Forensic Files Archives - Page 13 of 22

Madison Rutherford: Con Man Walking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Madison Rutherford, aka, John Patrick Sankey — Madison Rutherford

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then he disappeared again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile, Rutherford tried to blame everything on his wife.

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

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

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

Madison Rutherford while under surveillance in Boston

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

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

Daniel and Cynthia McDonnell: Good Cop, Bad Wife

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scene of the crime in Bingham Township, Michigan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watch the episode on Amazon Prime

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clay Daniels with colored hair — Clay Daniels, dye job

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

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

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

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

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

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

Debbie Dicus: A Deejay Signs off Too Soon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ronald Blanchard, who murdered Debbie Dicus — Ronald Blanchard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But Rody accomplished a great deal in his short life.

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

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

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Amazon Prime

David Draheim: Uniformly Dangerous

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Murderer David Draheim as a young man — David Draheim

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

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

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

Her cousin Nancy Bishop remembered Jeanette as kind and loving.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bogus traffic stop. The Kirby case went cold.

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

She resisted, and he fled the scene without her.

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

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

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

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

Police still couldn’t connect Draheim with the murder.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally, authorities charged David Draheim with murder.

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

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

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

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

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

Epilogue and updates: So where are the parties today?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jeanette Kirby as a child at the beach — Jeanette Kirby

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

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

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

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Amazon Prime

Kathleen Foley (aka Katy Doyle) Kills for a Player

Q&A with Prosecutor Michael McIntyre
(“When the Dust Settled,” Forensic Files)

After three hours of fruitlessly combing the internet for an epilogue for “Katy Doyle,” I tried watching “When the Dust Settled” one more time.

Murder victim Joseph Foley and Kathleen Foley — Joe and Kathleen Foley in happier times

Sure enough, the end credits of the Forensic Files episode said that some names had been changed.

It turns out that the woman who murdered her husband so she could divert all of her bandwidth to a workplace Romeo was actually named Kathleen Ann Foley.

Her husband, whom she shot four times in his sleep on July 30, 1998, was Joe Foley.

Kathleen, a 36-year-old psychiatric aide at Allentown State Hospital in Pennsylvania, probably didn’t know that her boyfriend, George Fleming, was romancing another woman on the side, but she certainly knew that he was married.

Nonetheless, Kathleen happily cashed in a $1,177 savings bond to give George, who worked in housekeeping at the hospital, a down payment on a Chrysler Concord.

While the widow was looking forward to using her husband’s $212,000 life insurance payout to underwrite new escapades with her Casanova, the police were slowly building a case against her. They didn’t believe her story that an anonymous intruder killed her husband.

Results of an autopsy on Joe Foley, a union official and recreational therapist at the hospital, conflicted with the timeline of the story that Kathleen offered. And the clothing at the crime scene was arranged the wrong way.

Allentown State Hospital, where the Foleys and Fleming worked, closed in 2010

Still, Kathleen Foley maintained that an unknown thief took her husband’s life, and her defense lawyer tried to finger everyone from a local trade organization to a foreign terrorist group.

A Lehigh County jury rejected those contentions, and she received a life sentence on October 2, 2000.

But the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections doesn’t list a “Kathleen Foley” as an inmate, and newspapers haven’t mentioned her name in years.

What happened to her?

Fortunately, former District Attorney Michael P. McIntyre, who prosecuted Kathleen in 2000, agreed to fill in a few blanks about the case for forensicfilesnow.com. Following are excerpts from our phone conversation:

Michael McIntyre, Lehigh County prosecutor — Prosecutor Michael McIntyre in his *Forensic Files* appearance

Did anything about the case surprise you? I handled it from the arrest through the trial — I was the one pressing for the arrest. The amazing thing is how she remained free for 15 months after she shot her husband. It was soon after the time of the OJ Simpson trial, and the defense came up with the mantra “rush to judgment,” and investigators didn’t want to do that anymore.

What did you think George Fleming’s role was in the crime? The boyfriend was the whole impetus for this killing. Our theory was that he was selling Kathleen on something like “go ahead and kill him.” But he had an iron-clad alibi. We couldn’t find anything on him. He testified for the prosecution. In my heart of hearts, I thought he might have had something to do with it, but we couldn’t prove it.

George Fleming, seen in a Forensic Files screen shot — The other man: George Fleming

Why did Forensic Files use the fictitious last name “Doyle” for Kathleen and Joe Foley? No clue.

I read that Joe Foley was one of nine children. Did you meet any of the siblings? Yes, I met at least two of them and they pushed for the prosecution. They assisted me and told me to talk to this person, talk to that person.

Was Joe Foley a prominent citizen around the area? Joe Foley was well-known in the Irish community. He started a program that brought poor Irish kids to the U.S. for the summer.

What do you recall about the defense’s attempt to shift the blame away from Kathleen Foley? I think there was some kind of defense that had to do with Joe’s work life with the union. Or over the Irish program — they were saying maybe the IRA did it. I never put any credence in it. It’s the defense’s job to come up with theories.

Kathleen Foley only made one appeal attempt. Did that surprise you? It’s very rare. There’s no downside [to an appeal], nothing to lose.

Kathleen Foley served her time in the SCI Muncy prison — what’s it like? I’ve never been there, but I think it’s brutal, one of our toughest prisons for women.

Pennsylvania doesn’t list Kathleen Foley as an inmate. Was she released? No. She died a year or two years ago.

Was a fellow inmate to blame? I heard it was natural causes, nothing traumatic.

How did you like working with Forensic Files? It was a good experience. They found some gunshot residue on the nightgown that she wore, and we used that as evidence.

Are you still working for Lehigh County? I retired from the DA’s office in 2001, but they brought me back for one more Forensic Files, the Patricia Rorrer case. It was my half hour of fame — Foley was my 15 minutes.♠

The time in the spotlight was even more fleeting for Kathleen’s paramour George Fleming. It ended with the trial and the 2003 Forensic Files episode.

Scene of Joe Foley's murder in Fountain, Hill, Pennsylvania — Scene of the crime in Fountain Hill, a borough of Bethlehem, Pa.

The only subsequent mention of him that turned up in the media was a 2006 Morning Call item noting that his storage facility items would be auctioned off to satisfy a lien.

Incidentally, Kathleen Foley is not the only Forensic Files killer to sacrifice everything for a love object who ended up helping the prosecution. Sarah Johnson made the same mistake.

They both should have listened to my old hair-stylist’s advice, “Don’t lose your head over a little piece of tail.”

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Amazon Prime

Rachael Mullenix: A Thankless Child

A Teenager Overkills Her Mother
(“Runaway Love,” Forensic Files)

Note: Updated with a development from October 2022

The story of Rachael Mullenix brings to mind a couple of descriptive terms: pure evil and bad acting.

Rachael Mullenix before her mother Barbara Mullenix's murder — Rachael Mullenix

With the help of her boyfriend, 17-year-old Rachael stabbed her mother 52 times, then headed to Florida for some R&R.

That’s the evil part. The bad acting came during her police interview.

Rachael’s weepy explanation about why she’s the real victim is more excruciating than your friend’s cousin’s one-woman off-Broadway show.

Forensic Files told Rachael’s story in the 2010 episode “Runaway Love.”

For this post, I checked on what’s happened to Rachael since then and also looked for some background information on her late mother.

So let’s get started on the recap along with additional information drawn from internet research:

On September 13, 2006, a member of California’s Newport Beach Yacht Club spotted a dead body in the water.

Police could see it wasn’t the work of a shark or barracuda. A killer had left a butter knife embedded in the victim’s eye.

The body was in a degraded condition, but investigators managed to identify the victim as Barbara Mullenix from the serial number on her breast implants.

Members of the Newport Beach Yacht Club were unaccustomed to finding homicide victims in their midst

Barbara, 56, lived in an apartment in Huntington Beach, California, with her ex-husband, Bruce, and their teenage daughter, Rachael.

The couple had divorced years earlier in Oklahoma City, where Rachael Scarlett Mullenix was born in 1989, but ended up sharing the condo in California for financial reasons.

Barbara had dreams of stardom (which probably explains the implants) as an actress. She snagged work as an extra on films and TV shows, including several episodes of her favorite series, CSI.

Sources vary on whether Barbara, who was born on May 29, 1950, had been married once or twice before she met Bruce. She definitely had a son named Alex from a previous husband. Her obituary mentions a daughter named Traci.

Multiple media accounts report that Barbara was raped as a teenager. One story said that the attacker had impregnated her and she gave up the resulting baby for adoption. It’s not clear whether Traci was the daughter.

Rachael was the only child she and Bruce had together.

Ian Allen was Rachael Mullenix’s boyfriend

The mother-daughter relationship had highs and lows.

Rachael said home life was, on one hand, fun-filled “like Disneyland,” but on the other, stressful, with drinking and arguments about money between her parents, according to CBS News.

Although Barbara was understanding when Rachael got pregnant at age 15, she was none-too-supportive when, at 17, Rachael acquired a 21-year-old boyfriend named Ian Allen.

Barbara threatened to file statutory rape charges against Ian. She also showed up at Ian’s home and made a big embarrassing scene, according to Rachael. When she broke curfew, Barbara grounded her, preventing her from gallivanting around with Ian.

The lovebirds wanted to dispense with all the restrictions and run off together. After all, they’d known and loved each other for three whole months.

They decided murder was the best solution.

Days after Barbara made a commotion at Ian’s place, she turned up floating in the harbor. Bruce Mullenix had a solid alibi, so police turned their attention toward his daughter.

Rachael and Ian had disappeared after the murder, but they left enough forensic evidence to keep investigators busy.

In the Mullenix condo, they uncovered traces of cleaned-up blood splatter in a bedroom and Rachael’s DNA on a bloody sponge. They found fingerprint evidence from both Rachael and Ian.

They took note of an empty bed frame in Barbara’s room. A missing mattress is a veritable blinking sign that says Foul Play.

The kitchen contained knives that matched the one found in Barbara’s eye.

Detectives found that someone had withdrawn $300 from Barbara’s credit union account right after the murder.

They traced Rachael and Ian’s escape route from Florida to Louisiana, where authorities arrested the couple. A secret recording device in the backseat of a police car caught Rachael encouraging Ian to plead insanity.

LA Times clipping of Rachael Mullenix and her lawyer at the sentencing hearing — *Los Angeles Times* clip

The pair had left a mile-long electronic trail by texting each other dozens of incriminating messages about their plan. “After what my mom has done 2 U you can do what you want as long as U don’t get hurt or in trouble,” said one of Rachael’s texts.

But for criminal boyfriend-girlfriend duos, it can be a short trajectory from committing capital murder for the sake of love to turning against each other in legal proceedings. (Diana Haun and Sarah Johnson.)

Rachael fell first.

Once detectives got her alone in an interrogation room, she whined out an unconvincing story about how Ian killed her mother and she tried to stop him, but she was knocked unconscious and woke up bound and gagged in a hotel room with Ian.

As mentioned, it was a performance far worse than any high school production of Our Town.

And speaking of drama, prosecutor Sonia Balleste found out that Rachael had made a failed attempt at slashing her mother to death two years earlier, in 2004. Balleste suggested that the incident made Rachael realize that killing Barbara was a two-person job.

Rachael also made sure to be better-equipped her second time. Detectives determined that the couple used three different knives during Barbara’s murder.

Rachael Mullenix with boyfriend Ian Allen — Really worth murder?

Once completed, the murder didn’t seem to weigh on Rachael’s mind too much. Her jury got to see security footage of the couple acting friendly during their post-homicide victory tour in the south. She didn’t look like a kidnap victim.

At first, however, Ian backed up Rachael’s version of the story and accepted all the blame. But he did a 180 later and said it was Rachael alone who had killed her mother.

“He did the not-so-smart but chivalrous thing by saying, ‘I did it. I killed her,’ ” public defender Julia Swain told the jury, the LA Times reported on October 16, 2008.

Ian contended that Rachael committed the homicide in a fit of rage over Barbara’s years of verbal abuse and mean drunkenness — and that he only helped cover it up. Rachael couldn’t put the body into a cardboard box and throw it into the Pacific Ocean by herself.

While Ian betrayed Rachael, her dad stayed loyal. Bruce Mullenix denied that his daughter would ever kill her mother despite that his ex-wife could be abusive toward Rachael. As the Huntington Beach Independent reported:

“When she was drunk she would say things like, ‘I’m going to go up to school and go to class and embarrass you,’” [Bruce] said. “‘I’ll call up your friends and say things that humiliate and embarrass you.’ … You have to understand she was a completely different person when she was drunk.”

Nonetheless, the jury found Rachael guilty of first-degree murder.

After Rachael’s trial, a victim impact statement from one of Barbara’s friends denounced the teenager as having a “black heart” and throwing out her mom like “garbage,” the LA Times reported on October 11, 2008.

Rachael, wearing French braids for the sentencing hearing, looked like “a school girl with a broken heart,” the Orange County Register reported.

Little Rachael Mullenix and mom Barbara Mullenix — Rachael and Barbara Mullenix

When the judge gave her 25 years to life, her grandparents broke into tears and her grandmother cried out, “She’s innocent!”

Two years later, in 2010, Rachael lost an appeal claiming prosecutorial misconduct.

When I first wrote about the case, Rachael was residing in Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, with parole eligibility for 2027 at age 38.

But, according to a source close to the situation, Rachael Mullenix was released from prison on October 14, 2022 and is with her father, Bruce, in Southern California. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation no longer lists her as an inmate.

Ian Allen, also found guilty and given 25 years to life, is in Chuckawalla Valley State Prison in Blythe and eligible for parole in November 2024.

Rachael’s half-brother, Alex, apparently had no involvement in the legal proceedings and didn’t speak to the press, although he and Rachael weren’t strangers. They lived in the same house in Oklahoma before the divorce.

It’s sad that his mother was robbed of a chance to shake off her troubles and try for a second act in life.

You can watch the 48 Hours about the case on YouTube.

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

P.S. Rachael’s brother, Alex Hagood, reached out to Forensic Files Now and defended Rachael in a subsequent interview.

Watch the episode on YouTube or Amazon Prime

Jill Coit: Some Snow Job

Gerry Boggs Dies for a Con Woman
(“Order Up,” Forensic Files)

How do folks who have been married say, four or more times, continue to find others willing to take a chance on them?

Jill Coit, called a black widow killer, murder husband Gary Boggs. — Jill Coit in her siren days

You’d think their prospective spouses would consider their track records and decide it’s best to stick with gambling on NFL games, not seductive mystery men or flirtatious femme fatales.

Friendly revisionism. If you watch Forensic Files often enough, you probably already have a clue as to how these operators pull it off: They simply lie about how many times they’ve been married.

Two or three former husbands or wives aren’t impossible to explain away — you were too young for the first one, the second one ran off with some jerk or bimbo, and the third one died tragically.

But once the numbers really start clicking upward, con men and con women begin expunging weddings from their records. (See Dante Sutorius.)

Store owner buys story. In what must be a Forensic Files record, Jill Coit managed to jump the broom as many as 11 times. “Order Up” tells the story of husband No. 9.

Wealthy retailer Gerry Boggs fell for the striking divorcée and ended up paying with his life on October 21, 1993.

For this week, I looked into Jill Coit’s whereabouts today and also tried to find out a bit about her early life.

Member of the in-crowd. So let’s get started on the recap along with additional information drawn from internet research:

Jill Lonita Billiot was born in Louisiana on June 11, 1943 or 1944, and had what the crimemuseum.org called a normal life.

Her father owned a marine business and her mother stayed at home to raise her and a younger brother. At age 15, Jill decided to live with her grandparents in Indiana.

According to a biographical timeline compiled by Radford University’s psychology department, Jill didn’t excel academically at school, but she was popular just the same.

Quite the tart. She married for the first time at age 17 and divorced after a year, eventually embarking on a pattern of marrying well-to-do men without necessarily divorcing existing husbands first.

Somewhere along the way, the tall-ish Jill found work as a model, according to Forensic Files. A Steamboat Pilot story referred to her as a former beauty queen who once held the Miss Eskimo Pie title.

Her good looks helped her land husband No. 3 in 1966.

Probable first victim. The prosperous William Clark Coit, described as an engineer or a gas pipeline worker, married Jill and adopted her son from a previous relationship. Together, the couple had another son. (Jill reportedly ended up with a total of three children, but there’s no information available on the third one.)

Unfortunately, William Coit turned up shot to death in his home in 1972 in Houston, Texas. Jill was never charged with the crime.

Next up, she married her lawyer, Louis DiRosa. They went on to divorce, remarry each other, and split up again.

Jill at the time of her marriage to William Coit

Business-minded. Although Jill developed a skill for finding men with money, she didn’t just sit around the house eating chocolate-covered strawberries and watching The Young and Restless all day.

She had an entrepreneurial streak and at various times owned an ad agency, a noodle factory, a farm, and a bed & breakfast.

At some point, she started subtracting years from her true age and erasing weddings from her history.

Hardware man goes soft. She met Gerry Boggs circa 1990 in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where she owned a bed and breakfast that was reportedly worth $1 million. Her son Seth managed the business.

Boggs ran a local hardware store established by his family in 1939. The business clearly sold plenty of screw anchors and drain stoppers, because media accounts describe Boggs as one of the wealthiest residents of Steamboat Springs. He was well-liked and respected in town.

Jill must have made quite an impression in order to get the lifelong bachelor to the altar. (One of her ex-husbands described her as the “greatest person” he’d ever met, at first.) It didn’t hurt that she claimed to be pregnant with Boggs’ baby. They married on April 4, 1991.

Steamboat Springs offers visitors good clean fun

No baby, no way. Gerry Boggs may have been a bit of an old fool, but he came to his senses soon enough.

He had the marriage annulled after a private detective he’d hired discovered that Jill Coit was still married to another man and had lied about her number of husbands. Also, Jill, who was around 50 years old, wasn’t really pregnant. She’d had a hysterectomy.

But Gerry had invested $100,000 in Jill’s bed & breakfast, and the two continued to fight about it after the divorce. Jill decided to end the dispute via homicide.

Brother makes discovery. She and a boyfriend, Michael Backus, started off by trying to farm out the murder job for a few thousand dollars, but those solicited refused.

On October 21, 1993, Jill disguised herself as a man by wearing bulky clothes, a cap, and a fake mustache. She and Backus, who also tried to conceal his identity, headed over to Gerry Boggs’ house.

Jill Coit’s sons, Seth and William, didn’t believe in their mother’s innocence

When Gerry, 52, didn’t show up for work at the hardware store the next day, his brother Doug decided to check on him. He found Gerry dead — beaten with a shovel, tortured with a stun gun, and shot with a pistol inside his own home. (Accounts vary as to whether the gun was .22 or .25 caliber.)

Nice try, you two. The murder shook up Steamboat Springs, a ski resort town known for its safety and community feeling.

The authorities quickly zeroed in on Jill Coit and Michael Backus. More than one local remembered seeing two odd-looking people near Boggs’ house.

Jill’s masculine disguise didn’t fool eye witnesses, who said it looked like a Halloween costume and it was obvious there was a woman inside it, the Steamboat Pilot recalled in a 2003 story.

Onion surprise. Jill claimed that she and Backus couldn’t be the killers: They were camping in the Poudre Canyon west of Fort Collins at the time of the homicide.

Boggs’ stomach contents became an important part of the investigation because they helped pinpoint the time of his death. Detectives found out he’d eaten breakfast at a local spot called The Shack Café.

The fact that the medical examiner discovered onions, despite that restaurant workers said Boggs had ordered his eggs and potatoes without onions, threw off the timeline of the crime, in favor of Jill’s alibi.

Gratuitous detective work? At that point in the episode, you could practically hear other viewers at home yelling at the TV screen, “It’s a diner — they cook stuff on a big grill and stray pieces of food end up on your plate.”

But a detective felt it necessary to go on a little field trip to The Shack to watch the short-order cook making breakfast before he came to the same conclusion.

On the other hand, maybe you can’t be too careful with evidence in a murder case, particularly because the police had very little to go on. Jill and her accomplice left no fingerprints or other forensic calling cards at the crime scene.

The finding about the onions helped prove that Boggs was murdered early in the day, before the suspects’ camping trip.

Prodigal mom. Jill Coit and Michael Backus were ordered to face homicide charges and held on $5 million bond each in February 1994.

By then, with her curly perm, Jill looked more like a soccer mom than a deadly temptress. But in pre-O.J. Simpson days, the trial of the “black widow” ensnared media attention from all over the country and some from overseas.

Jill tried to portray herself as an Elizabeth Taylor of sorts, a passionate woman whose only crime was her love of men and her fickle heart.

But the court felt more compelled by the depiction that her son Seth, who testified against her in exchange for immunity, had to offer. He said that his mother asked him to kill Boggs or at least help dispose of his body. He refused but allegedly told her, “If you do anything stupid, wear gloves,” the AP reported.

Hostile environment. In 1995, a jury convicted the couple of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. She received life without parole and a $1 million fine to prevent her from profiting off the crime in any way, according to the Steamboat Pilot. Backus got the same punishment.

Today, Jill resides in the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility and has virtually no chance of getting out on two feet. Her last appeal was rejected in 2006.

She also got nowhere with an earlier suit against Colorado that alleged she’d been sexually assaulted while behind razor wire.

Sadly, that might be one time when the con woman was telling the truth.

Jill Coit in a recent Colorado DOC mugshot

The prison has the highest rate of sexual assault of prisoners by corrections officers in the U.S., according to the Denver Post.

In an operation that sounds like a page from an Orange Is the New Black script, the state orchestrated a sting operation to catch a canteen supervisor who was assaulting prisoners, according to a Denver Post story from April, 12, 2018.

Today, at 74, Jill still looks like her old self and probably has retained some of her wily charm. Maybe she can use it to stay out of harm’s way while she serves her time.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Amazon Prime

Tim Boczkowski’s Kids: Where Are They Now?

Their Father Made Them Orphans
(Forensic Files, “All Wet”)

On November of 2018, media outlets all over the country ran an AP story reporting that Tim Boczkowski was up for parole in North Carolina.

Tim Boczkowsi and Elaine Pegher at their wedding — Tim Boczkowski’s wedding to Elaine Pegher

The prospect of the Tar Heel State releasing a man found guilty of drowning both of his wives — one in a bathtub in Greensboro in 1990 and the other in a hot tub in Pittsburgh in 1994 — made for scintillating headlines.

Sentence has teeth. But the fact is that Boczkowski, who the press has called an American Bluebeard, has almost no chance of getting out and snagging a new spouse on Match.com.

Even if the onetime owner of a dental-supply business wins parole, North Carolina will immediately turn him over to authorities in Pennsylvania, where he has a separate life sentence waiting for him.

For this week, I looked for a story with more possibilities: What happened to Boczkowski’s daughter and two sons, who were school-aged when they lost their loving biological mother and then their kind-hearted stepmother?

Second wife Maryann Boczkowski formally adopted Tim’s children

Media-friendly. At the time of the second murder, of Maryann Boczkowski in 1994, Todd was 9 years old, Sandy 10, and Randy 13.

The trio gave separate on-camera interviews on “While the Children Slept,” the American Justice episode about the case. They said they supported their father’s innocence. “Whether he’s guilty or innocent, I’m still going to love him,” said Todd.

That same year, the kids also spoke out in court during the sentencing phase of the Maryann Boczkowski homicide trial. They asked the court to spare their dad’s life, but he got a death sentence anyway. (Judge Donna Jo McDaniel later reduced it to life.)

Todd Boczkowski, Sandy Boczkowski, and Randy Boczkowski — Todd, Sandy, and Randy Boczkowski circa 1992

Musical homes. As of 2003, when Forensic Files originally aired “All Wet,” about the deaths of Elaine Pegher Boczkowski and Maryann Fullerton Boczkowski, the kids were saying they still loved their father and believed that both of their moms died accidentally.

So, what has happened to them since Tim Boczkowski traded his Dockers for prison scrubs?

Although they were shuffled around a lot, the Boczkowskis managed to stay together. They first lived with their aunt and then their grandparents, but for whatever reason, they couldn’t care for them permanently.

Odyssey concludes. The kids landed in a happy foster home, but it was overcrowded and its location made it impossible for all of them to continue school in the North Hills District of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.

In 1996, the AP reported that the Boczkowski kids were searching for a new foster home where they could stay together and in the same school district.

Here’s the best part of the story: 100 people applied to adopt them.

Brothers Randy and Todd Boczkowski circa 2003 — Randy and Todd Boczkowski circa 2003

Faithful offspring. County authorities narrowed down the list to 20. The kids, who were ages 12 to 15 by then, decided on a couple whose own children who had grown up and moved out, according to an AP story from January 17, 1997.

But they hadn’t forgotten about their original dad. According to another AP account: “They write him and are allowed one phone call a year. They’ve mailed him photos and sent him tins of cookies for Christmas.”

In the meantime, the new foster family must have done a good job.

Impressive résumés. The kids participated in sports in school, finished college, and went on to have LinkedIn profiles brimming with keywords like “sales funnels,” “competitive compensation structure,” and “social interaction through a behavioral system.”

(Not exactly sure what all those terms mean, but they sound like the stuff hiring managers like to see.)

Sandy Boczkowski in 2003 — Sandy Boczkowski 2003

Randy, the eldest child, grew up to work with at-risk young men at George Junior Republic and later joined a Philadelphia-area crowd-management company as an intern and rose to branch manager.

Baby a hero. His sister, Sandy, graduated from North Carolina State and has had a decade-long career as an employment recruiter and expert on talent development for private industry.

And the youngest Boczkowski, Todd, trained with the Civil Air Patrol when he was 16. He joined the U.S. Air Force and became a military police officer. In 2006, a Virginia Daily Press story mentioned Todd after he came to the aid of a child at the scene of a shooting in Hampton.

After his military service, Todd worked in online marketing for several years before he and a business partner established their own digital consulting firm in Pittsburgh.

No hell-raiser. Meanwhile, their father, Tim Boczkowski, lives in medium security at the Nash Correctional Institution. His last legal action of note came in 2007, when his bid for a new trial for Maryann Boczkowski’s death was rejected.

Boczkowski’s prison record reflects good behavior — no infractions or escape attempts.

There aren’t any recent media accounts about the kids’ relationship with their father, but I suspect they still believe in his innocence, especially considering that Sandy Boczkowski has chosen to live in Raleigh — just 47 miles from where her dad occupies a cell in Nashville, North Carolina.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Amazon Prime

Update on Lawrence Murrell and Justin Glover

A Scam Begets a Murder
(“Dollars and Sense,” Forensic Files)

When people kill for a small amount of cash, it’s only natural to think: Couldn’t they just make money via fraud instead so no one gets hurt physically?

In what sounds like a Sopranos subplot, a trio of young pals in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, started out to do just that.

Fraudster friends. Wesley Person, Justin Glover Jr., and Lawrence Murrell Jr. would persuade a fourth party to apply for an auto loan, divide up the money, and never buy the car.

The Pennsylvania State Employees Credit Union couldn’t recoup the funds by seizing the vehicle because there was no vehicle. The conspirators carried out more than a dozen of these scams, defrauding lenders out of a total of $115,000 to $120,000.

Unfortunately, the men’s shenanigans took a horrible turn, which Forensic Files recounted in “Dollars and Sense.”

Shifty move. In 2005, Wesley Person’s partners in crime discovered that he’d quietly completed a scam worth $15,000 to $20,000 and neglected to share the proceeds.

Person, age 26, barely had a chance to enjoy the new shoes he bought himself at the Sneaker Villa in Harrisburg: Murrell and Glover killed him on the day before Christmas.

They defeated the purpose of their business model. Instead of easy money, the two men received life sentences.

Horrible sight. For this week, I looked for epilogues on Murrell and Glover. They were in their early 20s at the time of the murder, so I was curious to find out whether they got any breaks.

The Harrisburg neighborhood where police believe Wesley Person's murder took place in 2005 — The Harrisburg neighborhood where the murder took place

But first here’s a quick recap of the episode along with information drawn from internet research:

On Christmas Eve of December 2005, motorists spotted flames alongside Route 83 near Baltimore, Maryland. They came from a body that had been set on fire.

That’s my BF. Although the corpse had been badly burned, the skull along with a patch of the victim’s braided hair gave a reconstructionist just enough to work with.

A woman named Keisha Walker recognized the police artist’s drawing as her boyfriend, Wesley Person. (Note: He appears to be no relation to either of the NBA players of the same name).

Person was born on August 31, 1979, and attended Brooklyn’s Boys and Girls High School, whose alumni included science fiction author Isaac Asimov and Shirley Chisolm, the first black woman elected to Congress.

Justin Glover Jr. murderer of Wesley Person — Justin Glover Jr.

Hardest-working scammer. Although Person wasn’t exactly chasing greatness, he didn’t make a whole lot of trouble either. He moved to Pennsylvania and started keeping company with Lawrence Murrell Jr., 21, and Justin Glover Jr., 24.

If anything, Murrell sounded like he should have been a good influence. He was married, worked full time as a janitor for the Harrisburg school district, and was taking college courses. In his spare time, he bought and renovated houses.

Murrell and Glover, the third member of the trio, “were partners in several rental properties in Harrisburg,” according to a Pennlive.com article, which also notes that Glover was a father.

That’ll be cash. But for whatever reason, honest entrepreneurship wasn’t enough, and Murrell, Glover, and Person started the auto loan scams.

The last day anyone saw Person alive was shortly before Christmas. He had gone shopping with a big wad of 50s and 100s.

His buddies Abdul McCauley and Stephen Aikens witnessed him having a heated discussion with Murrell and Glover in the parking lot afterward.

Police theorized that Murrell and Glover took Person to the basement of one of the properties Murrell owned and shot him three times in the head.

Lawrence Murrell Jr. murderer of Wesley Person — Lawrence Murrell Jr.

Detritus divulges. At the site where the duo left Person’s burning body, investigators found some plaster and other detritus that matched the debris in Murrell’s house at 441 South 13th Street in Harrisburg.

On February 19, 2008, Murrell and Glover were found guilty of first-degree murder, criminal conspiracy, and abuse of a corpse.

Glover got a life sentence for the homicide and 11 to 22 years for other charges. Murrell received life without the possibility of parole plus additional time.

They are both still fighting to get out.

Legal maneuvers. In 2014, a superior court upheld Glover’s conviction. He then filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus based on contentions including ineffective counsel for failing to object to the use of “unverified cell phone records,” failure to impeach Abdul McCauley, and the possibility that Keisha Walker “had motive to commit the crime.”

Justin Glover Jr. in a recent mugshot — Justin Glover Jr. in a 2018 mugshot

Glover contends that Aiken should have testified for the defense that he heard Keisha Walker — Person’s girlfriend — say that Person “got what he deserved” because of some bad blood between the two lovebirds.

License to work. Glover also contended that his own girlfriend Christina Hughes should have been allowed to testify that they were watching a movie together during the time of the murder.

In August 2017, U.S. District Judge Richard Conaboy denied Glover’s petition.

For now, Glover resides along with 2,183 inmates in the maximum-security Fayette State Correctional Institution in Labelle, Pennsylvania. It’s the only prison in the state where license plates are made.

At 6-feet-5-inches, Glover probably doesn’t have to worry about being bullied out of his commissary items.

Chance of freedom. Murrell, who is serving his sentence in the medium-security Dauphin County Prison, has had better post-conviction luck.

Although the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania denied his 2010 petition for allowance of appeal, he won the right to an evidentiary hearing in 2018.

Murrell’s court papers contend that he had ineffective counsel who failed to call character witnesses and that the plaster found on Wesley Person’s body could have come from a different property. Murrrell also alleges that Abdul McCauley’s testimony for the prosecution was tainted because Dauphin County had given him favorable treatment for an unrelated drug offense.

Rehab your life and house. No word on how the evidentiary hearing turned out or whether it has even been scheduled yet. As of this writing, Murrell remains behind razor wire.

Murrell and Glover are still young — 34 and 37 — and have plenty of time to explore legal avenues to freedom.

They also have skills that would enable them to start legitimate real estate careers, although the two should probably forget about their partnership and go their separate ways if they get out of prison on two feet.

Incidentally, the 5-bedroom 1-bath row house where Wesley Person met his end is up for sale for $69,100.

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

Watch the episode on YouTube and Tubi

Category: Forensic Files

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