Nightmare in Phoenix (“Walking Terror,” Forensic Files)
If you’re looking for a story about a wholesome nuclear family no one ever imagined could harbor a murderer, the “Walking Terror” episode of Forensic Files should hit the spot.
Scott Falater on trial
Scott Falater and Yarmila Klesken started dating in high school and wed in 1976. She loved him enough to adopt a surname that sounds like a brothel-worker classification.
Scott, a Motorola engineer, and Yarmila, a preschool teaching aide, had a son and a daughter, a golden retriever, and a comfortable house in Phoenix, Arizona.
No secrets. The family made few ripples until Scott stabbed Yarmila 44 times with a hunting knife and drowned her in their backyard pool on January 16, 1997.
Normally, after a commercial or two in a Forensic Files story such as this, we learn about the administrative assistant the husband has been secretly romancing or the hidden financial problems in the family and the life insurance jackpot the surviving spouse hoped to receive.
But “Walking Terror” offers up none of that. The only conflicts between the two allegedly stemmed from the fact that he wanted more children and she felt he spent too much time on church activities — hardly the kind of stuff that boils over into homicide.
Call in the pros. Instead, we find out that Scott had a history of sleepwalking. He claimed that he was sleepwalking when he killed Yarmila and had no memory of the incident.
Scott’s sister, Laura, had once tried to wake him up during a sleepwalking episode when he was a teenager, she said, and he reacted by flinging her across the room.
Yarmila Falater’s murder case ended up hinging upon the testimony from sleep-disorder experts as well as a neighbor who saw the attack.
If Scott could prove he was sleepwalking when he killed his wife, he could escape legal responsibility and glide out of the courtroom a free man.
Aye said the jury. In its own way, Falater’s defense made some sense. There was no evidence of prior spousal battery or any waking physical abuse toward anyone.
Still, I found myself rooting for the expert witnesses who doubted Scott’s story. Someone had to pay for the horrible death.
And if a person is capable of killing someone while sleepwalking, maybe that individual belongs behind razor wire, period.
The hunting knife Falater used during the attack
That didn’t matter, however, because the jury rejected the theory that Scott Falater was sleepwalking during the attack and found him guilty of premeditated murder.
For this week’s post, I looked around for an epilogue for him.
But first a recap of the Forensic Files episode along with additional facts from internet research.
Blackout. On a chilly night in 1997, Phoenix resident Greg Coons heard screams coming from his next-door neighbor’s house. Peering over the fence between the properties, Coons saw Scott Falater, age 41, repeatedly stab his wife, also 41, in the backyard, then go inside to change clothes.
Next, Scott tried to quiet his agitated dog and then rolled Yarmila into the swimming pool and held her head underwater. He sealed his knife and bloody clothes in a Tupperware container and deposited it in the wheel well of his Volvo.
By this time, Coons had alerted police, who arrived on the scene and took Scott away in handcuffs. During the subsequent interrogation, Scott told detective John Norman he had no memory of what he had done and that he and Yarmila had a happy marriage.
He remembered Yarmila watching ER on TV when he went to bed that night, and the next thing he recalled was the sound of police sirens in his driveway, he said. “I heard the dogs go crazy, and I heard all the voices, came down, and you guys were all over me. God,” Scott told Norman.
Clash of the experts. During the ensuing investigation, the authorities indulged Scott’s sleepwalking contention by sending him to the Sleep Disorders Service and Research Center, where experts studied his brain waves over a four-day period and found abnormalities consistent with those of sleepwalkers.
Yarmila Falater
Scott Falater had interruptions in his phases of sleep right before the dreaming stage, typical of sleepwalkers.
Psychologist Rosalind Cartwright, who testified for the defense, told Forensic Files that sleepwalkers have committed such senseless acts as destroying their own furniture or plunging their own arms through panes of glass.
The kindly mannered Cartwright believed in Scott’s innocence. Her theory was that Scott, while sleepwalking, was working to fix a malfunctioning swimming pool pump, when Yarmila walked over to question him about it. His fight or flight impulse kicked in and he attacked her, Cartwright suggested.
Why did he feel threatened by his own wife? Sleepwalkers are incapable of facial recognition during episodes, Cartwright said. Scott mistook Yarmila for an attacker, she believed.
Memory bank. County prosecutor Juan Martinez mocked the credentials of Cartwright and the defense’s other sleep expert, Robert Broughton.
Their résumés “are nothing but steps to their shrines of self-indulgence,” Martinez told the jury. He also pointed out that Broughton’s and Falater’s explanation differed about stashing the clothes in the car.
Broughton said it was a routine task because Falater kept clothes in his car to wear for yard work, but Falater said they were there for emergencies.
Martinez called on sleep-disorder expert Mark Pressman, M.D., who testified that Yarmila’s screams of pain and the dog’s barking would have awakened a sleepwalker.
Pressman also asserted that a sleepwalker can’t create new memories during an episode. Scott’s recognition of the need to conceal the bloody evidence meant that he knew what he was doing all along, Pressman testified.
Martinez theorized that Scott planned to kill Yarmila, go back to bed, and allow his children to find her body the next morning and think a random stranger had murdered her.
During the six-week trial, the prosecutors also contended that the Falater marriage wasn’t all hearts and flowers and noted that Yarmila wasn’t wearing her wedding ring when police found her body.
Backup excuse. Perhaps, the prosecution ventured, Scott knew about the 1987 case of a Canadian man named Ken Parks who was acquitted of killing his mother-in-law because, he claimed, he did it unintentionally while sleepwalking.
Maybe Scott planned to use a sleepwalking defense as a backup plan in case the unknown-attacker ploy failed.
The Falaters in happier times
Martinez, who newspaper reporter Paul Rubin described as having the “demeanor of an adrenalized boxer,” hammered Scott Falater’s contention that stress at work contributed to his alleged frazzled sleepwalking state on the night of the killing.
According to Rubin’s Phoenix New Times article: “Falater testified that Yarmila was the only person he’d told about his sleep deprivation. ‘And she can’t come in and testify, can she?’ Martinez snapped at him.”
Jurors convicted Scott after eight hours of deliberation. “It’s not over yet,” Scott announced as he left the courtroom, according to a New York Post story entitled “Wide-Awake Jury Nails ‘Sleepwalking’ Wife Killer.”
Scott also expressed remorse, as reported by the Associated Press:
“I have no memory of what happened. The one thing I do know is that I loved my wife. . . . I’ve tortured myself a hundred times with thoughts of what must have been going through her [Yarmila’s] mind as she was being attacked by me. It had to have been a terrifying, confusing, and painful experience for her.”
At least he didn’t try to blame the victim.
Mother-in-law speaks. Megan, the Falaters’ 18-year-old daughter, who was a freshman at the University of Chicago, and Michael, their 15-year-old son, both testified that Scott was a great father and they wanted to continue their relationship with him.
Yarmila’s mother (also named Yarmila) told the judge she wanted her grandchildren to have Scott in their lives, albeit with him in a jail cell.
Noting the children’s testimony that the Falaters had a happy marriage free of violence, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Ronald Reinstein declined to impose the death penalty and instead sentenced Scott to life with no possibility of parole.
While reaffirming his belief in Scott’s innocence, defense lawyer Mike Kimerer conceded the sleepwalking contention presented a challenge. “You would love to have a much different defense,” Kimerer said. “We didn’t have anything else.”
Martinez went on to prosecute Jodi Arias in 2015
Single white male. Today, Scott Falater is inmate No. 148979 in the Arizona Department of Corrections system.
Aside from one incident in 2004, when he “disobeyed an order,” Scott has behaved himself in prison. His work assignments have included teacher’s aide, library aide, and data entry clerk.
One online commenter joked that Scott’s last name could make him very popular in jail. Just the same, for everyone’s safety, let’s hope the warden has him sleeping alone, in a locked cell.
That’s all for this post. Until next week, cheers. — RR
This Abomination Will Live On (“Mistaken for Dead,” Forensic Files)
With any crime that involves a lot of money and at least one commercially attractive offender, you can pretty much count on a TV movie and a book or two.
Captured: John Hawkins in police custody in 1991
The last blog post mapped out a timeline for the murder-insurance fraud fiasco perpetrated by two entrepreneurs and a neurologist in 1988. The post before that one offered a cheat sheet listing the cast of characters.
For this week, I compiled a list of the various shows and books about the case. But first, a superquick summary of the crime for readers new to the sordid mess.
The story starts in Columbus, Ohio, where a young con man named John Hawkins and his middle-aged lover, Gene Hanson, opened a store selling colorful workout clothes in 1985. The business did so well that in a few years, they had 22 stores in Ohio and Kentucky.
But they had expanded too fast, overbought, and probably spent too much on TV commercials, which starred the nubile Hawkins decked out in the likes of a lemon-yellow tank top paired with periwinkle-blue shorts.
With the business on the edge of bankruptcy by 1988, the duo decided to fake Hanson’s death and try to cash in on his $1.5 million in life insurance.
A Just Sweats store in the chain’s juggernaut days
Neurologist Richard Boggs, a recent acquaintance from California who had money problems of his own, procured a dead body — by killing an innocent man named Ellis Greene — to pass off as Hanson.
Utter disaster followed, with authorities figuring out what happened and nabbing Hanson and Dr. Boggs fairly quickly. Hawkins escaped to Europe, triggering a three-year international manhunt. Like his pals, Hawkins ended up behind bars, but he got out on parole after 20 years.
Here are some other sources of information and entertainment related to the case (in addition to “Mistaken for Dead,” a favorite Forensic Files episode).
Books Cheating Death by Edwin Chen. This nonfiction paperback written by the reporter who covered the crime for the Los Angeles Times got a mixed review from New York Times writer Bill Kent, who described the tome as having “brief, breathless chapters” and said its “just-the-facts style of reporting is long on information but short on analysis.” (Onyx, 1992, 320 pages.)
Insured for Murder by Robin Yocum and Catherine Candisky. Written by two Columbus Dispatch reporters who followed the case from the beginning, the nonfiction hardback contains some tantalizing details about the plot. The book got decent reviews. You can check out excerpts free online before buying. (Prometheus Books, 1993, 286 pages.)
The Dirty Nasty Truth: 18 True Crime Stories to Stop Juvenile Delinquency by John Barrett Hawkins. The former Just Sweats partner, who now counts motivational speaker as part of his reinvented self, came out with his own book that “chronicles his descent from successful entrepreneur … to convicted felon.” Amazon carries the book. (Dark Planet Publishing, 2012, 192 pages.)
TV If Looks Could Kill, a TV movie starring soap opera actor Antonio Sabato Jr. as John Hawkins and Maury Chaykin (who Entourage watchers may remember in a role as a Harvey Weinstein-like movie producer) as Dr. Richard Boggs. Produced by America’s Most Wanted in 1996, it got mediocre reviews, but it sounds like fun and you can check out the 80-minute drama for free on YouTube. (Don’t wait too long. A different link that worked just a week ago has already been taken off YouTube.)
America’s Most Wanted did a great segment about the case on its regular TV show back in 1990, when John Hawkins was still on the loose. Unfortunately, the vignette isn’t on YouTube. A couple of sources gave links to the AMW episode on Lifetime and Hulu — but they no longer work. If anyone knows of a way to watch online, please leave a clue.
Killer Couples, an Oxygen Network series, features one episode about the Just Sweats case. It includes the real John Hawkins discussing the crime on camera. There’s an interesting promo on YouTube, and you supposedly can watch the episode on the Oxygen website, although it’s not clear whether it’s free.
John Hawkins circa 2012
Blood, Lies, and Alibi, a 2012 series from the Investigation Discovery Network, devotes the episode “Doctor of Death” to the Just Sweats murder. It features interviews with Columbus Dispatch reporter Catherine Candisky and legal authorities directly involved in the case. (Update: YouTube and Daily Motion links to the episode no longer work. Amazon has the show, but you have to pay, even if you belong to Prime.)
Murder by the Book, a Court TV show in which true-crime authors devote an hour to cases that intrigue them, featured the Just Sweats crime in 2006 in Episode 4 of Season 1 with writer Jonathan Kellerman. I couldn’t find any trace of the the episode on YouTube or anywhere else online, however. If anyone knows where to watch it, please share the evidence.
That’s all for this post. Until next week, cheers. — R.R.
Instead, they hooked up with Dr. Boggs in California, took the life of an innocent fourth party, and ruined all their own lives.
A number of viewers who left reader comments on the YouTube webpage for “Mistaken for Dead” — the Forensic Files episode about the case — mentioned the plot of the murder-insurance fraud case was hard to follow. So a timeline seems in order.
1970
Dr. Richard Boggs, a respected neurologist, helps create Satellite Health Systems, one of the first HMOs in the United States.
Boggs’ onetime mansion
1971 to 1976
Satellite Health Systems grows spectacularly but fails to make a profit. Dr. Boggs is millions of dollars in debt.
1977
Dr. Boggs declares bankruptcy. Friends say he is never the same afterward.
1978 Lola Boggs leaves Dr. Boggs after a marriage of more than 20 years and four children.
He moves out of the couple’s luxurious Tudor-style house in Glendale, California, and gets an apartment in West Hollywood. He begins partying with young men there.
1981
Lola Boggs takes her ex-husband to court over $33,000 in unpaid child support.
1981 to 1988
Dr. Boggs continues to spend lavishly, buying a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith II. He incurs huge debts.
He is accused of performing unnecessary surgeries on patients. Medical organizations expel him.
At some point in the 1980s, he meets the two Just Sweats entrepreneurs from Ohio: sexy high school dropout John Hawkins and middle-aged former department-store shoe buyer Melvin Eugene “Gene” Hanson.
1985
Hawkins and Hanson open their first Just Sweats store, in Columbus, Ohio. It carries a large inventory of colorful exercise clothing.
The store is a huge success.
1986
The duo open more Just Sweats for a total of 22 stores in Ohio and Kentucky. They offer such deals as Lycra bike shorts for $4.99.
Hawkins appears in TV commercials for the business and becomes “a household name across central Ohio,” according to the Columbus Dispatch.
But Hawkins and Hanson begin mismanaging the business. They start selling off the stores’ assets for cash.
At some point, the two men begin plotting a crime that will relieve them of the financial hellhole Just Sweats has become.
Hanson starts applying for life insurance. He ultimately obtains three policies totaling $1.5 million and names Hawkins sole beneficiary. The plan is to fake Hanson’s death and get their hands on the insurance money.
Richard Boggs, M.D.
They invite Dr. Boggs in on their plan. His assignment: to procure a body to pass off as Hanson’s.
1988 Meanwhile, Hawkins and Hanson do a Herculean job of hiding the financial problems at Just Sweats. As a Columbus Dispatch story stated:
“Propelled by a series of seemingly ubiquitous TV commercials — all of which featured the wavy-haired, always-smiling entrepreneur — the chain’s annual sales were approaching $10 million. Would-be franchisees were lining up, and major players in the athletic-wear industry were looking to invest.”
1988
Realizing that any prospective Just Sweats investor would require to see an audit — which they cannot allow — Hawkins and Hanson begin looking for an illicit way out.
Gene Hanson starts telling people that he has AIDS and is dying. Neither claim is true: Hanson is setting up a story to make his upcoming “death” believable.
April 9, 1988 Dr. Boggs makes his first attempt at acquiring a dead body by killing someone.
The would-be victim, a computer professional named Barry Pomeroy, complains to the Glendale police that Dr. Boggs tried to murder him by prodding him with an electric device after meeting him at a bar called The Spike and inviting him to his office for an EKG.
The district attorney declines to press charges because of a lack of corroboration. At least one source says authorities dismissed the incident as a lovers’ spat.
Also, Dr. Boggs retains some remnants of his former success: A detective who hears of Pomeroy’s claim notes that Dr. Boggs has an excellent reputation in town.
April 15, 1988
Another try: Dr. Boggs — and possibly Hanson as well — chat up a stranger named Ellis Greene and somehow entice him to Dr. Boggs’ office. The doctor tasers Greene and murders him by suffocation, then puts Gene Hanson’s driver’s license, credit card, and birth certificate in the dead man’s wallet.
April 16, 1988
Dr. Boggs calls 911 and says a longtime patient named Gene Hanson (who was in reality alive and well and hiding) died from a heart attack in his office; he tried CPR, but it was no use.
Paramedics note that rigor mortis already set in. Dr. Boggs claims he tried to call 911 earlier but the line was busy.
Late April 1988
John Hawkins jets to California, identifies Greene’s body as Hanson’s, and puts in a claim for $1 million of the insurance money.
At some point, Hawkins has “Gene Hanson’s body” cremated to destroy evidence.
In stores and online
July 1988
Farmers New World Life Insurance sends Hawkins a check for $1 million.
A few days later, a case worker at the insurance company discovers Ellis Greene’s thumbprint taken at the morgue doesn’t match Gene Hanson’s thumbprint on record at the DMV.
Two other insurers deny claims filed by Hawkins.
Hawkins panics. He withdraws $400,000 from Just Sweats accounts and flees to Amsterdam. He buys a boat so he can travel freely.
Hanson also abandons Just Sweats stores, and flees separately.
1989
Security workers at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport notice a nervous-looking man with plastic surgery scars on his face.
Suspecting he’s a drug courier, they detain the man and find he’s carrying $14,000 in cash.
Melvin Eugene Hanson
Although he gives his name as either Wolfgang von Snowden or George Soule (sources vary), he has Ellis Greene’s driver’s license. He’s also carrying a Dade County library book called How to Change Your Identity.
He is Gene Hanson. Police take him into custody.
Hanson claims he paid Dr. Boggs $50,000 to supply a corpse but had nothing to do with the murder of Ellis Greene.
1990
Dr. Boggs claims that he didn’t kill Greene; he was already dead. He also said that he only took part in the insurance fraud scheme because Hanson threatened to out him as gay.
Regardless, Dr. Boggs is convicted of murder and insurance fraud and gets a life sentence.
April 29, 1990
With John Hawkins still missing, America’s Most Wanted airs a segment about the sweatpants gang’s crime and asks for help locating him.
Oprah Winfrey has America’s Most Wanted host John Walsh on her show to discuss the manhunt.
A former girlfriend of Hawkins in Amsterdam sees the Oprah episode and offers info about his whereabouts.
August 1991
Authorities find Hawkins off the coast of Sardinia in a red catamaran named Carpe Diem. He angrily denies that he’s John Hawkins. They seize him anyway.
August 8, 1995 Gene Hanson goes to trial. He maintains that he thought Dr. Boggs was going to use a cadaver, not murder someone.
Nonetheless, a jury convicts him of murder and insurance fraud.
August 10, 1995
It’s Hawkins’ turn to go to trial. Like Hanson, he claims that Dr. Boggs was supposed to use a cadaver; the state drops the murder charge against Hawkins.
But Hawkins is found guilty of insurance fraud.
August 21, 1995
Gene Hanson receives life in prison without the possibility of parole.
October 13, 1995
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Paul G. Flynn gives John Hawkins 25 years to life — a lighter sentence than what his associates got.
2003
Dr. Boggs dies in Corcoran State Prison in California at age 69.
March 2012
Hawkins wins early release from Donovan State Prison in San Diego in part because he participated in Convicts Reaching Out to People, or CROP, a program to help teens stay out of trouble.
May 2014
A Columbus Dispatch story reveals Hawkins lives with his mother in a San Diego recreational vehicle park and continues to work with troubled young people.
John Hawkins circa 2014
In a Columbus TV station WBNS-10 interview, Hawkins says he was an arrogant youth. He admits to participating in the insurance fraud scheme but again insists no one was supposed to die.
Hawkins tears up on camera and says he’s glad to have a second chance.
2017
Hanson remains in prison at Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo, California.
That’s all for this post. True Crime Truant will be on vacation next week and back the following Thursday with a post about John Hawkins’ dubious legacy today. Until then, cheers.
Smart Pants, Foolish Men (“Mistaken for Dead,” Forensic Files)
The tale of how two sweatpants entrepreneurs and a friend used insurance fraud to bail themselves out of a financial hole was a five-star smorgasbord for any Forensic Files watcher.
The cast includes a brilliant doctor turned wicked, a two-timing male model, and a third accomplice who faked his own death and then (wait for it) got plastic surgery and hair transplants to change his identity.
“Mistaken for Dead,” the Forensic Files episode about the case, weaves a Hollywood-worthy tangled web, to be sure.
The story plays out as something of a glam precursor to the Molly and Clay Daniels debacle, except with better dental work.
Unfortunately, the sweatpants gang actually killed someone (Molly and Clay only robbed a grave).
A number of readers who commented on the “Mistaken for Dead” episode on YouTube mentioned having trouble keeping the plot and the characters straight.
So this week’s post will be a cheat sheet for the 1988 crime’s four principals:
Dr. Richard Boggs, age 55 Role: Killer and conspirator Who: Respected neurologist with a Harvard degree, a Tudor-style mansion in Glenwood, California, and an ex-wife and kids. Why: Boggs was secretly living in a financial house of cards. He needed money. Participation in crime: Lured Ellis Greene to his office, then murdered him as part of an insurance fraud plan hatched with Gene Hanson and John Hawkins.
Gene Hanson, age 46 Role: Conspirator Who: Entrepreneur who co-owned a chain of 22 Just Sweats stores in Kentucky and Ohio with his lover and business partner John Hawkins. Why: Just Sweats expanded too fast and was a financial disaster. Hanson wanted to disappear to escape responsibility for the business. He needed money. Participation in crime: Faked his own death so his cohorts could collect $1.5 million in insurance payouts to be divided among him, Boggs, Hawkins.
John Hawkins, age 25 Role: Conspirator Who: Young David Hasselhoff lookalike who co-owned Just Sweats chain. Hawkins appeared in commercials for Just Sweats before the bottom dropped out of the business. He ultimately became the object of a three-year manhunt. Why: Like Hanson, Hawkins wanted to escape the financial disaster engulfing the retail clothing chain. He needed money. Participation in crime: Served as the bagman. He was the beneficiary of Hanson’s $1.5 million in life insurance policies. After Hanson faked his own death, Hawkins flew from Ohio to California, collected $1 million from one of the policies, and vamoosed.
Ellis Greene, 32 Role: Victim Who: Friendly accountant who lived in North Hollywood, California. Why: One or two of the conspirators probably spotted Greene at a bar and realized he looked something like Hanson. Then, Dr. Boggs invited Greene to his medical office, assaulted him with a stun gun, and suffocated him. Dr. Boggs called 911 and said Greene’s dead body belonged to Hanson. That way, the three conspirators could get their hands on Hanson’s life insurance money. Participation in crime: None. He was murdered by someone he thought was a new friend.
That’s all for this week. The next post will provide a timeline of the crime. Until then, cheers. —RR
Her Dad Was No Father of the Year (“Bagging a Killer,” Forensic Files)
This week, it’s back to Forensic Files with an episode about how police used a low-concept ploy and a high-tech device to expose a murderer.
Valiree Jackson and a wee pal in an undated photo
Investigators compelled Brad Jackson, who killed his 9-year-old daughter, to dance a two-step familiar to Forensic Files watchers:
1) “Officer, I have no idea what happened to (fill in name).” 2) “Your Honor, I know what happened and it’s not my fault because (fill in improbable excuse).”
Police tactics that force suspects to change their stories add some wry moments to otherwise grim tales like this one.
Taken? Jackson, 34, ended up sentenced to 56 years rather than life without parole. So, for this week, I dug around a little for an epilogue for him and some of the other parties on “Bagging a Killer,” the Forensic Files episode about the case.
But first a recap of the episode, along with additional information drawn from internet research:
On October 18, 1999, Brad Jackson dialed 911 and, in an anguished voice, said he couldn’t find his daughter.
She’d been playing outside with her dog and had disappeared, with only her backpack left behind, he said.
Brad Jackson in court
Troubled mom. Folks from the Jacksons’ friendly neighborhood in Spokane Valley, Washington, sprang into action by searching for the flame-haired little girl and holding vigils.
Not everyone was buying Brad Jackson’s heartsick single dad routine, though. Valiree’s uncle John Stone recalled how his sister, Roseann Pleasant, had feared Jackson.
Pleasant had vanished two years after giving birth to Valiree, her daughter with Jackson. She reportedly struggled with drug problems, which Jackson blamed for her disappearance. But Stone wasn’t so sure.
Car stash. Investigators also had some suspicions about Jackson in relation to his daughter’s disappearance. He claimed that some blood stains on Valiree’s pillow came from a nosebleed she’d had the night before he reported her missing. But police hadn’t found any bloody tissues, wash cloths, cotton balls, etc., in the house.
After searching Jackson’s car and Ford pickup truck, investigators secretly outfitted each vehicle with a GPS transmitter — hot new gadgetry back in the day. A 1999 New York Times story about the case described it as a high-tech version of a bloodhound.” (Prosecutor Jack Driscoll later said “GPS” stands for “God Praise Satellites.”)
Then, as Detective David Madsen explained during his interview on Forensic Files, he warned Jackson that if Valiree lay in a shallow grave somewhere, her body would be easy to find.
Jackson fell for it.
The GPS tracked his movements as he removed his daughter’s body from its original grave, then drove to another area to bury it more deeply.
Cadaver dogs found Valiree’s body buried face down on the grounds of the second of those locations, a logging region near the town of Springdale.
Shaky defense. Investigators believe Jackson suffocated Valiree in her bed, thus the blood on her pillow, then wrapped her head in a plastic bag — similar to ones found in the home that Jackson shared with his parents and Valiree — and hastily buried her. Afterward, he returned home, called 911, and started play-acting.
Dannette Schroeder
In the subsequent trial, Jackson’s “not my fault” contention was that he had found Valiree dead in her bed due to a Paxil overdose (more about that in a second), panicked out of fear that people wouldn’t believe him, and then buried her.
The jury didn’t buy it.
As for a motive, apparently Valiree didn’t get along with her father’s onetime girlfriend, Dannette Schroeder. Jackson allegedly felt that, with his daughter out of the way, he could rekindle things with Schroeder.
Few friends. I’m not sure how Forensic Files narrator Peter Thomas managed to read this part without throttling the living parties involved: Taking Valiree to a psychiatrist and getting her a prescription for the psychotropic drug was Schroeder’s idea. Schroeder thought it would help make the little girl easier to contend with.
Apparently, however, Schroeder had nothing to do with the murder plot. She testified for the prosecution at Jackson’s trial.
“He’s not the B.J. that I fell in love with two years ago,” Schroeder testified. “I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t there.”
Some of Jackson’s own blood relatives spoke out against him in court.
“This is hard for me to say — I honestly believe Brad deserves what he took from Valiree, and that’s a life sentence,” said his brother, Dick Jackson, as reported by AP.
Pleasant and Valiree
Memorial. Neighbors who fell victim to Jackson’s false alarm that an anonymous child abductor was loose in their community weren’t exactly unhappy to see him locked up either.
The Forensic Files episode closed with a view of the tree that kids from McDonald Elementary, where Valiree attended school, planted as a memorial to her. They chose a plum tree with red leaves that reminded friends of her hair.
So where are the parties today? There’s no recent information available online about Dannette Schroeder, but the Web did turn up some intelligence on others related to the case:
• Sadly, Roseann Pleasant never turned up. Her brother said he suspected Jackson killed her and buried her in a building foundation during his stint working for Haskins Steel Co. The Charley Project, an organization that profiles missing persons, maintains a page devoted to Pleasant. (Note: Some sources spell her first name “Roseanne.”)
• John Stone, Valiree’s uncle, was the most sympathetic character appearing on the Forensic Files episode. Many online commenters expressed anger that Brad Jackson didn’t simply give custody of Valiree to Stone if he wanted her out of the way. Stone launched the Valiree Jackson Charitable Foundation which, as of 2004, was mired in some legal woes.
• Lawyers for Jackson have taken issue with the legality of the police’s GPS use. On Sept 11, 2003, the state of Washington Supreme Court denied Jackson’s motion for a new trial and reaffirmed his conviction. In 2019, he lost another court action, which noted he’s incarcerated in Mayo Correctional Institution in Florida. (Thanks to reader TJ for writing in with the tip.) It’s a safe bet that this child killer will stay behind razor wire, where he can’t harm innocent people again.
That’s all for this post. Until next week, cheers. — RR
For this week, I sailed through a second viewing of the entire seven-part series about the link between Sister Cathy Cesnik’s 1969 murder and sexual abuse at a girls parochial school in Baltimore.
The goal was to look for some joy in the disturbing series. And it does exist — in seeing the survivors finally get a chance to meet one another.
Justice denied. For the most part, the girls, now women in their 60s, had kept secret the ritualized sex crimes allegedly orchestrated by Archbishop Keough High School’s chaplain, Father Joseph Maskell. They never had an opportunity to empathize with one another in high school, when their ordeals began.
And they got no comfort from the criminal justice system. Maskell never paid for his offenses, nor did the other alleged perpetrators, including Father Neil Magnus, gynecologist Christian Richter, and at least two police officers.
Both of the priests and the doctor are long dead. No one has identified the police officers by name.
Another of the suspects, a local reprobate named Edgar Davidson, submitted to an interview for the cameras. Although unaffiliated with Maskell professionally, he somehow gained his acquaintanceship and may have committed at least one rape under his supervision.
But Davidson seemed far removed from his former self — the smirking young man with lush coiffed hair who cruised around middle schools and tried to entice girls into a stolen red sports car.
Archbishop Keough High, a site of the alleged abuse, changed names in 1988 and closed in 2017
So close. The now-elderly Davidson mentioned not driving anymore, presumably due to DUIs or poverty. His health looked so tenuous that one wonders whether he could survive a trial, if there is one, which seems doubtful.
And unfortunately, the statute of limitations for bringing a civil action against the church and school — for enabling and covering up the abuse — expired. A push to extend the limits via Bill 642, first introduced by Maryland House of Delegates Rep. C. T. Wilson in 2003, was unsuccessful initially.
The documentary showed abuse survivors Teresa Lancaster and Jean Wehner testifying before a sympathetic panel in the Maryland General Assembly.
Suppression trap. Lancaster explained why victims of sexual abuse sometimes take decades to tell authorities. “I was 40 years old when I came forward,” she said. “It took me that long to focus on my life and make something of myself.”
Proponents made a case for waiving the statute of limitations in part because memories of assaults can take decades to resurface, thus making them new allegations.
Wilson, himself a survivor of rapes committed by his adoptive father, testified as well about the need to extend the statute of limitations. “The problem with this is suppression,” he said. “You learn to live with the lie as a child, so you can certainly live with it as an adult.”
David Lorenz, another survivor of abuse (it’s not clear whether it’s related to the archdiocese) told the panel:
“Everyone has a secret. Stand up here and admit it to everybody, because that’s what you’re asking me to do. You’re asking people to take the deepest darkest secret they have and stand up in front of a jury and tell them.”
Survivor shaming. Kevin Murphy, a lawyer for the Maryland Catholic Conference, argued against the bill. He pointed to a “weakness of human memory” that could put accused “citizens” at risk.
He also asserted that allowing victims more time to come forward would give the sex criminals more time and opportunity to abuse additional victims.
Allison D’Allesandro, the Archdiocesan Director of Child and Youth Protection, offered up the same argument:
“The reality is that the perpetrator often remains in a position of close access to children until an allegation is reported to the civil authorities and the employer.”
For the sixth time, the bill died. State Senate President Mike Miller and Judiciary Chair Joe Vallario refused to let it come up for a vote.
Earlier victim. “I thought my colleagues would get behind me [after I testified]. I had no idea the battle I was in for,” Wilson said during a WBAL Radio interview. “When I realized it wasn’t even coming up for a vote, it was very painful…it was very humiliating.”
But The Keepers manages an ending that, while not exactly happy, offers some hope and yet another bit of joy.
Joseph Maskell circa 1969
First, the survivors learn of documentation of Maskell’s having abused a schoolboy named Charles Franz before the priest ever arrived at Archbishop Keough High School.
A 1967 complaint made by Franz’s mother to the archdiocese resulted in Maskell’s transfer from his job as associate pastor at Saint Clement Church to his post as a chaplain and guidance counselor at Archbishop Keough High.
The episode all but proved that the church had covered up the abuse committed by Maskell — allegations that would have helped substantiate Jean Wehner and Teresa Lancaster’s stories.
It also invalidated the church representatives’ argument that reporting sex crimes early is certain to prevent new ones from taking place.
At the end of the series, the producers show Jean Wehner’s cathartic reaction when she learns that archdiocese officials allegedly tried to buy Charles Franz’s silence (he declined) after she and Lancaster initiated legal action in the 1990s over Maskell’s abuse.
There’s more. And a nice post-documentary epilogue: C.T. Wilson managed to resurrect Bill 642. Once it finally came up for a vote, the Maryland House and Senate gave it a unanimous yes.
While the new rules still aren’t inclusive to all survivors, they give those sexually abused as minors the right to pursue damages — from individual offenders as well as organizations that allowed abuses to continue — up until 20 years after they reach majority age.
The old law set the time span at seven years so, for example, a little girl abused when she was a minor would have only until age 25 to sue for damages. Now, the law gives her up until age 38.
(The maximum amount of damages recoverable from offending organizations appears to have remained the same, at $800,000.)
Maryland’s C.T. Wilson
It’s official. The new law also enables victims to sue up until three years after a defendant is “convicted of a crime relating to alleged incident or incidents.”
On April 4, 2017, the day that Governor Larry Hogan signed Bill 642, he also approved six other pieces of legislation, including one outlawing fracking in the state. Sounds like an all-around good date in Maryland history.
That’s all for this post. Until next week, cheers. — RR
P.S. Thanks to Crime Traveller editor Fiona Guy for including True Crime Truant in her site’s 50 Best Crime Blogs and Websites feature.
This week, I’d like to start a little sabbatical from Forensic Files and discuss the new Netflix series The Keepers, a seven-part documentary about a nun’s murder in Maryland in 1969.
The crime went unsolved for decades — and apparently not because the culprit was some kind of lone maniac who slipped in and out of the area around Baltimore.
That and many other aspects surrounding the homicide come as surprises.
Ad hoc sleuths. Usually any violent crime against a clergy member would mean harnessing maximum police manpower for as long it takes to track down the fiend — the people demand it.
But public sentiment lost out in regard to Sister Cathy Cesnik’s murder. The case went cold. A retired Baltimore police officer interviewed on camera for the series unapologetically said that there were lots of murders in the region every year and this one didn’t merit special attention.
Another unexpected element: The nun’s former students — rather than journalists or detectives — spearheaded the investigation that ultimately turned up the most relevant evidence. It was fun to meet the onetime Catholic schoolgirls taught to respect authority without question, who are now in their 60s and aggressive in their own styles.
Sister Cathy Cesnik shortly before her death
Resident evil. Finally, as we learn as the series progresses, although the crime was most likely tied to sexual abuse taking place at Archbishop Keough High, the all-girls Catholic school where Sister Cathy taught English, the collusion that hindered justice went beyond the church hierarchy.
It allegedly involved police, at least one unaffiliated low-life from the community, and even a local gynecologist.
Actually, one more surprise that I’m not sure how to phrase the right way but will try: The 26-year-old nun at the center of the tragedy was by all accounts warm, gentle, empathetic, and a bit of a rebel.
No stereotype. Not that there’s any shortage of nuns with such positive traits, to be sure: It’s just that on an anecdotal basis, one tends to hear more about sisters who hit children with wooden implements, frightened them with visions of the inferno, etc.
The Keepers has plenty of other compelling plot twists, and it portrays the richness and complexity of the lives of the survivors both within and outside of the late-1960s time capsule.
I did a two-day binge-watch of the entire series, directed by Ryan White, and intend to see it again and write a bit more about it next week. Until then, cheers. — RR
In honor of True Crime Truant’s first birthday, I studied the traffic data from the last 12 months.
It turns out that nine out of 10 of the most-visited posts center on Forensic Files episodes, which makes sense because the blog is primarily devoted to the half-hour docuseries.
There was a surprise regarding where the most readers live: The Ukraine turned up in the Top 5.
The U.S. ranked first, with 199,689 page views. Great Britain, Canada, and Germany round out the list.
Viewers in 142 countries have access to Forensic Files on TV and, as such, True Crime Truant has amassed one reader each in Kyrgyzstan, Brunei Darussalam, Tanzania, Sint Maarten, and Belarus. Fingers crossed for better traction in those locales in the next year.
Below are links to the 10 most-read blog posts.
1. The Vicky Lyons Story A mother searches for the unidentified delivery truck that ran over her 4-year-old daughter.
2. Vicky Lyons: An Epilogue We find out what happened in between the Forensic Files episode that told Vicky Lyons’s story and her death at age 34.
Scapegoating a Role-Playing Game (“Shopping Spree,” Forensic Files)
Last week’s post discussed how a young man who loved role-playing games, most notably Dungeons & Dragons, committed homicide.
Caleb Fairley’s killing of Lisa Manderach and her baby daughter, profiled on Forensic Files episode “Shopping Spree,” allegedly arose from his obsession with finding a real-life counterpart to the type of woman whose looks were idealized in his fantasy game (or games) of choice.
For this week, I looked into whether any other superfans of Dungeons & Dragons have left murder victims in their wakes.
Disturbed adolescents. To get right to the point, the answer is yes, a few, although they go back quite a ways. In 1984, Steve and Dan Erwin, 12 and 15, died in a Colorado murder-suicide and left a note saying it was their only way to escape the game.
Three years later, Daniel Kasten murdered his parents in their Long Island home reportedly because a Dungeons & Dragons character named Mind Flayer coerced him into it.
But even before those murders happened, Dungeons & Dragons had turned into the subject of public scrutiny because of suicides by a number of boys known to play the game.
Organized revolt. After two separate such cases, one in 1979, the other in 1982, the mother of the second young man, Irving Lee Pulling, started the group Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons, or BADD.
By 1985 — a decade before Fairley generated headlines — BADD had made Dungeons & Dragons the object of a moderate case of public hysteria.
A game that involved such supernatural elements as magic spells and curses must, the BADD folks reasoned, degenerate into real-life everyday devil worship, human self-sacrifices, etc.
Patricia Pulling, founder of BADD
Evidence existed that Pulling and the other youth who took his own life, a 16-year-old boy genius named James Dallas Egbert III, had underlying psychological problems, but that didn’t slow down BADD’s momentum.
Unhealthy relationship? BADD grew prominent enough to spur a 60 Minutes segment about the Dungeons & Dragons phenomenon in 1985. Host Ed Bradley described D&D:
An enormously complicated game in which each player chooses an imaginary character he’ll assume. There are dwarves, knights, and thieves, gods, and devils, magic and spells. It’s a journey into fantasy through complicated mazes where you use your wits to kill your enemies before they kill you, all in a quest for wealth and power. The dungeon master orchestrates and referees the game, creating scenarios both complicated and terrifying.
Dieter H. Sturm, public relations director for TSR Inc., the company that sells D&D, made a case that correlation doesn’t mean causation: With 3 million to 4 million users of the game in the U.S., it was a coincidence that a fraction of the 5,000 teens who committed suicide in the most recent 12-month period played D&D, he said.
An adolescent boy wearing eyeglasses with Reagan-era giant aviator frames (talk about scary) explained that the good game-characters try to stop the bad hombres from raping and plundering — and the role-playing stops once the six-sided dice go back in the box.
Good clean fun. “This is make believe,” Dungeons and Dragons creator Gary Gygax told 60 Minutes. “Who is bankrupted by losing a game of Monopoly?
D&D villain Fire Giant
You can find a hazy video of some of the 60 Minutes story on YouTube. An online commenter calling himself Michael Miller wrote the following retroactive rebuttal to BADD’s campaign:
My mom gave me the red Basic D&D for Christmas while this stupidity was going on. She played with me and the rest of the family several times, and we all had a great time defeating monsters, getting out of traps, and amassing sizeable fortunes. She knew how to be an involved, responsible parent.
The BADD publicity died down after a few years. Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control said they found no causal link between D&D and violence.
In fact, one could make a case for a connection between the game and healthy creativity.
Winners, not losers. A number of accomplished authors, including George R.R. Martin, the father of Game of Thrones, have given credit to Dungeons & Dragons for sparking their imaginations as writers.
A 2014 New York Times article quoted Pulitzer prize-winner Junot Díaz as saying that, via Dungeons & Dragons, “we welfare kids could travel, have adventures, succeed, be powerful, triumph, fail, and be in ways that would have been impossible in the larger real world.”
Still, it’s not hard to imagine anti-D&D activism reappearing today, with religious fundamentalism on the rise. (As a Wiccan told me many years ago, every so often, when there’s nothing better to worry about, some concerned citizen sounds an alarm about devil-worship.)
It can be enough to make even a sane person worry about his own affinity for fantasy and superhero-related culture.
Introspection. Fairley’s crime recently prompted self-reflection from one writer somewhere along the nerd continuum. A passage from the 2015 post by blogger Benjamin Welton on Literary Trebuchet:
Whereas Fairley spent his days alone in his parent’s home with his porn, his vampires, and Dungeons & Dragons, I killed many hours alone in my father’s apartment with my comic books, my horror novels, and my favorite television shows. Fairley loved heavy metal; I still do. As much as it pains me to say it, Caleb Fairley, who was convicted of murdering and sexually assaulting Lisa Manderach and her 19-month-old daughter Devon in 1995, is the darkest version of people like me and my friends.
But surely he knows that paranoia and substance abuse, not football, fueled Aaron Hernandez’s homicidal rage, and greed, not tennis, compelled the Menendez brothers to make themselves orphans.
Without D&D, would Game of Thrones exist?
One can point to an id lurking in practitioners of just about every avocation and vocation.
Good guys. Fortunately, very few lead to horrifying crimes. And perpetrators are far outnumbered by the authorities who protect us from them.
Who knows, some of those hard-working law enforcement types just might shake off stress with a little witch and wizard role-playing in their off hours.
That’s all for this post. Until next week, cheers. — RR
Insured for Murder by Robin Yocum and Catherine Candisky. Written by two Columbus Dispatch reporters who followed the case from the beginning, the nonfiction hardback contains some tantalizing details about the plot. The book got decent reviews. You can check out 
August 1991
Dr. Richard Boggs, age 55
Gene Hanson, age 46
John Hawkins, age 25
Ellis Greene, 32
