Sheriff’s office said during his Stolen Voices, Buried Secrets interview.

But an investigation never turned up any suspects of note in local law enforcement.

The Flex-Cuf’s tiny metal tab solved the case

Bogus traffic stop. The Kirby case went cold.

Four years later, in 1990, an imposingly tall man impersonating a Michigan law officer stopped a female motorist and tried to force her into his truck. He threatened her with a 9-millimeter handgun and fired a warning shot in the air.

She resisted, and he fled the scene without her.

Golden boy. A gas station receipt identified the driver as David Draheim. He was a 33-year-old worker at a wastewater treatment plant in Holt.

The sandy-haired blue-eyed ex-Marine was also a volunteer firefighter. He had a good reputation and no criminal record.

Local law officials had no idea that the man they knew as an asset to the community was using an Ingham County sheriff’s hat and police-style flashing lights in an attempt to waylay women.

Waitress terrorized. But the knife and plastic handcuffs found in Draheim’s vehicle were different from those used on Jeanette Kirby, and the failed abduction took place 200 miles away, in Leelanau County.

Police still couldn’t connect Draheim with the murder.

Jeanette Kirby's brother, Joe Kirby, and mother, Muriel Kirby in court — Muriel Kirby and her son, Joe, react to the verdict

But the 6-foot-6-inch-tall Draheim received 40 years in prison for the attempted kidnapping of the female motorist as well as crimes from 1989 that Forensic Files didn’t reveal — two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct with a weapon, according to the Michigan Department of Corrections.

Draheim had repeatedly raped a waitress after pretending to be a good samaritan who wanted to help her fix a flat tire. She didn’t report the attack until years later because he threatened to kill her if she did, according to “The Cuff Link,” the Cold Case Files episode about the case.

Friend in a high place. Meanwhile, the Kirby case went cold again — until 12 years after the murder, when Muriel Kirby found a sympathetic ear in Michigan’s new attorney general.

Jennifer Granholm assigned two investigators to reopen Jeanette’s case.

They decided it was a good idea to interview Mark Greko, the aforementioned Draheim pal.

While living together in the early 1980s, both men had worked as security guards. During this same time, Greko found a stash of Flex-Cufs inside an old state police car he was rehabbing.

Mark Greko, David Draheim's best friend, during his Forensic Files appearance — Mark Greko during his *Forensic Files* appearance

Tab settles it. Greko said he remembered using one Flex-Cuf for a repair and wrapping a second one around the brim of the hat he wore as part of his old uniform.

He gave the rest of the Flex-Cufs to his roomie, David Draheim.

Greko singlehandedly turned Kirby’s case from ice-cold to red-hot by digging through his storage area and plucking out his ancient security guard hat — with the Flex-Cuf still attached. Being a pack rat paid off.

Hand restraints in tow. Investigators found the same distinctive production markings on the metal tab of the Flex-Cuf used on Jeanette Kirby and the one from Draheim’s pal’s hat. They came from the same batch manufactured in 1979.

Finally, authorities charged David Draheim with murder.

At the 2002 trial, Draheim’s wife testified that he routinely took Flex-Cufs with him when he went jogging.

Mother gets results. Another woman, a former acquaintance of Draheim’s, told the court that he had Flex-Cuf’ed her once.

Prosecutors contended that Draheim was scouting for a random victim when he spotted Kirby jogging and ambushed her on that day in 1986.

The jury found Draheim guilty of second-degree homicide, and he received 60 to 90 years on top of the 40 years he was already serving.

It was a long time to wait, but mild-mannered Muriel Kirby’s persistence got results.

Epilogue and updates: So where are the parties today?

David Draheim is serving his time at Saginaw Correctional Facility in Level II security, which probably means he’s behaved himself while incarcerated.

On Jmail, a service that allows inmates to seek pen pals, he identifies himself as a 295-pound bodybuilder who’s “sensitive to other people’s feelings” with “true family values.”

Draheim, who says he’s looking for a woman to correspond with, claims that there are doubts about his guilt.

David Draheim in court and in a recent mugshot — David Draheim in court in 2002 and in a 2016 mugshot

The innocence website hvots.altervista.org notes that Draheim saved several people’s lives through his firefighting work.

Draheim will be eligible for parole in 2050, when he’s 93 years old.

After her daughter’s death, Muriel Kirby started a chapter of Parents of Murdered Children and also added her voice to the Victims in the Media program at Michigan State University.

Unfortunately, her husband, Paul, had died in 1999, without seeing his daughter’s killer brought to justice. Muriel herself died at the age of 84 in 2006.

As for Mark Greko, the Investigation Discovery episode produced in 2012 used the pseudonym Mark Smith for him, which probably means he prefers not to be asked about the case anymore.

Greko still lives in Holt, Michigan, and works as a security guard for a mental health facility and as a rescue worker for the Ingham County Sheriff’s Office, according to his LinkedIn profile and other information available online.

Jeanette Kirby as a child at the beach — Jeanette Kirby

Incidentally, in case anyone has the wrong idea about Greko, it should be pointed out that a pack rat isn’t the same thing as a hoarder.

While hoarders live among mountains of junk and other stuff they’ll never need, pack rats squirrel away things that may prove useful some day.

And speaking of useful, Jennifer Granholm went on to serve as Michigan’s governor and is often credited with helping to save Detroit’s auto industry in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Amazon Prime

Author: Rebecca Reisner

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