Rebecca Reisner

Tina Biggar: Escort and Scholar

Con Man Ken Tranchida Murders a College Student
(“Deadly Knowledge,” Forensic Files)

Tina Biggar turned an academic research project about prostitution into a personal foray into sex work.

The Michigan college student quietly went to work for escort services and made a tidy sum to use toward the costs of school and housing. Sadly, one of her clients, a sleazy little ex-con named Ken Tranchida, murdered her after the two argued about a car loan.

Ken, who would ultimately give the court quite an original excuse for ending Tina’s life, pleaded guilty just weeks after the 1995 murder.

Gratuitous occupation. But the Forensic Files episode about the case leaves some questions not completely answered.

Why did someone like Tina take a chance on a wild card like prostitution? She was studious and came from a stable home with a caring father. She had a nice boyfriend and close girlfriends.

And she already made good tips serving up James Beard New England clam chowder and 22-ounce rib-eye steaks at a popular local restaurant.

Unsettling fact. Plus, once she took on high-paying escort work, why did Tina still need to borrow cash for a car? And how did the slimy Ken charm the intelligent Tina into believing he could be her personal hero?

Finally, what was the Biggars’ reaction when they found out that the tragedy of losing their daughter came wrapped in a salacious secret?

For this week’s post, I looked for some answers and also checked on Ken’s incarceration status. So let’s get going on the recap of “Deadly Knowledge” along with extra information drawn from internet research:

Military dad. Tina Suzanne Biggar was born in South Dakota on Dec. 31, 1971, the daughter of a Coast Guard commander and a registered nurse.

The Biggars moved around a lot, to Florida, Alaska, and Michigan. They educated their kids at Catholic schools and participated in church activities and community goings-on.

Friends would later describe Tina as a hard worker who was friendly and fun to be with.

As a teenager, Tina gave up a baby girl for adoption after her relationship with the father — a Coast Guard enlisted man — turned abusive, according to the Already Gone podcast.

Government project. Tina got her life back on track and started college at South Dakota State University, then transferred to Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, to be closer to Traverse City, where her father was stationed.

By summer 1995, the psychology major was getting ready to start her senior year in college and had plans to attend graduate school.

Although Forensic Files didn’t mention it, before Tina began her independent study about sex work, she was one of eight Oakland students who worked on a larger project funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to educate prostitutes about HIV and AIDS, then follow up to gauge their retention.

Different world. Tina interviewed prostitutes both on the streets and in jail. A friend told the Oakland Post that Tina “put her all in this study.”

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

Her own separate project, “A Survey of Sexual History and Health Practices Among Women Employed as Escorts,” involved higher-priced prostitutes, the ones who don’t work on corners. Tina reportedly sought financing for the project, but the university declined.

While doing research, Tina lived in an apartment in Farmington with her boyfriend, Todd Nurnberger, who attended the University of Michigan and worked as a chemical engineer.

Plea for help. On Aug. 23, 1995, Todd returned home to find Tina gone despite that the two had plans together that night. “Since we’d lived together, that never happened,” Todd would later testify. He called the Rochester Chop House and found out that Tina had quit her waitress job four months ago. She’d been play-acting by ironing her uniform at home.

The escort service faced some minor legal consequences after Tina Biggar’s death

By Sept. 13, 1995, Tina was still missing. Her parents offered a $5,000 reward for help.

Back at Tina’s apartment, boyfriend Todd had discovered an “OMG, my girlfriend’s moonlighting as a call girl” bag. The red duffle contained thigh-highs, KY Jelly, condoms, and correspondence with the LA Dreams escort service.

Multiple employers. LA Dreams didn’t know anything about a Tina Biggar, but the service did have a popular escort named Crystal who matched her description — 5-foot-7 with blond hair and perfect white teeth.

Narrator Peter Thomas gently explains what an escort service is and, because even a tasteful show like Forensic Files can’t resist the myth that prostitution is sexy, the episode features visuals of women wriggling out of front-zipped miniskirts while anonymous customers watch.

It turned out that Tina also worked for two other escort services, Elite Desires and Calendar Girls, and had dozens of clients. She’d been in the biz for about a year.

Busy biz. According to the City Confidential episode “Detroit: A Coed’s Secret,” she sometimes freelanced by cutting out the agencies.

So what kind of wages did Tina snag as an escort?

LA Dreams charged its clients around $250 of which Tina got $150, according to author Fannie Weinstein, who appeared on Forensic Files. Max Haines, a columnist for the Times-Colonist, reported that Tina netted just $100 per date but sometimes did three a night.

A real lowlife. Phone records revealed she’d talked frequently to a 42-year-old named Ken Tranchida. He would later say that he met Tina by chance at a restaurant and she gave him the number of her escort service.

Ken, born in Detroit in 1953 and brought up in Southfield, was a drifter and con man who held a series of menial jobs. He’d served time for passing bad checks, embezzlement, and breaking and entering. After a gig working the front desk at an E-Z Rest Hotel, Ken helped himself to its cash and fled, leaving behind new jewelry and baby items in his room there, according to the Detroit Free Press.

Among Tina’s belongings, investigators found a love letter with a poem from Ken.

‘Lot’ of trouble. Ken told police he last saw Tina when he dropped her off at the airport. She had a business trip in Ohio and left her car at his place. Oh, and Tina liked him so much that she starting dating him free of charge, he said.

As for the car loan that played a role in the story, a Honda dealership told investigators that Ken and Tina together signed a contract for a $15,000 car. She put up her share of the money,$5,000, but Ken failed to produce his $10,000. He said the remainder was coming via his “ex-mother-in-law who was flying in from England.” Neither she nor the money materialized. Tina and Ken had a loud argument at the car lot.

But lacking forensic evidence against Ken —a tracker dog that searched the woods around his house came up with nothing — police released him.

Magnificent Five. Meanwhile, Tina Biggar’s father, Bill, launched into action in hopes of finding his daughter alive.

Todd Nurnberger and Tina Biggar had an on-and-off relationship

He put together a team of amateur sleuths consisting of escort-service co-owners identified as Donna and Debbie, tow-truck driver Jerry Holbert (who was friends with Ken but sympathetic to the Biggars), and Todd. They stayed close to Ken Tranchida in an effort to get information.

When Ken landed in jail for skipping meetings with his parole officer, Bill & Co. paid $250 to bail him out. They shadowed Ken while he was staying at the Pink Flamingo Trailer Park.

‘Trunkated’ evidence. Bill even took Ken out to dinner at a local Ram’s Horn. According to the Detroit Free Press, Ken offered various stories about Tina’s whereabouts: She was at a Hilton Hotel in Dayton or his friend knew where she was but he lost his number and would page him later.

But police soon made a grim discovery. During a second search of Tina’s Honda Accord, they found a pool of her blood under the carpeting in the trunk. It indicated too much bleeding for her to have survived.

On Sept. 21, Southfield police located the badly decomposed body of Tina Biggar behind a house once owned by Ken’s aunt.

Drama king. Sadly, the Biggars first learned about the positive ID of Tina’s body from a TV report.

The family buried Tina in a light blue and silver casket in Elkton, South Dakota. About 100 students attended a service for Tina at Oakland University and raised $500 for the Biggars.

Meanwhile, Ken Tranchida went on the lam. When investigators tracked him down in a rundown Detroit neighborhood, he made a pretense of committing suicide by slitting his wrists and drinking chemicals.

Really, euthanasia? His arrest came as a relief to law enforcement, but Tina’s grieving mother, Connie, told the media it brought her no comfort.

Ken, who said he was in love with Tina, broke down and told police that Tina died accidentally when she fell and hit her head during a scuffle in his rented room. After placing her on the bed, he blacked out and couldn’t remember what happened next, he said.

But a forensic examination didn’t find a fatal head injury, so Ken came up with a revision to his story: He purposely mercy-killed Tina because she was unhappy and worried about financial problems. Ken also said he would “switch places with Tina in a heartbeat.”

Press pain. Prosecutors alleged that Ken beat and strangled Tina to death on his bed and then hid the bloody mattress in the attic. (He had told his landlady that he got rid of the mattress because he threw up on it.) Ken put Tina in the trunk of her car, dumped her body in the woods, and drove the vehicle back to his place.

Ken ended up pleading guilty to second-degree murder in a deal that the Biggars agreed to in order to avoid publicity. Judge Rudy Nichols handed Ken Tranchida two life sentences, one for homicide, the other for habitually offending.

The family felt the court handled the case well but had no warm words for the media. Bill Biggar said journalists profit by others’ pain. “Put your name in the headlines,” he said to reporters. “Put your daughter’s and son’s names in the headlines. The sustaining hurt is right here.”

*A Detroit Free Press clip shows Todd Nurnberger, Tina’s friend Aimee Vermeersch, and Bill Biggar attending a vigil*

Prospective breakup. So, getting back to the question of why Tina needed money so badly, some insight surfaced. First off, although Oakland is a public school, it’s expensive. Today, tuition costs as much as $27,000 a year.

Second, Tina needed to replace her old Honda Accord — it would have required a huge cash outlay to fix it after a recent accident — and her credit cards were maxed out, said Fannie Weinstein, who co-wrote the mass market paperback The Coed Call Girl Murder. According to the Already Gone podcast, Tina’s 25-mile commute to school also strained her budget.

Third, Tina and Todd enjoyed wining and dining themselves at nice restaurants, and the apartment the two shared in Farmington was in a high-rent gated community. Forensic Files asserts that Tina was thinking about leaving Todd and getting her own place, another big expense.

Workin’ at the car wash. And fourth, Tina was the oldest of six kids and probably wanted to minimize any financial burden she put upon her parents.

But why did she choose work as a call girl? As part of the CDC study, she no doubt heard harrowing tales from drug-addicted prostitutes working for abusive pimps on the streets. Perhaps employment for an escort service looked like a safer, easier way to earn better money.

Tina was probably just young enough to believe at least a little bit in fairy tales, and maybe Ken was the closest thing to a Prince Charming/Richard Gere she could find among the escort-patronizing population. Ken could make a good impression when it suited him. Former employers described him as well-liked and conscientious. Although he was working as a laborer at the Classic Touch Auto Wash when he met Tina, it’s a good bet that he told her he owned the place and had a string of other businesses as well.

Eventual acceptance. As far as how the Biggars reacted to revelations about Tina’s work, at first Bill denied it. He said that “people of good heart can see through much of what’s printed” and that “escorts make more money than she had,” according to accounts from the Associated Press and Detroit Free Press. Likewise, coworkers from the Rochester Chop House believed that Tina worked for the service for research only, the Detroit Free Press reported.

Once it looked certain that Tina had indeed been a call girl, Bill said he loved his daughter regardless.

When some women from the escort service attended a funeral for Tina in Traverse City, the Biggars offered them a place to stay and gave them homemade food, the Detroit Free Press reported.

Benevolent words. According to an AP account, the funeral eulogy delivered at Christ the King Catholic Church was also kind-hearted:

Ken Tranchida in a recent prison mug shot

“Rev. Edwin A. Thome noted that Jesus had spent time with prostitutes and sinners. ‘And he, too, suffered the consequences,’ the minister said. ‘The self-righteous did not understand. Eventually, they put him to death. Tina had that spirit of adventure, which took her into uncharted waters. And she died for something she believed in.‘”

Today, the client who ended Tina’s sabbatical into sex work resides in Muskegon Correctional Facility. Although one media source reported Ken won’t be eligible for parole until 2030, news recently broke that the Michigan Parole Board will have a public meeting on May 18 to decide whether he deserves early release. (Thanks to reader John Q. for writing in with the tip.)

I still believe it’s a good bet this killer will die behind razor wire.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

James Elmen: Fright in Florida

A Homicidal Sex Criminal Eludes Justice in Jacksonville
(“Cold Feet,” Forensic Files)

Julie Stoverink Estes in a yearbook photo — Julie Estes in a yearbook photo

By chance, 17-year-old James “Jimmy” Elmen Jr. escaped prosecution for a homicide in Florida in 1984. But as viewers of Forensic Files know, some criminals who get away with murder once just can’t stop pushing their luck (Barbara Stager, Bart Corbin).

Instead of reforming after his acquittal, Elmen went on to terrorize three women and kill one of them, a 21-year-old newlywed named Julie Estes.

Very bad hombre. Elmen’s crimes and his Charles Manson-like mannerisms make him especially disturbing. He’s among Forensic Files’ most frightening subjects.

“I would say that James Elmen was an outlier,” former Jacksonville detective Frank Mackesy, who helped investigate Elmen, told ForensicFilesNow.com. “Fortunately, most law officers don’t deal with such offenders regularly.”

Nonetheless, as true crimes fan know well, even especially cruel murderers sometimes win release despite life sentences. (Wood-chipper killer Richard Crafts recently got out).

Sunshine State child. For this week’s post, I checked on James Elmen’s incarceration status in hopes that he’s securely locked away for good.

So let’s get going on the recap of “Cold Feet” along with extra information drawn from phone interviews and internet research:

James Elmen posing for an early mugshot and relaxing in an interrogation room. He was short in stature but had a menacing way about him

Julie Stoverink came into the world on Dec. 12, 1963, and grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida, as the eldest of four kids born to Kathleen and John Stoverink.

Night shift. As a teen, she enjoyed playing video games and working at Burger King along with her best girlfriend, according to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch story. She graduated from Fort Zumwalt High School in 1982.

Julie married a truck driver named Rod Estes in April 1985 and took a job as a late-shift cashier at a Jacksonville convenience store.

Unfortunately, she didn’t get much time to enjoy adulthood or married life.

Missing person and money. On Oct. 22, 1985, a passerby called police after noticing that the Lil’ Champ store at 6892 Old Kings Road South, where Julie worked, was dark at 10:30 p.m. It normally didn’t close until 11 p.m.

The next morning, an employee arrived to find the store had been robbed of $500.

And Julie had never returned home on the night of the theft.

Shrimpy driver. A police helicopter spotted Julie’s blue Camaro stuck in some mud in woods about four miles from the store.

Her body, with her hands tied with her own sneaker shoelaces, lay under some cardboard and other debris nearby. She’d been raped and killed via a blow to the head.

Investigators believed someone shorter than Julie had driven her car that night; the seat had been moved forward. Inside the vehicle, they found Julie’s purse and the store’s empty cash bag.

The Lil’ Champ chain originally belonged to boxer Julian Jackson, who sold it in 1958. It has changed hands at least twice since then. Today, the Jacksonville store where Julie Estes worked is called Old Kings Quick Mart

Early focus on spouse. The trunk had traces of Julie’s blood. Investigators believed someone had tied her hands first, then put her in the trunk.

The No. 1 suspect, husband Rod Estes, told detectives that he spent the night of the murder home alone and didn’t report Julia as missing because they had a fight that day.

Police don’t particularly like unverifiable alibis like Rod’s, but they found him cooperative and ultimately cleared him.

Case revived. Investigators began to suspect that Jacksonville had a serial killer on the loose.

Months before Julie’s homicide, police had discovered a 15-year-old girl named Christina Casey murdered just a few miles away from Julie’s crime scene. And Dana Loomis, a missing 10-year-old, had turned up dead and hanging from a tree in the area.

Still, Julie’s homicide went unsolved until 2003, when Frank Mackesy, who had been promoted from patrolman to chief of detectives in the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, suggested a cold case squad reopen the investigation.

“Her family came and thanked me because they thought she had become forgotten,” Mackesy recalled.

Rescued by cop. Detectives discovered that shortly before Julie’s murder, a woman Forensic Files calls Carla Nobles (probably a pseudonym) had been abducted from a different convenience store, about 30 miles away in Callahan, but survived. Carla, 19, had given a ride to a man she met in the parking lot, none other than the impish-looking James Elmen.

After raping Carla, Elmen forced her at knifepoint to get behind the wheel and drive. Along the way, she managed to stop the car and get the attention of a law officer, who arrested Elmen.

Elmen ultimately pleaded guilty to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, armed kidnapping, and four counts of unarmed sexual battery. (Some of the charges stemmed from an incident a few days before the rape — Elmen grabbed a woman and threatened her with a knife, but she escaped.)

Suspect connection. For those crimes, Elmen got a sentence of 42 years, with parole eligibility after 22 years.

Meanwhile, cold case investigators found another tantalizing piece of circumstantial evidence: The 10-year-old murder victim found in the tree circa 1985 was a half-sister to James Elmen.

So who was this button-nosed psychopath? A few biographical details on Elmen came up.

Troubled youth. He was born on Sept. 12, 1966, and reportedly dropped out of school after ninth grade.

Although he had parents who gave him moral support during at least one of his court dates — his mother, Pamela Loomis, “kissed him and handed him a pack of cigarettes as he was led back to jail,” according to a Florida Today story — at some point he moved in with his aunt and uncle in Titusville.

Wanda and Randall Gurr hoped the “small-town atmosphere” would “straighten him up” — and were shocked when their tousle-haired nephew was arrested in connection with the murder of 18-year-old Steven Linthicum in 1984.

Buddies turn. Prosecutors had a strong case that the then-teenage Elmen stabbed Linthicum to death after he and an accomplice stole Linthicum’s Walkman, jewelry, and decorative swords.

Elmen associate Tom Pack, 22, told the court that he and Elmen committed the burglary and later took the stolen goods to Glen Stroman, also a friend of Elmen’s. Stroman admitted to selling some of the stolen jewelry and got immunity for testifying against Elmen.

Plus, Elmen had been seen wearing bloody clothes around the time of the murder, according to an Orlando Sentinel story.

Menace to society. Despite the strong case against Elmen, an oddball factor unexpectedly kneecapped the prosecution. A tracking-dog handler named John Preston, who had provided some evidence for the trial, was discredited as a phony. That was enough to tip the jury’s verdict to not guilty.

By the time cold case investigators took up Julie Estes’ murder, however, Elmen was in prison for the 1985 attack on Carla Nobles, but he was eligible for parole. The cold case squad wanted to ensure he’d never get out. He was way too dangerous. Police, doctors, medical workers, and public defenders were all afraid of Elmen, detective James A. Parker said during his Forensic Files appearance.

Frank Mackesy seen with dark hair in the 1980s and with gray in the millennium — Frank Mackesy — seen toward the beginning of Julie Estes’ case and during his Forensic Files appearance — said that the unsolved homicide stayed on his mind for 20 years

“I was so worried he would reoffend that we made a case to put him on 24-7 surveillance,” Mackesy recalled.

Planned attack. Fortunately, authorities were able to hold Elmen in prison thanks to the Jimmy Ryce Act, which allows extended incarceration for convicted violent sexual offenders because they’re a threat to society. The court classified Elmen as a “mentally disordered sexual offender.”

Elmen probably had no intention of ending his attacks on women. “I think Julie Estes’ murder was definitely premeditated,” Mackesy said. “She matched all the physical traits of all his victims. They had the same body style, hair color, and hair style.”

After reopening the case, detectives hit some forensic pay dirt when a lab identified Elmen’s DNA on Julie’s socks.

Sudden confession. Investigators believe that on the night of Julie’s murder, Elmen noticed there were no customers inside the Lil’ Champ store, entered and turned off the electricity, and forced Julie to empty the safe. He made her drive to a lot, then raped and killed her and ditched her car.

Just as Julie’s family was preparing to attend Elmen’s trial at the Duval County Courthouse in 2008, Elmen surprised them by pleading no contest to Julie’s rape and murder. He got life without the possibility of parole.

“This was probably the better of the two options,” Julie’s dad, John Stoverink, said in a TV news interview. “You never know what a jury is going to do. This way, he doesn’t have a chance to get out.”

Throw away the key. Despite the guilty plea, Elmen’s defense lawyer Frank Tassone thought the judge made some wrong decisions.

“People picked and chose the facts they considered,” Tassone told ForensicFilesNow.com. “There were some mitigating things the judge didn’t allow.”

Nonetheless, it looks as though James Elmen has zero chance of leaving prison on two feet. “His plea deal was contingent on him not being able to appeal or get out,” Mackesy said. “Part of that deal was our prosecutor didn’t go after the death penalty.”

Grief relief. Today, Elmen lives in Graceville Correctional and Rehabilitation Facility in Florida and is on the sex offender registry. The Florida Department of Corrections lists his status as life without the possibility of parole, and he’s in close custody, meaning maximum supervision.

The sentence relieves Julie Estes’ family of having to attend parole board hearings for the killer of their eldest child.

According to Florida Times-Union account, as a tribute Julie, her brother Tom Stoverink “named his daughter Samantha Julie after his big sister, whom he followed everywhere when she was living at home.”

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

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Roy Beck: Mullet-Wearing Maniac

Virginia Russell Exits Prison and Meets a Sociopath
(“Trouble Brewing,” Forensic Files)

If Roy Gene Beck Jr. had any redeeming qualities, they didn’t come across on Forensic Files or any other sources of intelligence about him. The young man from Columbia, South Carolina, financed his crack cocaine habit by robbing women. He raped at least one and killed another.

Once the law caught up with Roy, he tried to blame his crimes on a friend — a nice guy who had helped him.

Speedy read. Fortunately, the criminal justice system sorted out the truth and convicted Roy.

For this week, I looked into where Roy Beck is today. This will be a quick update (which for my blog means 1,200 words) because the case didn’t get a huge amount of press coverage, although a tantalizing tidbit about Roy bubbled up.

So let’s get going on the recap of “Trouble Brewing,” along with extra information drawn from internet research. Because Virginia Russell is the murder victim in this episode, let’s start with her story:

Boyfriend killed. Virginia Russell had long struggled with a drinking problem, which played a role in a horrible accident.

While the South Carolina resident was driving her boyfriend home after a party, her car veered out of its lane, did somersaults, and ejected both of them.

He died.

Virginia, whose blood-alcohol level was twice the legal limit, got a six-year sentence for vehicular homicide.

Final page. In an effort to get back on her feet financially after she served her time, Virginia began working for an escort service, although she told her family it was a house-cleaning company that paged her when jobs came in.

Forensic Files notes that some names and images were changed for TV, but this shot of Virginia Russell, shown on more than one series, looks like the real deal

On Nov. 12, 1996, her beeper went off at 8:54 p.m. and she left for what she called a cleaning job.

While Forensic Files portrays Virginia as at home with family when she got the page, the New Detectives reported that she was at a hospital visiting a cousin’s sick baby.

Scattered evidence. Whatever the scenario, the next day, a man walking his dog found the body of a woman lying face down near Owens Field Park in Rosewood, South Carolina. Her hair was soaked with blood, her stockings had runs in them, and she was missing a shoe.

At the scene, investigators found two Michelob Light bottles, shell casings, a small purse with $2 in coins, and a handbag with no money inside.

Fingerprints identified the victim as Virginia Russell, age 30.

Ruse bought. Inside her car, which was abandoned in a parking lot in Olympia, police discovered Virginia’s blood, a bullet casing, the missing shoe, and a Michelob Light carton with one full bottle inside.

They theorized Virginia and the killer drank beer in the car before he shot her, dragged her to the soccer field, fired two more bullets into her, and stole the bills from her bag.

The victim’s aunt, who still believed the nighttime cleaning job story, mentioned to investigators that Virginia always had a lot of cash. They believed the murderer robbed her of hundreds of dollars.

Charitable pal. Police traced the pager call to an apartment occupied by a young man called Justin Bullard on Forensic Files (he’s referred to as Richard Bullard in court papers — it’s not clear what his real name is, so we’ll keep it at Justin for now).

Justin owned an aquarium-cleaning business and lived with a roommate, Trevett Foster. Lately, Justin had allowed his hard-up friend Roy Beck Jr. to stay there, too.

The Columbia-area athletic field where Virginia Russell’s body lay

Although Justin insisted he himself had no involvement in the murder, the forensics and circumstantial evidence suggested otherwise.

Yeah, right. First of all, Justin had no way of proving his alibi that he was home alone when the homicide occurred. He owned a Makarov semiautomatic 380-caliber, which ballistic tests showed was used to execute Virginia. At his apartment, police found a phone book with pages advertising escort services ripped out. And Justin’s black military-style boots had high-impact splatter of Virginia’s blood.

Police officers must have rolled their eyes out of their sockets upon hearing Justin’s explanation — that someone else must have used his stuff in the murder and then returned it to his apartment to frame him.

But tests on a hair found at the murder scene showed it more likely came from Roy than Justin.

Prior felony. And it turned out that a crime against another professional escort had taken place at Roy Beck’s former residence on Whitney Street in Olympia.

Inside, the call girl found the place was lit by candles, but it wasn’t because Roy was a romantic: His electricity had been turned off due to lack of payment.

Roy, who had used the name David Davis when requesting the date, held a knife to the woman’s throat, raped her, and robbed her of about $300, according to court papers. He told her to run away and not look back.

That guy. The escort, age 20, identified Roy Beck from a photo lineup. Cops found Michelob bottles in Roy’s place and confirmed they came from the same factory and batch as the ones from Virginia’s murder scene.

Roy Beck’s new
haircut was more
appropriate for
court but it couldn’t save his case

And Richland County South Carolina’s law officers already knew Roy Beck Jr. He had started committing burglaries to finance his crack cocaine addiction in his teens.

Under police questioning, Roy insisted that Justin Bullard — the kind-hearted friend whom Roy was freeloading off of — committed the murder.

Premeditated. But prosecutors had little trouble proving Roy did it.

An associate named Larry Barlow testified that Roy told him about a plan to rob and rape prostitutes and invited him to participate, but he declined.

Investigators believed that Roy and Virginia already knew each other before the night he robbed her, so she would have been able to ID him. After they enjoyed Michelob Lites together, he shot her, took her money, then abandoned the car and quietly returned the boots and gun to Justin’s apartment to transfer the blame to him.

Disobedient con. Prosecutors won a conviction against Roy, and in November 1997, Circuit Court Judge Thomas Cooper handed him a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

Roy lost an appeal three years later.

Today, he’s still in prison and making his share of trouble on the inside.

Don’t Be My Guest. According to South Carolina’s Department of Corrections, Roy has committed 21 infractions involving possession of a cell phone or narcotics, plus one violation for possession of a negotiable instrument, which apparently means he got hold of a forbidden form of payment.

For those misdeeds, he’s received losses of visitation privileges for as many as 720 days (nonetheless he’s kept himself trim and presentable with just 124 pounds on his 5-foot-6-inch frame), plus revocations of canteen, TV, and telephone privileges.

Over the years, the state has moved Roy around to a number of prisons. Since 2017, he has resided in Perry Correctional Institution in Pelzer.

Obscure fact. The DOC website lists Roy, who was born on Jan. 19, 1972, as ineligible for furlough, parole, or release.

There his story pretty much ends, but as mentioned, an interesting piece of trivia did pop up via a message board on the Columbia Closings website.

A commenter said that Roy is the son of Roy Beck Sr., who owned a gentlemen’s club called ChippenDolls that riled up some Columbia residents in 1990 by switching from topless entertainers to completely naked ones.

In December 2021, an email from a reader who worked at the (now-defunct) club as a cocktail waitress confirmed that the two Roys were indeed father and son — and Jr. was one scary dude.

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

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Karyn Slover’s Killers: An Update

Jeannette and Michael Slover Murder Their Grandson’s Mother
(“Concrete Alibi,” Forensic Files)

Updated on June 30, 2022

Although she liked her job as an advertising sales rep at an Illinois newspaper, Karyn Slover was looking forward to making more of a splash in the world after she clinched her first gig as a model.

But her colleagues at the Herald and Review never got to throw her a going-away party or publish a story about the local girl who made it to the big time. Instead, her co-workers attended a memorial service and wrote headlines about Karyn’s murder — after she turned up dead, her body dreadfully abused, at Lake Shelbyville.

Model citizen. It took more than five years to solve the case, but the justice system convicted ex-husband Michael Slover Jr. and his parents, who probably thought they were too upright-seeming to even be suspected of a homicide.

For this week, I looked into where the Slover gang is today. I also tried to find out whether Karyn was the victim of not only homicide but also false advertising by her modeling agency.

So let’s get going on the recap of “Concrete Alibi,” the Forensic Files episode about Karyn Slover’s short life and horrible death, along with extra information drawn from online research:

Sweetheart’s ride. On Sept. 27, 1996, a police officer spotted an abandoned car on the side of Interstate Highway 72 outside of Champaign, Illinois.

Inside the black Pontiac Bonneville, police found a purse, a half-eaten candy bar, and scattered coins.

The vehicle was registered to David Swann, who worked as a circulation district sales manager.

In the bag. David said he’d lent the car to his girlfriend, Karyn Slover, who was going to pick up her 3-year-old son. Forensic Files calls the little boy Christopher, but newspapers identify him as Kolten.

He had spent the day with his grandparents. They claimed Karyn never showed up to retrieve Kolten.

Two days after Karyn’s disappearance, boaters spotted a gray plastic bag on the shore of Lake Shelbyville.

The float. It contained a female head with blond hair and at least six bullet wounds fired to the back with a .22-caliber gun.

Other bags, found in the water, held the rest of her body. The bags as well as the car had chunks of concrete in them. The killer probably used them to weigh down the bags, but body gasses caused them to rise to the surface (another case of criminals who don’t watch enough Forensic Files).

Investigators believed someone had used a power tool to cut up the body.

Grim news. Dental records confirmed the victim was 23-year-old Karyn Hearn Slover.

She had disappeared after leaving the office for the day.

Publisher Bill Johnston called a meeting to tell employees about the tragedy.

Well-liked. “He did spare everyone the gory details,” former co-worker George Althoff recalled in a Herald and Review story from August 2020. “But the emotion was quite raw and evident around the whole place.”

“Karen didn’t have enemies,” her friend Jill Scribner said in an interview with the series Cold Blood. She “was a very lovable person.”

Her ex-husband, Michael Slover Jr., had been violent during the relationship, but he had an alibi for the night of the murder. He’d been working as a security guard at Cub Foods. A coworker remembered seeing him in his office with a shoplifter the store had just caught.

Conveniently forgotten. After work, Michael Jr. taught a karate lesson, went home to shower, and left for his second job as a bouncer at Ronnie’s Tavern.

The newspaper office where Karyn worked before she became the news

Police next turned their attentions toward David Swann, who had been dating Karen for just a few weeks. He had some legal problems in his past, including impersonating a law officer (yikes, David Draheim).

David Swann also had a felony conviction for aggravated battery. (Years later, at the trial, he would claim he didn’t remember what crime he committed.)

Distress call. At first, David couldn’t account for his whereabouts for 45 crucial minutes on the day of the murder. He’d been late to a rehearsal dinner — he was slated to serve as best man — at Tater’s Family Grill. Police interrogated him for four hours before he mentioned that he’d stopped to get money at an ATM during the 45 minutes.

The bank had video footage of David that proved his alibi.

Meanwhile, investigators had appealed to the public for help identifying the place where the murder and desecration happened. Surely, there must have been signs of a bloodbath hidden somewhere.

Unlikely suspects. A law enforcement taskforce including FBI agents said they suspected Karyn met her grisly end in a location with tall grass and a gravel or rock base. They asked owners of remote properties matching that description to look around for signs of foul play.

“Because the offense was so odious, it also left an entire community clamoring for vengeance,” according to Dusty Rhodes, a reporter for the free weekly newspaper the Illinois Times.

A former FBI profile cautioned that individuals “can commit these horrendous crimes yet they can act like the person sitting next to you in church.”

The three Slovers in court. Michael Jr., center, and Michael Sr., right, look more like brothers than father and son

‘Feudal’ family. The newspaper offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the killer or killers. Funds were set up for a memorial to Karyn and an education for Kolten.

By now, police had found out that Karyn and her ex-husband’s family didn’t get along.

Mother-in-law Jeannette Slover reportedly hated Karyn.

Tight grasp. Jeannette enjoyed an excessively close relationship with Kolten and acted as though she were the mother.

Karyn had won custody of Kolten in the divorce, but the court ruled that Jeannette and husband Michael Slover Sr. would have the right to babysit him while Karyn was at work.

An ex-boyfriend of Karyn’s would later explain that Karyn sometimes had to physically pry Kolten away from Jeannette and that she had told her grandson that “one day you’ll be all mine,” the Herald and Review reported.

Lot of trouble. Karyn’s father-in-law, Michael Sr., who worked as a pipe insulator at the Clinton Powerhouse, claimed that he’d gone to Kmart and bought a Play-Doh Factory for Kolten around the time of the murder, according to Cold Blood. But the store said that it had never carried that particular toy.

Jeannette, whose occupation has been described as either full-time homemaker or employee at a drive-through liquor business, lacked an alibi.

Investigators couldn’t find a blood-splattered murder scene, so they concentrated on Miracle Motors, a poorly maintained Mount Zion used-car lot owned by Jeannette and Michael Sr.

Fasten down the case. The lot had concrete and cinders that resembled remnants used to weigh down the bags with Karyn’s body.

Authorities called in the U.S. Army to help sift through the soil on the 5,000-square-foot expanse — despite that the Slovers had given the property a makeover shortly after the murder (FF red flag).

Six months into the forensic archaeological dig, the taskforce hit a small but valuable piece of pay dirt: a metal button that matched the ones on Karyn’s jeans. They later found rivets from the jeans and a fabric-covered button that appeared to come from her blouse.

Relocation rebellion. Authorities uncovered evidence that Michael Jr. had participated in the planning and cleanup — he and his folks talked on the phone 12 times on the weekend of the murder. One theory was that Mary Slover, Michael Jr.’s sister, babysat Kolten while her parents “performed the gruesome work necessary to dispose of Karyn’s body,” prosecutors would later allege.

Friends said Karyn was thinking about moving away from Illinois to pursue her modeling career after she landed a job in Georgia (more about that in a minute). The Slovers reportedly feared she would move there and take Kolten with her.

Police arrested Michael Jr. and his parents and charged them with first-degree murder.

Car trouble. Prosecutors made a case that Jeannette shot Karyn in the back of the head when she showed up to get her son.

The loving grandparents dismembered her body at the car lot, bagged the pieces, and weighed them down with concrete from the property, then threw the bags in Lake Shelbyville, the prosecution maintained.

The presence of the Pontiac on the Slovers’ property would have raised suspicions, so they abandoned it along the highway.

Doggone killers. Neighbors remembered seeing Michael Jr. trimming weeds along the Miracle Motors parking lot around the time of the murder, important because investigators believed tall grass grew at the scene of the crime. Witnesses also remembered that the Slovers had been burning items at the lot during the same period.

And as though we needed more reason to root against the Slovers, Jeannette and David Sr. euthanized their dogs after a laboratory matched DNA from Cassie — one of the couple’s black Labradors — to a hair that was found stuck to tape on a bag from the lake, according to Cold Blood.

In 2002, the loathsome trio were convicted of first-degree murder.

Buh-bye. Jeannine got a 60-year sentence. The men got 65 years each.

The Slovers lost a June 2003 appeal.

Nonetheless, Mary Slover continues to fight for brother Michael Jr. and their parents — who probably still can’t believe an outwardly respectable couple like them got caught.

Got the blues. According to an article in the Illinois Times from 2005:

“’Homebodies’ is the word Mary and Michael Jr. use to describe their parents. A night out meant dinner at a fast-food restaurant and maybe a movie. Usually, they were happy to simply hang around their Mount Zion home, grill some pork chops, and watch PBS or the History Channel.”

In 2008, a court filing mentioned an untested human hair found at the scene as well as a fingerprint near a spot of the victim’s blood on Findley Bridge — and ordered a hearing to consider potential new evidence in the case. The Slovers’ camp also called attention to unidentified short blue wool fibers found in Karyn’s car and with her body parts.

Prosecutor’s vow. In an impressive development, the Slovers garnered the support of the Illinois Innocence Project, a legal studies seminar sponsored by the University of Illinois at Springfield. (It’s not clear whether the group is affiliated with the better-known Innocence Project founded by Barry Sheck.)

In 2014, they won a ruling allowing DNA testing on fingerprint evidence from the case.

But that went nowhere, and Assistant State’s Attorney Jay Scott, who prosecuted the Slovers, pledged to work to keep the conviction in place.

Locked up. So where are the Slover three today?

Well, two of them are still behind razor wire, but with some chance of release in the next decade.

Michael Slover Sr., Jeannette Slover, and Michael Sloven Jr. in recent mugshots — Michael Slover Sr., Jeannette Slover, and Michael Slover Jr. in recent mugshots

Jeannette Slover, 72, resides in Logan Correctional Center, with a parole date in 2029 and projected discharge date of 2032. Apparently, she’s been visiting some version of Laverne Cox’s beauty shop, because she now sports blond hair.

Hail Mary play. Michael K. Slover Sr., 74, occupied a bunk at Pontiac Correctional Center. He had a date with the parole board in 2032, but he didn’t need it. According to a reader (thanks for writing in, Steph Nihi), he died in June 2022. Good riddance.

Mike Jr., 50, is incarcerated at the Illinois River Correctional Center, with a parole date of 2031 and projected discharge in 2034.

As for Kolten, Mary Slover adopted him in 1999 — but that was before authorities had charged Mary’s parents and brother with murder.

Custody contest. And there were allegations of abuse and neglect, according to court papers.

Kolten spent some time in a foster home. After a legal battle, a Macon county judge ruled Mary unfit as a parent because the judge believed she took part in concealing her sister-in-law’s murder.

At some point, cousins of the Slovers also threw their hat into the ring in the custody competition.

Reason to smile. Ultimately, Karyn’s parents, Larry and Donna Hearn, won custody of Kolten. (He must have been a sweet little guy — everyone wanted him.)

“We’re goofy,” Larry Hearn told the Herald and Review after defeating Mary in the battle for Kolten. “We’re just both giddy as a couple of kids.”

So, what happened to Kolten?

Today, he’s in his late 20s and uses a different name. According to a social media account, he works in the home-improvement industry as a flooring remodeler.

Runway ruse? And on the subject of occupations, as previously mentioned, I was curious about the legitimacy of the agency that supposedly snagged Karyn a modeling engagement — there are so many scams associated with that industry.

Paris World, the Savannah-based agency, “would seek applicants through newspaper ads and then sign potential models and place their photos on the internet,” according to testimony from Paris World owner Alan Tapley at the 2002 murder trial.

Tapley said that he couldn’t remember any of the particulars about the modeling job his agency secured for Karen except for the fact that it was temporary, not longer than a month.

Not fee-free. Karyn paid $92 in processing fees in order to get the modeling gig, Tapley said, adding that he returned the money to her family after the murder.

Paris World no longer exists and Yelp didn’t saunter onto the stage until 8 years after the murder, so the modeling agency’s repute remains hazy.

(BTW, the Federal Trade Commission offers guidelines to help prospective catwalkers avoid scams.)

More in store. Whatever the case, Karyn Hearn Slover was a lovely person who never got the future she deserved.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

Karen Pannell: Written off Too Soon

Tim Permenter Pins a Murder on Another Ex
(“Writing on the Wall,” Forensic Files)

Tim Permenter isn’t the first Forensic Files killer to cast suspicions on multiple dupes so if investigators cleared one, they could target another. But he did distinguish himself by doing so in a speedy manner.

Murderers Christopher Porco and Richard Lyon, for example, brewed up multifaceted plans — including blaming the Mafia and a victim’s own brother — well ahead of their crimes. Tim, on the other hand, made a spontaneous decision to kill, then brainstormed with himself on a cover-up while eating pizza at the crime scene.

Accused in print. Of course, Tim had a lot more experience in manipulation than the others: He was a former pimp.

Tim’s onetime girlfriend, popular airline professional Karen Pannell, 39, didn’t learn about that particular aspect of his past until a few months into the relationship. When she insisted on breaking up, he flew into a rage and stabbed her to death in her townhome in Oldsmar, Florida, in 2003. Then, he scrawled the name of her ex-boyfriend on the wall in hopes that he would take the fall.

For this week, I looked into how investigators picked off that and other false leads one by one. I also searched for more information on murder victim Karen Pannell and on Tim Permenter’s whereabouts today — as well as some details on his early career as an escort-service owner.

Kid sister. So let’s get going on the recap of “Writing on the Wall” along with extra information from internet research:

Karen Pannell was born the last of a family of six kids and the only girl on February 10, 1964, in Germany, where her father was serving in the Air Force.

She had a vivacious personality, symmetrical features, and a beautiful smile — the kind of individual any business would want as the face of its brand. She worked as a model and then got a job as an American Airlines gate agent at the Tampa International Airport, where she acquired a reputation for being able to pacify irate travelers. She worked her way up to customer service supervisor.

Drama king. In her spare time, she liked diving and other outdoor activities and also became her family’s informal event-planner. She encouraged togetherness as her brothers grew into adults.

“Karen, being the only girl and the youngest, she was always very special to her brothers,” Randy Pannell told the North Pinellas Times.

In October 2003, Timothy Permenter dialed police, telling them that he dropped by Karen’s house at 2030 Montego Court and found her dead on the kitchen floor. He used a teary, pitiful voice on the phone. He was so upset that he threw up in the front yard after law officers arrived.

Furniture fight. The word “Roc” was written in blood on the wall — it looked as though Karen used her right index finger to spell out the name of her attacker as her last act before dying.

Someone had stabbed Karen 16 to 17 times in her back, neck, and heart and left her face-up in a pool of blood.

She had a previous boyfriend named Roc Herpich, an insurance adjuster known to have struggled with drug problems and minor legal troubles. The couple had lived together for about a year and were still in a custody battle over a $900 roll-top desk.

Nice try, buddy. Karen and the Harley-Davidson-riding Roc had a stormy relationship in general and she had filed a domestic battery complaint against him. He admitted to kicking in the door after they had a fight.

If all was as it appeared on the surface, police had an open and shut case against Roc.

Or so the real killer thought.

The forensics indicated someone wrote “Roc” over spots of blood splatter that had dried earlier than the letters, suggesting that it had happened after Karen died. And Karen’s right hand had formed the letters, despite that she was left-handed.

MS diagnosis. After suffering minor indignities like having police photograph the bottoms of his feet and take nail clippings, Roc was cleared.

At the time of the murder, he was home with his current girlfriend and her son, who was having a backyard sleepover with a bunch of his little buddies.

The ever-helpful Tim advised investigators to check out Karen’s dark and handsome former husband, Jeff Paine. The two had been married for five years and were now having an alimony dispute. Karen needed more money because she had recently found out she had multiple sclerosis.

Ransacking ruse. But Jeff proved he was in South Florida on a diving trip at the time of the homicide. And a British Airways pilot who Karen had once dated was out of the country.

By this time, officers had also ruled out a theft as the cause of the murder, although they found some disarray — an overturned birdbath, a purse with its contents emptied — at Karen’s place. Random home invaders don’t generally overkill their victims or know the names and spellings of the homeowner’s former boyfriends.

Meanwhile, Tim was cooperating with police. He answered questions and allowed a search of his home.

Ready for his closeup. And Tim had one more trick up his sleeve: an alibi. He had been with his friend and former co-worker George Solomon in New Port Richey, he said.

Soon enough, however, police discovered that a cell phone call to George that Tim had made around the time of the murder bounced off a cell tower near Karen’s home.

Having cleared all of Tim Permenter’s intended patsies — Roc, the ex-husband, and the fictitious surprised burglar — investigators could at last turn all eyes toward Tim and only Tim.

Engine trouble. So who was this guy and how did a nice woman like Karen end up with him?

Tim Permenter was born on May 10, 1967, to a teenage mother, Donna Finch, and had little contact with his father, according to a Tampa Bay Times account. Donna’s parents helped bring up Tim. His grandfather, Alex Finch, a lawyer and onetime mayor of Clearwater, was murdered by a client in 1989.

Karen met Tim, who drove a blue BMW convertible, when he was working as a VW salesman. She was shopping for a new vehicle.

Passed intelligence test. They began dating. He took a page from the classic sleazy-criminal playbook (Richard Crafts, John Meehan ), using fake war stories to gratify his ego. Tim falsely claimed that he served as a Navy Seal and participated in a mission.

But the Pannells had no reason to suspect that he was lying. Tim seemed bright, according to Michael Pannell, brother of the victim. The Ph.D.-holding Michael noted during his Forensic Files appearance that Tim impressed the family by beating him at Trivial Pursuit.

But there was some knowledge about Tim that the Pannells had yet to discover — and it wasn’t trivial.

Interesting ‘hook.’ Tim had at one time operated a small chain of prostitution outfits in Gainesville and Tallahassee, Florida. After the law caught up with his criminal enterprise, he explained that he started by placing newspaper ads for escorts. He discussed his best practices with the Associated Press:

“You could tell over the phone if a woman knew what she was getting into or not. For example, if a woman called up and said, ‘What exactly is this escort service?’ they wouldn’t be hired.“

Tim’s service, called Esquire Escorts, charged $100 per hour; the woman would get $65 and Esquire got $35. (One source noted that new hires had to go out on a practice date for free with a member of Esquire Escort’s management team.)

Pimp vs. pimp. He grossed $6,000 to $7,000 a day by the time he turned 20, he told Dateline during an episode titled “Written in Blood.”

But Tim was hungry for more. In 1990, at Tallahassee’s Capital Ridge Apartments, Tim had a shoot-out with a pimp who owned an escort service called Exclusively Yours. According to the Solved episode “Written in Blood,” Tim was the aggressor, and he shot the rival pimp twice.

Tim’s name had also popped up in the media amid allegations that a University of Florida supporter had paid for prostitutes supplied by Esquire Escorts to have sex with basketball player Dwayne Schintzius.

(The mullet-wearing Schintzius survived the scandal and went on to play professionally before dying of leukemia at 43 in 2012.)

Cash frittered away. Esquire Escorts also figured into the downfall of University of Central Florida president Steve Altman, who claimed he used the service for nonsexual massages only.

Although Tim said he started his empire to finance his University of Florida tuition, he also admitted to the AP that he blew all the money on “cars, a motorcycle, Jacuzzis, that sort of thing.”

He spent 12 years in prison for attempted murder, racketeering, and other related crimes.

Bad marks. Toward the end of his three-month relationship with Karen, he had given her a watered-down version of his criminal record. (Not sure how he explained the “Escort King” tattoo on his arm, however.)

When Karen told Tim it was over, he reportedly tried to choke her. Her airline colleague Catherine Mallet said that Karen had worn a turtleneck to work on a hot day and pulled it down to show her the strangulation marks.

Authorities investigating Karen’s murder slowly put together a case against Tim. At the crime scene, they found his prints on a pizza box with three missing slices (Karen’s autopsy found no pizza in her stomach). The delivery time of the pizza contradicted his contention that he left Karen’s place at 7:30 p.m.

The Pizza Hut deliveryman, who chatted with Karen in the doorway for around 10 minutes, told investigators that Tim had scowled at him.

Tim’s skin was found under Karen’s nails.

Poor placement. Investigators believe Tim went to her house in hopes of rekindling the romance. They ordered a pizza at some point, but when Karen made it clear she wanted to discontinue the relationship, he got angry and strangled her. While figuring out how to foist the blame on someone else, Tim ate three slices of pizza.

Next, he used Karen’s lifeless right index finger to write “Roc” in order to frame Roc Herpich. But the letters were too high up on the wall for a partially disabled victim to write.

Lab tests showed Tim’s DNA mixed in with Karen’s blood at the scene.

Horrible death. Tim was indicted in 2004. The trial wouldn’t take place for three more years, but the law took him into custody right away for violating his parole for crimes related to his pimping; he had traveled to Pasco County to see a friend without permission from his parole officer.

Karen Pannell with husband Jeff Paine — Ex-husband Jeff
Paine called Karen
‘amazingly bright’

Prosecutors maintained that Tim started the attack by surprise, putting a knife in Karen’s back, which paralyzed her. Blood splatter placement suggested he then got on top of her and continued to stab her. “She was looking up into the eyes of her murderer,” according to Assistant State Attorney Bill Loughery.

In court, the prosecution decimated Tim’s already-compromised alibi about visiting George Solomon. George, his ex-colleague from the car dealership on Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard, testified that on the night of the murder, Tim met him at a gas station, where he asked him to provide an alibi. Later, over drinks, he confessed to killing Karen. “She’s gone. I killed her. I killed Karen,” Tim said, according to George’s testimony.

Loose lips. Tim said the two had argued after he told Karen that he had just quit his job at the car dealership, according to George Solomon.

Also to Tim’s detriment, after finding the body, he had called Catherine Mallet to let her know Karen had been stabbed — before investigators made the determination of cause of death.

Tim’s defense team came out swinging.

They labeled George Solomon a “big fat liar” and pointed out that Tim had no blood on his clothing the night of the gory murder.

Missing wardrobe. Tim, who testified calmly at the trial, said that his statements about the logistics regarding the cell phone and his arrival at Karen’s house were simple errors. During an appearance on the On the Case with Paula Zahn episode “Message in Blood,” he maintained that he didn’t wear a wristwatch and often didn’t keep track of the time.

“I’ve been off on times,” Permenter told prosecutor Bill Loughery. “Does that make me a murderer? No, sir.”

Police never found the murder weapon, believed to be a knife taken from Karen’s kitchen, or any of Tim’s bloody clothes.

Kind souls. Aside from his mother, known as Donna Finch or Donna Markham, Timothy had no supporters in court, according to the Tampa Bay Herald. Donna had cancer and sometimes came directly to court after chemotherapy treatments, the St. Petersburg Times reported.

After deliberating for four hours, on October 24, 2007, a jury found Tim guilty of first-degree murder.

While pleased with the verdict, Karen’s camp showed sympathy for Tim’s mother. “My heart goes out to her,” said Karen’s stepmother, Yvonne Pannell. “I know his mother is in pain. And we’ve been in pain for four years.”

Eye kept on guy. In November 2007, the jury voted 7-to-5 for the death penalty, but the judge sentenced Tim to life without the possibility of parole, which disappointed Karen Pannell’s family, according to her brother Randy.

Tim’s various efforts for a new trial have failed. In 2013, a U.S. district court denied a petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

Today, Timothy Permenter is inmate #570672 at Liberty Correctional Institution in Bristol, Florida. The state lists him as in close custody, meaning he requires armed supervision at all times.

Wait, there’s more. Sadly, Roc Herpich, whose animated personality livened up the Forensic Files episode, died in 2018 at the age of 60. (Thanks to reader Joe for writing in with the tip).

If you’d like to check out other true-crime programs about the case, you can choose from a few. You can see the Dateline episode, divided into six segments with different URLs, on the NBC News website. It costs $1.99 to view the On the Case with Paula Zahn episode on Amazon.

The shows aren’t as compact and easy to watch as Forensic Files, but nothing is.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Tubi

Margaret Rudin: A Gold Digger Craps Out

The Fifth Time’s Not the Charm for Las Vegas Millionaire Ron Rudin
(“For Love or Money,” Forensic Files)

If you’re looking for a sympathetic Forensic Files murder victim, you might prefer to read about Daniel McConnell or Charlotte Grabbe instead of Ron Rudin.

The Las Vegas residential real estate developer wore garish jewelry, cheated on his wives, foreclosed on homes, and evicted tenants. He accrued so many enemies, whether avowed or suspected, that he maintained an arsenal of firearms and a pack of hunting dogs inside his house and a concrete wall and barbed wire fence outside.

Bid for bucks. Of course, that doesn’t mean he deserved to be shot four times in his sleep and then thrown in the desert so that spouse No. 5 Margaret Rudin could claim her share of his $10 million to $12 million estate.

On “For Love or Money,” the Forensic Files episode about Ron Rudin’s murder, one of his ex-wives mentioned he’d done good things for people during his life — but she didn’t specify what.

For this week, I checked around and found redeeming information about the human being behind the bling. I also did background research on the elegant and proper-looking Margaret — one of many Forensic Files villains (Craig Rabinowitz, Janice Dodson) whose plans to become independently wealthy by eliminating a spouse backfired.

Illinois boy. So let’s get going on the recap of “For Love or Money” along with information from internet research:

Ron Rudin was born an only child on Nov. 14, 1930, and grew up in Joliet, Illinois. His mother, Stella, stayed at home and enjoyed a close relationship with him, according to the book If I Die by Michael Fleeman. His father, Roy, had a high-paying job as a chemical company executive.

A look behind the barricades: Ron’s house was nice, not grand

Still, Ron didn’t live a charmed life.

At the age of 10, he saw Roy die of a heart attack.

Veteran returns. As a student, Ron tried to avoid the Korean War draft by joining the ROTC and later serving in the Illinois National Guard — but the government nabbed him anyway.

He survived overseas duty and moved to Las Vegas to make his mark on the world.

After gaining experience as a construction worker, Ron started his own real estate business, building houses and also buying and flipping existing ones. He became a gun dealer and amassed a collection valued at $3 million.

Affinity for alcohol. Ron shared his success with his mother, moving her to Nevada so they could spend more time together. He liked taking her out to dinner at the Las Vegas Country Club.

In his off hours, he enjoyed hunting and flying airplanes.

But Ron had another favorite pastime that wasn’t so wonderful: alcohol consumption. Loyal ex-wife Caralynne Rudin — who gave interviews to multiple true-crime shows — defended him, saying drunkenness didn’t make him abusive. But Margaret would claim otherwise.

Shiny, shiny. On the bright side, Ron had no interest in gambling. He stayed out of Sin City’s casinos.

Still, he did delight in flashing his wealth. He wore a six-carat diamond ring and drove a perpetually spotless black Cadillac with vanity plates reading “RRR-1.”

Another of the handsome, olive-skinned entrepreneur’s favorite accessories was a wife — five of them in all.

Wife commits suicide. He met the first two, secretary Donna L. Brinkmeyer and insurance agent Caralynne Holland, through his work. His union with Donna, whom he married in 1962, barely lasted a year. He had better luck with the glamorous-looking Caralynne. They made it work from 1971 to 1975 and stayed friends despite that Ron had cheated on her.

Next up came a horrible tragedy. Ron’s third wife, hairdresser Peggy June Rudin, shot herself in the master bedroom inside Ron’s fortress-like house at 5113 Alpine Place. She reportedly suffered from depression.

A couple of sources referred to Peggy as Ron’s one true love. (Of course, it’s possible that she died before he had a chance to get tired of her.) After Peggy’s death, which happened around Christmastime, Ron would always feel distressed when December rolled around, according to “Vegas Black Widow,” an episode of the TV series Sex, Lies & Murder

Ron Rudin circa 1974 (in a photo from the Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project libraries) and
shortly before his death

New squeeze. Media accounts didn’t mention the identity of Ron’s fourth wife, but she was inconsequential compared to his fifth, Margaret.

The pair met at the First Church of Religious Science. “She was outgoing. She was vivacious, very sociable and dressed nicely,” Michael Fleeman told KTNV-TV.

Margaret was slender and had blue eyes and a fine-boned face. Some YouTube viewers commented that she looked like Meryl Streep. Newspapers described her as a socialite.

Modest abode. The couple married in 1987, when Ron was in his late 50s; Margaret was 12 years younger and had two adult children.

Like all of Ron’s wives, Margaret lived with him in the two-bedroom two-bath abode behind the seven-foot barrier. The house lacked curb appeal but — location, location, location — it sat right behind Ron Rudin Realty’s office in a strip mall, so Ron could walk to work.

Margaret and Ron had their ups and downs.

The guy had charm. “They loved each other passionately, but they had these very, very volatile fights,” Fleeman told ABC-KTNV. “At one point [in 1988] there was gunfire, literally. A gun went off. Nobody got shot, but that’s how this relationship was.”

A gun with a legal silencer ended Ron Rudin's life — The gun that ended Ron Rudin’s life

The couple split up and then reconciled.

Margaret would later tell 48 Hours that Ron was charismatic and mysterious and she wanted to make their relationship work in spite of his imbibing and his affair with a woman named Sue Lyles.

Kept at a distance. Ron cared enough about Margaret to bankroll her when she decided to open her own antiques shop. He bought her a Lincoln Continental.

But that didn’t mean he trusted her. One of his guns outfitted with a federally registered silencer went missing during the first year of their marriage and at some point, he suspected Margaret of taking it. Ron reported the theft to the police — his gun business was lawful and legitimate.

Ron didn’t let Margaret too close to his finances. She received an allowance.

Insidious plot. After discovering that Margaret was eavesdropping on his conversations at work, Ron removed the phone line between the house and the real estate office. She and her younger sister, Dona Cantrell, later secretly installed hidden recording devices there.

Just weeks before Christmas in 1994, Ron made a disturbing discovery, according to his best buddy John Reuther.

“He says he’s found a piece of paper in the house, ‘Margaret is diagramming out how she’s going to split up all my money, the estate with her relatives and her friends,'” Reuther told ABC-KTLV.

Nomadic upbringing. Yikes, so who exactly was the woman who Ron had taken to the altar?

Margaret Frost was born in Memphis circa 1942, and by the time she got her high school diploma, her family had moved to 15 states and she’d had to change schools 22 times, according to an interview from jail she gave to the TV series Mugshots for the episode “Margaret Rudin: Death in the Desert.”

She described her father as stern and fanatically religious.

Eager to leave home, at the age of 18, Margaret married a 20-year-old carpenter. They settled in Winthrop Harbor, Illinois, and had a son and a daughter. That union lasted 10 years and Margaret went on to acquire and divorce two more husbands before she took her act to Vegas.

Margaret Rudin with her first husband and two children — She wasn’t always glam: Margaret with her first husband and their children

No jackpot. There, she married a boat dealer, but that relationship sank quickly.

Although Margaret had snagged progressively wealthier men, she didn’t score lucrative settlements in any of her divorces, according to American Justice. (Her daughter, Kristina Mason, who appeared on Mugshots, denied that Margaret was a gold digger.)

Ron’s extramarital girlfriend, Sue Lyles, said her children had received threatening anonymous letters about the affair. Sue suspected Margaret sent them in hopes she would end the relationship.

Lateness unusual. But Margaret didn’t need to worry about Ron cheating on her for much longer. He disappeared on Dec. 18, 1994.

His employees at the real estate office got worried immediately when he didn’t show up for work — Ron always got there on time — and notified authorities.

Margaret also reported him missing but not until two days after he vanished.

Names of the disgruntled. A week later, police located his Cadillac in the parking lot of the Crazy Horse Too, a local gentlemen’s club. The car’s exterior was covered with mud, a worrisome sign because Ron liked to keep his autos glistening. Inside the vehicle, they found some small blood spots too degraded for DNA testing.

Ron Rudin owned the strip mall that housed his real estate office. Margaret’s antiques store was just down the way

Investigators got a list of all Ron’s evicted tenants in case one of them had gone homicidal. (His buddy Jerry Stump, however, would later tell the Las Vegas Sun that Ron was a kind landlord who gave tenants extra time to come up with their rent money.)

No solid leads came until three weeks later, when hikers reported finding a skull near Lake Mojave. The discoverers knew right away it didn’t come from an animal. They could see fillings in the teeth. Lying near the scene, they found a white-gold bracelet with diamonds that spelled “Ron.” Caralynne had bought it for Ron during their marriage.

Cleanliness compromised. Someone had incinerated the remains of the corpse from the neck down.

Dental records proved the skull belonged to Ron Rudin, dead at 64.

The skull had four bullet wounds from a .22-caliber Ruger. Knife marks suggested that whoever killed Ron Rudin decapitated him.

Cosa Nostra? Investigators came to believe that someone other than Ron had left his car at the strip club (he never patronized the establishment) to throw them off course. A manager there allegedly had ties to organized crime.

Margaret’s daughter,
Kristina Mason,
stayed loyal to her

Ron reportedly brushed up against the mafia in a conflict with Tony Spilotro — later portrayed by Joe Pesci in Casino — over a real estate auction, according to “Vanished in Vegas,” an episode of The Perfect Murder.

But the bedroom Margaret and Ron shared told a much more relevant story than the Crazy Horse Too.

Sounds like Scott Peterson. Margaret had recently had the room recarpeted (flaming-red flag). Her contractor, Augustine Lovato, contacted police later and said that he found sticky bloodlike residue on the old rug. The walls and ceiling lit up when detectives sprayed luminal.

She suggested the blood came from Ron’s sneezing during his frequent nosebleeds or that it was left over from Peggy’s long-ago suicide.

Police noticed Margaret referred to Ron in the past tense and started renovating the master bedroom into an office before anyone knew he was dead.

Special conditions. But she wouldn’t get much time to enjoy the remodeling job. As the investigation continued to crawl along in 1995, trustees of Ron’s estate booted Margaret out of the house and seized cars and other assets in Ron’s name. They cut off her checking account.

A fake ID with Margaret in a brown wig while she claimed to be a nurse — Margaret, pictured on a fake nurse ID, had books about disguising identities

In Ron’s will, he stipulated that if he died by violent means, there should be an investigation into any person with financial reasons for wanting him gone —and he instructed the trustees to disinherit such an individual.

Margaret, however, didn’t know about those directives in the will. As far as she knew, Ron’s demise would mean she’d inherit millions.

Discovery in the water. That never happened, but after haggling with the trustees, Margaret received a $500,000 to $600,000 settlement in 1996.

The murder investigation continued.

A scuba diver had found Ron’s missing gun with its silencer in Lake Mead. Police determined the old-timey firearm (“That gun looks like you have to walk 10 paces before you shoot it,” wrote YouTube commenter Katelyn Young) was the murder weapon.

Dona Cantrell testified against her sister

Gone girl. Margaret didn’t seem too worried yet. According to Las Vegas Metro Detective Phil Ramos’ interview with American Justice, she had once remarked that a “Clark County grand jury couldn’t indict a ham sandwich.”

Law officers generally don’t appreciate that kind of talk, and Margaret was indicted on charges of first-degree murder, accessory to murder, and unlawful use of a listening device.

Detectives moved to arrest her on April 18, 1997, but she had disappeared.

Border crossing. Despite that America’s Most Wanted aired segments asking for help finding her, Margaret remained on the run for years and had quite a fantastic voyage, thanks to her adeptness at changing her appearance and making fake ID cards. She used the names Anne Boatwright, Susan Simmons, and Leigh Brown.

She lived among a community of U.S. retirees in Mexico, stayed in a YMCA while working in a gift shop in Phoenix, and ended up about as far away from Las Vegas in miles and culture as one can get in the U.S. — Revere, Massachusetts.

Whatever post-Ron life Margaret hoped to attain, it probably didn’t look like the drab apartment complex where police found her after tracing packages sent between her and her family members. She was living with a retired firefighter she met in Guadalajara.

Self-protection. He and the rest of the buddies she acquired while on the lam couldn’t believe the grandmotherly lady in the black wig was a felon. “She’s just too sweet,” friend Carol Reagor told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “It’s not in her nature.”

Joseph Lundergan, another friend Margaret met in Mexico, let her stay with him briefly in Massachusetts and accepted her collect calls after she went to prison.

Margaret said that she concealed her identity because she feared her late husband’s business associates. “When you’re helpless and you’re totally alone, you do tend to, maybe, panic,” she told 48 Hours in 2001.

Israeli connection. Prosecutors made a case that while Ron Rudin lay sleeping, Margaret shot him three times on one side of the head and once on the other, put his 6-foot-tall body into the missing trunk and burned it, then left his bracelet nearby for identification.

Forensic Files didn’t mention it, but before Ron Rudin’s disappearance, Margaret had been spending a lot of time with a 40-year-old Middle Easterner named Yehuda Sharon. Police suspected the two were having an affair and that he had helped her carry Ron — how else could the featherweight Margaret haul Ron’s 220-pound body?

Yehuda, a former Israeli intelligence officer, denied everything.

Cue the violin music. The trial of the so-called Black Widow of Las Vegas kicked off in March 2001. Although the dramatic, self-indulgent storytelling used by defense team Michael Amador and Tom Pitaro annoyed the judge so much that he appointed additional defense lawyers to dilute their irritating effect — and they ultimately lost the case — they did put up a valiant fight for Margaret.

Apartment where Margaret hid in Massachusetts — The apartment where Margaret
hid in Revere, Massachusetts

“The entire state’s case is nothing but a house of cards waiting for just a slightest breeze to knock it down,” Amador told 48 Hours.

Amador (pictured with Margaret in the image at the top of the page) portrayed his client as a “poor widow left out in the cold.” He suggested that Ron’s trustees Sharron Cooper and Harold Boscutti had reason to kill Ron. Harold alone gained $1.5 million from the estate, Amador said.

Sister vs. sister. And women rarely mutilate victims, Amador argued.

Margaret trotted out the inevitable victim-smearing, claiming Ron trafficked drugs and evaded taxes and might have fallen victim to a business associate he double-crossed.

Unfortunately for Margaret, she herself ended up double-crossed when her lookalike sister served as a witness for the prosecution.

The verdict. Dona Cantrell confirmed that the two of them had planted the listening devices and testified that Margaret was romantically involved with Yehuda Sharon and was crazy about the guy.

Yehuda admitted in court that he had rented a van around the time of Ron Rudin’s disappearance, but said it had nothing to do with the murder and he and Margaret were just friends; he helped her with her taxes.

A jury convicted Margaret of first degree murder. She showed no emotion upon hearing the decision.

Margaret exits prison, where staff members called her a model inmate

High proof. Juror Coreen Kovacs mouthed the words “I’m sorry” to Margaret after the verdict. She later said the other jurors pressured her to vote guilty.

A different juror, however, told American Justice that the evidence against Margaret was so great that no lawyer could have won an acquittal.

Amador later admitted that the reason Margaret looked scared, feeble, and weak during the trial had more to do with staging than any real circumstances. “That was no accident,” Amador told American Justice. “That was a $450-an-hour makeup artist I hired from a modeling agency”

Sprung! On August 31, 2001, Judge Joseph Bonaventure gave Margaret a life sentence.

She served some of her time at Southern Nevada Women’s Correctional Facility, later renamed Florence McClure Women’s Correctional Center.

An old classified ad from Ron Rudin 's real estate business — As this old classified ad shows, Ron Rudin created jobs — or at least gigs — thanks to his success in real estate development

In 2020, the Nevada Department of Corrections agreed to release Margaret early to settle her lawsuit over alleged civil rights violations stemming from the way she was treated in prison.

Enterprises no more. She told the media that she planned to move in with her daughter in Chicago and write books about her time in captivity. Margaret again proclaimed her innocence, blaming the Las Vegas police for her “wrongful” conviction. They “testi-lyed,” she said.

Yehuda Sharon made the news again in 2020 after he accused police of neglecting to investigate a burglary in his residence. The Las Vegas resident remains a fuzzy character who has said he supports himself as a software developer or as a seller of holy oils for church use. Some speculated his main occupation was gigolo, according to true-crime author Suzy Spencer, who appeared on Sex, Lies & Murder.

As far as an epilogue for the Rudins’ businesses, they appear to be no more. A check-cashing business moved into Ron’s old real estate office and Margaret’s nearby antiques shop was replaced by an X-rated video store.

Wait, there’s more. The house on Alpine Place, which was fortified outside but couldn’t protect Ron Rudin inside, was torn down. A commercial building now occupies the space.

You can watch the Mugshots episode on Ron Rudin on YouTube. You can see the Sex, Lies & Murder for free if you sign up for a trial subscription to Reelz.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

Joe and Shannon Agofsky: Cruel Intentions

Thieving Brothers Force a Banker to Die in Terror
(“Stick ’em Up,” Forensic Files)

Joseph and Shannon Agofsky probably didn’t need to commit homicide in order to rob a bank, and they definitely didn’t need to do it in such a sadistic way.

Like villains from a James Bond movie, the brothers bound Dan Short to a chair, tormented him with a cruel claim, and threw him into a lake while he was still alive.

Unlike 007, Short had no chance of escape. The father of two drowned.

Missouri misery. Clearly the perpetrators were heartless, but didn’t they realize that adding murder to their thievery all but guaranteed they’d never exit prison on two feet? (Alvin Bellamy was convicted of multiple armed bank robberies but got out after just eight years because no one died.)

For this week, I looked for any information about the Agofsky brothers’ motives and upbringing that might explain their inhumanity and recklessness. I also searched for some background on Dan Short, whose death stunned Noel, a town of 1,000 people on the Elk River in southwestern Missouri.

A lot has happened since the Forensic Files episode “Stick ’em Up” first aired in 2006, so let’s get going on the recap along with additional information culled from internet research and recent interviews:

Tend to the lens. On Oct. 6, 1989, cashier Pauline Coonrod arrived at the State Bank of Noel to find the door unlocked and the vault open.

Local police and an FBI agent from Joplin found that $71,000 in paper money and 320 pounds of wrapped coins worth $4,000 were missing. On the floor lay two spent 45-caliber shell casings. The robbers had shot out the security camera lens, covered it with spray paint, and tipped it away from the lobby. They left no fingerprints and set off no alarms.

In the aftermath of the heist, no one could find the bank’s president, Dan Short. He had the keys to the front door and access to the vault, which made him a suspect.

Hounds released. After a split with his wife, Dan was having problems adjusting and at times had turned to alcohol, his daughter, Melanie, later told investigators, according to the Swamp Murders episode “Run for the Money.”

Shannon, left, was supposedly the brains, rather than brother Joe — Shannon, left, was supposedly the brains, rather than big brother Joe

Maybe Dan Short was looking for a new, cash-infused start.

County sheriffs coordinated a search effort using tracker dogs and helicopters that flew so low that Noel residents had to raise their voices to talk, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

Secret treasure. And talk they did. The crime was pretty much the only topic of local conversation, according to Gerald E. Elkins, a newspaper reporter who appeared on the Forensic Files episode.

Soon, investigators discovered that the bank had a second, secret vault that only Dan Short had the key for, and it contained $100,000. If he wanted to steal from the bank, why would he leave the extra cash there?

And disarray at his house suggested something bad had happened to him. Someone had rifled through drawers and upended his wastebasket. His glasses, which he always wore, lay on a dresser. The spot where he normally parked his vehicle was empty except for debris— neckties, newspapers, and letters emptied out of the back.

Spouse scrutiny. Police found Dan’s red four-wheel-drive Dodge pickup abandoned at a parking lot for Sibley Industries on Toga Hill Road outside of town. The vehicle had no prints other than Short’s.

At first, the victim’s estranged wife of 23 years, Joyce Short, drew suspicion. Although she’d been a popular and well-respected gym teacher and coach for the Noel public school system, she was also the beneficiary of $200,000 in payouts from Dan’s life insurance policies.

Noel was known for Christmas, cabin rentals, and canoe paddling, not kidnapping and murder

But police found no solid evidence pointing in her direction.

Security upgrades. Joyce, who lived in St. Louis with son Scott while he attended a private high school and Melanie was away at college, defended Dan’s reputation. “He didn’t do drugs. He didn’t gamble. He didn’t associate with rough tough people,” she told an AP reporter.

Despite $75,000 in rewards funded by area banking organizations, “the consensus of people coming in and out of my post office is [the case] will never be solved,” Postmaster Bill Poage told the AP, which also reported that some worried residents installed floodlights around their houses for extra protection.

“After the first day, we had hope,” Dan’s brother Bob Short later told the AP. “Even the second day, we thought that maybe they had just tied him up somewhere.”

Bound for death. On Oct. 11, 1989, five days after the robbery, a couple fishing for bass reported seeing a body floating on Grand Lake in Oklahoma, 21 miles from Noel.

Someone had duct-taped a man to an antique wooden chair, weighted it with a concrete block, attached a 30-pound hoist chain, and dropped it off Cowskin Bridge on Highway 10.

Joyce Short was protective of her husband despite their rift

The victim’s wallet ID’ed him as Dan Short, born July 19, 1938.

Good citizen. His murder took a toll on not only his family — Dan remained close to his kids despite the marital woe — but also the community.

Dan started the president job at the State Bank of Noel in 1983, and he also did radio commentary on local sports and served as grand master of Noel’s annual Christmas parade.

When Noel school principal Rocky Macy and friends established a local newspaper, the Elk River Courant, Dan penned sports columns free of charge.

Nice guy remembered. “Dan Short was a great writer,” Macy told ForensicFilesNow.com during a phone interview on Oct. 31, 2020. “He was a very nice guy, and he’d been a guest in my house.”

At Dan’s funeral, some of his columns were read aloud, Macy recalled in his blog.

A TV series titled Lost Cause suggested that Dan might have caused ill feeling in the community because economic problems spurred the bank to repossess some customers’ belongings and decline to provide credit to others.

But a different media account said that Dan was compassionate and would actually bend the rules a bit to help out people in financial need.

Tape-up job. With the victim identified, investigators busied themselves with the forensics.

Authorities released a photo of the spindle-backed death chair in hopes that someone would recognize it.

A lab rejoined the cut-up duct tape.

Well-traveled. Around the same time, concerned citizen Rowdy Foreman picked up a stray piece of tape near Grand Lake and turned it over to police. It fit perfectly with the rest. And remnants of the wooden chair used to bind Dan Short clung to the adhesive.

Police got tips that locals Joe Agofsky, 23, and Shannon Agofsky, 18, had been talking about coming into money.

The brothers had grown up in Noel, and Joe had at one time wanted to become a sheriff’s deputy. Shannon, who stood 6-foot-3-inches tall and liked to keep himself fit, was thinking about a career as a bodyguard, according to Rocky Macy’s blog.

Women to the rescue. At first, the duo seemed to have alibis. Joe’s fiancée, Shayna, and her brother, Lloyd Tuttle, said that Joe was with her at her house in Carterville, Missouri, the night of the robbery.

Likewise, the Agofskys’ mother, Sheila Agofsky Billbe, claimed Shannon was at her house after coming home from teaching a karate class. He wasn’t feeling well and she saw him asleep in his bed around the time of the crime, Sheila said.

The investigation continued for two years. Although discouraged by the wait, local businesses and houses kept yellow ribbons, along with the usual Christmas decorations, on their doors to signify their desire for justice for Dan Short.

Loose lips. Unsolved Mysteries produced a segment about the case and asked for tips. Syndicated series Hard Copy reenacted the crime and solicited help as well.

The Agofskys’ names surfaced again amid more reports that they were throwing a lot of money around. After the bank robbery, both brothers, who were unemployed, purchased cars with cash, according to the FBI Files episode “Blood Brothers.” Shannon reportedly bragged that he was the richest teenager in the country, according to Lost Cause.

Joe had taken Shayna to Disneyland (yes, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride incentivized a horrific crime) and bought her a ring, Swamp Murders reported.

Unlikely trust-funders. And it turned out that Sheila Agofsky owned a brown-and-tan van like the one a passerby reported seeing on the bridge around the time of Dan Short’s murder. Other witnesses saw the brothers wipe off fingerprints from their bullets before loading their guns and recognized the chain used in the murder as those once seen in Sheila Agofsky’s residence.

Still, at first, there was one big factor that cast doubt on the Agofsky brothers’ involvement: Years earlier, they came into a lot of money honestly.

Every December, thousands route cards via Noel’s post office to snag its Christmas stamp

In 1980, the boys’ father, Joe Agofsky Sr., who worked for Pressure Control Inc., an Oklahoma company that did trouble-shooting for oil rigs, died in a plane crash while returning from a business trip in Mexico. The twin-engine Piper Navajo ran out of fuel, hit the ground, and burned in Soto La Marina, killing all seven people on board, according to newspaper accounts from 1980.

Just out of reach. The boys, ages 9 and 14 at the time of the tragedy, were entitled to trust funds as a result of their father’s death. Joseph Jr. reportedly nabbed $75,000 from his trust.

But Shannon couldn’t get at his payout until he turned 21.

After receiving subpoenas, Joe and Shannon said they had nothing to do with the robbery-murder.

Buddy squeals. Meanwhile, the FBI started leaning on an Agofsky associate named Gant Wesley Sanders, reminding him he had no alibi and threatening him with prison time if he withheld information about the murder-robbery.

Gant, who had gone to high school with Joe and briefly roomed with Shannon, finally cracked in 1990. He said Joe Agofsky had talked about the possibility of kidnapping a bank president and forcing him to open the vault. (Authorities ultimately concluded Gant had nothing to do with the robbery-murder, and he got immunity on a gun charge.)

Police obtained a complete set of fingerprints from Shannon and got a match on the errant piece of duct tape from the crime scene — despite having soaked in water, the tape bore a fingerprint.

Conspicuous consumption. A wiretap picked up Shannon asking Joe if he could face charges on the Short case. Still, authorities needed more evidence tying Joe Agofsky to the crime.

After studying Joe’s financial history, investigators found that he had made $19,000 in cash purchases from Oct. 6, 1989, to Jan. 31, 1991, while he was jobless.

Without fisherman Rowdy Foreman’s
help, Shannon Agofsky
would have gotten away
with murder

His total spending around the time included $800 in cash for a vacation car rental, $44,500 to buy a house and some adjoining land, and an unspecified amount for new furniture.

Bye, bye, alibi. Shannon, the prosecution argued, needed money because he was too old to continue receiving $600 to $800 a month from his late father’s Social Security — but too young to tap into the trust fund.

Meanwhile, Joe’s alibi disintegrated when FBI agent Ladell Farley discovered Joe made long distance phone calls to Shayna’s house during the time of the robbery when he said that he was home with her.

Investigators also discovered that Joe had rented a safe deposit box in the bank, probably to get its floor plan, and asked questions about who the president was and where he lived.

Gant, whose father had helped remodel the bank, said that Joe asked him for the blueprints, the Springfield News-Reader reported.

Anonymous participant. Investigators believed that, before dawn on Oct. 6, 1989, the brothers abducted Dan Short from his house in Sulphur Springs, Arkansas. Dan had two friends over earlier that night, and the Agofskys might have staked out the house and sprung into action as soon as Short’s pals left.

They had already loaded their mother’s brown-and-tan van with equipment needed for the crime.

An unidentified accomplice served as lookout and driver.

Utter inhumanity. The Agofskys made Dan open the outer vault, took the money, abandoned his truck, and carried out their plan to execute him.

Shannon took off one of his gloves while tying Dan Short to the chair, leaving the fingerprints on the duct tape.

John Douvris, a jailhouse informant, would later testify that Shannon claimed to have taunted Dan Short by lowering the chair, then lifting it up again as he begged for his life — and telling Dan that his wife, Joyce, was the one who wanted him dead.

Already caged. When they threw Dan over the side of the bridge, one of the chair legs broke, releasing the piece of tape.

An autopsy proved Dan was still breathing when they tossed him into the water.

Police arrested the Agofsky brothers in March 1992 and charged them with murder. (They didn’t have to look too hard for Shannon; he was incarcerated due to a 1991 conviction for transporting stolen guns.)

Mom on the case. Sheila Agofsky offered a reward to anyone who could help clear her sons of the robbery and murder, but she didn’t specify a dollar amount, according to The Oklahoman.

The trial for robbery kicked off in 1992.

“I’m scared. I’m mad. And I’m in disbelief that it’s gone as far as it has,” Sheila said during jury selection proceedings. Sheila also complained that the jail denied her sons telephone and TV privileges.

Sorry, guys. She claimed that the boys couldn’t have used her van the night of the murder because it had a flat tire and compromised battery.

Yet the prosecution would later produce evidence that Sheila had tried to sell the van in 1989 and said in a newspaper ad that it “runs good.”

After seven-weeks, the trial ended in convictions.

U.S. District Judge Russell Clark sentenced the brothers to life without the possibility of parole plus a concurrent 10 years for conspiracy to commit armed bank robbery and use of a firearm during a violent crime.

A mother’s love. “The system works,” Joyce Short said after the sentencing. “The sunshine feels good on my back.”

The judge also ordered Shannon to pay $71,562.25 in restitution all by himself since Joe Jr. needed what little money he had to support a baby son he shared with Shayna, the Springfield News-Leader reported. Joe used $40,000 from his trust fund to cover legal costs, according to one media account.

Shayna and Sheila Agofsky vowed they would fight on to prove Joe and Shannon’s innocence. In 1993, Sheila pledged to sell her house and a rental property to finance her sons’ defense for the upcoming murder trial.

Spoiling for a fight. Sheila tried a little victim-smearing as well, saying Dan Short’s murder was drug related and that he “knew too much, drank too much, and talked too much,” the Oklahoman.com reported.

Meanwhile, Dan Short’s family and friends had to wait until 1997 before authorities could put together a solid homicide case and pull the trigger on a trial.

But once they did, the prosecution, led by Ben Loring, presented a battalion of witnesses — 60 in all. One of them testified to having seen Joe’s blue pickup truck at Dan Short’s house on the night of the murder.

In denial. And the prosecutors trotted out some high-impact prose. Assistant D.A. Eddie Wyant dubbed the chair used in the murder an “execution contraption.” Assistant U.S. attorney Mike Jones called the fingerprints on the tape a “smoking cannon.”

Defense lawyer Waco Carter produced just three witnesses, including Sheila and the boys’ uncle.

Carter argued that the fingerprint evidence wasn’t wholly intact.

Mechanical dude. Joe’s lawyers, John Woodard and David Autry, put Joe on the witness stand, where he claimed, “I have never considered robbing a bank before, and I never will.”

Joe maintained that he had enough money left from his trust fund to live on. Furthermore, he could make money doing auto-body work from his home if need be.

″We are innocent and we should be allowed to go home to our family where we belong,″ Joe said in court. He accused the FBI and state of fabricating evidence and claimed the judge had it out for the Agofskys.

Blame the bank. Shannon declined to take the stand, but his jailhouse acquaintances were happy to talk.

Wayne Pennington said Shannon had laughed about the murder. John Douvris claimed Shannon planned to murder FBI Agent Ladell Farley and that Shannon even spoke of killing Joe and Shayna because they were both present during the crime. (Shayna was never charged or prosecuted.)

The defense lawyers called the snitches liars and the investigators Keystone Cops. The team also tried to trash the bank’s reputation, alleging it had sloppy procedures and problems with the FDIC. Short’s death was tied to an alleged money-laundering scheme involving his bank, the Agofsky lawyers claimed.

Devil-may-care. Autrey contended that the prosecution’s case didn’t make sense because Short’s body surfaced upstream — rather than downstream — of the bridge.

Defense lawyer Richard Anderson implored the jury not to “do damage to your souls” by ignoring any reasonable doubt.

Another defense lawyer, Debbie Maddox, instructed Shannon — who managed to look pleasant and unthreatening throughout the trial — to turn his chair toward the jury members. She asked them to gaze into his innocent-looking eyes, and implored, “I beg you, I invite you to stare him down.”

Aggrieved family speaks. She held onto Shannon’s arm when the jury returned with the guilty verdict against him.

According to Tulsa World, Shannon’s “ever-present friendly expression remained unchanged.” He turned to his family and assured them that everything would be all right.

But there was more adversity in store for Shannon before the sentencing.

During the victim impact statements, multiple members of Dan Short’s family spoke of experiencing the same nightmare in which they heard Dan begging for his life.

Run-on sentence. Dan’s daughter, Melanie, was particularly emotional. “For the rest of my life, I will always have bittersweet feelings about such things as cutting a Christmas tree or watching a Cardinals game,” she tearfully told the court.

Shannon said he had no regrets about the murder because he didn’t commit it and asked spectators to think of him if someday one of their loved ones was unjustly accused.

He received another life sentence for the murder.

Why the brutality? Without forensic evidence placing Joe at the murder scene, the jury couldn’t agree on a verdict. Prosecutors didn’t try Joe again because he already had life for the bank robbery.

No one ever indisputably ID’ed the third accomplice.

Despite all the media coverage before, during, and after the murder, one question remained: What turned two middle-class brothers into ritualistically savage killers?

Dark matriarch. A longtime Noel resident who knew the Agofskys — and asked to remain anonymous because of safety concerns — told ForensicFilesNow.com that Sheila Agofsky indulged her sons in a way that probably shaped a narcissistic criminality.

“I’m sure if anytime there was an issue of authority, Sheila would say to her sons, ‘you don’t have to listen to them,”’ the source said. “She was mean as a snake and very smart. Shannon was very bright, too. I think Shannon would have been the boss and Joe would have been the assistant” in the robbery-murder.

Apparently, the Agofsky brothers felt confident that they could get away with anything and saw Dan Short’s murder as cinematic fun.

Not a pen pal. Indeed, even behind bars, Shannon wasn’t done killing.

In 2001, at the U.S. Penitentiary at Beaumont, Texas, Shannon and another prisoner shared an exercise cage where the prison apparently allowed inmates to fight — but not to the death.

Shannon, who had training in martial arts, stomped down on Luther Plant’s head and neck.

It’s all on tape. A video camera recorded the attack, which showed Plant “as he died, with his arms and legs twitching, his face bloody and mangled,” according to an AP account.

Plant, who was serving 15 years for arson and gun charges, drowned in his own blood.

A photo from Shannon Agofsky’s
Facebook page

After three days of deliberation, a jury convicted Shannon in 2004, rejecting his claims of self-defense. Again, Shannon showed no emotion upon hearing a guilty finding.

He received a death sentence.

Social-media presence. Shannon has not been executed and resides in the U.S. Penitentiary at Terre Haute, Indiana, as of this writing.

He has a Facebook page, although it hasn’t been updated since 2013. An innocence website for him posted as recently as 2018.

Older brother Joe Agofsky died of natural causes in a North Carolina federal prison at the age of 46 on March 5, 2013.

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

Watch the episode on YouTube

Bart Corbin: Homicidal Dentist

Jennifer Corbin’s Murder Explains Dolly Hearn’s Death
(“Insignificant Others,” Forensic Files)

In 1995, Jennifer Monique Barber had recently finished college and was plotting out her career while bartending at a Barnacle’s seafood restaurant in Georgia. A bouncer named Bob Corbin introduced her to his older brother.

Bart Corbin picture here in his early 30s — Bart Corbin pictured here in
his early 30s

Bart Corbin, D.D.S., must have seemed like a great catch. He was working hard to build up his dental practice, loved kids, and looked almost as sculpted as a Calvin Klein model. He was even three whole inches taller than Jennifer, who stood at around six feet.

Hidden past. After they married, Jennifer got a job teaching preschool at the Sugar Hill Methodist Church. By 2004, Jennifer, 33, and Bart, 40, had two sons, a four-bedroom house, a houseboat, and wonderful friends. Jennifer was outgoing and friendly. Bart was witty.

But there was one medium-sized problem: Jennifer and Bart were having affairs.

And one large problem: Bart was a murderer.

He’d shot girlfriend Dorothy “Dolly” Hearn in 1990 after she broke up with him. He successfully staged the scene as a suicide.

Jennifer Barber Barton wearing sunglasses — Jennifer Barber Corbin

Not this time, buddy. Like a number of Forensic Files villains (Barbara Stager and David Copenhefer), Bart got away with murder once and just couldn’t resist trying it again.

In 2004, Bart killed Jennifer in the same way, except this time, authorities figured out what happened and reopened Dolly Hearn’s case as well.

For this week, I looked around for information on Bart’s early life that might explain why he adopted homicide as a remedy for relationship problems. I also checked on his whereabouts today.

Healthy bromance. So let’s get going on the recap of Forensic Files episode “Insignificant Others” along with extra information from internet research.

Barton Thomas Corbin was born on Dec. 22, 1963, in Jacksonville, Florida, and brought up in Snellville, Georgia, with his fraternal twin, Brad, and younger brother, Bob. Their mother, Connie, worked as a bank teller. Their father, Eugene, was a military police officer who later started a chemical company.

During childhood, Bart and Brad dressed in identical outfits and were best friends, according to the mass-market paperback The Doctor’s Wife by John Glatt.

Gridiron guy. After watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer for the first time, Bart decided to become a dentist like Hermey the misfit elf, according to The Doctor’s Wife.

At one point in his youth, Bart was overweight, according to Glatt’s book. He began working out and acquired a chiseled look that women liked.

Bart played football in high school and then got his bachelor’s degree at the University of Georgia. Academically, he was competent but unexceptional.

He reportedly felt inadequate sometimes because Brad was more of a scholar.

Parent pleaser. Friends from dental school who spoke to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for a story dated Jan. 16, 2005, recalled Bart as a good guy who sometimes displayed a bad temper. In fact, all three Corbin brothers were loud and excitable, a condition they facetiously called “pseudo Tourettes,” according to Glatt’s book.

Jennifer and Bart Corbin's 3,200-square-foot house in Buford, Georgia — The Corbins’ 3,200-square-foot house at 4515 Bogan Gates Drive in Buford, Georgia

Still, by all accounts, Bart was fun to be around most of the time. He was musical and enjoyed going to dance clubs.

Soon after Bart and Jennifer began dating, he hit it off with her parents, Narda and Max Barber. They respected him for his industriousness.

Dedicated dad. The Barbers had only one reservation about Bart. According to Ann Rule’s book Too Late to Say Goodbye, he used a lot profanity and didn’t bother to clean up his language when he was around the Barbers.

Nonetheless, they were thrilled when the couple announced they were expecting a baby and wanted a big wedding. They married on Sept. 1, 1996, and went on to have sons Dalton and Dillon.

Bart crafted himself into a model citizen. He spent one day a month providing free dental care to patients in need. He visited Dalton’s kindergarten class to talk about dentistry, and coached Dalton’s baseball team.

Sociable duo. Some acquaintances recalled Bart rebuking Dalton harshly when he underperformed in a game, but most described Bart overall as a nice father.

Jennifer acquired a reputation for kindness at her nursery school job. She had a “warm lap and sheltering arms” for her students, according to the Ann Rule book.

She was also a livewire who enjoyed a good mojito.

The couple had many friends in Buford, a town of 14,000 people 35 miles from Atlanta.

Child confronted by scene. Neighbors Kelly and Steve Comeau grew so close to Jennifer and Bart — whose son shared a birthday with their daughter — that they named the Corbins as guardians for Stephanie, their only child, in case of a tragedy.

Bart and Jennifer Corbin in a boat. — Bart and Jennifer Corbin were both friendly, fun-loving, and close to their families

The Comeaus never imagined that a tragedy would happen so soon or that it would involve Jennifer.

On Dec. 10, 2004, Dalton, 7, entered his parents’ room to ask for breakfast. He found his mother dead and bleeding with a revolver by her side. He ran to the Comeaus’ house for help.

Histrionic Husband. Police discovered Jennifer with a bullet to the head, divorce papers under her body, and a gun tucked into the coverlet of her dark-wood canopy bed.

Upon learning of Jennifer’s death, Bart broke down emotionally and threw up in the bathroom, his brother Bob Corbin told 48 Hours Mystery.

Bart at first seemed to have an alibi. He was with friends at the Wild Wing Cafe bar in Suwanee and had the receipt to prove it. Afterward, Bart said, he drove one of his friends home and spent the night at Bob’s house.

Game girl. Once Jennifer died, it didn’t take long for word to get out about the adultery on both sides of the marriage. The couple had separated at some point; Jennifer wanted a divorce, but Bart filed first and requested custody of the kids.

He was having an affair with a married dental hygienist named Dara Prentice (it’s unclear whether that’s a pseudonym), according to Ann Rule’s book.

Jennifer had fallen in love with someone she met online while playing the fantasy game EverQuest.

Dolly Hearn helping a dental patient — Dolly Hearn was in her senior year of dental school when she died

Female trouble. She and her internet connection, Chris, emailed each other feverishly and talked about a future together.

Shortly before Jennifer died, however, she found out that Chris, who purported to be a man, was actually a woman named Anita Hearn (no relation to Dolly Hearn).

Here’s where the story gets a little hazy. On 48 Hours Mystery, Anita Hearn said that after some shock upon learning of the deception, Jennifer decided to accept her as a love interest regardless of gender.

Fuzzy facts: “Did you ever meet someone who could finish a sentence for you but that lived 800 miles away?” said Anita, who resided in a modest house in St. Joseph, Missouri.

Anita explained that she portrayed herself as a man at first because EverQuest involved role-playing. She also claimed that her new friend feared her husband would kill her.

Other media accounts suggest Jennifer was having an affair with a genuine man, but it’s unclear whether they were mixing up the facts about her relationship with Anita or the male love interest really existed. Records showed that Jennifer was on the internet and phone with Anita the day she died.

What a heel. Divorces are never fun, but there were some early hints this one would get particularly ugly.

On Dec. 1, 2004, Jennifer called police to complain that Bart stole her diary and flip phone, bolted out of the house wearing only a towel, and ran over her foot with his yellow Mustang, according to the Barbers.

Barbara Hearn during her appearance on Forensic Files — Barbara Hearn during her
appearance on Forensic
Files

Corporal Dan Huggins, the officer who responded to the call, would later say that, because Jennifer declined medical treatment, the police couldn’t take action against Bart for domestic violence.

Odd pathway. In an earlier incident, on the couple’s way back from Thanksgiving at the Barbers’ house, Bart looked in Jennifer’s purse and found a romantic email from Chris, who he assumed was a guy. (Bart shouldn’t have gone through Jennifer’s bag but, yikes, what was she thinking printing out a love email?)

Jennifer and Bart had a fight in the car, and he allegedly hit her.

On the day that Jennifer died, police discovered a rather fishy crime scene. The entry wound was toward the back of Jennifer’s head, behind the right ear, traveling toward the front — an awkward trajectory for a self-inflicted shooting.

Informers help cops. She had no gunpowder residue on her hands and the weapon was tucked into the bedding, not an easy feat for someone who took a fatal bullet to the brain.

Once the investigation got underway, Bart clammed up and hired a lawyer.

Against the Barbers’ wishes, Bart had Jennifer cremated.

The investigation really started to heat up when tipsters told police about Dolly Hearn’s death back in 1990.

Family tradition. Dolly, 28, may have been saddled with a nickname 200 years out of date, but she looked as though she stepped out of a 1980s Van Halen music video.

Yet Dolly’s ambitions were higher than her hair. She was following in her father’s footsteps to become a dentist.

A newspaper clip of Dolly Hearn playing softball next to a shot of her with her hair and makeup done on Christmas day — Dolly Hearn was athletic as well as glamorous-looking

Dolly met Bart when they were attending dental school at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta.

Refusal to get lost. In his last year of school, Bart was “alternately despondent and furious” when Dolly broke up with him, according to his buddy Eric Rader, who spoke to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Friends would later say that Bart didn’t mind being the one to end a relationship, but he couldn’t handle the reverse.

Dolly took Bart back but soon regretted it and ended the relationship for good.

Bart wouldn’t let it go. The Hearns said that he put hairspray in Dolly’s contact lens case, sabotaged her coursework, let the air out of her tires, and removed the gas cap from her car. He kidnapped Dolly’s cat, Tabitha.

Case abandoned. The Hearns asked Bart to knock off the stalking, and they gave Dolly a .38-caliber gun for protection.

On June 6, 1990, Dolly’s roommate found her shot to death on the couch in their apartment at 3077C Parrish Road in Augusta.

Dolly’s mother, Barbara Hearn, told Forensic Files she always knew that her daughter didn’t commit suicide, but authorities never made a determination, and let the case turn cold. A private coroner the Hearns hired concluded that Dolly killed herself.

Timeline shapes up. When authorities reopened the Dolly Hearn case, they took note that Dolly lacked blood splatter or gunpowder residue on her right hand, even though the bullet hit her on the right side.

Prosecutors theorized that Bart stopped by Dolly’s apartment, then collected her gun on his way to the bathroom, shot her, and positioned her body and the gun.

As for Jennifer Corbin’s death, investigators discovered that Bart canceled a marriage counseling appointment beforehand, suggesting he knew she wouldn’t be around.

Jennifer Corbin's sisters, Rajel
Caldwell and Heather Tierney,
listen to court proceedings — Jennifer Corbin’s sisters, Rajel
Caldwell and Heather Tierney,
listen to court proceedings

Not cut out for the slammer. Prosecutors believe that in between the time Bart dropped off his buddy and went to his brother’s place, he stopped by the house in Buford at around 2 a.m. on December 10, 2004, shot Jennifer, and arranged her body so it looked like a suicide, and wedged the divorce papers under her.

In late December 2004, a grand jury indicted Bart on one count of felony murder and one of malice murder. Police pulled over an SUV Bart was riding in — his secretary was driving — and arrested him.

Richmond County Jail boss Charles Toole put Bart in a “special needs” unit along with 15 other inmates not quite up for mixing with the hardcore population of prisoners, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Witnesses materialize. Bart’s mother and one of his brothers visited him in jail.

Meanwhile, investigators got two great tips about Dolly’s death. A neighbor came forward to report she saw Bart’s silver Monte Carlo parked at Dolly’s apartment complex the day she died. And Bart’s former school buddy Eric Rader said that Bart begged him not to tell investigators that he knew Dolly kept a gun in her apartment.

A neighbor also reported seeing Bart park his Chevrolet pickup at his and Jennifer’s house for about 20 minutes on the night of her murder.

A newspaper clipping showing Jennifer Corbin and sons Dalton and Dillon

Ready to rumble. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, prosecutor Danny Porter, known for his love of duking it out in the courtroom, was stoked for the main event against defense lawyers David Wolfe and the braid-wearing Bruce Harvey.

The defense hired a jury selection consultant. There were plans to roll out R-rated emails between Jennifer and Anita in court.

Jennifer, the defense alleged, turned to suicide over the failure of her marriage and possibility Bart would win custody of their sons.

Victims’ families unified. “We will take the high road,” Bart’s supporters wrote on the now-abandoned innocence website friendsofbartcorbin.org, “and appeal to you to support Bart and wait for the truth to come out at trial and for the falsehoods to be exposed and swept away as what they are.” They also solicited donations for his legal fund.

At the same time, the Hearn and Barber families supported each other emotionally and sometimes held hands during the early court proceedings.

Dozens of witnesses were lined up to testify. Ann Rule had tickets to fly in to Georgia for the trial.

‘Gotta cancel.’ But the showdown never happened.

Brad Corbin and his wedding party — Bart and Jennifer, left, at Brad Corbin’s wedding. Bob is far right

Bart and his legal team saw their defense evaporate when Bart’s buddy Richard J. Wilson admitted he gave Bart the gun that killed Jennifer.

The revelation spurred a bombshell: On September 19, 2006, Bart admitted to both murders in a plea deal to avoid the death penalty.

Fry, guy. Defense lawyer David Wolfe said that Bart made the decision in an effort to spare the Hearn and Barber families from the emotional strain of a trial.

Max Barber, Jennifer’s father, told the court that Bart was doing the right thing by admitting his crimes — but that he hoped he burned in hell anyway.

Stonefaced defendant. “To hear him say out loud that he killed the two girls, that’s huge,” said Jennifer’s friend Bridge Kamarad, the Gwinnett Daily Post reported.

Carlton Hearn Jr., one of Dolly Hearn’s brothers, stated that Bart “disgraced his profession and he has stolen from the world. He deserves no place in society.”

Records showed that on the day she died, Jennifer was on the phone and internet with Anita Hearn

Bart, who remained expressionless, declined Superior Court Judge Michael C. Clark’s invitation to speak before the sentencing.

Tributes established. He received two concurrent life prison sentences and started his life of JPay and weekend visitors on September 19, 2006.

“We rejoice that this truth has been publicly revealed and that Dolly’s name is now officially cleared,” a statement from the Hearns said. “This nightmare is over.”

In 2007, the Medical College of Georgia awarded Dolly a posthumous Doctor of Dental Medicine degree. Barbara and Carlton Hearn established the Dr. Dolly Hearn Scholarship for dental students who embody PEP — professionalism, empathy, and perseverance.

‘Stay put.’ The Methodist Church where Jennifer taught dedicated the Jennifer Barber-Corbin Memorial Playground to her.

The world hadn’t quite heard the last of Bart Corbin, however. Although he gave up his right to file appeals in Gwinnett and Richmond counties, he made attempts in Georgia state and federal courts.

US District Judge J. Randal Hall dismissed his 2014 appeal because it was filed too late. His other legal salvos failed as well.

Campaign launched early. Today, Bart is inmate #0001226826 at the Central State Prison in Georgia. He no longer looks like Jon Hamm.

The Department of Corrections lists his sentence as life with no possibility of early release, although the Gwinnett Daily Post reported he can try for parole in 2024.

To preempt any attempts, the Hearn family has encouraged the public to write letters and emails of protest to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles.

New tragedy. Meanwhile, Jennifer’s younger sister, Heather Tierney, and her husband, Doug, had taken custody of Dalton and Dillon. They brought them up alongside their own two children. “Taking care of four kids is the easy part,” Heather told 48 Hours Mystery. “Missing Jennifer is the hard part.”

A mugshot of Bart Corbin looking old and worn out — Bart Corbin in a recent prison mug shot. Unlike most Forensic
Files killers, he has stayed
slim while behind razor wire

Sadly, the Corbins’ good friends Steve, 47, and Kelly Comeau, 50, both died in 2010. Bart and Jennifer would have ended up adopting their daughter.

Tabitha, the cat Bart stole from Dolly Hearn, was returned in good shape and lived to the age of 21.

Innate evil. As far as what turned a law-abiding suburban medical professional into a killer, a bad temper like Bart’s might explain murdering in a rage (see fellow dentist Glen Wolsieffer) — but not plotting ahead to kill, stage suicides, and turn his sons into half-orphans.

Bart Corbin was most likely born that way, a typical Forensic Files psychopath who couldn’t stand for a significant other to cut ties with him.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

Patricia Rorrer: An Update

Joann Katrinak’s Killer Still Has Innocence Advocates
(“A Woman Scorned,” Forensic Files)

Patricia Rorrer has been portrayed as a bully, petty thief, neglectful horse owner, and heartless killer — or a sweet, caring friend railroaded by authorities desperate to solve a double-murder case that snagged worldwide interest.

Joann Katrinak wears what you might call a 1980s mullet — Murder victim Joann Katrinak

After Joann Katrinak, the wife of Patricia’s former flame, turned up dead along with her infant son, prosecutors suspected Patricia.

Highly charged case. Patricia’s accusers theorized that she resented Joann’s domestic bliss with the tall, athletic Andrew Katrinak. They allege that the North Carolina resident stealthily drove 500 miles to Pennsylvania and killed out of a sense of deadly indignation. Strands of the accused’s dyed-blond hair at two crime scenes proved it.

Or did they? Aside from the hair, there was almost zero forensic evidence. The state made a case fueled by circumstantial evidence and public outrage over the deaths of a modern-day madonna and child.

More than 20 years after her conviction, Patricia Rorrer still has advocates working to exonerate her.

Meticulous primping. For this week, I looked into the defenders’ reasoning as well as Patricia’s whereabouts today. And because some of Patricia’s advocates have suggested Andrew Katrinak had a motive for murder, I checked into whether he had a life insurance payout to gain upon Joann’s demise.

I also communicated with Patricia via email to get her input on some matters.

So let’s get going on the recap of the Forensic Files episode “A Woman Scorned,” along with extra information drawn from internet research:

Joann Marie O’Connor was born on Oct. 11, 1968, the youngest of Sarah and David O’Connor’s four children.

The Irish-Italian girl had full, fluffy dark hair, olive skin, and a pretty face. She made an effort to look perfectly groomed “even when she took out the trash,” according to her mother, who appeared on Forensic Files.

Great catch. Joann was “fun, likable, beautiful, always happy,” said her sister-in-law Cindy Wiard.

After a very early failed marriage, the 24-year-old Joann scored a new husband in Andrew Katrinak, 38, whom she met at a club. He had worked as a semi-pro boxer in Las Vegas in his youth and later settled into his own construction business.

The couple moved into Andrew’s sturdy brick house at 740 Front Street in Catasauqua, Pennsylvania. They had a son, Alex Martin, in August of 1994.

No show. On December 12, 1994, Joann answered a phone call from a woman she’d never met, Patricia Rorrer, her husband’s onetime girlfriend. She asked to speak with Andrew, who was home during the call; Joann refused.

Three days later, Joann had plans to pick up her mother-in-law, Veronica Katrinak, to go Christmas shopping.

Patricia Rorrer picture on the left in an undated photo and right circa 1997 — Patricia Rorrer in an undated photo, left, and one taken circa 1996

Joann never showed up.

Combination locks. At 10:30 p.m., Andrew reported his wife missing. And yikes, he discovered someone had cut one of the house’s phone lines and pried the hinge on the basement door.

Family members found Joann’s tan Toyota sitting vacant in the parking lot of McCarty’s, a nearby bar. Inside the locked 1992 vehicle, police discovered some strands of blond hair stained with dried blood. DNA testing revealed the blood came from either Joann or her son.

Forensic Files didn’t mention it, but the hairs were actually brown at the top and the rest dyed blond, according to the show Autopsy Six: A Fatal Attraction.

At first, local police suspected Andrew.

Puny policy. Detective Barry Grube found it odd that Andrew fixed the severed phone line before police examined it — in essence tampering with evidence. And Andrew’s explanation of how the intruder got in through the basement door seemed contrived, according to Grube, who gave an interview to Wrong Man, a 2020 true-crime docuseries from the Starz network, which produced two episodes called “The Hang Up” about the Rorrer case.

But investigators conceded they had no solid evidence against Andrew. Plus, he had only a “minimal” life insurance policy on Joann and he passed polygraphs, according to The FBI Files: Family Secrets. His father confirmed his alibi that they were doing construction work together, putting an addition on the house of friends Tom and Kathy Holschwander, at the time of Joann’s disappearance.

The Katrinaks’ four-bedroom two-bath house

Andrew described his existence with Joanne and Alex as a “little Camelot.”

Ex-spouse off list. “I can’t lose them,” he told the media. “That’s my life.”

The state police dropped him as a suspect.

Joann’s first husband, New Jersey construction worker Michael Jack, who had reportedly abused her during their marriage, also had a solid alibi.

Search is on. The police considered the possibility that Joann ran away, a theory disputed by her family. “She’s just extremely happy with Andy,” her brother, Michael O’Connor, told the media. “She’s extremely, extremely happy with the baby. In a million years, she wouldn’t do anything to harm that.”

No activity on her bank account or credit cards took place after the day she went missing, so investigators dismissed the theory that she took her child and bolted.

Meanwhile, the case of the missing mother and baby turned into colossal news across the U.S. and internationally. State police and the Philadelphia division of the FBI appealed to the public for leads. They released a poster of Joann and Alex, noting that the baby had “almond-shaped blue eyes,” weighed 18 pounds, and was circumcised.

Sad discovery. Still, no good leads materialized. “It’s definitely getting rougher every day,” Andrew told the Morning Call. “I don’t even know it’s Christmas.”

Four months after Joann’s disappearance, farmer Paul Kovalchik reported seeing what at first looked like a pile of clothes on his land in Heidelberg Township woods, about 15 miles from the Katrinaks’ house.

On closer inspection, he saw it was the body of a woman. An infant was lying face down on her stomach. Both were deceased.

More hairs there. Police identified the pair as Joann and Alex Katrinak. His favorite rattle, shaped like a phone, lay near the crime scene.

Someone had shot Joann in the face with a .22-caliber pistol, then beaten her about the head — hitting her 19 times in all — with a blunt object. Police couldn’t determine whether the baby died of exposure or suffocation.

On Alex’s diaper bag, police found strands of the same type of hair from the car.

Stable situation. In April 1995, the family buried Joann and Alex in a single bronze casket after a funeral mass at a Bethlehem church.

Andrew mentioned to police that his former live-in girlfriend Patricia Rorrer once managed a horse stable two miles from the bodies’ location and would have been familiar with the riding trails close to the murder scene. (Media sources vary as to whether she actually worked at the stable or just rented a stall there for her own horse.)

Patricia “seemed like the girl next door but all of a sudden, something snapped,” Katrinak later told Wrong Man investigators.

No charmed life. Patricia Lynne Rorrer made for a good suspect. Then 31 years old, she had lived a rocky existence.

She was born on Jan. 24, 1964, in eastern Pennsylvania and moved back and forth between there and Davidson County, North Carolina.

At 17, Patricia dropped out of high school and married landscaper Gary Gabard.

Later, they both worked 12-hour graveyard shifts at a textile factory. Her mother, Patricia Chambers, provided day care for their baby son, Charles.

Trash-talking ex. Patricia Rorrer “was a cold woman. She was always looking for a fight,” Gary Gabard told the Morning Call, which noted that he was “a head shorter” than Patricia.

Once, when a gun-wielding farmer and his buddy caught Patricia and Gary riding motorcycles on his field, Patricia walked up and “got in their faces” and argued, Gary recalled to the Morning Call.

“She is a tough one,” Sheriff Gerald Hege would later tell the Morning Call in a June 29, 1997 interview. “I don’t think she was ever scared until we put the cuffs on her.”

Walmart woe. Patricia’s professional life included short-lived gigs as a Century 21 real estate agent and an Oldsmobile salesperson. In North Carolina, she reportedly enjoyed some success as a horse trader, riding instructor, and rodeo competitor.

Patricia Rorrer with partially blond hair — The smoking gun: This photo proved Patricia Rorrer once had blond hair

But her reputation wasn’t exactly sleek and shiny. She got 12 months of probation for shoplifting at a Walmart in Lexington, North Carolina.

She was also accused of breaking into barns, stealing horses, and underfeeding the ones she owned. But none of those charges ever stuck.

New state, new man. Tragedy also touched Patricia’s life. Charles Robert, the 3-month-old son she had with Gary Gabard, died of sudden infant death syndrome; Patricia found him blue in his crib.

Patricia and her husband broke up after the baby’s death.

After relocating to Pennsylvania, Patricia met the 6-foot-2-inch Andrew in a restaurant. They moved into her house in Salisbury County, staying together for about two years. They broke up in 1993.

Dial-a-problem. Patricia defaulted on her mortgage and then returned to North Carolina, where she eventually moved in with a boyfriend named Brian Ward. Together they had a baby girl, Nicole.

When police traveled to North Carolina to interview Patricia about the murders of Joann and Alex, she said that on the day of the homicides, she had visited a feed store, a tanning salon, and a country music club.

Andrew told investigators that the unpleasant phone call between Joann and Patricia happened just three days before his wife’s disappearance.

Conflicting versions. Patricia’s phone bill showed no record of a call to Catasauqua that day, but police noticed she didn’t make any calls at all from her house in North Carolina that day either — suggesting she could have been out of state and used a pay phone to dial up the Katrinaks.

Brian Ward was Patricia's live-in boyfriend at the time of her arrest — Brian Ward was Patricia’s live-in boyfriend at the
time of her arrest. One theory says that she had the baby with him
to sanitize her image in the wake of the murders

As for the words exchanged on the call between the two big-haired women, Joann told Andrew that Patricia had used profanity; Patricia said it was the other way around. Both sides agree Joann hung up on Patricia.

Police slowly built a case against Patricia. Her alibi about going to the club, called Cowboy’s Nitelife, got fuzzy when investigators discovered she hadn’t signed the guest book on that day. And dance instructor William Jarrett couldn’t remember whether she attended his dance class at the club the night of Joann’s disappearance. On a secret recording, Patricia asked Jarrett to vouch for her attendance or she might go to the electric char.

“Why would somebody tell you, ‘they’re going to fry me,’ if they didn’t do it?” Jarrett told Wrong Man.

Hair we go. As for the murder weapon, police didn’t find a .22 caliber pistol on Patricia’s property, but an ex-boyfriend claimed that she owned one — and it would always jam after one shot.

They also found a photo of Patricia taken 11 days before the homicide. It showed her usually all-brown hair haphazardly highlighted blond. Forensic tests suggested the hair found in the car and at the murder scene came from Patricia.

According to court papers from Patricia 2017 appeal, “DNA on the cigarette butt found near the two bodies belonged to Appellant.” (Prosecutor Michael McIntyre, however, told ForensicFilesNow.com that that the cigarette butt was never actually tested).

Incriminating words. At 6 a.m. on June 24, 1997, police arrested Patricia at her modest house in Linwood, North Carolina, and took her back to Pennsylvania.

Lieutenant Christopher Coble and Sergeant Suzanne Pearson would later testify that Patricia cried and apologized to 18-month-old Nicole, telling the baby, “I’m sorry for doing this to you” and lamenting to the officers that she would never see little Nicole again.

“If I knew I was going to get caught, I never would have brought you into this world,” the arresting officers testified they heard her say to Nicole.

Deal refused. The authorities charged her with two counts of murder. After her arraignment, she had to walk past a crowd of dozens of locals screeching “hang her!” and “baby killer!” Patricia clung to a Polaroid picture showing her and her own little girl.

Prosecutors offered Patricia a plea deal that would take the death penalty off the table, but she declined. “How could I explain to my daughter years later that I took a plea for something I didn’t do?” she said.

At the trial, prosecutor Michael McIntyre alleged that Patricia remained obsessed with Andrew Katrinak long after their breakup — despite testimony that she’d had “many boyfriends and live-in lovers” to occupy her bandwidth.

Kidnapped and killed? Ex-boyfriend Walter Blalock said that Patricia wanted him to be more like Andrew. Another former boyfriend said she talked about Andrew frequently and liked to gaze at old photos of him.

Patricia Rorrer, seen here in custody in a tan jail uniform, dressed up when in the courtroom. She looked more like an educator on parent-teacher night than an accused murderer — Patricia Rorrer in custody

The prosecution alleged that Patricia called the Katrinaks’ house from a pay phone in Pennsylvania. Angry that Joann hung up on her, she stalked her for three days, then broke into her basement and cut the phone line, put a gun to Joann’s head as she was placing Alex in the car, and forced her to drive to the rural area.

After one bullet didn’t kill Joann, the gun locked up, so Patricia had to beat her to death, according to the prosecution. The 5-foot-9-inch-tall Patricia was physically strong, no match for 5-foot-4-inch Joann.

Testimony from Walter Blalock contradicted Patricia’s claim that she never had a gun. He said she did own a firearm, with its serial numbers filed off.

Prosecutor pounds away. And in a piece of salacious testimony, Patricia Rorrer’s half sister, Sandra Ireland, said that in May 1995, about six months after the murder, their mother, Patricia Chambers, stopped by the house and asked her to hold onto or hide a gun, or both. Ireland’s husband buried it in the yard because he didn’t feel comfortable with a firearm inside, she said.

During Patricia’s hours-long turn in the witness chair, Michael McIntyre grilled her relentlessly. According to a Morning Call account from March 5, 1998:

“McIntyre leaned forward conspiratorially like someone trying to persuade another to tell a secret, lowered his voice and said: “Here’s what I want to know: After you killed Joann Katrinak, did you kill that baby or just leave it to die?”

“Sir I would not kill somebody and I definitely wouldn’t kill somebody I never met,” Rorrer said.

Dance defense. The prosecution alleged that after the murder, Patricia drove Joann’s car to McCarty’s parking lot and backed it into a parking space. Those who knew Joann pointed out that she didn’t like to drive in reverse and would have never parked that way.

When Patricia Chambers, seen here outside of court, died in 2001, there was no one to take baby Nicole to visit Patricia Rorrer in prison — After Patricia Chambers, seen here outside of court, died in 2001, there was no one to take Nicole to visit
Patricia Rorrer in prison

But defense lawyer Robert Pfeiffer said that plenty of evidence supported Patricia’s innocence. For one thing, her mother never asked Sandra Ireland to “hide” the gun, and she retrieved it on the way home the next day — she worked as a bus driver and couldn’t take it with her to school.

Plus, two men, her baby’s father and his friend, testified they saw Patricia at the line-dancing club the night of the homicide.

Pal stays true. Pfeiffer and Burke claimed that police Sgt. Suzanne Pearson fabricated quotes from Patricia — including her claim that Patricia said, “I’m going to the electric chair” upon her arrest — because a conviction would boost Pearson’s career.

And Patricia wasn’t all edges. She was bubbly and likable, not disgruntled, according to friend Kathy Barber, who visited her friend in jail.

Other loyal friends and associates attested to Patricia’s kindness toward horses and devotion to her daughter, whom she took along as she worked in stables.

Not gender neutral. A newspaper account described Patricia as a soft-spoken, demure woman who had a sweet Southern accent and wore feminine clothes in court.

It all gave jurors a lot to think about — but only for six hours. They returned with a guilty verdict and a sentence of two life terms.

At the trial, Patricia Rorrer looked more like an educator on parent- teacher night than a tough cowgirl — At the trial, Patricia Rorrer looked more like an educator on parent-teacher night than a tough cowgirl

Advocates for her innocence complain of hype surrounding the case. “Men who murder are conventional, women are sensational,” posits the Worldwide Women’s Criminal Justice Network. “The media love the femme fatale.”

FBI lab blunder. The organization purports that “if there were awards for distorted reporting, the Morning Call…would win high honors.”

The Worldwide Women’s Criminal Justice Network’s website also points to a bombshell: In 2015, the Justice Department acknowledged that most of the team members from an FBI microscopic hair comparison unit gave prosecutors flawed data from 1980 to 2000 that could have unjustly contributed to a number convictions — including Patricia Rorrer’s.

Some lawyers call microscopic hair analysis junk science that today wouldn’t qualify as evidence in a trial like Rorrer’s.

Book her. Further, an early FBI report said the hairs found in the car had no roots — which contain the DNA — suggesting an evidence switcheroo.

But that’s just some of the ammo on Team Patricia’s battleship. She’s attracted the help of writer Tammy Mal (full name Tammy Malinowski O’Reilly), author of Convenient Suspect, a book about the case. And James Pfeiffer and Jim Burke have remained on her side.

They theorize that Andrew Katrinak framed Patricia and that the hostile phone call between Patricia and Joann actually took place not on Dec. 12 as Andrew said but rather on Dec. 7. Phone records confirmed Patricia placed the earlier call from North Carolina, not Pennsylvania.

Great communicator. Patricia’s defenders also say Andrew Katrinak staged the scene at his house by prying the door and cutting the phone line. The phone wire was located at the opposite end of the basement, which was dark. How would an intruder find it?

And the fact that Patricia called Andrew even after he married someone else didn’t mean she was still carrying a torch for him, according to one of her friends. “She just stayed in touch with everybody,” Kathy Barber said in her interview on NBC’s Murder in Lehigh Valley: Keith Morrison Reports in 2017. “And she would just call out of the blue.”

According to the Free Patricia Rorrer page on Facebook:

“I called him to let him know that I was going to the USA finals for a horse show. I was so excited that I called everyone, and Joanne picked up the phone … and she said Andy is married, and I said I know, then she said we have a baby, and I said yea I know, then she said don’t ever call here again. … I was like OK, maybe she was tired, you know with a new baby. …. I really never thought of it again.“

Cop defends accused. The Free Patricia Rorrer page responds to comments from supporters (“How is this even possible that this woman is still in jail?!?!”) and detractors (“This is another bs attempt to free a psycho”).

Barry Grube, one of the few — if not only—police officers sympathetic to Patricia’s cause, noted that Andrew didn’t seem particularly frantic while authorities searched desperately for his wife and son. In TV clips, Andrew didn’t come off as anguished.

Mal told Keith Morrison that Patricia’s dance teacher originally confirmed her alibi that she was in class on the day of the murder, then changed his mind.

Unbloody vehicle. At the state’s request, the instructor wore a wire during a phone conversation with Patricia. Although the prosecution used it as evidence that she was trying to create a false alibi, it actually sounded more like Patricia was simply trying to nail down the facts he had already asserted to her.

And even prosecutor Michael McIntyre, who wrote the book Hair Trigger about the case, acknowledged to Keith Morrison that it was a little odd that the police found blood on the hairs in Joann’s car but nowhere else in the vehicle. If Patricia drove it back from the murder scene after she shot Joann and then beat her to death, luminal would have lit up the interior.

There’s also the matter of a woman who suddenly remembered she saw Joann with another man at a Food Mart store five days after the disappearance. (Disclaimer: I’m not a big fan of eyewitnesses who come forward years after the fact, but it’s possible).

Flaw in reasoning. Another witness, Walter Traupman, who never testified, had told state troopers that on the day of Joann’s disappearance, he saw a couple who looked like Joann and Andrew arguing about the paternity of a baby. Traupman claimed that when he reported the dispute, trooper Robert V. Egan III got mad and practically kicked him out of his office. The police report misspells his name (“Troutman”) and doesn’t include his address, suggesting authorities didn’t want anyone to track him down, according to Patricia’s side. (McIntyre said that Egan ignored Traupman because he was a nut who said that the man he saw arguing with the woman in a car was Hispanic but wearing a fake mustache and a toupee. Traupman died in 2016.)

The Wrong Man investigators Ira Todd and Joe Kennedy have some theories of their own. They noted houses near the murder scene would have heard a gunshot in December, when no farm equipment is making noise, and question why the murderer didn’t just kill Joann inside her house instead of risking being seen in public in her car. (A good point.)

Sarah O'Connor lost a daughter and a grandson — Sarah O’Connor lost a daughter and a grandson

And in another bombshell, Joann’s good friend Karen Devine said Joann planned to leave Andrew after the holidays. “She had a suitcase packed,” Devine said. “She had money put aside. He wanted to move to Colorado and she was against it.”

Nailed? The Free Patricia Rorrer page points to a sliver of a fingernail found at the murder site that didn’t come from either Patricia or Joann.

Despite the new evidence and hypotheses, the courts have rejected all of Patricia’s bids for a new trial.

The Innocence Project has declined to take her case.

Weak wages. Today, Patricia Lynne Rorrer resides in State Correctional Institute at Muncy, a medium and maximum security facility that has the highest rate of cancer of all prisons in Pennsylvania, according to a story from northcentralpa.com.

Patricia Rorrer in a 2020 mugshot — Patricia Rorrer in a 2020 mug shot

The article also notes that most inmates earn around 19 cent an hour at their jobs and must pay $5 each time they need medical attention or medicine.

I was able to email with Patricia via the PrisonConnect platform around Christmastime. She said that she’s no fan of Forensic Files and that the show had “many misrepresentations” about her case and that she’d heard ForensicFilesNow.com mixed up some facts as well. (We didn’t get into the specifics.)

One on one? Patricia also pointed out that when author Tammy Mal “started her research and speaking to me, she was not an advocate at all” — but she reversed and ended up advocating for Patricia’s innocence.

Most of all, Patricia said, she would like a rematch with prosecutor Michael McIntyre.

Now retired, he declined ForensicFilesNow.com’s invitation to spar directly with Patricia via a podcast.

“I most definitely will not personally afford Patricia a platform,” Michael said in an email to ForensicFilesNow.com “She had her chance to answer my questions and tell her story in court over 20 years ago. She failed miserably to convince me, or anyone else who mattered, of her innocence. “

Meanwhile, interest in Patricia’s plight continues on social media. In addition to the Facebook page, there are Reddit threads on her case. On Instagram, I found a post for a two-part Win at All Costs podcast featuring journalism professor Bill Moushey’s interviews with Patricia Rorrer from prison in December 2019.

Media galore. As for an epilogue on ex-flame Andrew Katrinak, he has moved to Colorado and kept a low profile since the trial ended. He gave an audio interview to the Wrong Man investigators when they made a surprise visit to his house, but he declined to appear on camera.

As for Joann’s parents, her father died a year after the murder. “My husband passed away of a broken heart,” Sarah O’Connor said on the Montel Williams Show in 2001. “He would be alive today if it were not for Patricia Rorrer.” The mild-mannered Sarah died in 2019 at the age of 83.

For more on the Katrinak murder case, you can watch Autopsy Six: A Fatal Attraction for free on YouTube.

Murder in Lehigh Valley: Keith Morrison Reports is also available on YouTube, but it costs $1.99 to view (Keith comes off as an advocate for Patricia’s innocence on the episode).

If you subscribe to Hulu and upgrade to Starz (there’s a free one-week trial offer), you can stream the Wrong Man episodes about Patricia Rorrer. The series was produced by Joe Berlinger, who made the Paradise Lost documentaries, which garnered actor Johnny Depp’s attention and ultimately helped free the West Memphis Three.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

A Sheriff Who Traded His Star for a Pen

Harry Spiller Discusses Kathy Woodhouse’s Murder and More in a Q&A
(“A Clean Getaway,” Forensic Files)

Author Harry Spiller with his dog, Bella, whose only crime was being too cute

If there’s one takeaway from Harry Spiller’s career in law enforcement, it’s that criminals are dumb and irrational.

“You almost get to the point where you don’t expect normal things to happen,” says Spiller, who retired from his job as Williamson County sheriff and went on to write 17 history and true-crime books, including the Murder in the Heartland series about homicides in Illinois and Missouri.

Forensic Files watchers may recognize Spiller from his appearance on “Clean Getaway,” the episode about Paul Taylor’s rape and murder of Kathy Woodhouse.

Born and raised in Marion, Illinois, Spiller spent 10 years in the Marines, doing two tours in Vietnam before returning to the Land of Lincoln and donning a sheriff’s badge.

Spiller, who today teaches criminal justice at John A. Logan College, recently gave ForensicFilesNow.com some extra intelligence on the Woodhouse case as well as a couple of other famous homicides that happened 50 years apart.

Edited excerpts of the conversation with Harry Spiller follow:

Do you watch true-crime shows now? They don’t hold my interest as much as other people’s. It’s always, “Can you believe it really happened?” I say, “Ride around with us in a squad car for a while.” You see the way people can treat one another — child abuse, domestic abuse.

Is it true that the area around Herrin, Illinois, is so safe that police almost laughed off the anonymous call reporting Kathy Woodhouse’s murder? The police didn’t really think it was a joke. Everyone wants to think they live in Mayberry, RFD, but we have a lot more crime than what people would imagine.

You mentioned that Kathy’s killer, Paul Taylor, had a tough life. Do you think it drove him to rape and murder? I’m not saying that’s why he did it, but it could be a reason he got off keel.

After years of watching Forensic Files, I’m curious: When ATF or FBI agents join an investigation, does local law enforcement resent it? No, they’re used to working together. Sometimes the FBI would have information it couldn’t share and they’d want us to help but wouldn’t tell us what’s going on, which was difficult. But overall, I have the highest respect for the FBI.

Are there any cases you discuss with students in your work as a professor? I use the Jeff MacDonald Fatal Vision case.

Do you think that Jeffrey MacDonald [a handsome surgeon and Green Beret convicted of stabbing his wife and daughters to death in 1970] is guilty? In court, I think he was railroaded because people didn’t like him because he was cheating on his wife and he didn’t do much to push for looking for another suspect.

Colette, Kimberley, and Kristin MacDonald and Dr. Jeff MacDonald

But, yes, I think he’s guilty.

He took a polygraph, but you can beat a polygraph. He never would take truth serum — if you take that and they start asking you questions, you can’t fake it.

I wrote to Jeff MacDonald and his team, and I asked why he didn’t take truth serum.

He wrote me back and said, “We already have enough evidence to prove I’m innocent.”

Fast-forwarding to today, what’s your take on the case of Jacob Blake, the unarmed black man who a police officer shot in the back multiple times in August 2020? There are times when someone does something and the police have to react quickly — but not in that case. ♣

You can buy Harry Spiller’s books from Amazon or at a discount via his Facebook page or by emailing harryspiller@icloud.com.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

Author: Rebecca Reisner

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Roy Beck: Mullet-Wearing Maniac

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Karyn Slover’s Killers: An Update

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Karen Pannell: Written off Too Soon

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Margaret Rudin: A Gold Digger Craps Out

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Joe and Shannon Agofsky: Cruel Intentions

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Bart Corbin: Homicidal Dentist

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Patricia Rorrer: An Update

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A Sheriff Who Traded His Star for a Pen

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