Forensic Files Archives - Page 3 of 21

Douglas Birdsall (aka Doug Miller): A Librarian’s Final Chapter

An Academic and a Teenager Meet a Horrible End
(‘Shattered Dreams,’ Forensic Files)

Men who patronize prostitutes don’t usually come off as particularly sympathetic characters on Forensic Files.

Some, like Michael Dally, are cheating husbands. Others are psychopaths like Roy Beck, who robbed one sex worker and killed another.

Douglas Birdsall, for whom Forensic Files uses the pseudonym Douglas Miller, falls into a different category, that of a lonely guy who secretly traded money for companionship.

Bookish type. For this week, I looked for more information about Doug and the lady of the night who died alongside him as well as their killer, who committed double homicide on an angry whim and annihilated his own somewhat bright future.

So let’s get going on the recap of “Shattered Dreams” along with extra facts from internet research:

On January 31, 2001, Douglas Birdsall, an associate dean of libraries at Texas Tech University, didn’t arrive at work at his usual 8 a.m.

Saab story. His coworkers at the Lubbock school immediately became worried. “He is a very reliable person,” colleague Dawn Pierce told the Associated Press. “He’s a dean, after all.”

Doug’s boss, Dale Cluff, checked Doug’s house and no one answered the doorbell, according to the Daily Toreador.

Then, a bicyclist alerted authorities after spotting a black Saab in a drainage gully in Canyon Lakes Park, five miles from campus.

Furrowed brows. Doug, 53, lay dead in the backseat. Viola Leanne Ross McVade, 18, also deceased, was in the front seat of the 1993 vehicle, which belonged to Doug.

Doug had hired Viola as an escort that night.

Police Captain Thomas Esparza noted that they were both fully clothed, the Associated Press reported.

Meanwhile, Doug’s coworkers — many of whom had red eyes from crying, according to Pierce — couldn’t imagine how the divorced dad ended up in a vehicle with a teenaged prostitute. They also said that he rarely talked about his private life.

My own research revealed nothing troubling about him.

Educated duo. Douglas Birdsall was born in Wyandotte, Michigan on July 1, 1947, and graduated from the University of Michigan in 1969. He earned a teaching certificate from Western Michigan University in 1971, and went on to get a master’s degree in library science from the University of Michigan.

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In 1972, he married Francia Fitch, who studied music education at Michigan State University. The couple started out as teachers in the Midland Public Schools District, according to an item in the Traverse City Record-Eagle.

The Birdsalls had two children, Emily and Nathaniel.

Doug put his graduate work to good use, taking jobs with the library systems of North Dakota State University and Idaho State University.

Giant makeover. Next up, he joined Texas Tech University in Lubbock. There, he created the Art in the Library Committee and a scholarship for library assistants. He also oversaw the library’s $17 million renovation.

Today, the Texas Tech Library has 1.7 million books as well as podcast studios and a 3D printer.

Despite the extent of the construction project, Doug made sure the library remained open every day while it received such updates as new elevators, new carpets, and a new mezzanine level to provide offices for subject librarians, among many other improvements, according to Texas Tech’s archival notes.

By this time, Doug and Francia had divorced. She remarried. He stayed single.

Fiddling around. One night, Doug wanted a date with a young black woman. According to Forensic Files, he was looking for companionship more than, or instead of, sex. Doug asked an acquaintance named Teresa Kay Williams, who had three convictions for prostitution, to find someone for him. She suggested Viola.

Not a great deal about Viola’s short life came up in the media. She was born on July 13, 1982 in Lubbock and had two sisters, Liza and Ashley. Viola’s father, Chester Ross, would later describe Viola as warm-hearted, friendly, and always with a smile. According to Forensic Files, she hoped for a career in modeling.

Viola was engaged to Terremy Beaver, who noted during his Forensic Files interview that Viola liked money and would do whatever necessary to earn it. (There’s no indication of how long Viola had been working as an escort or whether she had any other occupation. A Daily Toreador story described her as unemployed; another source said she was still in high school.)

Fiancé eliminated. The green T-shirt Terremy was wearing during his TV appearance worried me a bit. Forensic Files‘ producers like to prolong the whodunit by bringing in regular street clothing for imprisoned interviewees to wear.

It turned out, however, that Terremy wasn’t incarcerated when he appeared on Forensic Files in 2006 — but he was in jail the night of the double murder in 2001.

Police ruled out Terremy as a suspect.

Robbery not a motive. The killer had shot Viola three times in the head, suggesting she had been the intended target. The blood pattern in the car indicated that the gunman shot Doug in the front seat and then moved him into the back.

The victims both died from head wounds.

No one had stolen their wallets or jewelry.

Misery from Missouri. Some people in a dicey part of Lubbock told police that on the night of the murder, they heard gunshots coming from the direction of a nearby alley. Investigators determined that pieces of glass found on the little street came from Doug’s car. A 10-inch-diameter pool of blood at the scene matched Doug’s DNA. The murder weapon, a .380 pistol, was abandoned there.

More evidence turned up at Doug’s house. A cigarette had Viola’s DNA on it. Investigators found out that someone used Doug’s phone to call Viola’s sister Liza Shontell McVade the night of the murders.

Police learned that Viola had called for Liza but instead ended up talking to Liza’s boyfriend, 29-year-old Vaughn Ross

Vaughn, born on September 4, 1971, grew up in Missouri and earned a bachelor’s degree from Central Missouri State University. Despite the shared name of “Ross,” Vaughn and Viola were not related.

Tough talk. At the time of the murder, Vaughn was working a clerical job to pay for graduate architecture classes at Texas Tech. (Vaughn and Doug probably never met. Not counting its law school, Texas Tech had 24,910 undergraduate and graduate students in 2001.)

Viola and Vaughn were feuding; he admitted it. She disapproved of him because he reportedly had physically abused Liza. According to court filings cited by Reuters News, during at least one past call to Vaughn, Viola put an ex-boyfriend of Liza’s on the phone. He allegedly called Vaughn a coward.

Vaughn threatened to shoot Viola.

The tip fits. It later came out that Liza allegedly saw Vaughn don gloves the night of the murders and he suggested that she leave his apartment because, he said, “If I do something, I don’t want nobody around.” Liza left, according to Forensic Files.

Vaughn’s place, in the Chateau De Ville apartments, was a stone’s throw from the alley with the broken glass and blood. A lab test showed that the rubber tip of a glove found under Doug’s body held DNA from both him and Vaughn Ross.

Investigators believed that he killed Doug and Viola in the vehicle, moved Doug’s body to the backseat, got into the driver’s seat next to Viola’s body, and steered the vehicle into the ravine in Canyon Lake Park.

Worrisome history. A background check revealed that in 1997, Vaughn had pleaded guilty to stabbing then-girlfriend Regina Carlisle with a butcher knife and stealing her car. He claimed that she threatened him with the weapon and that he grabbed it from her hands and used it to defend himself. She had wounds to her arm, thigh, and neck.

Fortunately, she survived.

Texas Tech’s architecture library in 1955

Vaughn received probation and attended an anger-management class.

On February 5, 2001, police arrested Vaughn Ross for the murders of Doug and Viola.

He behaved. Vaughn’s friends at school apparently knew nothing of his violent past.

“He was a nice guy, one we all kidded around with. He never showed any anger in class or blew up at the teacher,” one acquaintance said.

But he did act out while in Lubbock County Jail pending his trial for double murder. Vaughn threw his ID band to the floor and spewed profanity at a jail employee, according to a press release from the Texas Attorney General.

Boiling over. Prosecutors charged Vaughn with two counts of first-degree murder and announced they would seek the death penalty.

The authorities believed that on the night of the murders, Vaughn seethed with anger and hatred for Viola.

He donned rubber gloves. When he spotted Viola in Doug’s car, he shot her to death, then turned the gun on Doug to eliminate him as a witness.

Can’t lie to Mom. The prosecution alleged that the glove tip broke off when Vaughn shuffled Doug to the back of the Saab. When police found similar gloves at Vaughn’s apartment, he explained that he was planning to wash his floor with bleach. Police discovered Vaughn had a sweatshirt with a bloodstain containing Doug’s DNA.

On a recorded phone call from Lubbock County Jail, Vaughn told his mother, Johnnie Ross, that he wasn’t sure whether or not he committed the homicides and that he needed a lawyer. “Oh, lord,” she said.

Nonetheless, the defense alleged that the police planted evidence and that it would take two assailants to move Doug Birdsall’s body. Vaughn was 5-foot-6 and 150 pounds, according to Texas Department of Criminal Justice records.

Trashing the ex. Vaughn’s lawyers, Patrick S. Metze and Floyd Holder, also cast doubt on the DNA evidence.

The Texas Tech architecture library today

“It’s a useful tool, but it is collected and analyzed by humans and can be contaminated,” Holder said, as reported by U-Wire. “You can be fooled by DNA.”

As for Vaughn’s previous assault, on Regina Carlisle, the defense downplayed its severity, noting that the victim was treated and released, not kept overnight at the hospital.

Traumatic injuries. The defense suggested Doug Birdsall put himself in danger by frequenting a high-crime area, the Houston Chronicle reported. Holder contended that “crackheads or prostitutes” might have set Doug up, lying in wait for him.

Vaughn’s lawyers, however, were no match for the prosecution’s showmanship. In the courtroom, the team projected overhead images of the victims’ bodies at the morgue. They had a combined total of 11 bullet wounds.

Strong conviction. Roger Birdsall, Doug’s brother, told the court how the murder had devastated their mother as well as Doug’s two adult children.

It took the jury one hour to find Vaughn, then age 31, guilty.

During the punishment phase of the trial, Vaughn’s former college roommate, Tanya Robertson, advocated for him. She told the court that Vaughn didn’t use drugs, seldom drank, and had a steady relationship with a girlfriend whom he treated well. Robertson described the accused as meek, humble, and polite, according to court papers available on Murderpedia.

A Boy Scout, Literally. Vaughn’s mother played the “no male role model” card, noting that Vaughn hadn’t seen his father, Hershall Sumpton, since he was around 8 years old.

She also threw in the “he was a great kid” angle, noting that her son attended church several times a week, played football, and was a Cub Scout and a Boy Scout, and had no interest in guns. He was never violent until the stabbing incident in 1997, she believed.

Furthermore, she said, the jury held a tainted opinion of her son from the beginning. She also expressed sympathy for the families of Doug Birdsall and Viola McVade.

The court was not impressed. Vaughn received a death sentence.

SCOTUS bid. In 2013, Vaughn Ross appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. He complained that his trial lawyers neglected to call witnesses who could have persuaded a judge to give him a life sentence instead of the death penalty.

Assistant Texas Attorney General Tomee Heining pointed out that it was Vaughn himself who had instructed some family members and friends to not cooperate.

The high court rejected his appeal at 5:45 p.m on July 18, 2013.

No reprieve. Doug’s son, Nathaniel Birdsall — who had become a lawyer himself — told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal that his father opposed the death penalty. “I am saddened that the loss of two lives will be needlessly compounded by the taking of a third,” said Nathaniel.

At 6:38 p.m. on July 18, 2013, Vaughn, 41, had his date with a gurney and syringe.

The Clark County Prosecutor’s office noted that it no longer provided a special last meal for the condemned, but it did offer Vaughn a chance to speak before the execution.

Gone forever. He denied that he killed Viola and Doug but said he wasn’t afraid to die. According to the AP, none of his friends or family members attended the execution, but in his last words, Vaughn said he loved them and that they should “stay strong.”

The Dallas Morning News reported on the execution:

“As the lethal dose of pentobarbital began taking effect, Ross took several breaths, then began snoring. He let out a gurgle, snored once more and then stopped all movement. “

Roger Birdsall watched.

The university is going strong today, with some 60,000 students across all its schools

There ended the case, but it didn’t stop the puzzlement over Doug’s desire for paid companions who probably only visited libraries to use the Ladies Room.

“Bad idea from the get-go,” wrote one YouTube viewer. “Unfortunately, he was eventually going to get arrested, robbed and/or killed. This was way out of his league.”

Another said, “They’re trying so hard to make him just an innocent, lonely man. We know why he was with her. C’mon.”

Doug’s colleagues, however, didn’t judge him for going astray.

In 2002, they dedicated a 7-foot-tall steel and sheet metal sculpture, titled Windsong II, to his memory.

“Undoubtedly,” Texas Tech President David Schmidly told the AP, “the Texas Tech library would not have become one of the most comprehensive research libraries in the nation had it not been for Doug’s dedication.”

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

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Tim Scoggin: Suck-Up and Killer

A Fortune Hunter Plays Faithful Servant to His Victims
(‘Penchant for Poison,’ Forensic Files)

Although it usually isn’t the main point of the episode, Forensic Files has taught us that you don’t always have to kill your well-to-do associates to win big.

Tim Scoggin walking to court with law officers — *Small but lethal: Tim Scoggin, middle, in custody*

Brigitte Beck, for one, inherited all the assets of a nice German couple who took her in after she first came to the U.S. (“Past Lives“). Likewise, two employees at Al Zullo’s home-improvement company became its owners when Zullo willed it to them (“Frozen Assets“) to reward their loyalty. In both cases, the benefactors died of natural causes.

Not the plan. A more common and central Forensic Files theme, however, is that of “Prints Among Thieves.” It told of how Sharon Zachary, a beloved caretaker to millionaire Robert Rogers, beat him to death in a bid to speed up her inheritance.

Such was the case with Timothy G. Scoggin, except that the petite-sized plotter used poison instead of brute force on his victims.

Like Sharon Zachary, he ended up in a prison cell instead of a Rolls Royce.

Chilling tale. For this week, I looked for background information on this outwardly virtuous man as well as the business owners he betrayed.

So let’s get going on the recap of “Penchant for Poison” along with extra information drawn from internet research:

Leita and Olgie Nobles, both born in 1918, owned Nobles Hardware & Air Conditioning in San Angelo, Texas. Thanks to the area’s hot weather and scant rain, the store did a great business.

Sieged with symptoms. Perhaps because the pair spent so much time together at home and at work, they didn’t have a whole lot of patience for each other, according to Forensic Files. They often quarreled.

But there would be no couples counseling or divorce for the Nobleses. A violent illness took hold of Olgie and he died on March 27, 1988 at age 70.

Cause revealed. At the time, no one suspected foul play.

Leita Nobles sits on the couch with a crocheted blanket covering her — *Arsenic was no match for Leita Nobles*

Leita, meanwhile, was suffering from horrible nausea plus other discomforts and numbness in her fingers.

She received two blood transfusions at Brownwood Regional Hospital. During a subsequent stay at Shannon Medical Center, tests revealed she had consumed three times the typically fatal dose of arsenic.

Riddled with toxin. Arsenic has no color, taste, or smell, making it easy to sneak into edible substances. A bottle of Riopan Plus found in Leita’s medicine cabinet contained arsenic.

Some wondered whether Olgie poisoned Leita before his own demise, but a hair test indicated that she ingested some of the arsenic afterward.

Investigators had Olgie’s body exhumed, and tests revealed large amounts of arsenic in all of his major organs.

Lots o’ loans. Farrice L. James, Leita’s son from a previous marriage, bore no arsenic in his blood despite that he lived in the same household. But Farrice, who used a wheel chair because of a disability, was soon cleared.

That left the aforementioned Tim Scoggin, a trusted 33-year-old mortuary professional who was a dear friend to Leita and Olgie and had bought their appliance business in 1985. He had borrowed more than $30,000 from the couple and was paying them back in increments of $1,700 a month.

He had taken out other loans and, all in all, Tim was $175,000 in debt, according to the late Texas Monthly writer Gary Cartwright.

Storefront of Nobles Appliance and Air Conditioning store — *Tim Scoggin committed murder for a hardware business*

Dead on. So who was this guy? According to a 1989 Texas Monthly story, Tim Scoggin had a father who was a longtime employee of El Paso Natural Gas. (No mention of Tim’s mother turned up online.) During an interview with Gary Cartwright, Tim said he grew up middle-class in El Paso.

According to Cartwright’s 1989 Texas Monthly article:

“With little prompting Scoggin painted a picture of himself as a popular, hard-working, above-average student at Jal High School — editor of his yearbook, member of the drama club, officer on the student council — with an abundant talent for art and an outgoing personality. He sold paintings and mowed grass at the country club to buy a car. He also revealed himself to be acutely class-conscious.“

After graduation, Tim attended mortuary school in Dallas.

Finer things. He secured an apprenticeship at Waldrope-Hatfield Funeral Home in 1975. In a quest for riches, he also tried his hand at real estate and other businesses.

In his spare time, he enjoyed painting flowers on porcelain urns, and belonged to a club devoted to the art. Tim befriended a number of older women there.

In his 2002 Texas Monthly piece, Cartwright recalled Tim as a “smarmy nerd.”

Friends in high places. But at the Nobles household, he had been like a family member. He helped Leita address her thank-you notes after her hands grew weak.

She considered him above suspicion.

Her nephew, a county prosecutor named Leonard Sutton, wasn’t so sure. He kick-started an investigation into Leita’s 5-foot-4-inch auburn-haired “friend.”

It turned out that before Olgie and Leita Nobles became sick, Tim had grown close to wealthy sisters Catherine and Cordelia Norton, who lived in a mansion on a hill above Llano, Texas.

Parties galore. Catherine and Cordelia were the remaining two of five daughters born to owners of a profitable granite-mining operation. Tom W. Norton and Mary Agnes “Lady” Norton had bought the house in 1915 and moved their family in the following year.

When the daughters were growing up, the Nortons hosted many festivities at the abode, which had a wraparound porch and an observation deck.

“That’s where I learned to dance,” Lucille Patton, who had known the sisters since childhood, told the Austin American-Statesman. “It was a big meeting place for us kids. It was a whole lot of fun back then.”

Untimely deaths. None of the Norton daughters married or had children. Only one of them, Polly Norton, moved away from Llano; she lived in Washington, D.C.

Their father, known as T.W., died in 1948, followed by Lady in 1962. Three of their daughters died of cancer, according to a friend quoted in the Austin American-Statesman.

Catherine, 75, and Cordelia, 83, remained in the gigantic house.

The Nortons' light yellow mansion with a huge porch — The Civil War-era house’s original owner, F.R. Malone, went broke, and the structure later served as a tuberculosis sanatorium. The Nortons remodeled the structure and turned it into a happy home, moving there in 1916

The sisters were entrepreneurial and ambitious. Cordelia, described as the rough-mannered one, owned the Lone Star Beer distributorship and operated a ranch. “The only dress she owned was to go to a funeral,” friend T.D. “Dutch” Swenson told the Austin-American Statesmen.

Local philanthropy. Catherine, nicknamed “Girlie,” ran two retail businesses, Norton’s Flowers and Norton’s Dress Shop. (Multiple sources describe Catherine as the feminine sister, but for some reason Forensic Files used a photo that makes her look like Orville Redenbacher.)

In their adulthood, the two sisters, whose combined wealth totaled around $5 million, were not socialites and liked to keep a low profile — no more galas. But they weren’t recluses either. They went out to dinner in town and had a circle of close friends.

Catherine and Cordelia quietly donated money to causes benefitting the town of Llano, their friend Ann Lottie Wyckoff told the Dallas Morning News for a September 10, 1988 story.

L.T. Des Champs, the Nortons’ estate lawyer, said the sisters had “hearts of gold” and respected people from all walks of life — but they weren’t suckers for every opportunist with a sob story, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

A framed photo of young Tim Scoggin — *A youthful Tim Scoggin*

Presumptuous panderer. Tim managed to ingratiate himself to the Nortons after meeting Catherine through her work as a florist. He became their driver and helper at home. He prepared their food. They reportedly considered Tim — whose high-pitched voice prompted people to mistakenly call him “ma’am” over the phone — like one of the family. Sometimes he stayed overnight at their house. (It’s not clear whether the Nortons paid Tim for his services or he gave them for free under the guise of kindheartedness.)

Apparently, Tim believed the women had written him into their wills. He told people he was going to be rich, according to Charlotte Harris, the county prosecutor who appeared on Forensic Files.

In February 1988, the sisters died within a day of each other. Tim immediately called Mary Moursund, executor of the estate, and inquired about the will.

“When the will is filed for probate, you’ll get to see what you got,” Moursund replied “tersely,” according to the Austin American-Statesman.

Grocer spills it. The Nortons were cremated at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. But Rod McCutcheon, a toxicologist for the Texas Department of Public Safety crime lab, knew that a fire can’t completely burn away a metallic substance like arsenic.

Leita Nobles and her son, Farrice James — *Leita Nobles outlived her son, Farrice James, who died at 58 in 1995*

Tests on Catherine’s ashes were inconclusive, but McCutcheon found huge amounts of arsenic in Cordelia’s.

The owner of local supermarket Abbott’s told police he recalled selling Tim Scoggin some Cowley’s Original Rat and Mouse Poison, which contained arsenic. (Note to poisoners: Buy your toxic substances out of state.)

Convenient crucible. But even before the truth came out about the Nortons’ deaths, Tim had received some bad news. The sisters never got around to changing their wills to include him.

Tim consoled himself by forging a $30,000 check with Catherine’s name. And in an inept move reminiscent of Ron Gillette‘s and Jason Funk‘s crimes, he dated the check the day after Catherine died, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Next up, Tim concentrated on Leita and Olgie Nobles. Forensic Files didn’t mention it, but during this time, an unidentified person stole a large amount of cash from the store after the couple rushed to the scene of a fire at a trailer they owned — interesting because Tim had some arson in his past. A suspicious fire once befell a house he’d just bought (no one was charged and the insurance company paid off on Tim’s policy), according to Texas Monthly.

Bad edibles. Oh, and Tim was the manager of the Cactus Lane trailer park, where Olgie and Leita kept their ill-fated trailer.

Tim must have gone to work fast at the Nobles household, because Olgie died just five weeks after the Norton sisters. Police believed Tim poisoned the couples’ food in a bid for ownership of the appliance business without the pesky $1,700-a-month payments.

Authorities arrested Tim and charged him with murder and intention to commit murder. A judge set bail at $500,000.

A photo of Catherine, Marge, Elinor, Cordelia, and Polly Norton in their youth — *The Austin American-Statesman published this vintage photo on October 20, 1990*

Lethal concoction. At some point amid this mess, Tim filed for bankruptcy due to his financial woes over the appliance store.

In court, defense attorney Steve Lupton argued that investigators ignored potential evidence that might have implicated other suspects.

District Attorney Stephen Smith contended that the illness of Leita Nobles and the deaths of Olgie Nobles and at least one of the Norton sisters had three things in common: “old age, arsenic, and Tim Scoggin, their greedy friend.”

Treasures within. In April 1989, a jury took less than four hours to find Tim guilty. He was sentenced to 20 years for his attempt to kill Leita and life for murdering Olgie plus 10 years for forging $45,000 in checks and depositing them in his own account.

A year later, he pleaded guilty to the Norton homicides and picked up concurrent 55-year sentences plus another 10 years for forgery.

An empty glass bottle embossed with a raised rat figure — *Cowley’s Original Rat and Mouse Poison is no longer manufactured, but its distinctive bottles turn up on collectibles websites*

(During Tim’s friendship with the sisters, $40,000 in gold coins and securities had disappeared from a safe in their house in 1983, but authorities lacked evidence against Tim.)

With Tim behind razor wire, in October 1990, the Norton sisters’ estate began organizing an auction of their house, its contents, and 40 acres of land, with the proceeds going toward Llano’s city park and cemetery. Items for sale included Oriental rugs, “15th century icons,” and “Italian renaissance furniture believed to be from the Vatican,” according to the Austin American-Statesman.

Hard to kill. As for the victim who survived Tim’s crimes, Leita Nobles appeared on Forensic Files in the 2006 episode amid her struggle with paralysis and pain as aftereffects of the arsenic poisoning. She used a wheelchair and wore braces on her hands to prevent her fingers from curling, according to Texas Monthly.

The tough Texan died at the age of 93 in 2012.

The man who tried to kill her resides in the Wynne Unit, a medium-security prison with no air-conditioning in Huntsville, Texas. In an interview, Tim told Gary Cartwright that jail was his first encounter with “lower class” people and that he didn’t realize how unluxurious life in the joint would be.

See ya’ in five. Any charm that Tim still possesses isn’t winning him any friends in management. The board has repeatedly denied him parole, most recently in 2020, noting his “conscious selection of victim’s vulnerability” and that he poses a “threat to public safety.”

He has another shot in 2025.

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

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Forensic Files Wants to Know: What Are Your Favorite Things?

UPDATE: TV SPECIAL WAS CANCELED! IT WAS FUN HEARING FROM YOU — THANKS MUCH TO THOSE WHO ANSWERED!

Another Forensic Files special — yes, we are blessed! — is in the works. As you probably remember, in 2021, a great TV show took a serious look at the docuseries over the years.

This time, the producers are out for fun.

Gary Lico, one of Forensic Files producers, is interested in hearing what you think is the craziest, most shocking, or off-the-charts weird alibi or clue or evidence — or person.

Please leave a reader comment at the end of this post and I’ll relay the message to the folks at Forensic Files. Or shoot Gary an email directly at gary@garylico.tv

P.S. The men in the photo brought you the original Forensic Files, from 1996 to 2011. Left to right: Michael Jordan, Vince Sherry, Gary Lico, Matt Hensel, series creator Paul Dowling.

Cassie Hansen: Abducted in Church

Taxi Driver Stuart Knowlton Spontaneously Kidnaps a Child
(‘Church Disappearance,’ Forensic Files)

Vanessa, Cassie, Ellen, and Bill Hansen — Vannessa, Cassie, Ellen, and Bill Hansen before the tragedy.

If you watch enough Forensic Files, you learn that even the most unlikely places are settings for tragic crimes against children.

It happened when Lisa Manderach and her baby daughter entered a kids clothing store with a depraved killer working the register.

Gone too soon. And it happened when 6-year-old Melissa Brannen ducked out of her mother’s sight for 30 seconds at a Christmas party filled with neighbors. A married maintenance man no one knew was a pedophile grabbed her and fled.

Likewise with first-grader Cassandra “Cassie” Lynn Hansen: She vanished from a well-attended church function.

For this week, I looked for a bit more information about Cassie and her short life and also searched for epilogues on killer Stuart Knowlton as well as Dorothy Noga, who nearly lost her own life in a bid to help solve Cassie’s murder case.

So let’s get going on the recap of “Church Disappearance” along with research from the internet:

Stuart Knowlton allegedly liked to hang around playgrounds

Bookish girl. On November 10, 1981, Ellen Hansen and her two daughters, Cassie, 6, and Vannessa, 4, went to family night at the Jehovah Evangelical Lutheran Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Up until that evening, Cassie, born on Jan. 20, 1975, had led a happy life. She attended St. Columba Grade School and enjoyed ice skating and creating art projects.

“Cassie was just learning to read and loved it,” her godmother, Kathleen Schuba, told the Winona Daily News. “She’s been interested in books and magazines for years.”

People described Cassie as warm and affectionate and able to make friends easily.

Frantic search. But she would never get a chance to go out on her first date or read Jane Eyre and Of Mice and Men for English class.

On that November 1981 evening, sometime between 6:50 p.m. and 7 p.m., Cassie got her mother’s permission to leave the church’s auditorium, where a scavenger hunt was about to begin, and go to the restroom.

The blond-haired blue-eyed little girl never returned. A search of the church yielded Cassie’s coat but no sign of her.

The police swooped in immediately and scoured the surrounding area for Cassie. Volunteers joined in the effort. The authorities quickly sent her picture to publications and news shows.

Lifeless body. But the search concluded the next morning. Cassie’s body turned up three miles from the church in an Auto Clinic dumpster in St. Paul’s Crocus Hill area. Someone had strangled her, possibly with a belt. The attacker left semen on her pleated blue skirt, but an exam showed no signs of penetration, according to court papers.

Church member Lynette Pederson remembered seeing a white-haired man outside the church as well as inside near the restrooms around the time Cassie vanished, according to reporting from the Minneapolis Star and Tribune. Pederson also saw Cassie heading downstairs toward the bathrooms — making her the last person, except the killer, to see her alive.

Another witness recalled a man carrying a motionless little girl near the dumpster the night of the murder, and others remembered seeing him lurking around the crime scene. Their descriptions of him matched the one Pederson gave.

Awesome tip. The police department assigned six detectives to the case. They went door to door searching for witnesses, and ultimately interviewed 633 potential ones. They also considered 108 suspects, according to the Star-Tribune of the Twin Cities.

An FBI profiler suggested that the killer was a white male loner with a nocturnal lifestyle and a history of child sex offenses. And he’d probably feel compelled to talk about the crime.

Sure enough, Dorothy Noga, who Forensic Files described as a massage parlor employee, went to the police with a terrific lead.

An inside view of the pews and altar at the Jehovah's Lutheran Church — Stuart Knowlton said he stopped by the Jehovah’s Lutheran Church to use the bathroom

Daring proposition. A 50ish taxi driver named Stuart Willis Knowlton came to the Comfort Massage Studio the day after Cassie disappeared — and requested that Dorothy tell anyone who asked that he’d been with her the night before.

Under police questioning, Knowlton denied he murdered Cassie and said he was busy driving his cab on the night she died. He felt sorry for her family, he offered.

Dorothy Noga volunteered to secretly tape her conversations with Knowlton, but police declined because it was too dangerous.

Untaped confession. Next up, another great tipster came along. Janice Redman, head of St. Paul’s public housing, told police that she had received complaints about Stuart Knowlton making advances toward children. Investigators accepted her offer to secretly record a conversation between her and Knowlton.

On the tape, Knowlton didn’t confess, but he did mention that Cassie had been beaten about the face, a detail police hadn’t made public.

In the meantime, Dorothy Noga went rogue and tried to get Knowlton to discuss the murder — and he allegedly did confess to her, but not on tape, she said.

Dorothy Noga heading to court and during her Forensic Files appearance — Dorothy Noga at court, left, and during her Forensic Files appearance

Horror scene. Shortly after that admission, a mystery man waited for Dorothy outside the massage parlor at closing time and stabbed her 32 times. He slit her carotid artery and jugular vein.

The blood “just poured like a faucet, like a garden hose,” Noga told the Pioneer Press. Fortunately, patrol officer Pat Scott, who had just gotten coffee at a Flame Burger — 125 feet from where Dorothy lay praying for help — quickly arrived on the scene.

Scott used a towel and applied pressure to her neck in an attempt to stop the bleeding and would later recall that her blood soaked his pants “from his thighs to his boots,” according to the Pioneer Press story from Dec. 12, 2017.

Against all odds, Dorothy survived.

He’s with the band. The next part of the story sounds like a daytime soap opera, but apparently it really happened: Dorothy underwent hypnosis to help her remember who attacked her. She identified Stuart Knowlton as the man who told her, “Take a look because it’s going to be your last,” as he pushed his face into hers and began using his knife.

Minnesota doesn’t allow evidence influenced by hypnosis, but it gave more affirmation to the case against Knowlton.

Police got a hair sample from him that looked similar to some strands taken from Cassie’s clothing. They also found one hair with a hairshaft abnormality, “banded” hair. Knowlton’s hair bore the same pattern.

Life and limb. He was also seen eating at an Arthur Treacher’s restaurant near the Auto Clinic around the time of the murder.

The investigation lasted 10 months.

Ellen Hansen during her interview on Forensic Files

Then there was a shocking development that had nothing to do with the case: A vehicle struck Stuart Knowlton as he crossed a street in downtown St. Paul. Doctors had to amputate his leg below the knee.

Story unfolds. Knowlton’s misfortunate didn’t stop police from arresting and jailing him in September 1982. Apparently, he spent a little too much cash at the massage parlor because he couldn’t come up with $75,000 in bail.

He waived his right to a jury trial, leaving his fate in the hands of Judge James Lynch.

In court, Dorothy Noga testified that Knowlton said that on the night of the murder, he entered the church to use the bathroom and asked Cassie if she’d like to play a game and then led her to his taxi. Cassie started to scream, so he choked her with his belt and disposed of the body and left her shoes in two different places. (But he kept the little buckles — he supposedly had a foot or shoe fetish.)

Fishy behavior on the job. Knowlton’s friend Janice Rettman testified that Knowlton told her he couldn’t remember where he was on the night of the murder.

Members of the Hansen family sitting in the audience during a ceremony honoring those who helped solve the murder case — Hansen family members attending a 2017 ceremony belatedly honoring four people who worked on the murder case

Two taxi dispatchers who worked with Knowlton said that he normally checked in with them frequently throughout the evening, but on the night Cassie disappeared, he didn’t communicate with them after 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. He also never turned in his trip sheets for the night; Knowlton said a passenger stole them. When Knowlton began work the next day, he rattled on about the murder so much that the dispatcher had to cut him off.

Knowlton’s defense lawyers had a few salvos to launch. They found some witnesses who said they’d seen a girl matching Cassie’s description in other parts of St. Paul the night she went missing.

Oddball turn. They also introduced a signed confession to Cassie’s murder from a 25-year-old Texan named Bondell Kvanli.

But on the witness stand, Kvanli denied committing the murder and said she was struggling with alcohol problems and schizophrenia.

Stuart Knowlton as a young man with eyeglasses and tousled hair. — Little is known about Stuart Knowlton’s early life, but this photo of him turned up on ancientfaces.com

After the three-week trial, Knowlton was convicted of first-degree murder and second-degree misconduct and given a life sentence.

Solo actor. At a parole hearing in 1997, Cassie’s father, Bill Hansen, asked board members to not let Knowlton’s age or missing leg arouse their compassion. “His physical condition would lure sympathetic children into his lethal grasp,” Bill said, as reported by the Star-Tribune of the Twin Cities.

Previously, 1,500 members of the community had written letters to urge the board to keep Knowlton behind razor wire.

Knowlton, without any defense lawyers accompanying him, told the panel members that he was innocent, and pleaded for release.

Final exit. They denied him parole, and noted that his next hearing would take place in 10 years.

“This in no way is to be construed that Mr. Knowlton will be released at that time, only that he will be afforded another review before the Commissioner of Corrections and the advisory panel,” a statement from the Minnesota Department of Corrections said, as reported by the Star-Tribune of the Twin Cities.

It mattered little because Stuart Knowlton died of natural causes in prison in 2006.

Dorothy Noga is embraced by retired police officer Jim Groh in 2017 — After the Cassie Hansen case, Dorothy Noga — seen here in a 2017 *Pioneer Press* photo with retired officer Jim Groh — helped police nab a state tax examiner who propositioned her for sex in return for tax-related favors

Beastly man. Not that his death made anyone in the community forget what happened to Cassie.

“I had a little girl at the time, and she was my firstborn,” Don Gorrie, Ramsay County medical examiner’s chief investigator, recalled in an Albert Lea Tribune story about his retirement in 2013. “It was just hard to not carry that case with me.”

In 2017, Pat Scott recalled, “It shook us to our core [that] a monster who walked among us, impersonating a human being, took her from her family and took her from all of us.”

Award received. That year, on the 36th anniversary of Cassie Hansen’s death, the St. Paul Police Department gave the Chief’s Award for Merit to Dorothy Noga, Pat Scott and retired officers Rick Klein and Jim Groh for helping to convict Stuart Knowlton. (Others involved in the case had been honored decades earlier.)

Pat Scott called Dorothy Noga the real hero of the effort. “Without her, who knows how many little girls that monster would have gone on to kill,” he said, according to a CBS News story from 2017.

Ellen and Bill Hansen, who had since moved out of state, attended the award ceremony along with Vannessa and their other two daughters, who were born after Cassie died.

A life changed. As for Dorothy Noga, no one was ever charged with the knife attack, but she received $50,000 to settle a claim that police failed to protect her.

Noga, who had moved to Florida and was no longer a massage parlor professional, said that the profound physical trauma she suffered “was an act of God to get me out of that line of work.”

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

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Jason Funk: Give Us a Sign

Katie Froeschle Is Attacked on the Job
(‘Muffled Cries,’ Forensic Files)

Although it certainly wasn’t his intention, Jason Funk did just about everything possible to incriminate himself before, during, and after Katie Froeschle’s murder.

Katie Froeschle in a white sleeveless top — Katie Froeschle

The unemployed motorcycle mechanic killed the 25-year-old insurance adjuster at his residence, just after she had confirmed with a co-worker that she was at his address. In fact, she was still on a cell phone call when Jason came walking out of his house toward her car.

Zero cover-up. Next up, he left forensic evidence, including the victim’s blood, in the house and “hid” her body in a highly discoverable location.

He didn’t even get rid of the murder weapon.

But it’s another misstep in particular that cemented the 27-year-old Floridian’s ranking as the second-dumbest criminal in all 15 seasons of the original Forensic Files.

Colorado native. I’ll get to his colossal mistake in a minute, but first here’s a recap of “Muffled Cries” along with extra information drawn from internet research into the case and the victim’s young life:

Katrina Anne “Katie” Froeschle came into the world in Fort Collins, Colorado, in 1979, the only girl and eldest of three children born to Leonore Froeschle, a nurse, and Jeff Froeschle, an assistant attorney general who later went into private practice. Katie was especially close to her father. They went skiing in Steamboat Springs and scuba diving in Key West together. She also enjoyed gymnastics and softball.

The family moved to Tierra Verde, Florida, and Katie, who had long hair and attractive features, graduated from Lakewood High School in St. Petersburg and then from Florida State University in 2002. She earned degrees in finance and risk management.

Insurers deluged. Her very first job out of school, as an adjuster for Florida Farm Bureau Insurance, put her interpersonal skills as well as her business studies to use.

Katie “got all the difficult people because she could get the information she needed and soothe them,” Leonore Froeschle told the Tampa Tribune.

On November 12, 2004, Katie deserved some R&R after one of many long days. Four hurricanes had hit Florida that year, creating extensive damage and an overwhelming amount of work for insurance professionals.

The yellow two bedroom house where Jason Funk lived — Jason Funk lived in the North Tampa house with girlfriend Pamela Hintz, who ultimately turned against him

Pet gone hungry. Katie planned to meet up with some friends at a restaurant after work, but she never showed up.

Her family called her repeatedly over the weekend but heard nothing. When her best friend from work, Amy Roderick, checked on Katie’s apartment, she found it empty — and yikes, no one had fed the cat.

Police began looking for Katie’s 2003 Chevrolet Impala. They learned that she had ended her workday by visiting a house in Sulphur Springs, a working-class section of Tampa, to check on a leaky roof reported by the owner.

Potential accident. Although the area has been called a bit dicey, Katie probably didn’t feel vulnerable.

“When performing inspections for roof damage, most adjusters will cite a fall from the roof as their greatest concern, not physical attack by the home’s occupants,” according to the Property Casualty 360 Daily News.

Also, that particular inspection probably didn’t even require the adjuster to go inside the home.

Auto turns up. As mentioned, Katie needed help from a coworker to locate the house at 1503 East Mulberry Drive, then told the coworker that she had arrived and described the occupant who walked toward her car.

After Katie disappeared, Jeff and Leonore Froeschle visited the two-bedroom yellow house that Jason Matthew Funk and girlfriend Pamela Hintz had moved into just three days earlier. The couple claimed to know nothing about a damaged roof or a visit from an adjuster.

The Froeschles soon discovered their daughter’s maroon Impala in the parking lot of the Harbor Club, a restaurant about a mile from the house on East Mulberry Drive. Inside the car, they found her keys and purse with no cash.

Sad development. A witness came forward to say he saw a tall man leave the car in the lot and walk away.

The book cover of the Safety in the Field for Adjusters And Other On-Site Professionals — Jeff Froeschle remarked that if the safety manual existed earlier, it could have saved his daughter’s life

When a missing woman’s car turns up abandoned, it’s usually an indicator of a tragedy, and unfortunately, such was the case with Katie. A police officer spotted her dead body in the Hillsborough River. She was partly clothed and lay in the water directly behind Jason Funk’s house.

Katie’s family held a memorial service at the Island Chapel in Tierra Verde.

Not a typical crime. The news of the random killing rattled locals. “Everyone felt this one,” police officer Jim Simonson told the Tampa Bay Times as reported in a November 20, 2004 story, which also noted that the cashiers at an area CVS pharmacy “couldn’t stop talking about it.”

Tampa Police Department spokesperson Joe Durkin said that Sulphur Springs had “its share of crime” but that the “brutal and heinous” homicide “shocks the conscience of the community,” according to Colorado news publication Summit Daily.

Because of Katie’s half-clothed state, investigators believed someone had sexually assaulted her, although a rape kit tested inconclusive. They determined she had been in the water for about 30 hours.

Owner cleared. The medical examiner found pattern injuries in the form of round marks on her head. Someone had likely beaten her to death with an object.

(In a letter to the editor, Katie’s aunt would later criticize the Tampa Bay Times for printing ” horrific, graphic details” that “served no purpose” and “only sensationalized and humiliated the name of a beautiful and upstanding young woman.”)

Leonore spoke to Jason Funk’s landlord, who acknowledged he had made the claim about the roof. His behavior seemed a bit suspicious to Leonore — but anybody could get a little weird when questioned about a murder, and he gave an alibi that satisfied the police.

Erratic behavior. When investigators informed Jason Funk about the discovery of Katie’s body, he “was more concerned about the police distracting him from his birthday cake baking in the oven than about Froeschle,” the Tampa Bay Times reported on February 10, 2005. Jason said that he was jet-skiing at the time Katie disappeared.

“He was at turns cold, jovial, and distraught, and he said a few things only the killer could have known,” a January 27, 2005 Tampa Bay Times story reported.

Investigators discovered that someone had tried using Katie’s credit cards a number of times and succeeded at least twice.

A black and white newspaper clipping showing Jason Funk in shackles and a prison uniform in court — A Tampa Bay Times clipping shows Jason Funk in court

Put his name to the crime. A Publix store surveillance video showed a tall white male paying for groceries with Katie’s ATM card.

And here’s the part of the story that has kept Forensic Files fans scratching and shaking their heads since “Muffled Cries” first aired in 2007: The same man paid for items at a Qwick Stop with Katie Froeschle’s card and signed his own name — “Jason Funk” — on the receipt.

The reaction of the audience members at a Montel Williams Show was typical. During a segment featuring shocking crimes, they could not contain their laughter when told about the signed receipt. “This guy is just stupid,” Williams said during the 2008 episode.

Backyard inferno. Jason left plenty of other clues as well. A lab discovered that some skin cells on Katie’s steering wheel came from Jason. Apparently, it didn’t occur to him to wipe the car interior clean after he drove the Impala from his house to the restaurant.

Inside the residence, detectives found Katie’s E-ZPass unit and business card. Outside the house, investigators identified a burn pit (incinerated items, always a bad indicator, the Slover s) with Katie’s belt — she was wearing pants and a top that day. Police also believed the killer put bloodstained synthetic carpet in the flames. Neighbor Robert Rodriguez recalled the smell of “plastic burning.”

Investigators theorized that a motorcycle muffler with a circular mounting bracket they had recovered from the house was the source of Katie’s pattern injuries. Jason had beaten her to death with the car part, they believed. His Nike sneakers had Katie’s blood on them and so did walls and miniblinds inside the house. A bank envelope belonging to Katie carried Jason’s fingerprints.

Not dodgy looking. But police didn’t have to wait for the test results before arresting Jason. They had taken him into custody immediately on a drug charge after finding 19 marijuana plants growing inside the house.

So who was this dim-witted brute?

Well, his background is a little mysterious, but some information turned up on Jason Funk. He was born on November 13, 1977 and grew up to stand 6-foot-3-inches tall. A photo of Jason “reveals a clean-cut, handsome young man, whose appearance would be impressive to most landlords,” according to Property Casualty 360 Daily News, which notes that in high-vacancy markets, many landlords “do not pull credit reports (much less run criminal background checks).”

A closeup of Katie Froeschle — Katie Froeschle thought about becoming a lawyer someday

Why she went inside. It turned out that, years before the murder, Jason had gotten himself into legal trouble owing to domestic violence and drug use.

Investigators theorized that on the day Katie died, Jason was the man who came out of the house as she drove up. (His girlfriend was at work.)

“There are any number of possible scenarios that might explain why the adjuster entered a property that seemed to require only an exterior roof inspection,” Property Casualty 360 Daily News conjectured in an October 5, 2009 story. “Perhaps she asked to use the bathroom after an unexpected long drive; maybe Funk invited her in for a drink of water; or perhaps Katie found significant roof damage and wanted to check interior ceilings for water stains.”

Still water. Forensic Files suggested that perhaps Jason made a pass at Katie, then got mad when she rebuffed him, and struck her repeatedly with the motorcycle muffler, killing her and spraying the wall with blood.

Then, not noticing that the water had no current (because of a dam), Jason threw her body into the Hillsborough River behind his house — and there it stayed, awaiting discovery.

Jason burned Katie’s clothes and the bloodstained carpet and stole her cash and credit cards. He had recently lost his job and needed money for groceries and the $850-a-month rent on the house.

Caught on audio. Then, Jason meticulously cleaned the muffler alleged to be the murder weapon; the metal sparkled, but the circular cutout enabled police to link it to Katie’s injuries.

Pamela Hintz cooperated with the police and secretly recorded some of her conversations with Jason:

“‘Honey, they can have me driving her car, spending her money, using her cell phone, doing everything else, but they don’t have me doing anything to her,’ he told Hintz. At other times, he became threatening, telling Hintz if she hung up, he would put her ‘in the river,'” the Tampa Bay Times reported.

The waterway where police found Katie Froeschle’s body is part of Hillsborough River State Park

Full confession. Despite the mounting evidence, Jason did have at least one defender. “It’s not in character for Jason to do anyone wrong like that,” said Scott Bitman, owner of Cycle Masters and Jason’s former boss.

But Jason himself seemed to come to his senses when confronted with the forensics and possibility of the death penalty.

Wearing shackles and an orange prison uniform in court, he admitted to inviting Katie into his house, attempting to rape her, and beating her to death with the motorcycle muffler.

Source of sadness. He also pleaded guilty to a charge of cultivation of marijuana.

Represented by a public defender, Jason declined to make a statement to the victim’s family.

Katie’s parents, her brother Samuel, and Amy Roderick chose to address the court about their loss. Amy mentioned that Katie only saw the good in people, and Samuel spoke of how he and his sister would stay up all night talking — but now he cries himself to sleep. Leonore called Katie her best friend.

Jeff Froeschle had an especially difficult time mourning his daughter

Quite the revisionist. Their words brought Judge Denise Pomponio to tears, the Tampa Bay Times reported. She gave Jason a sentence of life without parole for the murder plus a total of 60 years for attempted sexual battery and other offenses against Katie plus having the contraband houseplants.

But during his Forensic Files interview, Jason Funk said that he was innocent and took responsibility for the murder only to avoid the death penalty.

So where is this Isaac Newton of a man today?

FSU award. Jason resides in the Wakulla Correctional Institution in Crawfordville. Also known as #168693 and listed with the Sexual Offender Predator System, he’s under close custody, meaning that armed personnel must supervise him at all times. The Florida DOC website notes that he weighs 236 pounds and has no chance of release.

To honor the woman Jason murdered, the Froeschles established the Katrina Anne “Katie” Froeschle Memorial Scholarship Fund for FSU students interested in risk management, insurance, real estate, and business law.

Katie’s former employer, Florida Farm Bureau Insurance, donated $50,000.

In 2011, with Katie’s tragic murder in mind, the American Association of Public Insurance Adjusters published Safety in the Field for Adjusters And Other On-Site Professionals. “If this manual can save one life, it’s worth it,” a press release quoted Jeff Froeschle as saying.

Jason Funk in a prison mugshot, which shows he still has a headful of hair — Jason Funk in a 2022 mugshot

Weighty memorial. Over the years, Jeff has kept close tabs on Jason’s whereabouts as Florida moved him around to various prisons, according to a Tampa Bay Times story, which noted that Jeff served as a board member of the Life Center of the Suncoast, a Tampa facility offering grief counseling to families of murder victims.

Sadly, the Froeschles ended their 28-year marriage not long after the murder. Jeff said he worried that the union deteriorated because he talked about Katie too much.

His devotion continued, however.

Have some punch. Jeff collected 934 photos of his lost daughter and set them to music for a presentation for the scholarship fund — but he told the Tampa Bay Times that after viewing it twice, he found it too heartbreaking to watch again.

The article also notes that Jeff tried to work through his feelings by boxing with a heavy bag and sometimes he would “pretend the bag was Funk’s face.”

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

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Adolph Coors III’s Kidnapping

Joseph Corbett’s Plan Fails Spectacularly
(‘Bitter Brew,’ Forensic Files)

Dating back to 1960, Adolph Coors’ kidnapping is among the oldest cases featured on Forensic Files. But it mirrors the show’s modern episodes about abductions in two fundamental ways: The perpetrator never got what he wanted, and he ended up in dire legal trouble.

In the Sally Weiner case in 1988, for example, the authorities found Sally’s body before her husband had a chance to meet David Copenhefer’s demands for cash. Evidence linking the ransom note to the bookstore owner’s computer helped convict him, and he ended up dying behind razor wire.

Loser situations. Then there’s convicted killer Mark Winger. He dreamed up a plan for having a friend ransomed and using the money to murder a witness. It never made it past the prison walls. A fellow inmate recorded him. In 2007, a judge tacked an extra 35 years on Winger’s sentence for that debacle.

For this week, I looked into what price kidnapper Joseph Corbett — whose plan went haywire almost immediately — paid for his crime against Adolph Coors III, and also searched for additional background information about both men.

So let’s get going on the recap of “Bitter Brew” along with extra information drawn from online research:

Good rich guy. After coming to the U.S. from Germany, Adolph Herman Coors started the Coors Brewing Company with a business partner in 1873. His son took it over and, in turn, grandson Adolph Herman Joseph Coors III moved up to the top spot despite that he stuttered and was allergic to beer, according to the New York Times.

Adolph Coors III was born in 1915, back when Americans still named baby boys “Adolph.” People called him “Ad” for short. He grew up to be 6-foot-3-inches tall and had “Coors trademark” blue-green eyes. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy and Cornell University, and married Mary Urquhart Grant in 1940.

“The calamity couldn’t have happened to a more undeserving member of his moneyed class,” the New York Times wrote in a book review. “Ad Coors was devoted to his wife and four children and lived a relatively simple, scandal-free life.”

Outside the bottle. He also reportedly liked to help out at his family’s 500-acre ranch. He would drive a tractor and even shovel manure, according to the Kansas City Star.

At the office, he presided over a huge enterprise. In addition to the brewery, the family owned a ceramics business and aluminum can factory. The three companies combined were grossing $40 million a year, a colossal sum in 1960.

Exterior shot of Coors Brewery — The Coors Brewery offers guided tours and has a gift shop

Vacant vehicle. On the morning of Feb. 9, 1960, Adolph started his 12-mile drive from the ranch in Morrison to the brewery in Golden, Colorado.

He never arrived.

That day, a milkman found a blue-and-white vehicle blocking the Turkey Creek Bridge, a short and narrow structure built over a shallow creek. The dairyman pressed on his on horn, but Adolph’s International Harvester Travelall — a type of station wagon that auto magazines would later point to as the precursor to the SUV — didn’t move. It had its radio and engine on but no one inside.

Serious trouble brewing. Police took note of a bloodstain on the bridge, and saw Adolph’s brown fedora and a lens from his eyeglasses lying beneath the bridge. The Kansas City Star reported that the found objects were his tan baseball cap and plastic rimmed glasses.

Either way, yikes.

The next morning, Mary Coors, whose children were ages 10 to 18 at the time, got a typed letter saying her husband had been kidnapped. It demanded $200,000 in tens and $300,000 in twenties. Adolph would die if she notified police (she did anyway), the note said.

The kidnapper instructed her to take out a Denver Post ad for a tractor as a signal that she had the money ready. The letter used the pronoun “we” and said that Adolph would be released 48 hours after they received the cash. And they didn’t want to hurt him; they just wanted the money, the note said.

Feds come in. Adolph III’s father, Adolph Coors Jr., who had been finishing up a Hawaiian vacation when he heard about the kidnapping, said he would pay any price to get his son back. The Coorses got the $500,000 in cash together and placed the classified ad.

Newspaper clipping showing Mary Coors and her children — A *Kansas City Star* photo from March 13, 1960 shows Adolph Coors III’s wife, Mary Coors, and their children

They waited for further instructions, but they never came.

Because kidnapping is a federal crime, the FBI’s Denver division swooped in to join the case.

Astute witness. The agents studied the letter, noting that it had no errors and was beautifully typed using a font made by a Swiss company. Investigators determined the note came from a Royalite portable typewriter that retailed for $49.99. They noticed the letter “s” printed lower than the other letters, a clue that might help them pinpoint the typewriter used by the kidnapper.

A store clerk remembered that a man bought that model typewriter with cash about four months before the kidnapping.

In the meantime, a witness had recalled seeing a 1951 Mercury sedan near the scene of the abduction and even gave the police a few digits of the license plate number.

Print evidence. The canary-yellow car was registered to a “Walter Osborne.” In Denver, investigators found his apartment, but he had vacated it right after the kidnapping. The maid had seen guns in his room.

Fingerprints found in the empty apartment matched those of Joseph Corbett, a 31-year-old escaped killer using Walter Osborne as a pseudonym. Where did this brazen man come from?

Joseph Corbett Jr. was born in Seattle on October 25, 1928, the son of a newspaperman. He was more than six feet tall and slender with light brown hair and hazel eyes, according to a later FBI Wanted poster, which also noted he was a “proficient typist and neat dresser.”

Joseph Corbett wearing a jacket and tie and eyeglasses — Joseph Corbett used the alias ‘Walter Osborne’ after slipping away from prison

Promise wasted. He had an IQ of 148 and was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Oregon, according to an October 22, 2017 story in The Commercial Appeal.

“I knew him as intellectually very, very sharp,” parole officer Ron Olson would later tell the Denver Post. “Emotionally, very immature. High strung. Excitable.”

At age 20, he lost his mother when she accidentally fell off of a balcony at home. He then dropped out of school.

Penchant for pigment. By 1951, Joseph’s life was spinning out of control. He shot another man in the back of the head near Hamilton Air Force Base north of San Francisco. He claimed self defense but pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and received five years to life.

He behaved so well in prison that he won a spot in a light-security dormitory — and promptly escaped.

As “Walter Osborne,” he moved to Denver in 1955. He got a job as a paint mixer at a Benjamin Moore factory.

Investigators found out that he told colleagues at Benjamin Moore that he would be coming into some money. And one day, he didn’t show up for work and never returned.

Manhunt continues. A neighbor in his apartment building said he heard him typing late at night. Eight days later, a fire chief found the suspect’s burned-out car at a dump site in New Jersey. On the vehicle, investigators scraped off a caked-on substance similar to soil around Turkey Creek. Inside, they discovered the Royalite typewriter used to write the ransom note.

Now, the police had a good suspect but still no sign of Adolph Coors III.

“Will the big spring thaw yield additional clues to Ad Coor’s whereabouts?” reporter John T. Alexander wrote in the Kansas City Star.

Not coming back alive. On September 11, 1960, eight months after his disappearance, hikers found some discarded clothing around Pike’s Peak in the Rocky Mountains. A keyring engraved with “ACIII” helped authorities identify the clothing as belonging to the abducted man.

Dump site with garbage and branches — The dumpsite where some of Adolph Coors’ clothing was found

Four days later, some human remains, including a skull and shoulder blades, plus a jacket with what looked like two bullet wounds, were discovered in Sedalia.

“A colleague ran through the office, saying ‘They found Coors!’ ” recalled Richard Hanes, then an assistant district attorney in the Colorado Springs DA’s office, as recounted in local newspaper The Gazette. Hanes and his co-workers raced to the scene to preserve the evidence. Most of the body parts had decomposed and animals had picked at them. But dental records confirmed the ID as Adolph Coors III. (Hanes told The Gazette that he had to carry the skull in a box past patients in the waiting room of the dental office.)

Plot goes awry. Investigators believed that Joseph Corbett, who in reality had no accomplice, studied Adolph’s daily schedule and route to the brewery. The morning of the kidnapping, Corbett parked his car on the bridge, pretending it had broken down, and Coors got out to investigate, they theorized. Joseph’s plan was probably to restrain him — packaging from handcuffs and leg shackles were seen in a dumpster outside Corbett’s apartment building — and take him alive.

Adolph fought back when Joseph advanced on him, the two men struggled, Adolph broke free and tried to return to his own car, and then Joseph shot him twice in the back, investigators believed.

Then, he probably unloaded the body in the Colorado mountains, drove his own car to New Jersey, and lit the vehicle on fire in an attempt to dispose of evidence.

Mounties ride in. Still, where was Joseph Corbett?

J. Edgar Hoover called him the most wanted criminal in the U.S. The Denver Post later referred to him as “a man once sought more urgently than any outlaw since John Dillinger.”

After seeing a Reader’s Digest article about the kidnapping, a woman in Vancouver reported that a man matching Corbett’s description lived in her apartment building. By the time the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and FBI arrived, he had fled. Next up, the owner of the Maxine Hotel tipped off authorities that a gentleman resembling Joseph Corbett had “recently stayed at her flophouse” under the name Thomas C. Wainwright and he drove a “fire-engine red Pontiac,” according to the FBI website. Finally, on October 29, 1960, a local Vancouver patrolman spotted the car at a motor inn and called for backup.

FBI Wanted poster showing Joseph Corbett facing the camera and from the side

When Joseph saw the law officers, he said, “I’m your man” or “I give up. I’m the man you want” or “Okay, I give up.” (Sources vary.)

Get your act together. He pleaded not guilty but was convicted of kidnapping and murder on March 19, 1961. Because under Colorado law, courts couldn’t give a death sentence without an eyewitness or a confession, Joseph Corbett received life in prison.

In 1979, he won parole but immediately violated the terms by traveling out of state, and ended up back behind bars. Shortly afterward, he received parole anew, but broke the rules again. On December 12, 1980, officials gave him another chance, releasing him from the Colorado State Prison in Cañon City.

He got jobs in a factory and as a truck driver for the Salvation Army.

Inconspicuous lifestyle. In 1996, Joseph acknowledged to the Denver Post that the Lindbergh baby kidnapping case from 1932 fascinated him, but said he had nothing to do with the botched Adolph Coors abduction.

Toward the end of his life, Joseph lived in a one-bedroom apartment at the Royal Chateau Apartments in southwest Denver. Most of his neighbors knew him only as the quiet man who emerged from his apartment to retrieve his newspaper with barely a word for anyone, according to the Denver Post. A few knew about his past as a killer but never asked him about it (a wise move).

Richard Hanes sits near a window — Assistant DA Richard Hanes followed the case from Adolph Coors III’s disappearance to Joseph Corbett’s parole

Joseph caused no trouble.

Tight-lipped until the end. At some point, he got cancer and occasionally needed help up the stairs.

On August 24, 2009, after neighbors noticed Joseph’s newspaper lying uncollected outside his door, the building manager entered Joseph’s apartment and found him dead.

He had shot himself in the head with a pistol.

Joseph left no note, dying without ever admitting to his horrible crime.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

Dr. Debora Green: Tennis and Madness

Q&A With Ann Slegman Isenberg
(‘The Ultimate Betrayal,’ Forensic Files)

Whatever problems were plaguing Dr. Debora Green — depression, her husband’s cheating — no one foresaw what happened on Oct. 24, 1995.

Debora, an oncologist who had stepped away from her career to care for the three kids she shared with cardiologist Michael Farrar, deliberately set fire to the family’s mansion in Prairie Village, an upscale neighborhood in Kansas City.

She and 10-year-old Kate escaped unhurt from the house. Kelly, 6, died of smoke inhalation and Tim, 13, sustained fatal burns. Debora wanted to kill the kids to punish her husband, prosecutors later contended.

By the time of the tragedy, Michael, who was living with his girlfriend, was ill from ricin, a toxin that Debora allegedly sneaked into his food.

Debora pleaded no contest to a variety of charges in 1996 and is serving her sentence at the Topeka Correctional Facility. Today, she’s 71 years old. Her first parole consideration date is in 2035.

For this week’s post, I talked to Ann Slegman Isenberg, a retired writer and editor who knew Debora before and after her transition from good-natured stay-at-home mom to universally condemned child killer. Excerpts of our conversation follow:

How did you meet Debora Green? I started taking a “three and a pro” tennis class at a little club near my house. I played singles and wanted to learn doubles tennis. Debora was no longer working as an oncologist and was also learning tennis, so we got to know each other.

Was Debora likeable? She literally had a genius IQ, so she was so quick and as funny a person as can be, kind of the life-of-the-party type of person.

Did you meet her husband, Michael Farrar? My husband and I socialized with her and her husband once at a tennis get-together. He was nothing to look at, kind of a drip, but was well-thought-of in his field.

Did you meet their kids? They went to private school and my kids went to public school. Some of Debora’s kids would come around at the tennis club, and I think they really did have a good relationship with their mother. Kelly was darling with a poof of blond hair.

Who says you don’t make nice friends in prison? Debora Green has participated in the KSDS Pooches and Pals program, whereby inmates train and care for assistance dogs

How did you first hear about the fire? My sitter came over that morning and said there was a fire on Canterbury Circle and I thought, please don’t be Debora. I called and her phone was busy, so I thought she was chatting on the phone and everything was OK. Then, when I took my son to the barber and saw on the news the fire was at her house, I thought, “Oh no, they’re going to think Debora did that because of that other fire.” [A year earlier, a fire broke out at a previous house owned by Debora and Michael.] I took flowers and left them at Mike’s doorstep. Debora was staying with friends, I think.

Were you surprised about the substance abuse claims? Debora did call me and it was obvious she was intoxicated — but she showed no signs of drug abuse before. As Ann Rule wrote, the night of the fire, she had taken a lot of Prozac and vodka. So she might have just been out of her mind.

Did you stay in touch when she was in custody? Debora reached out to me quite a bit. I visited her at the Olathe jail. When she went to prison in Topeka, I visited her there. She was always proclaiming her innocence. She wrote me a letter and asked whether I would perjure myself — and say that Tim said, “Sometimes I get so upset with my dad I want to burn the house.” I think I sent it to our lawyer, who sent it to the defense. And pretty quickly afterward, she pleaded no contest.

How did the people at the tennis club react to the murders? Debora had seemed so fun and sensible. So there was the whole thing of appearance vs. reality. I think a lot of us had to go to therapy over this.♠

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

Editor’s note: Michael Farrar died on August 23, 2023, at the age of 68. Media outlets have yet to disclose his cause of death.

P.S. Read Part I, an informed recap and epilogue of the “Ultimate Betrayal” episode
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Fredrick Evins: An Update

What Happened to Damaris Huff and Rhonda Ward’s Killer?
(‘DNA Dragnet,’ Forensic Files)

Police must have thought they had a slam-dunk case against Damaris Huff’s husband. After her murder, James Huff quickly had his wife’s body cremated against her relatives’ wishes. That’s usually a blinking arrow that says “guilty.”

Damaris Huff

Likewise in the homicide case of Rhonda Ward Goodwin. Police seemed to have solid evidence when an eyewitness placed someone who looked like her boyfriend close to the scene of the crime.

And as Forensic Files viewers know, the boyfriend or husband did it.

Skeletons in closet. But thanks to DNA testing, police cleared those suspects and discovered that a criminal named Fredrick Evins raped and killed both women.

For this week, I looked for more background information on the two victims and also searched for an epilogue for Fredrick Evins. Along the way, I discovered that Fredrick’s criminal history includes an especially horrifying felony that Forensic Files didn’t mention.

So let’s get going on the recap of “DNA Dragnet,” the 2009 Forensic Files episode about the case, starting with Damaris because her death came first:

Happy union. Damaris Adams entered the world on Jan. 11, 1947, in Spartanburg, South Carolina. She graduated from Converse College. By the time she met James Huff (Forensic Files uses the pseudonym “Wynn” as his surname), she was divorced with a child.

“We fell in love, and we stayed in love all the rest of our lives,” wrote James, as reported by Go Upstate, the website for the Spartanburg Herald-Journal. “I can honestly say we grew closer over time.”

Damaris worked as a bookmobile supervisor.

“Reading and exploring different belief systems and ideas were so important to her,” Jennifer Washburn, her daughter, told the Spartanburg Herald-Journal. “I think she really wanted to understand everyone in the world — why people are the way they are.”

Concerned spouse. On a Saturday, Sept. 15, 2002, Damaris went for one of her usual walks in Duncan Park near her home in Spartanburg.

She never returned to the family’s house at 335 North Park Drive.

James told police that he was worried she’d been injured, and he’d taken a drive around to look for her but had no luck.

Walkmans in stereo. Her body soon turned up amid some vegetation in Duncan Park. The killer had stolen her purple Walkman, wrapped the cord around her neck, and taken her clothing except for her blue-and-white socks.

An autopsy indicated the attacker had sexually assaulted Damaris and strangled her to death.

A view of Duncan Park with fall foliage showing — Damaris enjoyed walking in Duncan Park — seen here in an aerial view — so much that she sometimes did it twice a day

As mentioned, James Huff made a likely suspect. In addition to hastily disposing of her body, he failed a polygraph. Plus, police found a purple Walkman in the couple’s house. What was it doing there if an unknown killer had stolen it? James claimed that Damaris owned two purple Walkmans. He engaged a lawyer to represent him and, on at least one occasion when the Herald-Journal asked him about the case, he declined to comment.

Husband off hook. But, as one YouTube viewer commented, “Why would a husband rape his wife in the woods? Or take items from her as ‘trophies’?” Also, even though James might have soured on the media, he cooperated with police, according to Go Upstate.

And fortunately for James, DNA testing on Damaris’ rape kit eliminated him as a suspect.

Police also asked for DNA samples from men in and near the park around the time of the murder. They acquired 25 specimens, but none matched the rapist’s.

Another casualty. Investigators plugged the DNA from the rape into the Combined DNA Indexing System, aka CODIS, but got no hits.

By January 2003, the police had upped the $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest to $20,000.

Five months later, on February 15, 2003, a woman from a different world disappeared.

Demure victim. Rhonda Ward Goodwin, 32, lived at 111 Hanover Apartments and had recently separated from her husband. She’d gone back to school in order to win herself a promotion to manager of a convenience store, Cigarettes 4 Less, in the Reidville section of Spartanburg.

“She was a very tender-hearted person, a very soft spoken person,” said her mother-in-law, Faith Goodwin, during her appearance on Solved.

Rhonda Ward Goodwin with her young daughter — Rhonda Ward Goodwin with one of her daughters

Rhonda’s mother, Cathy Tessier, told Solved that she and her daughter were best friends and that Rhonda, who had two daughters and a son, dedicated her life to her family and her work.

Workday never started. “She was the big sister definitely, always looking after me, making sure I was doing right,” Rhonda’s brother said on Solved.

On Feb. 13, 2002, Rhonda went missing after dawn when she arrived early to open up the store on Drayton Road.

Three days later, Rhonda’s body turned up in an apple orchard.

Car torched. Like Damaris Huff’s attacker, the killer had sexually assaulted her and taken her clothes. The assailant stabbed Rhonda 12 times, according to court papers. Some of the cuts were defensive wounds to her hands.

A witness tipped off police that she’d seen a parked white car and a man and a woman who looked like Rhonda headed toward the orchard the night that Rhonda vanished.

Police found Rhonda’s white 1993 Nissan Sentra in front of an abandoned crack house at 106 Bell Avenue in Greenville County. Someone had taken the car stereo and then burned the vehicle.

Pompous newswoman. The Secret Service helped police enhance security footage from the store parking lot to figure out what happened; after Rhonda parked in front of the store and got out of the car, it looked as though a man forced her to get back in and then drive off with him in the passenger seat.

“If you get in a car and go to a second spot, most likely you’ve just signed your death certificate,” TV reporter Amanda Abbott said during her Forensic Files interview.

A sign for the Cigarettes 4 Less store where Rhonda worked — Rhonda liked to arrive at work half an hour early

I have three things to say about that: First, the expression is death warrant, not certificate. Second, she’s blaming the victim. Rhonda didn’t sign her own death warrant — the maniac who killed her did. Third, Rhonda was probably too terrified to refuse to go to the second location. Sorry, Amanda, but women under attack don’t suddenly turn into Bruce Lee.

Boyfriend vindicated. OK, back to the narrative.

Again, investigators probably thought they cracked the murder case, this time because store employees said the man with Rhonda on the security footage looked like Chester Donovan, a 26-year-old teacher’s aide whom she was dating. He failed his polygraph test, and the witness from the apple orchard picked Chester’s photo from a lineup.

But Chester furnished a solid alibi, and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division found that his DNA didn’t match that of the rapist.

There was, however, a bombshell: It matched the DNA from Damaris’ attacker.

Mysterious background. Police then got wind of a man attempting to sell a Nissan car radio in exchange for cocaine. He was 35-year-old Fredrick Antonio Evins, a short-order cook and ex-con. Fredrick, a divorcé with a teenage son, accrued a long criminal record including an earlier rape and robbery as well as punching a woman in the face while snatching her purse and using a box cutter to lacerate a male victim.

Aside from his rap sheet, little background came up on Fredrick. The South Carolina Department of Corrections lists him as a naturalized U.S. citizen but doesn’t specify his country of birth.

But forensics offered plenty of information on the 6-foot-2-inch felon. The DNA also exposed Fredrick as the perpetrator of another terribly disturbing crime that happened more than a decade before the murders. On Nov. 21, 1991, Fredrick tied up an 83-year-old woman and raped her in front of her 7-year-old granddaughter, whom he also bound. The man declined the little girl’s offer of her piggy bank, but robbed the house of a VCR. Both victims survived the assault; the older woman had died in 1999, too soon to witness the resolution.

The burned-out white Nissan Sentra — Because of Rhonda’s death, a payment on her Nissan Sentra was overdue, giving the dealership cause to turn off its starter

Shifting story. Before addressing that cold case, the authorities went full-throttle on Rhonda’s rape and murder.

It helped that Fredrick followed the typical rapist-murderer blueprint by changing the story he told investigators. Fredrick accepted the investigators’ lie that his mother ID’ed him on the videotape (she hadn’t seen the tape) but claimed that he never had sex with Rhonda. At some point, he offered a story that he and another man were in the woods together and his companion made him kill Rhonda, according to court papers. But he also told cops that he and Rhonda had plans to meet up at the store and then go off to use drugs and have sex. After consensual sex in the apple orchard, Rhonda got mad and threatened him with a knife so he killed her in self-defense (Jack Boyle and Jonathan Nyce), he contended.

Investigators theorized that Fredrick just happened upon Rhonda outside the convenience store — he lived nearby — and decided to rape her. He took her by surprise in the parking lot and forced her to drive to the orchard. After the murder, he stole her Sentra but couldn’t drive it for long because the Nissan dealership remotely disabled the vehicle’s starter. With the auto no longer mobile, he burned it to destroy evidence.

Already detained. As for Damaris’ murder, investigators theorized that he had been sleeping in Duncan Park shortly before he spotted Damaris walking by, and attacked her.

In February 2003, Evins was charged with kidnapping and raping Rhonda and grand larceny for stealing her car. Meanwhile, he was already in county jail on a charge of driving without a license.

The trial started a year after the murder. The prosecution alleged that after killing Rhonda and taking her money, Fredrick went on a drug binge.

Stoic in courtroom. Fredrick’s claim that Rhonda willingly went to the apple orchard to have sex with him didn’t hold up in court — it had been freezing on the day of the attack.

The Huffs' red brick house — The Huffs’ three-bedroom four-bathroom house lay near the park where Damaris died

In 2004, Fredrick was found guilty on all charges.

He “showed little emotion” as the verdict was read, according to an Associated Press account.

Ultimate price. At the sentencing hearing, a woman whom Fredrick pleaded guilty to raping in 1986 said that he ruined her life. Another woman told the court about how he raped her, choked her, and left her on the frozen forest floor.

He received the death penalty, and Circuit Judge Ned Miller scheduled his execution for Jan. 19, 2005.

With Fredrick already on death row, authorities didn’t have a trial for Damaris Huff’s rape and murder.

Intelligence an issue. Fredrick’s attempts to get a new trial in the Rhonda Ward case stretched all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007; the justices declined to review his case.

But in 2014, a judge overturned Fredrick’s death sentence because of the ever-popular “ineffective counsel” claim as well as allegations that he had intellectual disabilities (Ronnie Joe Neal and John Lotter).

A psychiatrist said he scored below 70 on an IQ test she administered. (I’m always suspicious about those — can’t the criminal purposely give the wrong answers in an effort to avoid the death chamber?)

Justice for oldest victim. Fredrick ultimately accepted a plea deal for life without parole. He also received a life sentence for Damaris Huff’s murder.

And the granddaughter of the late 83-year-old victim saw him sentenced to three consecutive life sentences plus 155 years in connection with his 1991 crimes against them; he apologized to the granddaughter and her mother in court.

Under the deal, he will not face execution, which in South Carolina would mean lethal injection, electric chair, or firing squad.

A mugshot of Fredrick Evins wearing an orange prison uniform — Fredrick Evins in a recent prison mug shot

Captive achiever. Today, 54-year-old Fredrick Evins resides in McCormick Correctional Institute in South Carolina. He’s made no escape attempts and has accrued no disciplinary problems.

Fredrick has earned two culinary certificates and served as an electrician’s helper, a ward keeper’s assistant, and a hauler.

There his story ends because he has virtually no chance of plying his new skills outside of prison walls.

Scales balanced. Although TV shows trumpeted the power of DNA technology and databases in securing his conviction, the case is also notable because of something else — the publicity it drew. The media focused as much attention on the murder of the working-class convenience store employee as that of the polished upper-middle-class librarian.

Sometimes, a little egalitarianism is just as impressive as a lot of forensics.

That’s all for this week. If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe and share on social media. — RR

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Robert Buell: A City Planner Goes off the Rails

A Shirt-and-Tie Guy Lives a Dual Existence
(‘Material Evidence,’ Forensic Files)

My favorite Forensic Files episodes tend to involve criminals no one suspected, people who seemed to live within society’s conventions.

Krista Lea Harrison

Enter one Robert Anthony Buell, the subject of “Material Evidence.” He was a municipal employee with a college education, a manicured lawn, and colleagues and friends who respected him.

Unfortunately, he also had a secret life as a serial sex criminal and murderer.

Local newspaper on story. For this week, I did some research on the reactions that locals had upon hearing that the homicidal maniac in the van looked not like a monster but rather like one of them.

So let’s get going on the recap for “Material Evidence,” along with information from online sources, including the Akron Beacon Journal, which did great reporting on the case:

On July 17, 1982, Krista Lea Harrison and Roy Wilson were collecting cans at a softball field in Marshallville Village Park in Ohio. Krista’s older sister, Dawn, had given her permission to ride her 10-speed bike to the park instead of doing dishes at home.

On high alert. Suddenly, a man grabbed Krista, 11, and forced her into a reddish-brown van with bubble-shaped back windows.

Roy, 12, who had just stepped away for a moment when the assailant drove up, described him as a white male of medium height, 25 to 35 years old with a prominent nose, dark hair, and a mustache.

The crime unnerved the town of Marshallville, population 750 to 900. “The park became a ghost town,” recalled Mayor Robert Brooker on Forensic Files. “There was tremendous apprehension that this could happen again.” Residents started locking their doors. A column in the Akron Beacon Journal advised parents to tell their kids that “no reasonable adult drives around seeking to give rides to children.”

A black and white image of a young Robert Buell — Robert Anthony Buell in his youth

Awful discovery. The FBI helped local authorities as they mobilized volunteers and tracker dogs, a helicopter, and even a psychic in their efforts to find the blue-eyed tawny-haired girl who loved softball. Local groups raised a $13,500 reward for information leading to the man’s capture. The feds outfitted the Harrisons’ phone with a recording device in case a kidnapper called.

“We want to be able to hold her in our arms and tell her how much we love her,” Krista’s dad, Gerald Harrison, said in a plea to the unknown man who kidnapped the youngest of his four children.

But no ransom calls came.

Six days after Krista’s abduction, some turtle trappers found the girl’s decomposing body 30 miles outside of Marshallville in a field in Holmes County. Someone had partially wrapped her in a plastic bag and left a large bloodstained cardboard box at the scene. Not far away, police found a pair of discarded men’s jeans and a plaid shirt.

Terrifying tale. Someone had strangled and sexually assaulted Krista. Forensic experts found the same type of synthetic trilobal orange fibers in her hair that had turned up eight months earlier at the murder scene of another child, Tina Harmon, in a neighboring town, but a young migrant farm worker named Herman Ray Rucker was in prison for that homicide. (Rucker eventually won a new trial and was acquitted).

A photo of fall foliage with the Marshallville water tower in the background — Marshallville created a memorial to Krista Harrison with geraniums and a plaque with her picture in the park where she showed off her talent for softball

Investigators determined that the L-shaped cardboard box at Krista’s murder scene came from a new leather van seat ordered from Sears.

Police got a huge break when a 28-year-old local woman came forward with a horrifying story. While she was painting the floor of the Petroco Gas Station where she worked as a manager, a man holding a pistol appeared and told her, “You are coming with me unless you want your head blown off,” according to court papers. He took her to his house and shaved her head, battered her, raped her, and tortured her with electric wires. He tied and handcuffed her to the bed. The next morning, in what sounds like a scene from a James Bond movie, the sadistic man turned up the stereo so no one could hear her scream and left for the office. It gave her an opportunity to loosen the ropes and force her hand through a handcuff. The victim put on a robe and ran outside for help. She was purple with bruises.

Outdoorsy guy. The man she identified as the attacker was the quintessential “somebody no one expected” — Robert Anthony Buell. He worked as a loan and grant specialist for the Akron Planning Department. His house at 3319 Symphony Lane in Clinton had an automatic garage door opener and a neatly trimmed yard with freshly planted chrysanthemums. The divorced father of one had reportedly been talking marriage with his longtime girlfriend, a lawyer at an Ohio bank; she had a 13-year-old daughter and an 8-year-old son. Robert took camping trips with both the kids and attended the girl’s softball games.

Robert Buell wearing an orange prisoner uniform — It’s a good thing Robert Buell liked orange

His arrest shocked neighbors and colleagues who knew him as a friendly, conscientious man who enjoyed hiking, scuba diving, and skiing — and was loved by local kids, the Akron Beacon Journal reported. His inner circle didn’t believe the accusations.

“Friends tended to dismiss the [gas station manager’s rape] charge as if it were an empty slur uttered the morning after by a woman Buell brought home one night,” according to the ABJ.

String of attacks. Nonetheless, the police thoroughly searched his vehicle and his house, placing sheets over the windows to discourage prying eyes.

Inside, they found jeans of the same size and style as the ones left near Krista Harrison’s murder scene. Robert owned a reddish-brown 1978 Dodge van. It didn’t have round windows as the witness to Krista’s abduction had reported, but Robert’s helpful nephew, Ralph Ross Jr., told investigators that Robert had recently replaced them with rectangular ones. The bright orange carpet in Robert’s van and his home matched the fibers in Krista’s hair. And Robert had ordered Sears van seats that came in boxes like the one found at the murder scene.

Family strife. Authorities would eventually name Robert as a suspect in the murder of Deborah Kaye Smith, 10, of Massillon, as well as a number of sexual assaults on women and girls in Doylestown, Akron, Barberton, Lodi, and Jeromesville. There was evidence that his string of crimes started as early as 1975, when he abducted Terry DeLapa (luckily, she escaped after 20 minutes), according to an account that DeLapa, now an executive at a materials company, gave to Rubber and Plastics News in 2015.

The gas station manager who Robert Buell raped and beat — After raping and beating the gas station manager (above) with his fists and a belt, Robert Buell tied her up and went to sleep for the night

So where did this man come from and did his early life give hints at the horror and loss he would create?

Robert Anthony Buell was born in Cincinnati on Sept. 10, 1940, the son of Jacqueline Buell, a waitress, and Carter Buell, a chef. His parents went through a horrible divorce, according to the ABJ. Jacqueline described her husband as a drunken troublemaker. Carter complained that he returned home from the army to find his wife shacked up with a bartender. They fought over custody of the children, with Carter alleging that Jacqueline whipped and beat Robert so severely that a broom handle once broke over his back.

Robert, understandably, was described as a nervous child.

Finance positions. Still, he had a normal social life, dating girls and going out with friends. He followed a stable, successful career path, which included serving in the Navy as an electronics technician and receiving an honorable discharge. He studied business at the University of Akron, and held jobs as a cashier and loan officer at a couple of banks and as a credit manager at W.T. Grant.

When Robert married and became a father, he didn’t allow his parents to see their granddaughter for many years — presumably to spare her their dysfunction. Robert and his wife, a bookkeeper from Steubenville, stayed together for 18 years before divorcing.

A shot of a road in the Clinton, Ohio — Robert Buell lived in the Summit County town of Clinton, a bedroom community of Akron, Ohio

After Robert’s arrest and indictment on charges of Krista’s aggravated murder, kidnapping, and felonious sexual penetration in November 1983, some neighbors started telling stories suggesting that he wasn’t all that squeaky clean after all.

Exes supportive. They said that, after his wife and daughter moved out, Robert tried to rebrand himself. He grew his hair longer and wore a cowboy hat, sunglasses, and an unbuttoned shirt like Richard Gere in American Gigolo. He also started riding a motorcycle, hanging around with younger people, and blasting music, according to the ABJ.

Still, there was no evidence that Robert had mistreated his wife and daughter or his girlfriend and her children. In fact, after his arrest, his ex-wife and girlfriend raised funds for his defense.

They must have wanted their money back when Robert, 43, pleaded no contest to the savage attack on the gas station manager.

Not So Hot in Cleveland. But he denied any crimes against children.

Authorities moved Robert Buell’s trial to Cleveland because of extensive pre-trial publicity.

He declined to take the stand in his own defense, and his lawyers didn’t impress the court much.

On April 4, 1984, a jury of six women and six men convicted Robert Anthony Buell of aggravated murder and rape for the attack on Krista Harrison.

Sorry, buddy. In a separate sentencing action, the jury voted in favor of a death sentence, which in that era meant the electric chair. Additionally, he received life plus up to 185 years for other charges related to his various sex crimes and abductions over the years.

A mug shot of Robert Buell — Buell spent his final few hours listening to classical music in his cell. For his last meal, he reportedly ate one pitted black olive.

He made many attempts to escape the death chamber. In 1996, a court halted his execution just 17 minutes before its scheduled time.

But a federal judge later “called his pleas for a stay ‘a rehash of the same arguments’ only ‘dressed in a brand-new outfit,'” the Akron Beacon Journal reported.

No chair. As a new execution date in 2002 grew near, Krista’s mother, Shirley Harrison, said that Robert Buell deserved to die the way Krista did. But she also noted that “we have been advised not to read [Krista’s] autopsy report,” according to a BG Falcon Media story.

Robert insisted he had nothing to do with the murder and that the real killer was still out there.

By this time, Ohio had started using lethal injections of sodium pentothal, potassium chloride, and the muscle relaxant Pavulon for executions.

On Sept. 24, 2002, at the “death house” of the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, Robert Anthony Buell took the needle, joining the small club of Forensic Files killers (including Jason Massey and Walter Leroy Moody) whose death sentences have been carried out as of this writing.

That’s all for this week. If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe and share on social media. — RR

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Ralph Marcus: Obsession and Fraud

A Swindler With a Grudge Kills a Teen
(‘Oily in the Morning,’ Forensic Files)

Aside from great hair, Ralph Albert Marcus didn’t have a whole lot going for him.

He made a living through scams. And he spent more than two decades fixated on a woman named Patty Howard who made it clear she had zero romantic interest in him.

Patty Howard with her children when they were small — Patty Howard with Jaime and Nick

At age 42, Ralph set in motion what he probably thought would be his greatest coup: collecting $850,000 from life insurance on Patty’s son, Nick, and getting revenge by taking him away from her forever.

As a comment on YouTube said, “Marcus is not a POS. He’s the whole thing.”

For this post, I looked into Ralph Marcus’ criminal history and searched for an explanation as to why in the world Nick Howard — a teenager with no dependents — had such an expensive life insurance policy.

Fender unbenders. So let’s get going on the recap of “Oily in the Morning,” the Forensic Files episode about Nick Howard’s murder, along with extra information culled from the internet.

Nicholas Andrew Howard was born on March 9, 1978 to Daniel and Lillian “Patty” Howard. The Howards, who lived outside of Sacramento, California and ran an auto body shop, were a close bunch. Nick’s sister, Jaime, told Forensic Files that Nick was her best friend. After Nick, 18, got his diploma, he continued to live at home, and worked in the family business.

At the end of a night out on Feb. 5, 1997, Nick went to Tony’s Place, a restaurant in Walnut Grove, to pick up a forgotten driver’s license. He left a phone message to tell his family that he had some car trouble but was heading home.

Nick never arrived.

Patty called the sheriff’s department the next morning. Her husband went out to search for Nick, driving up and down River Road, the route Nick would have taken from the restaurant.

Ralph Marcus wearing glasses with aviator frames — Ralph Marcus ‘discovered’ tire tracks from the ‘accident’ — in hopes of clearing the path to an insurance jackpot

Car discovered. River Road had no shortage of perilous stretches. It runs parallel to the Sacramento River, with a 30-foot drop from the road to the water, and no guardrails. (Just a few days ago a driver crashed into the river and died.)

Ralph Marcus, who joined the search effort along with his friend Jake Stanton, flagged down a police car to tell officers he’d found tire tracks leading from the road to the riverbank.

California Highway Patrol and Yolo County officers converged at the scene and called in divers. Two days after Nick’s disappearance, they found his empty Mazda 626 at the bottom of the river. The engine had been running when the vehicle hit the water.

Not ready to give up. Investigators discovered Nick’s neatly crumpled glasses inside the car but no other sign of Nick.

The interior of the vehicle had stains from motor oil, probably from an empty bottle of Valvoline found in the car.

Meanwhile, Patty Howard still hoped what everyone hopes when a loved one goes missing after an accident — that he’s a John Doe, confused but still alive, at a hospital.

Police suspected that Nick had staged the accident and then gone into hiding.

Slumber through an accident? But on Feb. 25, 1997, a male body surfaced near Clarksburg downstream from the track marks. Investigators had to use dental records to identify it as belonging to Nick Howard; his corpse had started to decompose. An examination suggested that someone had beaten and strangled Nick and thrown him into the river while he was still breathing. He died of drowning.

Authorities classified the death as a murder.

One of the investigators noted on Forensic Files that if Nick fell asleep along the road, he would have probably been jolted awake by the rocky descent toward the water.

A view of the Sacramento River — The Sacramento River view from River Road in Walnut Grove

Lively interview. Besides, the car had gone off the road at a 45-degree angle, too sharp a path for a vehicle whose driver had fallen asleep.

The case got all the more fishy when investigators discovered Nick had a $500,000 life insurance policy that offered $850,000 if his death happened by way of an accident.

Homicide Detective Larry Cecchettini, one of the more vigorous speakers on this particular Forensic Files episode, noted the oddity of a young person having this much insurance coverage.

Suspicious paperwork. It turned out that Nick had taken out the policy on himself after lying to the agent — he said that he planned to get married and take over his parents’ business, according to court papers from 2001. He paid the premiums, which cost him about one fourth of his monthly income, Cecchettini told The New Detectives on the “Betrayed” episode.

The Howards discovered that the policy listed not them but rather Ralph Marcus as the beneficiary. (According to The New Detectives and court papers from 2001, the change never officially went through because Nick neglected to supply some required information — but Ralph probably didn’t know that until after Nick died.)

Ralph had a long history with the Howard family, particularly with Patty.

Unrequited feelings. In 1973, Ralph, then 17, met Patty, 14. He immediately started hitting on her and made some unwanted advances after pinning her down — he claimed he just wanted to show her some wrestling holds. The incident sounded like borderline, or maybe full-fledged, sexual assault.

Jaime Howard as a young adult — Jaime Howard during her appearance on Forensic Files

Patty friend-zoned him, but he continued to hover around her.

Even after she married Dan Howard, Ralph’s preoccupation with Patty persisted. In an October 1986 letter to Patty’s sister, Ralph said that the emptiness he felt without Patty “would be like for you if your children were taken away forever,” according to court papers.

Connection with son. Ralph continued to hang around Patty and her family until 1993 — when he made a bizarre request to have a baby with Patty.

She finally told him to get lost forever.

But Nick stayed in touch with Ralph, who lived in Orangevale. Starting when Nick was 16, Ralph would sometimes hire him to work on landscaping jobs, according to 2001 court papers.

Bad-news guy. Ralph acted like Nick’s godfather, according to Forensic Files. He whisked Nick away on adventures in Reno and Tahoe. They stayed in hotels and went to casinos. What teenage boy could resist those enticements?

Many YouTube commenters criticized Patty for allowing Ralph to have any contact with her or her family after experiencing his aggression in high school. But remember, that was in 1973, before anyone talked about date rape or acquaintance rape or forcible kissing. Back then, behavior like Ralph’s was often filed in the “he can be a jerk sometimes” bin.

Patty Howard's husband, Dan — Nick’s father, Dan Howard

If there was a loser bin, he definitely belonged in that one, too. Although Ralph liked flashy things, he could never hold a job for long. He told people he made a living as a gambler. He resided rent free with his mother and stepfather for years and did sporadic contracting work. But he needed money for a new home — the bank was set to take ownership of his mother’s house because of a reverse mortgage.

Litany of offenses. A background check on Ralph revealed bankruptcy, drug running, and insurance fraud. In one case in the 1970s, Ralph allegedly set his own house on fire and stayed in the burning structure until he almost died.

Court papers would note Ralph’s “past success, working with one or more confederates, in obtaining cash from insurance companies by means of contrived fires, faked auto theft, faked burglary, and property damage from faked auto accidents.”

He acted surprised to hear that Nick had named him as insurance beneficiary. Ralph said he knew nothing about any fraud scheme. But some of Ralph’s acquaintances who later came forward told police that Ralph knew about the beneficiary switch and offered varying reasons for the change. He told one associate that Nick didn’t trust his own parents and wanted Ralph to administer the money to his family in a prudent way.

Far-fetched scheme. After Nick’s death, Ralph said that he would turn over any insurance money to the Howard family, but he later backpedaled.

Meanwhile, an unidentified associate of Nick’s told police he heard Nick brag about a plan to fake his death for $1 million in insurance money, and Ralph Marcus would collect the payout so Ralph and Nick could use it for high living.

In addition to various statements from people who knew Ralph or Nick, the forensic evidence was growing.

Mouthing off. Tests on the Mazda showed that a Valvoline oil bottle cap was holding the throttle open. It was used so the vehicle could be operated without a driver, investigators believed. A Valvoline oil bottle found in Ralph Marcus’s garage bore the same lot number as the one in the sunken car.

A newspaper clipping of Nick Howard wearing a baseball cap and glasses — In all available photos of Nick Howard as a teenager, he’s wearing a hat

Experiments with a Styrofoam model of Nick’s head suggested that the accident wouldn’t cause the severe crushing of glasses. (The glasses shown on Forensic Files looked neatly crushed rather than mangled.)

It came out later that Ralph told friend Gayle Schlenker that Nick’s car was going around 85 miles an hour when it hit the water. How would he know?

Big-talking teen. Jake Stanton would later tell police that, at the crash site, Ralph found a stray glove that matched the one found on Nick’s body — and put it back in the water rather than turning it over to police. Ralph later claimed that the glove was tangled in fishing line and slipped from his hands.

Investigators theorized that Nick and Ralph transpired to commit insurance fraud, then run away together and live the glamorous life on the payout. Nick had told his sister and his buddy Jason Smalling that he was “worth more dead than alive” and that Ralph could take his insurance money and multiply it. Jaime and Jason both expressed skepticism, but it didn’t discourage Nick — and they probably thought he would never really do such a thing anyway.

Furthermore, Nick told his friend Susan Von Niessen about a plan to fake his own death, hide in Mexico, and then return to the U.S. to collect on his life insurance. But Susan told him that insurance companies don’t pay off until the policy holder has been missing for seven years. That information rattled Nick, according to court papers from November 2001.

Not so cocky now. On July 11, 1997, detectives from the Yolo County sheriff’s office arrested Ralph and charged him with murder with the special circumstance of committing the homicide for financial gain, which could bring the death penalty.

A view of the Sacremento River from the water — The Sacramento River is also a tourist attraction featuring wine-tasting cruises

Ralph pleaded not guilty. His court appearance was a far cry from the image of bravado to which he aspired: Ralph “sat silently, attached by each wrist to other inmates in a line of prisoners wearing identical blue jail pajamas,” the Sacramento Bee reported on July 25, 1997. “He fidgeted and cast brief, nervous glances toward the row of spectators — the family and friends of his alleged victim.”

Public defender James Eger represented Ralph early on, and later J. Toney took over as part of a contractual relationship with the county.

Tall tale. The trial kicked off on Oct. 5, 1999.

Investigators theorized that Ralph clung to Nick because the rest of the Howards didn’t want him hanging around.

Ralph plotted the insurance caper from the beginning, they conjectured. Nick was probably acting on Ralph’s suggestion when he took out the insurance policy.

Brutal assault. It came out that, possibly as part of an effort to stage the accident, Nick had called his buddy Samuel Tyler to say that he was driving home along River Road and was tired after staying awake about 32 hours — and that he had some trouble with the car’s distributor cap but had fixed it.

On the night of Feb. 5, he and Ralph met at a dock on the Sacramento River to create the accident scene, prosecutors believed, but Nick tried to back out of the plan, so Ralph killed him — or maybe Ralph had planned the murder from the beginning either out of greed or for revenge against Patty, the prosecution believed. He beat and strangled Nick until he passed out, threw him in the water, crunched the glasses, and put them in the car and accidentally spilled the Valvoline oil while taking the cap off. Then he used the bottle cap in the carburetor so he could send the unoccupied Mazda into the Sacramento River, prosecutors alleged.

Later, Ralph informed police that he “discovered” the tire tracks where the car ran off the road — he wanted the authorities to find the vehicle and the body so he could collect on the insurance.

At the trial, two of Ralph’s former associates who received immunity testified about scams Ralph had taken part in.

Pickup game. Harold Thompson said that in the 1970s, Ralph had shown up at his door with singed hair, saying that his house had burned down because of an electrical fire and that he had secretly removed expensive items from his house and claimed that the blaze destroyed them.

Jeff Cantrell testified that Ralph had helped him out by destroying Jeff’s ski boat so Jeff could collect on insurance. Ralph also defrauded his own insurance company by claiming someone stole his Toyota pickup truck, Jeff said.

Nick Howard's grave stone. — Patty Howard said her son loved her too much to disappear

Glen Harms, an inmate from Yolo County Jail, testified that Ralph told him that Nick was his adopted son and that Ralph himself had paid for the insurance policy.

Dubious claims. After his court appearance, Harms claimed that Ralph looked at him and mouthed, “You’re dead.”

Another witness testified that Ralph had lured Nick Howard into a credit card fraud scheme.

And Farmers Insurance representative Jim Dyer said he suspected that a 1996 claim from Ralph — that someone burglarized a shed outside his home — was phony. But Ralph went to the Insurance Commission to complain, so Farmers reluctantly paid Ralph $58,000 on his claim.

Defense’s turn. Ralph’s lawyer, J. Toney, was undeterred and hit the prosecution back hard.

The defense presented three forensic pathologists who denied the strangulation evidence and said Nick had simply drowned and that his facial injuries came from the crash. Tony argued that Nick was fatigued the night of his disappearance and could have easily drifted off behind the wheel.

And Ralph was an honest citizen who made his living as a gambler, the defense contended.

Brother speaks up. Next up, Ralph Marcus himself took the stand. He claimed to have witnessed Nick put a bottle cap in his vehicle’s carburetor on an occasion before the accident.

Ralph also said he was shocked to find out Nick had made him the beneficiary of his life insurance policy, but he kept it as a secret from the Howards as not to upset them. Oh, and he never mentioned the insurance to police because he didn’t think the change was valid.

His brother, Ron Marcus, would later testify that Ralph said that Nick named him beneficiary because he was mad at his parents.

Right where he belongs. Ralph denied past acts of fraud. He also said that he quit working to care for his mother.

The jury was unmoved. On Jan. 13, 2000, Ralph was convicted of first-degree murder and given life without the possibility of parole. He lost a 2011 appeal attempt.

Today, Ralph Albert Marcus, 67, is in Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California, where he’s better known as #P66056, and still has no chance of parole, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

“Marcus got his wish,” wrote YouTube commenter Lowhandlagum. “He doesn’t have to work anymore.”

That’s all for this week. If you enjoyed this post, please share on social media. Until next time, cheers – RR

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