Relax, These Heartless Souls Are Out of Commission
With so much cruelty portrayed on Forensic Files, an update that gives a little peace of mind seems in order for this week.
Stacey Castor
1. Stacey Ruth Castor Prison: Bedford Hills, New York DOB: 7/14/67 FF episode:Freeze Framed Crime: Murder, attempted murder Victims: David Castor, Ashley Wallace Outlook: Deceased.
Stacey murdered husband David Castor in 2005 by feeding him antifreeze via a soft drink and a turkey baster, then staged his death to look like a suicide. She subsequently attempted to frame her own daughter Ashley Wallace for the crime by forging a confession note, then slipping her a lethal dose of pills to make it look as though she’d committed suicide; fortunately, Ashley got help and survived. Stacey might have killed her previous husband, Michael Wallace, as well, but no charges were filed. She died of a heart attack in a jail cell on June 11, 2016. She would have been eligible for parole at age 87 — but I wouldn’t trust someone like her at any age.
Sharon Zachary
2. Sharon Zachary
Prison: Huron Valley Complex, Michigan DOB: 08/05/1965 FF episode:Prints Among Thieves Crime: Murder, robbery Victim: Robert Rogers Outlook: In prison for life, no parole.
The caretaker of the very crotchety and cash-rich Robert Rogers, Sharon Zachary was already in the will, but she couldn’t wait. The 5-foot-1-inch-tall Battle Creek, Michigan, native started helping herself to his money early, then used a pipe to beat the 80-year-old multimillionaire to death in hopes of gaining total access early.
Shannon Agofsky
3. Shannon Agofsky Prison: Terre Haute USP, Indiana DOB: circa 1971 FF episode:Stick ’em Up Crime: Robbery, murder Victims: Dan Short, Luther Plant Outlook: On death row.
Shannon, 18, and his brother Joseph, 23, abducted bank president Dan Short, forced him to unlock the vault in the State Bank of Noel in Missouri, and stole $71,000 on October 6, 1989. Instead of wearing masks to hide their identities, the thieves bound the 52-year-old banker to a weighted chair and threw it into Oklahoma’s Grand Lake. While serving prison time for Short’s murder, Shannon killed fellow inmate Luther Plantin an exercise cage in 2001 and faces the death penalty. In the meantime, he’s active on Facebook. (Joseph Agofsky was convicted of the robbery but not the murder; he died in jail in 2013.)
Read a full recap and update to the case.
Lynn Turner
4. Lynn Turner
Prison: Metro State Prison, Atlanta DOB: 7/13/68 FF episode:Cold Hearted Crime: Murder Victims: Glenn Turner, Randy Thompson Outlook: Deceased.
The rather benign-looking mother of two poisoned her 32-year-old common-law husband by sneaking antifreeze into his food, in a bid to collect the firefighter’s $35,000 life insurance payout. After Randy Thompson’s death, it came to light that her previous husband, police officer Glenn Turner, had met his end in a similar way and she had received $150,000 from his insurer. She was convicted of both murders and given life in jail. The prison routine didn’t suit Lynn Turner, and she took her own life via an overdose of propranolol in her cell on August 30, 2010.
Colvin “Butch” Hinton
5. Colvin “Butch” Hinton Prison: Hays State Prison, Georgia DOB: 09/18/1960 FF episode:Ring Him Up High Crime: Sexual assault, murder Victims: Shannon Melendi, Tammy Singleton Outlook: In prison for life, no parole. SEE CORRECTION BELOW.*
Authorities should have never released Hinton after he attempted to rape 14-year-old Tammy Singleton in 1982. But the sexual predator won freedom after just two years. He got a gig as an umpire at a softball game, where he met 19-year-old Emory University sophomore Shannon Melendi on March 26, 1994. He abducted, raped, and strangled her, then burned her body. Afterward, he took his unsuspecting wife out to dinner at an Olive Garden and gave her as a gift a ring stolen from Melendi. It took a decade for authorities to figure out what happened and convict Hinton. *Correction and update: Thanks to reader Chi for the correction notice. This inmate is actually up for a parole review in 2018. Shannon Melendi’s family has started a petition asking for Hinton’s parole request to be denied. March 2020 update: No parole for Hinton. He’s still in Hays State Prison (thanks to reader Marcus for writing in with the good news).
That’s all for this post. Until next week, cheers. — RR
Or Maybe a Railroaded Victim
(“Chief Suspect,” Forensic Files)
This week, it’s back to Forensic Files with one of the more perplexing episodes in the series.
Jim and Vickie Barton as a youngish couple
The evidence used to convict Jim Barton for his alleged role in a home invasion that left his wife dead seemed shaky. And unlike other accused Forensic Files spouse killers, Barton was something of a sympathetic character.
While his alleged crime was highly inadvisable, it didn’t carry much in the way of malice — if he really did it, that is. A jury thought so, and convicted him in 2005.
Eye on the prize. I checked into an epilogue for the 6-foot-5-inch former lawman, but first here’s a recap of the episode, “Chief Suspect,” along with additional information from internet research and insights from YouTube commenters.
Jim Barton was a well-liked lieutenant with the Springboro, Ohio, police department. His wife, Vickie, worked as a nurse supervisor at Sycamore Hospital.
The couple met through their love of riding and lived on a horse farm called Locust Knoll in Franklin Township, outside of Springboro. By all reports, Jim and Vickie had a happy marriage.
By the time he was around 40, Jim allegedly was aiming to win the top job of police chief, but that position would usually go to someone who resided within the city limits.
Horrific scene. On April 11, 1995, he called 911 to report finding his wife on the floor. She was undressed, not breathing, and had three bullet wounds to the head from a .22 caliber.
Someone had ransacked the household’s gun collection but didn’t steal anything.
Vickie Barton taught at Kettering College of Medical Arts in Ohio
The crime shocked the small community, and police geared up for a thorough investigation. But they found no suspects and no helpful evidence.
The case went cold for a few years, until police arrested a local career criminal named Gary Henson over an unrelated burglary. Henson said he knew something about the Vickie Barton homicide.
Suicide adds intrigue. His half-brother, William Phelps, was paid $3,000 by Jim Barton to rob his home in order to scare Vickie so that she’d agree to move away from their rural property and into the city of Springboro, Henson contended.
But Phelps went off the rails and raped and murdered Vickie, said Henson, who also told police that the original plan was for Henson himself to go along on the robbery but that he was in jail then.
Phelps committed suicide just weeks after the murder. (Henson later changed his story, testifying that Phelps had an accomplice, and the accomplice was the one who assaulted and killed Vickie.)
The revelations were more than enough reason for a cold case squad to reopen the investigation in 2003.
Detectives listened to Jim Barton’s 911 tape for any hints pertaining to a robbery-for-hire, and came up with a lot of what it considered red flags.
Tale of the tape. First, the detectives noted that Barton referred to the killers in the plural, evidence that he knew that two people committed the crime, they theorized. But as a YouTube commenter noted:
Susan Adams7 months ago “They” could be said because you don’t know if the person who committed the crime was man, woman, one person or several. Saying “they” shouldn’t have [raised] red flags.
Detectives also interpreted noise on the tape as the sounds of Barton moving objects around, possibly tampering with evidence.
Gary Henson
But the offending noise, which the episode broadcast, sounded rather nonspecific. It could have been the house’s HVAC system or a breeze through a window.
In an interview for “Scared to Death,” a 20/20 episode about the Barton case, Jim Barton said that he looked around the house in case an assailant was still on the scene. Perhaps that accounted for some of the noise on the 911 tape.
Jumping to conclusions. Also, the theory about the attack as a scare tactic seemed a little far-fetched.
Before voting for conviction, I’d want to hear something along the lines of a secret recording of Barton admitting to the crime. No evidence like that existed. As another commenter wrote:
Sam Rod1 year ago (edited) “hmm, the evidence was terrible in convicting this guy. this was a long reach for the prosecution.“
And on the subject of long reaches, one of the prosecution’s witnesses (presumably Henson) was hypnotized in order to extract information from him, said Barton defense lawyer Jon Paul Rion.
According to the 20/20 episode, in his earliest police interviews, Henson didn’t mention a robbery-for-hire plan; he added that part of the story later.
Henson sounded like a none-too-reliable witness all in all.
A CBS story published on truthinjustice.com reported that Vickie’s friends considered the frighten-into-relocating theory a stretch as well: “It would have challenged her to be more aggressive in protecting their farm,” Vickie’s girlfriend Darlene Bisgaard told CBS.
Here’s the part that really made me lose respect for the methodology of the investigation:
Jim Barton in custody
Hokey experiment. On the 911 tape, Barton said, “I gotta call [unintelligible word that sounded like ‘felp’], man.” Prosecutors asserted the garbled word was “Phelps” — thereby proving that Barton was in cahoots with Henson’s half-brother, William Phelps.
Barton maintained that he said “help” as in “I gotta call for help.”
To prove otherwise, the prosecution brought in Robert Fox, an Ohio State University linguistic and acoustic-phonic expert.
“To eliminate any potential bias,” narrator Peter Thomas explained, the professor was given only two choices: Was the word “help” or “Phelps”?
But why even give him suggestions? They should have simply let him interpret the word in question instead of prejudicing him.
Fox concluded that Barton said “Phelps” despite what seemed like a lack of a final “s” sound on the tape.
Failed second marriage. And there were other weak revelations as well. Barton’s second wife, Mary Ann Lacy, said that he sometimes spent time alone in their darkened basement, which investigators translated into evidence of guilt.
But Barton had married Lacy, who was Vickie’s best friend, only 15 months after the murder, and he may have still had sorrow to process. It didn’t make him guilty of anything. Or as an online commenter put it:
Dan Kirchner1 year ago (edited) “so the 2nd wife dumped him for spending alone time in the basement?? wtf? its called a mancave these days, right?”
Another piece of new evidence the prosecutors seized upon: A waitress named Barb Palmer suddenly remembered that, 10 years earlier, she had seen Jim Barton and William Phelps eating together at a local diner called Mom’s Restaurant.
Unless they left her a $100 tip, how could she recall them after all that time?
DNA taken from the crime scene didn’t match that of Gary Henson or William Phelps (authorities exhumed his body to get a sample).
Credit undeserved. But members of the jury apparently harbored few doubts. They convicted Barton of complicity to commit manslaughter. On April 15, 2005, he received a sentence of 15 to 50 years at the Southeastern Correctional Institution in Lancaster.
“Had it not been for the forensic analysis of Jim’s 911 call, the case might never have been solved,” narrator Peter Thomas concludes. But as another commenter noted:
Babalwa Brook2 years ago “I love how they are crediting forensics for solving this case when it clearly was the informant who brought up Phelps and the waitress who confirmed that dude knew Phelps smh”
The Forensic Files episode left off in 2006, but more has happened since then.
Barton wins a round. In 2015, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that authorities improperly withheld evidence about a break-in that happened in another rural home in Warren County, where the Bartons lived.
Vickie Barton’s mother, Mary Jane Siebert (right), testified for the defense. She is shown with Elaine Barton, who married Jim in 2003.
The panel of judges also said that the state’s case hinged on “unsupported, shifting and somewhat fantastical” witness testimony (presumably referring to Henson’s assertions).
In March 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to reinstate Barton’s conviction, meaning Ohio authorities would have to give him a second trial or set him free.
The following month, Jim’s third wife, Elaine Geswein Barton, put up $350,000 in bail, and he exited prison.
In September 2016, Barton avoided a new trial by entering an Alford plea, whereby the accused maintains his innocence while admitting that enough evidence exists to convict him.
Who knows? Of course, maybe Barton really did cause his wife’s death via the Fargo-like plot that Henson related. The time Barton served behind razor wire seems like adequate punishment for a crime of that nature.
From the evidence shown on Forensic Files and detailed in newspaper stories, however, his chance of being guilty seems around 50 percent. As a juror, I’d want to be 99 percent sure before convicting.
That’s all for this post. Until next week, cheers. — RR
A Murdered Dad, a Broken Teen (“Shattered Innocence,” Forensic Files)
If there’s a Fredo Corleone of Forensic Files, it’s Brian Vaughn. He betrayed a family member, then incriminated himself by blurting out a few words.
Brian Vaughn at 16
Not that the 16-year-old Texan had formulated anything close to a foolproof plan for getting away with his father’s murder in the first place.
Own worst enemy. Investigators picked apart his story in weeks, issuing an arrest warrant two months after the shooting of San Antonio trial lawyer Leslie Vaughn, murdered in bed at home.
But it was the student-athlete’s own inadvertent admission to a 911 operator that guaranteed he’d end up in a jail cell rather than a dorm room.
“Shattered Innocence,” the episode about the November 10, 1998, crime, doesn’t make anyone want to see Brian get away with murder, but it’s still excruciating to hear his unforced error.
The story is also a bittersweet reminder of how small disadvantages feel like the end of the world to a teenager.
Shiny, shiny. Here’s a recap of the episode along with additional information from internet research.
Brian Vaughn was born on May 20, 1982, to Madeline Vaughn, a registered nurse, and Leslie Vaughn, who the San Antonio Express-News described as a respected professional “who sometimes posted bonds for clients out of his own pocket.”
Brian played basketball well enough to make an athletic scholarship a possibility.
Madeline and Leslie Vaughn
But in 1998, he was wishing for an off-court score: a brand-new car. His used auto was cramping his style.
After his father refused to buy him a new one, the old car conveniently caught on fire. It looked like arson, but no charges were filed.
Leslie Vaughn then agreed to replace the burned-out vehicle with another used one. He and Brian had an argument about it at a car dealership on November 10, 1998.
Concerned older brother. Brian and his father left without making a purchase. Later at home, Chris, Brian’s 12-year-old brother, overheard Brian threaten to quit the basketball team if he didn’t get a new car.
That night, at 1:24 a.m., Brian took Chris to the neighbors’ house. Brian explained to Mr. and Mrs. Floyd that he had called 911 after hearing what sounded like an intruder. He wanted to make sure his brother was safely off the premises while he waited for the police.
On the 911 call, Brian said he heard a gunshot coming from his father’s bedroom, but he couldn’t get in to check on him because the door was locked.
When Deputy Edward Olivares broke down the door, he found Leslie Vaughn, age 44, lying in bed with a gunshot wound to the back of his head. A 10-pound piece of limestone lay on the floor; it had created a conveniently tall hole in the French doors leading to the balcony off the bedroom.
The Vaughns’ balcony
Noxious glass. Brian apparently wanted authorities to think that an unknown intruder had climbed onto the balcony, thrown the rock through the glass, shot his father, and exited the same way he came.
His mother was working the night shift at Methodist Heart Hospital, so Brian didn’t have to worry that detectives would suspect her.
It was he who became the No. 1 suspect early on. Investigators saw evidence that contradicted Brian’s narrative. There was broken glass on top of Leslie’s body, suggesting that he slept through the break-in — an unlikely scenario.
This was no burglary. And more glass shards lay on the rug in the hallway outside the master bedroom door. The fragments created a trail to the bathroom. How did it get there if the assailant came and left via the balcony?
Also, Brian had waited 25 minutes in between leaving the Floyds’ house and phoning emergency services, giving him time to shoot Leslie and stage the scene.
Nothing was stolen from the bedroom.
And the bedroom door handle looked rather flimsy. As a couple of online YouTube commenters put it:
• Indy Castleton If my dad was shot I wouldn’t let a locked door prevent me from going inside that’s for sure. • Jocelyn Vernon: I agree if that would of been my parent no door would stop me from getting in the room!!!!
Seeking a scapegoat. Investigators theorized that after dropping off Chris, Brian used his father’s own 9-millimeter Smith & Wesson to shoot him as he slept, then stepped onto the balcony, hurled the rock through the glass, exited through the bedroom door, locked it on the way out, inadvertently tracked shards to the bathroom, washed the gunshot residue from his hands, and called 911.
Brian insisted an unseen intruder was responsible; perhaps one of his dad’s unsavory clients had a grudge.
Leslie Vaughn, who started out as an assistant district attorney for Bexar County and later went into private practice, had defended drug dealers, organized crime figures, and other rough characters.
“My father was a strong man,” Brian told an AP reporter. “He would stand up to anybody, no matter what. I think that’s what happened to him.”
It was a nice try, but not enough, especially once investigators took the time to listen to the entire 911 tape.
Final nail. After giving his locked-bedroom-door-can’t-get-in spiel, Brian said that his father was “bleeding from the mouth area.”
“OK, so how do you know he’s bleeding from the mouth area?” the operator asked.
There was no walking back on that one.
According to court documents, Brian told the Floyds that his father was not moving or breathing, which confused them because he had also told them he couldn’t enter the bedroom.
Anguish: Brian Vaughn during his murder trial
The Floyds noted that Brian was wearing a different shirt when he came back to pick up Chris.
Low-profile release? A jury convicted Brian Vaughn in 1999. “Oh, God, no. I can’t lose them both,” his mother cried out upon hearing the verdict, according to an AP account.
A judge sentenced Brian to 33 years in the Institutional Division of the Texas Department of Corrections. Brian served time at the Hamilton Unit in Bryan, Texas, as well as the Ramsey I prison.
As of 2016, he was still incarcerated, according to Inside Prison.
It always seemed a little unfair that the court tried him as an adult when he committed the murder for a child’s reasons. Also, it sounded as though he did so in a fit of anger rather than out of diabolical blood lust.
He became eligible for parole in 2017 — and it looks as though he won it. Inmate lookup websites for Texas have no listing for a Brian Leslie Vaughn anymore.
What could have been. I searched online for any media coverage related to his release, but nothing turned up. Brian would be 35 today, not old, but past his prime in his sport.
“He was a good athlete,” Bexar County Homicide Detective Al Damiani said in his interview with Forensic Files. “He could have played basketball in college and had the time of his life.”
Perhaps, unlike Michael Corleone, Brian’s younger brother will be forgiving and the two of them, along with their mother, can be a family again.
That’s all for this post. Until next week, cheers. — RR
A Nice Woman Marries a Bad Hombre (“All The World’s a Stage,” Forensic Files)
On the outrageous meter, Ted MacArthur’s explanation for his wife’s death would pretty much make the needle fly out of the machine.
Pilar Sones MacArthur
A detective for the Miami-Dade police force, MacArthur, 38, told the authorities that just for fun, he woke up Pilar MacArthur by squirting her with a water gun on the morning of August 1, 1989.
Sympathetic victim. That’s the relatively believable part. Here’s where he really pushed it. He said that Pilar, who was a corrections officer with firearms training, reacted by playfully putting a real gun up to her own head and pulling the trigger as a joke.
Pilar, 35, thought she had unloaded the weapon, he explained, but she had mistakenly left in one bullet and given herself a fatal wound on the left side of her skull.
Putting aside the insult to our intelligence, “All the World’s a Stage” is a sad and touching episode of Forensic Files.
Pilar MacArthur’s sister, Carmen Barraford, and a good friend, Jenny Alvarez, appear on camera, and they both seem like such sweet, mild souls. But just the same, they rip apart Ted McArthur’s credibility.
European background. Alvarez said that Pilar had found out Ted was cheating on her and she was giving herself a makeover in hopes of winning back the father of her two children.
For this week, I poked around to find out where Ted MacArthur is today and whether he’s still peddling the same story that paints his late wife as reckless and foolhardy.
But first, here’s a recap of the episode plus some additional facts drawn from internet research.
Pilar and Ted MacArthur
Pilar Sones was born in Valencia, Spain, the daughter of a fisherman and a maid. The family moved to Paris, France, where her parents secured better-paying jobs.
Following her older sister, Pilar moved to Boston. She worked as a nanny at first.
Slippery guy. Something or other drew the dark and striking Pilar to Theodore MacArthur, then a motorcycle policeman who was living in his mother’s basement.
Pilar didn’t know that Ted was still married to his first wife, Betty Lou Williams, and had a child, according to the book Cracking Cases: The Science of Solving Crimes by Dr. Henry Lee with Thomas O’Neil (Prometheus Books).
Days after Ted’s divorce came through, he married Pilar. They moved to Miami, where she began a career with the prisons system, and he worked his way up to homicide detective.
It was in that capacity that he met and began an affair with a Miami Herald crime reporter. Their romance put a strain on the MacArthur family’s budget.
Bath ploy. At first, Pilar’s efforts to keep her marriage together seemed successful. Ted said he that was just going through a midlife crisis, claimed he broke off his affair, and offered up a lie — that he would buy Pilar a new house and new car.
It’s not clear why Pilar believed him. According to Alvarez, Pilar was concerned that Ted was already “spending money faster than they could make it.”
Another part of Ted’s atonement consisted of doing nice little things for Pilar, like the time he drew her a relaxing bath, lit candles, and placed a powered-on TV on a ledge near the tub so she could watch her favorite shows.
Once she was in the tub, he caught his foot on a wire and sent the TV plunging toward the bathwater.
Tampa Bay Times item from February 1, 1994
Colleagues suspicious. Fortunately, Pilar wasn’t electrocuted. She accepted his excuse that it was an accident. She had no reason to believe her husband would kill her; they had two sons together.
Just a few days after that mishap, Ted called 911 to report that Pilar had shot herself by accident. As a detective, Ted surely knew an investigation would take place. But, overestimating the strength of his reputation, he thought it would be an open and shut matter.
Lead detective Donald Slovonic, however, planned to make the investigation thorough and in-depth. “Most of the people that I spoke with didn’t share a good impression of him,” Slovonic later recalled.
According to Lee’s book:
Sergeant David Rivers, one of MacArthur’s colleagues and a veteran detective with an excellent reputation, later commented, “It was unspoken, but from the first day, there were sidelong glances across the office. We knew he did it.”
The case against Ted MacArthur congealed once the forensic evidence started rolling in. Pilar had no high-velocity blood splatter on her alleged trigger hand, and her fingerprints weren’t on the gun.
Story dissolves. Lee noted that the amount and condition of Pilar’s blood on the bed contradicted Ted’s contention that he immediately moved her body to the floor to begin CPR.
A ballistics expert determined that the fatal gun wound was in the wrong place on Pilar’s head to support Ted’s story about how she shot herself — that the right-handed woman aimed at the left side of her own head.
How did an experienced homicide detective like Ted MacArthur orchestrate his own crime so poorly?
Pilar as a bride
“It’s kind of like the doctor who tells his patients to give up cigarettes but smokes himself,” remarked Slovonic during an appearance on a 2016 Dr. Drew episode that looked back on the case.
Justice delayed. Or maybe it’s more like the way professional hair stylists tend to do a better job on their clients’ hair than on their own.
Whatever the case, Ted’s motivation was rather obvious: A new, $250,000 life insurance policy he took out on Pilar a few weeks before her death would bring his total payout to $470,000.
Investigators theorized Ted shot his wife while she was sleeping and then staged the scene.
The trial started four years after the shooting, on October 24, 1993. By this time, Ted’s newspaper-reporter girlfriend, Joan Kite, had already moved in with him, moved out after a fight during which he allegedly threatened her with a knife, and offered to testify for the prosecution, according to Lee.
Courtside boast. Dade County assistant state attorney Susan Dannelly prosecuted the case, during which MacArthur remained notably calm. He had testified at numerous trials over his career, so perhaps his own didn’t rattle him. According to Lee:
MacArthur was supremely confident of his acquittal and even held a news conference predicting this outcome and promising legal action against his accusers.
The jury delivered its verdict on December 8, 1993, after nine hours of deliberation: guilty of first-degree murder. A round of applause broke out in the courtroom.
Ted then began his life as prisoner #123207 with the Florida Department of Corrections. But it wasn’t the last time his name surfaced in a legal action.
History of lying. In 2002, MacArthur’s dubious record came up during a battle over whether a drug-related murder conviction against a criminal named Rolando Garcia should be overturned because MacArthur had worked for the prosecution.
Miami-Dade Assistant Public Defender Christina Spaulding cited the discovery of MacArthur’s dishonesty as one reason to review the Garcia case.
A Sun Sentinel story about the Garcia case mentioned that MacArthur was known to use the phrase, “A lie is as good as the truth if someone believes it.”
MacArthur circa 2017
In regard to his own murder conviction, MacArthur, 65, is still maintaining his innocence — and that his late wife, who spoke three languages fluently, didn’t know enough not to play with guns.
Different kind of ink. He resides in the SFRC South Unit prison in Doral. At 5’10” and 250 pounds, he is presumably finding prison fare appetizing. (Update: A 2018 revision of the Florida Department of Corrections website indicates he’s lost height and weight, at 5’9″ and 224 pounds.)
According to his inmate profile, MacArthur has acquired a number of intricate tattoos, including one that says “Pilar.”
That’s all for this post. Until next week, cheers. — RR
And an Even Worse Husband (“Bad Medicine,” Forensic Files)
The Forensic Files episode about Dr. Anthony Pignataro isn’t in heavy rotation on TV, so you may not have caught it multiple times.
Debbie and Anthony Pignataro in better days
But really, all one needs is a single viewing to remember it forever.
“Bad Medicine” tells of how a cosmetic surgeon accidentally kills a patient, then deliberately poisons his wife.
Overconfident. And here’s the part that’s pretty much impossible to forget.
Years before his crimes, Anthony Pignataro made a name for himself as the inventor of the snap-on toupee, which attaches to a man’s head via bolts surgically implanted in the skull.
Pignataro started losing his hair at age 23 and was his own first customer.
I’m not sure whether it was the hairpiece or not, but Pignataro thought an awful lot of himself. Once he opened his own plastic surgery facility, he didn’t see the need to hire an anesthesiologist or a qualified nurse to help him.
Those deficiencies eventually led to prison time and the loss of Pignataro’s livelihood. For this week’s post, I looked around to see what Pignataro, who was released in 2013, is doing today.
The house the Pignataros shared in West Seneca
Summer love. But first, here’s a recap of the episode, along with other information culled from internet research as well as Ann Rule’s book about the case, Last Dance, Last Chance.
Deborah Rago, born in 1957, came from a financially strained family in Williamsville, New York.
In 1978, when Debbie was working as a pharmacy technician, she met Lehigh University student Anthony Pignataro, who Rule described as almost 6 feet tall with classic, balanced features.
One night, they fell in love on the dance floor to the Donna Summer hit “Last Dance.”
Anthony was the son of Ralph Pignataro, a respected surgeon in Buffalo, New York. He wanted to follow his father into the profession. The mainland U.S. medical schools Anthony applied to rejected him, so he enrolled at the San Juan Bautista School of Medicine in Puerto Rico.
None-too-impressive. Debbie waited for him to finish, and they finally married in 1985. Within the first year, a concerned party tipped her off that Anthony was cheating on her.
She took her father’s advice to “forgive once” and decided that Anthony deserved another chance.
The professionals at the hospitals where the young surgeon worked, on the other hand, didn’t think the guy merited any chance as a physician.
They figured out pretty quickly that the arrogant doctor in their midst had some scary gaps in his knowledge.
But incompetent people rarely get kicked out of their fields right away.
Pignataro eventually opened his own plastic surgery practice in the Buffalo suburb of West Seneca, New York.
He made a fortune doing breast implants and other cosmetic procedures.
Moneybags. To widen his profit margin, Pignataro skimped on overhead costs. He hired a licensed practical nurse (instead of a registered nurse) and a high school student to assist him during procedures.
Victim Sarah Smith
The Pignataros had a son and daughter by this time and lived in a big house in West Seneca. Anthony and his toupee cruised around in a red Lamborghini.
Meanwhile, he made some bad surgical mistakes. After performing an abdominoplasty on a patient named Teri LaMarti, he allegedly left her with open bleeding wounds, then yelled at her when she complained.
But back in those pre-Yelp days, word didn’t get around fast enough, and the practice continued to thrive until tragedy struck.
Utter fraud. In 1996, a 26-year-old mother of two from Depew, New York, stopped breathing during a breast augmentation operation. Pignataro’s facility didn’t have a ventilator, and Sarah Smith died.
The investigation that followed laid bare the incompetence of Anthony Pignataro for all the world to see.
It turned out that he wasn’t a board certified plastic surgeon or even a qualified plastic surgeon. He hadn’t administered Sarah Smith’s anesthetic properly. The New York state health board ended up charging him with 30 counts of professional misconduct.
Anthony pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide and received six months in jail, a $5,000 fine, and community service. He lost his medical license. Judge Ronald H. Tills noted that Pignataro would “never practice medicine again — anywhere in the world.”
And there wasn’t any fancy legal footwork to delay jail time. The judge had Pignataro taken directly from the court room to a prison cell, while Debbie Pignataro “sobbed in the back row,” according to a 1998 AP story.
Loyal wife. After his release, Anthony had trouble finding another job, but Debbie stood by him. His well-to-do mother, Lena Pignataro, helped out the family financially.
Anthony had another affair, and Debbie took him back again.
But soon, emotional anguish was the least of her problems.
In 1999, Debbie started feeling ill with nausea and numbness of the limbs. She had severe pain elsewhere. The symptoms came and went. When they were bad, she had to stay in bed.
Debbie Pignataro in an appearance circa 2004
Debbie began having memory loss and needed to use a wheelchair at times.
Anthony told her the answer was to have her gall bladder removed, but her doctors vetoed that plan; they said surgery would kill her in her weakened state.
Finally, one of her doctors did a hair test and found Debbie had consumed 29,580 milligrams of arsenic.
Convoluted idea. Anthony suggested that the family of Sarah Smith, the patient who died, was poisoning Debbie to punish him. But the arsenic was traced to some ant insecticide the good doctor had purchased himself.
He was sneaking arsenic into his wife’s food, investigators determined.
The prosecution found evidence suggesting that Anthony hoped the arsenic poisoning would cause Debbie to die during surgery so that the medical establishment would see it was normal for operations to kill people sometimes — and he would thus be absolved for Sarah Smith’s death.
Anthony Pignataro ended up pleading guilty to charges related to the arsenic poisoning. Judge Mario J. Rossetti labeled the former surgeon’s life “a charade of misrepresentation,” called him self-centered and manipulative, and said he showed “disrespect for the value of human life.”
Rossetti gave him 15 years.
Despite his guilty plea, Anthony at various times claimed that Debbie Pignataro poisoned herself in a suicide bid, an idea ridiculed by Erie County District Attorney Frank Sedita.
Back at it. Debbie, who appeared on Forensic Files, remarked without bitterness that a) she would never harm herself and b) her ex-husband should be forced to ingest arsenic himself.
She has also stated that her former spouse will never take responsibility for attempting to kill her.
But universal disdain and a second stint behind razor wire couldn’t crush Pignataro’s ego. Not long after his release in 2013, he returned to the Buffalo area, changed his name to Tony Haute, and opened a business called Tony Haute Cosmetique LLC.
The company sold a line of skin-care creams formulated from “one’s own DNA-derived plasma.” His website referred to him as a doctor.
Log off, dude. The Erie County District Attorney subsequently opened a criminal investigation into Pignataro’s new venture, and the ex-convict ended up taking down his website, according to a Buffalo station WKBW story by Charlie Specht in 2017.
Pignataro responded to WKBW’s report by stating that he changed his name in an effort to make a new start. He apologized to his ex-wife and the Smith family, although he didn’t make any specific admissions about his guilt. Pignataro also said that he works as a delivery driver.
I didn’t have any luck finding out how Debbie Pignataro is faring with the aftereffects of the poisoning today. I didn’t look too hard because she already cooperated with Forensic Files and Ann Rule and probably prefers privacy at this point.
Anthony Pignataro in a recent incarnation
The show stated that much of the damage to Debbie’s health is irreversible. On the bright side, the book said that she has found nice people to help her in her daily life.
Her former husband will probably reinvent himself as something or other, but let’s hope the only person he’ll ever incapacitate is himself.
That’s all for this post. Until next week, cheers. — RR
Update: Pignataro’s e-tail skin care site was back up as of February 2018 and included an imitation version of the classic medical logo of two serpents wrapped around a staff. Thanks much to reader Sean K. for discovering it and sending the link. Update to the update: The site was down again as of July 2018, but you can still see the content via a link to the archived site. Many thanks to reader LC for finding and sending it. New update: Pignataro is now in Florida, advertising himself as a geriatric-care giver. Many thanks to reader Rosemarie for sending in the link.
Nightmare in Phoenix (“Walking Terror,” Forensic Files)
If you’re looking for a story about a wholesome nuclear family no one ever imagined could harbor a murderer, the “Walking Terror” episode of Forensic Files should hit the spot.
Scott Falater on trial
Scott Falater and Yarmila Klesken started dating in high school and wed in 1976. She loved him enough to adopt a surname that sounds like a brothel-worker classification.
Scott, a Motorola engineer, and Yarmila, a preschool teaching aide, had a son and a daughter, a golden retriever, and a comfortable house in Phoenix, Arizona.
No secrets. The family made few ripples until Scott stabbed Yarmila 44 times with a hunting knife and drowned her in their backyard pool on January 16, 1997.
Normally, after a commercial or two in a Forensic Files story such as this, we learn about the administrative assistant the husband has been secretly romancing or the hidden financial problems in the family and the life insurance jackpot the surviving spouse hoped to receive.
But “Walking Terror” offers up none of that. The only conflicts between the two allegedly stemmed from the fact that he wanted more children and she felt he spent too much time on church activities — hardly the kind of stuff that boils over into homicide.
Call in the pros. Instead, we find out that Scott had a history of sleepwalking. He claimed that he was sleepwalking when he killed Yarmila and had no memory of the incident.
Scott’s sister, Laura, had once tried to wake him up during a sleepwalking episode when he was a teenager, she said, and he reacted by flinging her across the room.
Yarmila Falater’s murder case ended up hinging upon the testimony from sleep-disorder experts as well as a neighbor who saw the attack.
If Scott could prove he was sleepwalking when he killed his wife, he could escape legal responsibility and glide out of the courtroom a free man.
Aye said the jury. In its own way, Falater’s defense made some sense. There was no evidence of prior spousal battery or any waking physical abuse toward anyone.
Still, I found myself rooting for the expert witnesses who doubted Scott’s story. Someone had to pay for the horrible death.
And if a person is capable of killing someone while sleepwalking, maybe that individual belongs behind razor wire, period.
The hunting knife Falater used during the attack
That didn’t matter, however, because the jury rejected the theory that Scott Falater was sleepwalking during the attack and found him guilty of premeditated murder.
For this week’s post, I looked around for an epilogue for him.
But first a recap of the Forensic Files episode along with additional facts from internet research.
Blackout. On a chilly night in 1997, Phoenix resident Greg Coons heard screams coming from his next-door neighbor’s house. Peering over the fence between the properties, Coons saw Scott Falater, age 41, repeatedly stab his wife, also 41, in the backyard, then go inside to change clothes.
Next, Scott tried to quiet his agitated dog and then rolled Yarmila into the swimming pool and held her head underwater. He sealed his knife and bloody clothes in a Tupperware container and deposited it in the wheel well of his Volvo.
By this time, Coons had alerted police, who arrived on the scene and took Scott away in handcuffs. During the subsequent interrogation, Scott told detective John Norman he had no memory of what he had done and that he and Yarmila had a happy marriage.
He remembered Yarmila watching ER on TV when he went to bed that night, and the next thing he recalled was the sound of police sirens in his driveway, he said. “I heard the dogs go crazy, and I heard all the voices, came down, and you guys were all over me. God,” Scott told Norman.
Clash of the experts. During the ensuing investigation, the authorities indulged Scott’s sleepwalking contention by sending him to the Sleep Disorders Service and Research Center, where experts studied his brain waves over a four-day period and found abnormalities consistent with those of sleepwalkers.
Yarmila Falater
Scott Falater had interruptions in his phases of sleep right before the dreaming stage, typical of sleepwalkers.
Psychologist Rosalind Cartwright, who testified for the defense, told Forensic Files that sleepwalkers have committed such senseless acts as destroying their own furniture or plunging their own arms through panes of glass.
The kindly mannered Cartwright believed in Scott’s innocence. Her theory was that Scott, while sleepwalking, was working to fix a malfunctioning swimming pool pump, when Yarmila walked over to question him about it. His fight or flight impulse kicked in and he attacked her, Cartwright suggested.
Why did he feel threatened by his own wife? Sleepwalkers are incapable of facial recognition during episodes, Cartwright said. Scott mistook Yarmila for an attacker, she believed.
Memory bank. County prosecutor Juan Martinez mocked the credentials of Cartwright and the defense’s other sleep expert, Robert Broughton.
Their résumés “are nothing but steps to their shrines of self-indulgence,” Martinez told the jury. He also pointed out that Broughton’s and Falater’s explanation differed about stashing the clothes in the car.
Broughton said it was a routine task because Falater kept clothes in his car to wear for yard work, but Falater said they were there for emergencies.
Martinez called on sleep-disorder expert Mark Pressman, M.D., who testified that Yarmila’s screams of pain and the dog’s barking would have awakened a sleepwalker.
Pressman also asserted that a sleepwalker can’t create new memories during an episode. Scott’s recognition of the need to conceal the bloody evidence meant that he knew what he was doing all along, Pressman testified.
Martinez theorized that Scott planned to kill Yarmila, go back to bed, and allow his children to find her body the next morning and think a random stranger had murdered her.
During the six-week trial, the prosecutors also contended that the Falater marriage wasn’t all hearts and flowers and noted that Yarmila wasn’t wearing her wedding ring when police found her body.
Backup excuse. Perhaps, the prosecution ventured, Scott knew about the 1987 case of a Canadian man named Ken Parks who was acquitted of killing his mother-in-law because, he claimed, he did it unintentionally while sleepwalking.
Maybe Scott planned to use a sleepwalking defense as a backup plan in case the unknown-attacker ploy failed.
The Falaters in happier times
Martinez, who newspaper reporter Paul Rubin described as having the “demeanor of an adrenalized boxer,” hammered Scott Falater’s contention that stress at work contributed to his alleged frazzled sleepwalking state on the night of the killing.
According to Rubin’s Phoenix New Times article: “Falater testified that Yarmila was the only person he’d told about his sleep deprivation. ‘And she can’t come in and testify, can she?’ Martinez snapped at him.”
Jurors convicted Scott after eight hours of deliberation. “It’s not over yet,” Scott announced as he left the courtroom, according to a New York Post story entitled “Wide-Awake Jury Nails ‘Sleepwalking’ Wife Killer.”
Scott also expressed remorse, as reported by the Associated Press:
“I have no memory of what happened. The one thing I do know is that I loved my wife. . . . I’ve tortured myself a hundred times with thoughts of what must have been going through her [Yarmila’s] mind as she was being attacked by me. It had to have been a terrifying, confusing, and painful experience for her.”
At least he didn’t try to blame the victim.
Mother-in-law speaks. Megan, the Falaters’ 18-year-old daughter, who was a freshman at the University of Chicago, and Michael, their 15-year-old son, both testified that Scott was a great father and they wanted to continue their relationship with him.
Yarmila’s mother (also named Yarmila) told the judge she wanted her grandchildren to have Scott in their lives, albeit with him in a jail cell.
Noting the children’s testimony that the Falaters had a happy marriage free of violence, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Ronald Reinstein declined to impose the death penalty and instead sentenced Scott to life with no possibility of parole.
While reaffirming his belief in Scott’s innocence, defense lawyer Mike Kimerer conceded the sleepwalking contention presented a challenge. “You would love to have a much different defense,” Kimerer said. “We didn’t have anything else.”
Martinez went on to prosecute Jodi Arias in 2015
Single white male. Today, Scott Falater is inmate No. 148979 in the Arizona Department of Corrections system.
Aside from one incident in 2004, when he “disobeyed an order,” Scott has behaved himself in prison. His work assignments have included teacher’s aide, library aide, and data entry clerk.
One online commenter joked that Scott’s last name could make him very popular in jail. Just the same, for everyone’s safety, let’s hope the warden has him sleeping alone, in a locked cell.
That’s all for this post. Until next week, cheers. — RR
This Abomination Will Live On (“Mistaken for Dead,” Forensic Files)
With any crime that involves a lot of money and at least one commercially attractive offender, you can pretty much count on a TV movie and a book or two.
Captured: John Hawkins in police custody in 1991
The last blog post mapped out a timeline for the murder-insurance fraud fiasco perpetrated by two entrepreneurs and a neurologist in 1988. The post before that one offered a cheat sheet listing the cast of characters.
For this week, I compiled a list of the various shows and books about the case. But first, a superquick summary of the crime for readers new to the sordid mess.
The story starts in Columbus, Ohio, where a young con man named John Hawkins and his middle-aged lover, Gene Hanson, opened a store selling colorful workout clothes in 1985. The business did so well that in a few years, they had 22 stores in Ohio and Kentucky.
But they had expanded too fast, overbought, and probably spent too much on TV commercials, which starred the nubile Hawkins decked out in the likes of a lemon-yellow tank top paired with periwinkle-blue shorts.
With the business on the edge of bankruptcy by 1988, the duo decided to fake Hanson’s death and try to cash in on his $1.5 million in life insurance.
A Just Sweats store in the chain’s juggernaut days
Neurologist Richard Boggs, a recent acquaintance from California who had money problems of his own, procured a dead body — by killing an innocent man named Ellis Greene — to pass off as Hanson.
Utter disaster followed, with authorities figuring out what happened and nabbing Hanson and Dr. Boggs fairly quickly. Hawkins escaped to Europe, triggering a three-year international manhunt. Like his pals, Hawkins ended up behind bars, but he got out on parole after 20 years.
Here are some other sources of information and entertainment related to the case (in addition to “Mistaken for Dead,” a favorite Forensic Files episode).
Books Cheating Death by Edwin Chen. This nonfiction paperback written by the reporter who covered the crime for the Los Angeles Times got a mixed review from New York Times writer Bill Kent, who described the tome as having “brief, breathless chapters” and said its “just-the-facts style of reporting is long on information but short on analysis.” (Onyx, 1992, 320 pages.)
Insured for Murder by Robin Yocum and Catherine Candisky. Written by two Columbus Dispatch reporters who followed the case from the beginning, the nonfiction hardback contains some tantalizing details about the plot. The book got decent reviews. You can check out excerpts free online before buying. (Prometheus Books, 1993, 286 pages.)
The Dirty Nasty Truth: 18 True Crime Stories to Stop Juvenile Delinquency by John Barrett Hawkins. The former Just Sweats partner, who now counts motivational speaker as part of his reinvented self, came out with his own book that “chronicles his descent from successful entrepreneur … to convicted felon.” Amazon carries the book. (Dark Planet Publishing, 2012, 192 pages.)
TV If Looks Could Kill, a TV movie starring soap opera actor Antonio Sabato Jr. as John Hawkins and Maury Chaykin (who Entourage watchers may remember in a role as a Harvey Weinstein-like movie producer) as Dr. Richard Boggs. Produced by America’s Most Wanted in 1996, it got mediocre reviews, but it sounds like fun and you can check out the 80-minute drama for free on YouTube. (Don’t wait too long. A different link that worked just a week ago has already been taken off YouTube.)
America’s Most Wanted did a great segment about the case on its regular TV show back in 1990, when John Hawkins was still on the loose. Unfortunately, the vignette isn’t on YouTube. A couple of sources gave links to the AMW episode on Lifetime and Hulu — but they no longer work. If anyone knows of a way to watch online, please leave a clue.
Killer Couples, an Oxygen Network series, features one episode about the Just Sweats case. It includes the real John Hawkins discussing the crime on camera. There’s an interesting promo on YouTube, and you supposedly can watch the episode on the Oxygen website, although it’s not clear whether it’s free.
John Hawkins circa 2012
Blood, Lies, and Alibi, a 2012 series from the Investigation Discovery Network, devotes the episode “Doctor of Death” to the Just Sweats murder. It features interviews with Columbus Dispatch reporter Catherine Candisky and legal authorities directly involved in the case. (Update: YouTube and Daily Motion links to the episode no longer work. Amazon has the show, but you have to pay, even if you belong to Prime.)
Murder by the Book, a Court TV show in which true-crime authors devote an hour to cases that intrigue them, featured the Just Sweats crime in 2006 in Episode 4 of Season 1 with writer Jonathan Kellerman. I couldn’t find any trace of the the episode on YouTube or anywhere else online, however. If anyone knows where to watch it, please share the evidence.
That’s all for this post. Until next week, cheers. — R.R.
Instead, they hooked up with Dr. Boggs in California, took the life of an innocent fourth party, and ruined all their own lives.
A number of viewers who left reader comments on the YouTube webpage for “Mistaken for Dead” — the Forensic Files episode about the case — mentioned the plot of the murder-insurance fraud case was hard to follow. So a timeline seems in order.
1970
Dr. Richard Boggs, a respected neurologist, helps create Satellite Health Systems, one of the first HMOs in the United States.
Boggs’ onetime mansion
1971 to 1976
Satellite Health Systems grows spectacularly but fails to make a profit. Dr. Boggs is millions of dollars in debt.
1977
Dr. Boggs declares bankruptcy. Friends say he is never the same afterward.
1978 Lola Boggs leaves Dr. Boggs after a marriage of more than 20 years and four children.
He moves out of the couple’s luxurious Tudor-style house in Glendale, California, and gets an apartment in West Hollywood. He begins partying with young men there.
1981
Lola Boggs takes her ex-husband to court over $33,000 in unpaid child support.
1981 to 1988
Dr. Boggs continues to spend lavishly, buying a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith II. He incurs huge debts.
He is accused of performing unnecessary surgeries on patients. Medical organizations expel him.
At some point in the 1980s, he meets the two Just Sweats entrepreneurs from Ohio: sexy high school dropout John Hawkins and middle-aged former department-store shoe buyer Melvin Eugene “Gene” Hanson.
1985
Hawkins and Hanson open their first Just Sweats store, in Columbus, Ohio. It carries a large inventory of colorful exercise clothing.
The store is a huge success.
1986
The duo open more Just Sweats for a total of 22 stores in Ohio and Kentucky. They offer such deals as Lycra bike shorts for $4.99.
Hawkins appears in TV commercials for the business and becomes “a household name across central Ohio,” according to the Columbus Dispatch.
But Hawkins and Hanson begin mismanaging the business. They start selling off the stores’ assets for cash.
At some point, the two men begin plotting a crime that will relieve them of the financial hellhole Just Sweats has become.
Hanson starts applying for life insurance. He ultimately obtains three policies totaling $1.5 million and names Hawkins sole beneficiary. The plan is to fake Hanson’s death and get their hands on the insurance money.
Richard Boggs, M.D.
They invite Dr. Boggs in on their plan. His assignment: to procure a body to pass off as Hanson’s.
1988 Meanwhile, Hawkins and Hanson do a Herculean job of hiding the financial problems at Just Sweats. As a Columbus Dispatch story stated:
“Propelled by a series of seemingly ubiquitous TV commercials — all of which featured the wavy-haired, always-smiling entrepreneur — the chain’s annual sales were approaching $10 million. Would-be franchisees were lining up, and major players in the athletic-wear industry were looking to invest.”
1988
Realizing that any prospective Just Sweats investor would require to see an audit — which they cannot allow — Hawkins and Hanson begin looking for an illicit way out.
Gene Hanson starts telling people that he has AIDS and is dying. Neither claim is true: Hanson is setting up a story to make his upcoming “death” believable.
April 9, 1988 Dr. Boggs makes his first attempt at acquiring a dead body by killing someone.
The would-be victim, a computer professional named Barry Pomeroy, complains to the Glendale police that Dr. Boggs tried to murder him by prodding him with an electric device after meeting him at a bar called The Spike and inviting him to his office for an EKG.
The district attorney declines to press charges because of a lack of corroboration. At least one source says authorities dismissed the incident as a lovers’ spat.
Also, Dr. Boggs retains some remnants of his former success: A detective who hears of Pomeroy’s claim notes that Dr. Boggs has an excellent reputation in town.
April 15, 1988
Another try: Dr. Boggs — and possibly Hanson as well — chat up a stranger named Ellis Greene and somehow entice him to Dr. Boggs’ office. The doctor tasers Greene and murders him by suffocation, then puts Gene Hanson’s driver’s license, credit card, and birth certificate in the dead man’s wallet.
April 16, 1988
Dr. Boggs calls 911 and says a longtime patient named Gene Hanson (who was in reality alive and well and hiding) died from a heart attack in his office; he tried CPR, but it was no use.
Paramedics note that rigor mortis already set in. Dr. Boggs claims he tried to call 911 earlier but the line was busy.
Late April 1988
John Hawkins jets to California, identifies Greene’s body as Hanson’s, and puts in a claim for $1 million of the insurance money.
At some point, Hawkins has “Gene Hanson’s body” cremated to destroy evidence.
In stores and online
July 1988
Farmers New World Life Insurance sends Hawkins a check for $1 million.
A few days later, a case worker at the insurance company discovers Ellis Greene’s thumbprint taken at the morgue doesn’t match Gene Hanson’s thumbprint on record at the DMV.
Two other insurers deny claims filed by Hawkins.
Hawkins panics. He withdraws $400,000 from Just Sweats accounts and flees to Amsterdam. He buys a boat so he can travel freely.
Hanson also abandons Just Sweats stores, and flees separately.
1989
Security workers at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport notice a nervous-looking man with plastic surgery scars on his face.
Suspecting he’s a drug courier, they detain the man and find he’s carrying $14,000 in cash.
Melvin Eugene Hanson
Although he gives his name as either Wolfgang von Snowden or George Soule (sources vary), he has Ellis Greene’s driver’s license. He’s also carrying a Dade County library book called How to Change Your Identity.
He is Gene Hanson. Police take him into custody.
Hanson claims he paid Dr. Boggs $50,000 to supply a corpse but had nothing to do with the murder of Ellis Greene.
1990
Dr. Boggs claims that he didn’t kill Greene; he was already dead. He also said that he only took part in the insurance fraud scheme because Hanson threatened to out him as gay.
Regardless, Dr. Boggs is convicted of murder and insurance fraud and gets a life sentence.
April 29, 1990
With John Hawkins still missing, America’s Most Wanted airs a segment about the sweatpants gang’s crime and asks for help locating him.
Oprah Winfrey has America’s Most Wanted host John Walsh on her show to discuss the manhunt.
A former girlfriend of Hawkins in Amsterdam sees the Oprah episode and offers info about his whereabouts.
August 1991
Authorities find Hawkins off the coast of Sardinia in a red catamaran named Carpe Diem. He angrily denies that he’s John Hawkins. They seize him anyway.
August 8, 1995 Gene Hanson goes to trial. He maintains that he thought Dr. Boggs was going to use a cadaver, not murder someone.
Nonetheless, a jury convicts him of murder and insurance fraud.
August 10, 1995
It’s Hawkins’ turn to go to trial. Like Hanson, he claims that Dr. Boggs was supposed to use a cadaver; the state drops the murder charge against Hawkins.
But Hawkins is found guilty of insurance fraud.
August 21, 1995
Gene Hanson receives life in prison without the possibility of parole.
October 13, 1995
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Paul G. Flynn gives John Hawkins 25 years to life — a lighter sentence than what his associates got.
2003
Dr. Boggs dies in Corcoran State Prison in California at age 69.
March 2012
Hawkins wins early release from Donovan State Prison in San Diego in part because he participated in Convicts Reaching Out to People, or CROP, a program to help teens stay out of trouble.
May 2014
A Columbus Dispatch story reveals Hawkins lives with his mother in a San Diego recreational vehicle park and continues to work with troubled young people.
John Hawkins circa 2014
In a Columbus TV station WBNS-10 interview, Hawkins says he was an arrogant youth. He admits to participating in the insurance fraud scheme but again insists no one was supposed to die.
Hawkins tears up on camera and says he’s glad to have a second chance.
2017
Hanson remains in prison at Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo, California.
That’s all for this post. True Crime Truant will be on vacation next week and back the following Thursday with a post about John Hawkins’ dubious legacy today. Until then, cheers.
Smart Pants, Foolish Men (“Mistaken for Dead,” Forensic Files)
The tale of how two sweatpants entrepreneurs and a friend used insurance fraud to bail themselves out of a financial hole was a five-star smorgasbord for any Forensic Files watcher.
The cast includes a brilliant doctor turned wicked, a two-timing male model, and a third accomplice who faked his own death and then (wait for it) got plastic surgery and hair transplants to change his identity.
“Mistaken for Dead,” the Forensic Files episode about the case, weaves a Hollywood-worthy tangled web, to be sure.
The story plays out as something of a glam precursor to the Molly and Clay Daniels debacle, except with better dental work.
Unfortunately, the sweatpants gang actually killed someone (Molly and Clay only robbed a grave).
A number of readers who commented on the “Mistaken for Dead” episode on YouTube mentioned having trouble keeping the plot and the characters straight.
So this week’s post will be a cheat sheet for the 1988 crime’s four principals:
Dr. Richard Boggs, age 55 Role: Killer and conspirator Who: Respected neurologist with a Harvard degree, a Tudor-style mansion in Glenwood, California, and an ex-wife and kids. Why: Boggs was secretly living in a financial house of cards. He needed money. Participation in crime: Lured Ellis Greene to his office, then murdered him as part of an insurance fraud plan hatched with Gene Hanson and John Hawkins.
Gene Hanson, age 46 Role: Conspirator Who: Entrepreneur who co-owned a chain of 22 Just Sweats stores in Kentucky and Ohio with his lover and business partner John Hawkins. Why: Just Sweats expanded too fast and was a financial disaster. Hanson wanted to disappear to escape responsibility for the business. He needed money. Participation in crime: Faked his own death so his cohorts could collect $1.5 million in insurance payouts to be divided among him, Boggs, Hawkins.
John Hawkins, age 25 Role: Conspirator Who: Young David Hasselhoff lookalike who co-owned Just Sweats chain. Hawkins appeared in commercials for Just Sweats before the bottom dropped out of the business. He ultimately became the object of a three-year manhunt. Why: Like Hanson, Hawkins wanted to escape the financial disaster engulfing the retail clothing chain. He needed money. Participation in crime: Served as the bagman. He was the beneficiary of Hanson’s $1.5 million in life insurance policies. After Hanson faked his own death, Hawkins flew from Ohio to California, collected $1 million from one of the policies, and vamoosed.
Ellis Greene, 32 Role: Victim Who: Friendly accountant who lived in North Hollywood, California. Why: One or two of the conspirators probably spotted Greene at a bar and realized he looked something like Hanson. Then, Dr. Boggs invited Greene to his medical office, assaulted him with a stun gun, and suffocated him. Dr. Boggs called 911 and said Greene’s dead body belonged to Hanson. That way, the three conspirators could get their hands on Hanson’s life insurance money. Participation in crime: None. He was murdered by someone he thought was a new friend.
That’s all for this week. The next post will provide a timeline of the crime. Until then, cheers. —RR
Insured for Murder by Robin Yocum and Catherine Candisky. Written by two Columbus Dispatch reporters who followed the case from the beginning, the nonfiction hardback contains some tantalizing details about the plot. The book got decent reviews. You can check out 
August 1991
Dr. Richard Boggs, age 55
Gene Hanson, age 46
John Hawkins, age 25
Ellis Greene, 32