Forensic Files Archives - Page 20 of 22

Helga Luest: Miami Survivor’s Tale

Q&A with an Advocate for Trauma Victims
(“Tourist Trap,” Forensic Files)

Amid the violence of the Miami tourist-robbery epidemic, Helga Luest’s case stands out as something of an anomaly. As recapped in the November 10th blog post, Luest and her mother faced attackers in stereo, one on either side of their car.

The unusual part was that Stanley Cornet and his accomplice seemed caught up in brutality for brutality’s sake. “We offered to give them everything to leave us alone,” Luest recalls, “but they said they were going to kill us.” The pair either forgot, or never intended, to steal anything from the women.

Instead, Cornet and an unidentified associate pummeled them. Cornet bit down on Luest’s arm, piercing the muscle.

Luest subsequently appeared on “Tourist Trap,” the Forensic Files episode that told the story of the early-1990s South Florida crime wave that shocked the world. At the time, nightly newscasts were reporting story after story about brazen thieves ambushing travelers in daylight, smashing the windows of their rental cars, and occasionally killing those who resisted and some who didn’t.

Today, Luest lives in the Washington, D.C., area and is a senior manager at research and consulting firm Abt Associates. “Tourist Trap,” filmed in 2003, briefly mentioned the other work she started, as an advocate for people living with the effects of trauma.

To catch up on her work on behalf of victims since then, I spoke to Luest last month. She also discussed the Florida robbery epidemic, the assault by Cornet, and her efforts to ensure he stays tucked away in prison forever. Edited excerpts of our conversation follow.

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One theory said that assailants made the South Florida robberies so violent to make victims afraid to revisit the crimes by working with investigators, testifying, etc. Do you think that’s valid? I know that in my case, the nature and intensity of the violence was largely due to the assailants’ being on drugs.

But yes, tourists were specifically targeted because they were less likely to come back to prosecute. The theory was that tourists were targeted because they would be so traumatized that they would go back home and stay there.

How much time was there between the attack on you and your mother and the jailing of Stanley Cornet? It was a matter of a week or two weeks because he was apprehended while attacking a police officer’s mother — whom Cornet was robbing and assaulting [including a biting]. It’s very unusual for a victim to be bitten during a crime, so that made the link to our robbery stronger. They flew me to Florida to do an in-person ID of photographs, and I identified Stanley Cornet.

So the fact that the police caught him in the commission of another crime helped to speed along your case? Yes, if not, it would have been just my word against his. With the bite mark evidence, it was more difficult for him to claim he didn’t do this and to be believed by the jury.

You were originally a TV producer. How did the attack change your career path? My career changed completely. Because of my physical injuries, I could no longer carry gear in the field when I was producing news stories — so I knew I had to make a change. I came to see my life’s work as helping to prevent violence wherever possible and making sure victims have the support they need to heal and live well again.

What happened gives me insight into the nature and impact of trauma and how trauma affects whole health. When someone is traumatized, the effects are not just physical and mental but also spiritual and economic. It can lead to workplace presenteeism [difficulty focusing because of the trauma, so your productivity is affected].

I believe the final stage of the healing process is when you can take the dark cloud of what happened to you and make it something positive. I’m serving on the Governor’s Family Violence Council in Maryland. I use my experience to try to better inform programs and use what I know as a survivor to inform and help other people. What was once a senseless incident that happened to me became something I could turn into actions with a positive purpose.

I manage two groups, on Linkedin and Facebook. The Facebook “Trauma Informed” group has more than 1,300 members (with 3 to 5 new members daily) and is more conversation-oriented. It includes people from as far away as China and Australia. The LinkedIn group has more than 700 members.

What’s the first thing you should do if you’re the victim of a crime? First and foremost, is safety — get with people who can support you. If it’s a rape, go to the hospital. If it’s something else traumatic, report it. More people regret not reporting a crime than reporting it.

How long does it take to overcome the effects of trauma? Everyone heals differently. Sometimes after a year a two, it can seem that everything is back to normal, but then a life change — like getting married, losing a parent, starting a new job, having an illness — can unearth pieces of healing that you weren’t ready to explore earlier. People heal along their lifespans and in their own time and in their own way.

Is counseling generally effective? I believe counseling can be good, but victims also benefit from connecting with other trauma victims and those who can relate to their experience.

How do victims find one another? When I was attacked, there really weren’t any groups for crime victims.

Now with social media, it’s easier. Sometimes a victim can use a different name to protect privacy. We now have a deeper understanding of the nature of trauma. I see more state and grass-roots level opportunities to have discussions on crime and trauma in the community, so that heightens awareness.

Does it take longer for children to recover? It can be different for kids and adults. Kaiser and the CDC did an Adverse Childhood Experiences study some years ago. We know from the study that, although one event can have a big effect, children can be resilient. But if it’s happening again and again, it can ultimately affect a person’s life span.

How can children heal from trauma? They need at least one supportive and safe person and a safe space to heal. The research has really informed what’s being done with schools. For example, 15 years ago, if a child wouldn’t sit in her chair, it was because she’s a bad child. Now, we’re not asking about what’s wrong with this kid but rather what’s happening with this kid and what are they trying to tell me. If things are volatile at home, it makes sense that school would be a place a child would let it out. This is where we would see the school-to-prison pipeline. Now we’re in a different place and can use trauma-informed approaches to help and provide interventions.

What’s the most common effect of trauma on victims? The feeling that so much is out of their control. When an assailant is caught, he has Miranda Rights. But you as a victim don’t have a right to a speedy trial. No one tells you how long the process is or when VINE (Victim Information and Notification Everyday) is going to contact you. It really is a long-term commitment.

The forensic dental expert lost the photo of the bite wounds I sustained [from Stanley Cornet]. And I called every week for years to ask where the photos were, if they’d been found. Also, Cornet’s cap came off in the attack, and I gave it to police but it was never registered into evidence. I’m wondering: Will this ever go to trial? Will this ever be over? These are things you would never know until you have experienced it.

Forensic Files also didn’t show that Cornet found a loophole in the prosecution process. In 2001, I got a call from VINE notifying me that he was transferred back to Miami for a hearing. They resentenced the case, so I went back down to Florida and testified again.

Stanley Cornet sat there and smiled at me during proceedings — now, for a second time — as he heard what I went through physically and emotionally. The court saw that he was not remorseful. This judge sentenced him to life in jail without parole.

Your mother didn’t appear on Forensic Files. How did she contend with the aftermath of the robbery? My mother didn’t testify or come back to Florida to see the case investigated or prosecuted. Every survivor has a different process of dealing with that kind of thing. It happens along the survivor’s own timeline and in their own way — and it’s important to understand and respect that.

So she didn’t want to relive it? Yes, it was hard for my parents to even hear about what happened to me.

Do you still have physical effects from the beating? Yes. I don’t have feeling on one side of my face. I’ve had chronic back issues, although now I’m back to running — and now I’m running marathons. I also have scars, but I’ve become more comfortable with them as part of my body.

I’m a big fan Forensic Files. Did you have a good experience with the show? I felt that they did an accurate portrayal. It was difficult for me to see the reenactments. The producer and crew were very respectful, though, and I appreciated their including information about the nonprofit I founded. [Luest now works with Trauma Informed.]

Do you feel incidents that cause trauma are on the downswing? As we’re changing administrations, the US is in an unusual place where violence and threats of violence are increasing. I work with the National Bullying Prevention Initiative and have been tuned into news reports of increased bullying and hate crimes in school. The NEA recently said these incidents are rising. We’re seeing more bullying in schools. We need to set the right example, build empathy, and pay attention to what can cause kids lifelong problems.♠

Read more about the Miami tourism epidemic.

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Dante Sutorius: Petite Threat

A Fairy Tale Flames Out for Darryl Sutorius
(“A Second Shot at Love,” Forensic Files)

I grew up with a step-grandmother who bossed around my passive grandfather: “Shut up, Ben.” “No one was talking to you, Ben.” She said a few unforgivable things to us kids, too.

But, I must say, Grandma Jeanne was Maria von Trappe compared with Della “Dante” Britteon, who Forensic Files fans know from “A Second Shot at Love.”

Smitten. The episode begins in 1994 with the story of Darryl Sutorius, a divorced surgeon whose interpersonal skills could have used some rehab. He had a bad temper and tended to dish out demeaning verbal abuse, his first wife, Janet, said in her Forensic Files interview.

The lonely 6-foot-3-inch-tall doctor was none-too-charismatic to his colleagues either and, as such, probably didn’t attract much in the way of romantic interest via his career.

So, in 1994, Dr. Sutorius, 54, joined a dating service called Great Expectations that matched him up with Dante, a pretty, petite 44-year-old with a magnetic personality. She said she owned a day care center and had a degree from UCLA.

The heavyset cardiac and thoracic specialist was enchanted by Dante. He bought her a $5,000 ring, and they wed after a few months.

The marriage lasted less than a year, during which she used the poor man like a Powerball lottery ticket.

Getting greedy. She lived in a large, expensive house on Symmesridge Lane in the Symmes Township area of Cincinnati and enjoyed spa visits and a Lexus and three fur coats, all without the inconvenience of having a job. But that wasn’t enough.

Dante, it seemed, wanted everything. The doctor’s generosity toward his four children from his first marriage vexed her into fits of indignation and nastiness.

When she found out that Dr. Sutorius planned to pay for his daughter Deborah’s wedding, she got so mad it scared him into wearing a bulletproof vest. (At some point, Dante had bought a .38-caliber double action revolver at Target World and taken a shooting lesson.)

Toward the end, Dr. Sutorius was sleeping in the basement, talking to a lawyer about cutting Dante out of his will and divorcing, and asking his family members not to give any personal information to Dante.

Darryl Sutorius was difficult ot work with, but his colleagues respected his ability as a surgeon who could handle complex operations — Darryl Sutorius, M.D., was known for being disagreeable to work with, but his colleagues respected his skills as a surgeon

By this time, he had found out at least a portion of the truth about the size-2 with fluffy blondish hair. She’d been married five times (more than what she had told him), never graduated from college or high school, used various aliases, and had threatened, tried to kill, or otherwise left previous husbands far worse off than the way she found them.

Losing formula. But the revelations came too late. When Dr. Sutorius, who was chief of thoracic surgery at Bethesda North Hospital, didn’t show up for work on February 19, 1996, his co-workers called 911.

Dante told the authorities who came to the house that she hadn’t seen her husband for days. Then she went down to the basement to look for him and “Oh, my God. He’s shot himself!”

The doctor had been depressed, so it wasn’t difficult to believe he had taken his own life, until investigators started studying the evidence.

As so with many other Forensic Files cases, the blood splatter and gunshot wound were in the wrong places to support the contention of suicide.

Jury’s in. Investigators believed Dante sneaked up behind her husband and shot him, then used his lifeless fingers to fire the gun into the couch so police would find gunpowder residue on his hands.

At the subsequent murder trial, the court heard evidence about how much Dante had to gain (a $1 million life insurance payout) via her husband’s death versus how little she would reap ($1,000 to $2,000 a month) from a divorce.

The jury saw through Dante’s charm and benign-looking physical appearance and convicted her of aggravated murder after deliberating for four hours on June 7, 1996.

More salacious biographical information about the slight-figured killer came out in the press. According to a Cincinnati magazine story by Linda Vaccariello, Dante (born Della Fay Hall) had become pregnant at age 19 and given the father custody of the resulting daughter, who later ended up in foster care. At one time, Dante claimed to have slept with talk-show host and former Cincinnati mayor Jerry Springer.

Della Sutorius — The newlyweds in happier days.

Exes’ convention. If anyone harbored doubts about Dante’s guilt, the unctuous interview she gave to Forensic Files surely chased them away.

Some of her ex-husbands met for the first time at the murder trial. Her third spouse, graphic artist Grant Bassett, told AP reporter Terry Kinney that Dante “was very striking … eye-catching. I thought I was getting into a pretty lady, very meek. Lo and behold, Tasmanian devil.”

Olga Mello, Dante’s own mother, reportedly suspected her daughter’s guilt from the beginning and had alerted police.

Dante received a sentence of 24 years and died of natural causes in Marysville Women’s Prison in Ohio on Nov. 20, 2010, at age 60.

The saga seems worthy of a made-for-TV movie, although I don’t believe one has been made. But Dateline NBC dedicated a feature, “The Doctor’s Wife,” to the story. And writer Aphrodite Jones detailed Dante’s crimes in Della’s Web (Gallery Books, 2011).

My aforementioned step-grandmother lived into her 90s. We didn’t have much contact with her after my grandfather died in his sleep at age 87. No signs of foul play, just a lot of nagging beforehand. — RR

Miami Robbery Mayhem

A Crime Wave Rages and Recedes
(“Tourist Trap,” Forensic Files)

The whole world pretty much already knew how bad the smash-and-grab tourist robbery epidemic in Miami, Florida, had become by the time of Helga Luest’s 1993 ordeal — the subject of the Forensic Files episode “Tourist Trap.”

Two years earlier, another attack had made international headlines when thieves shot and robbed two British visitors, John and Rose Hayward; fortunately, they survived.

And that was only one of the six southern Florida tourist robberies taking place within a single 24-hour period in 1991. Between 1992 and 1993, the continuing horror show claimed the lives of nine visitors, including Barbara Jensen Miller, 39, who died when a vehicle driven by escaping thieves ran over her in front of her mother and two children.
Shortly before a would-be thief clamped onto Luest’s arm with his jaw as she hit the gas pedal and sped away in a rental car, a German man had died at the hands of an assailant on Miami’s Dolphin Expressway.

Futile prep. Uwe-Wilhelm Rakebrand recognized a bump-and-rob attempt and, as law enforcement recommended, he continued driving, refusing to stop his Alamo rental vehicle.

Instead of giving up, the teen-aged thieves pulled their truck alongside Rakebrand’s red Toyota Corolla. Patsy Jones fired a .30-caliber sawed-off rifle into the front seat, killing the 33-year-old agricultural engineer.

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Newspapers reported on the irony of the murder occurring just moments after Rakebrand’s wife had finished reading off a list of tourism safety tips from the Greater Miami Visitors and Convention Bureau.

At the time, I remember thinking that instead of printing out pamphlets, the city should concentrate on arresting robbers and keeping them incarcerated.

Conspicuous. Likewise, there was a push for companies to remove stickers and license plates that identified their vehicles as rental miami-welcom cars. Again, that seemed like a weak remedy: Even with those deterrents, wasn’t there still the same population of thieves out there who would simply find other ways to intimidate and rob?

As an Alamo spokesperson told the LA Times in 1991, “It’s not as though tourists are not spottable in unmarked cars. They have a lot of luggage, they dress differently than you or I, they carry maps and cameras.” She also asserted that thieves were identifying tourists at rental car lots and following them.

Even those who didn’t conspicuously look like tourists couldn’t help but be tailed once thieves saw them leave rental car facilities. As the New York Times reported the day after the Rakebrand crime:

The police said Mr. Rakebrand had not demonstrated any of the behavior that typically draws the attention of criminals to tourists. He was driving at a normal speed, not slowly as if bewildered, and his valuables had been placed out of sight. The police said his car had no emblems or special license plates identifying it as a rental vehicle.

I’ll revisit that issue in a moment, but first the story of Helga Luest as told in “Tourist Trap.”

Sheer brutality. There’s plenty of irony in her tale as well. Luest worked as a producer for German TV.

She was assigned to cover the Sunshine State crime woes and even produced a segment about tourist safety for German television. Coincidentally, Luest and her mother, who both lived in the U.S. on the East Coast, had made arrangements for a vacation to the Florida Keys before the crime wave hit. They decided to go ahead with the trip anyway.

Unfortunately, forewarned wasn’t entirely forearmed. The women got lost near Miami International Airport and pulled onto a side street to turn around. Two assailants suddenly materialized and blocked their rental car.

One of the attackers kicked through the driver’s side window, reached in, disabled the horn, shifted the gear to park, and began punching Luest while the other yelled threats at her mother.

Repeat performance. Luest fought back and, as mentioned, one of the men — later identified as 23-year-old Stanley Cornet — bit down on her arm and managed to hang on for a few moments as she raced from the scene.

The assault left Luest with a dislocated jaw, injuries to her back and neck, and a large bite wound. She retained a lack of feeling on one side of her face, according to her interview on Forensic Files.

The 5-foot-6-inch Cornet apparently bounced off the pavement without major injuries, because he felt well enough four days later to bite and attempt to rob another motorist. The victim’s son, a Miami police officer, intervened and took Cornet into custody.

A forensic odontologist made a cast of Cornet’s teeth and determined a match to Luest’s bite wound.

Mystery accomplice. Unlike many other tourist robbery victims, Luest was willing to travel back to Miami to assist with the investigation and legal actions against her assailant.

(The physical distance between the victims’ homelands and south Florida wasn’t the only detriment to prosecution during the crime wave. Thieves hoped that the dramatic and brutal nature of the smash-and-grab jobs would leave their prey too shaken up or scared to testify, according to the 2006 book Crime Scenes: Revealing the Science Behind the Evidence by Paul Roland.)

Cornet, who had prior convictions, ended up receiving life in prison. Honor among thieves does occasionally exist, it seems, because he never gave up the name of his accomplice in the Luest attack.

Stanley Cornet is serving his sentence in Hardee Correctional Institution in Blowling Green, Forida — Stanley Cornet is serving his life sentence in Hardee Correctional Institution in Bowling Green, Florida

The Forensic Files episode concludes by noting that the south Florida tourist-robbery wave ended after companies stopped marking rental cars as such and police increased their vigilance around rental parking lots.

Finally, results. I did a little research and found that southern Florida’s efforts to protect travelers were more extensive than what the show detailed. The state and Broward County put up additional lighting and signs to help tourists avoid getting lost. The rental car agencies began playing audio messages about safety on their PA systems.

Rewards were offered to members of the public who helped the police apprehend robbers.

Most important, law enforcement invested half a million dollars in a multi-jurisdiction task force to prevent crimes against tourists — and did, in fact, make hundreds of arrests within a few months.

In 1994, tourist robberies in Dade County dropped 58 percent from the previous year.

An upcoming post will offer an update on Helga Luest, who lives in the Washington, D.C., area and has become an advocate for people suffering from the effects of trauma.

Until then, cheers. — R.R.

Update: Read the Q&A with Helga Luest.

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

Thomas Druce: The Epilogue

Pennsylvania House, Big House, Then What?
(“Capitol Crimes,” Forensic Files)

Thomas W. Druce panicked and made a decision so ill-advised that it meant trading his job as a Pennsylvania legislator for a 42-cent-an-hour gig on the grounds crew of Laurel Highlands State Prison.

Laurel Highlands State Prison is no Alcatraz. The minimum-security facility serves as home to many elderly, disabled, and chronically ill convicts. Druce was assigned there ostensibly because the institution needed younger, healthier inmates to take on manual labor

Last week’s post examined the roles racism and classism played in the privileged treatment and light sentence Druce received for the hit-and-run accident that left Kenneth Cains alone and dying next to a Harrisburg street on July 27, 1999.

Druce, who for four terms represented the 44th District in Central Bucks County — and enjoyed a $57,367 annual base salary, per diem expenses, and a government-paid car — managed to evade justice at first by hiding the evidence of the accident, then by having lawyers stall his prison check-in date until April 2004. (He had pleaded guilty in 2000.)

So what ever happened to him and others featured on “Capitol Crimes,” the Forensic Files episode about Druce’s crimes? Three epilogues:

• Thomas Druce was released in 2006. “It’s a tragedy all the way around,” Druce’s mentor, former Bucks County Commissioner Andrew Warren was quoted as saying in a Morning Call story by Pervaiz Shallwani. “And now it’s probably best everyone start anew.”

Druce actually had already begun something of a new chapter, even before he reported to jail in 2004, according to his LinkedIn profile. He launched PoliticsPA.com in 2001.

Rare shot of Thomas Druce with facial hair

Although he’s no longer associated with the website, PoliticsPA.com still exists, under new ownership, as a “one-stop shop for political junkies in every part of the state” and has attracted ads from the likes of Uber and the University of Pennsylvania.

It’s not clear whether Druce ever owned the site in full or profited from it in any way.

The website wasn’t his first post-crime venture: He also founded a public-policy consulting business, Phoenix Strategy Group, before heading to his minimum-security digs.

Again, whether he derived net gains from the business (and who ran it) during his time behind razor wire is unclear.

A 2000 Philadelphia Inquirer story by Stephanie Doster and Amy Worden noted that Druce already had “a job lined up with Hershey public-relations firm Hallowell & Branstetter” after his release but that “he could have difficulty getting to work because his driver’s license had been suspended.” Druce’s LinkedIn profile makes no mention of that position.

In another Philadelphia Inquirer story, published the day after Druce’s March 2006 release from prison, Worden described the disgraced politician as having “$15 in his checking account” and being “$100,000 in debt.”

His wife, Amy Schreiber-Druce, a former ballet teacher, had already filed for divorce and found a job working for a political caucus, according to the article.

The 2006 Philly Inquirer story also noted that the house in Chalfont, Pennsylvania, that the couple and their three sons had shared still belonged to the family at the time of his release. Hence, it’s unlikely Schreiber-Druce ended up moving into the boardinghouse room vacated by Kenneth Cains after her husband went to state prison.

According to Thomas Druce’s LinkedIn profile, he worked at Phoenix Strategy Group from 2001 to the present, which would — curiously — encompass his days in Laurel Highland.

His LinkedIn profile also says that, starting in 2013, he worked in business development for Grace Electronics, “a small-business manufacturing and engineering company supporting the defense and aerospace industry partnering with Lockheed Martin, Boeing and the United States Navy to the Phoenix Strategy Group.”

Aside from the information on the social-media networking website, very little record of Druce’s doings after his release can be found on the internet.

Eric Cains — Louis Cains, the victim’s brother, lived in Harrisburg and worked at Ames Tru-Temper

• Louis Cains, the brother of hit-and-run victim Kenneth Cains, died in 2013 at the age of 60. An obituary notes that, in addition to Kenneth, two other siblings preceded him in death.

He lived long enough to hear Thomas Druce apologize for failing to stop after hitting Kenneth, and see Druce hit with a $100,000 civil fine for his crimes.

Cains, a longtime employee at a garden and lawn equipment manufacturer, left a wife of 26 years, a daughter, and three surviving siblings.

• Ed Marsico, the District Attorney who prosecuted Druce, still serves in that capacity in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, and is going strong a decade after his appearance on Forensic Files.

Recent headlines include Marsico’s investigation of a synthetic marijuana influx that caused widespread overdosing in the area.

In 2015, his office investigated police officer Lisa Mearkle, who shot a man lying face down on the ground after he fled a traffic stop in Harrisburg. A jury acquitted her on all charges related to David Kassick’s death.

Sadly, Marsico saw his own son, Connor, a 19-year-old football player at Millersville University, plead guilty to simple assault in connection with the robbery and beating of a 22-year-old man. Connor received 24 months of probation in 2015.

Adversity notwithstanding, Ed Marsico is Dauphin County’s longest-serving DA. In celebration, commissioners designated an Edward M. Marsico Jr. Day in 2014.

And he still has a great tan. — RR

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

Thomas Druce 2: Classism Is In

When a Mover and Shaker Hits and Runs
“Capitol Crimes,” Forensic Files

Last week’s post looked at the car accident that killed a former Marine and damaged the political career of the driver.

Pennyslvania lawmaker Thomas W. Druce plowed his SUV into Kenneth Cains on a Harrisburg street and then sped off into the night on July 27, 1999.

The original charges against Druce, then 38, included homicide by vehicle — a third-degree felony with a mandatory minimum of three years — in addition to lesser charges such as tampering with evidence and insurance fraud. Forensic Files covered the case in the absorbing episode Capital Crimes.

Struggling vet. But Druce got a plea deal that eliminated the vehicular homicide charge. Along with a tongue-lashing about how Druce “lacked character” and “betrayed the public trust,” Judge Joseph H. Kleinfelter handed him a two- to four-year sentence in 2000. He ended up serving just two years before winning parole.

Thus a well-to-do, influential white man paid a small price for fleeing the scene of an accident that killed a poor, down-on-his-luck black man.

Cains, 42, was a Vietnam veteran with a severe drinking problem. He lived in a rooming house in a dodgy section of Harrisburg and had no spouse or children.

Druce had a wife, Amy Schreiber Druce, to cry for him during court proceedings as well as three small sons at home. His family and friends paid $600,000 to bail him out of jail (while awaiting sentencing) in time for Christmas in 2000.

Defer, defer. Druce even had the top Pennsylvania government official in his corner. “This story is a tragedy,” then-Governor Tom Ridge said. “I have known Tom Druce to be a man of honor, integrity, kindness, and compassion. Like others who know him, I have been shocked by this news, and I have hoped that it is untrue.”

A young Kenneth Cains during his service in the Marines — A young Kenneth Cains during his service in the Marine Corps

Once sentenced, Druce filed various motions that delayed his imprisonment for four years, during which time he went “on vacation at the Jersey Shore, visited New York and Washington, attended parties and sporting events, and traveled to Harrisburg, where he worked as a political consultant,” a Philadelphia Inquirer editorial noted.

For this week’s post, I’d like to concentrate on how race and class factored into the Druce affair.

With the scenario reversed, a car driven by a Kenneth Cains striking a Thomas Druce — his suit-and-tie clad body hitting the side-view mirror, then bouncing off the windshield and landing beside the road — you can bet Cains’ sentence would have dwarfed the two years Druce got.

According to research gathered by the ACLU for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2014, black male defendants receive longer sentences than whites arrested for the same offenses and with comparable criminal histories.

NAACP weighs in. The ACLU report noted a differential of 20 percent, but I can’t help but envision a much, much more severe punishment than what Druce received. And Cains would have been denounced as an “animal,” to be sure.

As a 2001 Morning Call editorial noted:

“If anything, Mr. Druce, who is white, has received preferential treatment from the moment his car hit his African-American victim, as Paula Hess, executive director of the Harrisburg branch of the NAACP, has asserted. Eight weeks behind bars [prior to sentencing], followed by electronic monitoring — is that the price Mr. Cains would have paid if he had been the driver in a fatal hit-and-run?”

Consider another relevant scenario: an affluent African American office holder committing a hit and run against a heavily intoxicated, socially insignificant poor white man. I tend to think the driver would use his financial wherewithal to wring every ounce of leniency possible, just as Druce did.

In the real crime, classism seemed to play a larger role than racism.

Surviving memebers of Kenneth Cains, including brother Louis Cains and sister Delores Williams, who said — Surviving members of Kenneth Cains’ family, including brother Louis Cains Jr. and sister Delores Williams, who said Kenneth was a beloved uncle to her daughters.

Kid gloves. In his Forensic Files appearance, Louis Cains Jr., the brother of victim Kenneth Cains, expressed frustration over the consequences for Druce — but he didn’t pinpoint race.

As a 2004 Pocono Record story reported:

“Louis Cains Jr. has criticized the courts for giving Druce what he viewed as special treatment during his drawn-out appeal, but said at a news conference Thursday that he was satisfied with the outcome. ‘I knew in my heart he was going to have to do that time,’ the 51-year-old manufacturing worker said.”

Indeed, Pennsylvania Rep. Thaddeus Kirland, chairman of the legislative black caucus, pointed to class rather than race in decrying Druce’s short sentence and subsequent parole.

“Poor folk end up in jail, sometimes for the rest of their life for such a crime,” Kirland said, as reported by Tom Infield in a 2006 Philadelphia Inquirer story.

Not a fan. Likewise, Rep. Bill DeWeese, Druce’s colleague in the Pennsylvania House, implicated economic status. “If the down-and-out U.S. Marine had run helter-skelter over an Oxford-cloth, striped-tie, preppy legislator, that poor old salt would have been in the slammer until the cows came home,” DeWeese was quoted as saying in the 2006 Philadelphia Inquirer article.

Incidentally, DeWeese himself ended up on the wrong side of the law a few years later. In 2012, he earned himself a two- to five-year sentence for misuse of state resources for campaign purposes.

And why did DeWeese get a longer sentence for finance-related misbehavior than Druce did for a fatal hit and run?

Rep. Bill DeWeese said Thomas Druce got off too easy

Perhaps ageism, or just plain age. Druce, the younger, fresher rising star may have been judged more worthy of redemption than DeWeese, who was past 60 and presumably had more years to accumulate enemies in the state capital.

Next week’s post will provide an epilogue for Thomas Druce as well as some of those interviewed on Forensic Files. Until then, cheers. — RR

Update: Read Part 3 of the Thomas Druce story.

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

Thomas Druce: Pennsylvania’s Not Proud

Worlds Collide, Tragedy Ensues
“Capitol Crimes,” Forensic Files

The last four posts told the story of Mark Winger, whose crimes fascinated the public because of their unlikelihood and the intricate planning they entailed.

Thomas W. Druce before his fall from grace.

The actions of hit-and-run driver Thomas W. Druce, on the other hand, involved no diabolical blueprint. The Pennsylvania legislator’s decision to leave Kenneth Cains dying next to the road was born of common self-preservation instinct.

Literally. Although few people are callous enough to replicate all of Druce’s actions, everyone can relate to the way desperation dissolves morality.

“Capitol Crimes,” the Forensic Files episode about Druce’s offenses, was absorbing because of the predictable way it unfolded, confirming what viewers would pretty much suspect all along.

The deadly clash of two men worlds apart in socio-economic status (both of whom drank inadvisably) was something of a real-life Bonfire of the Vanities.

Hasty decision. It starts on July 27, 1999, when Thomas Druce, a 38-year-old member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, was driving home after having drinks with co-workers in Harrisburg, the state capital.

Druce hit and mortally wounded pedestrian Kenneth Cains, a former Marine who worked as a day laborer.

Investigators determined that Cains had a blood-alcohol level of 0.17 percent, twice what’s considered impaired, which possibly contributed to his stepping into traffic on Cameron Street.

Whether or not Cains, 42, was walking in a careless fashion didn’t matter once Druce fled the scene without checking on the injured man or calling 911. The politician instantly turned himself into a criminal.

Another driver witnessed the accident and summoned the authorities. He had seen the brake lights go on right before the vehicle zipped away but couldn’t determine its make or model. Paramedics pronounced Kenneth Cains dead at the scene.

Carded. By taping together fragments found near the scene, police officer Raymond Lyda uncovered a Chrysler logo and concluded that the car was a 1996 or 1997 Jeep Cherokee.

Victim Kenneth Cains of Harrisburg. — Kenneth Cains

The leads stopped there until the police received an anonymous Christmas card a few months later. It suggested they investigate Rep. Thomas Druce because he had taken in his state-provided black Jeep Cherokee for repairs and traded in the vehicle shortly after Kenneth Cains’ killing.

The story unspooled pretty quickly from there. Druce told investigators what just about any criminal trying to cover up a deadly hit and run would — that he didn’t stop because he thought he struck an object (a traffic barrel), not a person.

He also lied by asserting the accident took place on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

Then, he explained, he had the cracked windshield fixed and traded the car in because he wanted a vehicle with lower mileage.

Druce claimed that a stop he made at the state capital building happened before the accident and that he did so to pick up some files.

Once investigators obtained the ID of the Jeep, they traced it to an unsuspecting consumer who had purchased it from a car dealership.

Questionable malfunction. Despite the repairs and many washings, the car held a cache of evidence. Glass lodged in Cains’ elbow and paint on his clothing matched those of the Jeep. Investigators recovered a hair in the seam of the side-view mirror and determined it had come from Cains’ arm.

The police suspected Druce made the visit to his office after the accident, to assess the damage. The video camera at the gate Druce entered that night had mysteriously stopped working, and the “capital cop” — the complex has its own police force — who witnessed the car enter the parking lot retired shortly after the incident.

Investigators discovered that, on his insurance claim, Druce had said he hit a sign, not a traffic barrel.

On March 16, 2000, Druce was arrested and charged with numerous crimes, including homicide by vehicle.

A Philadelphia Inquirer story by Glen Justice and Rena Singer described Druce at his court date:

“Druce, in a wrinkled blue suit, chewed gum and appeared nervous at his arraignment, where he also was charged with leaving the scene of an accident — which carries a mandatory jail sentence. The eyes of Druce’s wife, Amy, filled with tears as District Justice Joseph S. Solomon rejected the 38-year-old lawmaker’s attempt to pay 10 percent of his $20,000 bail with a personal check.”

Money buys time. In September 2000, Druce pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, evidence tampering, and insurance fraud. He resigned from office, got a sentence of two to four years, and paid a civil fine of $100,000 to Cains’ brother and two sisters.

Thanks to various legal maneuvers, Druce didn’t go to jail until 2004. (His attorneys argued unsuccessfully that the time Druce spent with an electronic monitoring device on his ankle and an evening curfew should be subtracted from his jail sentence.)

On March 13, 2006, after serving two years of his sentence, Druce was paroled. He exited Pennsylvania’s Laurel Highlands prison with his political career destroyed.

In a statement, Druce came close to admitting what he’d denied for years: that he knew his car struck a person, not an object:

“Although the state police ruled the accident was ‘unavoidable’ since Mr. Cains stepped onto the roadway and into the path of my car,” Druce said, “I have no excuse for not stopping near the scene and reporting the accident to the police.”

Indeed, calling 911 after the accident and giving an honest account might have gotten Druce off with a DUI plea — or nothing if his blood-alcohol level tested below 0.10 percent, Pennsylvania’s generous legal limit before Act 24 in 2003.

Druce “might well have fled the scene of his innocence,” as then-columnist Dennis Roddy put it in a January 2000 Pittsburgh Post Gazette piece.

More important, reporting the accident would have spared Kenneth Cains’ family the anguish of knowing the driver of the car that killed their brother didn’t care enough to stop.

Upcoming posts will contemplate the role race or class, or both, played in the handling of the tragedy and give a post-conviction epilogue for those involved.

Until then, cheers. — RR

Update: Read Part 2 or Part 3 of the Thomas Druce story.

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

Mark Winger: Life in Supermax

His Heart Will Go On
(“A Welcome Intrusion,” Forensic Files)

In recent prison mugshots, Mark Winger looks more like a department-store Santa or an organic food co-op manager than a killer.

Mark Winger no longer looks like the clean-cut small-town husband and dad he once was. — The formerly clean-shaven Mark Winger in an undated photo from mugshots.com

It seems that the onetime nuclear engineer from Springfield, Illinois, has lost just about everything except hope.

Two of the last three blog posts, starting with Mark Winger: No Great Catch, cover his life from his days as a small-town father and husband with a $72,000-a-year job to his time spent orchestrating the double-homicide and murder-for-hire plots that ultimately landed him in supermax for life.

Conspicuous consumption. Winger’s story left off in 2007, when a judge rejected his contention that he’s just a lovable victim. Winger explained that he was merely managing his anger when he did such things as verbalize his desire to cut out DeAnn Schultz’s tongue (and that’s just the tamer part of his reverie regarding his ex-girlfriend) for testifying against him.

This week’s post offers a glimpse of Winger’s existence since then, in an update to the Forensic Files episode “A Welcome Instrusion.“

Although audio tapes captured Winger complaining about becoming ill from a “meat sandwich” served in prison, it looks as though he’s been able to find ample culinary delights.

The 5-foot-10-inch formerly small-framed prisoner now weighs in at 215 pounds, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections, which also notes he has an eagle tattoo on his left leg.

Winger tried to make the most of his time in captivity by mounting a legal fight over where he can exercise. His litigation in its various incarnations dragged on for years.

The prison, Tamms Correctional Center (he was later moved to Menard), had not been allowing him to exercise outside his cell. He alleged that forcing him to stay in his concrete-walled bachelor pad all day constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

Winger also contended that Illinois law restricted such limitations to 90 days.

Exercising authority. At some point during his incarceration, he also complained that running in place and doing jumping jacks in his cell caused his knees to hit the wall or bunk, sit-ups made his bed too sweaty, and the floor was too dirty for push-ups.

Back in 2006, Winger had contended that his exclusion from the exercise yard caused him “physical illness, depression, and panic attacks.”

Court papers noted that intent is essential for liability under the Eighth Amendment and there was no indication of malice toward Winger and no evidence the exercise restrictions caused his alleged psychological problems.

In 2013, a Chicago U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling that defeated Winger’s suit. That seems to be the last of Winger’s efforts to shake things up from his home in a maximum security institution.

Happier times: Winger with his wife, Donnah, and his parents. — Winger with his first wife, the late Donnah Brown Winger, and his parents, Jerrold and Sally Winger

Professor’s insight. In other Winger-related news, I stumbled upon some interesting academic research online that suggested that, in some ways, Mark Winger’s case was typical of husbands who kill.

In “Monstrous Arrogance: Husbands Who Choose Murder Over Divorce,” Davidson College professor Cynthia Lewis identifies a number of ways in which Mark Winger’s actions after the crime fit a typical pattern. Winger:

1) Used the 911 call as a means of setting up his alibi. “I found this man in my house,” Winger told the operator. He also claimed his baby was crying as an excuse to get off the phone so he could shoot Roger Harrington again.

2) Visited the police to find out how the investigation was going, despite that he was not originally considered a suspect. Other wife killers, Lewis notes, have tended to check in with neighbors and family members to see what they know about the progress of the investigation. “He’s fishing for clues about suspicion toward himself,” according to the author.

3) Capitalized on his loss to gain sympathy. Winger took “his sense of injury one step beyond emotional loss to financial gain,” Lewis writes. Indeed, he profited by Donnah Winger’s $150,000 life insurance payout. “But even more pronounced about Winger — and a major element tying together spousal murders that circumvent divorce — is the arrogance he displayed in suing Harrington’s company [Bootheel Area Rapid Transportation], a move perhaps related to cultivating the image of the bereaved husband,” Lewis concludes.

Mark Winger, still smiling — Mark Winger in a photo from his current home in Menard Correctional Center in Illinois

Talking points. So it seems the man of science who thought he was smart enough to annihilate — without consequences — those who stood in his way, is in many aspects just a typical violent criminal with more in common with his 3,203 fellow Menard inmates than he probably likes to think.

One more note: The Perfect Patsy by Edward Cunningham contains transcripts of Winger’s conversations with Pontiac Correctional Center inmate Terry Hubbell. Some of the book’s content is available free online.

As murder-for-hire dialogues go, these are actually a little tiresome to plow through. They’re riddled with repetition and passages noting unintelligible spans of tape. But there’s enough incriminating conversation to ease the minds of any folks still worried that Winger is just a good guy victimized by the system. — RR

Note: This concludes a four-part series on Mark Winger. To read the earlier posts, you can go to Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Mark Winger: Survivors’ Epilogues

Fallout from a Nuclear Engineer’s Crimes
(“A Welcome Intrusion,” Forensic Files)

Last week’s post and the one prior looked at Mark Winger’s two murder schemes (one fulfilled, the other failed) and the efforts of law enforcement to ensure he spends the rest of his days at the mercy of a prison commissary account and Nutraloaf.

This week’s post is devoted to epilogues for some of the people affected by the former Springfield, Illinois, nuclear engineer’s 1995 slaying of Donnah Winger and Roger Harrington:

• SARA JANE and IRA DRESCHER, Donnah Winger’s mother and step-father, took comfort in philanthropy. They raised $42,000 to build Donnah’s Playrooom in Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, in 1998.

donnahs-fund-crop At that time, they still believed Roger Harrington was the hammer-wielding killer. Once the truth about their son-in-law came out, the Dreschers turned their attention toward domestic violence.

They established Donnah’s Fund at the Women in Distress shelter in Broward County, Florida, to help victims pay for security deposits, furnishings, and babysitting once they exit the facility and start anew.

In a 2010 story in the Happy Herald, the Florida publication noted that the Dreschers made themselves available to speak to organizations about domestic violence.

P.S. You can also read a couple of nice tidbits about the Dreschers’ work by way of a 2008 post on an eclectic blog I came across. John Connor’s convoluted (in a good way) recollection tells of how his random purchase of a 1964 souvenir record album eventually connected him with Sara Jane Drescher.

Rebecca Simic with the children from her marriage to Mark Winger — A Southeast Outlook clipping of Rebecca Simic and children from her marriage to Mark Winger. Bailey is at top right

• REBECCA SIMIC, whom Mark Winger married after hiring her to care for Bailey, the baby girl he and Donnah Winger adopted, seems to have kept a low profile since he went to prison in 2002. A Southeast Outlook story provided a few details about her life since then.

The 2012 article in the newspaper, a publication of the Southeast Christian Church, reported that Simic’s marriage to Winger had been a happy one. According to the piece by writer Patti Smith:

“They were active in their church, and Winger did construction projects as a volunteer around the building. Simic said she believes Winger’s conversion was real. She never suspected him until he was sent to prison for life and she asked for a divorce. His letters, she said, were threatening and hostile.”

After the 2002 trial, she immediately moved to Louisville, Kentucky, along with Bailey — whom Simic adopted — and the other two girls and boy she shared with Winger.

In a 2016 interview with the Southeast Outlook, Simic said that she’s begun to open up more about her history as a means of giving moral support to other single moms.

She explained life as a onetime spouse to a murderer:

“No one seems to think about the family when someone is incarcerated,” Simic said. “I call them living victims. It’s a humiliating, embarrassing role to play, although you have done nothing wrong. That spouse is alive but dead to the family.”

As so with the earlier story, the more recent article asserts that Winger threatened Simic’s life when she took steps to end their marriage.

Despite everything, she says that the whole experience has strengthened her religious faith and that she’s grateful to have brought up Bailey.

• DOUG WILLIAMSON and CHARLIE COX were lead detectives on the case, starting with the deaths of Donnah Winger and Roger Harrington. Williamson appeared on both Forensic Files’ “A Welcome Intrusion” in 2003 and 48 Hours’ “Invitation to a Murder” in 2008.

In more-recent years, it seems, life has not gone so well for Williamson. He failed firearms training and left the police force in 2011.

Doug Williamson during a Forensic Files taping

As of 2014, he was locked in a conflict with the city of Springfield over a disability claim, as reported in the Illinois Times.

Williamson, whose father and brother also were police officers, said the job brought on post-traumatic stress disorder and made him unable to function in his position.

Investigating murders, including one involving the suffocation death of an infant, gave him disturbing dreams and night sweats and caused other trauma, he said. (Interestingly, San Antonio detective Alfred Damiani, featured in an earlier post, said that baby cases were part of the reason he left his homicide division.)

The city countered that Williamson’s problems stemmed from his drinking and willful wallowing in memories of homicide cases. He went on vacation with the surviving family of Donnah Winger.

Charlie Cox, it seems, has had an easier time. He retired as Springfield chief of police in 2009.

He later appeared in Final Witness. The 2012 TV series featured reenactments with actors along with real-life interviews of those involved in cases. The episode Cox participated in, “The Devil You Know,” told the story of Mark Winger’s double homicide.

• RALPH HARRINGTON the father of Roger Harrington, lived until the age of 73 in 2010 — long enough for him and his wife, Helen, to see Mark Winger convicted of not only Roger’s murder but also the jail-yard plot to kill DeAnn Schultz and the Gelman family in 2007.

Next week’s post will provide the latest blips on the Mark Winger radar screen from the maximum security Menard Correctional Center. Until then, cheers.

Update: Watch a 20/20 episode produced in 2021 that includes interviews with Donnah Winger’s parents and sisters and Bailey (now an adult), Rebecca Simic, and her other three children with Mark Winger.

Read Part 4: Life in Supermax.

Mark Winger: 19 Pages of Sociopathy

Quite a Murder-for-Hire Micromanager
(“A Welcome Intrusion,” Forensic Files)

Last week’s post told of how Mark Winger leveraged his reputation as a respectable middle-class husband and father to pull off a double homicide with impunity — but only for six years.

Mark and Donnah Winger — To friends, the Wingers’ marriage seemed ideal

On Aug. 29, 1995, the Illinois Department of Nuclear Safety engineer murdered his wife, Donnah, with a hammer and shot to death a hapless young man named Roger Harrington. Then he told police he killed Harrington because the 27-year-old suspended airport-shuttle driver invaded his home and was attacking his wife.

Winger profited by Donnah’s life insurance policy and basked in public sympathy and his new status as a hero who valiantly confronted a deranged killer.

That party ended in 2001, when police opened a new investigation that unwound Winger’s story and landed him in prison for life.

Tempting tale. The story of the Mr.-Perfect-gone-psycho drew interest from the entertainment media. The ABC-TV drama Silent Witness dedicated a 2012 episode called “The Devil You Know” to the Winger crimes. CSI: NY featured a 2006 episode, “Open and Shut,” loosely based on the case.

Celebrity attorney F. Lee Bailey included Winger in his 2008 book, When the Husband Is the Suspect, written with Jean Rabe.

And as mentioned last week, true-crime genre shows Forensic Files (“A Welcome Intrusion“) and 48 Hours did a great job of covering the Winger saga in 2003 and 2008, respectively.

For today’s post, I’d like to detail how, in the time span between those two broadcasts, Winger managed to obliterate any lingering doubts about his guilt.

Budding bromance. It seemed that Winger wasn’t enjoying the daily grind of the Pontiac Correctional Center and wanted a way out that didn’t involve digging a tunnel.

Pontiac Correctional Facility — Pontiac Correctional Center in Pontiac, Ill., was Winger’s first, but not last, prison home

At some point after his stay commenced in 2002, he established a rapport with another inmate.

Unlike Winger, Terry Hubbell lacked a degree from the Virginia Military Institute and didn’t come from a family prominent enough to land a wedding announcement in the New York Times.

But the biographies of the two men overlapped in that each had beaten someone to death, in Hubbell’s case, a teenager named Angel Greenwood, in 1983.

Eliminate them all. Winger asked Hubbell to execute a murder-for-hire project intended to exonerate Winger and exact revenge on those who had offended him. According to an Illinois state court document filed in 2011:

“In May and June 2005, [Winger] approached Hubbell in the recreation yard and mentioned his desire ‘to get rid of a witness in his case.’ Defendant [Winger] named the witness as DeAnn Anderson or Shultz. Hubbell initially blew it off ‘because everybody that is in prison pretty well says they would like to get rid of a witness in their case.’ Hubbell stated the issue came up ‘repeatedly’ and he eventually contacted a private investigator who worked on his case. Hubbell hoped to receive consideration for himself. In June 2005, Hubbell received a written plan from defendant [Mark Winger]…”

Winger’s 19-page handwritten note called for a hitman to kidnap Jeff Gelman — a well-to-do childhood friend who had declined to bail Winger out of jail in 2001 — and extract a huge sum of money in return for promising not to hurt Gelman’s family.

Terry Hubbell received $3,250 for helping investigators — Terry Hubbell, a lifer Winger met in prison, received $3,250 for helping investigators

That jackpot would pay for the kidnapping of DeAnn Schultz, Winger’s former lover and a witness for the prosecution. Schultz would be forced to write and record statements saying that she lied during the trial and Winger was innocent.

Another provision in Winger’s plan, as paraphrased by Donnah’s step-father, Ira Drescher, during his 48 Hours interview: “Oh, by the way, if there’s any money leftover, kill Ira Drescher also because he’s the son-of-a-gun father-in-law that I dislike.”

Grave expectations. Winger also wanted Gelman and Gelman’s family killed once they came up with the cash. The hitman would murder Schultz, too, but make it look like suicide.

The hired killer would need to follow elaborate instructions every step of the way. Winger’s plan specified, for example, that the hitman ensure that the only fingerprints on Schultz’s suicide note and its envelope would come from Schultz herself and only her DNA could be found on the stamps and flap of the envelope.

Given Winger’s past crimes and his background as an engineer, the elaborateness of the blueprint doesn’t seem too surprising. But his belief that he could phone in a plan with that many moving parts does. It sounds like a job for a team of CIA agents and Navy Seals, not some freelancer hired sight unseen.

Also, in his fixation on the details, Winger seemed to forget the larger picture. Once the hitman received the ransom from Gelman, what would keep him from taking the money and running? Why would he risk committing all those capital murders?

Snippet of Winger's detail-oriented master plan — Snippet of Winger’s detail-oriented master plan. A prison guard photo-copied the document and then had Terry Hubbell give it back to Winger.

And wouldn’t investigators connect the dots between the Schultz, Gelman, and Drescher murder victims? No one but Winger would have a motive for seeing all of them dead.

In the end, Winger hurt no one but himself with his intricate scheme.

No Johnnie Cochrans. In the resulting 2007 trial, Winger claimed that his plans were just a fantasy, fueled by anger over his belief that Springfield police detectives had lied about his murder case and that his conviction was in part politically motivated.

He also blamed his own bloodthirsty reveries on the dehumanizing conditions at maximum security prisons. “They are warehouses of men, but they’re also insane asylums,” Winger said.

Winger characterized Hubbell as a “sly fox” whom he feared. Hubbell was scamming him, he alleged.

Apparently, Winger’s parents couldn’t or wouldn’t help him get a lawyer for this, his latest trial. Livingston County public defender Randell Morgan represented him.

In a twist, a special agent who had helped arrange for Hubbell to wear a concealed recording device while talking to Winger in the prison yard ended up testifying for the defense. Casey Payne said that Hubbell came forward in the first place only because he wanted his mother’s phone bill paid and a transfer to another prison.

The jury took three hours to convict Winger.

As reported by Chris Dettro in a State Journal Register story, Morgan asked for a minimum sentence, arguing that no money changed hands between Winger and Hubbell and that none of the kidnap-murder plans came to fruition.

In his presentencing statement to Livingston County Circuit Judge Harold Frobish, Winger insisted he was a sociable soul, not a sociopath. “I love people,” Winger said. “The only thing I love more than people is more people.”

Nerves calmed. Frobish handed Winger — then 44 years old and already serving two life sentences without parole — two sentences of 35 years. The judge called him a “threat to the public.”

Sara Jane and Ira Drescher, Donnah Winger’s mother and step-father, had no idea their beloved son-in-law harbored murderous thoughts

Donnah Winger’s mother, Sara Jane Drescher, told 48 Hours that the additional sentence eased her worries that her former son-in-law would go free if a technicality caused the murder convictions to be overturned.

Ira Drescher recalled looking at Winger in chains after the trial and telling him, “Your miserable life is over.”

But here at ForensicFilesNow.com, Mark Winger’s story will continue in upcoming weeks with a postscript on his latest maneuvers from his super-max cell and an update on the lives of some of the survivors, including second wife Rebecca Simic.

Until then, cheers.

Update: Read Part 3: Mark Winger: Survivors’ Epilogues

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Mark Winger: No Great Catch

Diabolique, American Style
(“A Welcome Intrusion,” Forensic Files)

If I ever brought a guy like Mark Winger home to meet my parents, they would have died.

Of ecstasy.

“A nuclear engineer for the state of Illinois,” I can hear my mother saying in awe. A graduate degree and solid job would be a nice parcel of news to relay to the extended family in Miami Beach.

Mark Winger around the time of his first marriage.

Winger also seemed to have a nice personality — mild-mannered and friendly. And to top it off, he was, according to some reports, a first cousin of the actress Deborah Winger.

Unbeknownst to Donnah Brown and her approving parents, however, Mark was no prize.

Donnah, a medical technician, married him in 1989. By 1995, he was having a secret affair with her best friend. The Wingers had recently adopted a baby girl named Bailey, and Mark’s apparent plan was to get rid of Donnah, marry her friend DeAnn Schultz, and keep the baby for the two of them to raise.

To accomplish his goals, he devised the most foolproof-seeming murder scheme ever portrayed by Forensic Files.

Favorite half hour. “A Welcome Intrusion” is my favorite Forensic Files episode of all because it illustrates how a) the surface only tells half of the story, b) even the most stable-appearing family is just a house of cards, and c) people who get away with murder — literally or figuratively — just can’t stop pushing their luck.

The story of Mark Winger’s crime was also featured on 48 Hours in “An Invitation to a Murder.” It included interviews with Donnah’s mother and step-father, Sara Jane and Ira Drescher, who supported their son-in-law up until the evidence grew impossible to refute.

And later, even when it turned out Mark Winger was plotting against Ira, the way that the couple seemed utterly without vindictiveness toward Winger was admirable.

But all this is getting ahead of the story. Here’s what happened:

Winger, who up until 1995 had been an in-law-pleasing pillar of society, grabbed a chance to put a diabolical plot in motion after his wife’s chance encounter with a young man suffering from psychiatric problems.

Roger Harrington, 27, an airport shuttle driver, had driven recklessly and muttered some disturbing thoughts during a ride Donnah took from Lambert International Airport in St. Louis to the couple’s home in Springfield, Illinois. At Mark’s urging, she wrote a letter of complaint to the shuttle service owner.

The company suspended Harrington.

Deadly ruse. Mark Winger, 32, then lured Harrington to the Winger home on August 29, 1995, under the pretense of wanting to smooth things over.

When Harrington showed up, Winger shot him in the head.

Donnah, 32, ran into the room to find out what the commotion was. Winger beat her about the head with a claw hammer.

Then he called 911 and, doing his best impression of a hysterical grief-stricken husband, blamed the carnage on Harrington.

“I just found this man in my house. He beat my wife…He’s lying on the floor with a bullet in his head…,” Winger said in a breathless state of rehearsed melodrama. “Yes, I shot him — he was killing my wife!“

Both victims died of their injuries without speaking.

They bought it. Winger wanted the world to believe that Harrington was a deranged malcontent who invaded his home to seek revenge — by bludgeoning Donnah to death for making him lose his job — and that Winger shot Harrington to halt the attack.

Winger’s plan worked.

The authorities and the media believed him. Shortly after the crime, a Sun Sentinel article by David Nitkin reported:

“‘How [Harrington] got into the house, we don’t know,’ Springfield Lt. Bob Shipman said…Mark Winger was exercising in the basement when he heard his wife’s body thud to the floor…[Mark Winger] grabbed a 45-caliber pistol and shot Harrington fatally in the head. Police said Harrington had a history of mental illness, and that Mark Winger shot in self-defense and will not face any charges.”

It’s not clear whether Winger knew this in advance, but Springfield Police Det. Charlie Cox was already familiar with Harrington. Years earlier, Cox had to break up at least one physical fight involving Harrington and Harrington’s then-wife. (Cox owned the trailer park where the couple lived.)

It established a pattern of violence, giving police all the more reason to accept Winger’s story without question.

A beautiful mourning. Winger received $25,000 from a fund for crime victims and a $150,000 life insurance payout, according to a Chicago Tribune story by Linda Rockey. The grieving husband wrote a letter to a local paper thanking residents for their support during his ordeal.

He resumed his life, hiring a nanny, Rebecca Simic, to care for Bailey. He married Simic (instead of DeAnn Schultz) and converted to Christianity for his new bride. The couple added three more children to their family.

The Dreschers stayed loyal to Mark Winger, and they remained part of one another’s lives.

But Winger, apparently feeling that $175,000 wasn’t payment enough for committing a double homicide, sued the shuttle company. Bootheel Area Rapid Transportation, however, wasn’t going to just hand over the millions Winger demanded, and began its own investigation.

Springfield police reopened the case in 1999.

Denouement. Evidence of the deception trickled in. DeAnn Schultz told investigators about her relationship with Mark and that he had talked to her about wanting Donnah dead, although at the time she didn’t take him seriously.

Lead detective Doug Williamson, a member of the Springfield Police Department who had always harbored doubts about Winger’s narrative, now had a second chance to examine evidence. The original placement of the bodies — visible in rediscovered Polaroids — contradicted parts of Winger’s story to police.

After reviewing Winger’s 911 call — which picked up the sound of Harrington moaning in pain — and talking to a neighbor who had heard gunshots, investigators concluded that Winger hadn’t immediately fired his gun twice at Harrington as he’d claimed but rather waited 5 minutes in between shots.

“My baby’s crying, my baby’s crying. I’ve gotta go,” he told the operator on the 911 tape before hanging up and using the gun a second time to finish off the already incapacitated Harrington.

Hard cell. Investigators also turned their attentions toward a note found in Harrington’s Oldsmobile. It listed the Wingers’ address and “4:30,” suggesting that, rather that showing up unexpected, Harrington was attending a prearranged meeting. Harrington’s roommates said they remembered his receiving at least one phone call from Winger.

In 2001, Winger was indicted, arrested, and held on $10 million bond. He asked his friend Jeffrey Gelman to put up the money, but the successful Florida real estate developer declined.

In 2002, a jury convicted Winger of two counts of premeditated murder.

Now Mark Winger was once again a great catch — this time for the criminal justice system. He received life in jail without parole.

Oh, there’s more. That’s where the Forensic Files episode, made in 2003, ended, but Mark Winger stayed busy dreaming up other, even more complicated murders that he hoped to phone in from his new home at Pontiac Correctional Center in Illinois.

Next week’s post will detail his failed but frightening attempt and another will discuss the fallout of Winger’s crimes on the survivors. Until then, cheers.—RR

Update: Read Part 2: 19 Pages of Sociopathy

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