Rebecca Reisner, Author at Forensic Files Now

Robert Buell: A City Planner Goes off the Rails

A Shirt-and-Tie Guy Lives a Dual Existence
(‘Material Evidence,’ Forensic Files)

My favorite Forensic Files episodes tend to involve criminals no one suspected, people who seemed to live within society’s conventions.

Krista Lea Harrison

Enter one Robert Anthony Buell, the subject of “Material Evidence.” He was a municipal employee with a college education, a manicured lawn, and colleagues and friends who respected him.

Unfortunately, he also had a secret life as a serial sex criminal and murderer.

Local newspaper on story. For this week, I did some research on the reactions that locals had upon hearing that the homicidal maniac in the van looked not like a monster but rather like one of them.

So let’s get going on the recap for “Material Evidence,” along with information from online sources, including the Akron Beacon Journal, which did great reporting on the case:

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On July 17, 1982, Krista Lea Harrison and Roy Wilson were collecting cans at a softball field in Marshallville Village Park in Ohio. Krista’s older sister, Dawn, had given her permission to ride her 10-speed bike to the park instead of doing dishes at home.

On high alert. Suddenly, a man grabbed Krista, 11, and forced her into a reddish-brown van with bubble-shaped back windows.

Roy, 12, who had just stepped away for a moment when the assailant drove up, described him as a white male of medium height, 25 to 35 years old with a prominent nose, dark hair, and a mustache.

The crime unnerved the town of Marshallville, population 750 to 900. “The park became a ghost town,” recalled Mayor Robert Brooker on Forensic Files. “There was tremendous apprehension that this could happen again.” Residents started locking their doors. A column in the Akron Beacon Journal advised parents to tell their kids that “no reasonable adult drives around seeking to give rides to children.”

A black and white image of a young Robert Buell — Robert Anthony Buell in his youth

Awful discovery. The FBI helped local authorities as they mobilized volunteers and tracker dogs, a helicopter, and even a psychic in their efforts to find the blue-eyed tawny-haired girl who loved softball. Local groups raised a $13,500 reward for information leading to the man’s capture. The feds outfitted the Harrisons’ phone with a recording device in case a kidnapper called.

“We want to be able to hold her in our arms and tell her how much we love her,” Krista’s dad, Gerald Harrison, said in a plea to the unknown man who kidnapped the youngest of his four children.

But no ransom calls came.

Six days after Krista’s abduction, some turtle trappers found the girl’s decomposing body 30 miles outside of Marshallville in a field in Holmes County. Someone had partially wrapped her in a plastic bag and left a large bloodstained cardboard box at the scene. Not far away, police found a pair of discarded men’s jeans and a plaid shirt.

Terrifying tale. Someone had strangled and sexually assaulted Krista. Forensic experts found the same type of synthetic trilobal orange fibers in her hair that had turned up eight months earlier at the murder scene of another child, Tina Harmon, in a neighboring town, but a young migrant farm worker named Herman Ray Rucker was in prison for that homicide. (Rucker eventually won a new trial and was acquitted).

A photo of fall foliage with the Marshallville water tower in the background — Marshallville created a memorial to Krista Harrison with geraniums and a plaque with her picture in the park where she showed off her talent for softball

Investigators determined that the L-shaped cardboard box at Krista’s murder scene came from a new leather van seat ordered from Sears.

Police got a huge break when a 28-year-old local woman came forward with a horrifying story. While she was painting the floor of the Petroco Gas Station where she worked as a manager, a man holding a pistol appeared and told her, “You are coming with me unless you want your head blown off,” according to court papers. He took her to his house and shaved her head, battered her, raped her, and tortured her with electric wires. He tied and handcuffed her to the bed. The next morning, in what sounds like a scene from a James Bond movie, the sadistic man turned up the stereo so no one could hear her scream and left for the office. It gave her an opportunity to loosen the ropes and force her hand through a handcuff. The victim put on a robe and ran outside for help. She was purple with bruises.

Outdoorsy guy. The man she identified as the attacker was the quintessential “somebody no one expected” — Robert Anthony Buell. He worked as a loan and grant specialist for the Akron Planning Department. His house at 3319 Symphony Lane in Clinton had an automatic garage door opener and a neatly trimmed yard with freshly planted chrysanthemums. The divorced father of one had reportedly been talking marriage with his longtime girlfriend, a lawyer at an Ohio bank; she had a 13-year-old daughter and an 8-year-old son. Robert took camping trips with both the kids and attended the girl’s softball games.

Robert Buell wearing an orange prisoner uniform — It’s a good thing Robert Buell liked orange

His arrest shocked neighbors and colleagues who knew him as a friendly, conscientious man who enjoyed hiking, scuba diving, and skiing — and was loved by local kids, the Akron Beacon Journal reported. His inner circle didn’t believe the accusations.

“Friends tended to dismiss the [gas station manager’s rape] charge as if it were an empty slur uttered the morning after by a woman Buell brought home one night,” according to the ABJ.

String of attacks. Nonetheless, the police thoroughly searched his vehicle and his house, placing sheets over the windows to discourage prying eyes.

Inside, they found jeans of the same size and style as the ones left near Krista Harrison’s murder scene. Robert owned a reddish-brown 1978 Dodge van. It didn’t have round windows as the witness to Krista’s abduction had reported, but Robert’s helpful nephew, Ralph Ross Jr., told investigators that Robert had recently replaced them with rectangular ones. The bright orange carpet in Robert’s van and his home matched the fibers in Krista’s hair. And Robert had ordered Sears van seats that came in boxes like the one found at the murder scene.

Family strife. Authorities would eventually name Robert as a suspect in the murder of Deborah Kaye Smith, 10, of Massillon, as well as a number of sexual assaults on women and girls in Doylestown, Akron, Barberton, Lodi, and Jeromesville. There was evidence that his string of crimes started as early as 1975, when he abducted Terry DeLapa (luckily, she escaped after 20 minutes), according to an account that DeLapa, now an executive at a materials company, gave to Rubber and Plastics News in 2015.

The gas station manager who Robert Buell raped and beat — After raping and beating the gas station manager (above) with his fists and a belt, Robert Buell tied her up and went to sleep for the night

So where did this man come from and did his early life give hints at the horror and loss he would create?

Robert Anthony Buell was born in Cincinnati on Sept. 10, 1940, the son of Jacqueline Buell, a waitress, and Carter Buell, a chef. His parents went through a horrible divorce, according to the ABJ. Jacqueline described her husband as a drunken troublemaker. Carter complained that he returned home from the army to find his wife shacked up with a bartender. They fought over custody of the children, with Carter alleging that Jacqueline whipped and beat Robert so severely that a broom handle once broke over his back.

Robert, understandably, was described as a nervous child.

Finance positions. Still, he had a normal social life, dating girls and going out with friends. He followed a stable, successful career path, which included serving in the Navy as an electronics technician and receiving an honorable discharge. He studied business at the University of Akron, and held jobs as a cashier and loan officer at a couple of banks and as a credit manager at W.T. Grant.

When Robert married and became a father, he didn’t allow his parents to see their granddaughter for many years — presumably to spare her their dysfunction. Robert and his wife, a bookkeeper from Steubenville, stayed together for 18 years before divorcing.

A shot of a road in the Clinton, Ohio — Robert Buell lived in the Summit County town of Clinton, a bedroom community of Akron, Ohio

After Robert’s arrest and indictment on charges of Krista’s aggravated murder, kidnapping, and felonious sexual penetration in November 1983, some neighbors started telling stories suggesting that he wasn’t all that squeaky clean after all.

Exes supportive. They said that, after his wife and daughter moved out, Robert tried to rebrand himself. He grew his hair longer and wore a cowboy hat, sunglasses, and an unbuttoned shirt like Richard Gere in American Gigolo. He also started riding a motorcycle, hanging around with younger people, and blasting music, according to the ABJ.

Still, there was no evidence that Robert had mistreated his wife and daughter or his girlfriend and her children. In fact, after his arrest, his ex-wife and girlfriend raised funds for his defense.

They must have wanted their money back when Robert, 43, pleaded no contest to the savage attack on the gas station manager.

Not So Hot in Cleveland. But he denied any crimes against children.

Authorities moved Robert Buell’s trial to Cleveland because of extensive pre-trial publicity.

He declined to take the stand in his own defense, and his lawyers didn’t impress the court much.

On April 4, 1984, a jury of six women and six men convicted Robert Anthony Buell of aggravated murder and rape for the attack on Krista Harrison.

Sorry, buddy. In a separate sentencing action, the jury voted in favor of a death sentence, which in that era meant the electric chair. Additionally, he received life plus up to 185 years for other charges related to his various sex crimes and abductions over the years.

A mug shot of Robert Buell — Buell spent his final few hours listening to classical music in his cell. For his last meal, he reportedly ate one pitted black olive.

He made many attempts to escape the death chamber. In 1996, a court halted his execution just 17 minutes before its scheduled time.

But a federal judge later “called his pleas for a stay ‘a rehash of the same arguments’ only ‘dressed in a brand-new outfit,'” the Akron Beacon Journal reported.

No chair. As a new execution date in 2002 grew near, Krista’s mother, Shirley Harrison, said that Robert Buell deserved to die the way Krista did. But she also noted that “we have been advised not to read [Krista’s] autopsy report,” according to a BG Falcon Media story.

Robert insisted he had nothing to do with the murder and that the real killer was still out there.

By this time, Ohio had started using lethal injections of sodium pentothal, potassium chloride, and the muscle relaxant Pavulon for executions.

On Sept. 24, 2002, at the “death house” of the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, Robert Anthony Buell took the needle, joining the small club of Forensic Files killers (including Jason Massey and Walter Leroy Moody) whose death sentences have been carried out as of this writing.

That’s all for this week. If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe and share on social media. — RR

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Ralph Marcus: Obsession and Fraud

A Swindler With a Grudge Kills a Teen
(‘Oily in the Morning,’ Forensic Files)

Aside from great hair, Ralph Albert Marcus didn’t have a whole lot going for him.

He made a living through scams. And he spent more than two decades fixated on a woman named Patty Howard who made it clear she had zero romantic interest in him.

Patty Howard with her children when they were small — Patty Howard with Jaime and Nick

At age 42, Ralph set in motion what he probably thought would be his greatest coup: collecting $850,000 from life insurance on Patty’s son, Nick, and getting revenge by taking him away from her forever.

As a comment on YouTube said, “Marcus is not a POS. He’s the whole thing.”

For this post, I looked into Ralph Marcus’ criminal history and searched for an explanation as to why in the world Nick Howard — a teenager with no dependents — had such an expensive life insurance policy.

Fender unbenders. So let’s get going on the recap of “Oily in the Morning,” the Forensic Files episode about Nick Howard’s murder, along with extra information culled from the internet.

Nicholas Andrew Howard was born on March 9, 1978 to Daniel and Lillian “Patty” Howard. The Howards, who lived outside of Sacramento, California and ran an auto body shop, were a close bunch. Nick’s sister, Jaime, told Forensic Files that Nick was her best friend. After Nick, 18, got his diploma, he continued to live at home, and worked in the family business.

At the end of a night out on Feb. 5, 1997, Nick went to Tony’s Place, a restaurant in Walnut Grove, to pick up a forgotten driver’s license. He left a phone message to tell his family that he had some car trouble but was heading home.

Nick never arrived.

Patty called the sheriff’s department the next morning. Her husband went out to search for Nick, driving up and down River Road, the route Nick would have taken from the restaurant.

Ralph Marcus wearing glasses with aviator frames — Ralph Marcus ‘discovered’ tire tracks from the ‘accident’ — in hopes of clearing the path to an insurance jackpot

Car discovered. River Road had no shortage of perilous stretches. It runs parallel to the Sacramento River, with a 30-foot drop from the road to the water, and no guardrails. (Just a few days ago a driver crashed into the river and died.)

Ralph Marcus, who joined the search effort along with his friend Jake Stanton, flagged down a police car to tell officers he’d found tire tracks leading from the road to the riverbank.

California Highway Patrol and Yolo County officers converged at the scene and called in divers. Two days after Nick’s disappearance, they found his empty Mazda 626 at the bottom of the river. The engine had been running when the vehicle hit the water.

Not ready to give up. Investigators discovered Nick’s neatly crumpled glasses inside the car but no other sign of Nick.

The interior of the vehicle had stains from motor oil, probably from an empty bottle of Valvoline found in the car.

Meanwhile, Patty Howard still hoped what everyone hopes when a loved one goes missing after an accident — that he’s a John Doe, confused but still alive, at a hospital.

Police suspected that Nick had staged the accident and then gone into hiding.

Slumber through an accident? But on Feb. 25, 1997, a male body surfaced near Clarksburg downstream from the track marks. Investigators had to use dental records to identify it as belonging to Nick Howard; his corpse had started to decompose. An examination suggested that someone had beaten and strangled Nick and thrown him into the river while he was still breathing. He died of drowning.

Authorities classified the death as a murder.

One of the investigators noted on Forensic Files that if Nick fell asleep along the road, he would have probably been jolted awake by the rocky descent toward the water.

A view of the Sacramento River — The Sacramento River view from River Road in Walnut Grove

Lively interview. Besides, the car had gone off the road at a 45-degree angle, too sharp a path for a vehicle whose driver had fallen asleep.

The case got all the more fishy when investigators discovered Nick had a $500,000 life insurance policy that offered $850,000 if his death happened by way of an accident.

Homicide Detective Larry Cecchettini, one of the more vigorous speakers on this particular Forensic Files episode, noted the oddity of a young person having this much insurance coverage.

Suspicious paperwork. It turned out that Nick had taken out the policy on himself after lying to the agent — he said that he planned to get married and take over his parents’ business, according to court papers from 2001. He paid the premiums, which cost him about one fourth of his monthly income, Cecchettini told The New Detectives on the “Betrayed” episode.

The Howards discovered that the policy listed not them but rather Ralph Marcus as the beneficiary. (According to The New Detectives and court papers from 2001, the change never officially went through because Nick neglected to supply some required information — but Ralph probably didn’t know that until after Nick died.)

Ralph had a long history with the Howard family, particularly with Patty.

Unrequited feelings. In 1973, Ralph, then 17, met Patty, 14. He immediately started hitting on her and made some unwanted advances after pinning her down — he claimed he just wanted to show her some wrestling holds. The incident sounded like borderline, or maybe full-fledged, sexual assault.

Jaime Howard as a young adult — Jaime Howard during her appearance on Forensic Files

Patty friend-zoned him, but he continued to hover around her.

Even after she married Dan Howard, Ralph’s preoccupation with Patty persisted. In an October 1986 letter to Patty’s sister, Ralph said that the emptiness he felt without Patty “would be like for you if your children were taken away forever,” according to court papers.

Connection with son. Ralph continued to hang around Patty and her family until 1993 — when he made a bizarre request to have a baby with Patty.

She finally told him to get lost forever.

But Nick stayed in touch with Ralph, who lived in Orangevale. Starting when Nick was 16, Ralph would sometimes hire him to work on landscaping jobs, according to 2001 court papers.

Bad-news guy. Ralph acted like Nick’s godfather, according to Forensic Files. He whisked Nick away on adventures in Reno and Tahoe. They stayed in hotels and went to casinos. What teenage boy could resist those enticements?

Many YouTube commenters criticized Patty for allowing Ralph to have any contact with her or her family after experiencing his aggression in high school. But remember, that was in 1973, before anyone talked about date rape or acquaintance rape or forcible kissing. Back then, behavior like Ralph’s was often filed in the “he can be a jerk sometimes” bin.

Patty Howard's husband, Dan — Nick’s father, Dan Howard

If there was a loser bin, he definitely belonged in that one, too. Although Ralph liked flashy things, he could never hold a job for long. He told people he made a living as a gambler. He resided rent free with his mother and stepfather for years and did sporadic contracting work. But he needed money for a new home — the bank was set to take ownership of his mother’s house because of a reverse mortgage.

Litany of offenses. A background check on Ralph revealed bankruptcy, drug running, and insurance fraud. In one case in the 1970s, Ralph allegedly set his own house on fire and stayed in the burning structure until he almost died.

Court papers would note Ralph’s “past success, working with one or more confederates, in obtaining cash from insurance companies by means of contrived fires, faked auto theft, faked burglary, and property damage from faked auto accidents.”

He acted surprised to hear that Nick had named him as insurance beneficiary. Ralph said he knew nothing about any fraud scheme. But some of Ralph’s acquaintances who later came forward told police that Ralph knew about the beneficiary switch and offered varying reasons for the change. He told one associate that Nick didn’t trust his own parents and wanted Ralph to administer the money to his family in a prudent way.

Far-fetched scheme. After Nick’s death, Ralph said that he would turn over any insurance money to the Howard family, but he later backpedaled.

Meanwhile, an unidentified associate of Nick’s told police he heard Nick brag about a plan to fake his death for $1 million in insurance money, and Ralph Marcus would collect the payout so Ralph and Nick could use it for high living.

In addition to various statements from people who knew Ralph or Nick, the forensic evidence was growing.

Mouthing off. Tests on the Mazda showed that a Valvoline oil bottle cap was holding the throttle open. It was used so the vehicle could be operated without a driver, investigators believed. A Valvoline oil bottle found in Ralph Marcus’s garage bore the same lot number as the one in the sunken car.

A newspaper clipping of Nick Howard wearing a baseball cap and glasses — In all available photos of Nick Howard as a teenager, he’s wearing a hat

Experiments with a Styrofoam model of Nick’s head suggested that the accident wouldn’t cause the severe crushing of glasses. (The glasses shown on Forensic Files looked neatly crushed rather than mangled.)

It came out later that Ralph told friend Gayle Schlenker that Nick’s car was going around 85 miles an hour when it hit the water. How would he know?

Big-talking teen. Jake Stanton would later tell police that, at the crash site, Ralph found a stray glove that matched the one found on Nick’s body — and put it back in the water rather than turning it over to police. Ralph later claimed that the glove was tangled in fishing line and slipped from his hands.

Investigators theorized that Nick and Ralph transpired to commit insurance fraud, then run away together and live the glamorous life on the payout. Nick had told his sister and his buddy Jason Smalling that he was “worth more dead than alive” and that Ralph could take his insurance money and multiply it. Jaime and Jason both expressed skepticism, but it didn’t discourage Nick — and they probably thought he would never really do such a thing anyway.

Furthermore, Nick told his friend Susan Von Niessen about a plan to fake his own death, hide in Mexico, and then return to the U.S. to collect on his life insurance. But Susan told him that insurance companies don’t pay off until the policy holder has been missing for seven years. That information rattled Nick, according to court papers from November 2001.

Not so cocky now. On July 11, 1997, detectives from the Yolo County sheriff’s office arrested Ralph and charged him with murder with the special circumstance of committing the homicide for financial gain, which could bring the death penalty.

A view of the Sacremento River from the water — The Sacramento River is also a tourist attraction featuring wine-tasting cruises

Ralph pleaded not guilty. His court appearance was a far cry from the image of bravado to which he aspired: Ralph “sat silently, attached by each wrist to other inmates in a line of prisoners wearing identical blue jail pajamas,” the Sacramento Bee reported on July 25, 1997. “He fidgeted and cast brief, nervous glances toward the row of spectators — the family and friends of his alleged victim.”

Public defender James Eger represented Ralph early on, and later J. Toney took over as part of a contractual relationship with the county.

Tall tale. The trial kicked off on Oct. 5, 1999.

Investigators theorized that Ralph clung to Nick because the rest of the Howards didn’t want him hanging around.

Ralph plotted the insurance caper from the beginning, they conjectured. Nick was probably acting on Ralph’s suggestion when he took out the insurance policy.

Brutal assault. It came out that, possibly as part of an effort to stage the accident, Nick had called his buddy Samuel Tyler to say that he was driving home along River Road and was tired after staying awake about 32 hours — and that he had some trouble with the car’s distributor cap but had fixed it.

On the night of Feb. 5, he and Ralph met at a dock on the Sacramento River to create the accident scene, prosecutors believed, but Nick tried to back out of the plan, so Ralph killed him — or maybe Ralph had planned the murder from the beginning either out of greed or for revenge against Patty, the prosecution believed. He beat and strangled Nick until he passed out, threw him in the water, crunched the glasses, and put them in the car and accidentally spilled the Valvoline oil while taking the cap off. Then he used the bottle cap in the carburetor so he could send the unoccupied Mazda into the Sacramento River, prosecutors alleged.

Later, Ralph informed police that he “discovered” the tire tracks where the car ran off the road — he wanted the authorities to find the vehicle and the body so he could collect on the insurance.

At the trial, two of Ralph’s former associates who received immunity testified about scams Ralph had taken part in.

Pickup game. Harold Thompson said that in the 1970s, Ralph had shown up at his door with singed hair, saying that his house had burned down because of an electrical fire and that he had secretly removed expensive items from his house and claimed that the blaze destroyed them.

Jeff Cantrell testified that Ralph had helped him out by destroying Jeff’s ski boat so Jeff could collect on insurance. Ralph also defrauded his own insurance company by claiming someone stole his Toyota pickup truck, Jeff said.

Nick Howard's grave stone. — Patty Howard said her son loved her too much to disappear

Glen Harms, an inmate from Yolo County Jail, testified that Ralph told him that Nick was his adopted son and that Ralph himself had paid for the insurance policy.

Dubious claims. After his court appearance, Harms claimed that Ralph looked at him and mouthed, “You’re dead.”

Another witness testified that Ralph had lured Nick Howard into a credit card fraud scheme.

And Farmers Insurance representative Jim Dyer said he suspected that a 1996 claim from Ralph — that someone burglarized a shed outside his home — was phony. But Ralph went to the Insurance Commission to complain, so Farmers reluctantly paid Ralph $58,000 on his claim.

Defense’s turn. Ralph’s lawyer, J. Toney, was undeterred and hit the prosecution back hard.

The defense presented three forensic pathologists who denied the strangulation evidence and said Nick had simply drowned and that his facial injuries came from the crash. Tony argued that Nick was fatigued the night of his disappearance and could have easily drifted off behind the wheel.

And Ralph was an honest citizen who made his living as a gambler, the defense contended.

Brother speaks up. Next up, Ralph Marcus himself took the stand. He claimed to have witnessed Nick put a bottle cap in his vehicle’s carburetor on an occasion before the accident.

Ralph also said he was shocked to find out Nick had made him the beneficiary of his life insurance policy, but he kept it as a secret from the Howards as not to upset them. Oh, and he never mentioned the insurance to police because he didn’t think the change was valid.

His brother, Ron Marcus, would later testify that Ralph said that Nick named him beneficiary because he was mad at his parents.

Right where he belongs. Ralph denied past acts of fraud. He also said that he quit working to care for his mother.

The jury was unmoved. On Jan. 13, 2000, Ralph was convicted of first-degree murder and given life without the possibility of parole. He lost a 2011 appeal attempt.

Today, Ralph Albert Marcus, 67, is in Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California, where he’s better known as #P66056, and still has no chance of parole, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

“Marcus got his wish,” wrote YouTube commenter Lowhandlagum. “He doesn’t have to work anymore.”

That’s all for this week. If you enjoyed this post, please share on social media. Until next time, cheers – RR

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Shari Smith: Taken at 17

A Background Check on Egomaniacal Killer Larry Gene Bell
(‘Last Will,’ Forensic Files)

A kidnapper who taunts an abducted child’s parents is usually the stuff of fictional police dramas.

Sharon Faye ‘Shari’ Smith

Unfortunately, Larry Gene Bell did it in real life.

In 1985, he kidnapped Shari Smith and assailed her mother and father with a heartbreaking letter and disturbing phone calls.

“Last Will,” the Forensic Files episode about the case, does a good job of helping the audience get to know Shari and her parents, but leaves us with a lot of questions about Larry Gene Bell.

Local news outlets. Where did this rather goofy-looking killer come from? Were there any early warning signs or did he suddenly become unhinged? For this post, I looked into his background.

So let’s get going on the recap of “Last Will” along with extra information from internet resources, including coverage from South Carolina newspapers The State (Columbia), The Rock Hill Herald, and The Columbia Record.

In 1985, Sharon “Shari” Faye Smith was a 17-year-old senior preparing for her class trip, a cruise to the Bahamas. She would also be singing the national anthem at her upcoming graduation from Lexington High.

Odd delay. But Hilda and Bob Smith would never get a chance to drape a graduation robe over their daughter’s shoulders and secure a mortarboard atop her 1980s state-of-the-art hair, curly and shoulder length with bangs blown skyward.

On May 31, 1985, on her way home, Shari stopped at her family’s mailbox at 5700 Platt Springs Road in Lexington, South Carolina. From his home-office window, her father, Bob Smith, saw Shari’s car at the end of the driveway.

But she never made it the 700 feet to the house.

Menace on the line. Bob, a pastor at Lexington Baptist Church, found the blue Chevette with Shari’s black shoes and her purse on the seat. Hilda, a Sunday school teacher, recalled her husband saying, “Honey, I don’t know how to tell you this, but Shari’s car is at the end of the driveway running and she’s not in it.”

Lexington County Sheriff James R. Metts organized a huge search effort that included air and land resources and a 24-hour command center set up in a tractor trailer near the house.

Larry Gene Bell wearing a reddish beard and smiling — Larry Gene Bell

Two days after the disappearance of the blond blue-eyed teenager, an anonymous phone caller who asked for Hilda Smith told her that he had Shari in his possession. To verify his claim, he described the black and yellow bathing suit she had on under her clothes the day she disappeared.

Envelope seized. He said he would release Shari, and in the meantime the two of them were eating and watching TV.

The kidnapper said he sent the Smiths a letter that would arrive shortly. But investigators couldn’t wait. They made the postmaster open up the USPS office early and intercepted the envelope.

The missive was in Shari’s handwriting, dated June 1, 1985 and headed “Last Will & Testament.” In the letter, Shari tells her family not to let the abduction ruin their lives.

Parents’ pain. Even though the circumstances under which she wrote the note must have been terrifying, she managed a bit of light-heartedness: “I love you all so damn much,” she wrote. “Sorry, Dad, I had to cuss for once. Jesus forgave me.”

On a subsequent call to the house, the kidnapper tormented the family by saying that he and Shari were now “one soul.”

“Do not kill my daughter, please,” Hilda pleaded.

Strange motivation. Forensic Files didn’t mention it, but Shari had diabetes insipidus, a rare form of the disease that requires massive hydration and prescription drugs. Her medicine was found in her purse in her empty car, but the caller assured Hilda that Shari was drinking plenty of water, according to tapes available on Oxygen.com. He also suggested the family arrange to have an ambulance at the house for when Shari came home.

The caller didn’t ask for money.

“I’ve never had a case like this before where the offender doesn’t make it clear what he wants,” FBI profiler John Douglas recalled in a 2022 interview. “Does he want ransom? Is it sexually motivated? He doesn’t just want to commit this crime, but he also wants to toy with the victims’ families, give them false hope that their child is still alive.”

Slips through their fingers. Clearly, the abductor particularly enjoyed playing out his power trips on women; he always asked for Hilda when he called and would later involve Shari’s older sister, Dawn.

Police traced at least one of the calls to a phone outside Eckerd’s in the Lexington Town Square Shopping Center, but the mystery man was gone by the time they arrived.

Exterior of the large house where the Smiths lived — The Smiths’ four-bedroom 2.5-bath house in the Red Bank section of Lexington

In his next call, he directed Hilda to take 378 West to an out-of-the-way structure with a backyard.

Up to his devices. On June 5, 1985, investigators found Shari Smith’s body there. They believed she died about two hours after she wrote the letter on June 1 and that the killer waited to reveal the location so that decomposition would obscure forensic evidence.

Investigators found traces of duct tape on her face, suggesting the killer suffocated her. They concluded that Shari had died of either suffocation or dehydration, according to court papers available on Murderpedia. Accounts vary as to whether or not the autopsy proved she had been sexually assaulted, but he ultimately would be charged with rape.

Profiler John Douglas predicted the murderer would be a white male in his 30s with a failed marriage and sex crimes in his past. They believed he used a device to disguise his voice on the phone calls and knew something about electronics.

Next victim. Meanwhile, the menacing killer continued his verbal assault. He called collect on the night of Shari’s funeral to describe how he killed her.

A few weeks later, he called the Smiths to discuss Debra May Helmick —a 9-year-old with no connection to the Smiths — who had been abducted outside her family’s mobile home on Percival Road in Richland County. A neighbor had run outside when she heard Debra screaming for help, but the kidnapper and the little girl with the long blond hair were gone.

Shari Smith in a school photo — On the day Shari Smith died, she had met her mother to buy traveler’s checks

It’s not clear why the mystery man contacted the Smiths instead of the Helmicks about Debra. Perhaps he simply liked talking to Hilda — she had a soft, feminine way about her.

Panic and caution. As mentioned, Dawn Smith, Hilda and Bob’s older daughter, agreed to help investigators by also speaking to Larry on the phone about Debra. Larry gave directions to a grassy area where officers found the little girl’s dead body.

Meanwhile, a police artist worked up a sketch of a possible suspect, a bearded man seen in the area.

The community stayed on high alert for the killer on the loose. Innocent bearded men were facing scrutiny because of the police drawing. Other local men were taking pains to shield the women in their lives, according to The State.

Devious callers. Police fielded dozens of calls on a tip hotline. A number of citizens suspected a local meter reader, but those leads never went anywhere.

And yikes, the authorities ended up arresting four people for making false claims or trying to extort money from the Smiths.

Then, investigators got a huge break once a laboratory thoroughly examined the note that Shari wrote while in captivity. Indentations on the paper showed an intact phone number probably written on the sheet of tablet paper above the one Shari used.

Kibitzing killer. The phone number ultimately led the police to a South Carolina couple, Ellis and Sharon Sheppard. Some of the calls to the Smiths had come from their home phone. A roll of 22-cent USPS commemorative mallard duck stamps in the Sheppards’ drawer matched the one from the “last will” envelope. Some of what looked like Sherry’s blond hairs were found in the Sheppards’ bathroom.

Fortunately, the Sheppards had proof they were out of town during the entire episode. After listening to recordings of the killer’s calls to the Smiths, Ellis identified the voice as belonging to Larry Gene Bell. Larry worked as an electrician on construction sites and had done some wiring work for Ellis. Larry had also been housesitting for them.

The Sheppards recalled that when Larry picked them up at the airport, he talked a lot about Shari Smith’s abduction.

Breakthrough in case. Finally, the police had a solid suspect.

“We were all extremely elated,” recalled Assistant Deputy Lewis McCarty during his appearance on “Cat and Mouse,” an episode of FBI Files. “We could not show any emotion. But we knew we had our man.”

The goodbye letter Shari wrote to her family — Shari Smith’s letter included messages to her boyfriend, Richard, and her grandmother.

On June 27, 1985, police stopped Larry Gene Bell on his way to work. True to the predictions, they soon discovered that he had a history of making obscene phone calls and much worse.

Dual identities? At the police station, officers set up a “confession” room with items that belonged to Shari Smith and Debra Helmick as well as evidence of his guilt such as photos of his fingerprints. They also pretended to sympathize with him to gain his trust. (It worked for the Chris Watts case — not a Forensic Files episode but among my true-crime favorites). They even brought in Hilda and Dawn Smith. Larry cried, but he didn’t confess.

Interrogators had tried to persuade Larry that he had dissociative identity disorder in the hopes that he’d spill his story. The suspect said that “the bad Larry Gene Bell” committed the crime, but he didn’t reveal anything else.

Criminals like Larry “make it seem dreamlike. They did a crime, but they don’t remember doing it,” John Douglas said during an interview with A&E. “It’s like two sides to their personality. They have a good side and the bad side.”

Born in the Deep South. So who was this sadistic killer?

Larry Gene Bell came into the world on Oct. 30, 1949, in Ralph, Alabama.

He played baseball at Eau Claire High School. But apparently participating in a team sport didn’t act as a conduit to popularity, or at least to a group of friends, as it usually does.

Bad breakup. Larry’s parents later referred to him as a loner.

Although it didn’t cite a source, the Daily News would later report that young Larry sometimes fell into “psychotic trances” and, as a teenager, sexually abused some of his female relatives.

Shari's car left in front of the Smiths' mailbox — Shari Smith stopped at the mailbox most days

As an adult, he worked for Eastern Airlines in Charlotte for a time. True to the profiler’s theory, Larry had married and gone through a bitter divorce. He lost custody of a son.

Criminal history. It’s not clear whether it started before or after his failed marriage but, by the time he reached the age of 26, Larry had begun a history of “assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature,” according to The State.

In one instance, he used a knife during a failed attempt to abduct 19-year-old Dale Sauls Howell behind a Super Duper after telling her, “Let’s go to Charlotte and party.” Another time, he flashed a start gun in an attempt to grab a female University of South Carolina student. He committed a third, similar crime, but served time for only one of the attacks. He spent three years in the Central Correctional Institute, and Judge Owens T. Cobb urged him to get psychiatric help.

He didn’t follow through on all the counseling recommended over the years, but he did spend some time at a VA hospital, where a psychiatrist concluded he had schizoid personality disorder, a condition marked by limited social interaction and minimal emotional engagement.

Vengeful public. At the time of his arrest in 1985, he was living with his parents— whom a local newspaper described as a respected couple — in their house on a cul-de-sac on Old Orchard Road in Lake Murray. Larry’s brother was a lawyer.

Unless you count Bells’ admission that Larry kept to himself in his youth, no one offered any hints to explain the genesis of his depravity. Neighbors described Larry as kind and helpful, according to The State.

Those who knew Shari Smith, however, didn’t feel too charitable toward Larry. One suggested tying him to a stake in a field and letting “people to do him what he did to those girls.”

Stalked and attacked. Larry went on trial in 1986. He showed up in court wearing a forest green prison uniform with his auburn hair cut close to his head.

Larry Gene Bell in police custody — Larry Gene Bell in custody

“Larry was just — well, our Larry,” his mother testified. “We accepted him the way any family would accept a child. They say all children are different.”

Prosecutors made a case that Larry had spotted Shari outside a drugstore, then followed her home in his Buick and grabbed her when she stopped at the mailbox. He took her to the Sheppards’ house, where she wrote the note. Then he tied her to the bed, raped her, and suffocated her with tape.

Larry acknowledged that the voice on the taped phone calls with the Smiths belonged to him.

“At different points while the tapes were played,” the Columbia Record reported, “Bell shook with laughter, cried silently, watched the courtroom clock, and cracked his knuckles.”

Nutty prisoner. As if Larry hadn’t already freaked out the courtroom with his previous antics, while he was testifying, he did such things as turning to the jurors, cackling, and referring to his defense lawyer as his “professional teddy bear” who “takes care of me.”

During Larry’s evenings at the Berkeley County Jail, he paced, talked to himself, and sang “Amazing Grace” to the tune of “Silent Night,” according to The State.

So was Larry a lunatic who couldn’t control his own actions? A psychiatrist testified that she believed Larry’s antics were all an act — he wasn’t crazy at all, just a sadistic sociopath looking to escape severe punishment.

Show’s over. The fact that he never asked his victims’ families for ransom suggested that what he really craved was the thrill of frightening them, giving them false hope, crushing them, and then further tormenting them.

In 1975, Larry Gene Bell tried to abduct Dale Sauls Howell, seen here in a Rock Hill Herald clipping

After deliberating for 47 minutes, the jury found Larry guilty of kidnapping and first-degree murder. He was sentenced to die. (In a separate trial, he would receive the same sentence for killing Debra May Helmick.)

With the trial ended, “it was a little like the circus leaving town,” according to The State. The crowds of spectators disappeared, leaving Route 17 no longer jammed, and the “supply of short bottle Classic Cokes at the county courthouse didn’t run out for a change,” wrote reporter Margaret N. O’Shea.

And more disturbing behavior. Larry made numerous post-conviction salvos, including an appeal to the South Carolina Supreme Court in 1987, a post-conviction relief request in 1991, and an appeal to a U.S. district court in 1995.

His lawyers claimed he was schizophrenic, thought he was Jesus Christ, and was too mentally ill to face capital punishment. His behavior in prison included defiling himself with feces and drinking his own urine, according to UPI.

Still, all of Larry’s legal efforts failed.

Dustup with protestors. He turned down the option of dying via lethal injection and asked for electrocution instead. John Douglas said that he suspected Larry was playing tough guy by choosing the drama of the electric chair.

“Now, maybe I can get a rest,” said Donnie Helmick, Debra Helmick’s father. “Kill the son of a bitch.”

Donnie tangled with some of the anti-capital punishment demonstrators gathered outside the prison on Oct. 4, 1996 – the day when Larry Gene Bell became the second-to-last person killed in South Carolina’s electric chair.

Early victim’s memories. “We are relieved that the sentence has been carried out,” said Rick Cartrette, Shari’s uncle, as reported by UPI, “but just because it has been carried out, don’t forget Shari or Debra.”

A recent picture of Shari's sister, Dawn Smith Jordan — Shari’s older sister, seen here in an image from her website, is known as Dawn Smith Jordan today. Dawn became Miss South Carolina of 1986 and is now an inspirational speaker

Also present that day was Dale Sauls Howell, one of the women Larry attempted to abduct in the 1970s. She would later tell The Rock Hill Herald that he held a knife to her stomach before her screams elicited help. After the attack, she started sleeping with a baseball bat next to her in bed. Now, she was able to watch the hearse carry away Larry Gene Bell’s body.

He would never again torment his victims or their loved ones.

Tomes on the case. Forensic photographer Rita Y. Shuler, who worked on the murder case, interviewed Dale and other victims for Murder in the Midlands: Larry Gene Bell and the 28 Days of Terror that Shook South Carolina (The History Press, 2007).

Shari’s mother also wrote a book, The Rose of Shari by Hilda Cartrette Smith, which was published in 2001 and got good Amazon reviews, but is hard to find for sale online. (Hilda, who Forensic Files viewers will remember for maintaining a calm demeanor under duress, died in 2003 at the age of 61.)

The murder also inspired the CBS movie Nightmare in Columbia County, which tells the story from Dawn’s perspective. The 1991 effort got 5.6 out of 10 stars on imdb.com — but has miraculously landed on Netflix under the name Victim of Beauty, so you can check it out and form your own opinion if you like.

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

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Susie Mowbray: Stalled Heart

Did a Car Dealer’s Wife Get Away with Murder?
(‘Where the Blood Drops,’ Forensic Files)

Susie Mowbray

It’s usually a happy ending when a Forensic Files episode closes with someone exiting prison because of a wrongful conviction.

But “Where the Blood Drops,” the story of car dealer Bill Mowbray’s death, left a lot of observers in a less-than-celebratory mood.

As viewers will remember, Bill conveniently “committed suicide” the day before he was going to remove his wife, Susie, as his insurance beneficiary.

Second go-around. Then, less than a day after witnessing her husband shot through the head in their bedroom, Susie had a painting party there.

A jury found her guilty of murder, and she served nine years in prison.

Then she got a new trial —and won.

Too pert for prison? Susie Mowbray might have convinced a jury of reasonable doubt, but she sure didn’t seem innocent or genuine— even though she looked and sounded like a wholesome mom from an old-time sitcom.

For this week, I delved into whether there were good reasons — other than the fact that the public doesn’t like to see cute women incarcerated for too long — for allowing Susie and her toothy smile to walk free.

So let’s get going on the recap of “Where the Blood Drops,” along with extra information from internet research.

Trailblazer. Jay William “Bill” Mowbray Jr. was born on April 2, 1944 in Washington, D.C. His grandfather and father both worked in the automobile business.

By age 25, Bill was the youngest Cadillac dealer in the world, according to the Brownsville Herald.

In 1974, he debuted a new, five-acre dealership. It nabbed much publicity on the local front.

Spiffy new digs. The Brownsville Herald ran a whole page — which appeared to be a mix of ads, advertorial, and some reporting — about the grand opening of Bill Mowbray Motors.

The paper noted the dealership’s “very fine selection of pre-owned autos” and that its “dust proof booths and drying chambers are your assurance of a perfect auto finish.”

He had 45 employees at the time.

“If you drove a Cadillac, you for sure got your Cadillac at Bill Mowbray Motors,” recalled former news anchor Carey Zayas during her appearance on Accident, Suicide, or Murder, which produced an episode called “Death of a Salesman” about the case.

Cadillac dealership — Bill Mowbray’s trusted assistant, Luke Fruia, ended up taking over the business

Miss Popular. At some point, Bill crossed paths with Freda Sue “Susie” Burnett.

Susie came into the world circa 1948 and grew up in Louisiana. An Associated Press story referred to her as a “debutante who was a cheerleader and homecoming queen in Shreveport.”

By the time she met Bill Mowbray, she had been married and divorced and had two children, Cricket and Wade Burnett. Bill was also divorced, with a daughter named Kristin.

Tripping out. After Susie and Bill married, they had some great years as the money rolled in at Mowbray Motors.

Bill starred in local TV commercials for the sprawling business at 2645 Barnard Road. The perky Susie did as well. The two were local celebrities.

They enjoyed overseas travel and bought two beach condos, plus their huge “monstrosity of a house” in Los Fresnos, Texas. He liked to go hunting in Mexico.

In the red. Unfortunately, Bill also enjoyed chasing down extramarital sex. Susie found out he was cheating on her and moved to Austin with her children for a short time, according to Accident, Suicide, or Murder.

But she returned to Bill.

There were other problems in store for the couple. Bill had begun spending more than he earned.

In what sounds like a plotline from Fargo, he took out two loans on the same inventory from the dealership, according to Carey Zayas’ interview on Accident, Suicide, or Murder.

Premium problem. By 1997, the dealership was operating at a loss of $100,000, according to business manager Sergio Hernandez. Bill himself was reportedly $350,000 in debt and sometimes withdrew money from the dealership for personal expenses. (To his credit, though, the business always made payroll.)

Amid this whole mess, Susie discovered that Bill planned to cancel insurance policies that named her as the beneficiary and instead make his daughter the main recipient of new policies worth $1.8 million.

Bill’s insurance agent would later say that Bill was in the process of changing the policies to have the Small Business Administration and the dealership as the beneficiaries, according to a June 1, 1988 story in the McAllen, Texas newspaper the Monitor. It’s not clear whether these were additional policies or the reports that Bill’s daughter was named beneficiary were mistaken — but either way, Susie was on the brink of losing out big.

Bill and Susie Mowbray call — Bill and Susie Mowbray in happier times

Tonight Show prelude. Still, things were normal enough that on Sept. 15, 1987, Susie, 39, and Bill, 43, called her son, Wade Burnett, to wish him a happy 16th birthday — and Wade and Bill chatted pleasantly at length, according to an AP account.

The next night, Susie and Bill watched the Johnny Carson show and Bill hit the hay, Susie would later explain, but he woke up briefly during David Letterman. She fell asleep and awoke around 2:15 a.m. — to see her husband aiming a Ruger .357-caliber magnum at his head and then shooting himself, she said. He fired the gun with his right arm while he was still lying on his side, according to Susie.

Susie called Bill’s assistant at work, Luke Fruia, to tell him Bill had shot himself. Luke told her to dial 911.

Still respiring. Homicide detective George Gavito arrived to find Susie, dressed in a white nightgown, with a cocktail (she later said it was water) and a cigarette in hand. She wasn’t crying.

The EMTs found Bill tucked in bed, with a bullet wound that originated on his right side, went through his head, and pierced his left hand, which apparently was resting underneath a pillow and his head. There was a lot of blood. Some of it even sprayed the ceiling fan.

Sarah Bush during her appearance on Accident, Suicide, or Murder — Sarah Bush took part in the painting party

Forensic Files didn’t mention it, but Bill was still alive when first responders arrived. Susie said that she knelt by his side after the gun fired and saw his head bleeding — so why didn’t she notice he was still breathing and call the paramedics immediately instead of Luke?

Don’t bank on it. She tried to play it as though she was simply resigned to Bill’s dying at his own hand. During her Forensic Files interview in 2001, Susie claimed that Bill threatened suicide all the time, almost on a weekly basis.

He did have a lot of reasons to feel discouraged. In addition to all his other financial woes, the IRS was investigating him for tax fraud.

During his Forensic Files appearance, Susie’s lawyer Jim Shaw said that Bill had recently rested his head on a bank officer’s desk, cried, and threatened to kill himself if he didn’t get a $200,000 loan.

It’s her party. Still, the timing of the alleged suicide was extremely suspect. Why would Bill kill himself before he finalized his change in insurance beneficiaries? His death conveniently took place right before it went through.

And then there was that painting party just 10 hours after Bill died. The widow and her buddies had removed everything from the room including the carpeting. Bill’s daughter and brother Jim were the first to discover the fiesta when they stopped by the house — they heard music playing upstairs. (I’m guessing it wasn’t a Gregorian chant.)

Sarah Bush, a friend of Susie’s who appeared on Accident, Suicide, or Murder, said that Susie merely wanted to remove the bloodstains before her kids came home and saw them.

Liquidating lass. Meanwhile, investigators didn’t see any splatter or brain matter on Bill’s right hand, and wondered how he managed to tuck himself in after shooting himself.

A lab found blood blowback on Susie Mowbray’s nightgown. An autopsy performed by Lawrence Dahm, M.D., determined Bill’s death was not a suicide.

There were theories that Susie shot Bill through a pillow or that she straddled him and fired.

Loyal son. On Jan. 4, 1988, the Shreveport Journal ran a story about Susie headlined “Ex-Shreveporter in real-life soap opera.” It noted that Bill’s first wife and his daughter disputed his will and contended that Susie was quickly “selling off [Bill’s] things left and right”

Susie was charged with murder and her trial kicked off in 1988. Wade Burnett, then 16, canceled his plans for summer camp so he could attend.

The proceedings sounded like quite the spectacle. The Mowbrays’ king-sized bed with its mirrored headboard was brought into the courtroom. It still had Bill’s blood on it, plus a mannequin lying down on the mattress. And there was a second, bald mannequin — dressed in Susie’s white night gown — propped up on the floor.

Wade Burnett, Susie Mowbray, and Cricket Burnett — Susie Mowbray flanked by her children, Wade and Cricket Burnett

Witness not called. In June 1988, the jury found Susie guilty after deliberating for just two hours. The decision was unanimous on the first vote, a juror would later tell ABC News.

Susie got life in prison.

But her supporters said they had evidence to prove her innocence. For one, Wade found a blood splatter expert who determined that Susie’s white nightgown had no incriminating evidence, but he hadn’t been given a chance to testify.

Ex-spouse on her side. Interestingly, Susie’s side disputed the luminol tests on the nightgown, noting that some types of nonbodily matter — like horseradish — make luminol glow and that the nightgown hadn’t been tested for blood specifically.

In December 1996, Susie’s conviction was overturned thanks in part to her son, by then a law school student at Louisiana State University, and his lawyer father (that’s right, Susie’s ex-husband still cared). They uncovered evidence that the prosecution had suppressed the report from forensic expert Dr. Herbert MacDonell that denied the presence of blood on her nightgown.

The state of Texas released Susie from prison in May 1997 pending the outcome of the new trial.

When Bill Mowbray Motors debuted in 1974, a new Cadillac Sedan Deville cost $7,599

Enough with the nightgown. “Prosecutors made a career for themselves by taking my mom’s life away,” Wade told ABC News in 1998. “And defense attorneys weren’t any better. I know for certain, without any doubt, she was not in a position to have fired that shot.”

The second trial, in January 1998, was colossal news in Brownsville.

Court TV broadcast it.

“She belongs in jail and she belongs there for the rest of her life,” Kristin Mowbray told the media. Jim Mowbray, Bill’s brother, said that defenders were putting too much emphasis on the nightgown — regardless of MacDonnell’s finding.

Colleague buys story. But the defense found cracks to sow seeds of doubt. The prosecution lost some of the bedding evidence. And the scene allegedly wasn’t preserved well because authorities at first believed the suicide story.

Luke Fruia was close to both Susie and Bill Mowbray

A psychiatrist testified that Bill actually shot himself in the chest in a failed suicide attempt a year before his death. And Bill allegedly told friends he would kill himself rather than spend a day in jail.

Luke Fruia later said Bill was a “very lonely person” and the fact that Luke was planning to leave the dealership made Bill feel lost.

He sided with Susie, and said he believed the suicide story.

Unconvinced either way. Toward the end of the trial, Susie, 49, interrupted the proceedings by crying out, “I didn’t do it” and weeping theatrically.

It worked.

On January 24, 1998, the jury found her not guilty. Upon hearing the verdict, Susie rushed to hug her son and daughter.

Jury foreman Edward Saldivar later said that the not-guilty verdict meant the prosecution was unable to prove its case — not necessarily that the jury thought the accused was innocent.

YouTube gallery. “She got away with murder, literally, and we know the truth and a lot of people know the truth,” said Kristin Mowbray, 27, the AP reported.

Judging by the comments on YouTube, Forensic Files viewers tend to agree: “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!” wrote Frankie Wilhite. “She got away with murder but not the money.” His comment got 111 thumbs-ups. “I think she’s a cold blooded murderess with a dang good attorney,” wrote Panda Bear.

The show ended by noting that Susie didn’t receive any of Bill’s insurance money.

Son rising. But, it turns out, at least for a while, she continued to pursue the money. In April 2002, a Texas Court of Appeals denied Susie’s attempt to access funds in an appeal to a previous decision won by Bill’s daughter, Kristin Mowbray Avery, and his ex-wife, Virginia Hale.

Susie’s son, Wade Burnett, went on to a career in litigation. His work “has been featured in the New York Times, 20/20, Dateline NBC, Good Morning America, The Today Show, People Magazine and many other national media outlets,” according to the profile on his professional website, which has since disappeared.

Next up, Wade became a pastor. Today, he works as a consultant to other pastors for the Church Leadership Group.

More believers. His mother is around 74 today — and has kept a much lower profile. She mentioned plans to write a book back in 2001, but Amazon doesn’t list anything by Susie Mowbray.

Susie didn’t appear in the Accident, Suicide, or Murder episode that the Oxygen Network produced in 2021, but a couple of her supporters did, including Mary Lou Ryan Ray, who had served as Bill’s personal attorney. Mary Lou said that she had always thought Susie was innocent and that it was a tragedy she spent time in prison.

Susie Mowbray sitting atop the hood of a car during her appearance on a Cadillac commercial — When she was a queen: Susie as a pitchwoman in the 1980s

Was it? Maybe Susie thought she could get away with murder in the first place because so many of her friends and Bill’s associates liked her and knew that he had suicidal tendencies.

“The worst thing that could ever happen to anyone happened to me,” Susie said during her interview on Forensic Files.

I’d say that Bill Mowbray, his daughter, and his brother got a much rawer deal.

You can watch the Accident, Suicide, or Murder episode on the Oxygen website if you subscribe to cable.

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

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Gary Ackley: Homicidal Meltdown

A Metal Worker’s Foray into Murder Is Not So Bright
(‘Elemental Clue,’ Forensic Files)

During an appearance on Forensic Files, a Washington state prosecutor noted that Gary Ackley was “not a very intelligent fellow.”

I’ll say.

He killed two women and left both of their murder scenes littered with incriminating evidence.

A young Gary Ackley in a closeup — Gary Ackley

Not only was he careless but also oddly inconsistent. On one hand, he lived out a common fantasy by silencing his mother-in-law forever. On the other, he did something that no one aspires to — killing his own best friend.

Fancy stuff. Gary, who was also memorable for sporting a mullet with a salon-fresh look, maintained his innocence and went to trial despite forensics that pointed directly to him. For this post, I got some details on his double murder trial.

So let’s get going on the recap of “Elemental Clue,” along with extra information from internet research:

The story opens with footage of a uniformed server delivering stemmed glassware to passengers on the Spirit of Washington Dinner Train, which looks like a nice ride.

Sew troubling. When the train made an unexpected stop in Woodinville on June 21, 1997, passengers gazing out a window spotted what looked like a body partly covered by some brush and sticks in a creek.

Police found a dead woman wearing a blue nightgown and bedroom slippers. An empty pack of Basic cigarettes lay near her.

Arlene Jensen

Authorities identified the victim as Arlene Jensen, a 53-year-old commercial seamstress missing since May 26, 1997. Her employer had called her son, David, when she didn’t show up for work. The next day, David notified police.

Shiny, shiny. When investigators visited Arlene’s condominium in the Kingsgate building in Bellevue, they saw cigarette ashes littering a table and two Basic brand cigarettes thrown in the toilet — unflushed, so it was pretty clear a woman didn’t do this. Plus, Arlene smoked Marlboros.

Arlene’s blue and white floral bed sheets had bloodstains on them.

The bedding also held tiny metal fragments, similar to ones found with her body in the creek.

No one had stolen anything from the condo.

Out of another era. Suspicion soon fell upon Arlene’s son-in-law, Gary Ackley, 28. He and her daughter Julie, also 28, had two children and had been together for more than a decade. They were common-law husband and wife.

Arlene’s mother, Alice Vermillion, who appeared on Forensic Files, noted that Arlene and Gary didn’t particularly get along. Alice, a proper-looking woman notable for dressing like a 19th-century First Lady, said that in fact, no one in the family liked Gary.

Apparently, Arlene didn’t approve of the way Gary treated her grandchildren and let him know it. (Not to blame the murder victim, but criticizing the way people bring up their kids is not a pathway to a cordial relationship.)

Iron man. According to an AP account, Arlene made some child care arrangements without Gary’s consent and he complained to a co-worker that his “old lady’s mom” was “sticking her nose into my business.” He reportedly called Arlene a bitch and possibly even the C-word.

The Spirit of Washington running through a forested area — The Spirit of Washington featured formal dining service with such meals as “prime rib with mixed vegetables, mashed potatoes and a dish of apple-horseradish sauce,” recalls train enthusiast Glen Brewer

“Arlene had previously threatened to report Ackley to Child Protective Services,” according to court papers, “and in response, Ackley had threatened to kill her.”

Gary smoked Basic cigarettes, and he worked as a machinist at Pacific Tool Inc., where he used lathes and sanders on metals.

Another victim. Scientists identified the metal shavings and fragments from the murder scene as coming from the same source as metal particles found at Gary’s home. In other words, he must have carried those things with him wherever he went. Plus, beige fibers found near Arlene’s body matched the fabric in the backseat of one of Gary’s cars.

Soon, a second homicide in the Seattle area would make headlines.

On Aug. 10, 1997, campers discovered a woman’s body in a shallow grave along Miller River Road near Skykomish. Police identified her as Stephanie Dittrick, 29 years old and missing since July 5, 1997. She worked as an administrative assistant or a circuit board tester (media reports vary).

Stephanie Dittrick

Childhood pals. Small fragments made of steel and brass lay on Stephanie’s body.

Friends remembered seeing Stephanie talking to Gary at a Fourth of July party at her residence in Redmond. One guest recalled that Gary mentioned he played drums in a rock band (hence the extra-long statement mullet).

Stephanie had known Gary since childhood, when both of their families lived in Union Hill, and they were best buddies. Her brother, Todd, was also close to Gary.

Utter disbelief. Neighbors had seen Gary and Stephanie leaving her mother’s house together on July 5.

On August 15, 1997, Gary Ackley was arrested and taken to King County Jail for investigation of two counts of homicide.

“This is not the little boy I remember,” Stephanie’s mother, Diana Russell, told the Associated Press. “My heart is broken.”

Incriminating himself. At the September 1998 trial (an earlier one had quickly ended in a mistrial), prosecutors made a case that Gary worried that Arlene’s interference would end up getting his kids taken away from him.

Photo of an industrial sewing facility — Employees at the sewing factory where Arlene Jensen worked were the first to note her disappearance

He crept into Arlene’s apartment while she was sleeping and killed her —medical examiners never determined the cause of death, noting only “homicidal violence” — and then he put her body in a car and hastily buried it in the wooded area, prosecutors contended.

They believed Gary blurted out his secret that he’d murdered Arlene to Stephanie, then panicked and killed Stephanie to silence her. (Stephanie’s manner of death, like Arlene’s, was attributed to nonspecific homicidal violence.) A shopping bag near Stephanie’s murder scene bore Gary’s fingerprint.

Bad trip. Stephanie’s friend John Johnson testified that Stephanie told him she knew of a secret that might come back to hurt her.

Earlier, Judge Norma Huggins had forbidden him from bringing up something in court that he told prosecutors pretrial: Stephanie asked John, “Do you think Gary Ackley would hurt me?” according to Seattle Times reporting. The judge had also stopped Stephanie’s friend Dan Monise from testifying that Stephanie told him that Gary confessed to Arlene Jensen’s murder; it was hearsay.

But the prosecution won the right to take jury members to visit the locations where the murder victims were found. Gary, who sported short bangs and no more party in the back at the trial, was not happy about that decision.

Alice Vermillion shown in her home with an old-fashioned lamp — Alice Vermillion’s obituary noted that she liked to create blankets and lampshades and write poems

Budding florist? Defense lawyer Jeff Ellis argued that it would prejudice jury members to see Gary wearing shackles and handcuffs while accompanying them to the two sites. Captain Manning of Kings County Jail suggested a concession — putting the hand restraints to the front of Gary’s body and covering them with a jacket or towel. Gary ultimately decided to sit out the field trip.

Meanwhile, Deputy Prosecutor James Konat had circumstantial evidence tying Gary to the murder. For one, the day Arlene went missing, Gary had called in sick to work, saying he’d been vomiting all night. But one witness reported seeing Gary driving his Trans Am and another spotted him in his red Toyota around the time he was supposed to be convulsed in nausea at home.

Despite the particles of metal sprinkled all over both murder scenes, defense lawyer Jeff Ellis argued that no direct evidence linked Gary to the homicides. He maintained that his client was at home playing with his dogs and watering flowers when Arlene disappeared. Ellis rebutted the prosecution’s contention that because Gary had no one to corroborate his alibis, they must be false. Spending time by oneself didn’t add up to guilt, he noted.

Gary claimed he was at the Evergreen Speedway when Stephanie vanished, but it’s not clear whether anyone saw him there.

Gary Ackley shortly before his arrest

Tears and drama. After deliberating for two days, the jury convicted Gary of first degree murder in Arlene Jensen’s death and aggravated murder in Stephanie Dittrick’s. The “aggravated” condition applied because he murdered Stephanie to cover up Arlene’s homicide.

“His face red, [Gary] shook his head and held a tissue to his eyes as King County Superior Court Judge Norma Huggins read the verdict,” the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported. “Others in the courtroom on both sides of the case wept as well.”

Before the sentencing hearing took place, there was a wedding.

Open bar celebration. On Oct. 23, 1998, Julie Jensen married Gary Ackley in jail. By this time, they’d had a third child, conceived after Arlene’s death.

“I love him. I care for him. I believe in him,” Julie said at the sentencing hearing.

But most of those who spoke out at the hearing didn’t feel too kindly toward Gary. Julie’s brother, David, said that Gary had manipulated his sister. James Konat noted that Julie once landed in the hospital after a beating from Gary, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported.

Buh, bye. Stephanie’s friend Lee Pereira had no fond words for Gary either. “You’ve got control over nothing,” Lee said to him at the hearing. “Someday, you’ll get out — in a box.”

Gary received life without the possibility of parole plus 26½ years.

A package of Basic cigarettes — Ackley clearly didn’t understand the ‘Basics’ of evidence collection

He lost an appeal in 2001.

Today, Gary Ackley is better known as prisoner #946217 at the Monroe Correctional Complex in Monroe City just north of Seattle. The Washington Department of Corrections website doesn’t supply an updated picture so there’s no way of knowing whether or not Gary’s hairdo lives on.

The inmate’s disapproving grandmother-in-law, Alice Vermillion, died at the age of 90 in 2006. “I know that you are with Aunt Arelene & you both are watching over all of us,” wrote one of her grandchildren on her obituary page.

In another development relating to a figure in the case, James Konat resigned from his $147,500-a-year prosecutor job in 2012 amid accusations of racism. At a trial in 2007, he had stated that “black folk don’t testify against black folk.” Yikes.

And speaking of career derailments, the Spirit of Washington Dinner Train went out of business in 2007 because of highway construction and a decline in ridership. But it goes down in history as not only a wholesome tourist attraction but also a factor in finding a missing woman and helping to put a double murderer behind razor wire forever.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

Miriam Helmick: Waltzing into Homicide

A Dance Teacher Cons a Real Estate Developer
(‘Gone Ballistic,’ Forensic Files)

Before launching into this week’s post, I’d like to share some exciting news.

A book version of ForensicFilesNow.com is here. Each chapter consists of an existing blog post along with something extra, a new interview with someone involved in the case or an “update to the update.” Paul Dowling wrote the foreword. Prometheus Books has published it under the name Forensic Files Now: Inside 40 Unforgettable True Crime Cases on Oct. 15, 2022, and it’s available from Barnes & Noble as well as indepedent bookstores, and on Amazon.

Miriam and Alan Helmick dressed up, her holding flowers — Miriam and Alan Helmick

Boilerplate. Now that the book’s MOAM (mother of all manuscripts) is finished, I’m looking forward to spending more time on new recaps for the blog.

“Gone Ballistic” seems like a good place to resume because it offers story elements that are so very Forensic Files: (1.) A spouse makes a clumsy, failed attempt before (2.) successfully killing the other spouse, but (3.) leaves incriminating evidence, and (4.) never imagines that the suspicious death of an earlier husband or wife will draw police scrutiny.

Such was the template that Miriam Helmick (and Barbara Stager and others before her) used.

Student athlete. For this week, I looked for more information about Miriam’s first marriage as well as murder victim Alan Helmick. So let’s start the recap of “Gone Ballistic” along with information from online research.

Alan Clarke Helmick came into the world August 27, 1945. He pitched for the school baseball team at Delta High in Colorado and dated fellow student Sharon Leonard. They married young and had four children, Wendy, Portia, Kristy, and Alan Jr.

After working as a bank manager, Alan Sr. became a land developer and founded Helmick Mortgage. He had ownership interests in several businesses, one of which helped to build Mesa County’s Crista Lee housing subdivision.

Sudden tragedy. In 2003, after 36 years of marriage, Sharon had a fatal heart attack, leaving Alan devastated emotionally.

“I think that he died that day — a big part of him,” Alan Jr. would later tell NBC. “You know, he lost my mother who he’d been with since he was 14, his love, his life. I’m sure that everything that he thought was real was ripped out from under him.”

A stretch of highway outside of Whitewater, Colorado — The highway leading to Whitewater, where Alan and Miriam Helmick lived — and Alan died.

Two years later, he would cross paths with Miriam Giles.

Comfortable life. So who was this cheery-faced femme fatale? Very little of her early life history surfaced in media sources except that she was born Miriam Francis Morgan on Jan. 26, 1957.

In 1976, Miriam met Jack Giles, the man who would become her first husband, while he was working at a grocery store in Brunswick, Georgia, and going to school. They married a year later and eventually moved to Jacksonville, Florida.

Jack worked as a chemical engineer. He and Miriam “weren’t rich, but pretty well off … nice house with a boat, a couple cars,” Jack’s brother Tim Giles would later tell the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.

Gone girl. Miriam and Jack had a daughter, Amy, and then a son.

In 2001, a horrible tragedy happened when Amy, 23, died under hazy circumstances, possibly from an overdose.

“To this day, I still don’t know what she died from,” Tim Giles said, as reported by the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel on December 12, 2009. “Amy was Jack’s angel, the beauty queen, workaholic. She never took drugs.”

(It’s not clear whether or not Miriam had anything to gain via Amy’s death, but Alan’s daughter Wendy told Forensic Files that Miriam changed her story a number of times about how Amy died.)

Here we go again. The following year, another untimely death shook up the Giles family.

Jack, 46, shot himself in the head while lying in bed next to Miriam in the couple’s home in North Jacksonville on April 15, 2002.

A police officer who just happened to be Miriam’s half-brother arrived at the house and declared Jack’s death a suicide, despite that the scene suggested that the profoundly left-handed Jack had shot himself with his right hand.

A display of greeting cards including the same one that Miriam used — Smoking guns aren’t always made of metal: The card Miriam bought is seen at left middle

‘Bar’ scene. Miriam was the beneficiary of Jack’s $100,000 life insurance policy, but she must have blown through that jackpot quickly.

In 2004, the grieving widow spent three days in a Florida jail thanks to a counterfeit check-cashing scheme, according to a Florida Times-Union account.

It’s not clear exactly when, but Miriam started a career as a dance teacher in Gulfport, Mississippi, after impressing Barb Watts, owner of the Amour Danzar studio.

“I thought she was dynamite,” Watts would later tell the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. “She was the greatest thing that ever came by. We put her to work.” At some point, however, Watts came to suspect Miriam of stealing money from the business.

Happiness and grief. Nonetheless, at Miriam’s request, Watts sent her to Colorado to train the staff at her Grand Junction dance studio circa 2005.

Alan Helmick met Miriam after he signed up for ballroom lessons as a way to keep his mind off the sorrow of Sharon’s death.

Miriam enchanted Alan with her dancing, and they commiserated about the pain of losing loved ones.

Lively pair. They started dating despite that Miriam and Alan had signed agreements forbidding students and teachers from socializing outside of the studio, according to a Cox News Service story. (To be fair, it’s only natural for people to fall in love on the dance floor.)

Miriam and Jack “made everything they did fun,” recalled fellow dance student Penny Lyons in an interview with NBC.

The couple married in 2006. They lived in what a local newspaper called a high-end home, in a sprawling subdivision at 34999 Siminoe Road in Whitewater, Colorado.

High-risk investment. Alan enjoyed indulging his new bride. He bought her a dance studio and a horse-breeding farm.

In an interview on NBC, Alan’s accountant, Bob Cucchetti, said that he winced when Alan told him of his plans to go into those two types of businesses, which tend to lose money.

Two of Alan Helmick's daughters crying at the trial — Alan Helmick’s daughters at the trial.

Unfortunately, Bob was right. Dance Junction LLC and Creek Ranch Sporthorses LLC eventually overextended Alan’s finances, according to Oxygen True Crime.

Tanked. Still, there was another, bigger problem brewing: About two years into their marriage, Miriam became determined to kill Alan.

On one occasion, while Alan was sitting in a car waiting for Miriam to return from using a restroom, he saw smoke in the rear-view mirror and quickly exited the 1994 Buick Roadmaster.

Out of the question. Police discovered that someone had dropped a lighted fuse in the gas tank. Because the tank was full, the flames didn’t have enough air to grow quickly, giving Alan time to escape.

When speaking with Alan, police floated the theory that Miriam — who had asked her husband to pop open the trunk minutes before the fire started — was responsible for the sabotage.

Alan said he couldn’t imagine Miriam doing anything “malicious” and he’d be “shocked” if she did, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reported on Dec. 23, 2008.

Electronic trail. Little did Alan know that Miriam had inquired about taking out a $250,000 life insurance policy on him and asked the agent whether they could make the transaction without her husband’s participation (the agent said no), according to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.

Investigators would later discover that after the gas tank incident, Miriam searched online for information about overdosing on the types of prescription drugs that Alan took.

“People tend to be very intimate with their computers — they will ask it questions through Google that they would not ask another human being,” noted investigator Mike Piechota during his Forensic Files interview.

Little to gain? No one knows whether Miriam actually tried and failed to murder Alan with some type of lethal cocktail or abandoned the plan completely.

Meanwhile, Alan saw no reason to distrust Miriam, because they had a prenuptial agreement and he was leaving his money to his children, according to Oxygen True Crime. (Despite financial troubles with the horse farm and dance studio, Alan still owned Helmick Mortgage and was reportedly worth millions.)

Finally, Miriam decided to go low concept.

On June 10, 2008, she sneaked up behind Alan and fired a bullet into the back of his head.

This time, he died.

Few forensics. First responders to the house found 62-year-old Alan lying on the floor in his study, with a shell casing nearby. In another Forensic Files staple, it looked as though someone had ransacked the house but left behind too many valuables.

During Miriam’s interview with the sheriff, she provided shopping receipts as an alibi for the time of the murder, according to the Charmed to Death episode “A Ruthless Repertoire.”

Miriam voluntarily submitted to a gunshot residue test, which came up negative.

Seriously bad idea, lady. Deputies began walking around the subdivision to ask the neighbors for any clues, and a spokesperson for the sheriff’s department cautioned residents, “If you don’t know who’s at your door, don’t answer it.”

Meanwhile, Miriam’s friends described her as happily married to Alan — they were inseparable — but Miriam, 51, apparently felt the need to deflect any doubts about her innocence.

A week after Alan’s funeral, Miriam showed investigators an anonymous greeting card instructing her to “run, run, run” and saying that she was “next.” Someone had left it right outside her door, she said.

An aerial view of the Helmick's house in Whitewater — The Helmick’s former house is valued at upward of $700,000 today, according to real estate websites

Big flap. The note on the card misspelled Alan’s name as “Allen” (cute little trick, Miriam) and someone had cut out the bar code (nice try).

Investigators found no prints or DNA on the card, but this time, they got some help from security cameras. Footage showed Miriam buying the card at Orchard Mesa City Market. She probably thought she was being clever by using cash and going to a store 13 miles from the Helmicks’ house, but now she was busted.

Miriam had no choice but to admit she wrote the card — but only to stir up authorities to investigate the case more extensively, she said.

What she accomplished, of course, was to attract more attention to herself.

Drama department. Investigators theorized that Miriam shot Alan, then showered and changed her clothes and went to the New Dragon Wall Chinese Buffet restaurant as an alibi. She left phone messages of feigned concern for Alan about why he hadn’t shown up to meet her.

Next, Miriam headed home, where she “discovered” the body. Her weepy 911 “my husband is dead” call sounded rehearsed and melodramatic.

Another red flag for police: If someone other than Miriam shot Alan, how was she so sure he was beyond help? Why didn’t she ask for an ambulance pronto? Authorities would later conclude that she made no effort to revive him despite that the operator gave her instructions.

Wendy Helmick during her Forensic Files appearance

Will be cinematic. Now, police were finding evidence that Miriam had started devising sneaky ways to tap into Alan’s money while he was still alive.

They dug up $40,000 in checks written to Miriam from Alan, and 10 of the them appeared to be forged.

Some circumstantial evidence came up regarding the car fire. Investigators discovered that four days beforehand, the Helmicks had rented the movie No Country for Old Men, which included a scene in which someone dropped a lit wick in a gas tank. (As Forensic Files viewer Rodman Papros commented on YouTube, “I have never heard of a murderer who took gaslighting so literally.”)

Son loyal. The bathroom that Miriam had used in a convenience store on the day of the car incident smelled like lighter fluid, workers told investigators.

Meanwhile, Miriam pointed to Alan’s son, Alan Jr., as a possible suspect in the fire as well as the murder. She cited rumors that the younger Helmick had a methamphetamine addiction, according to Oxygen True Crime.

But Alan Jr. had solid alibis, and he loved his dad.

“My father was probably one of the best people I’ve ever met in my life,” he later told NBC. “And I don’t just say that because I’m his son.”

Prior ‘misfortune.’ The police identified the murder weapon as a 25-caliber handgun that had long belonged to the Helmick family and was kept in Alan and Miriam’s house.

Now, investigators turned their attentions toward the 2002 demise of Miriam’s first husband, Jack Giles.

Miriam claimed Jack was depressed about the overdose death of their daughter and shot himself.

Missed opportunity. Jack’s brother, Tim Giles said that he never believed Jack took his own life. Because of Amy’s death, Jack knew all too well how a suicide could devastate a family, Tim said.

Tim would later criticize the Jacksonville police’s decision not to investigate Miriam more thoroughly after Jack’s death. They could have prevented Alan’s murder, he believed.

In December 2008, while Miriam was staying with her son in Florida and combing online dating sites for new suitors, she received some gentlemen callers who didn’t come from eharmony or OurTime: Colorado deputies accompanied by U.S. Marshalls and Florida law officers arrested Miriam in Arlington.

They found that Miriam had identification that belonged to Sharon Helmick, Alan’s first wife.

Romance killer. Under the name “Sharon,” Miriam had almost snagged another big, or at least medium-sized, fish. Charles Kirkpatrick owned two dance studios and a human resources firm.

They dated for a while, but he would later say that Miriam scared him off by asking too early and too often whether she could move into his place.

Authorities returned Miriam to Colorado, where she appeared “shackled, stooped, and dressed in a high-security red jail jumpsuit” in court, according to a Denver Post account. The court charged her with 11 counts of forgery, attempted murder, and first-degree murder. She was placed in Mesa County Jail on $2 million bond.

Found out? But she had no chance of getting her hands on more of Alan’s money and using it to bail herself out. A court granted oldest daughter Portia Vigil emergency control of her father’s assets.

Before the trial, however, Miriam did score one big win when Judge Valerie Robison ruled as inadmissible any evidence pertaining to Jack Giles’ death.

Prosecutors still had a good deal of material to work with, and they made a case that Alan discovered Miriam pilfering from his business accounts and she wanted to quiet his concerns badly enough to try killing him — first with the car assault and possibly with some drug shenanigans.

Miriam Helmick in a recent mugshot — Miriam Helmick in a recent mug shot

Around the same time Miriam was forging checks from Alan, he fell mysteriously ill, although he did recover.

Time-tested firearm. There was also the matter of her selling some of Alan’s properties after his death, which reportedly robbed his children of monies rightfully theirs.

Miriam had insisted that, despite the prenuptial agreement, all property acquired during the marriage belonged to her, Portia testified.

Prosecutors alleged that Miriam used the Helmick family heirloom 25-caliber gun to shoot Alan. He reportedly kept the weapon in his sock drawer.

Inadvertent slip. No one determined what Miriam did with the gun or the clothes she wore when she pulled the trigger.

An acquaintance of Miriam’s, a horse trainer named Jeri Yarbrough, said that Miriam gave herself away after the fire by blurting out, “I did not know the full tank would not blow.”

Information about Miriam’s alleged fraudulent activities also came out. She had images of 39 different driver’s licenses stored on her computer, according to the prosecution.

Glam gone. Former online friend Charles Kirkpatrick testified that Miriam told him Alan died of a brain disease.

Miriam chose to take the stand. She made sure her appearance didn’t have “scheming seductress” written all over it. She wore eyeglasses and unassuming clothes — dark pants and a striped blue sweater. Her bright lipstick and suntan were gone. She let a little gray go unretouched.

Exterior view of the Denver Women's Correctional Facility — The Denver Women’s Correctional Facility has 984 beds and houses women at all custody levels, according to the Colorado DOC website

Under questioning, she denied her guilt and weepily recounted her narrative of finding Alan shot to death.

Prosecutor Richard Tuttle, who would go on to appear on Forensic Files, told the court that her tears were false.

Different kind of number. A jury agreed and convicted Miriam of first-degree murder

Hence, Miriam attained another component of the Forensic Files template: prison time. She’s currently inmate #148412 at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility.

Her sentence — life plus 108 years — means she has virtually no chance of fox-trotting her way to freedom and preying on other men looking for love.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

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Viktor Gunnarsson: A Swede Meets Death

A Notorious Scandinavian’s Fate Lies in North Carolina
(‘To the Viktor,’ Forensic Files)

Viktor Gunnarsson craved attention and fabricated stories to suit his ego.

In Sweden, where he was born and raised, he liked to pretend he originally came from the U.S.

He had spent some time in California and, upon his return, he started speaking Swedish with a fake American accent.

Shock and sorrow. He tried to impress women he chatted up at bars, once saying that he had debated Prime Minister Olof Palme and utterly humiliated the popular leader.

On the night that an assassin gunned down Palme on Feb. 28, 1986 — in a crime that devastated the peace-loving country — Gunnarsson, who belonged to a right-wing political group, had been loudly spewing anti-Palme hate speech in a bar not far from the crime scene.

Police detained and questioned Gunnarsson, but the story of a witness who said he had seen him near the murder scene suddenly fizzled, and Stockholm police chief Hands Holmer decided to drop charges against Gunnarsson.

Icy reception. Nevertheless, a cloud of public suspicion remained over Gunnarsson. Many still believed that he was the assassin who first greeted Palme amiably, then shot him in the back as he and his wife exited a movie theater on Sveavägen, a busy street in Stockholm.

In Sweden, Viktor Gunnarsson suddenly found himself about as welcome as an ice storm in summer.

Even the European Labor Party, an extremist group that labeled Palme a Communist, called Gunnarsson a “savage beast” and disowned him.

Tall tales. So Gunnarsson took his act back to the U.S., where most people didn’t know about his ill repute. And, despite his porn-star mustache, many women found him attractive.

Newspaper clipping of young Olof Palme and wife Lisbet — Olof Palme, shown with wife Lisbet, was charismatic and so well liked that he often went out without body guards. During the shooting, a bullet grazed Lisbet

Gunnarsson sometimes told his new acquaintances that he was an FBI agent or a film director capable of turning aspiring actresses into stars.

In reality, he worked as a language tutor. He lived in a rental unit in Lakewood Apartments in Salisbury, North Carolina.

True-crime fame. But he was determined to make a splash in America and he did, just not in the way he hoped.

Instead of landing on 60 Minutes or Biography or The Tonight Show, he ended up as a murder victim portrayed on Forensic Files.

Although “To the Viktor” did a good job of covering the investigation into Gunnarsson’s death, it never mentions who, if anyone, was eventually held liable for Olof Palme’s assassination or whether Gunnarsson remained a hated man in Sweden after his own death.

Grim discovery. For this week, I looked for some answers. So let’s get started on the recap of the Forensic Files episode along with extra information drawn from internet research and the book Blood on the Snow: The Killing of Olof Palme by Jan Bondeson.

Kay Weden

On a frosty January morning in 1994, a North Carolina land surveyor found the body of a middle-aged man in a remote area called Deep Gap in Watauga County, North Carolina. His toes were sticking out of the snow. He was naked except for a watch and a ring.

Police believed it was a professional hit. The man had died of two bullet wounds, one to the head and another to the neck, and his body had been there since late December.

Errant boyfriend. At the scene, police found a long piece of electrical tape containing a bullet hole, blood drops, and human hair.

A photo in a missing person’s database identified the dead man as Viktor Gunnarsson, 40, who lived in the U.S.

Interpol sent fingerprints that confirmed the ID.

A schoolteacher named Kay Weden told police she had been dating Gunnarsson for a few weeks and she hadn’t heard from him since Dec. 3, when he’d taken her out to dinner.

Obsessive ex. Police at first suspected Gunnarsson died in a political assassination tied to the Palme murder.

The truth wasn’t quite so grandiose, although it was a bit sordid.

Kay Weden told detectives that on her last date with Gunnarsson, a car driven by her jealous ex-fiancée, Lamont Claxton “L.C.” Underwood, cruised by her house to spy on the couple, who were sitting outside, according to “Cold Blooded,” an episode of The New Detectives.

L.C. Underwood, seen here in uniform as an active-duty police officer — L.C. Underwood during his active duty years

A female friend of Underwood’s named Shelly Thompson said that the retired cop had written down the license plate of a 1979 Lincoln in front of Kay Weden’s place and then used a police source to find out the name of the owner — Viktor Gunnarsson.

Trusting victim. When police subsequently searched Underwood’s “immaculately clean” house, a sharp-eyed officer noticed that behind a clothes dryer there was some electrical tape similar to the type used to gag Gunnarsson, according to The New Detectives.

Underwood claimed he’d never heard of Viktor Gunnarsson.

Meanwhile, just days after Gunnarsson’s death, a bigger tragedy befell Kay Weden. Her mother, Catherine Miller, was shot to death, apparently by someone she knew. The 77-year-old had been cooking a meal in her apartment when it happened, and there was no sign of a break-in. Like Gunnarsson, she received two shots execution style, although they were from a .38 caliber, a different gun from the one used on Gunnarsson.

Cold greeting. But police found plenty of evidence, both circumstantial and forensic.

Underwood, who was bitter about his breakup with Kay Weden, had at one time confronted Catherine Miller and accused her of ruining his relationship with Weden, according to the Winston-Salem Journal.

He had also dumped a glass of iced tea in Weden’s lap at a restaurant.

Troubling record. The iced tea incident wasn’t exactly proof of murderous intent, but strands of Gunnarsson’s hair found in the trunk of Underwood’s car looked pretty incriminating.

A typewriter ribbon in Underwood’s house revealed the same language used in anonymous threatening notes that Weden had received in the run-up to the murders.

Plus, Underwood, who had been married and divorced three times, had a history of stalking women once their relationships started to sink. (He probably feared abandonment — Underwood lived in a children’s home from ages 3 to 18, according to a newspaper account.)

March into forest. Investigators theorized that Underwood killed Viktor Gunnarsson and Catherine Miller because he wanted to create havoc in Weden’s life so that she would rush back into his arms for consolation.

They believe Underwood abducted Gunnarsson at gunpoint, bound him and gagged him with the black electrical tape, put him in the trunk, drove 90 miles to Deep Back, made him walk into the woods, and shot him to death. To eliminate forensic evidence, he either forced Gunnarsson to disrobe or undressed him after killing him.

Viktor Gunnarsson in a suit and sunglasses — Viktor Gunnarsson had delusions of grandeur never quite fulfilled

Next, he dropped by Catherine Miller’s house and murdered her.

At the trial for Gunnarsson’s homicide, the defense tried to play the Olaf Palme card. Underwood’s lawyer trotted out a witness who claimed a federal inmate told him that the Russian government had killed Gunnarsson to deflect attention from Palme’s real assassin.

Not a cause celébrè. The jury didn’t buy it and convicted Underwood in July 1997. He got a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

Authorities never tried Underwood for the murder of Catherine Miller, probably because he already had little chance of getting out of prison on two feet — and Kay Weden had suffered through enough court proceedings.

In 2004, a local innocence group looked into Underwood’s case, but it’s not clear how far they took it. A federal court vacated his conviction in 2010 on the basis of ineffective counsel and granted him a new trial, but another court put the kibosh on that.

Elusive resolution. Underwood died in the hospital while serving his sentence at Central Prison in Raleigh on Dec. 23, 2018.

So, back in Sweden, did authorities ever find out who killed Olof Palme?

Well, not exactly.

They succeeded in prosecuting ex-convict Christer Pettersson after the prime minister’s widow, Lisbet Palme, identified him in a police lineup. But the courts later voided the conviction for lack of evidence, namely the missing murder weapon. Pettersson received $50,000 for wrongful conviction. He spent it all on drugs and alcohol, according to the Observer.

Renewed interest. In 2004, Pettersson died of natural causes, with many still believing him guilty. Others speculated that South Africa had ordered Palme’s hit because he was anti-apartheid.

Catherin Miller, Kay Weden's mother — Catherine Miller

Authorities still haven’t given up on the case. Sweden changed its homicide laws to extend the statute of limitation beyond 25 years.

In 2016, the country appointed a prosecutor to start a new probe into Palme’s murder.

In the meantime, the population remains divided as to whether new forensic technology will help authorities crack the case or whether it’s time to admit defeat and close the files, according to an article published on the 25th anniversary of Olof Palme’s death on Swedish news website The Local. Over the years, police had already questioned 10,000 people in connection with the assassination and 134 individuals falsely took responsibility for the crime.

Fanciful contention. In any case, suspicion toward Viktor Gunnarsson had faded in his country of birth by the time of his death.

One conspiracy theory holds that the real assassins set up Gunnarsson as a suspect and then had him murdered in the U.S. in hopes that Swedish authorities would close the books on the case.

Gunnarsson and his ego would probably find that explanation for his death more satisfying than the real story — that he got tangled up in a love triangle with a couple of public-sector employees.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on Tubi

Forensic Files Ranked

Which Episodes Keep You Up at Night?

This past spring, producers asked viewers to tell them which of the 400 Forensic Files episodes amused, haunted, enlightened, and otherwise seared themselves into their cerebrums.

Graphic with a gun and fingerprint promoting Forensic Files A Special Tribute. — The 25th anniversary special includes reminiscences from series creator Paul Dowling

The survey results determined which clips made it into a 45-minute program celebrating the show’s 25th anniversary. I was glad to see a lot of my own favorites turn up in the responses — and surprised at a few greats I’d almost forgotten.

At the end of Forensic Files: A Special Tribute, you can see some of the survey responses flicker by during the credits.

Just for fun, please witness the full results, below. I’ve put in links to relevant recaps from this blog.

Most Memorable Episode
1. The List Murders
2. The Disappearance of Helle Crafts
3. Kill’igraphy

Scariest Criminal or Criminal Pair
1. Erika and B.J. Sifrit (Dirty Little Secret)
2. Jason Massey (Pure Evil)
3. John Schneeberger, M.D. (Bad Blood)

Dumbest Criminal or Criminal Pair
1. Molly and Clay Daniels (Grave Danger)
2. Jason Funk (Muffled Cries)
3. George Hansen (Frozen Assets)

Most Memorable Exoneration
1. Ray Krone (Once Bitten)
2. Patricia Stallings (Deadly Formula)
3. Clayton Johnson (Accident or Murder)

Most Groundbreaking Forensic Science
1. DNA Profiling
2. Polymerase chain reaction
3. AFIS

Best Reenactment
1. Murder of the List Family (The List Murders)
2. Drowning of Joan Rogers and her two daughters (Water Logged)
3. Drugs sneaked into pregnant fiancée’s drinks by Maynard Muntzing, M.D. (Bitter Pill to Swallow)

Best Interview
1. Skip Palenik
2. Trey Gowdy
3. Candy Fonagy

Creepiest Crime Scene
1. B.J. Sifrit in bathtub with victims’ heads (Dirty Little Secret)
2. Entire family shot to death by John List (The List Murders)
3. Christopher Porco’s ax attack on his parents (Family Ties)

Favorite Forensic Tool or Technique
1. Luminol
2. Forensic genealogy
3. Mass spectrometry

Favorite Phrase or Quote
1. “Is it common for a bomber to blow himself up?” “Not common enough.” (Postal Mortem)
2. “It’s from the book of Who Cares” (Slippery Motives)
3. “Those goddamn black shoes!” (Hell’s Kitchen)

Most Surprising Clue
1. Blood vial implanted in arm of John Schneeberger, M.D. (Bad Blood)
2. Hamburger bun with killer’s print (Purebread Murder)
3. Cat hair (Purr-Fect Match)

Most Difficult-to-Solve Murder(s)
1. Zodiac Killer’s victims (Sign of the Zodiac)
2. Reyna Marroquin (A Voice from Beyond)
3. Helle Crafts (The Disappearance of Helle Crafts)

Most Creative Alibi
1. Kevin Dowling’s fishing video (Shadow of a Doubt)
2. Dana Ewell’s being with FBI agent John Zent at the time of the Ewell family murders (Two in a Million)
3. Thomas Jabin Berry’s claim that he frequently had consensual sex with strangers he just met at the beach (A Cinderella Story)

Best Takeaway from Series
1. Technology and investigative techniques are constantly improving.
2. The odds of getting away with crimes are slim.
3. Criminals are dumb.

One-Off Favorite Forensic Files Quotes
• “We will NOT reveal the name of the poison on this program.”
• “He stopped at an ice cream store and got a dessert known as a ‘blizzard.’”
• “Let’s go after that bitch.”

Random Comments From Survey Takers
• “This was such a hard survey to answer! It was like asking me who my favorite child is — and I only have 4 kids, not 400.”
• “Antifree made Stacey Castor Anti-free.”
• “Never trust anyone with trilobal carpet fibers”
• “I only wish that Peter Thomas can see this event or episode.”
• “Best time to watch Forensic Files: midnight after the meds kick in.”

In addition to YouTube, you can watch Forensic Files: A Special Tribute on Pluto or Tubi as well as on Discover+ and Fox Nation.

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

Book cover of Forensic Files Now — Book available in stores or online!

Deana Wild (aka Donna Hartman) Falls for a Con

With Friends Like Virginia McGinnis…
(‘Financial Downfall,’ Forensic Files)

Before jumping into this week’s recap, I want to address something that readers brought to my attention: Forensic Files has exited Netflix. I usually watch the show on HLN or YouTube and thus was asleep at the switch when the news broke.

Gary Lico, Forensic Files global marketing executive, officially confirmed the change.

“Forensic Files is indeed off Netflix, much to the dismay of many,” Gary said in a statement to ForensicFilesNow.com. “Viewers were concerned they’d lose their favorite show. This will be a boon to our other streaming partners: FilmRise, Pluto, Discovery +, and HBO MAX, in particular. We’ve all seen the power of one program, in this case, Forensic Files, increasing a platform’s audience.”

In other words, we won’t need GPS or sniffing dogs to find places to watch Forensic Files in 2022. So let’s enjoy the new year and turn our attention toward “Financial Downfall”:

Forensic Files evildoers who plan ahead often rely on feigned sentiment, staged death scenes, and insurance fraud to win their fortunes.

In 1987, Virginia Agnes McGinnis did just that. Fifty-year-old Virginia and her husband bamboozled a trusting 20-year-old woman whose real name was Deana Jalynn Hubbard Wild but whom Forensic Files calls Donna Hartman.

After manipulating Deana into taking out a $35,000 insurance policy, Virginia and Billie Joe “B.J.” McGinnis killed her and made it look like an accident.

Deana Wild dressed in a jeans and high heels while sitting on a rock — Deana Wild at a Seal Beach overlook

Virginia, we discover, didn’t limit her betrayal to friends. She allegedly killed one of her husbands and two of her own blood relatives as well.

So what made Virginia into a scheming killer who felt loyalty to no one but herself? And why was Deana Wild spending her time with a middle-aged couple instead of making friends her own age?

For this week, I looked for answers. So let’s get going on the recap along with extra information from internet research:

Deana Hubbard was born in Kentucky in 1967, and her parents divorced three years later. Her mother, Bobbie Jo Roberts, who worked as a school teacher, then married a law student whose last name was Marshall, according to the True Crime Brewery podcast. That union also ended in divorce.

Bobbie’s high hopes for her little daughter’s future fell when a school test revealed Deana’s IQ as 85, right on the marker between normalcy and mild intellectual impairment —if one trusts those kinds of metrics to gauge a person’s potential (I don’t).

A couple of Deana’s best girlfriends from high school who appeared on the Oxygen show Accident, Suicide or Murder described Deana as fun to be with and part of a lively social circle.

Virginia McGinnis as a young adult — One of the few existing photos of Virginia McGinnis

At 17, she fell in love with a Navy man named Jay Wild. Two years later, they married and moved to San Diego, where he was stationed, but his absences while at sea strained the marriage and they separated in 1987.

Deana stayed in California and met Virginia and B.J. McGinnis.

Virginia was born in 1937 in Ithaca, New York, to a dairy farmer named Christie Hoffman and his wife, Mary. The family lived in poverty, and Virginia suffered sexual abuse, according to research from Radford University. In childhood, she exhibited the three conditions of the MacDonald triad theorized to presage violent behavior in adults.

Virginia had a son named James Coates, and media accounts vary widely on his relationship status with Deana. They were anywhere from headed to the altar to mere strangers

Like Deana, Virginia and B.J. had lived in Kentucky, which made her feel comfortable with them. Deana moved in with them in their Chula Vista, California house in December 1986 while she looked for a job and an apartment, according to the Oxygen Network.

Deana’s mother tried to check up on her, but Virginia reportedly interfered. After Bobbie sent her a plane ticket, Deana visited her in Kentucky, but the two clashed and she returned to the McGinnises.

On April 1, 1987, Virginia brought Deana to an insurance agency and they took out a $35,000 policy on Deana. Virginia claimed Deana was traveling to Mexico and thought life insurance made sense.

In reality, the McGinnises were taking Deana on a sightseeing trip to the Big Sur region of California, where the Pacific Ocean’s dramatic coastline lies at the foot of the Santa Lucia Range of mountains. The three tourists arrived at Seal Beach on April 2, 1987.

Sea lions sunning themselves on the sand on Seal Beach — Deana reportedly had a fear of heights, but she probably couldn’t resist looking around for Seal Beach residents like these

Deana enjoyed gazing down at the waves crashing into rocks so much that she stayed behind after her friends headed back to the car, the couple later explained.

Suddenly, Virginia and B.J. realized that Deana had disappeared, they said. One of her blue high-heeled shoes lay at the site.

Virginia ran to a nearby art gallery to call for help. A Monterey County rescue team arrived at the scene.

The couple told Police Officer Jess Mason that they didn’t hear Deana yell or scream; she silently vanished.

Mason would later describe the McGinnises as calm — but it didn’t seem suspicious because the missing woman wasn’t a blood relative.

By the time first responders found Deana’s body, she had dried blood covering her face. They could also see severe wounds on the backs of her hands and fingers. She had fallen anywhere from 390 t0 500 feet and died of head trauma.

Once the McGinnises learned about the discovery, they seemed appropriately distraught.

Authorities at first believed the couple’s story about an accidental fall. Sadly, things like that happened a lot on the cliffs of Big Sur.

Virginia immediately filed a claim for the insurance payout on Deana.

Photos showing the real Deana Wild and the woman Forensic Files portrays as Donna Hartman — Deana Wild, left, was the real woman portrayed as ‘Donna Hartman,’ right

Meanwhile back in Kentucky, after Deana’s funeral, her mother was having trouble collecting on a $2,500 burial insurance policy that her employer provided, according to the book Death Benefit by David Heilbroner. The insurance company was holding up the claim pending some fact-finding. At church, Bobbie approached a fellow parishioner, a tax attorney named Steve Keeney, and asked for help.

Independently, Keeney started checking out Virginia’s background and discovered her history as an insurance payout queen. She pursued small amounts of money because — as Forensic Files watchers know well — it’s not cost-effective for the companies to investigate modest claims. Virginia went for quantity, with each policy amounting to around $35,000.

In one fishy case, second husband Sylvestor “Bud” Rearden, a cancer patient in the hospital, was released to Virginia after she falsely identified herself as a nurse qualified to care for him. He promptly died on Virginia’s watch.

The same thing happened to Virginia’s mother.

In both cases, Virginia benefitted from their life insurance policies.

And horror of horrors, it turned out that more than two decades before Deana’s death, Virginia’s 3-year-old daughter, Cynthia Elaine Coates, had been found dead in a barn. The little girl was riding a pony and somehow got tangled up in cords, accidentally hanging herself from the ceiling, Virginia said. Again, she collected an insurance payout.

She had also profited from a number of suspicious fires earlier in her “career.”

With Virginia’s track record exposed, police investigated Deana’s death as a possible homicide. A sequence of photos that the McGinnises took at Seal Beach suggested that Deana had grown sleepy as the day passed. In the last images, B.J. appeared poised to push Deana off the cliff.

A lab found that Deana’s blood contained Elavil, an early treatment for depression. The drug, usually taken just before bedtime, causes drowsiness.

And one more thing: James Coates — Virginia’s son and insurance co-beneficiary — was in prison for a parole violation and married to someone else.

Still, the McGinnises maintained that Deana and James were engaged and it was only natural for them to have an insurance policy on their future daughter-in-law.

Investigators would ultimately conclude that the McGinnises took the naive Deana out for a bite and sneaked the Elavil into her beverage before heading off to Seal Beach. Once they thought she was too drowsy to fight back, B.J. pushed her off the cliff.

Deana’s medical records showed that Deana never had a prescription for Elavil.

But B.J. did.

The wounds to the back of Deana’s hands and her fingers suggested someone had stomped on them, perhaps as she tried desperately to hold onto a ledge or brush.

Virginia and B.J. McGinnis were arrested and charged with murder on Sept. 15, 1989, under a no-bail warrant. (One source says that the judge did set bail, for $5 million. Either way, the authorities were not letting this killing machine and her spouse out of their sight.)

The trial kicked off on Jan. 6, 1992. The court transported jury members to Seal Beach so they could study the drop-off where Deana died in horror.

During the open-air part of the trial, the jurors could hear sea lions barking on the coast below, an AP account noted.

Virginia’s lawyer, Albert Tamayo, blamed Deana’s death on her high-heeled shoes.

In typical smear-the-victim fashion, Virginia claimed that Deana was a pill popper who would help herself to any drug, hence the presence of her husband’s Elavil in her blood.

It took the jury three days to convict Virginia of forgery, insurance fraud, and first-degree murder.

Deana Wild and B.J. McGinnis pose for a photo at Seal Beach — Deana Wild with B.J. McGinnis

“I don’t for a moment entertain the thought of Deana wanting life insurance for herself,” said Superior Court Judge Bernard Revak. “I don’t think this 20-year-old girl thought about her death.”

He also noted, “There are too many coincidences for this to be a coincidental death.”

Virginia went off to prison.

B.J. McGinnis had already died from complications due to AIDS while in jail awaiting trial.

On an interesting tangent to the legal drama, some controversy arose over Steve Keeney’s portrayal as the crusading lawyer who cracked the case wide open.

In an April 10, 1993 review of the book Death Benefit, Louisville’s Courier-Journal newspaper suggested that the tome overglorified Keeney, depicting him as “a cross between Perry Mason and Mother Teresa, a character whose only sin is working too hard and caring too much.”

Keeney supposedly sank $250,000’s worth of time and expenses into the investigation, all pro bono. But he reportedly had a deal for a portion of the proceeds from David Heilbroner’s book (which got great views on Amazon), and both men allegedly got money for a Lifetime Channel movie based on the case.

An overlook at Seal Beach — Although the scene of the crime at Seal Beach lies in Monterey County, the insurance was purchased in San Diego County, hence Virginia’s trial there

Forensic Files interviewed Keeney on camera, but the episode also focuses on the work done by homicide detective Scott Lawrence and prosecutor Luis Aragon.

As for the Lifetime production, Justice for Annie: A Moment of Truth Movie first aired in 1996 and starred Peggy Lipton and Danica McKellar.

No word on whether Virginia got to watch actress Susan Ruttan play the character based on her in Justice for Annie, but she definitely missed her portrayal on the Oxygen show in 2021 — Virginia died in prison at the age of 74 on June 25, 2011.

You can watch Justice for Annie on YouTube, where it’s collected 2 million views. If you have a cable subscription, you can see the Accident, Suicide or Murder episode “Fallen” online for free.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

Collier Boyle Today: Moving Past Murder

John and Noreen Boyle’s Son Reveals More of His Story
(‘Foundation of Lies,’ Forensic Files)

When Noreen Boyle suddenly disappeared from her home in Mansfield, Ohio, her husband, John “Jack” Boyle, told friends and family that she simply had gone off on a jaunt. No big deal.

Collier Landry Boyle wearing a black t-shirt — Collier Landry

But their 11-year-old son, Collier Boyle, immediately went into overdrive.

He sensed something terrible had happened. Collier pushed for an investigation that ultimately led to the discovery of Noreen’s body buried beneath the concrete floor of a new home in Erie, Pennsylvania that Jack hoped to share with his pregnant mistress.

In 1990, Collier served as the star witness for the prosecution at the sensational murder trial. A jury convicted Jack Boyle, M.D., a popular doctor with a huge practice, and he’s lived behind razor wire ever since.

His son, now known as Collier Landry, grew up to become a freelance cinematographer out of Los Angeles and pitched the idea for the documentary A Murder in Mansfield, which first aired on the ID Network in 2018.

In 2021, Collier started a podcast series. He aims to make Moving Past Murder not just a vehicle for storytelling but also therapy and outreach for listeners.

Collier recently answered some of my questions about his work and life. Edited excerpts of our conversation appear below:

Forensic Files and the ID documentary told the story of your mother’s homicide. Where does the podcast fit in? It’s a true-crime podcast from someone who knows about murder. My message is that you can come through extraordinary things and be a functional person. I’ve stared at the nadir and survived. My mother gave me resiliency. I don’t want her death to be in vain.

What was your mother like? My mom was a kind, giving, wonderful person who often put the needs of others before her own. Every year for Christmas, I would have to donate half my toys to other children because I was fortunate and I should share with others who need it.

She disappeared on New Year’s Eve 1990. How did your father explain that to you? He said she took a little vacation. I knew my mother would never leave my sister and me.

What did you do first? I stored notes with her phone numbers in a Garfield. I was secretly calling her friends to find out where she was. That’s how everyone knew she was gone. People were devastated. She was the light of people’s lives and they were shocked this could happen to her.

Noreen Boyle in a pink Polo shirt with the sea in the background — Noreen Boyle was sweet but ‘didn’t suffer fools,’ according to her son

How did the disappearance transition from a missing-person case to a murder investigation? A Mansfield police officer named Dave Messmore saw the case cross his desk over a holiday when there wasn’t a lot going on. I told him, “She’s dead.” Dave didn’t care if my dad was a doctor — he was going to investigate him like any suspect.

It turned out that my father had been accused of molesting my uncle’s daughters and the Maryland police were about to arrest him for that crime, but the girls couldn’t go through the trauma again. The police in Maryland believed he killed my mom.

What happened to you after they finally arrested your dad? My entire family abandoned me. My father’s side didn’t want anything to do with me. And my mother’s side didn’t either because I look like my father. I went into foster care before I was finally adopted.

Your sister, Elizabeth, was just a toddler when this happened. Where did she go? When my sister and I were playing together in a foster home, they would take her away and say we weren’t bonded so they could adopt her out. I haven’t been able to find her.

Can your listeners relate to your history with your father? The manipulations by my father are incredible. He’s written around 500 letters to me from prison. I read the letters on the podcast and people say, “This is just like my abusive father and husband.”

You’ve said you can relate to the emotional side of sheltering in place during the Covid-19 crisis. How so? When I was 12 years old, for six months, I was basically not allowed to talk to anyone because I was preparing to testify.

So I get it with the pandemic. There are kids in abusive homes for whom school is their only relief. Now they’re stuck at home.

Have you ever found yourself attracted to someone who shares your dad’s traits? I got involved with a woman and then realized she was narcissistic and a horrible person. And when I broke up with her, she wanted to destroy me. I’m glad we ended it before the pandemic because if I’d been stuck with her in the same place, I think I would have offed myself. True narcissism is so insidious.♠

You can hear the Moving Past Murder podcast, including an episode in which Collier interviewed me about my blog, on Spotify or Audible or YouTube or Apple Podcasts.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

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Author: Rebecca Reisner

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