Rebecca Reisner, Author at Forensic Files Now

Richard Nyhuis: A Boy Scout Leader Goes Astray

Bunchee Nyhuis Is Murdered In America
(“The Talking Skull,” Forensic Files)

Last week’s post recapped a Forensic Files episode that was rich in biographical details, about an elegant social climber named Noreen Boyle and the arrogant mid-life crisis victim of a husband who murdered her.

This week is dedicated to “The Talking Skull,” a Forensic Files story whose heart lies in the evidence-gathering process.

As a YouTube commenter summarized the authorities’ work:

Anupam Sircar 2 “From just a skull in the ground to a convicted killer in prison!!! Wow!!! Well done!!!”

The story offers up everything viewers ever wanted to know about ID’ing a skull.

Cartographer’s catch. But the episode gives relatively little in the way of personal details about Bunchee Nyhuis or her husband, Richard, who turned homicidal one night in 1983. By the time the closing Forensic Files theme music plays, viewers haven’t really gotten to know the couple.

Photo of the book Forensic Files Now — Book instores
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So, for this week, I looked around for intelligence about their personal histories (only a few tidbits about Bunchee available, but a fair amount on Richard) and also checked into the whereabouts of Richard today. So, let’s get started on the recap:

In November 1987, a freelance mapmaker named Raimo Pitkanen was on a job for an orienteering club when he spotted a skull at the S Bar F Scout Ranch near Farmington, Missouri.

Frightened by what he’d seen, Pitkanen left the skull in the woods and didn’t report until he was safely back in his home in Finland.

Written in bone. At the scene, the Missouri Highway Patrol found some other bones, strands of hair, and a button that said “Texwood.” Some of the remains had been gnawed by animals who probably dug them up from a shallow grave.

Bunchee Nyhuis and Richard Nyhuis — In happier times

The victim’s pelvic bone had the type of markings that indicate it belonged to a woman who had given birth to two or more children. (That would have been a nice fun fact in a case that wasn’t quite as grim as this one).

Investigators discovered that Texwood was a Hong Kong manufacturer that made jeans specifically for “Asian builds,” according to The Bone Detectives, a children’s book of all things, published by Little Brown in 1996.

Facing the challenge. Forensic Files asserted that the button proved the victim was either from Asia or had visited Asia.

It turned out that was correct, but it bothers me when the show leaps to conclusions — the jeans could have been worn by an Armenian-American woman who bought them in a thrift store in Vermont.

Anyhow, after a forensic artist used the skull to re-create the face of the victim, a woman named Wilaiporn Cox saw it on TV and identified it as belonging to her missing friend Bunchee Nyhuis. No one had seen Bunchee since December 1983. At the time, Richard claimed that she had returned to Thailand. He said he had dropped her off at the St. Louis airport and never heard from her again.

Thai love story. It seemed plausible at the time. Her friends recalled her saying that she wanted to go back and visit her relatives in Thailand.

Bunchee (also “Bun Chee” or “Buncheerapon,” depending on the source) was born in the city of Chonburi in Thailand circa 1950 and left her homeland after meeting the dark-haired, blue-eyed Richard Nyhuis. He was serving in the Air Force in Thailand in the early 1970s.

Seemed perfectly respectable. Richard Nyhuis came from a normal family background (on paper, anyway). He was born on February 18, 1946, to Harold Clayton Nyhuis and Virginia Buckler Nyhuis, who lived in Kankakee, Illinois. Harold spent 30 years working for an office supply business called Amberg File and Index, and Virgina was a secretary who worked on a newsletter published by the family’s church, Asbury United Methodist.

When Virginia died at the age of 94 in 2016, an obituary mentioned Richard had two sisters, Kathryn Siegel and Ann Johnson.

Richard became an electrician for McDonnell Douglas. Neighbors described him as an ideal husband and father and a well-respected Boy Scout leader, according to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch story from July 20, 1989.

Don’t let the no-frills sign fool you. The S Bar F Ranch looks like a rustic Club Med

“She’s a tigress.” But investigators didn’t believe Richard was entirely wonderful. They confronted him while he was camping with his sons, Steven and Michael, at the same Boy Scout ranch where Bunchee’s remains had been discovered. He gave a videotaped confession, albeit a shifting one, and went on trial for murder in 1992.

The proceedings took place in St. Charles County Court with a jury of seven men and five women.

The prosecution contended that, during an argument in November 1983, Richard struck the 33-year-old Bunchee with a sharp object, then suffocated her as she lay on the floor pleading for medical help.

The defense countered that Richard Nyhuis was a peaceful man who fell prey to his wife’s volatile nature. His lawyer alleged that he pushed his 5-foot-tall wife in self-defense after she demanded that they build a bigger house, which they couldn’t afford, threatened to leave him and take their two little sons to Thailand — and then came at him “with hands and fingernails raised,” The St. Louis Post Dispatch reported on November 24, 1992. He also alleged she bit him.

Fifty long years. She hit her head when she fell, then began screaming and Richard accidentally suffocated her, the defense contended during the trial.

But St. Charles County medical examiner Mary Case testified she believed the skull injury came from an implement such as a clawhammer or tackhammer. According to court papers, “Dr. Case further stated that if the wound was left untreated, it could only have caused the wife’s death if medical attention was not properly sought.”

A jury convicted Richard of first-degree murder, and he got life in jail without the possibility of parole for 50 years.

Appeal fizzles. On appeal, Richard complained that the “state flaunted his wife’s remains in front of the jury throughout the trial.” He also contended that the court had precluded him from presenting evidence of “his wife’s specific acts of violence against defendant’s and wife’s children,” according to court papers.

In October 1995, a Missouri Court of Appeals upheld his conviction. The judges noted that “people normally become unconscious after being deprived of oxygen for one minute. This gave defendant sufficient time to coolly reflect on what he was doing after his wife was unconscious.”

Today, Richard Nyhuis resides in Potosi Correctional Center in Mineral Point. The prison houses death-row inmates and has accommodations ranging from minimum to maximum security.

The Missouri Department of Corrections website describes Nyhuis as 5-feet-8-inches tall and 180 pounds.

He’ll be 96 when he comes up for parole.

What about the children?

Offspring Okay. Again, not a whole lot of information, but it sounds as though Richard did a decent job of raising them alone in the years between Bunchee’s death and his arrest for murder.

The name Steve Nyhuis popped up on the St. Charles High honor roll in 1990. Steve appears to have followed his father into the military and had a successful career. It looks as though his brother, Michael, became a woodworker and is married.

In 1991, 48 Hours produced an episode about the case, but I wasn’t able to find it on CBS.com, Youtube, Amazon Prime, or Netflix. If anyone has a clue, about where to see it, please write in.

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

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Noreen Boyle: A Death Encrypted

John “Jack” Boyle Creates a Bistate Horror Show
(“Foundation of Lies,” Forensic Files)

Note: Updated with a new parole eligibility date

Noreen Boyle’s murder sounds more like a page from an Edgar Allan Poe short story than an episode of Forensic Files.

After killing Noreen, her husband decided on a macabre way to conceal her body. Dr. John “Jack” Boyle created a grave beneath the concrete basement floor of their new house in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Amateur job. The story surrounding the homicide, however, is pretty typical as true-crime tales go: A spouse finds a new love and murders the old one to avoid a battle over the kids and money.

But Jack Boyle, a University of Pennsylvania graduate who was a tremendous success as a physician, failed miserably as a hitman, and landed himself in a crypt of his own — a cell at the Marion Correctional Institution in Ohio.

The murder took place in the hours before New Year’s 1990 struck, but people from the Boyles’ old hometown of Mansfield, Ohio, have never stopped talking about the case. The Investigation Discovery channel produced a documentary about it in 2018.

Imperfect union. Jack Boyle is still alive, so for this week, I looked for an epilogue for him as well as his and Noreen’s children. But first here’s a recap of “Foundation of Lies” along with extra information drawn from internet research:

Noreen Schmid Boyle, an elegant mother of two, managed to cope with her husband’s various affairs over the years. Maybe she cared more about maintaining a stable home for Collier, 11, and Elizabeth 3, than she did about her own hurt feelings.

Or perhaps she soothed her pride with shopping trips and her Range Rover and BMW. Her husband’s medical practice, which specialized in Medicaid and Medicare cases, was a money machine. One in every 13 residents of Richland County, Ohio, was a patient there, according to Forensic Files.

Surely, Noreen enjoyed Jack Boyle’s status in the community.

Gatsby gal. According to the Akron Beacon Journal, Noreen was something of a Holly Golightly. She came from a working-class background, the daughter of a secretary and a machinist.

But she liked people to think otherwise.

Noreen told friends that she grew up in a mansion and had an M.B.A. from the Wharton School.

She did, however, graduate from the University of Pennsylvania School of Dentistry as a dental hygienist (and supported Jack Boyle while he went to medical school).

At some point before New Year’s Eve 1989 rolled around, Noreen had decided that being the wife of a rich doctor wasn’t worth the pain. She found out that Collier had witnessed his father kissing another woman.

Noreen with Elizabeth and her birth mother

Secret agenda. Citing mental cruelty and neglect, Noreen, 44, filed for divorce. But Jack, then 46, persuaded her to make a fresh start with him in Erie, Pennsylvania. He bought a house there and arranged for the sellers to vacate it right away.

All along, however, Jack planned to make Noreen disappear, then marry his girlfriend, Sherri Campbell, and live with her and the kids in Erie, where he intended to establish a new medical practice.

On December 31, 1989, Jack struck Noreen and suffocated her to death after an argument at their residence in Mansfield, Ohio.

Heavy equipment. Over the course of the next few days, the doctor began driving the three hours from Mansfield to Erie, saying he was preparing the new house for their big move. He didn’t mention that he was renovating the basement into a cemetery.

He used a rented jackhammer to make a hole in the concrete floor. Then he secreted Noreen’s body inside, filled in the opening, repainted the floor, and covered it with indoor-outdoor carpeting.

In what must have been a strenuous job, Jack gathered up the pieces of broken concrete and dumped them on property owned by Mark Davis, a business associate who was also Sherri Campbell’s uncle.

Sherri Campbell, in a still from Forensic Files and a News Journal photo, during the time of the trial. She had already given birth to Jack’s daughter

Deluded. Now Jack was free to move in with Sherri Campbell, who was 26 years old and very pregnant with his child. He told Collier that Noreen had gone on a little jaunt out of town. Jack would later contend that he saw his wife leave the house and that she was picked up by someone in a car.

Why did Jack Boyle think that his wife’s disappearance would quickly fall off the radar screen?

Maybe he figured the new friends and associates he planned to acquire in Erie would know nothing of Noreen and have no reason to inquire about her.

Jane Imbody, a local Mansfield news anchor who appeared on the Forensic Files episode, said that the doctor considered his deceptions good enough for not only the public and his family but also for himself. “He was such a good liar he believed his own lies,” Imbody said.

But 11-year-old Collier wasn’t having any of it.

Semi-forgery. Collier told investigators everything: Jack’s affair with Sherri Campbell, the thumps he heard while his parents were arguing New Year’s Eve, the trips to Erie, and how his father complained of being sore when he returned. His 3-year-old sister reportedly told police she saw her father strike Noreen.

The authorities found the patch of newly paved basement flooring in the Erie house and discovered Noreen’s decomposing body beneath it. She had a plastic bag over her head.

The real estate agent who handled the $300,000 house deal told investigators about the woman who accompanied Jack to his office. She signed her name “N. Sherri Boyle,” in an apparent effort to impersonate Noreen. (When asked about it in court later, Sherri Campbell pleaded the Fifth Amendment.)

Ice overkill. The prosecution ordered forensic tests to make sure the discarded concrete fragments dumped in Mark Davis’ yard came from the concrete in the Erie basement.

Dr. Jack Boyle intended the new house in Erie to double as a love nest and a burial ground

They matched, but the real smoking gun was the rental receipt from the jackhammer.

Jack said he used it to break up ice on his property. I grew up near Erie, with the lake effect and six-month-long winters, but never saw a homeowner use a jackhammer to get rid of ice. People either left the ice alone, put rock salt on it, or ruined their shovel blades hacking away at it.

Prosecutor takes aim. By the end of the month, authorities had arrested Jack and were holding him on $5 million bond. The trial kicked off just a few months after the murder in 1990, and the doctor testified on his own behalf — for nine hours.

It came out during questioning that Jack had arranged for Sherri Campbell to cook a pork roast and bring it over on New Year’s day — evidence he knew there was no chance Noreen would show up at home, according to Richland County prosecutor James Mayer Jr.

Stories published in the Mansfield News Journal on June 26, 1990, gave extensive coverage of Jack Boyle’s various evasions under oath.

Witness for the prosecution. In addition to the lies he told to cover up the murder plot — for example, he denied purchasing concrete mix at a local Busy Beaver store — there were self-aggrandizing claims regarding his military service.

He said that he was a former Navy man (true), he flew an F-14 during the Vietnam War and logged more flight time than any other pilot (false), a sniper shot him during the Iranian hostage crisis (false), and that he was a flight surgeon (false).

The trial’s real sensation was Collier Boyle, age 12 by then, who impressed the courtroom with his articulate testimony about his parents. Collier revealed that he and Noreen feared Jack’s nastiness and temper.

Cruel tactic. Jack received a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for 20 years for aggravated murder and a consecutive 18 months for abuse of a corpse.

As if losing his mother once didn’t hurt enough, Collier had to go through it again in 1994, when Jack Boyle claimed the body found underneath his basement didn’t belong to Noreen and that she might still be alive.

Some of the autopsy details, including her eye color, were wrong, and the doctor’s brother claimed he’d received a phone call from Noreen after the night she officially disappeared.

Trash talk. Around the same time that Jack was pushing for a new trial, his aforementioned brother, Charles “C.J.” Boyle, began a smear campaign against Noreen.

A lengthy account appeared in the Akron Beacon Journal on July 25, 1994.

Charles Boyle claimed that Noreen’s adoption of Elizabeth from Taiwan was illegitimate.

He also alleged the adoption was “the ‘first operation test’ of a baby-selling organization for which Noreen Boyle became an agent” and that she and an associate had nabbed “several hundred thousand dollars in clear profits” from the illegal enterprise.

A job for DNA. What’s more, Noreen was an international gold jewelry smuggler, according to Charles. And she had planned to burn down the new house in Erie out of jealousy — and she had multiple affairs of her own with men, including a contractor and a police officer, Charles claimed.

He also suggested that Noreen staged her own death and then disappeared on her own volition.

Noreen wasn’t around to defend herself from the character assassination, but at least the authorities were able to refute the story that she had fled on her own accord.

They exhumed Noreen’s body, and a mitochondrial DNA tested reconfirmed its identity.

The misinformation on the coroner’s report was simple human error.

Stay inside, pal. On June 2, 1994, Jack Boyle lost his appeal of the case, when a panel of circuit judges ruled that evidence of his guilt was “overwhelming.”

In 2000, the Mansfield News Journal reported that Boyle was making noise about his attorneys’ not representing him competently. He said they failed to advise him against testifying on his own behalf. That effort went nowhere, and he remained behind razor wire.

In 2010, he failed in his first bid to win parole. As of this writing, he’s still in Marion, with his next parole hearing scheduled for Oct. 01, 2025.

He has reportedly changed his story about Noreen’s death. He acknowledges that he killed her, but says it happened by accident: After she tried to attack him with a knife, he pushed her to defend himself and then he blacked out, he said. When he woke up, he claimed, Noreen was dead.

Okay, whatever you say, Jack.

More about him in a minute. What about Elizabeth and Collier?

‘Colliver’ Twist. Elizabeth was adopted by the family of a local school principal. No other information about her came up in internet searches. She may prefer to remain uncontacted.

Collier found himself alone after the murder. As a Daily Mail story from November 10, 2017, quoted the A Murder in Mansfield filmmaker:

“He … had a lot of rejection from both sides of his family,” documentary director Barbara Kopple tells DailyMail.com. “His father’s family probably felt that he betrayed them, and they didn’t want to adopt him or have him live with them, and the mother’s family probably had some trouble embracing a murderer’s son — in a way, a sense of further rejection.”

Fortunately, a local couple named Susan and George Zeigler eventually adopted Collier. He credits them with helping him recover from the traumatic events of his childhood.

Today, he goes by the name Collier Landry and works as a cinematographer out of Los Angeles.

Return to Mansfield. As of 2016, Collier was seeking to reconnect with his sister Elizabeth, whom he lost track of after the trial.

He conceived of the idea for A Murder in Mansfield, which was produced by Cabin Creek Films.

It shows Collier’s homecoming to Mansfield and his reunion with his mother’s best friend as well as with lead detective Dave Messmore, who also appeared on the Forensic Files episode. Messmore and his wife actually wanted to adopt Collier but legal problems prevented it, according to a positive review of the movie on the filmint.nu website.

Back to Jack: The movie also promised to show a reunion between him and his son. Somehow, Collier has managed not to hate him.

Collier Landry

Photo motherlode. The Hollywood Reporter gave A Murder in Mansfield a good review as well. The movie has appeared at a number of film festivals and had “explosive ticket sales” for its showing in Mansfield. But the broadcast on November 19 on the ID network will be its TV debut.

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

Update: Read about Collier’s life today.

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Amazon Prime.

P.S. Read a Q&A with the Mansfield native who reported on the case for the Mansfield News Journal

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Updates on James Kidwell and Eddie Makdessi

Folks, It Doesn’t Get Much More Sordid Than This
(“Fate Date” and “Double Cross,” Forensic Files)

The Forensic Files episodes about James Kidwell and Eddie Makdessi — unconnected except that they both committed especially lurid homicides — might tempt you to fast-forward past the TMI and get right to the parts about how the authorities caught them. Here are quick summaries, plus updates that you can skip ahead to if you like:

JAMES KIDWELL
Episode: Fate Date
DOB: 12/10/71
Appearance: 6-foot 7, 209 pounds, hazel eyes.
Facility: Mack Alford Correction Center, Stringtown, Okla. Medium security.
Outlook: Life without parole, three counts. Virtually no chance of getting out on two feet.
CRIME: After Rebecca Barney declined Kidwell’s advances, he raped and killed her, shot her husband, Fred, set their house on fire, and murdered a good Samaritan named Kenneth Maxwell who stopped to report the blaze on Feb. 22, 2003. The salacious part of the case, which was tried in 2004, revolved around Kidwell’s pride in his alleged natural assets. It’s not clear whether he gave himself this nickname or others dubbed him so, but here it is: Ten-Inch Cowboy.
UPDATE: Life in prison has not been kind to this buckaroo. By 2006, he had lost all his teeth — he only had 14 to start with — and has been fighting to get dentures. In 2014, the state rejected his request because he’s managed to eat enough to maintain a weight between 209 and 252 pounds. To be sure, Kidwell doesn’t deserve a Hollywood-quality smile at taxpayers’ expense, but everybody needs at least some teeth, so maybe Oklahoma will consider footing the bill for a strictly utilitarian set.
TAKEAWAY: Avoid prison unless you have plenty of Ben & Jerry’s commissary cash.

EDDIE MAKDESSI
Episode: Double Cross
DOB: 9/3/63
Appearance: 5-foot-4, dark eyes.
Facility: Red Onion State Prison, Pound, Va. Supermax.
Outlook: Two consecutive life terms for two first-degree murders and a $202,500 fine. Victim Information and Notification Everyday, aka vinelink.com, makes no mention of his being eligible for parole.
CRIME: Virginia Navy man Adibeddie “Eddie” Makdessi collected a $700,000 life insurance payout on his wife, Elise Martin Crosby Makdessi, before authorities figured out he killed her and an innocent colleague named Quincy Brown in Virginia Beach on May 14, 1996, as part of a ridiculously complicated scheme to sue the Navy on (false) sexual assault charges. Both victims worked at Oceana Naval Air Station. It took authorities 10 years, during which time a news reporter tracked Makdessi down in Russia and lured him back to the U.S., but he finally paid for his horrible deeds.
UPDATE: Makdessi’s efforts to break free include an unsuccessful 2014 lawsuit alleging authorities discriminated against him because of his Lebanese ethnicity. In 2016, a U.S. Magistrate Judge ruled against him in a suit claiming Wallens Ridge State Prison staff failed to protect him from assaults from a cellmate. On Oct. 31, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court denied his habeas corpus petition, noting that Makdessi “has repeatedly abused this Court’s process” and it would deny any subsequent such attempts. (Thanks to reader Patrick Wood, who tipped me off on this new development.) Meanwhile, although the name of Makdessi’s current home sounds whimsical, it’s actually quite grim. Virginia’s “worst-behaving” prisoners end up there, according to HBO’s Solitary: Inside Red Onion State Prison. Makdessi isn’t in the documentary, but it offers a glimpse of the daily life faced by him and other inmates housed in the prison’s 8×10 cells.

TAKEAWAY: If you have teenage sons you’d like to scare straight, stream the HBO documentary today.

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

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Book cover

Greg Davis: Darlie Routier’s No. 1 Antagonist

A Texas Prosecutor Dedicated to Death Row
(“Invisible Intruder,” Forensic Files, and “Darlie Routier,” The Last Defense)

After the past two posts about the unfair treatment Darlie Routier has received at the hands of the criminal justice system, it seems only natural to provide some intelligence on Greg Davis.

Greg Davis in a Forensic Files appearance

I was hoping to find something scandalous or incriminating about the Texas prosecutor, who still clearly takes pride in having landed Routier on death row in connection with the 1996 stabbing deaths of two of her little sons — a crime she has always blamed on an unidentified assailant.

Davis discussed the case on camera in the Forensic Files episode “Invisible Intruder” in 1999 and in the series The Last Defense in 2018.

He and Routier’s other detractors have consistently used personal smears against her: She was “self-centered” and “materialistic,” she was grieving in an undignified manner, she gave the babysitter a wine cooler, she got DDD breast implants, and so on.

But what about Davis himself? Does this millennial-era Oliver Cromwell have any impurity in his past?

Well, much to my disappointment, nothing obvious.

The only official trouble that popped up was an action from 2010, when a grand jury indicted Davis, then a Collin County assistant district attorney, on charges of tampering with a government record.

The matter involved allegations that some DA’s office employees falsified information to indicate they were working on official business when they were actually campaigning for a district clerk.

But a judge granted a motion to quash the indictment against Davis in January 2011.

After new Attorney General Greg Willis took office that same year, Willis chose not to retain Davis. But Davis quickly got a new job, as deputy first assistant DA in McLennan County. He served under District Attorney Abel Reyna.

Davis exited that job in 2014. He left on his own accord, and no accusations of misbehavior turned up on internet searches. But the announcement merited a number of negative reader comments, including:

“Sherry Moses Greg Davis is more of an ass than an asset. I don’t know how he can live with himself for putting an innocent woman on death row. God will be his judge.”

“Barry Green Being part of the Henry Wade administration and obtaining almost two dozen death penalty verdicts is a resume I would not want.”

As of 2014, Davis had helped put 20 people on death row, and several have been executed. (The conviction of at least one of them, Albert Leslie Love Jr., was reversed, in 2016.)

TV station KWTX in Waco reported that “Davis is said to be the most successful capital murder prosecutor in the state of Texas.”

Davis has said he believes there’s a good chance Routier will be executed, which would leave her surviving son motherless.

The next big news about Davis hit in 2017, and it sounded positive (sorry).

The FBI was investigating ex-boss Abel Reyna because he allegedly “dismissed criminal cases for his friends and major campaign donors for political and personal gain,” according to the Waco Tribune-Herald on November 10, 2017.

In an affidavit, Davis indicated that Reyna’s corruption was the reason he chose to leave the job. (Reyna lost his reelection bid in 2018.)

A snippet of typical character assassination

So, it looks as though Greg Davis — who is now a retiree living in the Dallas area — is basically a narrow-minded individual but with some integrity.

And to his credit, in his TV appearances, he seems earnest and not particularly in love with the sound of his own voice.

Just the same, if anyone knows of any skeletons in this guy’s closet, I’m all ears.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode about Darlie Routier on YouTube or Amazon Prime

Drake Routier: 5 Things to Know

Darlie Routier’s Son Lives the Crucible
(“Invisible Intruder,” Forensic Files, and “Darlie Routier,” The Last Defense)

After last week’s post about the persecution of Darlie Routier, many readers searched for information about her youngest son, who was 7 months old when a knife attack left his brothers dead on June 6, 1996, in Rowlett, Texas.

Despite the upheaval of the murders of brothers Damon and Devon Routier and the imprisonment of his mother for homicide, Drake Routier grew into “the most adaptable kid I’ve ever seen,” his father, Darin, told reporter Liz Stevens, who wrote about the Routiers in a Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

The article, published when Drake was 2 years old, described him as normal, lively, and resembling his mother with “startled blue eyes” and a “delicate mouth.”

Now in his early 20s, Drake has beaten the odds in a number of ways. In an on-camera CNN interview, he doesn’t act like a young man who’s consumed with bitterness or anger. And he apparently has stayed out of trouble with the law. (No small accomplishment in an age when the children of politicians and celebrities tend to pop up on mugshots.com.)

Drake has said he believes in his mother’s innocence, and he has visited Darlie, 48, regularly in the Mountain View Unit, where she’s one of six women on death row in a state with the most active execution chamber in the U.S.

Here are 5 realities, drawn from internet research, about his life:

Reality #1. Drake’s father, Darin Routier, didn’t take custody of him right away after the murders, because he wanted to get his finances in order, Liz Stevens reported. After putting Darlie in jail with bail set at $1 million, the state of Texas placed baby Drake in a foster home in 1996. A court later gave custody to his father’s parents, Sarilda and Leonard Routier. Meanwhile, Darin, once a successful computer hardware entrepreneur, lost the family’s huge Georgian-style house, cabin cruiser, and 1986 Jaguar. He started over in Lubbock and eventually had Drake move in with him.

Reality #2. Drake found out in 2013 he had acute lymphocytic leukemia, which is “the most common type of cancer in children, and treatments result in a good chance for a cure,” according to the Mayo Clinic. He allowed CNN to show photos of him during the time he was undergoing chemotherapy. On October 13, 2016, Drake finished his last cancer treatment at the Children’s Medical Hospital in Dallas, according to a message his maternal grandmother posted online. An AP story dated June 18, 2018, reported that Drake was in remission, according to Richard A. Smith, a defense lawyer for his mother.

Reality #3. Drake told CNN he’s had to accept his identity as the kid whose mother is on death row. Darlie and other family members have been denigrated in the media ever since her arrest 11 days after the murders. During the trial, “prosecuting attorneys labeled Routier’s relatives ‘trailer trash’ and portrayed the Rowlett couple as tacky nouveau riche with twisted priorities,” according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The public chimed in, too. A pawn shop clerk “noted that Darlie often came to her store braless and used foul language,” the newspaper reported.

Reality #4. Drake’s visits to his mother, who’s been on death row for 21 years, take place with a sheet of glass between them. In addition to denying friends and family members physical contact with death row inmates, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice limits visits to two hours in duration and encourages “conservative dressing.” For example, visitors past the age of adolescence cannot wear shorts or skirts shorter than three inches above the knee.

Family lost: The Routiers with Devon and Damon

Reality #5. Although deprived of his mother’s embrace, Drake has grown up with many other people who love him. For instance, Jerry Dale Jackson, the father of Darin Routier’s girlfriend, Cindy, considered Drake to be his own. Jackson’s obituary in the Weatherford Democrat in 2017 listed Drake as one of his grandchildren.

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

Read Part 3: Greg Davis: Darlie Routier’s No. 1 Antagonist

Watch the Forensic Files episode about Darlie Routier on YouTube or Amazon Prime

7 Reasons Darlie Routier Is a Witch-Hunt Victim

Enough with the Silicone-Shaming
(“Invisible Intruder,” Forensic Files, and “Darlie Routier,” The Last Defense)

An ABC series called The Last Defense is reviving interest in the 1996 murders of Devon and Damon Routier and the character assassination prosecutors used to put their mother on death row.

Viewers of The Last Defense, co-produced by actress Viola Davis, may not realize that Forensic Files was on the case nearly two decades earlier.

Whereas The Last Defense disposes itself to throwing Darlie Routier’s guilt into doubt, the 1999 Forensic Files episode about the homicides of the boys, ages 5 and 6, portrays her as deserving of the capital punishment sentence doled out by a Texas jury.

But “Invisible Intruder,” the Forensic Files retelling of the suburban Dallas Greek tragedy, unwittingly lays the groundwork for skepticism over the prosecution’s presumption that it’s only logical for a sex kitten living in a mansion to stab her own children to death to free up more cash for Neiman Marcus.

On Forensic Files, a prosecutor named Greg Davis makes a number of narrow-minded judgments about Darlie that should have triggered the witch-hunt alarm.

Davis continues the defamation of the former housewife from Rowlett, Texas, on The Last Defense as do a number of others connected with the case. Unrelated observers also enjoy casting stones at the mother of three with the audacity to enjoy looking alluring.

Drawn from both Forensic Files and The Last Defense, the following seven assumptions and contentions are so unfair that I want to help Darlie Routier escape from her prison cell in the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville, Texas — whether she’s guilty or not.

Attack #1: Greg Davis and fellow prosecutor Toby Shook said they were “sickened” and “disgusted,” respectively, by a tribute involving Silly String and laughter the Routiers had at a grave-side birthday celebration for one of their slain sons. “It struck me as more than curious,” Davis said.
Refutation: People mourn in varied ways and processes, and some try to celebrate their loved ones’ lives in between the fits of unbearable sorrow.

The Routiers’ former home in Rowlett, Texas

Attack #2: Investigators contend a single fiberglass fragment on a knife from the Routiers’ kitchen indicates Darlie used the knife to stage the scene by cutting a hole in a screen.
Rebuttal: One tiny fragment? Murder scenes aren’t hermetically sealed chambers — how could they be when EMTs and police have to walk onto them in the first hours after the crimes? That fiber could have easily been accidentally transferred to, or planted on, that knife.

Attack #3: Greg Davis points out with disgust that Darlie liked to wear 10 rings at a time.
Dissenting view: So what? Madonna used to put on 20 bracelets at once and she still occasionally drapes herself in rhinestone-laden low-cut outfits. All five of her kids are alive and intact.

Attack #4: Again, Greg Davis is horrified (he sure thrives on repulsion), this time because the Routiers played Coolio hit “Gangsta’s Paradise” at their sons’ funeral. “I can’t imagine that you do that,” he said.
Wrong, wrong, wrong: Darlie’s husband, Darin, says it was the kids’ favorite song. The Last Defense shows video of the older boy dancing to it. People often enjoy songs because the melody and harmony speak to them — the lyrics are insignificant. My law-abiding mother taught me “La Cucaracha” when I was 5 years old. It’s about a cockroach who walks funny because he needs marijuana.

Attack #5: Davis notes one of Darlie’s diary entries asks God to “forgive her” for what she is “about to do.” He believes that means she intended to kill herself or her sons or both.
Oh, shut up, Greg: So now people have to censor themselves in their own journals because some modern-day Cotton Mather might read them one day? The woman had three kids by the time she was 26. Of course, she’s going to have down days. It doesn’t mean she was truly suicidal or remotely homicidal. Stay out of women’s diaries, Greg.

Attack #6: Juror Kerri Parris, who appeared on camera on The Last Defense, nonchalantly admits she used the fact that Darlie had breast implants as a strike against her. “That’s not something I would do,” Parris said.
Stop leaping: Who cares? Eating venison is something I wouldn’t do. That doesn’t mean I think deer hunters are inclined to turn their rifles on their own kids.

Attack #7: More from Kerri Parris: “I just knew that she killed her boys. I was angry about it, but also went in open-minded about it.”
Supreme Court, did you hear that? The presence of a juror who admits she was biased from the beginning sounds like a slam-dunk argument for a new trial. Actually, here’s a better idea: Spring Darlie Routier from her cell, and everybody else mind your own business.

By the way, Darin Routier, an IT entrepreneur who divorced Darlie in 2011, appears on The Last Defense and maintains that his former wife is entirely innocent. Does anyone really think that this Texas dad would defend a woman if there’s any chance she took away two of his man-children?

The Routiers’ surviving son, Drake, has leukemia. He lives near his father in Lubbock and has said he loves Darlie and always will.

Come on, Texas, let this nice young man and his mother console each other outside of razor wire. — RR

Read Part 2: Drake Routier: 5 Things to Know

Watch Forensic Files episode “Invisible Intruder” on YouTube or Amazon Prime

Ed Post’s Murder of Julie Post

A Spouse Scapegoats a Towel Ring
(“Slippery Motives,” Forensic Files)

The story of Julie Post’s death encompasses a favorite Forensic Files theme: As much as the show stresses science, many times the little things suspects do or say are more damning.

“Slippery Motive,” the episode about Julie Post’s murder by her husband, New Orleans salesman Ed Post, also contains one of the best quips ever from a prosecutor’s on-camera interview.

Salesman’s personality. I’ll get to that in a minute and also provide an epilogue for Ed, who is still alive three decades after he ended his wife’s life.

So let’s get started on the “Slippery Motive” episode recap, along with extra information from internet research:

Ed Post and Julie Thigpen met at the University of Southern Mississippi and married in 1967.

They moved to Louisiana, where Ed made a name for himself as a real estate agent, thanks in part to what Forensic Files calls his sophisticated manner.

Cajun success story. After Julie joined his firm, Wagner & Truax, she sold around $1 million in real estate a year, according to Forensic Files. But later, someone mentioned that she made only around $20,000 annually.

The Omni property where the murder took place in 1986 is now the St. Louis Union Station Hotel

That confused me a little because if the firm charges the standard 6 percent commission, why didn’t Julie get at least half of that, which would add up to $30,000?

On the other hand, she started working there in 1982, when $20,000 a year was pretty decent scratch.

Together, the couple were earning enough to afford a wine collection worth $30,000, according to St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Bill McClellan, who went on to write a mass-market paperback called Evidence of Murder (Onyx, 1993) about Julie Post’s homicide.

(Note: Forensic Files references Wagner & Truax as the real estate firm that Ed Post partly owned, but a reader recently wrote in that he wasn’t an owner and the firm where he worked was actually Gertrude Gardner Realtors.)

Worst convention ever. But all that affluence wasn’t enough for the chubby 5-foot-7-inch Ed. He became infatuated with a cute colleague. She already had a well-to-do husband, and it was theorized that Ed wanted to turn himself into an even better provider than her spouse.

A trip the Posts took to St. Louis for a real estate conference gave Ed an opportunity to put a homicide plan into action.

He drowned Julie in the bathtub early in the morning on June 3, 1986, then quickly jumped into a T-shirt and shorts.

Ed Post, right, and his brother in a St. Louis Post-Dispatch photo

On his way out of the Omni Hotel in Union Station, where they were staying, Ed stopped by the concierge desk to thank her for a recommendation. Next, he introduced himself to the doorman and mentioned he was going jogging.

Big payout. Upon his return, he “discovered” his wife unresponsive in the tub. Police found a broken-off towel ring in the water. It looked as though Julie had grabbed it for support, it came loose from the tile wall, and then she fell, hit her head, and drowned.

Ed Post might have gotten away with it, but his greed turned reckless. He immediately called his lawyer brother to the scene, where they photographed evidence of the allegedly homicidal towel ring, in preparation for a lawsuit against the hotel (see Mark Winger).

And one more gift for prosecutors: Ed had purchased a $300,000 life insurance policy on Julie less than a month before her death.

Gratuitous interaction. At first, however, it looked as though authorities were buying the accidental-drowning story, and Julie Post’s body was transported to New Orleans for burial in Metairie Cemetery.

The St. Louis Post Dispatch reported on the death at the Omni, and it caught the eye of a prosecutor from the Missouri attorney general’s office.

Dee Joyce-Hayes didn’t buy all the towel-ring shaming.

Dee Joyce-Hayes in a 2010 Post-Dispatch photo

Oh, come on. She also found it odd that Ed Post thought it necessary to introduce himself by first and last name to the Omni doorman and explain where he was going.

“It’s from the book of ‘Who Cares?’ ” she said. (Best quip of the season.)

Clearly, Ed Post was trying to establish an alibi.

Soon, more authorities took an interest in the case as a possible homicide.

Hardware inquisition. Next came the trial by combat of the towel ring. Investigators had a woman of about Julie Post’s weight and height test an attached, intact towel ring in another bathroom at the Omni Hotel.

After numerous trials, investigators determined that it would take a person weighing 480 pounds — or a person weighing 120 pounds who was descending from 64 feet — to pull the towel ring directly off the wall in the way they found it at the murder scene.

The lab concluded that someone standing outside the tub, with a foot against the side, violently and deliberately wrenched the towel wring from its mount on the tile wall.

Dead giveaway. After exhuming Julie Post’s body, the coroner found marks that suggested someone had held her head down in the water.

The authorities did a great job with the forensics, but the towel ring factor got undue attention, in my opinion. There was no way of determining the condition of the towel ring before it came off the wall in the Posts’ room. Maybe it had a loosened mounting plate or was defective.

As Dee Joyce-Hayes pointed out, Ed Post’s gratuitous explanation to the doorman was the real red flag.

Too much info. Even the friendliest of business travelers is not going to introduce himself to the doorman by first and last name. The guy had a hidden agenda.

Ed Post also made sure to have a long narrative about the sights he took in on his jog, including Busch Stadium, the Gateway Arch, and city hall.

U.S. Prosecutor Dean Hoag called Post “a detail man done in by details” as reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on May 29, 1989:

“Hoag asked the jury to recall the testimony of New Orleans insurance inspector George Leggio, who said Post had kept offering him details of the ‘accident’ when all Leggio wanted was Julie Post’s health record before her death.”

Talking down to them. Ed Post’s trial for first degree murder started in 1989. In addition to the towel ring test and the accounting of the financial windfall Post would receive upon his wife’s death, the evidence included testimony that he joked around — at Julie Post’s funeral — about wanting to date his aforementioned cute colleague’s twin sister .

And there was also the matter of Ed Post’s business, Jackson & Truax, having fallen on hard times. In the mid-1980s, the New Orleans real estate market wasn’t exactly a zydeco dance party.

Ed Post in 2013, a year before his release

The jury found Ed guilty of first-degree murder after a day of deliberation. Forensic Files noted that his condescending tone on the witness stand had struck out with the jury.

A judge gave Post a sentence of life in jail without parole.

Family turns. Apparently, Post’s lawyers had offered him the chance to be considered for second-degree murder as well as first degree, but he declined, preferring “all or nothing,” according to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch story on May 24, 2014.

But the murder conviction was overturned because of evidence that the sheriff’s deputies got a little too buddy-buddy with the jurors.

By the time of his second trial in 1992, Ed Post’s brother, older daughter, and best friend (Harby Kreeger) no longer believed in his innocence. They testified against him.

It’s not clear whether Ed Post’s former firm is still in business. It doesn’t have a website or any Yelp reviews

Daughter’s ordeal. As if Stephanie Post hadn’t suffered enough by virtue of losing her mother, during her three hours of testimony, defense lawyer Rick Sindel brought up the fact that she’d had an abortion after being raped.

Stephanie, who cried several times on the stand, also said that her father had abused, and had pointed a gun at, her mother.

In 1985, Julie Post had told her daughters that she and Ed were getting a divorce and they would have to switch from private to public schools, Stephanie testified.

Blame the pills. At some point during one of the trials (it’s not clear which), Dan Post testified that Julie had told him about physical abuse she suffered at Ed’s hands. Oddly, that information was supposed to work in Ed’s favor: The fact that he had a temper was intended to suggest he killed Julie in a fit of anger, punishable as second-degree murder instead of first-degree.

By this time, prison life had worn away Ed Post’s cockiness and he just wanted a deal, according to McClellan. Circuit Judge Timothy J. Wilson accepted Post’s guilty plea to second-degree murder in return for a 30-year sentence with the chance of parole.

Post admitted to drowning his wife but blamed it partly on his being on diet pills at the time. He apologized to Julie Post’s survivors. Julie’s father later remarked that the contrition gave him a bit of solace.

So where is Ed Post today, and what does he have to say for himself?

Gone quiet. After turning down several of his requests for release over the years, the parole board allowed him to exit Missouri Eastern Correctional Center in Pacific in 2014 at the age of 69.

As far as what he has to say, apparently he doesn’t. Post started keeping a lo w profile before his prospective integration back into the free world and has continued to do so.

As for an epilogue for Julie Post’s older daughter, Stephanie married a doctor who does work for Doctors Without Borders. Her husband attended at least one of the parole hearings to ask that Ed Post be kept in prison.

Dee Joyce-Hayes went into private practice at Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal and now is general counsel at the Bi-State Development Agency, according to her LinkedIn profile. I hope she gets a TV show of her own some day.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Amazon Prime

Betty Lee: Death of a Damsel in Distress

Robert Fry Murders a Mother of Five
(“Four on the Floor,” Forensic Files)

A combination of bad companions and bad luck led a woman named Betty Lee to a horrible end on a spring night near Farmington, New Mexico.

A divorced mother of five, Lee was taking a break and enjoying some drinks with a couple of girlfriends.

But her so-called friends ditched her, and she accepted a ride home with a stranger who seemed kind-hearted, but wasn’t.

With friends like these. For this week, I looked around for an explanation for why Betty’s girlfriends abandoned her that night and where the killer, Robert Fry, and his accomplice, Leslie Engh, are today.

But first, here’s a recap of “Four on the Floor,” the Forensic Files episode about the case, with additional information from internet research:

Robert Fry, 26, was cruising around in his Ford Aspire near a bar called The Turnaround on June 6, 2000.

A popular tour spot in Farmington, New Mexico

Forensic Files gives Fry’s occupation as construction worker, but a newspaper account describes him as a “marginally employed Navy veteran” who served in Guam, then worked on and off as a bouncer, security guard, and driver.

In his spare time, Fry enjoyed playing Dungeons and Dragons and collecting knives.

Abandoned and stranded. Neither Betty Lee nor the authorities knew it, but the hot-tempered, beer-swilling Fry was a serial killer. He had already committed three murders and allegedly liked to prey on Native American people.

Lee, a Diné College nursing student from Shiprock, belonged to the Navajo Nation. Her hobbies were gardening and herb-gathering.

She and two other women went to The Turnaround together, but her friends met two men there and they decided to go to a motel together, leaving Lee without a ride home.

She tried to call her brother from a pay phone but couldn’t reach him and broke down in tears.

Desert nightmare. Bobby Fry pulled up beside the 36-year-old Lee, said that he hated “to see a woman cry,” and offered a ride.

Fry, who had his young buddy Lester Engh in the car, drove her to a remote dirt road in Farmington, saying he had to stop to relieve himself.

The powerful 6-foot-1-inch Fry then dragged Betty out of the car and attempted to rape her. When she resisted, he stabbed her in the chest. She fled on foot, but Fry caught up and killed her with a sledgehammer.

Mass tow job. Engh helped Fry conceal her body in some bushes. They threw her clothes in a ravine.

But there was no quick getaway for those two. The Ford Aspire got stuck in some soft sand as they tried to reach the highway. Around 4 a.m., Fry called his parents for help, but their pickup truck was paralyzed in the sand, too, as was the first tow truck they summoned, according to Forensic Files.

Finally, Bloomfield Towing owner Charlie Bergin answered a call and pulled all three vehicles free. They went their separate ways.

The Albuquerque Journal, however, gives a slightly different version of events.

Leslie Engh in court

Mom and Dad abetting? Although the ending is consistent with the Forensic Files account — three vehicles were immobilized in the sand and Bergin freed them all — the newspaper reported that when Gloria and James Fry initially came on the scene, they didn’t get stuck.

Instead, they left their son’s sedan there and gave him a ride home, where he “changed clothes and cleaned up.” They also dropped Engh at his place. The Frys’ truck got stuck when they returned to the scene to tow the Ford Aspire, according to an Albuquerque Journal story from December 8, 2000.

Clothing unravels tale. Bergin probably had no idea a homicide had taken place near the scene, but one has to wonder about Robert Fry’s parents.

The next day, an electrical-line inspector found Betty Lee’s body after following a trail of blood (he suspected someone had poached a deer) off the road.

Police recovered a cell phone Charlie Bergin had discarded at the scene.

Bergin identified Fry and Engh as the men who summoned for help, according to Forensic Files.

Partner sings. Investigators tracked shoe prints at the murder scene to footwear found during searches of Fry’s and Engh’s homes. Both sets of shoes had Betty Lee’s blood on them. A blood stain on Fry’s T-shirt suggested that he was the one who hit Lee with the sledgehammer.

Fry stayed quiet after the authorities detained him.

Engh, who was only 22 years old and looked like a baby chicken, cracked and told detectives everything, then testified against Fry.

The trial took place in Albuquerque because there was too much publicity around Farmington.

In April 2002, a jury convicted Fry of kidnapping, attempted criminal sexual penetration, and second-degree murder.

Trail of tears. Fry apologized to the more than 20 of Betty Lee’s relatives present in the courtroom and asked the jury to spare his life for the sake of his parents, the The Albuquerque Journal reported.

Clipping from the *Albuquerque Journal* from Dec. 31, 2000.

But the jury delivered a death sentence — not a common decision in New Mexico.

Engh got 40 years.

Investigators later tried Robert Fry for the homicides of Joseph Fleming, 24, and Matthew Trecker, 18. The murders took place in a shop called The Eclectic in 1996. Fry had sneaked away with some expensive knives and swords from the store and was afraid the two men would identify him.

Thrill killer? Authorities also discovered that both Fry and Engh were responsible for the unsolved murder of a Navajo reservation resident named Donald Tsosie, 40, who had traveled to Farmington to sell plasma. The men offered him a ride home, then robbed and beat him and pushed him off a cliff in 1998, Engh admitted to police.

Fry received life sentences for those crimes.

“There’s no motive or past acrimony,” Assistant Attorney General Steve Suttle told local news site KRQE. “[Fry] just kills people, and apparently he enjoys killing people.”

In addition to seeing her son condemned to die, Fry’s mother suffered a career setback. A petition signed by 250 advocates for the murder victims called for Gloria Fry to be removed from her job as adult misdemeanor administrator for the San Juan County probation department.

Behind razor wire. An investigation revealed that Gloria Fry had driven onto the Betty Lee crime scene as police officers were studying it. The fact that she lent her son a county-owned cell phone, which he used on the night of Lee’s murder, didn’t help matters either. Gloria Fry was fired on June 7, 2002.

So what happened to the killer and his accomplice?

Engh is still inmate No. 419862 in the custody of the New Mexico Corrections Department.

Fry hasn’t been executed and lives in supermax at the Penitentiary of New Mexico near Santa Fe. His lawyers lost at least one appeal but have stayed busy with various other delay tactics over the last decade.

Justice delayed. As of April 2018, Fry was one of only two prisoners on death row in New Mexico and defense lawyers were arguing for both men’s sentences to be reduced to life without parole because the state repealed capital punishment in 2009.

While awaiting a decision, Fry began toting a Bible.

Apparently it worked, because in 2019, the New Mexico Supreme Court set aside the death penalty for Fry and the other inmate, Timothy Allen. They’ll serve life sentences instead.

BFF fail. Finally, courtesy of the mass-market paperback Monster Slayer by Robert Scott (Pinnacle, 2005), a few scraps of information came to light about the two female companions who abandoned Betty Lee.

As Forensic Files did, the book identifies one only as Tina. But it gives the other a full name, Gloria Charley. (Curiously, one of Betty’s children was named Roxann Charley.)

Gloria Charley said that Betty had turned into a fifth wheel on the night of the murder and she simply didn’t feel like giving Betty a ride back to the reservation.

Really worth it, ladies? Although Lee’s girlfriends apparently were chomping at the bit to check into that motel with those two men, it doesn’t sound as though it turned into a magical evening.

Charley got only the last name of one of them and the name the other one gave — Johnny Miller — was either fake or he didn’t get around to telling her where he lived. Police never found either of the one-night Romeos.

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

Watch Forensic Files episode “Four on the Floor” on YouTube or Amazon Prime.

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IDCon Comes to NYC

“Evidence” from Investigation Discovery’s Confab

Just a quick post this week with photos and memories from Saturday’s IDCon, a convention for fans of Investigation Discovery network shows like Homicide Hunter and Scene of the Crime. It was great to be in a room with hundreds of other people who cop to loving true-crime programs.

Attendees expressed themselves at the entrance to IDCon in the Altman Building in Chelsea.

A fan from Canada with her dog, Lady. Caution to Americans thinking of moving there: She said that a lot of true-crime shows don’t make it to Canadian TV until long after they air in the U.S.

A booth at the show tested powers of observation by having IDCon visitors peer through a slot with this picture inside, then take a written quiz with five questions. Average score: 40 percent. The only person who got 100 percent: a retired police officer.

A panel of journalists who cover true crime for People magazine discussed the upcoming series “People Magazine Investigates: Cults.” Elaine Aradillas (far right), who reported on the Cleveland horror house — where Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight were held captive — said she gained exclusive access to the demolition of the residence by befriending a woman who lived across the street from kidnapper Ariel Castro.

Friendly true-crime fans Rob Savacool and Lauren (didn’t get her last name) came from New Jersey to attend — and Lauren won a walk-on role on Homicide Hunter!

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

Bradley Schwartz: Short-Sighted Ophthalmologist

One Eye Surgeon Murders Another
(“Office Visit,” Forensic Files)

Like many of the criminals featured on Forensic Files, the men who murdered Dr. Brian Stidham obviously didn’t watch the show often enough.

Victim Brian Stidham left behind two children

For one, they didn’t know that phone contact between conspirators in the moments right before or after a murder is the kind of evidence that makes a county prosecutor’s job worth the commute.

Touching base. Dr. Bradley Schwartz, an ophthalmologist just out of drug rehab, did take some other precautions, however. He made sure he was out in public, eating at a restaurant around the time that a hired thug was stabbing Stidham to death in a parking lot in Tucson, Arizona.

The dinner alibi might have worked if not for what happened during the meal. Schwartz, who blamed his former colleague Stidham for the downfall of his medical practice, took a phone call from hitman Bruce Bigger.

And as if establishing an electronic trail to Bigger on the night of the murder weren’t enough, he had Bigger come to the restaurant and sit down at his table briefly to confirm that the crime had happened.

Victim overkilled. For this week, I checked around for an epilogue on Schwartz and Bigger. But first, here’s a recap of “Office Visit,” the Forensic Files episode about the case, along with information from internet research:

On October 5, 2004, a concerned passerby called 911 after finding a gravely injured man sprawled out on the blacktop.

Brian Stidham, age 37, had been stabbed 15 to 17 times (accounts vary) and his car was stolen, but police noted he still had his wallet with cash inside. They spotted a partly eaten slice of pizza on the ground.

Spouse’s house. Stidham was an ophthalmic surgeon; he specialized in treating children. Stidham had just finished giving a lecture to some University of Arizona medical students at the time of the attack.

When police showed up at Stidham’s house to deliver the tragic news to his wife, Daphne, she behaved in a strange way. They had to break into the house when she didn’t answer the door, and then her first words were to ask whether her husband had been “shot.”

Most viewers were probably hoping for a spouse-on-spouse murder drama, but the investigation led another way. Police ultimately chalked up Daphne Stidham’s reaction to the fact that she had taken sleeping pills that night and was disoriented.

Vehicular evidence. She mentioned that her husband had an enemy, Dr. Bradley Schwartz, a fellow ophthalmologist.

Raised in Longview, Texas, Stidham loved Tucson

The next day, detectives found Brian Stidham’s car abandoned in an apartment building parking lot, with his blood on the inside of the door. They theorized that just after Stidham placed his pizza on the top of the car and unlocked the door, the attacker sprang into action.

The killer drove off in Stidham’s 1992 Lexus to make it look like a murder-carjacking scenario, authorities believed. But a carjacking didn’t make sense because of the extent of Stidham’s injuries. Thieves generally don’t hang around long enough to overkill their victims.

Self-destructive surgeon. Investigators routinely study any changes that happen in a victim’s life around the time of a homicide, so they took note that the Harvard Medical School graduate had recently left his position at Arizona Specialty Eye Care.

When Stidham joined the practice, he didn’t know that the Drug Enforcement Agency was investigating Schwartz, a senior partner who had recruited him for the job in 2001.

Schwartz was a prescription drug addict using the practice to illegally obtain Vicodin and Ritalin for himself.

The drug problem wasn’t the only turmoil in Schwartz’s life. He had ruined his marriage by way of affairs, some of them with mothers of his juvenile patients at the practice. There were malpractice suits pending against him. And he was allegedly a shoplifter.

Free but debilitated. The DEA raided Arizona Specialty Eye Care in December 2001, and Schwartz was ultimately indicted on 77 counts of prescription drug fraud. The Arizona Board of Medical Examiners suspended his medical license and made him undergo drug therapy in 2002.

Meanwhile, the happily married, clean-living Stidham started over with a new practice. He took many of the patients from Arizona Specialty Eye Care with him.

Once Schwartz, 39, completed drug therapy and regained his medical license, instead of being grateful for getting a second chance, he stewed.

The suspension had cost him around $750,000, according to an October 4, 2005, Arizona Daily Star story, and he resented Stidham’s defection.

Eye on one suspect. According to prosecutor Sylvia Lafferty, Schwartz, who once earned $100,000 a month, made about $118,000 annually after his suspension.

Schwartz had lost his hospital privileges and could no longer write prescriptions freely for patients.

In the days after the homicide, a number of Schwartz’s friends and colleagues and even his own wife said they suspected Schwartz had something to do with Stidham’s death.

Popularity begrudged. He had plenty of reason to envy Stidham, who was known for his kindness, upbeat personality, and dedication to patients. As the Arizona Daily Star recounted on November 4, 2004, just days after the murder:

“‘[Stidham] probably checked on my daughter seven times a day when she was in Tucson Medical Center,’ said Kristy Ross, whose toddler daughter, Castilleja, was hospitalized two years ago for a sudden eye infection. ‘There were seven doctors who worked with her, but I only remember Dr. Stidham,’ she said.”

Schwartz, who once had been “the top Tucson ophthalmologist” — and lived in a $580,000 house with his wife and three kids in the gated Paloma Canyon development — had discussed fantasies such as planting child pornography on Stidham’s computer or harming him with acid, Schwartz’s girlfriends told investigators. (His defense attorney would later say that Schwartz was only talking that way in an effort to impress the women.)

But at some point, he decided on murder instead.

Simple but stupid plan. Schwartz hired Ronald Bruce Bigger, a 39-year-old patient who was the son of a retired police officer.

For a guy who could perform delicate surgeries to reroute intraocular fluids, Schwartz didn’t come up with a particularly artful murder plan.

All investigators had to do was follow short paths from points A to B to C. They found evidence of two phone calls between Schwartz and Bigger near the time of the attack, then discovered Bigger’s DNA in the murder victim’s car.

Witnesses said they had noticed Bigger, an unemployed parolee, flashing a big roll of bills after the murder. Investigators found that Schwartz had recently cashed a check for $10,000.

Oddball exchange. Schwartz’s girlfriend Lisa Goldberg told police about how a “Bruce” had shown up during their dinner the night of the murder and given Schwartz information in what sounded like coded lingo.

Murder scene in a lot outside Stidham’s office

Prosecutors prevail. While the authorities investigated a case against Schwartz, the community paid tribute to his victim with the Dr. Brian Stidham Children’s Memorial Walk in Sabino Canyon on November 4, 2004.

Local papers published many accounts of Stidham’s compassion.

The trial, which started in February 2006, was a media sensation far beyond Tucson. Court TV covered the proceedings, and CBS produced a 48 Hours Mystery episode called “An Eye for an Eye” about the case.

By springtime, both culprits had been convicted.

As usual, the brawn received a harsher punishment than the brain, with Bigger getting life for first-degree murder and Schwartz ending up with a minimum of 25 years for conspiracy to commit murder.

If Schwartz’s sentence seems a little light, don’t worry: Prison has been no country club.

Bruce Bigger and Bradley Schwartz in Arizona Department of Corrections photos

Incarceration blues. On September 27, 2008, it was Schwartz’s turn to fall prey to a surprise attack. Schwartz had just left a creative writing class and was heading to the bathroom when a fellow inmate assaulted the former ophthalmic surgeon, leaving him with facial injuries including two broken eye sockets.

Bigger, who is inmate number 219577 in the Arizona State Prison Complex in Safford, has not adjusted well to prison life either. The Arizona Department of Corrections notes 14 disciplinary incidents, including disorderly conduct, threatening and intimidating, and harassment.

As for Daphne Stidham, she received $2.29 million from Pima County to settle claims that some local officials had prior knowledge of the murder plan but didn’t act properly to prevent it. One of the officials, Lourdes Lopez, was a former girlfriend of Bradley Schwartz.

*As a high school senior, Stidham was chosen to participate in an M.D. Anderson Hospital study.*

Daphne Stidham could also take comfort in the many tributes to her husband, including a scrapbook that patients and their parents created to memorialize Brian Stidham so that his two small children would one day “know the impact their father had.”

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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7 Reasons Darlie Routier Is a Witch-Hunt Victim

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Ed Post’s Murder of Julie Post

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Betty Lee: Death of a Damsel in Distress

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IDCon Comes to NYC

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Bradley Schwartz: Short-Sighted Ophthalmologist

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