Forensic Files Archives - Page 18 of 22

Justice for Valiree Jackson

Her Dad Was No Father of the Year
(“Bagging a Killer,” Forensic Files)

This week, it’s back to Forensic Files with an episode about how police used a low-concept ploy and a high-tech device to expose a murderer.

Valiree Jackson and a wee pal in an undated photo

Investigators compelled Brad Jackson, who killed his 9-year-old daughter, to dance a two-step familiar to Forensic Files watchers:

1) “Officer, I have no idea what happened to (fill in name).”
2) “Your Honor, I know what happened and it’s not my fault because (fill in improbable excuse).”

Police tactics that force suspects to change their stories add some wry moments to otherwise grim tales like this one.

Taken? Jackson, 34, ended up sentenced to 56 years rather than life without parole. So, for this week, I dug around a little for an epilogue for him and some of the other parties on “Bagging a Killer,” the Forensic Files episode about the case.

But first a recap of the episode, along with additional information drawn from internet research:

On October 18, 1999, Brad Jackson dialed 911 and, in an anguished voice, said he couldn’t find his daughter.

She’d been playing outside with her dog and had disappeared, with only her backpack left behind, he said.

Troubled mom. Folks from the Jacksons’ friendly neighborhood in Spokane Valley, Washington, sprang into action by searching for the flame-haired little girl and holding vigils.

Not everyone was buying Brad Jackson’s heartsick single dad routine, though. Valiree’s uncle John Stone recalled how his sister, Roseann Pleasant, had feared Jackson.

Pleasant had vanished two years after giving birth to Valiree, her daughter with Jackson. She reportedly struggled with drug problems, which Jackson blamed for her disappearance. But Stone wasn’t so sure.

Car stash. Investigators also had some suspicions about Jackson in relation to his daughter’s disappearance. He claimed that some blood stains on Valiree’s pillow came from a nosebleed she’d had the night before he reported her missing. But police hadn’t found any bloody tissues, wash cloths, cotton balls, etc., in the house.

After searching Jackson’s car and Ford pickup truck, investigators secretly outfitted each vehicle with a GPS transmitter — hot new gadgetry back in the day. A 1999 New York Times story about the case described it as a high-tech version of a bloodhound.” (Prosecutor Jack Driscoll later said “GPS” stands for “God Praise Satellites.”)

Then, as Detective David Madsen explained during his interview on Forensic Files, he warned Jackson that if Valiree lay in a shallow grave somewhere, her body would be easy to find.

Jackson fell for it.

The GPS tracked his movements as he removed his daughter’s body from its original grave, then drove to another area to bury it more deeply.

Cadaver dogs found Valiree’s body buried face down on the grounds of the second of those locations, a logging region near the town of Springdale.

Shaky defense. Investigators believe Jackson suffocated Valiree in her bed, thus the blood on her pillow, then wrapped her head in a plastic bag — similar to ones found in the home that Jackson shared with his parents and Valiree — and hastily buried her. Afterward, he returned home, called 911, and started play-acting.

In the subsequent trial, Jackson’s “not my fault” contention was that he had found Valiree dead in her bed due to a Paxil overdose (more about that in a second), panicked out of fear that people wouldn’t believe him, and then buried her.

The jury didn’t buy it.

As for a motive, apparently Valiree didn’t get along with her father’s onetime girlfriend, Dannette Schroeder. Jackson allegedly felt that, with his daughter out of the way, he could rekindle things with Schroeder.

Few friends. I’m not sure how Forensic Files narrator Peter Thomas managed to read this part without throttling the living parties involved: Taking Valiree to a psychiatrist and getting her a prescription for the psychotropic drug was Schroeder’s idea. Schroeder thought it would help make the little girl easier to contend with.

Apparently, however, Schroeder had nothing to do with the murder plot. She testified for the prosecution at Jackson’s trial.

“He’s not the B.J. that I fell in love with two years ago,” Schroeder testified. “I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t there.”

Some of Jackson’s own blood relatives spoke out against him in court.

“This is hard for me to say — I honestly believe Brad deserves what he took from Valiree, and that’s a life sentence,” said his brother, Dick Jackson, as reported by AP.

Memorial. Neighbors who fell victim to Jackson’s false alarm that an anonymous child abductor was loose in their community weren’t exactly unhappy to see him locked up either.

The Forensic Files episode closed with a view of the tree that kids from McDonald Elementary, where Valiree attended school, planted as a memorial to her. They chose a plum tree with red leaves that reminded friends of her hair.

So where are the parties today? There’s no recent information available online about Dannette Schroeder, but the Web did turn up some intelligence on others related to the case:

• Sadly, Roseann Pleasant never turned up. Her brother said he suspected Jackson killed her and buried her in a building foundation during his stint working for Haskins Steel Co. The Charley Project, an organization that profiles missing persons, maintains a page devoted to Pleasant. (Note: Some sources spell her first name “Roseanne.”)

• John Stone, Valiree’s uncle, was the most sympathetic character appearing on the Forensic Files episode. Many online commenters expressed anger that Brad Jackson didn’t simply give custody of Valiree to Stone if he wanted her out of the way. Stone launched the Valiree Jackson Charitable Foundation which, as of 2004, was mired in some legal woes.

• Lawyers for Jackson have taken issue with the legality of the police’s GPS use. On Sept 11, 2003, the state of Washington Supreme Court denied Jackson’s motion for a new trial and reaffirmed his conviction. In 2019, he lost another court action, which noted he’s incarcerated in Mayo Correctional Institution in Florida. (Thanks to reader TJ for writing in with the tip.) It’s a safe bet that this child killer will stay behind razor wire, where he can’t harm innocent people again.

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

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Dungeons & Dragons, Oh My

Scapegoating a Role-Playing Game
(“Shopping Spree,” Forensic Files)

Last week’s post discussed how a young man who loved role-playing games, most notably Dungeons & Dragons, committed homicide.

Caleb Fairley’s killing of Lisa Manderach and her baby daughter, profiled on Forensic Files episode “Shopping Spree,” allegedly arose from his obsession with finding a real-life counterpart to the type of woman whose looks were idealized in his fantasy game (or games) of choice.

For this week, I looked into whether any other superfans of Dungeons & Dragons have left murder victims in their wakes.

Disturbed adolescents. To get right to the point, the answer is yes, a few, although they go back quite a ways. In 1984, Steve and Dan Erwin, 12 and 15, died in a Colorado murder-suicide and left a note saying it was their only way to escape the game.

Three years later, Daniel Kasten murdered his parents in their Long Island home reportedly because a Dungeons & Dragons character named Mind Flayer coerced him into it.

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But even before those murders happened, Dungeons & Dragons had turned into the subject of public scrutiny because of suicides by a number of boys known to play the game.

Organized revolt. After two separate such cases, one in 1979, the other in 1982, the mother of the second young man, Irving Lee Pulling, started the group Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons, or BADD.

By 1985 — a decade before Fairley generated headlines — BADD had made Dungeons & Dragons the object of a moderate case of public hysteria.

A game that involved such supernatural elements as magic spells and curses must, the BADD folks reasoned, degenerate into real-life everyday devil worship, human self-sacrifices, etc.

Evidence existed that Pulling and the other youth who took his own life, a 16-year-old boy genius named James Dallas Egbert III, had underlying psychological problems, but that didn’t slow down BADD’s momentum.

Unhealthy relationship? BADD grew prominent enough to spur a 60 Minutes segment about the Dungeons & Dragons phenomenon in 1985. Host Ed Bradley described D&D:

An enormously complicated game in which each player chooses an imaginary character he’ll assume. There are dwarves, knights, and thieves, gods, and devils, magic and spells. It’s a journey into fantasy through complicated mazes where you use your wits to kill your enemies before they kill you, all in a quest for wealth and power. The dungeon master orchestrates and referees the game, creating scenarios both complicated and terrifying.

Dieter H. Sturm, public relations director for TSR Inc., the company that sells D&D, made a case that correlation doesn’t mean causation: With 3 million to 4 million users of the game in the U.S., it was a coincidence that a fraction of the 5,000 teens who committed suicide in the most recent 12-month period played D&D, he said.

An adolescent boy wearing eyeglasses with Reagan-era giant aviator frames (talk about scary) explained that the good game-characters try to stop the bad hombres from raping and plundering — and the role-playing stops once the six-sided dice go back in the box.

Good clean fun. “This is make believe,” Dungeons and Dragons creator Gary Gygax told 60 Minutes. “Who is bankrupted by losing a game of Monopoly?

You can find a hazy video of some of the 60 Minutes story on YouTube. An online commenter calling himself Michael Miller wrote the following retroactive rebuttal to BADD’s campaign:

My mom gave me the red Basic D&D for Christmas while this stupidity was going on. She played with me and the rest of the family several times, and we all had a great time defeating monsters, getting out of traps, and amassing sizeable fortunes. She knew how to be an involved, responsible parent.

The BADD publicity died down after a few years. Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control said they found no causal link between D&D and violence.

In fact, one could make a case for a connection between the game and healthy creativity.

Winners, not losers. A number of accomplished authors, including George R.R. Martin, the father of Game of Thrones, have given credit to Dungeons & Dragons for sparking their imaginations as writers.

A 2014 New York Times article quoted Pulitzer prize-winner Junot Díaz as saying that, via Dungeons & Dragons, “we welfare kids could travel, have adventures, succeed, be powerful, triumph, fail, and be in ways that would have been impossible in the larger real world.”

Still, it’s not hard to imagine anti-D&D activism reappearing today, with religious fundamentalism on the rise. (As a Wiccan told me many years ago, every so often, when there’s nothing better to worry about, some concerned citizen sounds an alarm about devil-worship.)

It can be enough to make even a sane person worry about his own affinity for fantasy and superhero-related culture.

Introspection. Fairley’s crime recently prompted self-reflection from one writer somewhere along the nerd continuum. A passage from the 2015 post by blogger Benjamin Welton on Literary Trebuchet:

Whereas Fairley spent his days alone in his parent’s home with his porn, his vampires, and Dungeons & Dragons, I killed many hours alone in my father’s apartment with my comic books, my horror novels, and my favorite television shows. Fairley loved heavy metal; I still do. As much as it pains me to say it, Caleb Fairley, who was convicted of murdering and sexually assaulting Lisa Manderach and her 19-month-old daughter Devon in 1995, is the darkest version of people like me and my friends.

But surely he knows that paranoia and substance abuse, not football, fueled Aaron Hernandez’s homicidal rage, and greed, not tennis, compelled the Menendez brothers to make themselves orphans.

Without D&D, would Game of Thrones exist?

One can point to an id lurking in practitioners of just about every avocation and vocation.

Good guys. Fortunately, very few lead to horrifying crimes. And perpetrators are far outnumbered by the authorities who protect us from them.

Who knows, some of those hard-working law enforcement types just might shake off stress with a little witch and wizard role-playing in their off hours.

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

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**Barnes & Noble**
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Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Tubi

Lisa Manderach’s Murder

A Woman And Her Baby Walk into a Trap
(“Shopping Spree,” Forensic Files)

Last week’s post told of two nice people with the bad luck to cross paths with a personable married couple who were thrill killers looking for prey.

The circumstances of Lisa Manderach’s murder, the subject of today’s post, seem even more improbable.

Random misfortune. She walked into a kids clothing store where a young man working the cash register just happened to be a fantasy-game superfan seething with thoughts of criminal perversion.

Lisa Agostinelli Manderach lost her life because the aforementioned Dungeons and Dragons enthusiast, one Caleb Fairley, age 21, reportedly considered her the embodiment of beauty he’d been wanting to seize.

Fairley also killed Devon, the baby daughter Lisa shared with husband James Manderach. The murders initially made James, called Jimmy, a suspect because, as we know from countless other Forensic Files, the spouse did it.

Lenient system? Jimmy had reported Lisa missing when she failed to return home from shopping by dinner time. Fortunately, investigators found glaring evidence of Fairley’s guilt within days of the murder and built a case so solid that the attacker ended up sentenced to two consecutive life terms for two counts of second-degree murder.

Still, “Shopping Spree,” the Forensic Files episode about the murders, left me curious about an epilogue for Fairley.

He came from an affluent family, is white, and was young when he committed his crimes — all factors that can favorably tip the scales of justice.

On the other hand, the judicial system rarely takes kindly to anyone who kills a mother or child, or both.

Before getting into the most recent information on Fairley, here’s a recap of the episode along with some additional facts culled from internet sources:

Quick jaunt. Lisa Manderach, two weeks shy of her 30th birthday, worked full time as a fork-lift operator in a food warehouse and also had an entrepreneurial streak.

The Manderachs ran a janitorial service on the side. She also did volunteer work for Meals on Wheels.

The couple had known each other since Lisa was 10 and Jimmy was friends with her brothers. They married in 1992.

Devon, 19 months, was their only child.

The trio were all dark and striking. Lisa had long flowing hair, pale skin, and a pretty face.

On September 15, 1995, she and Devon headed to Your Kidz & Mine, a new clothing store in the Collegeville Shopping Center, 10 minutes from her house in Limerick, Pennsylvania.

Jimmy stayed home to watch football.

Lisa left her diaper bag at home because she planned to stay out for only an hour, which makes “Shopping Spree” an odd choice for the title of the Forensic Files episode. (To me, it’s not a “spree” unless it starts in the morning and doesn’t end until it’s too dark to find your car.)

Fantasy. As soon as she stepped into Your Kidz & Mine, Fairley, who had a passion for vampire lore, reportedly recognized her as having the idealized look of the women portrayed in vampire-related literature.

Fairley, a blond, heavy, powerful-looking fire hydrant of a man who lived with his parents, was described by a friend as a devotee of Dungeons and Dragons, a role-playing game that allows people to act out story lines involving medieval warrior heroes, dragons, wicked monarchs, you name it.

It’s not clear whether Fairley’s interest in vampires was part of D&D or a separate pastime.

The mullet-wearing Fairley killed both Devon and Lisa via strangulation and most likely sexually assaulted Lisa. He disposed of the little girl’s body in Valley Forge National Park, where hikers soon discovered it.

Fairley took Lisa’s body to a wooded spot in an industrial area near his health club.

Cover-up. Police found her 1988 Firebird in the shopping plaza’s parking lot and located a witness who remembered seeing Lisa in Your Kidz & Mine.

Then, in what has to be everyone’s favorite part of the episode, police noticed Fairley was wearing beige makeup on his face when they brought him in for questioning.

He washed off the foundation at their request, uncovering scratch marks that looked as though they came from someone’s fingernails.

During questioning, he claimed he got them while mosh-pit dancing, although it later came out that he had told friends he got scratched up while rescuing a guy who was being beaten up outside the clothing store.

He allegedly pressured one of those friends, Christopher Lefler, to perjure himself by corroborating the dance alibi in court; Lefler refused.

Police got a search warrant for Fairley’s home and discovered a great deal of pornography.

Hasty assumption. “We found out that he was a real pervert, all kinds of sexual devices and various perverted stuff,” District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. told Forensic Files rather triumphantly.

In general, I wouldn’t be so hasty to assume a link between perverted, well, whatever it was he had in his possession, and criminality.

But fortunately the murder created plenty of forensic evidence that made for a stronger case against Fairley.

Police found Lisa’s body after Fairley agreed to disclose its location in exchange for a promise that they wouldn’t pursue the death penalty. That decision drew public anger, as can be seen in Philadelphia Daily News letters to the editor published on September 29, 1995.

Investigators discovered his DNA under Lisa’s fingernails, some strands of long dark hair with the roots attached (suggesting a struggle) in the vacuum cleaner bag at the store, and the baby’s DNA on the carpet.

All this culminated in Caleb Fairley’s April 1996 conviction for two counts of murder, aggravated assault, theft, and abuse of a corpse.

I’m real immature. Fairley has not found prison life agreeable. As of at least 2012, he was trying to have his convictions vacated and get a new trial following a Supreme Court decision that deemed life sentences without parole for juvenile offenders unconstitutional.

Fairley’s argument: The court should have rendered him a minor for sentencing purposes. Even though he committed the double murder at age 21, “a person’s biological process is typically incomplete until the person reaches his or her mid-twenties.”

Caleb Fairley at the time of the trial and in a 2019 mug shot — Caleb Fairley circa 1996 and in a 2019 prison mug shot

That ploy hasn’t worked out, and today, Fairley lives in SCI Fayette, a moderately overcrowded maximum-security prison in Labelle, Pennsylvania. It houses 2,114 inmates but has bed capacity for just 1,826.

As for an update on Lisa’s widower, Jimmy Manderach, it appears he still lives in the same part of Pennsylvania. I make it a practice not to look too hard for up-to-date information about victims’ family members because, unless they show up on Dr. Phil or Dateline, they’re probably not looking for media attention.

(Jimmy Manderach did not appear on the Forensic Files episode.)

Dedication. In 1998, Caleb Fairley’s parents settled a lawsuit filed by Lisa’s mother and Jimmy Manderach for $1.6 million. According to legal documents reported on in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1998, the Fairleys contended:

“While the circumstances were indeed horrific, the deaths . . . were relatively and mercifully swift, mitigating their conscious pain and suffering.”

That same year, police arrested Caleb’s father, James Fairley, who owned a pharmacy in Phoenixville, for allegedly providing a customer with the painkiller Darvon illegally. Court papers allege he asked the customer for sex in return for the drug.

On a happier note, in 1998, the Limerick Township Park System built the Manderach Memorial Playground in honor of Lisa and Devon.

The township invested an additional $50,000 for new equipment for the playground in 2012. From the looks of its Facebook page, the place is still going strong.

That’s all for this post. For next week, I’m researching a bit about Dungeons and Dragons and whether any game aficionado — or the nature of the pastime itself — has been linked to other major crimes.

Until then, cheers. — RR

Update: Read Part 2.
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Please Never Let the Sifrits Out

Deliverance by the Sea
(“Dirty Little Secret,” Forensic Files)

Before going into this week’s recap, I’d like to share some exciting news — Bizarrepedia included True Crime Truant on its “Best True Crime Blogs and Websites” list.

Thanks much to the editors at the popular site for taking the time to check out my blog.

And speaking of all things bizarre, this week’s featured Forensic Files episode involves two people who put the “tan” in “satanic.”

“Dirty Little Secret” tells the story of a double homicide that happened after two middle-class couples met by chance at a bar in seaside getaway Ocean City, Maryland, on May 25, 2002.

Friendly fiends. The four hit it off so well that they went to a club together and then headed back to one couple’s penthouse condo to have more drinks and enjoy the hot tub.

Martha “Genie” Crutchley and her boyfriend, Joshua Ford, had no idea that Erika and Benjamin Sifrit were ghouls.

The friendly, respectable-seeming Sifrits had no criminal records and owned the Memory Laine scrapbooking store in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Erika, who grew up in Pennsylvania, had been a good student and basketball player. Benjamin Sifrit, known as B.J., was a former Navy Seal who graduated first in his class.

Unsuspecting victims. But the sun-loving pair were so horrible I almost don’t want to write about them — except to let the public know which prison they call home and whether or not they have any chance of getting out.

So I’ll make the recap quick (last time I said that, the post ended up 1,228 words long, but this time I really mean it):

Shortly after Genie, a 51-year-old insurance executive, and Joshua, a 32-year-old mortgage broker, got back to the Sifrit’s place in the Rainbow condo complex, their new friends set in motion a thrill kill game so awful that they make Leopold and Loeb seem like humanitarians.

Breastaurant heist. The Sifrits, both 24, terrorized, humiliated, and shot and stabbed to death the innocent couple from Fairfax, Virginia. Then they disposed of their bodies in a macabre fashion.

Fortunately, Genie’s and Joshua’s coworkers quickly reported them missing and detectives found witnesses who recalled seeing them and the Sifrits together on a shuttle bus to the night spot Seacrets.

(During his Forensic Files interview, Detective Scott Bernal described Seacrets as “one of the hottest night clubs in Ocean City.” I didn’t realize there were hot clubs in Maryland.)

The case broke wide open when a silent alarm summoned local police to a Hooters gift shop (yeah, I know). They found Erika and B.J. loading stolen Hooters merchandise into their Jeep.

Mementos. Detectives discovered Erika had the missing couple’s drivers licenses in her purse and found a photo of her wearing Josh’s ring on a chain around her neck — trophies from the kills.

Erika ended up making a deal with prosecutors after investigators built a solid case against the Sifrits, including ballistic (hollow point bullets) and blood evidence in their rented condo.

But the agreement fell apart when it became apparent that Erika participated in the killings to a greater degree than she originally claimed.

She ended up getting the longer sentence, life plus 20 years; the jury convicted her of one count of first-degree and one count of second-degree murder.

B.J. received 38 years after a jury found him guilty of one count of second-degree murder.

By the way, the Sifrits turned against each other at the trial.

So, do these two eastern seaboard versions of Deliverance hillbillies have any chance of tasting salt water and freedom again?

For Erika, probably not.

Drab accommodations. In 2014, U.S. District Court Judge Richard D. Bennett denied her appeal — the last of many she filed over the years — in which she claimed she was mentally ill at the time of the murders, her husband dominated her, and her lawyer, Arch Tuminelli, made errors during the trial.

The judge noted that her “claims are exhausted,” indicating legal avenues for exoneration have closed, according to a Maryland Coastal Dispatch story. (Warning: The article contains some gruesome details I could have lived without knowing.)

Erika, now 39, resides at Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in the town of Jessup.

Her husband, who occupies a cell at Roxbury Correctional Institution in Hagerstown, Maryland, has a much better chance of exiting prison on his two feet.

The homicides took place in a Rainbow condo

Stay gone. A judge gave him the 38-year sentence after lead prosecutor Joel Todd said that B.J. Sifrit “needs to be warehoused because he cannot be rehabilitated.” But the former military man is eligible for parole in 2021, when he’ll be in his mid-40s.

Let’s hope that’s enough time for friends and family members of the victims to plan a letter-writing campaign to keep B.J. Sifrit and his swastika tattoo behind razor wire for as long as possible — which in this case means 2040.

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

John List: House-Poor Killer

Mass Murderer, Overextended Homeowner
(“The List Murders,” Forensic Files)

Pictures of Breeze Knoll frighten me not only because John List murdered his family there in 1971 but also because, well, think of the electric bill.

Scene of the crime: Breeze Knoll in Westfield, N.J.

I’d hate to see the heating tab for the 19-room mansion that occupied 431 Hillside Avenue in Westfield, New Jersey. Factor in regular maintenance like painting plus the HVAC crises liable to befall a Victorian-era structure, and you’re asking for some none-too-stately financial drama.

According to a letter List left in the house along with the five bodies, he turned to homicide in part to prevent the embarrassment that losing the home would cause his family.

Way roomy. This week’s post will take a look at how List’s predicament compares with the kind of woe that affects homeowners in the new millennium — and particularly after the subprime mortgage crisis.

First, a recap of the Forensic Files episode “The List Murders” with some additional research from the internet.

John and Helen List, both 46, lived with their three teenage children and John’s mother, Alma, in a cavernous home in the affluent Union County town.

The family attended the Redeemer Lutheran Church, where John taught Sunday school.

Too much drama. Although Helen reportedly suffered from the effects of syphilis contracted from her previous husband, the family appeared stable and high-functioning to their friends and neighbors.

What no one knew was that John, an accountant, had trouble holding onto a job. At the time of the murder, John was unemployed. He left the house every morning, pretending to go to work when he was really whiling away time reading or sleeping in the train station.

There were more problems. John felt that his popular, socially active teenagers were neglecting their spiritual needs. It especially bothered him that his eldest, 16-year-old Patricia, was interested in becoming an actress. He thought it improper in the eyes of God.

He worried that she and the rest of the family wouldn’t get into heaven.

Undiscovered jackpot? His anxiety grew with his inability to keep up with mortgage payments and other bills. He was behind by $11,000 on the house and had been secretly dipping into his mother’s accounts.

The family had bought the house for around $50,000 in 1965. It meant living above their means, and List eventually had to take out a second mortgage.

By 1971, List seemed poised for a total financial collapse and didn’t want his wife and kids to bear the shame of going on public assistance.

A couple of sources claim that the ornate house contained a skylight made of Louis Comfort Tiffany stained glass valuable enough to bail List out of his financial problems. But in a pre-Antiques Roadshow world, he didn’t think to get an appraisal and try to sell the glass — if it really existed, that is.

Redefining eerie. By killing his family, he hoped to spare them shame, save their souls, and guarantee they could all spend the afterlife together. He chose not to commit suicide because he considered it a sin.

How do we know all this?

List’s five-page letter, addressed to his pastor, explained everything, including the way he murdered his family.

He waited until his wife and children arrived home one by one, crept up and shot them in the head at close range, and dragged their bodies into the ballroom. His 84-year-old mother, Alma, who lived in an upstairs apartment in the house, received a gunshot, too.

List lowered the temperature in the house, cued up some organ music on the intercom system, and told his kids’ teachers that the family had gone on a trip to North Carolina.

After cashing in his mother’s savings bonds and pocketing the money, he skipped town. He took the name Robert Clark, eventually got an accounting job, and remarried.

Bust the case. Meanwhile, back at Breeze Knoll, investigators found the bodies after neighbors summoned police because they hadn’t seen anyone enter or leave the house in a month.

The authorities couldn’t find List despite a nationally publicized manhunt led by the FBI; the fugitive had given himself too generous a head start.

Oh, and there was no internet back then.

The case turned cold until 18 years later, when then-new TV show America’s Most Wanted commissioned forensic artist Frank Bender to sculpt a bust that “aged” List. Host John Walsh, whose own son had been a murder victim, asked viewers to call in tips.

The effort was 100 percent successful.

Colorado resident Wanda Flanery contacted police about a former neighbor named Bob Clark who had recently moved away to Richmond, Virginia. He resembled the sculpture.

Spooky landmark. List’s subsequent FBI arrest at his accounting office made for scintillating news around the globe and electrified America’s Most Wanted ratings.

At the time, I remember my roommate coming home and asking, “Did you hear they caught John List?” She’d grown up in Westfield, where kids made the List property their No. 1 spooky dare long after the house mysteriously burned down in 1972.

A jury convicted John List on five counts of first-degree murder in 1990. Superior Court Judge William L’E. Wertheimer gave him life without parole.

List died in 2008, a one-of-a-kind killer who disposed of his family amid a dilemma that seems fairly prosaic in light of the last decade or so.

Westfield, where the average house costs $1,057,871 (Coldwell Banker)

Internet research turned up a number of statistics that surely would have provided List with some consolation if he faced his same problems post-2000.

According to Mortgage Bankers Association data cited by the FDIC, lenders foreclose on one in every 200 U.S. homes and one child in every classroom belongs to a family in jeopardy of losing a home because of difficulty meeting mortgage payments.

A 2005 Freddie Mac-Roper poll also flagged by the FDIC concluded that “more than 6 in 10 homeowners delinquent in their mortgage payments are not aware of services that mortgage lenders can offer to individuals having trouble with their mortgage.”

Hardly atypical. The poll also determined that “homeowners fail to contact their lender because they are embarrassed, don’t believe the lender can help, and/or believe it would cause them to lose their home more quickly.”

Any prospective John Lists of the new millennium surely could see that their problems were shared by countless homeowners around the U.S. and the world.

Northwestern University’s Institute for Policy Research found that during the subprime-mortgage-induced Great Recession, 8 million Americans lost their jobs and each year lenders foreclosed on 4 million homes.

Lack of faith. If List simply admitted to his family and creditors and the IRS that he was in crisis, a solution that didn’t involve homicide and pseudonyms could have been hammered out.

Perhaps if List knew back in 1971 that, 45 years in the future, an American who filed for bankruptcy protection four times would nonetheless be elected leader of the free world, he could have sucked it up, started over, and eventually made the List family great again.

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

Watch the episode on YouTube or Tubi

P.S. If anyone knows what year Breeze Knoll was built, please advise.

Sarah Johnson, a Killer at 16

A Girl Craving Freedom Ends up in Captivity
(“Disrobed,” Forensic Files)

Note: Updated with information from 2020.

“Disrobed” tells the story of a teenager who shot her mother and father after they forbid her to see a guy who sounded at best like a waste of time and at worst like a life ruiner.

Bourgeois privilege? Since a jury convicted Sarah Marie Johnson at age 18 and sent her to prison for life for a crime she committed at 16, an epilogue to her story seems in order.

The justice system tends to show mercy to middle-class convicts who committed their crimes — no matter how awful — as minors.

A fair amount has happened since “Disrobed“ first aired in 2008. But before getting into that, here’s a recap of the episode plus some information from internet research.

Diane Johnson, a 52-year-old tax collector, and her husband, Alan, a 46-year-old landscaper, provided a lovely home for Sarah and her older half-brother, Matt, in Bellevue, a city on the outskirts of Sun Valley, Idaho.

By 2003, Sarah had taken up with a 19-year-old named Bruno Santos. He was a high school dropout suspected of gang membership and drug activity.

He also had a cocky personality. Sarah’s parents found him none-too-endearing.

Happy ending. But Sarah had no intention of letting go of Santos and tried the usual teenage tricks, like telling mom and dad she was sleeping over at a girlfriend’s when she was really with him.

When they found out about one such incident, her parents took away her car and threatened to file charges against Santos for statutory rape.

At some point, Sarah decided to quell the controversy by disposing of her parents.

That way, she and Santos could run off and set up their own love-filled affluent household financed by her parents’ $680,000 life insurance payout and the rest of their estate.

Dressed to kill. According to Disrobed, Sarah was a fan of true crime entertainment. Perhaps she felt she had picked up enough know-how to pull off a double homicide with impunity.

First, Sarah stole a .264 caliber rifle from the guesthouse on her family’s property. The Johnsons rented out the structure to Mel Speegle, an electrician who was out of town at the time of the crime on September 2, 2003.

That morning, Sarah pulled a shower cap over her blond hair, put a pink plush bathrobe on backward, crept into her sleeping mother’s room, and shot her in the head at close range.

Fall planting. Her father ran out of the shower to see what happened. Sarah shot him in the chest.

To suggest gang activity, she placed knives at the foot of her parents’ bed and in her brother’s room. (Matt Johnson was away at the University of Idaho in Moscow at the time.)

She put the rifle’s scope on Speegle’s bed and left the rest of it at the crime scene.

Then she made a beeline for a neighbor’s house and said her parents had been shot by an unseen intruder.

Investigators were probably disappointed to rule out their first suspect, Bruno Santos.

He was arrogant and disrespectful, but they couldn’t connect any of the crime scene evidence to him or his DNA.

Mel Speegle, who Sarah had probably hoped to implicate, gave police a solid alibi.

By this time, Sarah’s lack of sorrow over the tragedy had aroused suspicion.

Evidence galore. Her aunt, Linda Vavold, who appeared on Forensic Files, noted that Sarah seemed more interested in having her fingernails painted than grieving her mother and father’s demise.

And a lot more than innuendo was building up against Sarah. It turned out that she had pretty much left a trail of forensic breadcrumbs for the police to follow.

First, the presence of her mother’s blood and bone fragments on Sarah’s bedroom wall contradicted her story that she was asleep with her door closed when she heard the first shot.

Cap it off. The pink bathrobe that police retrieved from the trash — Sheriff Walt Femling had stopped the garbage truck from picking up the can on the day of the murder — had high-velocity blood splatter from both Diane and Alan Johnson.

Gloves found in the garbage had traces of gun powder residue outside and Sarah’s DNA inside.

Plumbers recovered the shower cap, which Sarah had flushed down the toilet.

As crime scene investigator Rod Englert said during his Forensic Files interview, “The evidence was yelling and screaming.”

Prosecutors charged Sarah with two counts of first-degree murder.

Family affair. At this point, Sarah probably didn’t need any more proof that her fairy tale had gone awry, but she got some anyway: Bruno Santos decided to testify against her in court.

Santos wanted to prove he had nothing to do with the murders.

Sarah’s brother took a turn in the witness chair in the 2005 trial as well, but he didn’t seem to have an agenda.

Matt Johnson said his sister was overdramatic and tended to stretch the truth when it suited her, but he loved her just the same.

Defense lawyer Bob Pangburn uncharitably pointed out that Matt would receive Sarah’s portion of their parents’ insurance money if the jury convicted her.

The prosecution brought in one of Sarah’s cellmates, convicted drug trafficker Malinda Gonzalez, who revealed that, during their jailhouse conversations, Sarah seemed to inadvertently confess.

Aunt no help. As reported by Emanuella Grinberg for Court TV, Gonzalez testified: “One time, she said, ‘When I killed…’ Then she stopped herself and was like, ‘When the killers …'”

Linda Vavold, Diane Johnson’s elder sister, ended up on the prosecution’s side as well. “When we would be discussing Alan and Diane and someone would be upset, [Sarah] would roll her eyes and act disgusted,” Vavold testified.

The five-week trial of the flaxen-haired killer turned into a national sensation. Court TV broadcast the proceedings live from Idaho’s Ada County courthouse.

Sarah received two sentences of life in jail without parole.

Pin it on someone. As far as what’s happening with her today, my initial guess was that Sarah had confessed to the crime already, embraced religion, and was helping inmates in a prison literacy program — and asking the state for mercy since she was young and foolish and evil back in 2003 and regretted her crimes.

Or maybe she would take the Menendez brothers’ route and admit to killing her parents but tell tales about why they deserved it.

Wrong on all counts.

As recently as 2014, Sarah — now 33 years old and prisoner No. 77613 at the Pocatello Women’s Correctional Center — was claiming someone else killed her parents.

She managed to draw the Idaho Innocence Project into her case. They contended that she had ineffective counsel at the first trial.

Her legal team also brought up the fact that the murder weapon carried someone else’s prints (not Sarah’s or Mel Speegle’s).

BF behind bars. But Speegle said that some prints probably came from a friend who had helped him move his things from his ranch to the Johnson guesthouse in 2002.

The Idaho Supreme Court denied Sarah’s petition in a six-page decision in February 2014.

Life has been no dream for the motivation for all this misery, either.

Bruno Santos served some jail time related to drug charges around the time of Sarah’s trial in 2005.

Then, in 2010, Blaine County brought him up on new substance-peddling charges, including the sale of a half pound of methamphetamine to an undercover detective.

The following year, he received a 10-year sentence and earned himself a bunk at the Idaho State Correctional Facility.

Santos, who is allegedly in the U.S. illegally, received parole in May 2018 and could face deportation to Mexico — possibly in 2024, which the Idaho Department of Correction lists as his sentence satisfaction date.

Finally, it should be noted that Idaho released an inmate named Sarah Marie Johnson-Ploghoft in 2018, but she’s not the Sarah Johnson who killed her parents.

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

4 Ways to Enjoy Forensic Files

Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way to Watch

A South African Forensic Files fan tweeted last week to say he couldn’t watch the show in his country anymore.

CBS Reality, a network that broadcasts in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, had stopped airing the shows in South Africa.

Deprived of Forensic Files? Now there’s a crime.

I can relate. My access to the show seemed severely limited after I cut the cord about a year ago.

Along with the monthly cable bill of $125.51 to $172.59 (depending on whatever deal Time Warner was offering or yanking away), I also had to say farewell to the HLN TV network — the Forensic Files mother lode.

HLN has daily Forensic Files marathons anywhere from 4 to 12 hours long.

No. 1: HLN is a jackpot for Forensic Files watchers

If you have basic cable in the U.S., chances are you can bask in all the chromatography and rifling impressions patterns you like via HLN’s generous schedule of back-to back Forensic Files. I miss HLN.

Fortunately, there are also many other sources of the show.

Update: Forensic Files exited Netflix on Jan. 1, 2022.

But you can still stream episodes on Pluto, Discovery +, HBO MAX, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Tubi.

A Hulu logo in green font

You can also find many of the episodes on the internet. Just enter “Forensic Files” and the name of the episode or even just the name of the perpetrator in a browser window, and the right one should materialize.

The producers made a deal to distribute the show on YouTube via a company called FilmRise. So if you see “FilmRise,” you’re watching a legally procured episode.

**No. 3:** Logo means the online episode wasn’t boot-legged

I’m not sure how the picture quality on YouTube rates next to what you see on TV or a streaming service, but I’m happy with it.

Of course, you’ll need a broadband or otherwise expensive internet subscription to watch online. I use Spectrum, which used to be Time Warner Cable. I have nothing nice to say about either of them. Right now, I’m paying $54.88 a month.

The least expensive way to enjoy Forensic Files is via an over-the-air TV station — the kind you get for free, no cable subscription required.

An over-the-air TV station called Escape (Channel No. 33-4 in New York and available in other cities) broadcasts a couple Forensic Files episodes a day.

All you need is an antenna. I use a $29.99 RCA digital one.

It gives pretty much crystal clear reception on Escape and all the other free stations, including the major networks. It was a surprise.

I was expecting the same kind of static and the other types of interference from the old days of rabbit ears.

Most of my quest for Forensic Files has taken place in NYC. If anyone has advice or experience to share about finding Forensic Files elsewhere or via another route, please leave a reader comment and share the wealth.

Someone in the world is sure to appreciate any clues you have to offer.

Until next week, cheers. — RR

Brenda Andrew: Sunday School Killer Revisited

This Oklahoma Tale Is No Musical
(“Sunday School Ambush,” Forensic Files)

Who can resist a story about a Sunday School teacher gone homicidal?

And we’re not talking about someone who suffers from psychosis and snaps one day.

Brenda Andrew was a sane, high-functioning mother of two who nonetheless formulated at least two plots to murder her husband, Rob Andrew.

Try, try again. The first was staged in such a way that it could have killed not just him but also any number of incidental motorists and pedestrians.

Fortunately, that attempt on Rob Andrew’s life failed. But her second try succeeded. She devised both murder plans with the help of boyfriend and fellow Sunday School teacher James Pavatt.

The case is intriguing because it involves two killers who most certainly believed in God.

Even people who doubt the existence of a divine entity worry a little bit that someone is up there watching when they throw a recyclable container into the regular garbage.

Forging their way. Do avid worshippers like Brenda and James persuade themselves that the intended victim is so horrible that God has deputized them to banish him from this earth?

Or maybe they think God is distracted by March Madness or The Bachelor: After the Final Rose while they’re practicing the victim’s signature for the insurance paperwork.

Whatever the case, here’s a recap of the episode along with an epilogue and additional intelligence culled from online sources:

The pretty, petite Brenda Evers was born in 1963 and grew up in a conservative family in Enid, Oklahoma, where she enrolled in baton-twirling class, was known for being quiet, and “always buttoned her clothes all the way up,” according to a former classmate interviewed by Ken Raymond for The Oklahoman.

Likable victim. It’s not clear what kind of work she did after high school, but she married before turning 21, to Rob Andrew, a tall young man who would go on to snag a high-paying job with Jordan Advertising, which counts Oklahoma State University and energy giant OneOK among its clients.

Rob sounded like a sweet guy. As another Oklahoman story by Ken Raymond noted:

No one would’ve described Rob Andrew as crazy, although he did do fun things like bringing slushes to everyone at work because he’d decided July 11 should be 7-Eleven day. Or like naming his daughter Tricity because if she ever ran for public office, her slogan could be “Elect Tricity.”

He also was a church deacon and did missionary work in South America. At the time of the murder, the couple had a son, Parker, 7, as well as Tricity, 11. Rob, 39, remained smitten with Brenda, 38, even as she grew more dissatisfied with him.

Perhaps she felt resentful about hitching up at such a young age or about having parents who made sure she always conformed. At some point after marrying Rob, Brenda began to wear alluring clothing. And she embarked on a series of affairs.

She and Rob separated and got back together at least once during this time.

Rob was an optimist and didn’t believe in divorce.

Still, the abuse Brenda dished out must have tested his forgiving nature. “Sunday School Ambush,” the Forensic Files episode about the case, plays a rehearsed, insulting message that Brenda left on Rob’s answering machine during their troubled relationship. She called him a “half dad.”

By 2001, Brenda had taken up with Pavatt, who served as a deacon as well as a Sunday School teacher at the North Pointe Baptist Church. The two lovebirds went on a vacation to Mexico along with Brenda’s kids.

Sign here. The church gently suggested that the home-wrecking Prudential salesman and the erring wife step away from their teaching posts.

But at some point before everything blew up, Rob had trusted Pavatt enough to purchase from him an $800,000 life insurance policy with Brenda named as the beneficiary.

Brenda and Pavatt hoped to collect that payout via a plot so clichéed it belongs in a made-for-TV movie. They cut the brakelines of Rob’s car and arranged for a fake “your wife has been in an accident” call summoning him to the hospital immediately.

But Rob realized right away that someone had tampered with his Nissan, and he reported the entire incident to the authorities. Forensic Files played the recording of Rob telling police he thought a murder plot was afoot. It’s not clear whether authorities did any kind of investigation as a result.

Pilot-light ploy. On her next try, Brenda lured Rob, from whom she was then separated, into the garage of their Oklahoma City house when he came to pick up their kids for a visit on November 20, 2001.

She asked him to relight the furnace. When he knelt down to do so, Pavatt sneaked up and shot him in the abdomen with a 16-gauge shotgun. According to Forensic Files, Rob grabbed a bag of metal cans from the garage floor to shield himself before Brenda fired a second, fatal bullet.

Then, more cliché. She had Pavatt shoot her in the proverbial fleshy part of a limb (an arm in this case) to make it look as though a couple of robbers had attacked both Andrews.

To ensure no one saw him dashing from the crime scene, Pavatt hid out in the house of the Andrews’ neighbors, the Gigstads, for a couple days. They were out of town and Judy Gigstad had given Brenda their spare key for safekeeping.

Brenda called 911 and reported that two armed robbers wearing masks shot Rob and her.

The Forensic Files episodes suggests that Brenda’s voice sounds too calm on the 911 tape to be genuine. I don’t necessarily agree with that, because other episodes have pegged 911 calls as suspicious because the voice is overdramatic.

Fugitives. Regardless, investigators got a strong hint when Brenda and Pavatt gathered up Tricity and Parker and fled to Mexico right around the time of Rob’s funeral.

Authorities distributed Wanted posters with the couple’s pictures, and they were caught a few months later as they tried to cross the border into Texas.

Pavatt’s defense lawyer subsequently pointed out that investigators had no DNA or fingerprints, only circumstantial evidence.

But there was plenty of it. First off, everyone knew about the extramarital affair.

Pre-Airbnb. And Gigstad and her husband reported signs that someone had been in their house during their absence. There was a spent shell casing in the bedroom and a damaged shoe rack hidden under a bed.

Police theorized that Pavatt had accidentally stepped on the shoe rack and then left behind the shell casing when the Gigstads’ son stopped in to collect their mail; Pavatt was ready to shoot him if confronted. Fortunately, the son didn’t see him, and departed unharmed.

There was lots more. Brenda’s wound appeared to have come from a gun held just inches away from her arm, which conflicted with the story she gave police.

A handwriting expert determined that Rob’s signature had been forged on insurance papers that renamed Brenda as beneficiary.

Doctored docs. In later years, Rob had begun signing his name with an ichthus — the Christian fish symbol — as a flourish. It was missing from the papers that Pavatt claimed as genuine.

(On the valid documents, Rob had changed the beneficiary designation to Tricity and Parker.)

James Pavatt in custody. One of his ex-wives testified that he would do anything for love

The 2004 trials each ended with Brenda and Pavatt found guilty of first-degree murder and given a death sentence. Forensic Files shows them shuffling around in chains and orange uniforms.

It was a sad sight to behold but also a little refreshing to see that upper middle class defendants can’t always buy their way out of justice.

Epilogue to date. So, where are they today?

Brenda hasn’t made a lot of waves inside the Mabel Bass Correctional Facility in McLoud, Oklahoma. As of this writing, she’s on death row, with no execution date specified.

Pavatt has created some rumblings from his cell in Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester — the same prison that spurred headlines by botching the 2014 execution of Clayton Lockett.

Mike Arnett, Pavatt’s attorney, has campaigned to have the prison’s three-drug execution procedure declared cruel and unusual punishment.

Oklahoma resumed executions in June 2015, when the state put to death child murderer Charles Frederick Warner.

In an odd turn, an accused killer named Zjaiton Tyrone Wood confessed to the shooting of Rob Andrew.

Arnett contends Pavatt didn’t receive a fair trial, in part because jurors didn’t see Wood’s confession letter.

No appointment. But Wood’s letter was no bombshell. It contained information about the crime that was already known to the public, and it failed to impress a judge.

Still, Pavatt’s sentence was commuted to life.

No such luck for Brenda, but the last time an attractive white woman was facing the execution chamber — two decades ago — it caused a national uproar, with Jerry Falwell, Pat Buchanan, and other public figures arguing against carrying out Karla Faye Tucker’s death sentence. After stating that he had thought and prayed about it, then-Texas Governor George W. Bush refused to commute Tucker’s death sentence, and it was carried out on February 3, 1998.

I have a feeling Brenda will be luckier. You’ll hear plenty about it via media outlets if the court sets an execution date for her.

Let’s hope the powers that be, divine or secular, settle on the most appropriate punishment for the murder of Rob Andrew, a nice man gone too soon.

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

Dusty Harless: Wrestling with the Facts

Epilogues for the Cast
(“Pinned by the Evidence,” Forensic Files)

After doing some elementary research on California self-defense laws, I’m starting to understand how two juries found David Genzler guilty of charges related to his struggle with Dusty Harless.

Dusty Harless was only 5-foot-8 but an incredible athlete

Last week’s post told the story of how Genzler ended up in jail for his actions during a 1996 street fight in San Diego that was doubtlessly initiated by Harless.

Two on one. Offended that Genzler offered his girlfriend, Sky Flanders, a ride and called her “baby” — or some other slightly inappropriate term — the former college wrestling champion straightened out the non-issue by pinning him to the ground.

Scott Davis, a Harless associate, joined the fray by kicking Genzler, who pulled a knife from his pocket and stabbed Harless.

During the first trial, blood evidence seemed to support the theory that Harless and Genzler, both 25 years old, were face to face when the knife wound happened, although the defense maintained Harless had Genzler pinned face to the ground.

The law gives the right to defend yourself when you reasonably believe you’re in “imminent danger of being killed, hurt, or molested, believe immediate force is necessary, and use no more force than necessary.”

Sharp outcome. I tend to think anyone violent enough to pin a stranger to the ground over a minor provocation is also dangerous enough to kill someone whether intentionally or not.

But that’s me. (I’m also the person who still stands far from the edges of subway platforms because a mentally ill man pushed a woman onto the tracks in 1985.)

California state law — and unwritten guy code — probably assumes no one is likely to die from a weaponless street fight, hence pulling out a knife during such a struggle constitutes more force than necessary.

Face to face, it’s more likely Genzler intended to inflict a deadly wound, which explains the second-degree murder conviction at the first trial.

Newer laws. The jury at the second trial believed Genzler’s contention that Harless had him pinned face to the ground, meaning Genzler reached backward with his knife without necessarily intending to hit a major artery, hence the manslaughter conviction.

Either way, Genzler might have fared better under the Stand Your Ground laws that states started passing in 2005. They specify that as long as the victim didn’t make the first strike, he doesn’t necessarily have to retreat or run away when he feels threatened.

A defense lawyer today could make a case that brandishing a knife is simply standing your ground.

Fortunately, manslaughter verdict notwithstanding, the second judge sentenced Genzler to time served and set him free.

Legal recourse. Still, Genzler, a finance student who had no criminal history prior to the Harless tragedy, had to spend at least three years in prison, presumably with hardened criminals.

Genzler did get some satisfaction in the matter when he sued Deputy District Attorney Peter Longanbach for prosecutorial misconduct related to false testimony from Sky Flanders. (It’s not clear whether it applied to both trials or just the first one.)

According to the suit, the night of the Harless stabbing, Flanders told police that Harless “flip[ped] Genzler to the ground, and Genzler stabbed Harless while Harless held Genzler on the ground.” She also admitted to police that Harless had engaged in other street fights.

After meeting with Longanbach and his investigator, Jeffrey O’Brien, however, Flanders changed her story. She said she “remembered little of the actual fight.” She also failed to repeat her earlier statement that Harless had a history of fighting both on and off the wrestling mat.

Alternate facts. She also stated that she thought Davis had pulled Genzler off Harless after the stabbing — when, in fact, Genzler was still beneath Harless.

The amount of the settlement, reached in 2006, wasn’t disclosed.

A bit more consolation for Genzler: Longanbach’s law license was suspended for two years.

The Forensic Files episode mentioned Genzler himself was considering a career as a lawyer. I did a little poking around to find out whether that happened or to at least discover some kind of epilogue for him.

There wasn’t any confirmation on whether or not he went to law school, but he did complete his finance degree by 2006.

No information came up about him for the last decade or so. I didn’t look very hard because he probably prefers to not be found.

Sky Flanders during her appearance on Forensic Files

Sky Flanders appears to be alive and well and to have a son. She was never prosecuted for perjury relating to the legal actions against Genzler.

Flanders has stated that she prefers not to talk about the tragedy.

Car accident. After the trial, Dusty’s mother, Cathy Harless, who appeared in “Pinned by the Evidence,” moved to Butte, Montana, and then to San Diego.

She worked as a caretaker for ranch owners’ properties and also had two dogs and two horses of her own.

Her relationship with Sky Flanders ultimately turned sour. A 2006 story in the San Diego Union-Tribune contained the following quote from Cathy Harless:

“I consider [Flanders] really part of the problem, and I think she should be so ashamed for ruining Pete Longanbach’s life and career,” she said. “It turned from a trial about murder into a trial about lawyer misconduct.”

Sadly, Cathy Harless died at age 63 when a drunk driver hit her pickup truck in Alpine, California, in 2010. Two daughters survived her.

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

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