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Walter Scott: A One-Hit Wonder Silenced

Greedy Lovers Kill a Once-Famous Singer
‘The Cheater,’ Forensic Files

Black and white picture of young Walter Scott — Walter Scott in his prime

Forensic Files went all in on “The Cheater,” the episode about the rise and fall of vocalist Walter Scott.

The producers scored interviews with the victim’s mother and father — plus Bob Kuban, the leader of the group that Walter helped to land on the Top 40 list. Forensic Files even got the man who murdered Walter to speak on camera.

Before seeing the episode, I had never heard of Walter Scott, but the show’s portrayal made me want to learn more about his trajectory from blue-collar worker to nationally known celebrity to wedding singer — and ultimately to homicide victim.

Making the band. So let’s get going on the recap of “The Cheater,” along with extra information from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch‘s great reporting as well as other internet sources:

Bob Kuban, the founder of Bob Kuban and the In-Men, was a DuBourg High School music instructor who once studied under the head percussionist of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.

Drawing upon his most promising former students, Kuban formed the eight-piece group in 1964.

Hygienic youths. Although a musical act with more than five people — including brass instruments, no less — seemed a little anachronistic in the age of the Beatles, the group did well.

Black and white photo of Bob Kuban and the In-Men in the mid-1960s — Bob Kuban said the Vietnam War hurt the act as two of its horn players were drafted

In a 1966 interview, Kuban lauded the group’s wholesome image. He noted that the members styled themselves in a clean-cut manner, took baths daily, and in general distinguished themselves from the rock musicians who were “long-haired freaks” and wore Victorian costumes (not sure who he was taking a swipe at on that one).

According to Forensic Files, the band owed much of its appeal to its blond frontman, Walter Scott. Born as Walter Scott Notheis on February 7, 1943, he grew up in St. Louis and married when barely out of his teens. He and wife Doris had two sons, Wally and Scott.

When Walter joined Bob Kuban and the In-Men, he was working as a crane operator during the day.

Tuned up. The group first gained fame in their native St. Louis. The boys “cast a spell over teenagers” around town and spread the magic around the country, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Walter Scott's parents Kay and Walter Notheis Sr. — Kay and Walter Notheis Sr.

In 1966, the band created the song that would become its legacy.

“I remember a couple of the guys came up, and they were working on this tune,” Kuban would later tell the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “It was a rough version, but it sounded great. It just needed an intro and needed a driving beat. We put it together, recorded it, and it went crazy.”

High note. The lyrics to “Look Out for the Cheater” warned about a “guy known as the cheater, he’ll take your girl, then he’ll lie and he’ll mistreat her.”

On April 30, 1966, Bob Kuban and the In-Men performed “Look Out for the Cheater” on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.

The record reached No. 12 on the Billboard chart and stayed in the Top 40 for seven weeks. It would go on to sell a million copies.

In their heyday, the boys appeared on a soap opera called Never Too Young and continued to play at many St. Louis-area venues. The normally quiet Catholic Youth Council dances became all the rage when Bob Kuban and the In-Men performed there.

Lightning not striking twice. Walter, who had azure eyes and sometimes wore a blue tuxedo on stage, acquired many female fans. “Take a good-looking guy and he was like a movie star back then to a lot of women,” Kuban told Forensic Files. Locals who knew Walter described him as a nice person, too.

The band followed up with the songs “The Teaser” and “Drive My Car,” but they didn’t make it into the Top 40. Bob Kuban and the In-Men never had another hit like “Look Out for the Cheater.”

St. Louis arch — The boys in the band stayed true to their St. Louis roots

Walter quit the band and continued on his own, hoping to become the next blue-eyed soul phenomenon, according to a Daily News story. Many people who heard his disembodied voice assumed he was African-American, a 2016 retrospective in The Australian said.

Holding his own. His solo records didn’t sell well and he never became a singular sensation, but he made a living for himself for 17 years singing with cover bands that played at private events and street fairs. St. Louis Post Dispatch stories from 1967 note “Walter Scott and the Guise” appearing at Stoppkoette Roller Rink and Christ the King Parish Hall.

By 1975, he had formed a band called Walter Scott and the Cheaters, playing at such venues as the Harbour House Hotel in Lynne, Massachusetts. He might not have been a major star anymore, but his voice still sounded great as evidenced by a 1980 recording of Walter Scott performing live.

Walter’s career required a lot of time on the road and, as Forensic Files pointed out, he was not only singing about a cheater but also becoming one.

Scandalous goings-on. After years of being unfaithful to Doris, Walter divorced her. He then married his mistress, the olive-skinned Joann Calcaterra — described as one of Walter’s starstruck fans by an Exhumed: Killer Revealed episode titled “Murders on the Edge of Town.”

Walter’s parents, Kay and Walter Notheis Sr., told Forensic Files that Joann, who worked as a secretary at a TV station, was selfish and untrustworthy.

Things got more sordid and sad from there.

Walter, who shared a twin son and daughter with Joann, had an affair with a dancer from his act. Joann cheated with a sloppy-looking electrician named James “Jim” Williams — who was married.

Joann Calcaterra Scott Williams — Friends and neighbors of Joann Calcaterra Notheis Williams helped fund her $500,000 bail

“It was like Peyton Place,” said Kay Notheis. “Everyone was running around with each other’s wives.”

One last chance. In October 1983, Jim’s wife, Sharon Almaroad Williams, with whom he shared two sons, died at the age of 42 after her Cadillac Seville crashed into a ditch.

That same year, there was some good news. Bob Kuban decided to get his original band back together, and signed Walter on.

But the reboot was not to be.

Taking a break from a gig at a Playboy Club in Hershey, Pennsylvania, Walter returned to St. Louis to spend Christmas of 1983 with Joann — and promptly vanished. He left the house to replace a car battery and never came back, according to Oxygen.

Badmouthing a dead man. Wally Notheis, one of Walter’s sons from his marriage to Doris, first heard the news from his stepmother that his dad was missing. “I just didn’t know what happened,” Wally told Exhumed. “His life was pretty secretive.”

When reporting Walter’s disappearance, Joann immediately went into smear-the-victim mode (Ken Register, John Boyle). She told police that Walter was involved in the drug trade, associated with underworld figures, and tended to carry a lot of cash, according to Autopsy 3: The Cheater.

Police found the car he was using, a dark green Lincoln, abandoned at the St. Louis Airport. And, yikes, when Kay and Walter Notheis Sr. stopped by the house that their son shared with Joann, they found Jim Williams — a bear of a man at 6-foot-6-inches and 300-pounds — sitting at a table with Walter’s jewelry spread out in front of him. He was inspecting it with a magnifying glass.

That was fast. Within 24 hours of Walter’s disappearance, Joann canceled all of Walter’s singing engagements. Jim Williams began spending the night at Joann’s; she told police that Jim slept on the couch and they were just friends. Jim said they were merely consoling each other.

Nine months later, Joann divorced the still-missing Walter on grounds of adultery, abandonment, and emotional abuse. She married Jim Williams in April 1986.

Kay and Walter Notheis Sr. were not thrilled to see Jim Williams move into the house on Pershing Lake Drive where their son and Joann once lived together. They also had to contend with the enduring mystery of their son’s disappearance when the case turned cold.

Crypt located. In 1987, investigators finally got a break, from one of Jim’s sons, who was in prison at the time. Thanks to Jim Jr.’s tip, deputies zeroed in on a cistern on his father’s property. Little Jim recalled that his father had covered it with a wood-lined concrete planter around the time that Walter disappeared.

Sharon and Jim Williams with their two small sons — Homicide victim Sharon Williams with husband Jim Williams and their sons in happier times

Law enforcement officers quickly converged on the structure and pried open the cistern. They found what was left of Walter’s body, dressed in a blue jogging suit, floating in the water. Someone had tied him up and put a bullet through the heart. When the deputies lifted out his corpse, the head — a skull by this time — tumbled away from his spinal column. Medical examiner Mary Case, who had arrived at the scene minutes earlier, quickly retrieved the skull and made sure police carefully handled his torso, which had some delicate flesh attached.

Police arrested Jim Williams Sr. for Walter’s murder. Investigators built a case that he also killed Sharon Williams. Investigators found evidence suggesting that Sharon’s car accident was staged; her exhumed body showed injuries inconsistent with what the auto wreck would have caused. She had gasoline on her body, which they attributed to a failed attempt to incinerate the car.

It took years for the justice system to build a solid case against Joann and Jim Williams.

Major irritant. In the meantime, Walter’s father took comfort in driving past Jim and Joann’s house from time to time. “I think he just wants them to know we’re still around,” Kay told the St. Louis-Post Dispatch in 1990. “We’re still watching them.” Sometimes, Jim would come out of the house and stare at the car until they drove away.

Neighbors said that Joann usually stayed inside the house, but they would see Jim doing woodworking projects outdoors or fishing in the backyard on the banks of Pershing Lake.

”To see that guy in your own son’s house, it just gripes me no end,” said Walter Notheis. “I’d like to go in there and blow his head off.”

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Wheels of justice. Members of the community were frustrated, too, as evidenced by a letter to the editor in the Christmas Eve 1991 edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Walter Notheis Jr. died a cruel and violent death. His family and friends have suffered too long. The suspects should be tried and, if found guilty, they should be executed. Then and only then may our wounds start to heal. — Jack W. Geer, Kirkwood

The trial finally kicked off in 1992.

Authorities theorized that Jim got in an argument with Sharon at home and used an implement to strike her head. He staged the auto accident and set a fire near the car to cover up the murder, they alleged.

Not an agonizing decision. As for Walter, the prosecution made a case that Jim shot him in the back before burying him on his property where, Jim thought, no one would find him. One witness told the court that, before Walter’s body turned up, Jim Williams said that Walter was gone and never coming back. There was testimony that Jim had tried to hire hitmen to kill Walter.

The jurors quickly found Jim guilty, but they rejected prosecutor Thomas Dittmeier’s request for the death penalty. Jim Williams, then 52 years old, received two sentences of life without the possibility of parole for 50 years for the murders of Sharon Williams and Walter Scott.

Joann had been arrested, too, although investigators didn’t have quite enough evidence of her involvement to guarantee a murder conviction. She would later say that her only crime was falling in love with the “kind and gentle” Jim Williams, but she pleaded guilty to hindering prosecution. She received a five-year prison sentence, served 18 months, and then disappeared from public view. (There’s a 2015 obituary on the internet for a Joann Calcaterra, but it’s not the same woman.)

Walter Scott with two Playboy bunnies — Despite his cheating, Walter Scott for years felt reluctant to divorce his first wife because of his Catholic upbringing

Time for the finale. During his Forensic Files interview, Jim Williams denied committing murder and tried to cast blame on his own son, Jim Jr., for Walter’s homicide (Stacey Castor).

Williams served time in maximum security at Missouri’s Potosi prison. He died of cancer in an infirmary hospice at the age of 72 in 2011.

Bob Kuban called Walter’s mother to give her the news of Jim Williams’ death. “I was wishing he would live longer so he would have to suffer a little longer,” Kay Notheis, then 88, told Stlouistoday.com. “But you don’t always get what you want.” (Walter Notheis Sr. had died in 2003 at the age of 81. )

Band plays on. Sadly, a 2014 newspaper story told of how a caregiver hired by Ron Notheis — Kay’s well-meaning surviving son — stole her jewelry and cash.

At least the unscrupulous employee didn’t try to kill her.

Kay lived until she was nearly 100, dying in 2022.

Bob Kuban’s musical act lived a long time as well. After Walter’s death, Bob took over lead vocals and changed the group’s name to the Bob Kuban Band. He acknowledged that the latest incarnation struggled a bit.

As recently as 2019, however, the group was still playing, and had an invitation to perform at the annual Pointfest rock festival in St. Louis. Kuban told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the band would play a medley of 1960s hits as well as “Look Out for the Cheater.”

Wait, there’s more. He also said he’d rather be a one-hit wonder than a no-hit wonder.

Walter got a lot of mileage from that song as well, but he didn’t learn much from it and, unfortunately, he was cheated out of everything in the end.

You can watch the Autopsy episode about the murder on YouTube. The Exhumed episode is also on YouTube, but it’s behind a paywall and mostly concentrates on the murder of Sharon Williams.

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

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Rhoda Nathan: Tragedy Before a Bar Mitzvah

Elwood Jones Surprises a Hotel Guest
(‘Punch Line,’ Forensic Files)

Back in 1996, the case against hotel worker Elwood Jones seemed as solid as cast iron. The handyman had prior convictions for theft and possessed a master passkey for rooms at the Embassy Suites in Blue Ash, Ohio.

Rhoda Nathan

Two years after guest Rhoda Nathan was discovered beaten to death and a piece of her jewelry turned up in Elwood’s car, Judge Ralph Winkler sent him to death row.

But in a surprising development in 2023, Elwood exited prison on two feet after a different Hamilton County judge ordered a new trial.

Social gal. A look into the reasoning behind that decision seems in order — but first, here’s a recap of the Forensic Files episode “Punch Line” along with extra information from internet research:

Rhoda Silverman was born in the Bronx on January 15, 1927 and then lived in New York City for 18 years, according to her obituary in the Asbury Park Press. She married Robert Nathan and had two sons, Valentine and Peter.

By 1994, she was a 67-year-old widow, but still a livewire. Rhoda lived in Toms River, New Jersey and enjoyed local theater, tennis, golf, travel, and orchestrating family celebrations, according to the Justice for Rhoda Nathan website. An Asbury Park Press story described her as a popular member of the Dover Township retirement community.

Friends up in the air. She also stayed close to her old acquaintances, including childhood friend Elaine Shub. In September of 1994, Rhoda flew to Ohio to attend the bar mitzvah of Elaine’s grandson.

On the airplane, a married couple named the Cantors who were headed to the same bar mitzvah introduced themselves to Rhoda and ended up dropping her off at the Embassy Suites, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Exterior shot of the Embassy Suites in Blue Ash Ohio — Cincinnati hotel rooms were in short supply during the Labor Day weekend, so Rhoda Nathan and her friends stayed at an Embassy Suites outside of town

Rhoda and Elaine shared Room 237, along with Elaine’s boyfriend, Joe Kaplan.

Egg in the a.m. The hotel was configured with an atrium surrounded by guest rooms. No one could slip into a room without chancing detection.

Or so it seemed.

According to the Cincinnati Post, unlike other rooms, Rhoda’s had an exterior door partly blocked by plants and a low wall.

On the day of the event, September 3, 1994, Elaine and Joe left the room early in the morning to grab a bite in the atrium — where the hotel had an omelet station — and give Rhoda a chance to shower and dress in privacy.

Sudden terror. Unfortunately, it was just enough time to allow a thief to sneak into what he probably thought was an empty room.

When Joe, Elaine, and Elaine’s daughter Cynthia Kirsch returned from breakfast, they allowed Cynthia’s 6-year-old son to turn the key in the lock. The door opened to the sight of Rhoda on the floor.

Elaine screamed in horror.

Guests try to help. Although Season 4 of the Accused podcast said that police at first thought Rhoda had simply suffered a heart attack, her friends described her as having a face so swollen and battered that they could barely identify her — far more physical trauma than a cardiac arrest would cause. Rhoda had a shattered jaw and broken ribs. Investigators would later identify door chains and a walkie-talkie as objects possibly used in the attack.

Elwood Jones wearing tinted aviator while under arrest — Elwood Jones, seen here under arrest, was known for being arrogant and wearing cologne

“They just beat the living daylights out of her,” police chief Michael Allen said, as reported by the Associated Press.

A cardiologist and a nurse staying at the hotel tried to revive Rhoda, with no luck.

Emotionally scarred. Dorothy Cantor told the Cincinnati Enquirer that she was stunned to learn that the nice woman she and her husband had just met was now gone.

Cynthia would later tell the Accused podcast that Elaine Shub was never the same after that day.

Rhoda’s son was devastated. “As she passed away, so did my family,” recalled Valentine Nathan in a video on the Justice for Rhoda Nathan website. “We drew apart. There was nothing there to draw us back in together. It was horrible.”

Dental damage. Because of her facial injuries, the Nathans had to give Rhoda a funeral with a closed casket. “My baby, my baby,” said Rhoda’s 92-year-old mother, Sarah Silverman, as she looked at the coffin.

Meanwhile, the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office had sent detective Peter Alderucci to the crime scene. He found one of Rhoda’s teeth on the floor; another would turn up in her stomach. A necklace given to Rhoda by her husband, who had it custom-made with diamonds once belonging to his mother, was missing and so was $500 in cash from Elaine’s purse.

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The Hamilton County Coroner declared Rhoda’s death a murder. Because she had few defensive wounds, prosecutors believe someone overpowered her completely. She was naked, making it unlikely that she opened the door to let the anonymous killer in.

Handy clue. Investigators turned their attentions toward Elwood Jones, a 42-year-old handyman for the hotel. He started work at 6 a.m. on the morning of the homicide. Later that day, he acquired a bandaged wound on his left hand, and he went for treatment four days later.

When hand surgeon Dr. John McDonough cut into Elwood’s severely infected finger, blood and tissue spurted 10 inches across the operating room table. The doctor took photos of the wound to show students because it was so unusual. (Warning: Between those photos and the autopsy pictures, you probably shouldn’t plan on dining while watching this episode.)

Elwood’s hand injury required antibiotics, two operations, and a five-day stay in the hospital.

“The virulence of that infection was a clue to the mystery,” intoned Forensic Files narrator Peter Thomas.

Violent provenance. Elwood told the doctor that the cut came from a trash bin lid, but hotel employees recalled that he blamed it on metal stairs. Another version had Elwood saying he got the cut when he fell onto a garbage bag containing glass and later aggravated the wound while breaking down a dance floor at the hotel, according to a Northeast Suburban Life article from June 5, 2019.

Closeup of Rhoda's pendant featured a bar with five diamonds flanked on each side by two other bars — Rhoda’s necklace had five heirloom diamonds

Lab tests revealed the infection came from eikenella corrodens bacteria, found in oral plaque. The doctor identified the wound as a “fight bite” — from a fist coming into violent contact with human teeth.

So who was this man who quickly became the chief suspect in a beloved grandmother’s murder?

Respectable beginnings. Elwood “Butch” Jones came into the world in 1952, born to schoolteachers in Ohio. In addition to their own seven children, Elwood’s parents took in kids who didn’t have good homes.

At some point in Elwood’s life, he started accruing theft convictions — at least one of them for a burglary.

Having already married and divorced once, Elwood was living with his girlfriend, Yvonne, in the East Walnut Hills neighborhood of Cincinnati at the time of the homicide. He was also having an affair with a co-worker named Earlene Metcalf.

Sharp-dressed man. A search of his and Yvonne’s apartment turned up the Embassy Suites master passkey in Elwood’s possession, even though he no longer worked at the hotel by that time. A toolkit in the trunk of his car contained the necklace given to Rhoda by her husband.

Rhoda’s son became the family’s most vocal spokesperson

Police arrested Elwood, and he was indicted in 1995. With his sleek physique and tinted aviator-style frames, he looked more like an opening act for Sammy Davis Jr. than a maintenance man gone homicidal.

Alternate suspects? Prosecutors believe Jones saw Elaine Shub and Joe Kaplan leave for breakfast on that morning of September 3 and thought the room was empty. He took along his toolkit so he could say he was doing maintenance work if the occupants returned unexpectedly. When Rhoda surprised him by emerging from the bathroom, he beat her with his fists, door chains, and possibly his walkie-talkie and stole the necklace plus Elaine’s cash.

Elwood’s defense team argued that police, who had access to his car keys, planted the necklace in his toolkit to frame him.

Tow-truck driver Jimmy Johnson said that, in the course of doing repair work on Elwood’s car on September 4, 1994, he dumped out all the tools in Elwood’s trunk and saw no necklace like the one that detective Mike Bray said he later discovered.

There was also the matter of a local jailbird named Linda Reed who said that a woman she met while locked up admitted that her husband murdered someone and then framed a Black man.

Typical accusation. The defense contended that investigators launched the case against Elwood because of public pressure to solve it after they muddied up the murder scene.

Rhoda's battered face — Rhoda Nathan sustained injuries to her neck and chest in addition to those on her face

(I’m always skeptical about contentions that police erred by failing to keep crime scenes pristine. In the case of Rhoda, first responders didn’t know a murder had taken place. And even if they did suspect it, they had to walk into the room and move things in the course of trying to revive her and then removing her body.)

In 1996, a jury found Elwood guilty of aggravated murder and he received a death sentence. He stayed on death row for 27 years, all the while claiming innocence and writing letters to ask for help.

Steadfast story. On September 10, 2000, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported seeing court papers suggesting that Ohio judges had criticized prosecutors for using improper courtroom statements to win death-penalty convictions in numerous cases, including that of Elwood Jones. Among the prosecutors’ offending statements was that Elwood valued a stolen necklace more than Rhoda Nathan’s life. But that revelation didn’t lead anywhere for his case.

It wasn’t until 2022 that Elwood had some real luck. Pro bono defense lawyers, including Erin Barnhart, who called the prosecution’s evidence junk science, persuaded Hamilton County Judge Wende Cross to rule that he deserved a new trial because 4,000 investigative documents, including 400 hotel guest surveys, had been withheld from the defense during the trial.

Criminals aplenty. According to reporting from WLWT, the defense lawyers’ salvos included the allegation that some hotel guests said they saw a white man dashing out of the building and into the woods around the time of the murder and that the local police reported that they received a confession to the crime from someone other than Elwood Jones. There was also a confusing contention that Rhoda Nathan’s necklace was merely a piece of mass-produced jewelry.

“I’m not a murderer,” Elwood said in an interview. “I was a thief and I’m the first to tell you I’ve got a past.” According to the Accused podcast, the Embassy Suites in Blue Ash employed other people with police records — the hotel was having a tough time filling positions and it qualified for a tax credit for employing those who had trouble securing jobs. Over the years, the property had received many complaints of items disappearing from their rooms, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

His defenders also pointed out that Elwood’s narrative has remained the same since the murder happened in 1994. “A few stories have changed since then, but not Jones’,” the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote.

Rhoda Nathan’s family begged Judge Cross to keep Elwood in prison until the new trial. The state of Ohio tried to persuade her, too. “He’s 70 years old,” said assistant prosecutor Seth Tiger. “He’s got a lot of crime left in him.”

Elwood won. Wearing an electronic monitoring device on his leg and having posted no bond money, he emerged from razor wire on January 14, 2023

Comfort and reunions. “Because of all the bad rulings that have come out over the years,” Elwood told USA Today, “it’s kind of hard to comprehend when something good happens.”

In a March 2023 interview with USA Today, Elwood said he’s grateful to be able to make his own coffee and enjoy the company of his sister’s American bulldog while staying at her home on house arrest. Other family members come to visit him.

He spends some of his time sewing stuffed animals to give to people who have helped him, according to USA Today.

Fans materialize. The Nathans and prosecutors dismiss Elwood’s plea of innocence as a typical attempt at a SODDI (some other dude did it) defense.

Bar mitzvah taking place as Torah scroll is taken out — Elaine Shub had to borrow a dress because her hotel room was sealed off with police tape

“The issues Judge Cross rested her decision on have been decided on by the sixth circuit court of appeals, the federal court, at the district level and at the court of appeals, and all were rejected,” said Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters, adding that it’s a rare day that he doesn’t think about Rhoda Nathan.

Chief Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor Mark Piepmeier complained about the existence of what he termed Elwood Jones groupies.

Kickoff coming in 2024. “Now, thanks to misleading TV crime shows and inaccurate podcasts, Elwood Jones has gained enough support to be granted a new trial,” Valentine Nathan said in a video interview on the Justice for Rhoda website. “My mother is not here and this guy is still breathing and still appealing. Him constantly trying to do these appeals and bring everything back is torment of me and torment of my family.”

Elwood’s adversaries and supporters await his new trial, originally scheduled to begin on February 5, 2024 — but now delayed with the possible start time of summer or fall 2024 (thanks to reader Marcus for sending in the update). Because of a medical condition, he no longer has to wear an electronic monitoring device.

In the meantime, rewinding all the way back to 1994 for a moment, what happened with the bar mitzvah plans that prompted Rhoda’s fateful visit to Cincinnati? The ceremony actually did take place right after the tragedy, according to Dorothy Cantor, who cited the Jewish tradition of using happy occasions to help people celebrate life amid horrible events.

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

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Mia Zapata: Murder of a Front Woman

A Singer Dies in Seattle, But Not in Vain
(‘The Day the Music Died,’ Forensic Files)

Mia Zapata might have joined the 27 Club, but her death at age 27 was different from those of Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, and the rest: It had nothing to do with drug or alcohol abuse.

The lead vocalist and songwriter for the Gits — a band variously described as grunge, punk, or rock — Mia died in 1993 when an ex-convict randomly spotted her walking alone late at night in Seattle.

Mia Zapata

Awful discovery. But the tragedy of Mia’s demise gave rise to purpose. It brought out the best in her family, friends, and members of the community who were frustrated by a lack of evidence that made the case difficult to solve. They worked together to search for clues to the killer’s identity and also to safeguard other local women from crimes of opportunity.

For this week’s post, I looked for more details on Mia’s biography and the case. So let’s get going on the recap of “The Day the Music Died”:

Just before 3:30 a.m. on July 7, 1993, a sex worker stumbled upon a brutalized woman lying in the streets of Capitol Hill, a lively but rough section of Seattle popular with aspiring musicians. The victim’s body was still warm, but paramedics couldn’t revive her.

Up and coming. An attacker had raped, bitten, and choked her with a cord from her sweatshirt, and beaten her to death.

The medical examiner, who followed local bands, recognized the deceased woman as Mia Zapata, the front woman of the Gits.

Amid the city’s music scene, which had recently given rise to Nirvana and Soundgarden, Mia and her band had a large following and were on the verge of winning a contract with one of the Top 10 record labels in the world.

Classmates click. The Gits — consisting of Mia, drummer Steve Moriarty, bass player Matt Dresdner, and guitar player Andy “Joe Spleen” Kessler — had already enjoyed successful tours up and down the West Coast and in Europe and had played on the same bill as Green Day and Nirvana.

The Gits in a black and white photo — The Gits

The four had originally met and formed the band as students at Antioch College. After graduation, they relocated to Seattle and moved into an abandoned house in Capitol Hill.

It was a departure from the singer’s comfortable upbringing.

Mia Katherine Zapata was born on August 25, 1965 and grew up in a suburb of Louisville, Kentucky. She went to private school, and her family belonged to a tennis club.

Trio of tikes. Her mother, Donna Zapata, was a station manager for WHAS radio and TV, and her father, Richard, worked as a media executive as well.

Both of Mia’s parents earned six-figure incomes.

They had three children. Kristen was preppy, Eric was cool, and Mia was arty, according to Kristen.

Demure girl. Despite showing signs of dyslexia, Mia liked to write poetry. She learned to play guitar and piano and enjoyed painting and listening to Janis Joplin records.

“Mia was the best of our family,” Richard Zapata told the Seattle Times. “She had a complete and total social conscience. She cared about people. She would see people on the street, homeless, and tell us that it wasn’t their fault.”

Still, she was shy and didn’t call attention to herself, her father said in an interview found on YouTube.

The Comet Tavern sign lit up in neon at night — Mia Zapata was known for liking a drink.

Off to university. Although she grew to 5 feet 8 inches in height, people described Mia as petite or slight.

As a high school senior, Mia toured Antioch College, where a school director assured her that learning disabilities could be overcome, according to an interview with Donna Zapata in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Mia enrolled at the school, which is located in Yellow Springs, Ohio and known for encouraging students to explore their own improvised paths.

No inhibitions. She impressed other students with her vocal skills.

“I was transfixed and overcome,” Matt Dresdner told Rolling Stone about hearing Mia sing for the first time, at an open mic event in 1986. “I cried. It was raw, honest, to the bone, and from the heart. No music or musician had ever affected me like she did that night.”

LA Weekly would later say that Mia could “belt not unlike Bette Midler gone bananas.”

Dresdner told Unsolved Mysteries that once he, Mia, and the other two formed the Gits in college, people didn’t even notice him on stage because everyone was watching Mia.

“She couldn’t spell worth a darn,” Andy Kessler told the Plain Dealer. “But she could rock brilliantly.”

On the cusp. Still, the band didn’t make enough cash to pay expenses, so Mia, whose style of dress was grunge-utilitarian — tank tops, T-shirts, shorts, mini-skirts, combat boots — did restaurant work as a waitress or dishwasher.

Just before her death, everything seemed to be falling into place for the Gits. The band’s first album, Frenching the Bully, got good reviews, and a representative from Atlantic Records had taken the band out to lunch in Los Angeles. MCA (today part of Universal Music Group) was reportedly interested in signing the group as well.

Richard Zapata remarried after he and Donna Zapata divorced when Mia was a teenager

On July 6, 1993, Mia’s father drove two hours from his home in Yakima to take Mia out to lunch in Seattle. They had Thai food and visited a museum. That night, Mia had drinks at a popular bar, the Comet, and visited a friend. Mia was wearing headphones and listening to music when she headed home.

Meh prophesy. The murder took place during 80 minutes of unaccounted-for time after she left her friend’s place.

News of her death horrified and shocked the community, although some would say that she already had a fatal vision — expressed in an original song called Sign of the Crab. Her lyrics included, “Go ahead and slash me up and throw me all across town because you know you are the one that can’t be found.”

Of course, it seems as though when any notable person dies young, journalists dig up something foreboding the person said about death. Mia said she wrote the song in response to the violent crime happening everywhere. Her own murder was only one of 33 that had taken place in town in roughly the first half of 1993, according to the Seattle Times.

Outpouring of grief. But it was also the highest-profile crime Capitol Hill had suffered.

“A thousand people attended her dusk-to-dawn wake in Seattle — a thousand tattooed, pierced, wailing, fringe-dwelling, guitar-banging friends,” the Seattle Times reported. “Her father paid for the beer.”

Police kicked into high gear, following hundreds of leads and tips and interviewing dozens of prospective suspects. They included Mia’s on-and-off boyfriend, a Vietnam vet who played with a band called Hell’s Smells. But he had a solid alibi.

TV comes knocking. Because Mia’s body was reportedly found in a crucifix-like pose, with her ankles crossed and arms outstretched to the sides, some theorized that an unknown religious zealot committed the murder. That idea went nowhere and, according to one report, rescue workers had placed her arms in that position while trying to save her.

America’s Most Wanted threw its hat into the investigative ring, traveling to Capitol Hill to produce a segment on the case.

Downtown Capitol Hill today — Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood today

“Host John Walsh paced on the sidewalk outside the Comet while cameras recorded his earnest narration,” according to the News Tribune of Tacoma.

No fading. Robert Stack also got in on the act, when his show, Unsolved Mysteries, included a vignette about the murder.

Still, no one could find a viable suspect. The chalk outline drawn around Mia’s body remained visible for years, but the case went cold.

Here’s where the best of human nature took over.

Hired help. The Gits drummer Steve Moriarty spearheaded fundraising efforts to hire a private detective to investigate the case. The band held benefit concerts, joined by the likes of Courtney Love and Joan Jett & the Black Hearts.

Picture of Forensic Files Now book — Book available online and in stores!

Joan Jett — already a huge star thanks to MTV and the hit “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” — even recorded some of her own versions of songs written by the Gits for an album called Evil Stig that was produced to benefit the investigation.

After raising $80,000, the band engaged private investigator Leigh Hearon, a former journalist. When the money ran out, she continued to work on the case pro bono.

Personal safety. In the meantime, Richard Zapata had rented an apartment in Seattle so that he could retrace Mia’s steps and look for clues.

Mia’s death spurred the creation of Home Alive, an effort to protect women against predators. It offered self-defense classes priced at a sliding scale depending on what participants could afford to pay, according to All Things Considered.

“I lived in downtown Seattle a few years after her murder and Home Alive was a blessing!” said a YouTube reader comment left at Murder in Seattle: The Mia Zapata Story. “They would come and walk you home if you didn’t want to walk home alone.”

Jesus Mezquia in prison uniform seen in court with Kristen Vittitow and Steve Moriarity in the background — Jesus Mezquia in court with Mia’s sister, Kristen Vittitow, and Steve Moriarty in the background

CODIS ‘winner.’ As the murder case wore on, something significant happened in the field of forensics. A Nobel prize-winning breakthrough from U.S. chemist Kary Mullis enabled forensic scientists to identify the DNA in amounts of genetic material normally too small to test — including the foreign saliva found on Mia Zapata’s body. A specimen had been saved and kept refrigerated since 1993.

In 2003, the Combined DNA Index System, commonly known as CODIS, matched the specimen to Jesus Mezquia, a 48-year-old ex-con working as a fisherman in Marathon, Florida.

He was a tall, large-handed Cuban exile who was living in the Seattle area at the time of Mia’s murder.

Justice and joy. Investigators believed Mezquia caught sight of Mia walking home, stopped his car, abducted her, raped and murdered her, and then dumped her body.

On March 24, 2004, a jury convicted Mezquia of murder. The verdict elicited cries of “Viva Zapata” in the courtroom. Some of the jurors shook hands and hugged Mia’s loved ones in court, the Seattle Times reported.

Mia’s sister, Kristen Vittitow, was so excited about the verdict that she did handstands, according to Donna Zapata. Mia’s mother told the Seattle Times that she didn’t attend the trial of her daughter’s killer because “I never wanted to lay eyes on the person.”

Gone guy. Mezquia received a sentence of 36 years.

Steve Moriarty told the Courier-Journal of Louisville that he was glad Mezquia would rot in jail and that people could live more freely. (Mezquia died in a prison hospital in 2021 at the age of 66.)

The surviving Gits went on performing under the name the Dancing French Liberals of ’48, but eventually broke up and went their separate ways. “We lost our sister together,” said Moriarty. “We always will be brothers even if we’re in different parts of the country.”

Mia as a child carrying a small guitar — A wee Mia Zapata

‘Concerted’ effort. Mia Zapata’s memory has never flickered out. You can watch the The Gits documentary on Daily Motion. A Phoenix New Times article in 2023 quoted singer Kayla Long as citing the way Mia de-evolved on stage as an influence.

On July 7, 2023, the 30-year anniversary of the murder, a Mia Zapata tribute concert called Viva Zapata was held at The Skylark in Seattle.

As for Mia’s father — who didn’t appear on Forensic Files but gave interviews to other media outlets — he is still heartbroken but says he tries to use humor to cope with the loss of his youngest child.

“She was on loan to me,” Richard Zapata said, “and she now belongs to all of you.”

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

Joan Rogers and Her Daughters: Awful Trip

Oba Chandler Turns a Florida Visit into a Triple Homicide
(‘Water Logged,’ Forensic Files)

If anyone deserved a vacation, it was Joan Rogers. She worked full-time on her family dairy farm in Ohio, then drove across state lines to Indiana for a factory job. In fact, her life had been pretty much nonstop labor since she got married and had a baby as a teenager.

“Water Logged,” which tells the story of the murder that befell her and her daughters while on holiday in Florida, was voted as having the second-best crime reenactment of all 400 episodes of Forensic Files. The story also stands out as a reminder of what can lurk beneath a pleasant exterior — in this case, that of Oba Chandler, who many women found charming until his true self bubbled up to the surface.

For this post, I looked around for information that might reveal the origins of Oba’s depravity and also for the story of his bitter end. The Florida Department of Corrections lists him as deceased but doesn’t say whether he died of natural causes or was helped along by the state. I also searched for more details about the Rogers family. The random collision of their integrity with the killer’s dissolute lifestyle reminded me of the book In Cold Blood, the birthplace of true-crime storytelling.

Sadistic thrill. So let’s get going on the recap of “Water Logged” along with information from internet research:

On June 4, 1989, pleasure boaters began reporting bodies floating in different areas of Tampa Bay. The Coast Guard ultimately recovered three half-naked females. A killer had taped their mouths, bound their wrists and ankles, and tied them to concrete bricks with yellow ropes.

The authorities believed the victims had been raped, although three days in the sea had washed away any forensic evidence.

“I think he left their eyes uncovered because he wanted each one to see what was happening to the other one,” said lead investigator Glen Moore during his Forensic Files interview. “I think he wanted to see the fear in their eyes.”

Too few pounds. The presence of water in their lungs meant they were alive when thrown into the bay. “This was not just a murder,” narrator Peter Thomas said. “It was an execution.”

Nonetheless, according to the Bradenton Herald, the police felt that an amateur (or anyone who didn’t watch enough mafia entertainment) committed the homicides because a professional would have used heavier weights to ensure the bodies didn’t surface.

Authorities named the victims Jane Doe 1, 2, and 3.

Small wood and brick post office in Willshire, Ohio — Willshire, Ohio has a post office, a few thousand people, and farmland

Hotel hint. Psychics offered to help the police identify the victims, and hundreds of concerned citizens called in with tips. The St. Petersburg police offered a $5,000 reward for information that would help solve the case.

Fortunately, police got a break on June 8, when an employee at the Days Inn on Rocky Point Island reported that a woman named Joan Rogers and her two daughters had checked in on June 1 and hadn’t been seen for days since then. Their makeup, stuffed animals, bathing suits, etc. were still in the room at the Tampa hotel.

Police got in touch with Joan’s husband, Hal Rogers, who had stayed behind to tend to the couple’s 200-acre farm in Willshire, Ohio. Hal gave them access to dental records that positively identified the victims as Joan, Michelle, and Christe Rogers.

Fast start to adulthood. The three, who normally worked on the farm alongside Hal — the daughters milked 80 Holstein cows every day at 5:30 a.m. — had gone for a weeklong vacation.

As noted, Joan really needed a break.

Oba Chandler in an early mug shot in which he resembled James Dean — Oba Chandler in an early mug shot. As a boy, he enjoyed killing rats, according to his sister

Born on November 12, 1952 in Van Wert, Ohio, Joan Mae Etzler, known as Jo, was outgoing and friendly. In high school, she began dating her classmate Hal Rogers and became pregnant senior year, a situation that mortified her parents. The couple quickly married and had Michelle, who looked like her mother. A few years later, they welcomed Christe, who inherited her father’s cute puppy-dog features.

Spring break. Hal acknowledged that as hard as he worked, his wife worked harder. She drove a forklift and manned the assembly line at her second job, at Peyton’s Northern product distribution center, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

Joan and Hal “always looked happy but tired,” Susan Reynolds, a waitress at the Village Restaurant, where the couple often ate, told the Bradenton Herald. “You could see that the hard work took its toll on them.”

Michelle and Christe had never experienced leisure travel, so the thought of going 3,000 miles away to the Sunshine State must have been magical even before they laid eyes on Cinderella’s Castle.

Final correspondence. On May 26, Joan loaded the girls into her blue Oldsmobile Calais and gave Hal — who was unloading corn gluten feed—a kiss goodbye before heading south on Interstate 75 with plans to visit a number of spots, according to Angels & Demons, Thomas French’s seven-part Tampa Bay Times series, which won a Pulitzer Price in 1998.

After spending the night in Georgia en route to Florida, Joan and the girls traveled to the Jacksonville Zoo, then went to Disney World and Epcot Center. A post card Joan sent to Hal said that they had ridden in a glass-bottomed boat.

On June 1, Joan and the girls drove to Tampa and checked into the Days Inn at Rocky Point.

A family portrait when the girls where grade schoolers — Christe was a cheerleader and often practiced her routines in front of the cows.

On the blocks. Police got a lucky forensic break after locating Joan’s abandoned 1986 Oldsmobile at a boat launch. Inside, they found a brochure with some handwritten directions to either a boat launch or to the Days Inn (accounts vary).

A handwriting analyst determined that a note in the car was written by someone other than the victims.

Another note, in Joan’s writing, mentioned something blue and white, probably the colors of a boat.

Police did an aerial search to look for the source of the concrete blocks that the killer used.

Nightmare cruise. A tipster told police about an ex-con named Jason Wilcox who owned a blue and white boat and ran sunset cruises without a license. Jason had been in jail for aggravated assault, and police saw concrete blocks on his property.

Separately, they found out that on May 15, 1989, a boater in Madeira Beach offered a ride to a Canadian tourist and threatened to kill her if she wouldn’t have sex with him. He told her that sharks would get her if she jumped into the water. After the rape, he let her go.

Side by side photos of Michelle and Christe — Michelle was described as the quiet sister, Christe the high-spirited one, with “a mane of mall hair,” reporter Thomas French wrote

But the Canadian woman, a 24-year-old social worker, said her attacker didn’t resemble Wilcox’s photo.

Monetary incentive. Forensic Files didn’t mention it, but there was another false yet disturbing lead. According to Oxygen True Crime, Hal told police that his younger brother — a partner in the dairy farm — had sexually abused Michelle. But John Rogers, 31, was already locked up for another sex crime when the murders happened. (Hal and Joan Rogers never pressed charges against John because Michelle didn’t want to testify.)

Meanwhile, the community of Willshire and the surrounding counties reeled from the news about the murder of three of its own. “This grief is forever, a scar no one can remove,” said Rev. Gary Luderman of the Zion Lutheran Church, where the Rogers belonged.

A wholesaler who did business with Hal’s farm announced plans to fund a new reward for information on the killer.

On autopilot. But that didn’t mean Hal had everyone’s moral support. He hadn’t reported his wife and kids missing until three days after they were due at home. Investigator Stephen Porter said that the widower seemed cold and unemotional about the tragic events.

His reaction spurred some Ohio locals to suspect he was involved in the murders. Hal would later explain that he did what he had to do to function and keep the farm operational after the murders, and he felt like a third person viewing the devastation.

Hal had a huge pile of alibis because he ate his meals at local restaurants every day while his family was in Florida, and tons of people saw him.

Michelle Rogers working in a milking facility on her parents' farm — Michelle Rogers, seen here working on the farm, reportedly watched out for her younger sister to make sure she didn’t fall prey to their Uncle John

Dedicated sleuths. But rumors persisted. He had recently withdrawn $7,000 in cash from the bank, perhaps for hired guns?

“There was controversy swirling around that maybe I did this,” Hal said without rancor during an interview on the TV series The Investigators. “The people who [still] aren’t sure are scared to death because something like that could happen to them.”

Meanwhile, the St. Petersburg detectives assigned to the murder case “were working day and night, working weekends, putting off vacations, losing weight, gaining weight, growing pale and pasty and haggard, waking at 3 a.m. with a jolt and scratching notes on pads kept beside their beds,” Thomas French wrote.

Still, none of the tips led anywhere, and the case went cold about a year after the murders.

Water Hazard. The investigation picked up steam in 1992 when authorities displayed billboards with the unidentified handwriting from Joan’s car.

Oba Chandler's boat on a flat bed — Oba Chandler’s boat

A woman named Jo Ann Steffey recognized a police sketch of the killer as belonging to a redheaded contractor named Oba Chandler. She noticed that receipts from Chandler matched that of the handwriting on the billboards.

Oba Chandler was a construction company owner with a criminal record dating back to his teens; it included two sexual assaults. Steffey described him as creepy and not being able to make eye contact with her.

Palm in hand. In photo and in-person lineups, the Canadian rape victim picked him out as the charismatic boat owner who turned into a savage once they left shore.

Law officers arrested Oba, then age 45, on September 24, 1992 for the sexual assault.

In the meantime, they were building a case against him for the triple homicide. Oba’s palm print matched one found on the brochure from Joan’s vehicle.

Family tragedy. So who was this man of contradictions with a personality ranging from warm and friendly to antisocial and sadistic — and a record as a career criminal and a home-improvement entrepreneur?

Oba Chandler was born on October 11, 1946 to a poor family in Cincinnati. His mother, Margaret, was housewife. His father, also named Oba Chandler, was a laborer for National Distillers and Chemical Co., according to the Tampa Bay Times. Oba Sr. was a strict disciplinarian.

Joan Rogers, looking gaunt and prematurely aged — Joan Rogers was thinking about having a third child

In 1957, at age 10, Oba Jr. found his father hanging from a rope over a ceiling joist in the family’s home. He had committed suicide.

Corporal punishment. At the funeral, Oba Jr. threw himself upon his father’s open grave. Sources vary as to whether he was acting out of grief or anger, but either way, it marked the beginning of the fair-haired blue-eyed boy’s deviant future, according to The Investigators. He moved around a lot, bunking with various relatives including his mother and her new husband.

Oba started stealing cars and later admitted that he spent much of his life running from police. His sister Lula spent some time in a reform school, so maybe it ran in the family.

“Where I was raised up as a kid, the majority of the time you weren’t arrested,” Oba told The Investigators. “When you were caught doing something…you got beaten with the cop’s nightstick.”

At some point, he joined the Marines but stayed only a year. He used drugs and drifted from job to job.

Cooking up dough. Meanwhile, as a criminal, Oba was growing into a jack-of-all-trades. His offenses included tampering with a coin machine, hustling at pool, and robbing drug dealers. He once broke into a private home, tied up the couple who lived there, and stole their guns and Doberman pinscher.

Oba needed new identities to throw the police and his creditors off track. The Florida Department of Corrections would ultimately list 14 aliases for Oba Chandler, including Ron Howard, Oba Pinson, and Jimmy Wright.

Nonetheless, in the early 1980s, Oba caught the attention of the U.S. Secret Service — and ultimately served time in a Texas prison — for attempting to counterfeit money in his backyard.

Promising in appearance. In addition to his growing rap sheet, Oba acquired numerous romantic liaisons. While still in his teens, Oba had two daughters by a girlfriend and then a son by a different woman.

His charisma won him anywhere from five to eight marriages, but he had a penchant for violence and none of his relationships lasted. Of the half dozen or so children he accrued, only some became close to him.

At times, Oba moved back in with his mother.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, one of his marriages, to Debra Whiteman, represented a relatively stable period in his life. Using $10,000 of her money for the downpayment, the couple bought a house on 10790 Dalton Ave. in Tampa.

Naturally alluring. He was still living at that house when he randomly met Joan Rogers at a gas station. She asked for directions, and he jotted them down for her. He then invited her and the girls on a sunset cruise, and she wrote down directions to a boat launch where they would meet, investigators believe.

“The sun sparkles along the green water of the bay while warm breezes entice divers and boaters,” the Bradenton Herald wrote of the beautiful scene that Joan, Michelle, and Christe Rogers witnessed on the Courtney Campbell Causeway on the last day of their lives

It’s not clear whether Oba knew this, but the Rogers trio had very little experience in the water and Joan reportedly couldn’t swim at all. Once Oba stopped being personable and started tying them up and terrorizing them, they had no way to escape.

Frightening admission. On the night of the murders, Oba had called Debra from the radio on the boat to say he had engine trouble and would be home late.

Around the time police released a composite drawing of the then-anonymous killer, he showed up at the home of his daughter Kristal Mays. He allegedly confessed to Kristal’s husband that he committed rape. The son-in-law told authorities.

Oba and Debra Chandler — Oba Chandler acquired a veneer of respectability with Debra

Oba sold his boat.

Another of Oba’s kids, Jeffrey Chandler, defended his father against the rape accusations. Other relatives would go on to accept money for TV interviews, according to the St. Petersburg Times.

Help from up north. At the trial in September 1994, Oba testified that he wrote the directions on the brochure in Joan Rogers’ car but he never saw the trio again. He said he went fishing alone in Tampa Bay but a gas leak emptied his fuel tank and left him stranded.

But the Canadian victim sunk his defense. She testified about how Oba, who introduced himself as Dave Posno and claimed he was a nurse, charmed her into his boat. She said that the interior of the boat — which authorities had retrieved from its new owner — matched that of the crime scene.

At the very beginning of deliberations, the forewoman decided to assess where everyone stood. She asked each juror to write down guilty or innocent.

All 12 said guilty.

Negative superlative. Nonetheless, they pored over the evidence for 90 minutes before officially convicting Oba on three counts of murder.

Chief Judge Susan Schaeffer — known as a capital punishment enthusiast (House Calls) — said that Oba had forfeited his right to live. She gave him the death penalty, which at that time meant the electric chair.

Schaeffer later said that Oba was probably the most vile and evil defendant she’d ever encountered, which says a lot considering all the horrible crimes (Payback, Cold Feet, Muffled Cries) that go down in the Sunshine State.

No friends or family ever visited Oba in prison, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

Last meal. As of 1995, Oba, then 48, was cocky about his outlook. “I have no fear of it,” he said, according to the St. Petersburg Times. “If they kill me, they’re going to be killing an old man.”

All his appeal attempts failed.

On November 15, 2011, Oba ate two salami sandwiches and half a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich and drank coffee before meeting justice. He wrote a note denying his guilt.

Oba Chandler looking old and bold in his last mug shot — Oba Chandler’s last mug shot

Husband watches. By this time, Florida had retired Old Sparky, and was using lethal injection. The Tampa Bay Times reported:

“Chandler’s eyes were closed when the brown curtain to the death chamber rose. He was strapped onto a gurney, intravenous tubes leading into his arms. His eyes opened when he was asked if he had anything to say. ‘No,’ Chandler said. Then, at the age of 65, he closed his eyes for good.”

Hal Rogers witnessed the execution.

In an interview with The Investigators, Hal lauded his friends for letting him crash at their places when he couldn’t bear being alone.

Begin again. He also said that after the murders, there were some years about which he hardly remembers anything.

Tired of being alone, he took out a personal ad circa 2009 and met and married a widow named Jolene. He told the Tampa Bay Times that he still misses Joan, Michelle and Christe.

“That makes it rough on Jolene. How do you fight a dead person?” Hal said. “But her first husband died too. She understands.”

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

Alvin Ridley: Hide Your Love Away

A Small-Town Outcast Finds Redemption
(‘Killigraphy,’ Forensic Files)

In the land of Forensic Files, when one spouse murders another, the accused is often a respected citizen (Barbara Stager, Richard Nyhuis) who community members can’t imagine being capable of such a crime — until they see the evidence.

Alvin Ridley’s case was just the opposite.

Virginia Ridley as a young woman — Virginia Ridley

When paramedics pulled the petite body of Virginia Ridley, 49, out of his shack in Ringgold, Georgia, locals thought he had imprisoned her and then killed her.

They knew Alvin as the reclusive, hostile man who sometimes hid in his own bushes and peeped at passersby.

Batty but benign. At the time of Virginia’s death, in 1997, Alvin had shuttered his TV repair shop on Nashville Street and seemed intent on earning a living via lawsuits. Surely, he strangled Virginia to death to collect on an insurance policy or maybe just because he was a mean husband.

But after Alvin went on trial for murder, his defense team trotted out evidence that persuaded the jury and the media that he might have been a cantankerous oddball but he was no murderer.

For this week, I looked for more background information on the Ridleys and their marriage as well as an update on Alvin. So let’s get going on the recap of “Killigraphy” along with extra information from internet research.

‘Set’ for business. Alvin Eugene Ridley was an only child born on March 3, 1942 in Soddy, Tennessee to Minnie Sue and Bill Ridley, and the family later moved across the border to Georgia. The government drafted Alvin into the military, where he learned how to fix electronics. After his discharge, he moved back into his parents’ house, a small structure lying between a steel mill and railroad tracks.

‘Zenith Man’ was one of the kinder nicknames for Alvin Ridley

Next up, Alvin worked repairing and selling TVs in his store in downtown Ringgold, the seat of Catoosa County. Sources vary as to whether Alvin’s father started the business and then passed it down to Alvin or his parents set up the shop just for their son. They owned the building.

Bill died in 1982, and it was then that Alvin started acting weird, the Atlanta Constitution reported. He would drive around in a red sports car with a plastic dummy of a woman in the passenger seat, according to the Sunday Mail. Folks started referring to him as Crazy Al.

He was not particularly adept at personal hygiene.

Fragile flower. While he was still in the military, he became pen pals with Virginia Hickey after meeting her at someone’s house circa 1964, the Sunday Mail said. So where did this mystery girl-woman come from?

Virginia Gail Hickey entered the world on April 8, 1948 in Rossville, Georgia. According to the Atlanta Constitution, she acquired epilepsy at age 9 after a head injury. With her tiny figure, blond hair, and cute facial features, she resembled a doll.

She was described as extremely shy.

Habitual no-show. At just 18 years of age, she married Alvin. In a photo of the couple celebrating her birthday with her mother, Adell, in 1966, Virginia looks like a child bride. Family members complained that Alvin bossed her around.

The Sunday Mail reported that the lovebirds originally lived in public housing but were kicked out. After that, Alvin and Virginia moved into the dilapidated house at 134 Inman Street where he grew up.

Virginia didn’t work outside the home and soon began to shun her friends and relatives, even skipping family weddings and her father’s funeral. She didn’t venture outside her and Alvin’s house. Her sister Linda Barber said that when people tried to visit, Alvin would tell them to get lost or threaten to kill them.

Rare glimpse. The Hickeys tried to reach Virginia via a newspaper ad — “Parents Seek Married Daughter” — but never got a reply.

In 1967, Virginia’s family instigated a legal action to force Alvin to “produce” her to make sure that she was alive and well. Virginia showed up to court in the flesh and explained that she liked married life with Alvin and wanted to be left alone with him.

That cemented the break between her and the other Hickeys and also marked one of the last—if not the last — time anyone saw Virginia alive in public.

The Ridleys shared a shanty with no phone service

Toxic visitor. But why did she like to stay hidden? Numerous sources say that Virginia feared having an epileptic seizure in the presence of anyone other than Alvin. But she stopped taking her medicine because she believed God would protect her.

In addition to friends and relatives, outsiders weren’t welcome in the Ridleys’ house. Early on in the marriage, an exterminator who entered their home made a pass at Virginia, which greatly rattled the couple, according to the Washington Post.

When people asked about Virginia, Alvin told them she had left him and moved away, according to the Associated Press.

Litigious local. Rumormongers whispered that Virginia had gone to live in a mental institution, the Washington Post story reported.

In time, some locals forgot that Alvin was once married or thought that Virginia had long ago left him. Others didn’t know he ever had a wife.

After abandoning his TV repair shop, Alvin focused more on his apparent hobby of filing lawsuits. He had already unsuccessfully sued the government over the ejection from the housing projects.

Locals would occasionally see him selling tube socks at a flea market.

Unfazed. According to the Sunday Mail, Alvin “convinced himself he was a pauper, despite the fact that he owned his house, the boarded-up TV repair shop and some valuable land in nearby Tennessee.” The land was reportedly valued at $500,000.

Aside from the litigation and sales, Alvin was not one to interact much. He made eye contact with people but didn’t say hello to them. He posted No Trespassing signs on his fence. The house had metal bars on the windows.

On October 4, 1997, the man the town considered an isolated bachelor used a payphone to report the death of his wife. His voice seemed solemn enough but a little too calm considering the circumstances. “My wife’s not breathing,” he said, according to the Atlanta Constitution. “Y’all hurry up.”

Choking suspicion. First responder Blake Hodges smelled cat urine upon entering the house and noted it was the first time he’d met Alvin in person — he only knew of him as a scary loner, according to Blake’s interview on “The Alvin and Virginia Ridley Story,” an episode of Death in a Small Town, narrated by Bill Kurtis.

Alvin Ridley in a TV interview circa 2001

Hodges found Virginia lying still and looking underfed and unkempt. According to Forensic Files, her hair hadn’t been combed in years.

The house was a cockroach-infested hovel.

Quite a sensation. Alvin said that Virginia died of a seizure during her sleep. But the coroner found a classic sign of strangulation that Forensic Files watchers know well. Virginia had petechial hemorrhages in her eyes (Stefanie Rabinowitz, Jenna Verhaalen).

Alvin was arrested and charged with murder in May 1997.

The runup to the trial of the man who allegedly held his wife hostage for 30 years was big news around the country and beyond. England’s Yorkshire Post ran an item about it. Court TV wanted to film the 1999 trial, but the judge said no.

Chance at absolution. The prosecution suggested that Alvin considered Virginia a liability, a drain on his finances. Medical examiner Vanita Hullander testified that Alvin didn’t give a consistent narrative regarding her death. And the petechial hemorrhages spoke for themselves as proof of deliberately inflicted suffocation, the prosecution contended.

But defense lawyer McCracken Poston, who later acknowledged Alvin as the most difficult client he ever defended, rolled out a wealth of forensic and circumstantial evidence that wore away at what many had considered the county’s slam-dunk case against Alvin.

First off, although Vanita Hullander — who in the early 1980s worked in a space adjacent to Alvin’s store — denied any bias against Alvin, she acknowledged that she was afraid of him.

Voice from the grave. And the reports about the petechial hemorrhages from autopsies conducted by the county as well as the Georgia Bureau of Investigation didn’t necessarily point to guilt on Alvin’s part. Medical experts testified that seizures could cause such hemorrhages in a phenomenon known as sudden unexpected death in epilepsy — of which failure to take prescribed medication is a risk factor.

And according to the Washington Post, Virginia didn’t die looking unkempt. She had polished toenails and hair done up with pretty pins.

Finally, Virginia herself had left a record of her existence with Alvin that contradicted allegations that she was the prisoner of a tyrannical husband.

Pet peeve. Virginia had hypergraphia, a condition that compels people to extensively write about their own lives. The walls of the shack were covered with notes revealing a simple and contented life with her husband. She wrote about what she and Alvin ate for dinner, that they watched Elvis Presley on TV, and that she and her husband cleaned the basement. One note listed the cast of The Waltons. Virginia penned love letters to Alvin that attested to a good marriage. She also wrote of her feeling that the world was against her and Alvin.

A forensic document examiner verified that Virginia, not Alvin or anyone else, had written the notes.

(And fortunately for Alvin, his lawyer had done some preemptive work to make sure accusations of animal neglect didn’t come up. Before the trial, Poston made Alvin take his and Virginia’s two cats — that they kept as pets on string leashes attached to their coffee table — to the veterinarian. “I said, ‘By the way, when these cats come out of the house, they better have some names,'” he later recalled. Alvin declared them “Meow-y” and “Kitty,” the vet gave them a decent bill of health, and Alvin started giving them free range of the house, according to an interview with Poston on the University of Georgia library website.)

Emotion comes to surface. Against his team’s advice, Alvin took the witness stand. He spoke of his reluctance to trust people and his love for his wife. Alvin said they rarely argued and there was no violence in the marriage.

“The reason I testified then was because I didn’t have nothing to hide,” Alvin told the Walker County Register/Chattanooga County News in 2017. “The main thing was just telling the truth about everything … and I even cried, and the jury saw me crying.”

Within just hours of listening to prosecutors call him a captor and killer, Alvin got to hear the jurors declare him not guilty. Suddenly, he was a free man smiling on the courthouse steps.

Logical explanation. So what happened to Alvin after his legal problems went away?

He moved back into the shack on Inman Street. Poston took him for mental health testing, which yielded a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.

Caffeine Addicts is in the spot where Alvin had his store

It explained “the way he and Virginia lived, very seldom leaving their home, the flat emotionless monotone voice when he called for help after Virginia’s seizure, his ‘eccentricities,’ as those were called at the time,” Poston told the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

He referred to Alvin as the Boo Radley of the town.

More than 20 years after the acquittal, the two men meet regularly for lunch, and Alvin, 81, reportedly snagged at least one girlfriend post-trial.

The space that the TV shop occupied now houses an eatery offering white chocolate lattes and tomato basil wraps. Poston owns the entire structure today and has named it the Ridley Building after the ornery but harmless widower of Ringgold, Georgia.

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

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Dawn Fehring: A Missionary Dies Too Young

Eric Hayden Randomly Preys on a Neighbor
(‘Nice Threads,’ Forensic Files)

Dawn Fehring smiling — Dawn Fehring was described as having a low-risk lifestyle

At the time of her death in 1995, Dawn Fehring had plans to visit Russia and Israel. But she never got a chance to exchange her dollars for rubles or read up on safety tips for travel in the Middle East.

The bible student met her end on her own turf — in an area of Washington state known for safety.

For this week, I looked for a little more information on Dawn’s short life and the case, so let’s get going on the recap of the Forensic Files episode “Nice Threads” along with extra information from internet research.

Take a bow. Dawn Rene Fehring was born in Olympia, Washington on April 27, 1968, the second of Carl and Dottie Fehring’s four children. Always interested in languages, Dawn was an exchange student to Paris and Vienna, where she learned to speak French and German.

In 1986, she graduated from Olympia High School in the top 10 percent of her class, according to her obituary. She earned a bachelor’s degree from California Lutheran University.

Dawn, who played the violin, was the secretary of the Capitol Youth Symphony Association, and she worked at Christ the Servant Lutheran Church in Lacy.

A public park with a partly covered bridge — The Kirkland area features such attractions as Juanita Bay, where bird-watchers look for great blue herons

Door open. After doing missionary work and teaching English in Japan, the 27-year-old returned to Washington to work toward a certificate in cross-cultural ministries at the Lutheran Bible Institute in Issaquah.

She moved into the Salish Village Condominiums in Kirkland, an area with a low crime rate and high population of well-educated people. Sources vary as to whether Dawn was renting or borrowing the condo, but most say that she was housesitting for friends in Japan.

On May 14, 1995, about two weeks after Dawn returned to the U.S., a firefighter neighbor noticed her door open and went inside to investigate. He saw freshly baked cookies on the counter and Dawn’s body on the floor. Rigor mortis had set in. She had died on May 13.

Cookies vs. brownies. A clerk at a Fred Meyer supermarket witnessed Dawn shopping for baking ingredients at the store on May 12, the last time she was seen alive. The night of the murder, Dawn was making chocolate chip cookies as a gift for Mother’s Day. As prosecutor James Konat noted during his Forensic Files interview: What could be more American than baking chocolate chip cookies for one’s mother?

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(According to The New Detectives episode “Infallible Witness,” Dawn was making brownies, but the show got at least two other facts wrong, so I’m trusting Forensic Files on this one.)

Police arrived to find Dawn with a fist-sized bruise on the back of her head. She’d been sexually assaulted and strangled to death with her own bedsheet.

Image on fabric. First responders noticed ash marks on the bedding and a cigarette burn on a table, which almost certainly came from the attacker. Dawn didn’t smoke, and she reportedly kept her home immaculately clean.

In what must have been a horrible surprise, Dawn’s 13-year-old sister, Joy, called to check on Dawn, only to have a police officer answer the phone, according to the Seattle Times.

Forensic investigation revealed that bloodstains on the bedsheets came from Dawn. The bleeding originated from injuries to her mouth and hymen (a word we rarely hear today, which is probably a good thing), according to court papers.

Dottie and Carl Fehring — After the murder, Carl and Dorothy Ann “Dottie” Fehring moved to California to be closer to one of their sons

Criminal returns to scene. A forensic examiner soaked Dawn’s bedsheet in amido black liquid, which exposed a hand and fingerprint in blood, but there wasn’t enough definition to make them identifiable.

Investigators checked on the whereabouts of local sex criminals around the time of the murder, but they all had decent alibis.

Police then turned toward someone who had actually brought himself to their attention. A prosecutor would later describe Eric Hamlien Hayden as a big slob who was hanging around the crime scene. Hayden asked investigators whether his own safety was in danger from some unknown assailant.

Alibi dies. Hayden, a 32-year-old mill worker, occupied an apartment upstairs from Dawn’s in the complex at 12515 N.E. 132nd.

He lived with his girlfriend, but a neighbor recalled seeing him standing around outside barefoot in the rain while smoking cigarettes and eyeing the women who came and went.

When questioned at the police station, a nervous Hayden said he had an alibi: He was out drinking with friends at the time of the murder. Apparently his friends wouldn’t cover for him or never existed, because he later changed his story to say he was alone.

Highly suspect. Hayden told his girlfriend that he was too drunk that night to remember where he had been, according to court papers.

“His story wasn’t washing,” Kirkland Police Sgt. Gene Markle told the Seattle Times. “Every instinct you had was telling you something wasn’t right.”

Fortunately, a forensic lab made a breakthrough more concrete than instinct.

Scientific advance. Erik Berg, a forensic supervisor at the Tacoma Police Department, used pattern removal filters to subtract the thread pattern from the images in the blood on Dawn’s bedsheet. He came up with a clear print that matched one that police had on file for Eric Hayden because of a drunk driving action against him.

Dawn Fehring in a newspaper photo — Dawn Fehring didn’t date, drink, or use drugs

“Bingo, it was him,” Berg told 60 Minutes. “I got a phone call two hours later saying he was in custody.” Police deposited Hayden in King County jail and set bond at $500,000.

The methodology that identified Hayden became known as digital fingerprint enhancement. The 60 Minutes episode would later call it a silver bullet.

Strangers in the night. When the trial kicked off, a judge allowed the prosecution to present the digital fingerprint enhancement evidence.

Prosecutors made a case that Hayden was coming home from drinking and noticed that Dawn had left the door open, probably to let out the heat from the oven. The two didn’t know each other except possibly in passing, they believed. Dottie Fehring said that Dawn hadn’t met the neighbors yet.

Hayden entered Dawn’s apartment through the open door with the intent of raping her, the prosecution contended. The New Detectives suggests a slightly different narrative, although it was to the same end. The show theorized that Hayden used a ruse to get Dawn to open the door for him and then inadvertently propped the door open when a bedroom slipper got caught at the edge while he was making his getaway.

Voice from beyond. Whatever the scenario, the prosecution contended that Hayden struck Dawn on the back of her head, knocking her down, and then sexually assaulted and killed her. When he got up, he steadied himself by placing his hand on the mattress, leaving a bloody print. While contemplating what he’d done, he smoked a cigarette and snuffed it out on the table, leaving the ashes and burn mark.

Defense attorney Andrew Dimmock argued that the police had no evidence against Hayden except for the digital fingerprint enhancement, which was a new science.

James Konat in a tie and jacket — Prosecutor James Konat appeared on both Forensic Files and the New Detectives

The jury, however, put faith in the prosecution and convicted Hayden of murder.

At the sentencing hearing, Dawn’s mother showed a Mother’s Day card with Dawn’s photo and played a recording of Dawn singing hymns such as “I’ve Been Blessed.”

The prosecution asked for a 41-year sentence, but Judge Marilyn Sellers gave him 26.

Zero vindictiveness. Dottie Fehring told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that she was grateful for the sentence because an offender like Hayden would likely strike again and she didn’t want other families to face an ordeal like hers.

She wasn’t bitter, however. “Anger is not what you do when life creates problems,” she said, as reported in the Seattle Times. “You need to create peace. There’s no help in striking out again.”

After Hayden went to prison, the Fehring’s sent 200 of their friends cards handmade by Dawn.

Constructive idea. Next up, the Fehrings created the Dawn Fehring Love of God Award to financially help aspiring missionaries. They raised funds in part via entertainment. A May 1, 1999 item in the News Tribune noted a variety show including magicians, puppets, and Dixieland music with a suggested admission price of $5 per person.

The Fehrings have also supported other charitable causes as a tribute to their lost daughter.

Dottie, Carl, and their son Jeff paid $1,500 each to participate in the Jimmy Carter Work Project in Maragondon in the Philippines, where they labored under the sun to build two houses for poor people. A story in the News Tribune reported that Carl worked so hard that he suffered from heat exhaustion and had to receive fluids from medical workers, but he went back to work the next day.

Mucho dinero. Carl said it was doing the work that Dawn would do.

Little has been made public about Eric Hayden’s life before or after prison

“She was so full of life and love,” her mother told The Olympian newspaper in 2001. “It’s amazing what she packed into 27 years.”

Dawn’s other legacy was that her murder spurred police departments across the country to use digital fingerprint enhancement — despite that the technology package cost around $40,000 at the time.

Living quietly. Investigators can now identify criminals “drunk enough or stupid enough to leave their fingerprints in the victim’s blood,” according to James Konat.

So what happened to the man whose crimes fostered a forensic tour de force?

It appears that Eric Hayden served his 26 years and slipped out of sight. The Washington Department of Corrections doesn’t list him as a prisoner and there’s no obituary for him.

Let’s hope he’s gained some respect for human life or at least a little reverence for the technology that can catch evildoers like him.

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

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Scott Dunn: Lost And Found

A Father Fights for Resolution
(Forensic Files, ‘The Killing Room’)

Before jumping into the recap, I wanted to mention that this blog is now a book. Forensic Files Now: Inside 40 Unforgettable True Crime Cases includes blog posts along with extra information that doesn’t appear on my website plus a Q&A with Forensic Files creator Paul Dowling and a biography of narrator Peter Thomas, who started out doing Listerine commercials.

Jim Dunn

You can buy the book from Amazon or Barnes & Noble or your local independent bookstore. Or just spread the word on social media, an area where I can always, always use extra help.

Business in the front. And speaking of the internet, here’s a case that began before most laypersons had heard of it and finished when the whole world was posting its relationship status on Facebook:

Jim Dunn might have appeared as though he came from at least a slightly different socioeconomic group than his son Scott, but he was utterly devoted to him.

When Jim, a distinguished-looking CEO from Yardley, Pennsylvania, learned that his mullet-wearing child had disappeared, he immediately traveled to Lubbock, Texas to search for him.

Unfinished story. Once it became clear that Scott, who worked installing audio systems in cars, met a violent end at the hands of a girlfriend, Jim found a way around the Texas law that required a body in order to make a murder case.

Thanks in part to his diligence, a jury convicted Leisha Hamilton of beating Scott to death.

She went off to prison in 1994, but by the time Forensic Files produced “The Killing Room” in 1999, Jim still had no remains to bury beneath the headstone placed on an empty grave in the City of Lubbock Cemetery.

Scott Dunn working under the hood of a car — Scott Dunn was known for his fun-loving personality, but he also worked diligently

Checkered past? For this week, I checked on whether Scott’s body ever turned up and also looked for more information about the case. So let’s get going on the recap to “The Killing Room” along with extra information from internet research.

Roger Scott Dunn came into the world on Feb. 10, 1967, one of two sons born to James and Mary Sue Dunn. He used his middle name as his first. His family lived a financially comfortable life in the Philadelphia area.

Scott served in the military and moved to Lubbock, reportedly to start anew after making some bad choices. Nevertheless, he ran into trouble in his new home. At age 23, he was arrested in connection with a Domino’s Pizza robbery. The Abilene News-Reporter article about the alleged crime listed him as a car stereo installer at MGM Electronics.

Two timing, or more. It’s not clear what, if any, consequences came about because of the incident but, in the meantime, he was enjoying a successful career. He loved working on cars. According to KCBD, he had won stereo-installation competitions. He also bought, restored, and resold used automobiles on his own.

But vehicles weren’t the only things Scott enjoyed toying with. At age 24, the fair-haired Scott was living with Leisha Hamilton, a 28 year-old waitress, at the same time he was engaged to another woman, and possibly had relationships with others.

In one of the rare narratives in which Forensic Files leaves a storyline unfinished (Viktor Gunnarsson: A Swede Meets Death), the show opens by revealing that the day before his death, Scott played a joke on his buddies by bringing a gorgeous date to a party. His friends enjoyed flirting with her. But they later realized that, underneath the sexy outfit, there was a man.

Regular Florence Nightingale. His friends were not amused, and Scott got sick at the party. But, confusingly, those incidents don’t seem to have anything to do with each other or his imminent disappearance.

During her Forensic Files interview, Leisha said that Scott was compromised the night of the party and needed help getting dressed for bed after she brought him home to the place they shared at Oakwood Club Apartments at 5818 24th Street. Leisha said that she made him some tea in the morning and left for her waitress job.

Then Scott vanished.

Leisha stopped by Scott’s employer to pick up his 1991 yellow Camaro. Scott had run off with another woman, she told his boss, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer article from November 16, 1997.

Dramatic vehicle. Next up, Leisha called Jim Dunn—who up until that time didn’t know about her existence—on May 19, 1991 to alert him to Scott’s disappearance.

Clipping of story about Domino's Pizza robbery — A clipping from the Abilene News-Reporter from September 28, 1990

Jim got in touch with the Lubbock police, and ended up calling them every day, according to one account. Sympathetic detective Tal English remembered Jim’s telling him how unusual it was for Scott to leave the Camaro — nicknamed the Yellow Submarine — and his tools at work for the night, according to his interview on The New Detectives. Jim would make numerous trips to Lubbock to do his own fact-finding, interviewing witnesses and searching for evidence, all the while maintaining a good relationship with local law officers.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to control the narrative, Leisha led police to a corner of her and Scott’s bedroom with recently replaced carpet pieces —not a good sign in any missing-person story. And yikes, under the rug, luminol revealed red stains. They came from Scott’s blood, and there was lots of it.

Financial offense. Crime-scene consultant and semi-regular Forensic Files guest Tom Bevel got in on the act. He conducted blood splatter tests in the bedroom and found the pattern consistent with blows from a blunt object or pipe.

Leisha, in her grief, found the strength to tell Jim Dunn that she wanted to keep Scott’s Camaro for herself.

Jim traveled to Leisha’s former home of Albuquerque to look into her past. She had a police record for embezzlement.

Scott and Jim Dunn pictured together, both smiling — Scott and Jim Dunn

Next victim. But it was what Scott’s associates told investigators about her that was more worrisome. A female friend of Scott’s said that Scott was afraid to break up with Leisha. According to the New Detectives, Leisha’s ex-boyfriends warned Scott that she could lather herself up into violent jealous rages.

Leisha, meanwhile, tried to throw off suspicion on her new boyfriend, Tim Smith, who came from a sheltered background and was a “lovesick admirer” of the worldly Leisha, according to a story in The Times of Trenton. She probably thought he would take the fall.

When police dropped in on Tim at his place, they found a roll of duct tape similar to the tape used to attach the carpet pieces in Scott and Leisha’s bedroom. Stuck to the adhesive were green trilobal fibers like the ones in Scott’s bedroom. The tape also had Tim’s and Leisha’s hairs on.

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Pro bono aid. Despite the evidence, the authorities couldn’t make Scott’s death into a murder case until they had a body.

In 1992, Jim appealed to the VIDOCQ Society (pronounced vee-DUCK), a group of law enforcement professionals including none other than forensic sculptor Frank Bender, who helped to catch John List.

The VIDOCQ Society investigated cases for no fee.

Richard Walter, a forensic psychologist who belonged to the group, found Leisha’s behavior suspicious and, bless his heart, offered to help Jim “go after that bitch.”

Clever claim. Scotland Yard even got into the act after VIDOCQ forwarded evidence to the British detectives. They agreed that someone had murdered Scott via blunt force involving at least four blows.

Tim Smith

The Associated Press called the evidence “signs of a nasty butchering.” Scott had lost an estimated one quart of blood, according to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

The big break in the case came when Richard Walter persuaded authorities to move forward with the case because blood is a bodily part. In a way, they had a body.

Ruining another man’s life. In 1994, Leisha was charged with perjury and tampering with evidence. The perjury charge stemmed from her lying about not having possession of what media reports called a radio-controlled boat belonging to Scott.

But soon enough, she and Tim were charged with murder. The motive for the homicide? Revenge. Leisha was angry after finding out Scott planned to marry another woman.

When Tim Smith fell under her Leisha’s spell, instead of just using him as a rebound boyfriend until she got over Scott, Leisha enlisted him to carry out a plan for revenge.

Photo of yellow Camaro used on the Forensic Files episode — In its recreations for TV, Forensic Files used the same model cars from the cases

Good riddance. The authorities made a case that on May 16, 1991, someone attacked Scott as he slept and beat him to death.

After separate trials, Leisha and Tim were convicted of murder. Leisha got 20 years. Smith received a $10,000 fine and 10 years probation. Either the judge or jury, or both, believed that Tim helped with the disposal of the body but Leisha wielded the weapon.

It’s not clear why Leisha got such a short sentence — in Texas, no less — but she had to serve it in full after losing multiple bids for parole. Leisha dropped out of sight once she got out of prison.

But that’s getting ahead of the story.

Literary effort. By 2004, the Dunns still had no body to bury in Scott’s grave, but that didn’t mean the public forgot about the case. In fact, a writer from the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal thought the story would make a good book.

“That father just caught my heart, because I am a parent myself,” Wanda Evans said in a Plainview Writers Guild video interview. “I kept seeing my son in Scott.”

She and Jim ended up collaborating on Trail of Blood: A Father, a Son, and a Tell-Tale Crime Scene Investigation, which found a publisher and got positive reviews on Amazon.

Over the years, Jim Dunn maintained a good relationship with the same authorities who helped put away Leisha Hamilton. Jim was not adversarial, detective Tal English told the Lubbock-Avalanche Journal. “Sometimes the family gets so disgruntled with investigators.”

Theory proves right. There was much relief in 2012, when Lubbock Victims Assistance Services got word to Jim Dunn that a work crew (a.k.a. the folks who tend to discover stuff on Forensic Files) had uncovered skeletal remains in a sewage system near Scott’s apartment complex. Dental records confirmed they came from Scott.

Just as the prosecution argued in court, Scott died from blunt force trauma. The killer or killers had wrapped his body in a vinyl sheet from his waterbed. Investigators discovered a gold ring belonging to Scott’s grandmother at the scene, The Times of Trenton reported in a story from October 28, 2012.

Jim nearly passed out when he first heard the news about his lost son, according to his interview with KCBD TV.

On June 16, 2012, the Dunns buried him in a grave beneath a stone engraved with a likeness of Scott’s Camaro.

“I tell everyone,” Jim told The Times, “that Scott came home for Father’s Day.”

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

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Daphne Wright: Jealousy and Horror

A New Friendship Spurs Darlene VanderGiesen’s Murder
(‘Hear No Evil,’ Forensic Files)

Daphne Wright didn’t contribute a whole lot to her community, but no one foresaw how much she would take away from it.

The Sioux Falls, South Dakota resident thought that her on-again off-again girlfriend was spending too much time with a factory worker named Darlene VanderGiesen, so she decided to eliminate the competition.

Darlene VanderGiesen holding a black and cream Siamese cat — Murder victim Darlene VanderGiesen

All three of the women were deaf and two of them were gay, so the novelty of the story captured many headlines. And the gory manner of death sparked debate over whether Daphne should become the first woman in South Dakota history to receive the death penalty.

For this post, I searched for more biographical information about Darlene and her killer and checked on whether she’s (fingers crossed) still in prison.

So let’s get going on the recap of “Hear No Evil” along with extra information from internet research.

Darlene VanderGiesen was born deaf. She graduated from the Iowa School for the Deaf and attended junior college before moving to South Dakota.

She worked in the shipping department at JDS Industries Inc., a company that makes sports trophies and promotional items in Sioux Falls, a town known for its large community of people with hearing impairments.

An employee for 13 years, Darlene loved her job and also enjoyed camping, softball, going to the Deaf Club and collecting Beanie Babies in her spare time, according to her obituary.

Daphne Wright in a yearbook photo — Daphne Wright long before she committed a grisly murder

On February 3, 2006, Darlene’s parents received word that their daughter hadn’t shown up for her job for two days in a row. Gene and Dee VanderGiesen left a family reunion in Nebraska and headed back to Sioux Falls to look for her.

They were particularly concerned because Darlene had started using online dating websites. According to Deadly Affairs, Darlene had no shortage of friends in Sioux Falls, but she wanted to find a serious relationship.

“Oh, Darlene, be so careful,” Dee recalled telling Darlene. “There are so many, excuse the expression, ‘weirdoes’ out there.”

(“When a mom excuses herself for using the term ‘weirdoes,’ you have no doubt she raised her daughter to be a good person,” one commenter said on YouTube.)

At Darlene’s apartment in the Timberland Village complex, her parents found her cell phone lying on a table. Normally, she took it everywhere for texting. The VanderGiesens didn’t see her truck in the parking lot, and her cats looked hungry, according to “Playing With Hearts,” an episode of Deadly Affairs.

Still, the VanderGiesens had no reason to believe someone wanted to harm their daughter.

“She has no enemies,” Darlene’s friend Cheryl Brimmer later told the Argus Leader. “Why anyone would want to kill her is beyond me. I never saw her mad or upset or anything negative about her.”

Many of Darlene’s friends gathered at the VanderGiesens’ home to offer moral support. Daphne Wright, an acquaintance Darlene met at a Deaf Club, showed up, too. “She gave me a hug and she said she was sorry that Darlene was missing, that they were friends, and she would be praying that we would find Darlene soon,” said Dee VanderGiesen, as reported by the Argus Leader. “And I thanked her for coming.”

Police got what looked like a promising lead in a man Forensic Files calls Jeff Flynn — a local field hand who Darlene had recently dated. He seemed nervous during questioning and investigators found dried blood in the back of his car.

But testing proved the blood came from a deer, and Jeff could prove he had been out of town when the murder happened.

Darlene’s car soon turned up abandoned in a Pizza Hut parking lot on 26th Street and Sycamore Avenue, but police found nothing out of order inside. No one had used Darlene’s bank cards.

Meanwhile, her sister found emails on Darlene’s account from someone named Wendy Smith who declared her hatred of Darlene. “Wendy” called Darlene fat and said she had elephant feet. In other emails, the writer identified herself as the lover of Sallie Collins (Forensic Files uses the pseudonym “Sally Ford”).”You always visit Sallie when [I] am not here,” the message said. “Enough please.”

Sioux Falls waterfalls — Sioux Falls features waterfalls in the middle of town

Police spoke to Daphne Wright, who said that she and Darlene were friends and they liked each other. But soon enough, Daphne cracked and admitted she had created the email account in the name Wendy Smith and sent the disturbing emails to Darlene. At first, she denied meeting her at the Pizza Hut, but later acknowledged that she did.

And news of a dramatic incident involving Daphne came to light. A few days before she died, Darlene had gone out to dinner with Sallie Collins.

Daphne showed up and confronted Darlene and Sallie with accusations and got so out of hand that the police were called to escort Daphne off the premises. (Forensic Files says the outburst happened at a restaurant, but a newspaper account gave Sallie Collins’ house as the venue.)

Darlene later said that she made peace with Daphne. Darlene and Sallie Collins were just friends. Darlene wasn’t gay. But, in reality, Daphne still harbored suspicions. According to her mother, Daphne had some boyfriends in her youth before coming to terms with her gayness. Maybe Daphne thought Darlene would do the same—and then steal Sallie.

A look at her background showed that Daphne did have some understandable anxiety over abandonment. As a child, Daphne — who lost her hearing to rubella at the age of 10 months — faced rejection from other kids and even some members of her extended family. Daphne’s parents had to leave her at a school for the deaf 125 miles away from their home in North Carolina.

Her father died when she was a teenager.

As far as Daphne’s intellect, opinions vary widely. According to her mother, Daphne did well in athletics but had trouble reading in school. One mental health professional described her as “mildly retarded.” Another assessment placed her nonverbal IQ at 114 to 117, a higher-than-average score.

Snapped described Daphne as working in a series of low-paying jobs. She reportedly received Social Security. Daphne’s roommate, Jacki Chesmore, would later say that Daphne spent most of her time sleeping and playing video games.

Fortunately for police, Daphne didn’t channel much energy or intelligence into her murder plan. She left forensic evidence scattered over a 20-mile area starting in South Dakota and ending in Minnesota.

When police searched Daphne’s apartment at 1806 S. Phillips Ave., they smelled chemicals and found a receipt for a chainsaw from Ace Hardware. Her basement floor had random spots painted blue, and a storage room had a freshly painted floor in the same blue color. Investigators found some human tissue and bone pieces there.

Their DNA matched Darlene’s and so did blood found beneath the blue paint.

A hardware store employee remembered selling a deaf customer a chainsaw. She had handed the worker a note that said “tree cutting machine” and then bought the cheapest model available, a 1.5-horsepower that cost $60.

With the preliminary forensic evidence unmistakably grim, Darlene’s family went ahead and held a memorial service for her.

Shortly after, there was gruesome confirmation of Darlene’s fate. At a landfill, investigators found the pelvis, thighs, feet, and lower legs of an adult female along with a sweatshirt printed with sign language. It had Darlene’s bloodstains on it.

Just across the South Dakota border near Hills, Minnesota, a county snowplow driver named Keith Schmuck discovered a female upper torso and severed head wrapped up in a plastic bag in a ditch near Interstate 90. A drawstring was tied around her neck.

The body parts had a petroleum smell — as did Daphne’s basement, especially after investigators scraped the blue paint off the floors, according to Jessica Lichty, a forensic chemist with the Sioux Falls Police Department.

Darlene VanderGiesen in a formal blue gown and holding a flower bouquet — Darlene VanderGiesen

All the body parts belonged to Darlene. She died of either blunt force trauma to the head or suffocation, or both.

Police arrested Daphne 10 days after the murder. Media stories described the case as a “lesbian love triangle,” despite that Darlene self-identified as straight.

On the witness stand at the trial, Sallie Collins described the confrontation that preceded the murder. As the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported her testimony:

“[Daphne] saw Darlene, and she got very mad and said, ‘Why are you destroying our relationship?’ And she was very angry and then she sat down, and I said, ‘Daphne, you are wrong,’ Collins said. VanderGiesen left and put her middle finger up to her face as a gesture toward Wright, who refused to leave, so Collins said she went to a neighbor’s house and called police. She left when officers arrived, Collins said.“

Sallie also said that Daphne was antsy after the murder and smoked “a cigarette every minute.”

During Sallie’s testimony, Daphne chewed gum and shed some tears, according to an AP account.

Daphne Wright might have looked tough, but she had no criminal record before the murder

Police theorized that on February 1, 2006, Daphne met Darlene at the Pizza Hut and somehow persuaded Darlene to get into her Suzuki SUV. Once at Daphne’s apartment, the prosecution alleged, Daphne hit Darlene in the head and threw her down the steps to the basement, where she ultimately died.

Daphne then used the chainsaw to dismember the body in a room formerly used to store coal. She tried to burn the body parts — hence the gas smell — and then disposed of them in the dumpster in South Dakota and along the highway in Minnesota. She used the blue paint to cover up the blood in her basement.

Jacki Chesmore, Daphne’s helpful roommate, said that Daphne left the house with some cinderblocks and garbage bags and stayed out for two hours around the time of the murder.

When the prosecution showed photos of Darlene’s body parts, Dee VanderGiesen left the courtroom in tears, according to reporting from the Twin Cities Pioneer Press, which also noted that Daphne rarely let her emotions show, and mostly watched an interpreter stationed near the front of the court room.

Much to his credit, Judge Brad Zell decided the evidence was already gruesome enough and declined the prosecution’s request to show a video demonstrating a chainsaw carving up a pig’s body.

It’s unclear why Daphne didn’t just bury Darlene’s body whole instead of doing the ghastly work of sawing it up. By disposing of it in different places, Daphne made it easier to find and she branded herself forever as not only a murderer but also a depraved murderer.

And an inept one at that. At the sites where Daphne dumped the body parts, investigators found bed sheets, coal dust, rope, and carpet fibers, all of which originated from her house.

Daphne Wright was reserved during the trial

Public defender Traci Smith had an uphill battle but she managed to throw a few salvos. She tried to shift suspicion to Sallie Collins, because a T-shirt with the logo of her employer, Wells Fargo, turned up at one of the crime scenes. Traci Smith also suggested that some unknown man Darlene met online could be her killer.

The defense claimed that the prosecution made too much out of the emails. “These childish words have been spun into the death threat which gave rise to the state’s theory of their case,” Traci Smith said. She also hinted that a pack of cigarettes, not Darlene’s regular brand, found at her apartment implicated an unknown suspect.

In the end, however, Traci Smith was no match for the prosecution’s evidence. The jury of 11 women and one man convicted Daphne of kidnapping with gross personal injury and first-degree murder.

After the verdict, Darlene’s sister, Sandra Sidford, who is also deaf, said thank you and hugged state attorney Dave Nelson. “Deaf bloggers around the country felt the same elation, loss, and sadness,” the Argus-Leader wrote.

Friends from the deaf community explained their grief through interpreters. “I just can’t believe she’s gone,” said Monique Lion-Boothe. “We want her back so bad.”

The death penalty was in play and, as mentioned, the media publicized that Daphne could be the first woman executed in South Dakota.

Andrew Imparato, president of the American Association of People with Disabilities, said that Daphne didn’t deserve any leniency because of her deafness. “I think it’s very dangerous to argue that deaf people as a general matter shouldn’t be eligible for the death penalty,” he told ABC News, according to information available on Murderpedia.

A newspaper headline asks, "Will it be death?" — The trial was a sensation in Sioux Falls as well as in deaf communities across the country

The victim’s sister and brother-in-law said they felt comfortable leaving the punishment up to the jury’s discretion. According to an AP account, during the penalty phase, some jurors cried when they heard Eugene VanderGiesen describe the last time he saw Darlene — when she “put her big arms around me and gave me a great big hug” and said “I love you” in sign language.

But the testimony of Carolyn Tucker, Daphne’s mother, probably affected them as well. She said that Daphne’s father was an alcoholic and physically abusive and Daphne had witnessed his violence. According to an AP account, Daphne did poorly in school as she struggled with her sexuality.

Tucker told of the scene when she and her husband left Daphne at the school for deaf students. “She came out and thought she was going with us,” Tucker said, “but we had to leave her and she was screaming and crying, running behind the car.”

The jury decided Daphne deserved life without parole rather than the death penalty.

Today, Daphne Wright lives in South Dakota’s Women’s Prison in Pierre. Her inmate profile describes her as 5-foot-7 and 203 pounds. The South Dakota Department of Corrections lists her status as life, with no chance of parole mentioned.

In one of the few bright notes to the story, the families of both the murderer and the victim came to terms with each other without rancor. “As one mother to the other, I express my sorrow to your family,” Dee VanderGiesen told Carolyn Tucker, according to the Twin Cities Pioneer Press. “We both have lost our daughters. One to death and the other to prison time for as long as she lives. May God’s grace be shown to you at this time of pain in your life.”

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

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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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

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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.

Tag: Forensic Files

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