Forensic Files Archives - Page 21 of 22

Vicky Lyons: An Epilogue

It Got Better
(“Treading Not So Lightly,” Forensic Files)

Last week’s post discussed the circumstances surrounding the 1980 hit-and-run accident in Big Spring, Texas, that left Vicky Lyons, at age 4, with severe head and eye injuries.

Vicky Lyons, as picture on the findagrave.com — Vicky Lyons

Vicky was around 25 by the time she appeared in “Treading Not So Lightly,” the 2001 Forensic Files episode about the case, and she spoke of the way her neurological impairments made her feel self-conscious in public.

The closing credits noted she died in 2011 at the age of 34.

That got me curious about what happened to Vicky in the intervening years.

Mat mates. An internet search turned up a video of two semi-costumed women — one of whom was introduced as Vicky Lyons — participating in a wrestling match.

There weren’t any closeups, so it was impossible to tell whether the wrestler was the same Vicky Lyons, until I found an online obituary that made it clear the wrestler was in fact almost certainly the Vicky Lyons of Forensic Files fame.

It referred to her as a “professional woman’s wrestling Diva for the past six years working for the Highspots Wrestling School of Charlotte, N.C.”

Michael Bochicchio, owner of the school, confirmed in an email to ForensicFilesNow.com that it was indeed the same Vicky Lyons, and that she was fondly remembered by many people there.

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With her identity assured, I went back and watched the entire wrestling video.

I must say, Vicky kicked ass.

Hard-grapple life. She bounced back after opponent Daffney Unger picked her up and threw her to the mat and put her in a Boston crab hold (you can bet I had to Google that term).

Vicky won the match.

I don’t know too much about wrestling, but it looked more like the Hulk Hogan variety than the kind that leads to varsity letters and the Olympics.

Caleb Konley remembers Vicky for her willingness to help other students at the wrestling school

“We have found nearly every student initially comes in here with a character already in mind,” states the website of the school, now known as Rings Pro Wrestling Training School. “However once they make it past training and begin their careers they almost always find their way into a new character that works better for them.”

Whatever the case, Vicky was obviously having a good time and looking strong.

Dedicated to the art. She clearly had come a long way in her physical rehabilitation since 2001. The match took place around 2005 when Vicky would have been about 28 years old.

“She was a sweet person,” wrestler Caleb Konley told ForensicFilesNow.com in a phone interview on Aug. 17. “I learned pretty early on what happened [with the car accident]. It was an incredible story.”

Vicky was already a student at the school when Konley moved to Charlotte to train there.

At the time of her match with Daffney Unger, Vicky had a few years of training under her belt, Konley noted.

“She showed up for every practice,” Konley said. “She lived for it.”

Social media gal. Vicky’s obituary mentioned she was also studying mass media at the Arts Institute of Charlotte.

I came across Vicky’s Facebook page, with pictures of her and her friends and posts about current events and fun things like her favorite lip gloss.

Her last update was posted on April 17, 2011. She died on June 9 of that year.

Accounts vary as to cause of death (possibly an aneurysm) and where it took place (either in her apartment or a hotel room). There was no foul play.

Both Vicky’s parents survived her, according to the obituary. Her father, William Lyons, died three years later, however, at the age of 61.

“Everyone got along with Vicky,” Konley recalled. “She was tough as nails. If you got out of line with her, she’d let you know.”

Vicky Lyons may have started her childhood as a victim of circumstance but, as an adult, she learned how to write her own script.—RR

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The Vicky Lyons Story

One Very Bad Decision
(“Treading Not So Lightly,” Forensic Files)

The story of Vicky Lyons is heart-rending, about a little girl who survives being hit by a truck but spends the rest of her life beset by the effects of her injuries.

“Treading Not So Lightly,” the Forensic Files episode about the efforts of her mother, Crystal Lyons, to use amateur forensic science to find the driver’s identity, is exciting to watch. And her love for Vicky is beautiful, of course.

Still, the case in a way seems like a search for a villain where none exists. Terrible judgment contributed to the incident, but criminal intent or even ill will was nonexistent. Here’s the story:

No playground. One day in 1980, Crystal Lyons called her boss in the circulation department of the Big Spring Herald newspaper in western Texas to say she wouldn’t be coming into the office because her daughter Vicky’s babysitter was unavailable.

But he threatened her with termination, she said, so she went to work and took Vicky, age 4, with her.

At some point, Crystal’s boss told Vicky to go play outside in the parking lot, according to what both women said on the episode. (It was filmed in 2001 when Vicky was about 25.)

Wrong suspect. By the time Crystal went outside to retrieve Vicky, it was too late. She found her lying unconscious next to the toy dishes she’d been playing with. What looked like a tire track mark ran across her face.

No one saw what happened, but the police arrested and jailed a local fish peddler and minister named J.B. Hardeman who had been seen in the vicinity around the time the accident would have taken place.

Crystal said she never believed Hardeman was the culprit. A grand jury declined to indict him after forensics showed that a suspicious spot of blood on his truck actually came from a fish, not a person.

At some point, the police decided the accident was a civil matter and stopped investigating.

Meanwhile, Vicky lay in a coma for three weeks with severe damage to her skull and one eye. When she awoke, she was unable to walk or speak.

Tire test. Here’s where the suspense starts. Crystal decided to embark on her own investigation. She surreptitiously applied shoe polish to the tires on trucks parked in the Big Springs Herald’s lot, then placed sheets of typing paper on top, rubbed a comb over them to make impressions, and saved them as evidence.

By coincidence, in 1982, Crystal saw a Time magazine story by Bennett H. Beach about Pete “Sherlock” McDonald, a former Firestone designer who taught at the FBI Academy and specialized in forensic tire evidence.

He agreed to help Crystal with her investigation by comparing the tire impressions she had made to pictures of Vicky’s face taken right after the accident.

Laying blame. He determined that the marks on Vicky’s face didn’t match those from Hardeman’s vehicle, but they looked very similar to the Golden Sonic 78 tire patterns on a Ford pickup truck belonging to the Big Spring Herald, according to McDonald’s book, Tire Imprint Evidence (the link enables you to view some of the passages about Vicky Lyons for free).

J.B. Hardman, who picked up his newspaper directly from its facility every day, was wrongfully accused of committing a hit and run — J.B. Hardeman,who picked up a copy of the Big Spring Herald directly from the newspaper’s building every day, was wrongfully accused of committing a hit and run

The driver, whom the show never identified, later said that if he hit Vicky, he had no idea at the time. His contention seemed believable.

No one expects to see a tiny child alone in a parking lot. Many a driver in a residential neighborhood — where people are accustomed to watching out for kids — has accidentally hit a tricycle left in a driveway. Sitting down like she was, Vicky may have been even harder to see.

Also, as Forensic Files noted, the parking lot was unpaved and bumpy and the driver could have simply thought he hit a pothole. And the accident wasn’t part of any other crime — it’s not as though the truck was being used as a getaway car or that the man had any malice toward the Lyonses.

That’s why the whodunit aspect of the episode, although interesting to follow, rang a little hollow for me.

Damages award. Crystal sued the newspaper for “not supervising the parking lot properly.” That seem a little odd. The problem wasn’t the parking lot but rather that the supervisor suggested a child go outside and play there.

It reminded me a little of “the IRS brought down Al Capone” syndrome, whereby wrongdoers ultimately receive punishment — but for some ancillary offense rather than the egregious crimes.

Whatever the case, the Lyonses received a $750,000 settlement from the newspaper and used the money for the numerous surgical procedures Vicky needed to alleviate damage to her vision, hearing, and sense of balance.

Feeling vulnerable. Vicky learned to speak and walk again, although her neurological impairments remained apparent. She said having others gawk at her in public was the worst part of her ordeal.

“[Sometimes people] ask me if I’m mentally retarded or if I had a stroke,” Vicky told Forensic Files. “I’d rather they ask me than sit there and stare.”

The episode manages to end on a positive note, revealing that Crystal Lyons, divorced from Vicky’s father, went back to school to study forensic science.

Vicky Lyons, shown here as an adult, said she remembered a truck hitting her and seeing the driver's face in the rear-view mirro — Vicky Lyons, shown here as an adult, said she remembered a truck hitting her and seeing the driver’s face in the vehicle’s mirror

But it takes a chilling turn during the closing credits: They reveal that Vicky died in 2011 at the age of 34.

Epilogue odyssey. So what happened to Vicky in the decade between the Forensic Files interview and her death? Did her impairments continue to lessen to the extent that she felt comfortable getting out and finding more fulfillment in life?

After nosing around on the internet, I came across some information about Vicky’s later years, although a lot of it came from reader comments — hardly a verifiable source of intelligence.

I’m doing more research and will publish a reliable epilogue for next week’s post. Until then, cheers.—RR

Update: Read Part 2 of the Vicky Lyons story.

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‘Accounting’ for a Ponzi Schemer

Q&A with Ricardo Zayas, CPA
(“Summer Obsession,” Forensic Files)

There are plenty of TV shows revolving around doctors, lawyers, police officers, private detectives, judges, politicians, inmates, journalists, bounty hunters, and teachers.

Ricardo Zayas, CPA, during his Forensic Files appearance in 2005

Who’s missing from the merry mix?

Accountants.

The folks who audit public companies and tell us how many square feet of our home offices we can deduct rarely pop up on television or in films — except as a voice on the phone warning a beleaguered protagonist, “You’ve got to stop spending this way!”

Excel Adventure. Although there aren’t any scripted or reality TV shows devoted to the everyday drama of being an accountant, those with CPA skills do sometimes take part in exciting criminal cases.

One reason I found the “Summer Obsession” episode of Forensic Files so intriguing was that it enabled an accountant to step — albeit reluctantly — into the spotlight for a moment or two.

In the episode, Ricardo Zayas, CPA, discussed his role in contributing analysis that helped law enforcement build a case against Craig Rabinowitz, an entrepreneur who contended that his wife, Stefanie, accidentally drowned in a bathtub.

“For years, the FBI wanted more accountants involved in investigations,” Zayas, now a partner in accounting and advisory services firm Marcum LLP in Philadelphia, told me during a recent phone interview. “I started out as an IRS special agent who focused on financial crimes.”

Evidence in the bag. During the investigation into the 1997 death of Stefanie Rabinowitz, the police discovered a trove of receipts and handwritten financial records hidden in the Main Line, Philadelphia, house that Stefanie, a lawyer, shared with Craig, her husband of seven years.

The authorities provided Zayas with financials and other intelligence obtained during their investigation. He discovered suspicious evidence about what Rabinowitz contended was a thriving wholesale latex-glove venture.

“I said, ‘There’s no business. Here’s where the money went. You figure the rest out,'” Zayas recalled.

His analysis aided the prosecution in its argument that the business existed primarily as a means for Rabinowitz to scam investors out of funds that he used as tip money at Delilah’s Den and to buy gifts for Summer, his favorite dancer there.

Craig Rabinowitz was convicted and sent to Houtzdale State Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania — The case against Craig Rabinowitz was so strong that he confessed to murder and fraud — and was sent to Houtzdale State Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania

The investigation ultimately determined that Rabinowitz was spending an average of $2,000 a week at Delilah’s Den.

By analyzing the figures handwritten on a yellow legal pad, Zayas helped investigators establish a financial motive for the murder.

Rabinowitz intended to use his wife’s life insurance payout as his ticket out of a financial hell-hole of his own making.

Forever in reruns. Zayas, who answered my questions about the case and his appearance on “Summer Obsession,” said he watched the episode only once.

“Every once in a while, I’d have relatives call and say, ‘I just saw you on TV,'” he said.

Zayas found the experience interesting but, for him, it was enough TV exposure for a lifetime. “I’m happy to have it on my résumé,” he said. Excerpts of our conversation follow:

Why was it important for the investigation to call in an accountant?
You’re asking detectives to address issues they don’t have a background to deal with.

They may have some background in financial investigation, but if you put them on the witness stand, they could be asked questions that are difficult. At least I can get past the point when they say, “Are you familiar with financial records?” And I can say, “I’ve been doing this for 30 years.”

Shannon Reinert (or ‘Reinhart’), aka Summer, said Rabinowitz bought her $3,000 worth of Seaman’s furniture, among other gifts for her and her little son

Was the Rabinowitz case memorable?
Yes, I worked on racketeering cases that had aspects that were attached to murders in the 1970s and 1980s. There was labor racketeering where people were dying. But this was the first time I was specifically applying financial analysis in a murder case.

Were you shocked by the Rabinowitz case?
It was not the usual cup of tea but not shocking. You don’t spend 13 years in the environment I was in and react that way.

Shock is inappropriate — it’s not professional. It’s not in my playbook. I guess, over the years, you understand that other people act in ways you wouldn’t.

Was interpreting the evidence complicated?
It was fairly straightforward. For lack of a better term, it was “sources and uses of funds.” Craig Rabinowitz had gone out to people and solicited funds for a business — importing containers of latex gloves.

One of the first questions we asked as we looked at the finances associated with that business was: Is there really evidence of a business? Was he really buying containers of goods?

That was relatively easy to resolve because you could see that there was no indication that he had used funds in furtherance of some business.

It was a circular flow of funds, from person A to person B to American Express — without business expenses. It included frequenting Delilah’s Den.

Next, working with detectives, we interacted with the people who provided the funds. I would talk to the detectives and we would get information and statements from investors.

I wrote a report and included my thought that there was no business.

Were you happy with the job Forensic Files did portraying the case?
I viewed it one time, because my brother and sister-in-law visited and wanted to see it, and I thought it accurately reported what I said and did.

So I guess the appearance didn’t go to your head?
The work we do is only one piece of the puzzle that the prosecution will present in court. When you talk to cops and agents, you understand they don’t think [the attention is] about them. The training is such that it takes the focus off you. You don’t want what you did in your work to be a distraction in court.♠

Next: A look at the story of Vicky Lyons, whose injuries became forensic evidence.

Craig Rabinowitz: A Double Life

Come for the Strippers, Stay for the Duplicity
(“Summer Obsession,” Forensic Files)

Craig Rabinowitz had a baby daughter, a lawyer wife, and a house in a wealthy suburban area of Philadelphia.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have a career of his own. So he fabricated one, as an entrepreneur who imported and sold surgical gloves wholesale.

Slippery heel. His business, C&C Supplies Inc., never existed, but Rabinowitz fooled just about everyone into thinking it did.

The 34-year-old possessed enough charm and credibility to entice friends and relatives to invest a total of about $800,000 into his faux venture.

His in-laws, Anne and Louis Newman, used their own house as collateral to secure a $96,500 loan he said he needed for his business, according to a May 7, 1997, Philadelphia Inquirer story.

He needed the money, especially once he became a father.

Shannon Reinert capitalized on her short-lived fame, starring in dinner theater and an HBO series

A baby, a pay cut. After giving birth to the couple’s daughter, Stefanie Rabinowitz switched to part-time status at the law firm where she worked, taking a pay cut to $33,000 a year, according to a Washington Post article by reporter Debbie Goldberg.

That wasn’t enough to pay off the couple’s $300,000 mortgage debt or buy a sufficient sum of Delilah’s Dollars — vouchers used to pay exotic dancers, aka strippers — to hold the attention of Shannon Reinert, with whom Craig Rabinowitz became infatuated after seeing her perform at Delilah’s Den.

Last week’s post suggested that the stripper factor contributed in large part to the popularity of “Summer Obsession,” the Forensic Files episode about the Rabinowitz murder.

Guilty displeasure. It’s not just the male viewers who like watching the parade of peroxide and silicone.

Many women feel compelled to compare and contrast themselves with the 1 percent who look commercially attractive in G-strings.

Stefanie Rabinowitz, seen here with her daughter, was a lawyer with degrees from Bryn Mawr College and Temple University

In the case of “Summer Obsession,” however, the opportunity to look at women rubbing themselves against poles may be what attracted so many viewers, but it’s the double-life aspect of Craig Rabinowitz’s story that has kept them interested.

In a bid to neatly rid himself of his debts and marriage and also finance his pursuit of Reinert (known as “Summer” at Delilah’s Den), Rabinowitz came up with a murder-insurance fraud scheme.

Arrogant adulterer. Up until then, he had managed to compartmentalize his thieving and lecherous behavior well enough to avoid raising suspicion among his family and friends.

Rabinowitz garnered so much success with his duplicity that he must have felt invincible on April 29, 1997.

That night, he gave his wife a beverage laced with Ambien, waited until she fell unconscious, and drowned her in the tub. He then called 911 and reported finding her unresponsive.

The staged scene looked enough like an accidental drowning to satisfy the authorities at first.

In keeping with Jewish custom, Craig and his late wife’s parents, the Newmans, planned to bury Stefanie Rabinowitz by the next sundown.

Intriguing find. Fortunately, the coroner insisted on a delay in order to do a full autopsy. Forensic pathologist Ian Hood found petechial hemorrhages and other signs that Stefanie was strangled and held underwater until she died.

After searching the couple’s home, police found a crawlspace containing some receipts and handwritten ledgers. With the help of a forensic accountant, detectives used the crude evidence to uncover Rabinowitz’s secret life.

Ricardo Zayas, CPA, determined that Rabinowitz was spending up to $3,000 a week at Delilah’s. He found that C&C Supplies Inc. never bought or sold gloves, or did anything other than help its “owner” dupe investors.

No explaining it away. Rabinowitz, it turned out, had been placating investors by giving them small payments from money newer investors lent him. He was running a Ponzi scheme.

And his investors were expecting him to give them larger payments pronto.

Rabinowitz wanted to use Stefanie’s $1.5 million life insurance payout to make his investors whole, pay off his mortgage, and underwrite his relationship with Summer.

Rabinowitz in high school circa 1981 and in Pennsylvania’s SCI Houtzdale in 2016

Confronted with the extensive evidence against him, Rabinowitz confessed to the murder and financial crimes, ending his double life and starting a singular one as an inmate with no possibility of parole.— RR

Update: Read Part 3

Craig Rabinowitz’s Gratuitous Crime

Fraud and Murder for Tip Money
(“Summer Obsession,” Forensic Files)

The Forensic Files episode about Craig Rabinowitz — a popular Philadelphia husband, father, and entrepreneur who turned out to be a murderer running a fraudulent investing scheme — has racked up 708,819 views on YouTube.

Craig Rabinowitz after his arrest in 1997

Meanwhile, the other five cases covered on this blog to date have attracted barely 1 million views combined.

The closest runner-up, “Grave Danger,” got only 378,577 views, despite that the story of Molly and Clay Daniels’ grave-robbing insurance fraud plot was a global sensation, attracting not only Forensic Files but also Dateline NBC and news outlets as distant as Japan.

Dancers in the dark. Of course, the Daniels fiasco distinguished itself mostly for the ineptitude of its underemployed perpetrators whereas the Rabinowitz case involved a tragic, deadly crime committed amid affluence and social prominence.

Still, I think a great deal of the popularity of “Summer Obsession” comes from one particular factor: It had a stripper.

In this case, one Shannon Reinert (spelled “Reinhart” in some media outlets), who danced under the name Summer.

Gentleman's club at the center of a murder case. — The gentlemen’s club Rabinowitz frequented

Rabinowitz spent upward of $100,000 on her at Delilah’s Den, the club where Summer danced.

Tempting subject. He led a double life, ultimately swindling his friends and killing his wife, Stefanie Newman Rabinowitz, in an effort to keep himself in lap-dance funds.

Apparently, even a true-crime series as tastefully done as Forensic Files can’t pass up any opportunity to show scenes from a strip club.

The show also featured an on-camera interview with one of Reinert’s former colleagues, Miss Bunny.

Miss Bunny went on to appear in HBO's "G String Divas" — Miss Bunny, seen here on “Forensic Files,” went on to appear in the HBO documentary series “G String Divas”

That kind of thing is, it seems, what the people want.

Actually, I can attest to that, although I’ve never been inside a gentlemen’s club.

Brush with the biz. Years ago, I shared a quiet office with two other women. One of them, Shari, augmented her $18,000-a-year salary by working as a topless dancer on weekends.

Come Monday, she’d indulge our curiosity about her avocation.

We were fascinated by the details like the fact that most of the dancers wore wigs on stage to lower the odds a patron would recognize them outside the club.

Or that Shari kept a small satin purse off to the side of the stage to stow the cash discreetly during her sets. She made hundreds of dollars a night, which she hid under floorboards in her apartment.

Shannon Reinert, seen here in 1997, was a dancer and single mother when Rabinowitz met her

Similarly to the way Summer interacted with Craig Rabinowitz, Shari had a couple of faithful customers who gravitated to her and gave her bigger tips than the norm.

Of course, my co-worker and I were only interested in learning about the life of a stripper.

Craig Rabinowitz wanted to actually become part of a stripper’s life.

Think accounting’s dull? Next week’s post will give more details about the crimes committed by Rabinowitz.

And the blog post coming up after that one will feature an interview with forensic accountant Ricardo Zayas, who used his CPA skills and a bag of receipts to help police build their case against Rabinowitz.

Until then, cheers.—RR

Update: Read Part 2 of the Craig Rabinowitz story

Diane Tilly: A Detective Demystifies

Q&A with Homicide Detective Al Damiani
(“Transaction Failed,” Forensic Files)

Ronnie Neal and his daughter, Pearl Cruz, accepted the kindness of Diane Tilly and then robbed the educator in her San Antonio, Texas, home and killed her.

Last week’s post detailed the tragedy and irony of that 2004 crime, which Forensic Files portrayed in “Transaction Failed.”

Puzzling. Today, I’d like to focus on the senselessness of the crime.

Ronnie Neal, 33, committed capital murder for household electronics, a few hundred dollars, and a six-year-old car.

And he seemed oddly unaware of the way police actually catch criminals, considering that, as a felon, he had plenty of experience with law enforcement.

Hat trick. For example, he made no attempt to disguise himself when trying to withdraw cash with Tilly’s ATM card at businesses he must have known had security cameras.

He had Pearl, 15, use the card, too. She wore a hat but did nothing else to hide her identity.

After the authorities apprehended the father-daughter team at a motel, Neal told the police quite a yarn about how he came into possession of Tilly’s 1998 Cadillac Fleetwood, .357 Magnum, bank card, and other property.

You don’t say. Neal was at a car wash, he claimed, when he spotted the sedan with the keys in the ignition and the engine running. The vehicle was already loaded up with easy-to-pawn possessions, so he just couldn’t resist hopping inside and driving away, he said.

In the glove compartment, Neal explained, he discovered Tilly’s ATM card, with the PIN number written on a piece of paper.

When he heard on TV that the beloved Robbins Academy educator had gone missing and authorities were searching for two people seen with her car, he set the vehicle on fire in a field so no one would mistakenly believe he was connected with her disappearance, he said.

I’m curious as to why Neal peddled such absurdity.

He was there. Fortunately, Alfred J. Damiani, who Forensic Files watchers may remember for his appearance on “Transaction Failed,” agreed to answer some questions.

As a homicide detective, he worked to find Diane Tilly’s killers and win convictions against them.

Damiani, now a detective with the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office Vehicle Crimes Unit ReACT in San Antonio, offered some insight and also indulged my curiosity about his line of work:

Were you shocked by this case?
It was disturbing but not particularly shocking.

My wife is an educator and my habit was to have her proofread my reports before I turned them in. She told me recently that she found it [the Tilly case] so disturbing that she had trouble sleeping.

Why was Ronnie Neal so reckless?
He made some attempt. He told Pearl, “Don’t worry, the quality is so bad on the security footage that they’ll never be able to identify us.”

Why didn’t Neal just clam up instead of giving police a story that could easily be picked apart?
He didn’t have a lot of choices because we caught him dead to rights on video tape using the ATM card on more than one occasion.

We caught him with her possessions, and he tried to pull a gun on us — the gun he stole from Tilly’s house. It was in his waistband and fell down his pant leg. Then we grabbed him and took him into custody. He had a second gun, which we found in his hotel room.

And the interview was more than meets the eye.

I sat down with this guy and talked to him and came to the conclusion that no helpful information was coming. At that time, we hadn’t found a body yet so I was still involved in trying to find an alive Diane Tilly and didn’t want to waste time with the guy giving a fabrication.

There was a real close time frame between the murder and when we had him in custody — around 24 hours — and that’s why we were still operating under the hope that it was an abduction and we still might find her alive someplace.

So I turned the interview over to some other detectives, and they got something from him down on paper. Sometimes it’s good to get a story down, even if it’s a fabrication. It helps for judges to see what a liar he is.

Did you believe his contention that he was mentally retarded?
I don’t think he was a genius but, no, I didn’t believe he was retarded.

That contention came up later, because he wanted to stay out of the death chamber.

This information didn’t make it into the Forensic Files episode, but once when Ronnie Neal was in county jail in the Houston area [in connection with an earlier crime], he hatched a plan to have his sister bring him a TV set with a gun inside the back — this was before TV sets were so thin. The plan was that he would take the gun out, shoot a guard, and watch him die.

I felt a little bad for Annie Pine, Ronnie Neal’s mother, when she begged for his life. She seemed sweet. (I found some footage online of Annie Pine in court that didn’t appear on Forensic Files.)
I think there was more going on at Annie Pine’s house than we know. I don’t think she was the nice person she seemed.

The first time I met her I got a bad vibe off of her and she was incensed that we would be looking at Ronnie Neal in relation to this crime.

Annie Pine absolutely refused to cooperate with the investigation back when we still hoped to find Diane Tilly alive.

Diane Tilly, from her Waxahachie (Texas) High School yearbook, 1964

What about Pearl Cruz’s sentence? Forensic Files said she got 30 years, but I read that she’s already out.
Pearl Ann was as much a victim as anyone else. That doesn’t dismiss her behavior. She took an active part in this crime. But she was only 15 years old and she cooperated with the investigation, which is why the District Attorney’s office allowed her to have a life and walk out of jail. Otherwise, she would have been considered an adult and served the whole 30 years.

Did you feel Forensic Files’ portrayal of the case was fair and accurate?
Yes, they did a great job, especially considering the time constraints. There were two days of shooting and a lot of stuff going on.

Why did you stop working as a homicide detective?
I had one case after another of some really disturbing stuff. They say a detective has only so many homicides in him that he can deal with, and that everyone has a different body count.

One day, it just hit me, I don’t want to do this anymore. It was after the Tilly case and later some baby cases.

Could you put your cases out of your mind when you were at home?
To do homicide, you have to be completely involved — it’s not something you can forget. It was my life. Fortunately, my wife didn’t divorce me.♣

Next: A look at the 1997 murder of Stefanie Rabinowitz in Philadelphia

Diane Tilly: A Texas Tragedy

A Giver Is Taken Away
(“Transaction Failed,” Forensic Files)

Diane Tilly answered a knock at her door one night and found 15-year-old Pearl Ann Cruz, who told a story about car trouble and asked to use the phone. Tilly, 58, knew Pearl because she had at one time hired her father, Ronnie Neal, to do yard work.

Once inside, Pearl pulled a gun on her and let Neal in through the side door of Tilly’s house in the Alamo Heights area of San Antonio, Texas.

Although the exact sequence of all of the events is unclear, by the end of the night, the 33-year-old Neal had raped Tilly, threatened to kill her cat if she wouldn’t give him her PIN number, taken a swig of Scotch from a bottle on her kitchen counter, used her ATM card to steal $400, loaded possessions from the house into Tilly’s car, driven her to a field, and shot her to death.

Then, Neal dialed up Pearl’s mother to announce he had come into some money and suggest the three of them go shopping.

Generosity meets depravity. “Transaction Failed” — which told the story of the November 22, 2004, murder of the beloved school teacher — is one of my Top 2 favorite episodes of Forensic Files because it’s rich with difficult truths and compelling characters.

Out of all 400 episodes of the series, “Transaction Failed” portrays the most vivid collision between a high-functioning admirable human being and the most miserable lowlife imaginable

Tilly co-founded Robbins Academy, an alternative school for kids who had problems learning or were otherwise troubled, and was also the lead teacher there. Forensic Files showed brief footage of an interview with one of the students.

The teacher everyone deserves. “Most students don’t talk to teachers about their personal problems, but almost all the students talked to her about theirs,” a boy named Alex Rivard said on camera.

Tilly was called a miracle worker for the way she engaged hard-to-reach kids and helped improve their self-esteem.

The episode made me think of my own 12 years of public education, with so many teachers who went into the profession primarily because they wanted a job with summers off or who paid attention to students who were naturally gifted (in gym and home ec, usually) and ignored the rest.

As such, it was beautiful to hear how Diane Tilly cared about making her students’ lives better.

Worst father ever. Ronnie Neal, on the other hand, was in the habit of ruining lives. In a series of San Antonio Express News articles about the crime, reporter Karisa King revealed disturbing facts that weren’t mentioned on Forensic Files.

According to King, at the time of Tilly’s murder, Pearl Cruz was pregnant with her father’s child, and he sometimes earned extra money by prostituting her out to older men. He gave her cocaine and alcohol.

One of the articles also mentioned that Pearl’s mother, Elisa Stanley, had children with a number of different men and that Pearl was the only one who was biracial, and not entirely accepted by the others because of it.

(Links to the San Antonio Express News series no longer work, but I found one of them, a story about Pearl Cruz, reproduced on a Canadian website.)

Predators among us. Pearl’s life underscored another sad truth: As much as we like to think that everyone has a chance to succeed in the U.S.A., there are still kids like her out there who face lottery-like odds.

(In fact, in a letter written to the San Antonio Express News, Diane Tilly’s daughter, Allison Tilly Carswell, expressed frustration that the articles missed an opportunity to examine how child protective services could have better served someone like Pearl and thus prevented the tragic events.)

The case also is a reminder that there are people who identify kindness as a weakness to be exploited. Tilly had once given a swing set to Neal and made an effort to connect with Pearl by complimenting her on her nail polish, according to “Transaction Failed.”

Conspicuous trail. After the murder, Pearl admitted that she and her father had started planning their crime after first meeting Tilly. They noticed that Tilly had a lot more than they did and wished to steal it.

As painful as the case was to contemplate, it was fairly straightforward to convict, according to Alfred J. Damiani, then a homicide detective with the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office.

“We could have thrown away three-quarters of the evidence and still gotten a conviction,” Damiani said during a phone interview with ForensicFilesNow.com on June 30, 2016.

Police arrested Neal and Pearl in a motel parking lot after they were spotted with Tilly’s car and security footage showed them using her ATM card at a Shell station.

They found Neal’s fingerprint on the Chivas Regal bottle in Tilly’s house.

Daughter relents. Neal said he had nothing to do with Tilly’s disappearance and told the police a quite a story about how he came into possession of her things (more about that next week).

After 10 days in custody, Pearl decided to cooperate with the investigation, and led police to Diane Tilly’s body.

Sentenced as a juvenile, she received 30 years. Her father got the death penalty.

While in prison, Neal created an online profile in which he proclaimed his innocence and fondness for poetry. He also crafted an (unsuccessful) escape plan in which he told a prospective accomplice to let him be “the brains” in the plot.

Homicide detective’s story. At the same time, Neal claimed to be mentally retarded in the hopes of avoiding lethal injection by the state. That ploy didn’t work; prosecutors maintained that his IQ was at least 70, above the range for mental retardation.

Neal committed suicide in jail in 2010.

The final reason that I’ve watched “Transaction Failed” at least five times is that it raises intriguing questions about the mechanics of the case. For example, why did an experienced criminal like Ronnie Neal — he had prior robbery convictions — submit to police questioning instead of clamming up and calling a lawyer?

Next week’s post will provide an answer to that question and more via a Q&A with Detective Damiani about the Tilly case. — RR

Update: Read Part 2

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Betrayal: The Walking Wounded

Q&A with Matt Barnhill
(“Family Interrupted,” Forensic Files)

Last week’s post told of a small-time con artist who burrowed into the pockets of a few religious groups in an unsuspecting town — and then promptly fled, leaving those duped feeling shocked and betrayed.

To get some insight into how people on the receiving end of deceits both large and small can recover emotionally, I talked with Matt Barnhill, who has counseled people living with the aftereffects of betrayals ranging from minor theft to murder.

Forensic Files fans will remember Barnhill from his appearance on “Family Interrupted,” the episode about Bart Whitaker’s double homicide in Sugar Land, Texas.

Whitaker arranged to have one of his friends hide in the family’s house and shoot his parents, Tricia and Kent Whitaker, and younger brother, Kevin, as they returned home from a restaurant in 2003.

“My daughter was best friends with Kevin Whitaker,” says Barnhill, who knew the Whitakers from River Pointe Church, where he’s a pastor. “She was 19 at the time. Now she’s a week away from having her third child, and she has a healthy marriage and is incredibly well-adjusted. But having her friend murdered changed her life.”

Barnhill is the founder of Barnhill & Associates Counseling Center, based in Richmond, Texas. He’s still in contact with Kent Whitaker, who recovered from his gunshot wound and lives with the knowledge that his son wanted him out of the way so he could inherit the family’s financial assets.

Below are excerpts from my discussion with Barnhill:

What are the most common forms of betrayal that compel people to seek counseling?
Usually it’s related to marital infidelity. Once a woman finds out that her husband was unfaithful, everything he says is suspect — “Did he really like the eggs?”

We also have parents in their 50s and 60s who say, “My son committed adultery, and we never thought he was capable of being unfaithful.” So, even when you’re removed from the betrayal, it’s disturbing.

What about criminal betrayal?
I have a counseling client whose son committed a murder. He didn’t betray her, but he betrayed her belief in him.

Forensic Files has had a number of episodes concerning parents whose sons-in-law killed their daughters. Do people in those situations need counseling for life?
Not always. Their lives do divide into “before the crime” and “after the crime.” But after people start healing, their lives become less defined by the crime.

Are there commonalities within the various degrees and types of betrayal people experience?
Yes, it disrupts your internal radar.

There’s a vicarious trauma, a ripple effect even if it’s just the person who sits next to you at work or a guy who was in the church choir with you, even if he did something relatively minor. I talk to clients whose neighbor did something wrong – someone who was high on their trust meter and then it turns out the person stole money from the school district. And then they don’t know who they can trust anymore.

It makes people ask, “How can I feel safe again? How can I trust people in the same category as Joe?”

After the Whitaker murders, I found myself OCD’ing over whether my doors were locked, even after Bart was in jail.

We call it the trauma of betrayal. It erodes trust.

What is the “trust meter”?
Think of trust on a continuum. On the low end is the guy who’s repairing your dishwasher and you stay at home to make sure he doesn’t steal the furniture. Then there’s the repairman your friend recommended, so you might say, “Here’s the key, go inside.” On the high end you might have your child or spouse or parent, those you trust the most.

The higher the trust goes, the more you’ll feel violated by someone who betrays that trust.

The trauma of betrayal destabilizes people’s lives. Two of the most common symptoms are anger and sadness. People are super angry or super sad. Victims have high anxiety.

As a caregiver, I help them restabilize their lives.

That’s sounds like a project. How do you start?
You provide clients with a safe, loving environment where they can talk about guilt, shame, and trauma.

Whatever we don’t talk about in counseling is going to come out somewhere else – a hole in the lining of the digestive system or sleep disturbance or lack of appetite. “Secrets make us sick” is a saying here. Depending on how profound the trauma is, we may refer clients to a psychiatrist for medication. Sometimes they need something just to get a good night’s sleep.

I try to educate people about what’s happening to them and what triggers the anxiety related to the trauma. For some people, watching the 6 o’clock news might be a trigger. When you have several triggers at the same time, it’s called flooding.

I ask clients what they would find soothing — listening to music, reading inspirational literature, going to the symphony, sitting on a porch with friends. They come up with a list and I ask which of those things they can do today tomorrow, next week, or their whole lives. Someone might say, “I have to get on the treadmill” or “start eating healthy now.”

Do you counsel both people of faith and those who aren’t religious?
Oh, yes, you find a lot of irreligious people here. We get referrals from doctors and other people not from the faith-based community.

Churches tend to have more people who are traumatized because most people believe church is soothing. My opinion is that if a church is able to help people, it will attract people who are traumatized. A church can be warm and comforting. So can a bar where everybody knows your name.

Getting back to the Whitaker tragedy, do you know how Kent Whitaker is doing today, 13 years after the crime?
Kent wrote a book called Murdered by Family. He talks about his own healing. He’s remarried to a woman who also has a powerful tale of betrayal and together they help people who are traumatized.♣

Next: A look at another Lone Star State case, the murder of San Antonio educator Diane Tilly detailed in Forensic Files’ “Transaction Failed.”

The Aftermath of Betrayal

Folks Who Fooled Everybody
(“Family Interrupted,” Forensic Files)

Back when I was a teenager, a charming woman named Sylvia started attending services at the local Jewish Community Center my family belonged to. At that time, our hometown had a general population of about 18,000, which included around 50 Jewish residents.

So, naturally, everyone was delighted when a new person materialized at the center. I was away at school and only saw Sylvia once, while I was home on vacation. She was smiling and wishing everyone a nice night at the end of some Friday evening services. “It’s amazing how upbeat she can be,” I overheard my mother saying. “She’s in such a heart-breaking situation.” JCCjpg

It turned out Sylvia had told members of the congregation that she was dying of cancer and could no longer work. In addition to having financial problems, she was worried about her 11-year-old son, Noah.

A story they couldn’t refuse. Sylvia planned to have a non-Jewish relative raise Noah and his sister after she died, she said, but there was a problem. “Noah still wants to be Jewish after Sylvia’s gone,” my mother related. “Sylvia doesn’t know what to do.” Mom looked heartsick whenever she talked about her.

Sylvia’s family couldn’t help her financially, although she had a brother who was building a coffin for her, Sylvia let it be known.

The lady knew how to tell a good story, and soon members of the center convened a meeting at which each person donated $100 for her. One member paid for a cleaning woman to do some work at Sylvia’s place.

The cleaning woman reported back that Sylvia’s house was filthy and in disarray. There were pieces of clothing stuck to the floor.

Lone doubter. Of course, people figured Sylvia was too ill to keep up with her cleaning — despite that she herself appeared well-groomed and healthful. (The time I met her she looked like someone you’d see hosting a morning coffee-and-news TV show.)

One member of the congregation didn’t buy any of Sylvia’s story. “She’s full of crap,” said Mr. Cohen, a local junkyard owner. But Mr. Cohen had always been a bit callous. No one entertained his theory.

He didn’t have to wait long to be proven right. A radiologist who belonged to the congregation bumped into Sylvia’s doctor and started commenting on what a shame it was that this poor mother of two was dying.

Apparently, the other doctor didn’t take patient-physician confidentiality too seriously because he immediately said, “What are you talking about?” — and then gave the real story of Sylvia’s health problem. I forget the details, but basically it was something benign that didn’t require any treatment. She wasn’t dying or even sick.

Multiple cons. Once the truth about Sylvia hit the local word-of-mouth communication waves, she left town with her kids and a hastily acquired boyfriend. No one ever saw her again. This was in pre-Internet days, so there was no easy way to track her down or warn others about her.

But people didn’t want to find her. They weren’t mad but rather in sad shock, especially as more of the truth began leaking out. It turned out she’d been telling a sob story to the local Mennonite community as well. She’d dumped off Noah and her daughter, who was just a toddler, on a sympathetic Mennonite family for a few weeks.

In additional to that, she’d conned at least one other church in town, probably with the same story but with the denomination blanks filled in differently.

And the authorities were looking for Sylvia on charges of child abuse and welfare fraud.

The whole Sylvia saga, from the time she showed up as a stranger to the day she disappeared, unfolded over just a few months. But the sting of the betrayal stayed with my mother for years. About a decade after it all happened, she wrote an essay about it as a way to reconcile her charitable nature with the fact that there are convincing con people out there.

So what does a minor case of fraud like this one have to do with Forensic Files?

I’m curious about how victims of deadly deceptions contend with their sense of betrayal.

Homicides. A number of episodes — two I can think of off hand, “A Welcome Intrusion” and “Horse Play” — featured interviews with parents whose daughters had been murdered by their sons-in law. In both cases, the parents had loved their sons-in-law and considered them assets to the family.

How did they process that kind of betrayal? And what about parents who have survived attempted murders by their own children? “Family Ties” tells the story of Christopher Porco, who attacked both his parents with an ax in a bid to inherit their wealth. He succeeded in killing his father, but his mother survived.

Bart Whitaker, the subject of “Family Interrupted,” arranged for a friend to gun down his mother, father, and brother in hopes of making himself a sole heir. Kent Whitaker, Bart’s father, recovered from the shooting and lived to see Bart convicted of double homicide.

Professional weighs in. How can people survive psychologically, with the knowledge that their own kids wanted them dead?

I turned to Matt Barnhill for some insight. Barnhill appeared on the “Family Interrupted” episode of Forensic Files to discuss the aftermath of the Whitaker murders. He’s a pastor who established Barnhill & Associates Counseling, a Texas firm that offers therapy and life-coaching. He agreed to answer some questions about helping people contend with betrayal.

But this blog post is already a bit long, so the Q&A with Matt Barnhill will appear next week.

Until then, cheers. — RR

Why Are Sex Offenders Set Free?

Q&A with a Former Defense lawyer for Sex Criminals

Last week’s post on “Grave Danger” touched on the issue of lenient sentences for sex offenders — in that case, the 30 days a court gave Clayton Daniels in 2004 for raping his 7-year-old cousin.

Fortunately, Clay won’t have a chance to turn into a repeat offender anytime soon, as he shortly afterward collected a 30-year jail term in connection with an insurance-fraud scheme.

Two times a predator. But what about those who do finish their prison terms and go on to commit other sex crimes? The “Ring Him Up High” episode of Forensic Files tells the story of Emory University student Shannon Melendi, 19, who was murdered by Delta Airlines mechanic Colvin “Butch” Hinton.

Hinton 33, had a previous conviction for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl. His first wife had walked in as the crime was in progress and testified that she saw the victim with her mouth taped and ankles and wrists bound.

A judge sentenced Hinton to four years. He got out after serving half that term and then moved to Atlanta, where he met Melendi at a softball game and abducted and killed her in 1994.

Whether you see it on Forensic Files or read about it online or in the newspaper, it does seem that all too frequently, when the authorities catch a sex criminal, it turns out he’s already served time for a similar offense.

View from front lines. Those are the moments when we all want to start ranting: “Why did they let this person back on the streets? Don’t you people (judges, parole boards, etc.) care who you’re unleashing on the law-abiding public? Do all of us villagers have to turn into pitchfork-wielding vigilantes to get justice?”

Colvin “Butch” Hinton is in Georgia’s Hays State Prison

The hope is always that the reason we hear about these repeat-offender cases in the media is that they’re infrequent enough to be newsworthy — in the way that, conversely, we rarely see media reports about motorists receiving parking tickets because it happens all the time.

To get some perspective, I talked to a lawyer who was assigned to defend violent sex predators for a New Jersey state government agency in the last decade.

The lawyer, who requested anonymity, felt that horror stories like that of Shannon Melendi are the rare exceptions rather than the rule. Below are excerpts from our conversation.

Why does the legal system put so many sex criminals back on the streets? Many states don’t. Nobody wants these people back out on the streets. In fact, sometimes they’re held in custody after their sentences are finished.

In the state where I worked, before a violent sex offender could be released at the end of his sentence, the law required that he be seen by a state-appointed mental health professional who assesses his probability of reoffending.

The ones the mental health professionals assess as low risk are released at the end of their sentences. Still, Megan’s Law affects where they can live. Their whereabouts are discoverable.

If they are assessed as still dangerous, in some states, they then are put into a special facility or unit for those at a high risk of reoffending. They don’t get out.

So even when their sentences are over, they can still be held in custody?
Yes. One guy couldn’t find a place to live because of Megan’s Law. So he was not let out.

Did you feel the process was fair to the sex offenders themselves?
Not entirely.

When sex offenders are in prison, they see mental health professionals periodically. Then those same mental health professionals are the ones who offer an opinion to the court as to whether these people are no longer risks and can be let out of jail.

For you and me, of course, mental health professionals seeing us for therapy must keep all information confidential – the only thing they can reveal is a situation in which the patient is going to commit a crime, something that hasn’t happened yet.

But in the case of a sexually violent offender, a mental health professional can report to the court anything the offender says.

Also, for any other type of crime, even murder, you get out when you’ve served your sentence – no requirement to be assessed first.

Many sex offenders were convicted before the law [requiring assessment before release] existed.

Did all that give you pause?
At first, it may seem unfair in some aspects, but then you meet some of the violent sexual predators and you start to come over to the state’s side. You interview people who are playing with themselves under the table.

I had one sex offender tell me that, where he’s from, men rape women — it’s just something they do

Did you meet any sex offenders you had sympathy for?
There was one guy in jail for 30 years who committed offenses when he was 17. We all did things as teenagers we would never do now.

Also some offenders would refuse to meet with the mental health professionals to be assessed. They’d say, “Why bother? They’ll just keep me in.”

The common wisdom is that sex offenders reoffend more often than other criminals, but that’s never been proven.

Do you feel Megan’s Law has made kids safer?
No. Megan’s law can provide a false sense of security because you can find out if a predator lives near you, but you don’t know about the ones who haven’t been caught yet or even acted yet. You have to watch your children — that’s the bottom line. It’s a dangerous world.♠

Note: An undated story on Florida news website Keynews.com reported that Hinton was (at least once) denied parole.

Category: Forensic Files

Vicky Lyons: An Epilogue

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The Vicky Lyons Story

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‘Accounting’ for a Ponzi Schemer

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Craig Rabinowitz: A Double Life

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Craig Rabinowitz’s Gratuitous Crime

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Diane Tilly: A Detective Demystifies

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Diane Tilly: A Texas Tragedy

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Betrayal: The Walking Wounded

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The Aftermath of Betrayal

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Why Are Sex Offenders Set Free?

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