Ray Krone transitioned from a civil service employee to a death row inmate — and then to a free man who travels around the country for a cause.
Ray Krone
On December 31, 1991, police arrested Ray and charged him with the sexual assault and stabbing death of bartender Kim Ancona at the CBS Lounge in Phoenix, Arizona.
Ray told police that he and Kim were just acquaintances and he had nothing to do with the homicide, but investigators built a case against him based on gossip and questionable bite-wound science. One of Ray’s teeth protruded in a way similar to a mark that the killer inflicted on the victim.
“They can’t kill a man — they have to kill a monster,” says Ray. “So I was called the snaggletooth killer.”
A court sentenced him to death.
DNA and fingerprint evidence later proved that Kenneth Philips, a 35-year-old convicted child molester, committed Kim Ancona’s rape and homicide. In April 2002, Ray was exonerated and freed after serving a decade in prison.
After his release, Ray met Helen Prejean, the nun who wrote the book Dead Man Walking. The two started the group Witness to Innocence to draw attention to the plight of the wrongly convicted and campaign against capital punishment. The group’s supporters include Virgin Unite and the European Commission.
Ray’s speaking appearances often draw full houses. “When I spoke at Loyola College,” Ray says, “they had to set up microphones in the back so people who couldn’t fit in the room could hear it.”
It was a long way from the days of being pepper-sprayed and stabbed in prison.
Ray also does work to help prisoners adjust to life outside of razor wire.
The story of Ray’s ordeal was told in the Forensic Files episode “Once Bitten.”
In an interview with ForensicFilesNow.com, Ray indulged my curiosity about his life before, during, and after serving time, including the advocacy work he does now. Excerpts of our conversation follow:
Can you talk about your early life a bit?I was born in a Pennsylvania agricultural town near York, and the day you’re born, everyone knows about you. I played baseball, was in a church choir, and graduated in the top 15% of my class. I was a computer systems repairman in the military. After that, I was a letter carrier.
Did you have any brushes with the law?I had no arrest record, no traffic violations.
How long were you in prison? Two days after the murder, they arrested me and I was behind bars from that time until freedom. Ten years, three months, and eight days.
What’s the food like in prison?In Maricopa County Jail, we had green baloney. They buy food from places that aren’t allowed to sell food anymore.
In prison, is it like Orange Is the New Black, with people separated by race and ethnic group?I don’t watch stuff about prison on TV. I lived it. But yes, inmates group by Black, white, etc. The prison encourages this so you won’t fight with prison guards, you fight each other. Your life is going to be threatened if you don’t stay in your group. This is everywhere except death row.
Ray Krone with Sister Helen Prejean, whose book was made into a movie starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn
What’s it like on death row?You’re living alone in a cell. There’s no physical contact with other inmates so the racial dynamic wasn’t there. On death row, we all had an ax hanging over us, so there was some solidarity.
How was it the day you were released?There were media waiting for me when I got out. I wanted to take my $50 in gate money and get some food. I went into a convenience store and saw so much variety — six kinds of iced tea. The first real meal was a burrito. I had to ask the kid for help because microwaves have so many more buttons since the time I went to prison.
And how was it?I couldn’t handle the spices. In prison, the food was very bland. We weren’t even allowed to have salt.
Other small changes?I couldn’t sleep on the hotel bed. It was too soft. I would have gotten seasick.
Why did you start working with incarcerated people? Because 98% of people in jail are eventually going to be let out. We need the transition to be smoother. Life doesn’t just go back to normal. We need to make them viable for society. And to change so they don’t just end up back in prison. We start with a meeting in prison about what their future will be.
What are your feelings toward the criminal justice system?We can make the system better but a lot of people don’t want that. And we’re doing this to children and teenagers.
Witness to Innocence raises funds via donors and merchandise sales
Tell me about Witness to Innocence. We’re a membership group of death row survivors, a support group. We empower each other to share our personal stories in the quest for abolition of the death penalty. Only those exonerated from death sentences can become members. We don’t take on legal cases.
I’m in a group with about 30 exonerated people who were on death row. Two women were in prison after having been wrongly convicted of killing their kids.
We try to have an annual gathering somewhere around the country when funding permits.
Any luck with Witness to Innocence’s activism?Our members have had a significant impact on judicial reform — including laws named for them.
Have you watched the Forensic Files episode about your case?Yes and I get notes from people all over the world who watch the show, from as far away as Australia. They write me with good wishes.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. —RR
Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube on Amazon
A Spendthrift Preys on Men in Uniform (‘Cold-Hearted,’ Forensic Files)
To watch Forensic Files is to think twice about the actions of your romantic partner. “Why is my wife not tasting the soup she made for me?” and similar memes populate many a true-crime Facebook page.
Julia Lynn Womack Turner
They’re joking, of course, but there’s always some basis in reality behind the sentiment.
And Lynn Turner is it.
Hungering for life-insurance payouts, the weak-chinned temptress got away with poisoning husband Glenn Turner to death and felt so empowered that she later did the same thing to boyfriend Randy Thompson, the father of her children.
Press on it. But the victims’ mothers, forensic science, and the law interrupted her life of murder and insurance fraud.
Because the media loves black widow cases like this one, there is no shortage of coverage on TV, in print, and online. Some of the accounts, however, contradict one another, so I did my best to sort through all the information and come up with a trusty informed recap of “Cold-Hearted,” the Forensic Files episode about the murders.
So let’s get going on the story:
Shuttled around. Julia Lynn Womack came into the world on July 16, 1968, in the city of Marietta.
Glenn Turner and Randy Thompson long before meeting Lynn Womack
Her birth mother gave her up for adoption as a baby, and she ended up with new parents who divorced when she was a small child. Lynn and her adoptive mother, a legal secretary named Helen, moved to Cumming, Georgia. Helen acquired a financially comfortable husband named D.L. Gregory, according to the book Black Widow: A Beautiful Woman, Two Lovers, Two Murders by Marion Collins.
As a teenager, Lynn could be difficult and had trouble getting along with her stepfather at times. Her mother suspected drug abuse, and checked her into the Charter Peachford psychiatric hospital. The facility quickly released her after finding her normal and without substance problems.
Sharp curves. Lynn graduated from Forsyth County High School in 1986 without having made any particular social ripples, according to Atlanta Magazine.
Everything changed after she got an associate’s degree and started doing clerical work at a law school. Lynn became fascinated with law enforcement and the uniformed men who worked in the field. According to Collins’ book, Lynn would chat up officers while they idled in their police vehicles.
She liked to be the center of attention and had an outgoing personality, fluffy hair and, by all accounts, a shapely figure that men admired.
Her visage? Those who knew her described her as anything from a beauty to a butterface.
Lynn Turner said she returned from some errands and found Glenn Turner deceased in their bedroom
Force not with her. Whatever the case, Lynn “turned more than one head at a time and it never ended well,” according to “Double Dose” an episode of Someone They Knew hosted by Tamron Hall.
In 1991, Lynn began working as a 911 operator for the Cobb County Police Department for a salary of $20,000 a year.
Lynn wanted to become a police officer herself and passed the physical trials. But she failed the psychological test, according to Oxygen.
Easy-going lawman. Nonetheless, Lynn gravitated toward action and drama and “spouted macho-sounding police codes in everyday conversation,” according to Atlanta Magazine. She even got herself a gig posing as an undercover cop — wired up and everything — for Tennessee law enforcement.
She began dating a tall 200-pound police officer from Acworth, Georgia. People described Glenn Turner as a teddy bear. “Glenn was more Andy Griffith than Colombo,” his colleague and buddy Michael Archer told NBC News. Glenn played the saxophone as a boy and, like Lynn, enjoyed Nascar, motorcycles, and auto maintenance.
Lynn tried to make courtship into a fairy tale by buying the man in her life gifts (at least at the beginning of the relationship she did). She gave Glenn clothes, new tires, and snakeskin cowboy boots
Car collector. Before meeting Lynn, Glenn had set a goal of marrying by age 30. Despite that at least one of his buddies tried to talk him out of it, Glenn joined Lynn in matrimony on August 21, 1993. They lived in a house on Old Farm Walk in Marietta, Georgia.
Once the two got hitched, Lynn turned the tables and became more intent on treating herself to presents. She bought a Datsun 240Z, according to Reader’s Digest. Another source reported that she acquired two Camaros for approximately $25,000 each while married to Glenn.
“She had champagne taste on a beer budget,” said Cobb County prosecutor Pat Head during an appearance on Snapped.
Cold shoulder. Glenn, who made around $26,000 a year as a police officer, had to work at least one extra job to keep up with the bills that Lynn ran up.
Glenn survived a motorcycle wreck that put him in a coma. Then he met Lynn
At some point in the marriage, she began entirely depriving Glenn of sex, and blamed it on a gynecological problem, according to Michael Archer’s interview on Forensic Files.
Lynn still enjoyed having other kinds of fun. She and some friends went to the Daytona 500 and left Glenn behind. According to one source, Lynn had taken a job at a gas station but Glenn ended up having to fill in on her shifts so she could cavort with her friends.
Attentive wife. Although those who knew Glenn would later say that he was the one who spent most of the marriage cooking and caring for Lynn, she portrayed herself as a loving attentive wife, according to Atlanta Magazine.
When Glenn started displaying flu-like symptoms, she fussed over him and prepared his food herself.
But he became violently ill with hallucinations and died on March 3, 1995.
Escorted to funeral. Doctors attributed the death to a heart problem — which came as news to his mother. Glenn, age 31, had never suffered from any cardiac ailments.
At the funeral, Glenn’s mother, Kathy Turner, gave Lynn a hug but said her daughter-in-law was otherwise cold to her, according to Someone They Knew.
And even more insulting, Lynn brought a date to the funeral.
Two-timing woman. But Lynn had no criminal record and the possibility of her murdering Glenn Turner never came up — clearing the way for her to receive $150,000 in a life insurance payout and Glenn’s police pension of $750 a month. She also managed to get half of the $6,300 in deferred compensation that Glenn left in full to his sister. Lynn insisted the money was meant for her.
She had been living a double life, seeing firefighter Randall “Randy” Thompson during her marriage to Glenn. Lynn even attended Thompson family functions, according to court papers. Randy and his family believed that Lynn was divorced.
With the Thompsons, Lynn followed the template that she used with Glenn at the beginning. She bought cowboy boots and World Series tickets for Randy, plus Victoria Secret items for his sisters and a stereo for his parents. Where did a 911 operator get all this disposable income? Lynn said she had a windfall from her grandmother. What she really had was an insurance payout from Glenn’s death and a lot of credit cards.
Family of four. Randy’s sister Angie would later say that she was dumbfounded upon seeing Lynn fan out a stack of charge cards as thick as a deck of playing cards.
Lynn and Randy, who never married — otherwise, she would have lost Glenn’s pension money — had a daughter, Amber, in 1996, followed by a son, Blake.
Soon enough, Lynn’s supply of financial capital dwindled and she and Randy argued about money. It would later come out that she had around $35,000 in credit card debt and was behind on mortgage payments. By that time, Lynn was making just under $33,000 a year at her courthouse job, according to Dateline NBC.
Tea taxing. Randy moved out and allegedly made suicide attempts, but the couple reconciled.
In 2000, Randy developed a staph infection while recovering from sinus surgery. His mental health seemed to decline. Randy’s buddy once found him lying on the floor and talking to his cockatoo, Simon, who wasn’t in the room. (Randy and his pet bird were very close and even slept together under the covers, according to Atlanta Magazine.)
Lynn Turner and Randy Thompson
At home, Lynn made him grilled cheese sandwiches and sweetened iced tea and he seemed to do better.
Revelation by mail. But soon after, his colleagues at the fire department grew worried when they couldn’t contact him. It’s not clear whether Randy was living with Lynn or at an apartment he’d rented, but on Jan. 22, 2001, one of his co-workers kicked his door open and found him lying dead. The autopsy of the 32-year-old revealed an enlarged heart, although he had no history of cardiac problems.
As a tribute at Randy’s funeral, his colleagues formed an arch with the ladders of two firetrucks.
A few weeks later, Randy’s heartbroken mother, Nita Thompson, received a letter from a fellow bereft parent — none other than Kathy Turner. The two women compared notes and discovered the similarity between the trajectories of their sons’ lives and deaths with Lynn.
They notified the authorities.
Pursuit of payoff. Randy’s autopsy revealed ethylene glycol crystals in his kidneys. After exhuming Glenn Turner’s body, medical examiners found the same substance in his kidneys. Investigators believed that Lynn slipped the sweet-tasting poison — a component of antifreeze — into the men’s food and drinks, most likely Jell-O or iced tea.
The motive in Randy’s death? Insurance money, again. Randy had $100,000 to $400,000 in coverage, but he had let that policy expire without telling Lynn. The widow wasted no time in pursuing a separate $35,000 policy that was still valid, allegedly making phone calls to the insurance agency while en route to the burial.
Mothers of the victims Kathy Turner, in pink top, and Nita Thompson embrace
Friendly felon. On November 1, 2002, Lynn Turner was arrested and charged with the malice murder of Glenn Turner. Despite the weight of the accusations, Lynn managed to stay composed.
“The first time I talked to her, before the trial, she was taking care of her kids. She was a very likable person,” said Jane Hansen, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter whose investigative journalism was credited with helping spur the case. “During the trials, she was very calm, cool, and collected. When I’d go to the Ladies’ Room, we’d often speak. In one case, she gave me a piece of lemon gum (I did not chew it).”
The trial for Glenn Turner’s murder kicked off on April 30, 2004. Court TV filmed the proceedings.
Blame it on the media. In a conservative blue short-sleeved blazer with a matching top, Lynn looked more like a corporate middle manager than a scheming killer.
“This case is about lust, greed, and murder,” the prosecutor said in an opening statement. But defense lawyer Rafe Banks insisted that Lynn was a victim of media hype and overzealousness of the families of the deceased men, the Associated Press reported.
Jane O. Hansen reported on the case for the AJC
Lynn’s friend Stacy Hendrix Roaderick testified that Lynn told her she had given Glenn Turner green Jell-O the morning of his death.
Juror’s perspective. Georgia Bureau of Investigation special agent David King noted evidence that Lynn was actually $174,00 in debt, including $2,500 in overdraft fees.
After deliberating for four hours, the jury found her guilty.
“The indebtedness, the lifestyle…when you put all the pieces together, they basically took the place of the smoking gun,” a juror told Snapped.
Incriminating curiosity. At her second trial, for Randy Thompson’s homicide, Lynn again wore a blue outfit — but it was a prison uniform.
Her defense team suggested that unhealthy finances drove Randy to drink the ethylene glycol intentionally.
On the prosecution’s side, a veterinary technician testified that Lynn asked her, before Randy’s murder, what substance was used to euthanize animals.
For the kids’ sake. In March 2007, the jury convicted Lynn, making her eligible for capital punishment. During the penalty phase, Lynn’s mother, Helen Gregory, asked the court for mercy for the sake of Amber and Blake, ages 11 and 8.
“They talk to [Lynn] every day, and she’s keeping them alive and going,” Helen said as reported by the AP. “Please don’t take her away from us.”
It worked. The jury decided on life without parole instead of a death sentence.
Lynn Turner at one of her later court dates
“She’s a very cruel woman,” Kathy Turner said, “and she’s getting her punishment.”
Surprising development. Lynn’s son and daughter went to live with Helen Gregory.
Life at Metro State Prison for women in Atlanta disagreed with Lynn. On August 30, 2010, she was found dead in her cell, which she shared with roommates. She had hoarded prescription drugs and committed suicide via overdose.
Lynn’s mother told CBS News that she and the kids had just visited Lynn and she gave no hint of her suicide plan, although Lynn said she worried that other inmates would hurt her.
Goodbye to you. It was “the final chapter in what has been a very long and very sad, albeit fascinating, story,” said Penny Penn, the Forsyth County district attorney who prosecuted Lynn in the second trial.
“I think she just didn’t have anything to live for,” Glenn’s mother, Kathy Turner, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It comes around, doesn’t it?”
Kathy said she was disappointed that her former daughter-in-law didn’t serve her sentence but was glad she’d no longer have to see her on TV.
Crime stoppers. “If she committed suicide,” Nita Thompson told the AJC, “all she’s doing is telling the world that she’s guilty.”
Thanks in part to her former mothers-in-law, Lynn never had a chance to seduce anyone else’s son and turn his life into a cautionary meme.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Oba Chandler Turns a Florida Visit into a Triple Homicide (‘Water Logged,’ Forensic Files)
If anyone deserved a vacation, it was Joan Rogers. She worked full-time on her family dairy farm in Ohio, then drove across state lines to Indiana for a factory job. In fact, her life had been pretty much nonstop labor since she got married and had a baby as a teenager.
Joan Rogers in a yearbook photo
“Water Logged,” which tells the story of the murder that befell her and her daughters while on holiday in Florida, was voted as having the second-best crime reenactment of all 400 episodes of Forensic Files. The story also stands out as a reminder of what can lurk beneath a pleasant exterior — in this case, that of Oba Chandler, who many women found charming until his true self bubbled up to the surface.
For this post, I looked around for information that might reveal the origins of Oba’s depravity and also for the story of his bitter end. The Florida Department of Corrections lists him as deceased but doesn’t say whether he died of natural causes or was helped along by the state. I also searched for more details about the Rogers family. The random collision of their integrity with the killer’s dissolute lifestyle reminded me of the book In Cold Blood, the birthplace of true-crime storytelling.
Sadistic thrill. So let’s get going on the recap of “Water Logged” along with information from internet research:
On June 4, 1989, pleasure boaters began reporting bodies floating in different areas of Tampa Bay. The Coast Guard ultimately recovered three half-naked females. A killer had taped their mouths, bound their wrists and ankles, and tied them to concrete bricks with yellow ropes.
The authorities believed the victims had been raped, although three days in the sea had washed away any forensic evidence.
“I think he left their eyes uncovered because he wanted each one to see what was happening to the other one,” said lead investigator Glen Moore during his Forensic Files interview. “I think he wanted to see the fear in their eyes.”
Too few pounds. The presence of water in their lungs meant they were alive when thrown into the bay. “This was not just a murder,” narrator Peter Thomas said. “It was an execution.”
Nonetheless, according to the Bradenton Herald, the police felt that an amateur (or anyone who didn’t watch enough mafia entertainment) committed the homicides because a professional would have used heavier weights to ensure the bodies didn’t surface.
Authorities named the victims Jane Doe 1, 2, and 3.
Willshire, Ohio has a post office, a few thousand people, and farmland
Hotel hint. Psychics offered to help the police identify the victims, and hundreds of concerned citizens called in with tips. The St. Petersburg police offered a $5,000 reward for information that would help solve the case.
Fortunately, police got a break on June 8, when an employee at the Days Inn on Rocky Point Island reported that a woman named Joan Rogers and her two daughters had checked in on June 1 and hadn’t been seen for days since then. Their makeup, stuffed animals, bathing suits, etc. were still in the room at the Tampa hotel.
Police got in touch with Joan’s husband, Hal Rogers, who had stayed behind to tend to the couple’s 200-acre farm in Willshire, Ohio. Hal gave them access to dental records that positively identified the victims as Joan, Michelle, and Christe Rogers.
Fast start to adulthood. The three, who normally worked on the farm alongside Hal — the daughters milked 80 Holstein cows every day at 5:30 a.m. — had gone for a weeklong vacation.
As noted, Joan really needed a break.
Oba Chandler in an early mug shot. As a boy, he enjoyed killing rats, according to his sister
Born on November 12, 1952 in Van Wert, Ohio, Joan Mae Etzler, known as Jo, was outgoing and friendly. In high school, she began dating her classmate Hal Rogers and became pregnant senior year, a situation that mortified her parents. The couple quickly married and had Michelle, who looked like her mother. A few years later, they welcomed Christe, who inherited her father’s cute puppy-dog features.
Spring break. Hal acknowledged that as hard as he worked, his wife worked harder. She drove a forklift and manned the assembly line at her second job, at Peyton’s Northern product distribution center, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Joan and Hal “always looked happy but tired,” Susan Reynolds, a waitress at the Village Restaurant, where the couple often ate, told the Bradenton Herald. “You could see that the hard work took its toll on them.”
Michelle and Christe had never experienced leisure travel, so the thought of going 3,000 miles away to the Sunshine State must have been magical even before they laid eyes on Cinderella’s Castle.
Final correspondence. On May 26, Joan loaded the girls into her blue Oldsmobile Calais and gave Hal — who was unloading corn gluten feed—a kiss goodbye before heading south on Interstate 75 with plans to visit a number of spots, according to Angels & Demons, Thomas French’s seven-part Tampa Bay Times series, which won a Pulitzer Price in 1998.
After spending the night in Georgia en route to Florida, Joan and the girls traveled to the Jacksonville Zoo, then went to Disney World and Epcot Center. A post card Joan sent to Hal said that they had ridden in a glass-bottomed boat.
On June 1, Joan and the girls drove to Tampa and checked into the Days Inn at Rocky Point.
Christe was a cheerleader and often practiced her routines in front of the cows.
On the blocks. Police got a lucky forensic break after locating Joan’s abandoned 1986 Oldsmobile at a boat launch. Inside, they found a brochure with some handwritten directions to either a boat launch or to the Days Inn (accounts vary).
A handwriting analyst determined that a note in the car was written by someone other than the victims.
Another note, in Joan’s writing, mentioned something blue and white, probably the colors of a boat.
Police did an aerial search to look for the source of the concrete blocks that the killer used.
Nightmare cruise. A tipster told police about an ex-con named Jason Wilcox who owned a blue and white boat and ran sunset cruises without a license. Jason had been in jail for aggravated assault, and police saw concrete blocks on his property.
Separately, they found out that on May 15, 1989, a boater in Madeira Beach offered a ride to a Canadian tourist and threatened to kill her if she wouldn’t have sex with him. He told her that sharks would get her if she jumped into the water. After the rape, he let her go.
Michelle was described as the quiet sister, Christe the high-spirited one, with “a mane of mall hair,” reporter Thomas French wrote
But the Canadian woman, a 24-year-old social worker, said her attacker didn’t resemble Wilcox’s photo.
Monetary incentive.Forensic Files didn’t mention it, but there was another false yet disturbing lead. According to Oxygen True Crime, Hal told police that his younger brother — a partner in the dairy farm — had sexually abused Michelle. But John Rogers, 31, was already locked up for another sex crime when the murders happened. (Hal and Joan Rogers never pressed charges against John because Michelle didn’t want to testify.)
Meanwhile, the community of Willshire and the surrounding counties reeled from the news about the murder of three of its own. “This grief is forever, a scar no one can remove,” said Rev. Gary Luderman of the Zion Lutheran Church, where the Rogers belonged.
A wholesaler who did business with Hal’s farm announced plans to fund a new reward for information on the killer.
On autopilot. But that didn’t mean Hal had everyone’s moral support. He hadn’t reported his wife and kids missing until three days after they were due at home. Investigator Stephen Porter said that the widower seemed cold and unemotional about the tragic events.
His reaction spurred some Ohio locals to suspect he was involved in the murders. Hal would later explain that he did what he had to do to function and keep the farm operational after the murders, and he felt like a third person viewing the devastation.
Hal had a huge pile of alibis because he ate his meals at local restaurants every day while his family was in Florida, and tons of people saw him.
Michelle Rogers, seen here working on the farm, reportedly watched out for her younger sister to make sure she didn’t fall prey to their Uncle John
Dedicated sleuths. But rumors persisted. He had recently withdrawn $7,000 in cash from the bank, perhaps for hired guns?
“There was controversy swirling around that maybe I did this,” Hal said without rancor during an interview on the TV series The Investigators. “The people who [still] aren’t sure are scared to death because something like that could happen to them.”
Meanwhile, the St. Petersburg detectives assigned to the murder case “were working day and night, working weekends, putting off vacations, losing weight, gaining weight, growing pale and pasty and haggard, waking at 3 a.m. with a jolt and scratching notes on pads kept beside their beds,” Thomas French wrote.
Still, none of the tips led anywhere, and the case went cold about a year after the murders.
Water Hazard. The investigation picked up steam in 1992 when authorities displayed billboards with the unidentified handwriting from Joan’s car.
Oba Chandler’s boat
A woman named Jo Ann Steffey recognized a police sketch of the killer as belonging to a redheaded contractor named Oba Chandler. She noticed that receipts from Chandler matched that of the handwriting on the billboards.
Oba Chandler was a construction company owner with a criminal record dating back to his teens; it included two sexual assaults. Steffey described him as creepy and not being able to make eye contact with her.
Palm in hand. In photo and in-person lineups, the Canadian rape victim picked him out as the charismatic boat owner who turned into a savage once they left shore.
Law officers arrested Oba, then age 45, on September 24, 1992 for the sexual assault.
In the meantime, they were building a case against him for the triple homicide. Oba’s palm print matched one found on the brochure from Joan’s vehicle.
Family tragedy. So who was this man of contradictions with a personality ranging from warm and friendly to antisocial and sadistic — and a record as a career criminal and a home-improvement entrepreneur?
Oba Chandler was born on October 11, 1946 to a poor family in Cincinnati. His mother, Margaret, was housewife. His father, also named Oba Chandler, was a laborer for National Distillers and Chemical Co., according to the Tampa Bay Times. Oba Sr. was a strict disciplinarian.
Joan Rogers was thinking about having a third child
In 1957, at age 10, Oba Jr. found his father hanging from a rope over a ceiling joist in the family’s home. He had committed suicide.
Corporal punishment. At the funeral, Oba Jr. threw himself upon his father’s open grave. Sources vary as to whether he was acting out of grief or anger, but either way, it marked the beginning of the fair-haired blue-eyed boy’s deviant future, according to The Investigators. He moved around a lot, bunking with various relatives including his mother and her new husband.
Oba started stealing cars and later admitted that he spent much of his life running from police. His sister Lula spent some time in a reform school, so maybe it ran in the family.
“Where I was raised up as a kid, the majority of the time you weren’t arrested,” Oba told The Investigators. “When you were caught doing something…you got beaten with the cop’s nightstick.”
At some point, he joined the Marines but stayed only a year. He used drugs and drifted from job to job.
Cooking up dough. Meanwhile, as a criminal, Oba was growing into a jack-of-all-trades. His offenses included tampering with a coin machine, hustling at pool, and robbing drug dealers. He once broke into a private home, tied up the couple who lived there, and stole their guns and Doberman pinscher.
Oba needed new identities to throw the police and his creditors off track. The Florida Department of Corrections would ultimately list 14 aliases for Oba Chandler, including Ron Howard, Oba Pinson, and Jimmy Wright.
Nonetheless, in the early 1980s, Oba caught the attention of the U.S. Secret Service — and ultimately served time in a Texas prison — for attempting to counterfeit money in his backyard.
Promising in appearance. In addition to his growing rap sheet, Oba acquired numerous romantic liaisons. While still in his teens, Oba had two daughters by a girlfriend and then a son by a different woman.
His charisma won him anywhere from five to eight marriages, but he had a penchant for violence and none of his relationships lasted. Of the half dozen or so children he accrued, only some became close to him.
At times, Oba moved back in with his mother.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, one of his marriages, to Debra Whiteman, represented a relatively stable period in his life. Using $10,000 of her money for the downpayment, the couple bought a house on 10790 Dalton Ave. in Tampa.
Naturally alluring. He was still living at that house when he randomly met Joan Rogers at a gas station. She asked for directions, and he jotted them down for her. He then invited her and the girls on a sunset cruise, and she wrote down directions to a boat launch where they would meet, investigators believe.
“The sun sparkles along the green water of the bay while warm breezes entice divers and boaters,” the Bradenton Herald wrote of the beautiful scene that Joan, Michelle, and Christe Rogers witnessed on the Courtney Campbell Causeway on the last day of their lives
It’s not clear whether Oba knew this, but the Rogers trio had very little experience in the water and Joan reportedly couldn’t swim at all. Once Oba stopped being personable and started tying them up and terrorizing them, they had no way to escape.
Frightening admission. On the night of the murders, Oba had called Debra from the radio on the boat to say he had engine trouble and would be home late.
Around the time police released a composite drawing of the then-anonymous killer, he showed up at the home of his daughter Kristal Mays. He allegedly confessed to Kristal’s husband that he committed rape. The son-in-law told authorities.
Oba Chandler acquired a veneer of respectability with Debra
Oba sold his boat.
Another of Oba’s kids, Jeffrey Chandler, defended his father against the rape accusations. Other relatives would go on to accept money for TV interviews, according to the St. Petersburg Times.
Help from up north. At the trial in September 1994, Oba testified that he wrote the directions on the brochure in Joan Rogers’ car but he never saw the trio again. He said he went fishing alone in Tampa Bay but a gas leak emptied his fuel tank and left him stranded.
But the Canadian victim sunk his defense. She testified about how Oba, who introduced himself as Dave Posno and claimed he was a nurse, charmed her into his boat. She said that the interior of the boat — which authorities had retrieved from its new owner — matched that of the crime scene.
At the very beginning of deliberations, the forewoman decided to assess where everyone stood. She asked each juror to write down guilty or innocent.
All 12 said guilty.
Negative superlative. Nonetheless, they pored over the evidence for 90 minutes before officially convicting Oba on three counts of murder.
Chief Judge Susan Schaeffer — known as a capital punishment enthusiast (House Calls) — said that Oba had forfeited his right to live. She gave him the death penalty, which at that time meant the electric chair.
Schaeffer later said that Oba was probably the most vile and evil defendant she’d ever encountered, which says a lot considering all the horrible crimes (Payback, Cold Feet, Muffled Cries) that go down in the Sunshine State.
No friends or family ever visited Oba in prison, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Last meal. As of 1995, Oba, then 48, was cocky about his outlook. “I have no fear of it,” he said, according to the St. Petersburg Times. “If they kill me, they’re going to be killing an old man.”
All his appeal attempts failed.
On November 15, 2011, Oba ate two salami sandwiches and half a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich and drank coffee before meeting justice. He wrote a note denying his guilt.
Oba Chandler’s last mug shot
Husband watches. By this time, Florida had retired Old Sparky, and was using lethal injection. The Tampa Bay Times reported:
“Chandler’s eyes were closed when the brown curtain to the death chamber rose. He was strapped onto a gurney, intravenous tubes leading into his arms. His eyes opened when he was asked if he had anything to say. ‘No,’ Chandler said. Then, at the age of 65, he closed his eyes for good.”
Hal Rogers witnessed the execution.
In an interview with The Investigators, Hal lauded his friends for letting him crash at their places when he couldn’t bear being alone.
Begin again. He also said that after the murders, there were some years about which he hardly remembers anything.
Tired of being alone, he took out a personal ad circa 2009 and met and married a widow named Jolene. He told the Tampa Bay Times that he still misses Joan, Michelle and Christe.
“That makes it rough on Jolene. How do you fight a dead person?” Hal said. “But her first husband died too. She understands.”
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
A Small-Town Outcast Finds Redemption (‘Killigraphy,’ Forensic Files)
In the land of Forensic Files, when one spouse murders another, the accused is often a respected citizen (Barbara Stager, Richard Nyhuis) who community members can’t imagine being capable of such a crime — until they see the evidence.
Alvin Ridley’s case was just the opposite.
Virginia Ridley
When paramedics pulled the petite body of Virginia Ridley, 49, out of his shack in Ringgold, Georgia, locals thought he had imprisoned her and then killed her.
They knew Alvin as the reclusive, hostile man who sometimes hid in his own bushes and peeped at passersby.
Batty but benign. At the time of Virginia’s death, in 1997, Alvin had shuttered his TV repair shop on Nashville Street and seemed intent on earning a living via lawsuits. Surely, he strangled Virginia to death to collect on an insurance policy or maybe just because he was a mean husband.
But after Alvin went on trial for murder, his defense team trotted out evidence that persuaded the jury and the media that he might have been a cantankerous oddball but he was no murderer.
For this week, I looked for more background information on the Ridleys and their marriage as well as an update on Alvin. So let’s get going on the recap of “Killigraphy” along with extra information from internet research.
‘Set’ for business. Alvin Eugene Ridley was an only child born on March 3, 1942 in Soddy, Tennessee to Minnie Sue and Bill Ridley, and the family later moved across the border to Georgia. The government drafted Alvin into the military, where he learned how to fix electronics. After his discharge, he moved back into his parents’ house, a small structure lying between a steel mill and railroad tracks.
‘Zenith Man’ was one of the kinder nicknames for Alvin Ridley
Next up, Alvin worked repairing and selling TVs in his store in downtown Ringgold, the seat of Catoosa County. Sources vary as to whether Alvin’s father started the business and then passed it down to Alvin or his parents set up the shop just for their son. They owned the building.
Bill died in 1982, and it was then that Alvin started acting weird, the Atlanta Constitution reported. He would drive around in a red sports car with a plastic dummy of a woman in the passenger seat, according to the Sunday Mail. Folks started referring to him as Crazy Al.
He was not particularly adept at personal hygiene.
Fragile flower. While he was still in the military, he became pen pals with Virginia Hickey after meeting her at someone’s house circa 1964, the Sunday Mail said. So where did this mystery girl-woman come from?
Virginia Gail Hickey entered the world on April 8, 1948 in Rossville, Georgia. According to the Atlanta Constitution, she acquired epilepsy at age 9 after a head injury. With her tiny figure, blond hair, and cute facial features, she resembled a doll.
She was described as extremely shy.
Habitual no-show. At just 18 years of age, she married Alvin. In a photo of the couple celebrating her birthday with her mother, Adell, in 1966, Virginia looks like a child bride. Family members complained that Alvin bossed her around.
Newlywed Virginia and Alvin Ridley
The Sunday Mail reported that the lovebirds originally lived in public housing but were kicked out. After that, Alvin and Virginia moved into the dilapidated house at 134 Inman Street where he grew up.
Virginia didn’t work outside the home and soon began to shun her friends and relatives, even skipping family weddings and her father’s funeral. She didn’t venture outside her and Alvin’s house. Her sister Linda Barber said that when people tried to visit, Alvin would tell them to get lost or threaten to kill them.
Rare glimpse. The Hickeys tried to reach Virginia via a newspaper ad — “Parents Seek Married Daughter” — but never got a reply.
In 1967, Virginia’s family instigated a legal action to force Alvin to “produce” her to make sure that she was alive and well. Virginia showed up to court in the flesh and explained that she liked married life with Alvin and wanted to be left alone with him.
That cemented the break between her and the other Hickeys and also marked one of the last—if not the last — time anyone saw Virginia alive in public.
The Ridleys shared a shanty with no phone service
Toxic visitor. But why did she like to stay hidden? Numerous sources say that Virginia feared having an epileptic seizure in the presence of anyone other than Alvin. But she stopped taking her medicine because she believed God would protect her.
In addition to friends and relatives, outsiders weren’t welcome in the Ridleys’ house. Early on in the marriage, an exterminator who entered their home made a pass at Virginia, which greatly rattled the couple, according to the Washington Post.
When people asked about Virginia, Alvin told them she had left him and moved away, according to the Associated Press.
Litigious local. Rumormongers whispered that Virginia had gone to live in a mental institution, the Washington Post story reported.
In time, some locals forgot that Alvin was once married or thought that Virginia had long ago left him. Others didn’t know he ever had a wife.
After abandoning his TV repair shop, Alvin focused more on his apparent hobby of filing lawsuits. He had already unsuccessfully sued the government over the ejection from the housing projects.
Locals would occasionally see him selling tube socks at a flea market.
Unfazed. According to the Sunday Mail, Alvin “convinced himself he was a pauper, despite the fact that he owned his house, the boarded-up TV repair shop and some valuable land in nearby Tennessee.” The land was reportedly valued at $500,000.
Aside from the litigation and sales, Alvin was not one to interact much. He made eye contact with people but didn’t say hello to them. He posted No Trespassing signs on his fence. The house had metal bars on the windows.
On October 4, 1997, the man the town considered an isolated bachelor used a payphone to report the death of his wife. His voice seemed solemn enough but a little too calm considering the circumstances. “My wife’s not breathing,” he said, according to the Atlanta Constitution. “Y’all hurry up.”
Choking suspicion. First responder Blake Hodges smelled cat urine upon entering the house and noted it was the first time he’d met Alvin in person — he only knew of him as a scary loner, according to Blake’s interview on “The Alvin and Virginia Ridley Story,” an episode of Death in a Small Town, narrated by Bill Kurtis.
Alvin Ridley in a TV interview circa 2001
Hodges found Virginia lying still and looking underfed and unkempt. According to Forensic Files, her hair hadn’t been combed in years.
The house was a cockroach-infested hovel.
Quite a sensation. Alvin said that Virginia died of a seizure during her sleep. But the coroner found a classic sign of strangulation that Forensic Files watchers know well. Virginia had petechial hemorrhages in her eyes (Stefanie Rabinowitz, Jenna Verhaalen).
Alvin was arrested and charged with murder in May 1997.
The runup to the trial of the man who allegedly held his wife hostage for 30 years was big news around the country and beyond. England’s Yorkshire Post ran an item about it. Court TV wanted to film the 1999 trial, but the judge said no.
Chance at absolution. The prosecution suggested that Alvin considered Virginia a liability, a drain on his finances. Medical examiner Vanita Hullander testified that Alvin didn’t give a consistent narrative regarding her death. And the petechial hemorrhages spoke for themselves as proof of deliberately inflicted suffocation, the prosecution contended.
But defense lawyer McCracken Poston, who later acknowledged Alvin as the most difficult client he ever defended, rolled out a wealth of forensic and circumstantial evidence that wore away at what many had considered the county’s slam-dunk case against Alvin.
First off, although Vanita Hullander — who in the early 1980s worked in a space adjacent to Alvin’s store — denied any bias against Alvin, she acknowledged that she was afraid of him.
Voice from the grave. And the reports about the petechial hemorrhages from autopsies conducted by the county as well as the Georgia Bureau of Investigation didn’t necessarily point to guilt on Alvin’s part. Medical experts testified that seizures could cause such hemorrhages in a phenomenon known as sudden unexpected death in epilepsy — of which failure to take prescribed medication is a risk factor.
And according to the Washington Post, Virginia didn’t die looking unkempt. She had polished toenails and hair done up with pretty pins.
Finally, Virginia herself had left a record of her existence with Alvin that contradicted allegations that she was the prisoner of a tyrannical husband.
Pet peeve. Virginia had hypergraphia, a condition that compels people to extensively write about their own lives. The walls of the shack were covered with notes revealing a simple and contented life with her husband. She wrote about what she and Alvin ate for dinner, that they watched Elvis Presley on TV, and that she and her husband cleaned the basement. One note listed the cast of The Waltons. Virginia penned love letters to Alvin that attested to a good marriage. She also wrote of her feeling that the world was against her and Alvin.
Before they met: Virginia and Alvin
A forensic document examiner verified that Virginia, not Alvin or anyone else, had written the notes.
(And fortunately for Alvin, his lawyer had done some preemptive work to make sure accusations of animal neglect didn’t come up. Before the trial, Poston made Alvin take his and Virginia’s two cats — that they kept as pets on string leashes attached to their coffee table — to the veterinarian. “I said, ‘By the way, when these cats come out of the house, they better have some names,'” he later recalled. Alvin declared them “Meow-y” and “Kitty,” the vet gave them a decent bill of health, and Alvin started giving them free range of the house, according to an interview with Poston on the University of Georgia library website.)
Emotion comes to surface. Against his team’s advice, Alvin took the witness stand. He spoke of his reluctance to trust people and his love for his wife. Alvin said they rarely argued and there was no violence in the marriage.
“The reason I testified then was because I didn’t have nothing to hide,” Alvin told the Walker County Register/Chattanooga County News in 2017. “The main thing was just telling the truth about everything … and I even cried, and the jury saw me crying.”
Within just hours of listening to prosecutors call him a captor and killer, Alvin got to hear the jurors declare him not guilty. Suddenly, he was a free man smiling on the courthouse steps.
Logical explanation. So what happened to Alvin after his legal problems went away?
He moved back into the shack on Inman Street. Poston took him for mental health testing, which yielded a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.
Caffeine Addicts is in the spot where Alvin had his store
It explained “the way he and Virginia lived, very seldom leaving their home, the flat emotionless monotone voice when he called for help after Virginia’s seizure, his ‘eccentricities,’ as those were called at the time,” Poston told the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
He referred to Alvin as the Boo Radley of the town.
More than 20 years after the acquittal, the two men were meeting regularly for lunch, and Alvin, 81, reportedly snagged at least one girlfriend post-trial.
Alvin died on July 2, 2024 after years of declining health.
The space that the TV shop occupied now houses an eatery offering white chocolate lattes and tomato basil wraps. Poston owns the entire structure today and named it the Ridley Building after the ornery but harmless widower of Ringgold, Georgia.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. – RR
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A Building Employee Kills for No Reason (‘Low Maintenance,’ Forensic Files)
We hear about DNA more than any other type of evidence on Forensic Files. And rightly so.
Wrongful accusations have arisen from shaky science behind bite wound analysis (Ray Krone), polygraphs (Paula Nawrocki), and some arson investigations (Paul Camiolo).
Jenna Verhaalen
Inside the investigation. DNA tests, on the other hand, always seem to play the hero’s role. They lived up to their reputation in “Low Maintenance,” the Forensic Files episode about Jenna Verhaalen’s murder.
Either of the two most likely suspects could have ended up behind razor wire if not for analysis of genetic material found at the crime scene.
For this post, I looked for more details on the case and information on how Jenna’s family members — who didn’t give on-camera interviews to Forensic Files — reacted to the tragedy. And I checked to see where the real killer is today. So let’s get started on the recap of “Low Maintenance” along with extra information from internet research:
Go, team. Jenna Lynn Verhaalen was born on February 23, 1988 to Dina and Jim Verhaalen. She attended Victoria West High School in Victoria, Texas and had a lot of school spirit.
“Here comes Jenna Verhaalen,” recounts an Austin American-Statesman story about a rally for the West Warriors HS football team in 2005. “She’s wearing a red T-shirt that says ‘Finish the Drive in 05.’ She’s got on a denim skirt and Western boots, just like her friends.”
According to “To Stalk a Co-ed,” an episode of A Time to Kill, Jenna was also bubbly and enjoyed laughing and playing pranks.
On her way up. She started dating Spencer Hood while still in high school and they both attended Blinn College, a two-year school in the Texas town of Bryan.
She supported herself by waiting tables at Wings ‘N More in College Station—home to Texas A&M University — and lived in a popular residence for students, Autumn Woods Apartments on Hollowhill Drive.
Jenna lived in a two-bedroom unit.
In spring 2008, everything was going smoothly for the 20-year-old Jenna. She was studying for a career in government. Her on-and-off relationship with Spencer was back on.
No joke. On the last night of her life, she worked from 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. at the restaurant. Afterward, she picked up coffee at Starbucks and invited Spencer over to study. He left Jenna’s apartment around midnight, calling later to say goodnight.
The next day, April 9, 2008, Spencer went to Jenna’s apartment to pick up a book and found Jenna lying on her side on the floor of her bedroom. At first he thought she was playing a trick.
He tried calling out her name, then turned her face up. In a move that would later cast suspicion on him, Spencer asked a passerby to call 911 instead of doing it himself.
Jenna Verhaalen and Spencer Hood
Suffocated by hand. First responders arrived to find that rigor mortis had set in. Initially, Jenna showed no signs of a violent death. But police noticed that a lamp lay sideways on the floor and her bedding was torn away from the mattress, suggesting a struggle. There were a few blood droplets.
A medical examiner identified the body’s petechial hemorrhages and crushed larynx as signs of manual strangulation. It couldn’t be determined whether or not the attacker had sexually assaulted her.
Police found no evidence of a break-in, a likely sign that someone close to her committed the crime.
Pressed for details. As Forensic Files watchers know, the romantic partner who claims to have just discovered the body usually caused the death. And making himself even more suspect, Spencer had fled shortly after the murder.
When police caught up with him, Spencer explained that he left town to take comfort among family members. He said that he and Jenna were in love, got along well, and planned to transfer to Texas State University together. He acknowledged that they had broken up and gotten back together multiple times.
Then, he had to withstand seriously intrusive questioning. Spencer became embarrassed when investigators prodded him for details about his sex life with the victim, according to Bryan Police Department Det. Steven Fry. When they inquired as to whether they had a lot of sex, he said that they did sometimes, not a whole lot, and that it was consensual. Asked if the sex ever got rough, he said no, adding that Jenna was “pretty traditional.”
Buddy vouches for him. Police also obliged him to remove his shirt to check for wounds the victim might have inflicted while defending herself.
Police said Jeremy Rosser was calm at the beginning of questioning
Fortunately, Spencer’s ordeal was soon mitigated. His roommate substantiated the timeline for the alibi that Spencer had given to the police. But it was the DNA that handed him his freedom. Blood at the scene and skin under Jenna’s fingernails contained DNA that didn’t match Spencer’s.
Spencer was cleared.
Ill repute. Next up, police looked into a dicey-seeming young man called Sean Stevens on Forensic Files and Sean Underwood on A Time to Kill. Students who were playing volleyball outside Jenna’s apartment the night of the murder identified him as a suspicious-looking shirtless guy who walked past them. He lived in the same complex and had a direct view into Jenna’s place from his balcony one floor up.
Forensic Files didn’t mention it, but Sean had a visiting brother named Justin who became a suspect as well. Sean had a reputation as a heavy drinker and he and Justin were known for antagonizing others, students told the police. They remembered that Sean had once stood on his balcony and shouted obnoxious comments down at Jenna.
The brothers fled to their parents’ house in Oklahoma, but police found them. According to Forensic Files, Sean got extremely nervous during questioning, started shaking, and admitted he drank so much on the night of the murder that he couldn’t account for all his whereabouts.
Brothers ruled out. Justin had visible bruises under his eye and elsewhere. He told police he got them during a bar fight.
Luckily for Sean and Justin, receipts from bars backed up their story.
Jeremy Rosser
And better yet, their DNA didn’t match the evidence from the crime scene.
Nor did the DNA of dozens of men from the area who voluntarily gave samples.
Uninvited guest? Then, Jenna’s parents remembered that she mentioned occasionally coming home to find objects mysteriously out of place in her apartment. And Jenna herself had once stepped out of the shower to find a handyman in her apartment. The building employee hadn’t asked her permission to enter. He retreated out the door after she rebuked him.
His name was Jeremiah Rosser. Called Jeremy, he seemed like a long shot as a suspect at first. The son of a minister, Jeremy was the father of two children and looked more like a clean-cut football player than a creepy intruder.
Jeremy, who was in his late 20s, had no criminal record and willingly gave a DNA sample.
Police interviewed his boss, who said that Jeremy had a work order at Jenna’s apartment around the time she discovered him inside her place. (Jeremy said he didn’t hear the shower running and thought no one was home.)
Finally, a break. But a laptop computer stolen from another apartment turned up among his possessions. And Jeremy had an ex-wife who resembled Jenna. She told police he had choked her once during a fight.
Then, DNA stepped in and solved he case. Jeremy’s matched the evidence from the crime scene.
Police arrested him in February 2009 and placed him in Brazos County Jail on $175,000 bail.
According to reporting from theeagle.com, Verhaalen’s apartment complex “was buzzing Monday night with word of Rosser’s arrest” with one student saying that “we’re pretty traumatized.”
In a wise move, the apartment complex where Jenna and Spencer lived rebranded
Capital punishment off the table. Investigators theorized that Jeremy was already in Jenna’s apartment when she came home — he had been scared away the previous time he entered her place and now was back to carry out his plan. He had access to a master key through his job. He was there to burglarize the place or he intended to rape her, or both, but had to wait until Spencer left that night. With Jenna alone, he attacked her and she tried to fight him off, acquiring the skin cells under her fingernails.
The prosecutors couldn’t press for the death penalty under Texas law because they lacked evidence that he committed another felony along with the murder.
Shortly before the trial was set to begin, Jeremy made a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty in return for a 55-year sentence with a chance of parole after serving half of that time. A jury trial could have meant 99 years.
Confronted with grief. Three members of Jenna’s family spoke as Jeremy sat in his orange prison uniform in court.
Jenna’s mother, Dina, said that Jeremy would never understand the crime’s effect on the family. Jenna’s sister, Diana, said that she would try to forgive him.
Jim Verhaalen, Jenna’s father, was not quite as generous as the women. As TheEagle.com quoted him:
I want you to know that every time you move from a prison to another prison, I will come and meet with the warden to let them know about the monster you are. I will be at your parole hearing to make sure you aren’t let out in 27 and a half years.
Negligence or not. Today, Jeremy Rosser resides in in the Memorial unit in Rosharon, Texas, and is eligible for parole in May of 2036.
The Verhaalens initiated legal action against Autumn Woods owner Sunridge Management Corp. The defendants held that Jenna’s death didn’t result from any act or omission on their part and that Jeremy had access to apartment keys because he legitimately needed to enter at times. (It’s not clear who won the suit or whether the parties reached a settlement.)
Dina Verhaalen in a photo from Bridges To Life
In the years after the murder, the surviving Verhaalens took comfort in helping others. A website for Bridges To Life, a group that helps crime victims and works with offenders to prevent recidivism, lists Dina as a regional coordinator. Jenna’s sister, Diana, got a mention in Enterprise-Journal on April 9, 2012 for her work in Thailand as a Free Burma Ranger.
Aftermath for the boyfriend. Autumn Woods, the apartment complex, has been renamed College Edge. Apparently, it is also known as Fifteen12, and has a lot of bad Yelp reviews.
Spencer Hood stayed in Texas, got a degree from Texas Lutheran University and went on to have a career in recruiting. There’s no word on what happened to Sean, the falsely accused neighbor, but both he and Spencer can thank routine DNA testing for enabling them to move on with their own lives after a tragic death and a harrowing investigation.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube The A Time to Kill episode is available to stream on Amazon, but it costs $1.99, even if you have Prime.
A Hero in the Skies But Not Everywhere Else ‘The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping: Investigation Reopened,’ Forensic FilesSpecial
The last post unlocked the virtual electronic door to the lost Forensic Files Specialabout Charles Lindbergh. Peter Thomas narrates the story about the kidnapping of the aviation hero’s 20-month-old son on March 31, 1932. The case engrossed the public and broke its heart when the baby turned up dead by the side of a road in May of that year.
Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh
The investigation into the kidnapping — culminating in the trial and execution of German immigrant Bruno Richard Hauptmann — seemed a testament to the strength of the U.S. justice system.
It also made Charles Sr. a sympathetic character in addition to an admired one.
He and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, went on to have five other children. She wrote a series of popular autobiographical books, including A Gift From the Sea, which sold 3 million copies before she died in 2001.
Charles took on diplomatic roles and high-paying consulting gigs. For the most part, he got to retain his hero status until his death in 1974.
Everything pertaining to the couple seemed steeped in high-mindedness and respectability.
Or was it?
Not that it was their fault, but all sorts of untoward things — from the tacky to the tragic — happened as a result of the investigation into Charles Lindbergh Jr.’s kidnapping and murder. And Anne and Charles did some things on their own that made for less-than-perfect legacies.
Here are seven surprising facts about the Lindberghs, the kidnapping, and what was called Trial of the Century back in 1935.
1.There was a far-fetched theory that Charles Sr., who sometimes played cruel practical jokes, killed the child either accidentally or intentionally and used a kidnapping hoax to cover it up. Rutgers University history professor Lloyd C. Gardner contended that Charles Sr. subscribed to social Darwinism and eugenics and devalued his son because had some physical deficiencies, including hammertoes and a cranium deformity. But there was virtually no way for people with suspicions to speak out during the investigation, because Charles Sr. was running the show, according to Yankee Magazine.
Violet Sharpe ingested cyanide of potassium chloride
2. An innocent party ended up dead because of the investigation. Kidnapping suspect Violet Sharpe, a domestic worker for Anne’s mother in Englewood, New Jersey, committed suicide by ingesting poison crystals on June 10, 1932. Investigators had raided her room, confiscated her belongings, and questioned men whose phone numbers they found among her things. They presented photos of each man to her, which made her hysterical. It turned out that Violet, who was 27 and variously described as a waitress, servant, or maid, didn’t want the Morrows to know that she disobeyed their rules by visiting a speakeasy (one media source called the place a “grill”) in Orangeburg, New York, on the night of the kidnapping. There was also a rumor that Violet’s real worry wasn’t the Lindberghs but rather her boyfriend; she didn’t want him to know where she went or who she was with. Ironically, her night on the town served as an alibi in relation to the kidnapping, according to the FBI website. Anne Lindbergh, who was expecting another child, was at the Morrow home when Violet killed herself, and the family “broke the news gently and made sure she inadvertently didn’t visit the part of the house where Ms. Sharpe’s body lay.” Another casualty of the case, Henry “Red” Johnson — the boyfriend of Charles Jr.’s baby nurse, Betty Gow — faced deportation when investigators discovered he was in the U.S. illegally. The police ultimately cleared both him and Violet of having anything to do with the kidnapping.
3. After Bruno Hauptmann’s arrest, the police detained his wife, Anna Hauptmann, for questioning. When lawmen took Anna to get her something to eat, a cry of “Hang her” arose from a crowd of locals who converged on the restaurant and taunted her through the window. Meanwhile, police were physically abusing the husband she loved, and telling him such things as, “Your wife is being held in the women’s jail with a lot of prostitutes. She is separated from the baby. Your wife is hysterical. She will probably become an imbecile from this thing,” the Washington Post would later report in “The Sorrows of Anna Hauptmann.”
Anna survived the trauma of the trial in 1935 and electrocution of her husband in 1936 and got to bring up her and Bruno’s own little son. She ignored suggestions that she should change her last name, and never lost faith in Bruno. Over the years, she tried suing the state of New Jersey for wrongful death and fraud. In the early 1990s, she petitioned Governor Christie Whitman to reopen the case. All of Anna’s legal salvos failed. She died in New Holland, Pennsylvania, in October 1994.
4. The trial sparked odd instances of entrepreneurialism. Stores sold framed pictures of the Lindbergh baby, nicknamed “the Eaglet.” A vendor hawked miniature versions of the homemade wooden ladder found outside the baby’s window on the night of the kidnapping. You can find some of these souvenirs for sale online today.
Charles Lindbergh Jr. with his mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, grandmother and great-grandmother
5. The Lindberghs had a cordial relationship with Adolf Hitler’s administration before World War II. Charles made a diplomatic trip to Germany in 1936 and came back a fan of “the organized vitality of Germany.” Anne said that “the energy, pride, and morale of the people” impressed her. Charles asserted that Jews were a threat because of their “large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government”— part of a credo that anti-Semitic people still use today. The couple believed in isolationism and didn’t want the U.S. to fight against Nazis. The Lindberghs later changed direction and supported the allies. Charles vehemently denied any bigotry. “He didn’t hate Jews,” his daughter Reeve Lindbergh said in a video interview. “But he made the kinds of casual anti-Semitic statements that people of his era made. He felt he was misrepresented and had nothing to apologize for.”
6. Five surviving children by the same woman didn’t satisfy Charles Sr.’s ego. He felt entitled to spread his Northern European genes even more. During his visits to Germany as part of his work for the U.S. government and a commercial airline, he secretly cheated on Anne with three German women, and ended up having a total of seven children out of wedlock with them. Shortly before his death, Charles asked the women to keep the children a secret. Three of them came out in 2003 — two years after Anne died—but never sought any money from the Lindbergh estate, according to the Minnesota Historical Society.
Dyrk, Astrid, and David Hesshaimer produced love letters written between Charles Lindbergh and their mother, Brigitte Hesshaimer
7. As if Charles Sr. didn’t already have enough real progeny, pretenders emerged. A number of men in their AARP years came forward, each claiming himself as the real Charles Jr. All the stories seemed unlikely, but they were hard to thoroughly refute. No one could find Charles Jr.’s fingerprints, and Charles Sr. had the baby’s remains cremated shortly after they were discovered, so there wasn’t any forensic evidence to dig up. And Anne Morrow’s children didn’t particularly want to hand over their DNA for tests.
Harold Roy Olson, of Westport, Connecticut, a representative of a computer manufacturer, brought up the possibility that he was the Lindbergh baby in 1976 and demanded to see federal files to help him prove it. Next up, Kenneth W. Kerwin of Biddeford, Maine, who a 1981 New York Times story described as a disabled factory worker, was asserting that he was the Lindbergh baby and should be declared an heir to his estate. An insurance salesman born as Loren Paul Husted kicked things up a notch by changing his name to Charles Lindbergh. He theorized that back in 1932, someone robbed the grave of an anonymous child, dressed it in baby Lindbergh’s clothing, and left it where someone would find it. In 2001, the Lost Angeles Times ran an article by writer Michael D’Antonio, who compared the man’s appearance to Lindbergh family photos and concluded that “the similarities—the strong chin, broad nose, distinctive mouth and even the hairline—are uncanny.” Husted told the East Bay Times that he sent Anne Morrow Lindbergh a Mother’s Day card every year but never heard back from her.
Finally, at least one good thing happened as a result of the Lindbergh tragedy. The U.S. made kidnapping a federal offense so that local investigators of abduction cases of children 12 years and younger can get help from the FBI.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. —RR
Peter Thomas Narrated an Episode on 1935’s Trial of the Century (‘The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping: Investigation Reopened,’ Forensic Files Special)
Charles Lindbergh won glory at the age of 25.
Just a quick post this week to tell you about the most exciting Forensic Files sleuthing yet: A Reddit user posted a link to a 60-minute episode under the name Forensic Files Special.
You might already know about the existence of other hour-long Forensic Files episodes (the most famous being about Bobby Kent), but they were narrated by Peter Dean, and HLN still broadcasts them.
Peter Thomas lends his voice to the five Forensic Files Special episodes and they no longer air. Medstar, the production company behind Forensic Files, made the episode in 2005 as part of a five-part package for Court TV.
Then those episodes disappeared.
Thanks to the Internet Archive, you can find at least one of them, about a case from early in the past century: the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh’s baby son.
In the early days of air travel in 1927, before rolling beverage carts and honey-roasted nuts, Charles Lindbergh enthralled the world by becoming the first person to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean.
The aviator received a ticker tape parade down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and a Medal of Honor from President Calvin Coolidge. Pictures of his 6-foot-3-inch blond personage appeared on the covers of magazines and newspapers. Admirers kept framed photos of him and his plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, in their homes.
He later married a wealthy diplomat’s daughter, Anne Morrow, who shared his interest in aviation. They sought out a more private life by moving to a 390-acre estate in Hopewell, New Jersey. Still, when they had their first child, a cherub-like boy named after his father, it made a huge splash. Newsreels showed footage of 20-month-old Charles Jr. standing up in his crib.
Soon, however, the man whose career reached the stratosphere experienced high drama that wasn’t cause for jubilation. On the evening of March 1, 1932, a mystery evildoer sneaked onto Anne and Charles’ property, propped a homemade ladder up to the baby’s room, and stole him.
The kidnapping stirred up sympathy and hysteria around the world as the culprit sent ransom letters and had secret meetings with a doctor who offered to serve as an intermediary. Everyone wanted to be part of the action. From jail, Al Capone offered to use his “connections” to broker the baby’s return.
Little lamb lost: Charles Lindbergh Jr.
But in the end, no one—not the mafia or the FBI or amateur sleuths—could help. The search for the baby concluded when a truck driver found his body along a roadside, rousing outrage and prompting a trial filled with as much hype and passion as the O.J. Simpson case would six decades later.
Unlike Simpson, defendant Bruno Richard Hauptmann took the witness stand, and his questioning by prosecutor David T. Wilentz was more theatrical than anything Johnnie Cochran served up.
Even if you’re already familiar with the Lindbergh saga, you’ll appreciate what Peter Thomas’s narration and Forensic Files’ writing bring to the story. Plus, the production offers new investigative work on the handwriting from the demand letters.
“The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping: Investigation Reopened” is available to watch online thanks to the Internet Archive.
For an upcoming post, I’ll offer lesser-known aspects of the case and Charles and Anne Lindbergh’s lives that the show couldn’t fit into 60 minutes.
In the meantime, enjoy the episode. I’ve watched it twice and want to see it again. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Eric Hayden Randomly Preys on a Neighbor (‘Nice Threads,’ Forensic Files)
Dawn Fehring was described as having a low-risk lifestyle
At the time of her death in 1995, Dawn Fehring had plans to visit Russia and Israel. But she never got a chance to exchange her dollars for rubles or read up on safety tips for travel in the Middle East.
The bible student met her end on her own turf — in an area of Washington state known for safety.
For this week, I looked for a little more information on Dawn’s short life and the case, so let’s get going on the recap of the Forensic Files episode “Nice Threads” along with extra information from internet research.
Take a bow. Dawn Rene Fehring was born in Olympia, Washington on April 27, 1968, the second of Carl and Dottie Fehring’s four children. Always interested in languages, Dawn was an exchange student to Paris and Vienna, where she learned to speak French and German.
In 1986, she graduated from Olympia High School in the top 10 percent of her class, according to her obituary. She earned a bachelor’s degree from California Lutheran University.
Dawn, who played the violin, was the secretary of the Capitol Youth Symphony Association, and she worked at Christ the Servant Lutheran Church in Lacy.
The Kirkland area features such attractions as Juanita Bay, where bird-watchers look for great blue herons
Door open. After doing missionary work and teaching English in Japan, the 27-year-old returned to Washington to work toward a certificate in cross-cultural ministries at the Lutheran Bible Institute in Issaquah.
She moved into the Salish Village Condominiums in Kirkland, an area with a low crime rate and high population of well-educated people. Sources vary as to whether Dawn was renting or borrowing the condo, but most say that she was housesitting for friends in Japan.
On May 14, 1995, about two weeks after Dawn returned to the U.S., a firefighter neighbor noticed her door open and went inside to investigate. He saw freshly baked cookies on the counter and Dawn’s body on the floor. Rigor mortis had set in. She had died on May 13.
Cookies vs. brownies. A clerk at a Fred Meyer supermarket witnessed Dawn shopping for baking ingredients at the store on May 12, the last time she was seen alive. The night of the murder, Dawn was making chocolate chip cookies as a gift for Mother’s Day. As prosecutor James Konat noted during his Forensic Files interview: What could be more American than baking chocolate chip cookies for one’s mother?
(According to The New Detectives episode “Infallible Witness,” Dawn was making brownies, but the show got at least two other facts wrong, so I’m trusting Forensic Files on this one.)
Police arrived to find Dawn with a fist-sized bruise on the back of her head. She’d been sexually assaulted and strangled to death with her own bedsheet.
Image on fabric. First responders noticed ash marks on the bedding and a cigarette burn on a table, which almost certainly came from the attacker. Dawn didn’t smoke, and she reportedly kept her home immaculately clean.
In what must have been a horrible surprise, Dawn’s 13-year-old sister, Joy, called to check on Dawn, only to have a police officer answer the phone, according to the Seattle Times.
Forensic investigation revealed that bloodstains on the bedsheets came from Dawn. The bleeding originated from injuries to her mouth and hymen (a word we rarely hear today, which is probably a good thing), according to court papers.
After the murder, Carl and Dorothy Ann “Dottie” Fehring moved to California to be closer to one of their sons
Criminal returns to scene. A forensic examiner soaked Dawn’s bedsheet in amido black liquid, which exposed a hand and fingerprint in blood, but there wasn’t enough definition to make them identifiable.
Investigators checked on the whereabouts of local sex criminals around the time of the murder, but they all had decent alibis.
Police then turned toward someone who had actually brought himself to their attention. A prosecutor would later describe Eric Hamlien Hayden as a big slob who was hanging around the crime scene. Hayden asked investigators whether his own safety was in danger from some unknown assailant.
Alibi dies. Hayden, a 32-year-old mill worker, occupied an apartment upstairs from Dawn’s in the complex at 12515 N.E. 132nd.
He lived with his girlfriend, but a neighbor recalled seeing him standing around outside barefoot in the rain while smoking cigarettes and eyeing the women who came and went.
When questioned at the police station, a nervous Hayden said he had an alibi: He was out drinking with friends at the time of the murder. Apparently his friends wouldn’t cover for him or never existed, because he later changed his story to say he was alone.
Highly suspect. Hayden told his girlfriend that he was too drunk that night to remember where he had been, according to court papers.
“His story wasn’t washing,” Kirkland Police Sgt. Gene Markle told the Seattle Times. “Every instinct you had was telling you something wasn’t right.”
Fortunately, a forensic lab made a breakthrough more concrete than instinct.
Scientific advance. Erik Berg, a forensic supervisor at the Tacoma Police Department, used pattern removal filters to subtract the thread pattern from the images in the blood on Dawn’s bedsheet. He came up with a clear print that matched one that police had on file for Eric Hayden because of a drunk driving action against him.
Dawn Fehring didn’t date, drink, or use drugs
“Bingo, it was him,” Berg told 60 Minutes. “I got a phone call two hours later saying he was in custody.” Police deposited Hayden in King County jail and set bond at $500,000.
The methodology that identified Hayden became known as digital fingerprint enhancement. The 60 Minutes episode would later call it a silver bullet.
Strangers in the night. When the trial kicked off, a judge allowed the prosecution to present the digital fingerprint enhancement evidence.
Prosecutors made a case that Hayden was coming home from drinking and noticed that Dawn had left the door open, probably to let out the heat from the oven. The two didn’t know each other except possibly in passing, they believed. Dottie Fehring said that Dawn hadn’t met the neighbors yet.
Hayden entered Dawn’s apartment through the open door with the intent of raping her, the prosecution contended. The New Detectives suggests a slightly different narrative, although it was to the same end. The show theorized that Hayden used a ruse to get Dawn to open the door for him and then inadvertently propped the door open when a bedroom slipper got caught at the edge while he was making his getaway.
Voice from beyond. Whatever the scenario, the prosecution contended that Hayden struck Dawn on the back of her head, knocking her down, and then sexually assaulted and killed her. When he got up, he steadied himself by placing his hand on the mattress, leaving a bloody print. While contemplating what he’d done, he smoked a cigarette and snuffed it out on the table, leaving the ashes and burn mark.
Defense attorney Andrew Dimmock argued that the police had no evidence against Hayden except for the digital fingerprint enhancement, which was a new science.
Prosecutor James Konat appeared on both Forensic Files and the New Detectives
The jury, however, put faith in the prosecution and convicted Hayden of murder.
At the sentencing hearing, Dawn’s mother showed a Mother’s Day card with Dawn’s photo and played a recording of Dawn singing hymns such as “I’ve Been Blessed.”
The prosecution asked for a 41-year sentence, but Judge Marilyn Sellers gave him 26.
Zero vindictiveness. Dottie Fehring told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that she was grateful for the sentence because an offender like Hayden would likely strike again and she didn’t want other families to face an ordeal like hers.
She wasn’t bitter, however. “Anger is not what you do when life creates problems,” she said, as reported in the Seattle Times. “You need to create peace. There’s no help in striking out again.”
After Hayden went to prison, the Fehring’s sent 200 of their friends cards handmade by Dawn.
Constructive idea. Next up, the Fehrings created the Dawn Fehring Love of God Award to financially help aspiring missionaries. They raised funds in part via entertainment.A May 1, 1999 item in the News Tribune noted a variety show including magicians, puppets, and Dixieland music with a suggested admission price of $5 per person.
The Fehrings have also supported other charitable causes as a tribute to their lost daughter.
Dottie, Carl, and their son Jeff paid $1,500 each to participate in the Jimmy Carter Work Project in Maragondon in the Philippines, where they labored under the sun to build two houses for poor people. A story in the News Tribune reported that Carl worked so hard that he suffered from heat exhaustion and had to receive fluids from medical workers, but he went back to work the next day.
Mucho dinero. Carl said it was doing the work that Dawn would do.
Little has been made public about Eric Hayden’s life before or after prison
“She was so full of life and love,” her mother told The Olympian newspaper in 2001. “It’s amazing what she packed into 27 years.”
Dawn’s other legacy was that her murder spurred police departments across the country to use digital fingerprint enhancement — despite that the technology package cost around $40,000 at the time.
Living quietly. Investigators can now identify criminals “drunk enough or stupid enough to leave their fingerprints in the victim’s blood,” according to James Konat.
So what happened to the man whose crimes fostered a forensic tour de force?
It appears that Eric Hayden served his 26 years and slipped out of sight. The Washington Department of Corrections doesn’t list him as a prisoner and there’s no obituary for him.
Let’s hope he’s gained some respect for human life or at least a little reverence for the technology that can catch evildoers like him.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
A Father Fights for Resolution (Forensic Files, ‘The Killing Room’)
Before jumping into the recap, I wanted to mention that this blog is now a book. Forensic Files Now: Inside 40 Unforgettable True Crime Cases includes blog posts along with extra information that doesn’t appear on my website plus a Q&A with Forensic Files creator Paul Dowling and a biography of narrator Peter Thomas, who started out doing Listerine commercials.
Jim Dunn
You can buy the book from Amazon or Barnes & Noble or your local independent bookstore. Or just spread the word on social media, an area where I can always, always use extra help.
Business in the front. And speaking of the internet, here’s a case that began before most laypersons had heard of it and finished when the whole world was posting its relationship status on Facebook:
Jim Dunn might have appeared as though he came from at least a slightly different socioeconomic group than his son Scott, but he was utterly devoted to him.
When Jim, a distinguished-looking CEO from Yardley, Pennsylvania, learned that his mullet-wearing child had disappeared, he immediately traveled to Lubbock, Texas to search for him.
Unfinished story. Once it became clear that Scott, who worked installing audio systems in cars, met a violent end at the hands of a girlfriend, Jim found a way around the Texas law that required a body in order to make a murder case.
Thanks in part to his diligence, a jury convicted Leisha Hamilton of beating Scott to death.
She went off to prison in 1994, but by the time Forensic Files produced “The Killing Room” in 1999, Jim still had no remains to bury beneath the headstone placed on an empty grave in the City of Lubbock Cemetery.
Scott Dunn was known for his fun-loving personality, but he also worked diligently
Checkered past? For this week, I checked on whether Scott’s body ever turned up and also looked for more information about the case. So let’s get going on the recap to “The Killing Room” along with extra information from internet research.
Roger Scott Dunn came into the world on Feb. 10, 1967, one of two sons born to James and Mary Sue Dunn. He used his middle name as his first. His family lived a financially comfortable life in the Philadelphia area.
Scott served in the military and moved to Lubbock, reportedly to start anew after making some bad choices. Nevertheless, he ran into trouble in his new home. At age 23, he was arrested in connection with a Domino’s Pizza robbery. The Abilene News-Reporter article about the alleged crime listed him as a car stereo installer at MGM Electronics.
Two timing, or more. It’s not clear what, if any, consequences came about because of the incident but, in the meantime, he was enjoying a successful career. He loved working on cars. According to KCBD, he had won stereo-installation competitions. He also bought, restored, and resold used automobiles on his own.
But vehicles weren’t the only things Scott enjoyed toying with. At age 24, the fair-haired Scott was living with Leisha Hamilton, a 28 year-old waitress, at the same time he was engaged to another woman, and possibly had relationships with others.
Leisha Hamilton
In one of the rare narratives in which Forensic Files leaves a storyline unfinished (Viktor Gunnarsson: A Swede Meets Death), the show opens by revealing that the day before his death, Scott played a joke on his buddies by bringing a gorgeous date to a party. His friends enjoyed flirting with her. But they later realized that, underneath the sexy outfit, there was a man.
Regular Florence Nightingale. His friends were not amused, and Scott got sick at the party. But, confusingly, those incidents don’t seem to have anything to do with each other or his imminent disappearance.
During her Forensic Files interview, Leisha said that Scott was compromised the night of the party and needed help getting dressed for bed after she brought him home to the place they shared at Oakwood Club Apartments at 5818 24th Street. Leisha said that she made him some tea in the morning and left for her waitress job.
Then Scott vanished.
Leisha stopped by Scott’s employer to pick up his 1991 yellow Camaro. Scott had run off with another woman, she told his boss, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer article from November 16, 1997.
Dramatic vehicle. Next up, Leisha called Jim Dunn—who up until that time didn’t know about her existence—on May 19, 1991 to alert him to Scott’s disappearance.
A clipping from the Abilene News-Reporter from September 28, 1990
Jim got in touch with the Lubbock police, and ended up calling them every day, according to one account. Sympathetic detective Tal English remembered Jim’s telling him how unusual it was for Scott to leave the Camaro — nicknamed the Yellow Submarine — and his tools at work for the night, according to his interview on The New Detectives. Jim would make numerous trips to Lubbock to do his own fact-finding, interviewing witnesses and searching for evidence, all the while maintaining a good relationship with local law officers.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to control the narrative, Leisha led police to a corner of her and Scott’s bedroom with recently replaced carpet pieces —not a good sign in any missing-person story. And yikes, under the rug, luminol revealed red stains. They came from Scott’s blood, and there was lots of it.
Financial offense. Crime-scene consultant and semi-regular Forensic Files guest Tom Bevel got in on the act. He conducted blood splatter tests in the bedroom and found the pattern consistent with blows from a blunt object or pipe.
Leisha, in her grief, found the strength to tell Jim Dunn that she wanted to keep Scott’s Camaro for herself.
Jim traveled to Leisha’s former home of Albuquerque to look into her past. She had a police record for embezzlement.
Scott and Jim Dunn
Next victim. But it was what Scott’s associates told investigators about her that was more worrisome. A female friend of Scott’s said that Scott was afraid to break up with Leisha. According to the New Detectives, Leisha’s ex-boyfriends warned Scott that she could lather herself up into violent jealous rages.
Leisha, meanwhile, tried to throw off suspicion on her new boyfriend, Tim Smith, who came from a sheltered background and was a “lovesick admirer” of the worldly Leisha, according to a story in The Timesof Trenton. She probably thought he would take the fall.
When police dropped in on Tim at his place, they found a roll of duct tape similar to the tape used to attach the carpet pieces in Scott and Leisha’s bedroom. Stuck to the adhesive were green trilobal fibers like the ones in Scott’s bedroom. The tape also had Tim’s and Leisha’s hairs on.
Pro bono aid. Despite the evidence, the authorities couldn’t make Scott’s death into a murder case until they had a body.
In 1992, Jim appealed to the VIDOCQ Society (pronounced vee-DUCK), a group of law enforcement professionals including none other than forensic sculptor Frank Bender, who helped to catch John List.
The VIDOCQ Society investigated cases for no fee.
Richard Walter, a forensic psychologist who belonged to the group, found Leisha’s behavior suspicious and, bless his heart, offered to help Jim “go after that bitch.”
Clever claim. Scotland Yard even got into the act after VIDOCQ forwarded evidence to the British detectives. They agreed that someone had murdered Scott via blunt force involving at least four blows.
Tim Smith
The Associated Press called the evidence “signs of a nasty butchering.” Scott had lost an estimated one quart of blood, according to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.
The big break in the case came when Richard Walter persuaded authorities to move forward with the case because blood is a bodily part. In a way, they had a body.
Ruining another man’s life. In 1994, Leisha was charged with perjury and tampering with evidence. The perjury charge stemmed from her lying about not having possession of what media reports called a radio-controlled boat belonging to Scott.
But soon enough, she and Tim were charged with murder. The motive for the homicide? Revenge. Leisha was angry after finding out Scott planned to marry another woman.
When Tim Smith fell under her Leisha’s spell, instead of just using him as a rebound boyfriend until she got over Scott, Leisha enlisted him to carry out a plan for revenge.
In its recreations for TV, Forensic Files used the same model cars from the cases
Good riddance. The authorities made a case that on May 16, 1991, someone attacked Scott as he slept and beat him to death.
After separate trials, Leisha and Tim were convicted of murder. Leisha got 20 years. Smith received a $10,000 fine and 10 years probation. Either the judge or jury, or both, believed that Tim helped with the disposal of the body but Leisha wielded the weapon.
It’s not clear why Leisha got such a short sentence — in Texas, no less — but she had to serve it in full after losing multiple bids for parole. Leisha dropped out of sight once she got out of prison.
But that’s getting ahead of the story.
Literary effort. By 2004, the Dunns still had no body to bury in Scott’s grave, but that didn’t mean the public forgot about the case. In fact, a writer from the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal thought the story would make a good book.
“That father just caught my heart, because I am a parent myself,” Wanda Evans said in a Plainview Writers Guild video interview. “I kept seeing my son in Scott.”
She and Jim ended up collaborating on Trail of Blood: A Father, a Son, and a Tell-Tale Crime Scene Investigation, which found a publisher and got positive reviews on Amazon.
Over the years, Jim Dunn maintained a good relationship with the same authorities who helped put away Leisha Hamilton. Jim was not adversarial, detective Tal English told the Lubbock-Avalanche Journal. “Sometimes the family gets so disgruntled with investigators.”
Theory proves right. There was much relief in 2012, when Lubbock Victims Assistance Services got word to Jim Dunn that a work crew (a.k.a. the folks who tend to discover stuff on Forensic Files) had uncovered skeletal remains in a sewage system near Scott’s apartment complex. Dental records confirmed they came from Scott.
Just as the prosecution argued in court, Scott died from blunt force trauma. The killer or killers had wrapped his body in a vinyl sheet from his waterbed. Investigators discovered a gold ring belonging to Scott’s grandmother at the scene, The Times of Trenton reported in a story from October 28, 2012.
Jim nearly passed out when he first heard the news about his lost son, according to his interview with KCBD TV.
On June 16, 2012, the Dunns buried him in a grave beneath a stone engraved with a likeness of Scott’s Camaro.
“I tell everyone,” Jim told The Times, “that Scott came home for Father’s Day.”
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. —RR
A New Friendship Spurs Darlene VanderGiesen’s Murder (‘Hear No Evil,’ Forensic Files)
Daphne Wright didn’t contribute a whole lot to her community, but no one foresaw how much she would take away from it.
The Sioux Falls, South Dakota resident thought that her on-again off-again girlfriend was spending too much time with a factory worker named Darlene VanderGiesen, so she decided to eliminate the competition.
Murder victim Darlene VanderGiesen
All three of the women were deaf and two of them were gay, so the novelty of the story captured many headlines. And the gory manner of death sparked debate over whether Daphne should become the first woman in South Dakota history to receive the death penalty.
For this post, I searched for more biographical information about Darlene and her killer and checked on whether she’s (fingers crossed) still in prison.
So let’s get going on the recap of “Hear No Evil” along with extra information from internet research.
Darlene VanderGiesen was born deaf. She graduated from the Iowa School for the Deaf and attended junior college before moving to South Dakota.
She worked in the shipping department at JDS Industries Inc., a company that makes sports trophies and promotional items in Sioux Falls, a town known for its large community of people with hearing impairments.
An employee for 13 years, Darlene loved her job and also enjoyed camping, softball, going to the Deaf Club and collecting Beanie Babies in her spare time, according to her obituary.
Daphne Wright long before she committed a grisly murder
On February 3, 2006, Darlene’s parents received word that their daughter hadn’t shown up for her job for two days in a row. Gene and Dee VanderGiesen left a family reunion in Nebraska and headed back to Sioux Falls to look for her.
They were particularly concerned because Darlene had started using online dating websites. According to Deadly Affairs, Darlene had no shortage of friends in Sioux Falls, but she wanted to find a serious relationship.
“Oh, Darlene, be so careful,” Dee recalled telling Darlene. “There are so many, excuse the expression, ‘weirdoes’ out there.”
(“When a mom excuses herself for using the term ‘weirdoes,’ you have no doubt she raised her daughter to be a good person,” one commenter said on YouTube.)
At Darlene’s apartment in the Timberland Village complex, her parents found her cell phone lying on a table. Normally, she took it everywhere for texting. The VanderGiesens didn’t see her truck in the parking lot, and her cats looked hungry, according to “Playing With Hearts,” an episode of Deadly Affairs.
Still, the VanderGiesens had no reason to believe someone wanted to harm their daughter.
“She has no enemies,” Darlene’s friend Cheryl Brimmer later told the Argus Leader. “Why anyone would want to kill her is beyond me. I never saw her mad or upset or anything negative about her.”
Many of Darlene’s friends gathered at the VanderGiesens’ home to offer moral support. Daphne Wright, an acquaintance Darlene met at a Deaf Club, showed up, too. “She gave me a hug and she said she was sorry that Darlene was missing, that they were friends, and she would be praying that we would find Darlene soon,” said Dee VanderGiesen, as reported by the Argus Leader. “And I thanked her for coming.”
Police got what looked like a promising lead in a man Forensic Files calls Jeff Flynn — a local field hand who Darlene had recently dated. He seemed nervous during questioning and investigators found dried blood in the back of his car.
But testing proved the blood came from a deer, and Jeff could prove he had been out of town when the murder happened.
Darlene’s car soon turned up abandoned in a Pizza Hut parking lot on 26th Street and Sycamore Avenue, but police found nothing out of order inside. No one had used Darlene’s bank cards.
Meanwhile, her sister found emails on Darlene’s account from someone named Wendy Smith who declared her hatred of Darlene. “Wendy” called Darlene fat and said she had elephant feet. In other emails, the writer identified herself as the lover of Sallie Collins (Forensic Files uses the pseudonym “Sally Ford”).”You always visit Sallie when [I] am not here,” the message said. “Enough please.”
Sioux Falls features waterfalls in the middle of town
Police spoke to Daphne Wright, who said that she and Darlene were friends and they liked each other. But soon enough, Daphne cracked and admitted she had created the email account in the name Wendy Smith and sent the disturbing emails to Darlene. At first, she denied meeting her at the Pizza Hut, but later acknowledged that she did.
And news of a dramatic incident involving Daphne came to light. A few days before she died, Darlene had gone out to dinner with Sallie Collins.
Daphne showed up and confronted Darlene and Sallie with accusations and got so out of hand that the police were called to escort Daphne off the premises. (Forensic Files says the outburst happened at a restaurant, but a newspaper account gave Sallie Collins’ house as the venue.)
Darlene later said that she made peace with Daphne. Darlene and Sallie Collins were just friends. Darlene wasn’t gay. But, in reality, Daphne still harbored suspicions. According to her mother, Daphne had some boyfriends in her youth before coming to terms with her gayness. Maybe Daphne thought Darlene would do the same—and then steal Sallie.
A look at her background showed that Daphne did have some understandable anxiety over abandonment. As a child, Daphne — who lost her hearing to rubella at the age of 10 months — faced rejection from other kids and even some members of her extended family. Daphne’s parents had to leave her at a school for the deaf 125 miles away from their home in North Carolina.
Her father died when she was a teenager.
As far as Daphne’s intellect, opinions vary widely. According to her mother, Daphne did well in athletics but had trouble reading in school. One mental health professional described her as “mildly retarded.” Another assessment placed her nonverbal IQ at 114 to 117, a higher-than-average score.
Snapped described Daphne as working in a series of low-paying jobs. She reportedly received Social Security. Daphne’s roommate, Jacki Chesmore, would later say that Daphne spent most of her time sleeping and playing video games.
Sallie Collins
Fortunately for police, Daphne didn’t channel much energy or intelligence into her murder plan. She left forensic evidence scattered over a 20-mile area starting in South Dakota and ending in Minnesota.
When police searched Daphne’s apartment at 1806 S. Phillips Ave., they smelled chemicals and found a receipt for a chainsaw from Ace Hardware. Her basement floor had random spots painted blue, and a storage room had a freshly painted floor in the same blue color. Investigators found some human tissue and bone pieces there.
Their DNA matched Darlene’s and so did blood found beneath the blue paint.
A hardware store employee remembered selling a deaf customer a chainsaw. She had handed the worker a note that said “tree cutting machine” and then bought the cheapest model available, a 1.5-horsepower that cost $60.
With the preliminary forensic evidence unmistakably grim, Darlene’s family went ahead and held a memorial service for her.
Shortly after, there was gruesome confirmation of Darlene’s fate. At a landfill, investigators found the pelvis, thighs, feet, and lower legs of an adult female along with a sweatshirt printed with sign language. It had Darlene’s bloodstains on it.
Just across the South Dakota border near Hills, Minnesota, a county snowplow driver named Keith Schmuck discovered a female upper torso and severed head wrapped up in a plastic bag in a ditch near Interstate 90. A drawstring was tied around her neck.
The body parts had a petroleum smell — as did Daphne’s basement, especially after investigators scraped the blue paint off the floors, according to Jessica Lichty, a forensic chemist with the Sioux Falls Police Department.
Darlene VanderGiesen
All the body parts belonged to Darlene. She died of either blunt force trauma to the head or suffocation, or both.
Police arrested Daphne 10 days after the murder. Media stories described the case as a “lesbian love triangle,” despite that Darlene self-identified as straight.
On the witness stand at the trial, Sallie Collins described the confrontation that preceded the murder. As the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported her testimony:
“[Daphne] saw Darlene, and she got very mad and said, ‘Why are you destroying our relationship?’ And she was very angry and then she sat down, and I said, ‘Daphne, you are wrong,’ Collins said. VanderGiesen left and put her middle finger up to her face as a gesture toward Wright, who refused to leave, so Collins said she went to a neighbor’s house and called police. She left when officers arrived, Collins said.“
Sallie also said that Daphne was antsy after the murder and smoked “a cigarette every minute.”
During Sallie’s testimony, Daphne chewed gum and shed some tears, according to an AP account.
Daphne Wright might have looked tough, but she had no criminal record before the murder
Police theorized that on February 1, 2006, Daphne met Darlene at the Pizza Hut and somehow persuaded Darlene to get into her Suzuki SUV. Once at Daphne’s apartment, the prosecution alleged, Daphne hit Darlene in the head and threw her down the steps to the basement, where she ultimately died.
Daphne then used the chainsaw to dismember the body in a room formerly used to store coal. She tried to burn the body parts — hence the gas smell — and then disposed of them in the dumpster in South Dakota and along the highway in Minnesota. She used the blue paint to cover up the blood in her basement.
Jacki Chesmore, Daphne’s helpful roommate, said that Daphne left the house with some cinderblocks and garbage bags and stayed out for two hours around the time of the murder.
When the prosecution showed photos of Darlene’s body parts, Dee VanderGiesen left the courtroom in tears, according to reporting from the Twin Cities Pioneer Press, which also noted that Daphne rarely let her emotions show, and mostly watched an interpreter stationed near the front of the court room.
Much to his credit, Judge Brad Zell decided the evidence was already gruesome enough and declined the prosecution’s request to show a video demonstrating a chainsaw carving up a pig’s body.
It’s unclear why Daphne didn’t just bury Darlene’s body whole instead of doing the ghastly work of sawing it up. By disposing of it in different places, Daphne made it easier to find and she branded herself forever as not only a murderer but also a depraved murderer.
And an inept one at that. At the sites where Daphne dumped the body parts, investigators found bed sheets, coal dust, rope, and carpet fibers, all of which originated from her house.
Daphne Wright was reserved during the trial
Public defender Traci Smith had an uphill battle but she managed to throw a few salvos. She tried to shift suspicion to Sallie Collins, because a T-shirt with the logo of her employer, Wells Fargo, turned up at one of the crime scenes. Traci Smith also suggested that some unknown man Darlene met online could be her killer.
The defense claimed that the prosecution made too much out of the emails. “These childish words have been spun into the death threat which gave rise to the state’s theory of their case,” Traci Smith said. She also hinted that a pack of cigarettes, not Darlene’s regular brand, found at her apartment implicated an unknown suspect.
In the end, however, Traci Smith was no match for the prosecution’s evidence. The jury of 11 women and one man convicted Daphne of kidnapping with gross personal injury and first-degree murder.
After the verdict, Darlene’s sister, Sandra Sidford, who is also deaf, said thank you and hugged state attorney Dave Nelson. “Deaf bloggers around the country felt the same elation, loss, and sadness,” the Argus-Leader wrote.
Friends from the deaf community explained their grief through interpreters. “I just can’t believe she’s gone,” said Monique Lion-Boothe. “We want her back so bad.”
The death penalty was in play and, as mentioned, the media publicized that Daphne could be the first woman executed in South Dakota.
Andrew Imparato, president of the American Association of People with Disabilities, said that Daphne didn’t deserve any leniency because of her deafness. “I think it’s very dangerous to argue that deaf people as a general matter shouldn’t be eligible for the death penalty,” he told ABC News, according to information available on Murderpedia.
The trial was a sensation in Sioux Falls as well as in deaf communities across the country
The victim’s sister and brother-in-law said they felt comfortable leaving the punishment up to the jury’s discretion. According to an AP account, during the penalty phase, some jurors cried when they heard Eugene VanderGiesen describe the last time he saw Darlene — when she “put her big arms around me and gave me a great big hug” and said “I love you” in sign language.
But the testimony of Carolyn Tucker, Daphne’s mother, probably affected them as well. She said that Daphne’s father was an alcoholic and physically abusive and Daphne had witnessed his violence. According to an AP account, Daphne did poorly in school as she struggled with her sexuality.
Tucker told of the scene when she and her husband left Daphne at the school for deaf students. “She came out and thought she was going with us,” Tucker said, “but we had to leave her and she was screaming and crying, running behind the car.”
The jury decided Daphne deserved life without parole rather than the death penalty.
Today, Daphne Wright lives in South Dakota’s Women’s Prison in Pierre. Her inmate profile describes her as 5-foot-7 and 203 pounds. The South Dakota Department of Corrections lists her status as life, with no chance of parole mentioned.
In one of the few bright notes to the story, the families of both the murderer and the victim came to terms with each other without rancor. “As one mother to the other, I express my sorrow to your family,” Dee VanderGiesen told Carolyn Tucker, according to the Twin Cities Pioneer Press. “We both have lost our daughters. One to death and the other to prison time for as long as she lives. May God’s grace be shown to you at this time of pain in your life.”
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
