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Paul Taylor’s Murder of Kathy Woodhouse

He Raped and Killed Before Turning 21
(“Clean Getaway,” Forensic Files)

Forensic Files viewers know the frustration of finding out that the justice system could have prevented a rape and murder if only it doled out a longer sentence the first time the perpetrator committed a sexual assault (Colvin “Butch” Hinton and Thomas Jabin Berry).

Kathy Woodhouse, left, with her daughter. Paul Taylor liked to prey upon petite women double his age

Kathy Woodhouse’s 1992 rape and murder falls into that category. “Clean Getaway,” the episode about the case, mentions that the killer spent some time in a juvenile detention facility before he committed the deadly attack on the mother of three. But the show doesn’t mention what he did to earn his bunk there or why he got out early.

Mysterious ring. For this week, I did some research and learned of the horrible crime he committed at the age of 14. I also looked into his whereabouts today.

So let’s get going on a recap of “Clean Getaway” along with extra information from online sources as well as Murder in the Heartland author Harry Spiller, who gave a phone interview to ForensicFilesNow.com:

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On a Saturday on January 18, 1992, a caller told police that a woman had been raped and murdered in the back of a dry cleaning store in Herrin, Illinois.

Worst case scenario. It sounded like a legitimate concerned-citizen call except for two things: The man didn’t give his name and murders didn’t usually happen in the small town of about 12,000 people in Williamson County.

At first, police believed the call might be a prank.

But when they arrived at Fox’s Laundry and Dry Cleaners, they found a deceased woman beaten about the head, probably with a mop wringer that remained on the scene.

Pandemonium. The murder victim was Kathy Ann Woodhouse, a 40-year-old Herrin native who had three kids ranging in age from 13 to 22 and had been married to Joe Woodhouse for 18 years.

After hearing that something out of the ordinary had happened at Fox’s, Kathy Woodhouse’s mother headed to the scene.

“I saw all these cops around and they wouldn’t let me go inside,” Sybil East later recalled, adding that Kathy’s employer had been planning to transfer her to a store in Marion in just a couple of days.

Not a ‘secrete.’ Police questioned a customer who had left a check for $14.30 on the counter and retrieved her own dry-cleaning..

She gave a police artist a description of the tall white man who poked his head out of the backroom and asked if she needed help as she was exiting the store. The customer guessed the man’s age at 30 to 35.

Police believe Paul Taylor entered the dry-cleaning store shortly after Kathy Woodhouse opened it up in the morning

Unfortunately, lab work on semen recovered from the victim revealed it came from a nonsecretor — someone whose bodily fluids carry no indications of blood type.

Locals shaken. A fingerprint found on the payphone used to make the 911 call didn’t match that of any known offender.

In the meantime, state police Captain William Barrett warned the rattled community to stay alert but not give in to “excess hysteria.”

Early on, police got a tip that threw them off course — and probably mortified a slightly perverted young customer. Kathy had told a friend that an anonymous man called the store and asked what color toenail polish she was wearing.

Nailed. Investigators tracked down the gentleman via phone records. Under police questioning, the suspect, a 25-year-old construction worker, disclosed that he knew Kathy from visiting the store and eventually admitted he made the call. He said it was something he liked to do every so often, but he had no involvement in the murder.

Kathy and Joe Woodhouse with their children. The eldest came from Kathy’s first marriage

Luckily for him, he had an alibi that checked out.

Next up, an anonymous source suggested that the police look at a local man named Paul E. Taylor.

Odds against him. Paul, who was just 20 years old, had led a turbulent life. His parents divorced when he was 2 and his mother was reportedly an alcoholic. She remarried, to a man named Douglas Jackson, and he allegedly would physically assault her and verbally abuse young Paul.

“It’s my understanding that as he grew up and in school, he was picked on because he was extremely poor,” said Harry Spiller.

Paul also ran away and spent some time in a foster home.

By his mid-teens, he had landed at the Louisiana Training Institute, a detention facility for juveniles. But his offenses were way more serious than vandalizing cars or shooting garden gnomes with a BB gun.

Savage teen. In 1984, at the age of 14, Paul entered the women’s bathroom at a Baton Rouge hotel that was hosting a school administrators conference. He grabbed an attendee named Sandra Lott while she was drying her hands, according to court papers.

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After dragging her to a stall, the teenager brandished a butcher knife, told her to take off her clothes, and sexually assaulted her; he made a failed attempted at penetration. When another woman entered the bathroom, he threatened to kill Sandra Lott if she made a sound.

Next, Paul let Sandra dress, forced her to go to a nearby field with high grass, and made her disrobe a second time. The victim, who weighed 84 pounds, said she suddenly realized that if he raped her, he would probably kill her. Sandra fled and got help from a man who gave her his coat and alerted police.

Guess who’s out. Paul evaded capture at first — no one knew his identity yet — but two weeks later, authorities arrested a male who trespassed in the same women’s bathroom. Sandra Lott confirmed him as her attacker.

Harry Spiller during his appearance on Forensic Files

Despite the severity of his assault on Sandra, Paul got a sentence for only the “remainder of his juvenile life,” that is, until he turned 21. He spent the time at both the Louisiana Training Institute, now known as the Jetson Center for Youth, and the low-security Ponchatoula Police Jail.

But Judge Kathleen Stewart Richey let him out a few months early after psychologists said he had made “maximum progress” and recognized the seriousness of his crime. He had a job lined up, and Illinois officials had assured the judge that parole officers would supervise the young man on the outside.

Free to flip burgers. After his release, he moved in with his mother two blocks from the future murder scene, and began working at Hardee’s.

The fast food restaurant used Fox’s to clean employee uniforms.

Paul’s manager at Hardee’s told police that Paul had just quit and had said he planned to return to Louisiana. The law nabbed him as he was leaving a Van Halen concert with friends.

Forensic Files stated that Paul Taylor’s appearance surprised authorities because he didn’t look like the artist’s sketch — but I disagree. The drawing lacked the mustache Paul wore in real life, but the facial features, especially the nose, were very similar. (The composite looked more convincing than the police sketch used to wrongfully convict Richard Alexander of rape.)

Paul Taylor was living in this house on South 16th Street when he murdered Kathy Woodhouse

Nylons afoot. Many YouTube viewers who saw Paul Taylor’s photo expressed surprise that he was only 20 (“in dog years,” wrote Poelo Mokgotho19).

Whatever the case, a partial pair of pantyhose Paul hid under his bed looked similar to a piece of hosiery found near the murder scene. His palm print matched an impression left on a plastic bag near Kathy’s body.

Prosecutors alleged that Paul pulled pantyhose over his face, forced Kathy Woodhouse into the backroom and raped her.

Disturbed dialer. When he heard the customer come in, he took off his stocking mask and greeted her to make sure she wouldn’t come to the backroom, they contended. Then, the 6-foot-2-inch-tall rapist killed Kathy because she could have identified him.

Paul had robbed her purse of $3.

So why did he call the police to report the murder and rape?

“Sometimes you get people — especially the psychos — who think they’re smarter than everyone else,” Harry Spiller told ForensicFilesNow.com. “They have a tendency to think ‘I did it. You can’t catch me.’ You’ve heard about serial killers who write letters to the police.”

Curse in the courtroom. Under questioning, Paul Taylor confessed to the robbery and murder. Later, he reluctantly admitted that he raped Kathy Woodhouse, too.

Still, the case went to trial. In addition to Sandra Lott, the prosecution had Linda Schott, the accused’s first cousin, as a witness.

Paul audibly grumbled the word “bitch” as Linda took the stand. She told the court that he propositioned her for sex and mailed her threatening letters after she declined. He signed his name to the letters and wrote his return address on the envelopes.

Manson wannabe. A prison employee testified that he overheard Paul bragging to another inmate about the murder. Paul said he tried complimenting Kathy Woodhouse on her looks and said her jeans “were like a second skin.” He also confessed to the other prisoner that he “had to have her.” And once he had her, he “didn’t want her anymore” so he murdered her, and his only regret was not wearing gloves, according to the witness.

Paul Taylor definitely had loose lips. Linda Schott testified that Paul told her that he considered Charles Manson his idol and wanted to gather himself a band of followers.

On the defense’s side of the aisle, there was clinical psychologist David Warshauer. He testified that Paul Taylor suffered from alcohol abuse, depression, antisocial personality disorder, and schizotypal personality disorder.

Mother fumes. Nonetheless, on cross-examination, Warshauer admitted that Paul probably knew right from wrong.

For Kathy Woodhouse’s 77-year-old mother, Sybil East — who often held hands with older daughter Nancy Burlison during the trial — the proceedings were an exercise in terse self-control.

“In the courtroom, I couldn’t cry,” Sybil told the Southern Illinoisan years later. “I was just so angry. I wanted to kill him.”

Chamber closes. For a while, it looked as though she might get to see him perish. On Oct. 15, 1992, a jury decided that the case against Paul contained no mitigating factors that would preclude capital punishment. Paul “stared intently” as jurors individually confirmed the decision, according to a Southern Illinoisan account.

Paul Taylor, then 21, received a sentence of death by lethal injection.

But in 2003, Gov. George Ryan gave a blanket commutation to all 167 convicts on death row in Illinois because of inequities in the legal system.

Husband lawyers up. Paul ended up resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole — and he declared that he would stop appealing and resign himself to life behind razor wire unless Illinois reinstates his death sentence.

He later said he had no remorse for the murder but didn’t realize Kathy Woodhouse left three children behind and felt sympathy for them.

In December 1992, Kathy’s widower and children filed suit against Louisiana for letting Paul Taylor out of the juvenile facility early. The release enabled Paul to murder Kathy, they contended. (Of course, if the state kept him until he was 21, he probably would have raped and murdered someone else.)

He got lots of ink. Today, Paul Taylor resides in the Illinois River Correctional Center, a medium-security facility in Canton.

The Illinois Department of Corrections’ website states clearly that the 230-pound inmate — whose collection of tattoos includes a smiley face, a dog, and a rose — is ineligible for parole.

No word on how the Woodhouses fared with the lawsuit, but the family took comfort in an outpouring of support from friends and neighbors. The Southern Illinoisan published a letter written by Frank Starkweather, the minister of the Christian Life Center, where the Woodhouses attended services, to thank the community for its kindness.

Author, author. According to older sister Nancy Burlison, Kathy Woodhouse had experienced a religious awakening in early adulthood.

“Everyday life is so mundane and boring,” Kathy once said. “I want to live in the heavens.”

That’s all for this post. Coming up next week is a Q&A with Harry Spiller, who has studied Paul Taylor’s homicide case and written a set of books on true crime in the Midwest.

Until then, cheers. — RR

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Rachel Siani: Gone at 21

Strip-Club Denizen John Denofa Kills
(“Last Dance,” Forensic Files)

On April 1, 200o, an all-terrain vehicle rider spotted the body of a woman under a bridge in Burlington, New Jersey. She was dressed in jeans and a sweater but had no identification.

Fortunately, a former boyfriend recognized a description that the police released. She was Rachel Siani, 21, a psychology student at Bucks County Community College.

“Body Identified As That of Student,” read one of the first Philadelphia Inquirer headlines about the case.

Tantalizing tale. Although investigators suspected suicide early on, the autopsy proved that Rachel hadn’t killed herself. Someone threw her off the bridge.

In the meantime, another one of Rachel’s associates also called police. William Love worked as a manager at Diva’s International Gentlemen’s Club, where Rachel danced under the name Roxanne, and she hadn’t shown up for work.

Now, media outlets had all they needed for a storyline to hold readers’ interest for years — a commercially attractive murdered woman belonging to a workforce sector that never seems to lose its mystique.

Labeled forever. For headline-writing purposes, newspapers changed Rachael’s ID to “Student-Dancer” and then “Slain Stripper.”

It made the tragedy even worse for her family.

As her cousin Nancy Finan said during her appearance on Forensic Files, “If she worked at an ice cream stand, the headlines wouldn’t say ‘Ice Cream Girl Killed.'”

Big spender. She does have a point. And if they’re going to make “exotic dancer” a woman’s personal brand, maybe headlines should describe a man who patronizes an establishment like Diva’s as a “stripper-paying barfly.”

In the Rachel Siani case, the killer turned out to be just that, a gentlemen’s club frequenter named John “Jack” Denofa.

Where most patrons doled out their money $1 or $2 at a time, Denofa handed out $20’s, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer story.

Dad on the premises. And there was a strange twist. Denofa’s wife not only knew about his visits to Diva’s but also approved of them. She sometimes dropped him off at Diva’s so he wouldn’t drink and drive.

John Denofa — John ‘Jack’ Denofa. Photo by William Thomas Cain/CAIN IMAGES

For this week, I looked into where Jack Denofa is today and why Lisa Denofa tolerated her husband’s behavior. I was also curious to find out how a woman like Rachel Siani, who was brought up in a home with a nice father, ended up doing the kind of work she did.

So let’s get going on the recap of the Forensic Files episode “Last Dance” along with additional information drawn from internet research.

Psych major. Rachel Elizabeth Siani was born on April 18, 1978, and lived in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. When Rachel was a child, her parents divorced and her mother died a few years later.

At the time of Rachel’s death, she was living at home with dad Richard Siani, stepmother Janet Titlow Siani, with whom she reportedly had a good relationship, two brothers, Anthony and William, and two stepbrothers, Thomas and Charles.

Rachel attended community college full time and had completed 57 of 60 credits needed for an associate’s degree. To fund her education, she worked at Diva’s three to five times a week, earning as much as $400 a night. School cost around $1,000 a semester plus books, according to an AP account.

Really, no Camaro? In addition to studying psychology, she took acting classes. Like a lot of shy people who ply the performing arts, she lost her inhibitions when on stage.

Fellow acting students recalled that she came alive when she took part in skits.

So the exotic dancing might have served as an extension of that self-expression.

And maybe she really needed the money. She drove an ancient beaten-up-looking white Lincoln sedan (a gentlemen’s club performer without a red Trans Am?) and lived in a household of seven.

Early suspect. After a third party informed her father and stepmother she worked at Diva’s, they expressed disapproval but accepted that Rachel was an adult who could make her own decisions.

So how did she end up dead under a bridge? Police had found her blood on the bridge, suggesting someone had wounded her before she went over the side, although she probably died from the impact of the fall.

Investigators believe Jack Denofa intended for Rachel Siani’s body to fall into the Delaware River

Investigators immediately zeroed in on a cook who Forensic Files calls Jason Woods and the Oxygen series It Takes a Killer identifies as Spike Davis. The club management had fired him because he wouldn’t leave Rachel alone.

But, whatever his name was, forensic evidence soon cleared him.

Successful entrepreneur. Suspicions turned toward someone else connected with Diva’s, a regular customer named John Denofa, age 35.

Denofa owned Apex Sign Supplies, a wholesale business on Railroad Drive in Warminster, Pennsylvania. It apparently generated enough revenue to underwrite waxing and extensions for exotic dancers and sustain a comfortable upper-middle class existence for Denofa and his wife.

He and Lisa Denofa lived in a four-bedroom three-bathroom house on Deep Creek Way in Buckingham, Pennsylvania.

Nice work if you can get it. The Denofas appeared to be respectable citizens. He served as chairman of his high school alumni association and was generally well liked, although he did fly off the handle when he didn’t get what he wanted, according to It Takes a Killer and the Philadelphia Daily News.

Because he had a DUI on his record from 1999, Jack often stayed over at the Econo Lodge next to the club. As mentioned, his wife knew all about this trips to Diva’s and didn’t object. After at least one of his nighttime outings, Lisa met her husband and one of his exotic-dancing friends for breakfast the next day. (The sight of them must have furrowed the brows of other diners — how did this trio come to be?)

Rachel was Jack’s favorite dancer at Diva’s. He found her charm, thick flowing hair, and blue eyes irresistible and sometimes paid her hundreds of dollars just to sit and talk with him.

Last-stop saloon. By all accounts, the two had no physical relationship outside of the club.

On March 31, 2000, the last night of Rachel’s life, she finished her shift at the club, changed into jeans and a white sweater with a butterfly pendant, and headed to a bar named Sportsters. (It doesn’t exist anymore, but I’m guessing it was that special no-other-options dive.)

Jack Denofa went to Sportsters, too, but in a different car.

Rowdy guy. Everyone ended up back at Diva’s parking lot. Rachel and fellow Diva’s employee Rebecca Yavorsky sat talking and smoking marijuana in Yavorsky’s silver Mustang. She snapped a picture of Rachel, and it would later help police positively ID the body.

The house where the Denofa's once lived — The Denofas bought their 2,184-square-foot house for $206,000 in 1995. They sold it for $295,000 in 2000, and it’s worth $527,000 today, according to Zillow

Denofa got a little drunk and disorderly that night, banging on the door of the club, but employees told a concerned police officer that he was a regular and it was fine.

Rachel offered to walk the intoxicated Denofa to his room at the Econo Lodge.

Turnpike-cam. No one ever saw her alive again. Richard Scott, the ATV rider, discovered her body three days later.

Investigators found some blood in the shower of John’s $49.95-a-night room, No. 223, but it was too scant to test.

Video surveillance footage from Interchange 29 of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, however, turned up a gold mine. It showed Jack’s Dodge Ram pickup truck with what looked like a body in the back.

All washed up. The image was blurry enough to raise reasonable doubts, but fortunately, a motorist named Melodie Hall, who was situated high up in the driver’s seat of a tractor trailer, got a clear view of the back of the pickup and saw the body dressed in white socks and dark colored pants, court papers say.

Hall saw the driver’s hair was slicked back as though he’d recently taken a shower, according to the It Takes a Killer episode “The Murder of Rachel Siani.” She didn’t report the incident, because she figured the sprawled-out person was just drunk. It was 3:13 a.m., after all.

Jack Denofa’s truck returned 25 minutes later with the back empty, no body, video footage showed.

Rebecca Yavorsky used a disposable camera to take this photo of Rachel Siani the night she died

Off key. Police searched the truck, which Denofa had cleaned thoroughly, but they discovered some blood in the back, enough to do a DNA test. It came from Rachel Siani.

Confronted with the forensic evidence, Jack Denofa said it wasn’t him driving the truck. Diva’s staff had taken his keys from him a few times — maybe an unknown evildoer copied them in order to frame him.

Investigators weren’t buying it.

Talk show. It seemed more likely that on the night of the murder, the one-sidedness of his relationship with Rachel suddenly dawned on him.

Although concerned about his getting to his hotel safely, Rachel wasn’t quite the stripper with the heart of gold of Hollywood movies.

She had reportedly told her friends at the club that Jack was a sucker for paying her $100 or more just for sitting with him. Sometimes, he gave her so much money for chatting that she didn’t have to bother dancing for dollar bills.

Pool of blood. The medical examiner noted burst blood vessels in Rachel’s eyes and on the rest of her face. He concluded that someone choked Rachel until she passed out that night in his room at the Econo Lodge.

A hotel guest remembered hearing a thud the night of the murder and police found Rachel’s blood in the parking lot below Denofa’s room.

Investigators believe Rachel rejected an advance and he choked her until she lost consciousness. Believing she had died, he then tried to put her on a ledge outside his room so he could drive his truck underneath and drop her into the back.

But he lost hold of her and she fell to the ground, leaving the blood stain on the parking lot.

Still breathing. Jack then threw her in the back of the truck and headed east to the bridge connecting the Pennsylvania and New Jersey turnpikes. He threw her body off the bridge — from a height of either 112 feet or 200 feet (accounts vary) — so it would look like a suicide.

She landed on the grass and died of massive injuries from the impact, which created indentations in the ground.

Dr. Faruk Presswalla, the New Jersey State medical examiner, would later testify that the internal bleeding she suffered indicated she was still alive when Jack Denofa threw her from the bridge.

Cops have their man. Econo Lodge night-auditor Diane Crouch told investigators that she saw Denofa walking fast to the parking lot that night and that he later checked out “smelling of soap and without a word,” according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Police arrested Denofa and placed him in the Bucks County Jail.

Meanwhile, Rachel’s family had to wait to bury her because investigators needed her body for evidence. It’s not clear whether everyone knew where Rachel worked, but her father definitely did.

“It’s not something I would have chosen for her,” Richard Siani told the Associated Press, “but it was something she was doing temporarily to pay her way through school.”

No judgments. The Sianis also had to bear the aforementioned media storm. The Philadelphia Daily News devoted four reporters and three pages to her story, “Death of a Dancer,” on April 17, 2000.

Meanwhile, no one seemed to use words like “lecher” or “sleazy character” to describe Jack Denofa for spending money vying for the attention of younger women while he had a wife at home. News stories referred to him as a “businessman.”

But the law considered him a dangerous individual.

Declining to testify. A judge originally set Jack’s bail at $1 million but later reduced it $500,000 and required him to turn over his passport. More than 20 of his friends showed up for the bail hearing and some of them chipped in toward the cause, according to an AP account.

At the month-long trial, Jack declined to take the stand, a wise move as recounting his days as a stripper patron too tipsy to drive himself home probably wouldn’t have helped the case.

Nonetheless, the defense produced 11 witnesses who testified about his “reputation for truth and honesty’ and “issues of habit and custom,” according to court papers.

Breadwinner. His mother-in-law, JoAnn Zener, even took the stand in his defense.

She testified that Jack was a good guy and that, although she didn’t like his boozy trips to the lap-dance emporium, “that was his time of relaxation with people he knew who accepted his drinking and accepted him,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Zener noted that her son-in-law made a nice living and took good care of Lisa Denofa.

Throwing off suspicion. To their credit, Denofa and defense lawyer Albert Cepparulo didn’t try the classic “she attacked me first and died by accident while I was defending myself” ploy (see Jonathan Nyce and Richard Nyhuis).

But they did go the trash-the-victim route.

“She had a number of lovers, and a number of men wanted to be the only man,” Cepparulo said. He also contended that Rachel used drugs heavily and knew motorcycle gang members who might have killed her.

Richard Siani said that it seemed as though his daughter were on trial rather than her killer.

Speedy verdict. Fortunately, members of the jury didn’t feel that way.

After deliberating for two hours, they found him guilty on Nov. 29, 2002.

Before leading him away, officers allowed him to hug his “wailing” wife and his mother. “The constricted position hindered his usual swagger,” according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Lisa Denofa was helped to the elevator by John’s mother and sister.

No bail. “This part of it is over,” said Richard Siani, “but Rachel will not be with us at Thanksgiving or at Christmas.”

Rachel Siani's long white Lincoln — Detectives at first theorized that whoever killed Rachel Siani deliberately punctured a tire on her Lincoln so she’d accept a ride

Judge Thomas Smith deemed Denofa a flight risk and revoked his bail, so he stayed in jail between the hearing and the sentencing in February 2003 — when he made his first public statement since his arrest three years earlier.

“I am not a murderer. I have been wrongly convicted,” Denofa said. “I grieve for Rachel and her loved ones…I pray every day her killer will be found.”

Interstate intrigue. The judge gave him a sentence of life with a chance at parole after 30 years.

Jack Denofa “raised his cuffed hands to his lips and blew a kiss to his wife, Lisa,” as officers led him away, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

In 2005, Jack won a new trial based on a claim that the judge didn’t make it clear to the jury that they could only reach a guilty verdict if they believed Rachel died in New Jersey rather than Pennsylvania.

Defense drains dad. His lawyers argued that three different autopsies had each yielded a different cause of death.

The decision meant he could apply for bail, which a judge set at $1 million. His father, also named Jack, who had underwritten the cost of the defense for the first trial, said that this time his son wouldn’t make bail and would have to use a public defender.

“All my money is gone,” the senior Denofa said, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. “I spent it on attorneys.”

Living to the max. The New Jersey Supreme Court reinstated Jack Denofa’s “where did she die conviction” in 2006.

In 2017, a court denied a writ of habeas corpus petition that Denofa filed.

Today, John Denofa resides in the New Jersey State Prison, a maximum security facility built in 1836 and formerly known as Trenton State Prison.

Wait, there’s more. He is still maneuvering to get out earlier than in 2032 — when, at the age of 68, he’ll have a shot at parole.

Incidentally, the venerable Diva’s International Gentlemen’s Club found its way into the spotlight again, when HBO used it as the setting for the reality show G-String Divas.

One of the divas, Shannon Reinert, might be familar to Forensic Files viewers because she figured into the 2005 episode “Summer Obsession.”

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

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Crystal Faye Todd: Murdered by a Pal

Ken Register Takes Away a Mother’s Only Child
(“The Alibi,” Forensic Files)

Before launching into the recap, I wanted to offer good wishes and empathy from here in the epicenter as everyone copes with the coronavirus pandemic.

Ken Register and Crystal Todd in a swimming pool — Ken Register and Crystal Todd

The Crystal Todd case seems like a good choice for this week’s post, because it includes extensive on-camera interviews with such a sympathetic protagonist.

Even toward the end of the show, when Bonnie Todd says she wishes that her daughter’s murderer got the electric chair, she does so in her own gentle way.

Surprise package. The case distinguished itself as the first time that South Carolina prosecutors used DNA as evidence, but what really made the episode memorable was the way it portrayed a mother’s love.

Bonnie talked about being grateful for having a baby at 39 — a common age for a first pregnancy today but not so much back in the early 1970s.

“She was a miracle to me,” Bonnie said. “I just couldn’t believe I had her, and I was proud of her, too.”

Odd wrinkle in case. The two were close. Crystal had confided in Bonnie that best buddy Ken Register, 18, got a little out of line with her once. But neither could foresee the savagery he unleashed on the night of Nov. 17, 1991.

For this week, I searched for information on what happened to Bonnie Todd from the time the Forensic Files episode first aired in 2002 to her death in 2014. I also looked into Ken Register’s whereabouts today.

In the process, I discovered an unusual twist in the case that either happened after the Forensic Files episode finished production or was just too weird for the show’s producers to mentally process. Frankly, I’m having a little trouble with it, too.

Dad gone too soon. So let’s get started on a recap of the “The Alibi,” along with additional information drawn from internet research:

Crystal Faye Todd was born on Jan. 4, 1974, in Conway, South Carolina. Her father, Junior Todd, died when she was 11, but she grew into a happy, fun-loving teenager, according to Forensic Files.

After Crystal and a girlfriend attended a party on the evening of Nov. 17, 1991, the friend dropped Crystal off in a mall parking lot where she’d left her brand-new Celica.

Women’s intuition. When Crystal didn’t come home by her midnight deadline, her mother called the Horry County police. She was so overcome with anxiety that the police at first could barely make out her words or tell whether the caller was a man or a woman, according to the book An Hour to Kill: The True Story of Love, Murder, and Justice in a Small Southern Town by Dale Hudson and Billy Hills.

Next, she contacted her daughter’s longtime close friend Ken Register, who said that he hadn’t seen Crystal all night and that he would check the local hospitals, according to the ID Network series Stolen Voices, Buried Secrets.

Bonnie located her daughter’s vacant blue 1991 Toyota, which she’d given her for an early graduation present, in a middle school parking lot.

Disturbing to pros. Sadly, Bonnie didn’t have to wait long to justify her sense of dread.

Hunters found the body of a teenage girl in a ditch the next day. She was wearing a class ring with a shiny purple gemstone and “Crystal Faye Todd” engraved inside.

The murder scene horrified even veteran homicide detectives. In addition to bruises and abrasions, Crystal had 31 cut and stab wounds, including an ear-to-ear gash across the throat, according to court papers.

Lecherous outsider. They found a defensive injury on Crystal’s left hand, but she was no match for the attacker’s weapon, which investigators believe was a 3.5-inch knife with a locking blade.

At first, police had a promising suspect in dark, handsome Andy Tyndall, a grown man who liked to hang around teenage girls. Crystal had known him for a week and already had a little crush on him, according to “Killer Instinct,” a 2011 episode of Stolen Voices, Buried Secrets.

Although Crystal and her friends could tell Andy Tyndall was past high school age, they probably didn’t know he was married and wanted by Alabama authorities on a felony charge.

Call the clairvoyants. When law officers came to arrest him in South Carolina, he fled on foot into the woods, with tracker dogs in pursuit.

But all the drama was for naught. Andy Tyndall was quickly cleared.

Next up, investigators turned to criminal profilers. They predicted that the killer would be an angry young white male who was confident the law wouldn’t catch him — and he was probably a friend of the victim.

Low-rise brick building in the historic district of Conway South Carolina — Ken Register’s murder trial was the longest and most eventful in the history of Conway, population of 21,000

Revealing genes. Local homicide detective Bill Knowles, who had just visited the FBI Academy, suggested adding the then-new science of DNA testing to the investigation.

Police asked 51 of Crystal’s male friends and acquaintances if they would give samples.

They all said yes.

A lab determined that DNA from the rape kit matched none other than Ken Register — full name, Johnnie Kenneth Register II — the blond-haired blue-eyed onetime varsity football player who Crystal considered her best pal.

Police arrested him in February 1992.

Sterling reputation. Bonnie knew that Ken Register had once offended Crystal by propositioning her for sex despite that he had a girlfriend, but he was the last person she suspected of the murder.

“He’s been our friend for years and years,” said Bonnie, the Herald Rock Hill reported. “He was everybody’s friend around here.”

Ken and Crystal had dated briefly in their early teens and stayed happily friend-zoned afterward, and he seemed like an asset to the community. He got good grades in school and helped out by scrubbing floors at the little church his family attended. He and his father, Kenny, had recently built a wooden altar for the congregation, according to An Hour to Kill.

Just got tarnished. Little did Crystal’s mother know that Ken had a police record for exposing himself to two Coastal Carolina University students not long before Crystal’s disappearance.

It was not the first time that Ken had come to law enforcement’s attention. At 15, he did something that suggested he was no ordinary budding pervert.

He made an obscene phone call to a grown woman and described in sickening detail how he wanted to slit her body open and kill her — in the same way he eventually murdered Crystal, according to Stolen Voices, Buried Secrets.

Registering an excuse. Ken might have enjoyed menacing women with talk about blood and gore, but he probably didn’t realize that different bodily fluids contain the same telltale genetic code, which is why he willingly gave samples for DNA testing.

Bonnie and Junior Todd with Crystal as a baby — Bonnie, Crystal, and Junior Todd

Forensic evidence notwithstanding, Ken had alibis. His girlfriend said they were together at the Dodge City go-cart track in the town of Aynor on the night Crystal died.

In an on-camera interview, Ken’s mother, Shirley Register, sweetly explained that her son got home from his date too early to match the timeline of the crime.

He needed his mom. Nonetheless, law officers arrested Ken Register on Feb. 18, 1992.

While riding in the police car, he asked twice for his mother, according to court papers.

At first, Ken didn’t want to answer questions without his mother present, so officers went to Shirley Register’s house to pick her up, but instead she gave them a note to hand off to her son.

Unauthorized revision. According to Forensic Files, the note told Ken to clam up until they got a lawyer. But court papers said that she simply wrote that she loved him and knew he was innocent.

It mattered little because police, who are legally entitled to lie while questioning a suspect, told him that they had found his footprints at the murder scene (they didn’t) and that the note from his mother instructed him to tell the truth (it didn’t).

The interrogation tricks worked. Ken cracked.

Hidden blade. The night of the murder, he and Crystal spotted each other at a traffic light, he said. She then parked her car at the middle school and got into his vehicle, where they had consensual sex — but she threatened to accuse of him of rape, so he panicked and stabbed her, he contended.

Investigators begged to differ. There was no consensual sex. She had severe wounding consistent with rape. After killing her, Ken further defiled and stabbed her body, investigators determined.

They never found the murder weapon. Ken said he tossed away the knife as far as he could near the scene of the crime, according to an AP account.

What a spectacle. As if Ken needed any more bad publicity, in a separate court action before his homicide trial kicked off, he was found guilty of exposing himself to the college students. Ken claimed he was actually clothed during the incident and that he stood up in his car and shimmied himself around because the women “wouldn’t give me the time of day” and “made me feel like trash,” according to An Hour to Kill.

The homicide trial didn’t go so well either.

In front of 400 spectators, Ken Register was convicted of Crystal Todd’s sexual assault, murder, and kidnapping.

Girlfriend backs away. The jury declined to give him the death penalty because of his young age. Circuit Judge Edward B. Cottingham sentenced him to life without parole and 35 years to be served consecutively.

Ken’s sweetheart, Angela Rabon, made a few “dutiful” visits to him in prison, then wrote him a breakup letter and headed to college, according to An Hour to Kill.

Crystal Todd’s car had a custom-made license plate that said C TODD.

Over the years, Ken and defense attorneys Morgan Martin and Tommy Brittain made efforts to get him out of prison on two feet.

Character assassination. In 1996, the supreme court of South Carolina was not impressed by Register’s claims that police violated his rights during questioning and that the DNA testing method was below par. In fact, the prosecution had given the defense an opportunity to do its own independent DNA tests, but Ken Register told his lawyers not to, according to An Hour to Kill.

Ken also tried the requisite smear-the-victim ploy in hopes that some nefarious acquaintance of hers would be accused. He said that he heard rumors that Crystal used drugs and he had seen her drink alcohol and smoke marijuana, contradicting his own statement from 1992 that he had never seen Crystal using marijuana, according to reporting from the Horry Independent.

He claimed he initially lied because he didn’t want Crystal’s alleged drug use to somehow sully his own reputation — he had only used the recreational drug a few times in his life when someone happened to pass around a joint, Ken said, as reported by the Horry Independent on Feb. 3, 2000.

Oh, please. Always a gentleman, Register also said he didn’t know whether it was true, but he heard rumors that Crystal “slept around” and that she had helped distribute LSD, the Horry Independent reported.

Shirley Register chimed in, saying she heard Crystal would sometimes leave a party with one guy, then return to pick up another guy or two. She also tried to lend credence to the drug-dealing theory by suggesting that Bonnie and Crystal had too meager a combined legitimate income to afford their lifestyle — and that Crystal rode to school with a student rumored to sell LSD, according to the Horry Independent.

Ken claimed that, at the same time that Crystal’s morals were deteriorating, he himself was embarking on the straight and narrow, thanks to his serious relationship with Angela Rabon.

Writer in their corner. Though vexing to Crystal’s friends and family, the Registers’ tactics are pretty standard, something Forensic Files watchers have seen countless times.

The outlandish twist in the case came after a world-famous author caught the trial coverage on court TV.

Mickey Spillane, writer of the 1940s detective mystery novel “I, the Jury” — and 25 other books in that genre that sold a total of 200 million copies — thought Ken Register got a raw deal.

Audience with a convict. He and his wife, Jane Spillane, who lived in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, believed prosecutor Ralph Wilson framed him.

The Spillanes met with Ken in person and “came to the conclusion that the young man was incapable of committing such a heinous act,” the Washington Post would later report.

Jane Spillane went so far as to run for county prosecutor herself so that she could personally bestow justice upon Ken.

Drama continues. She didn’t win, and both Spillanes later admitted that the law had weighty evidence against Ken Register. They ultimately concluded that Crystal’s murder couldn’t be the work of a single assailant.

Ken Register in a recent mug shot — Ken Register, seen here in a 2018 mug shot, is eligible for parole in 2022

The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, however, didn’t find Ken Register particularly endearing and refused to hear his case.

Ken’s bid for post-conviction relief failed as well. “It’s the best thing I’ve heard in a while,” Bonnie Todd commented upon the ruling, as reported by the Charlotte Observer.

Gang assault. Today, Ken Register resides in Broad River Correctional Institution, a high-security prison that houses South Carolina’s death chamber.

The Department of Corrections doesn’t list any escape attempts or disciplinary problems for Ken. And at 5’8″ and 223 pounds, he isn’t staging any hunger strikes either.

It would serve him well to keep a low profile. In 2019, DOC police charged a female Broad River guard after she allegedly unlocked an inmate’s door and allowed 11 other prisoners to enter his cell and beat him up.

Closing the loop. Fortunately for Ken himself, he still has a large support network of family members living in and around Conway, South Carolina, to speak up for him should he face abuse while on the inside.

But enough about Ken Register — what about the mother of the girl whose life he took?

By the time Bonnie appeared on Forensic Files in 2002, Crystal had been gone for 11 years, but her melancholy clearly hadn’t lifted.

Sojourn to Gotham. The murder “devastated her more so than any other family member I’ve ever dealt with,” longtime Horry County homicide detective Bill Knowles would later tell a local ABC affiliate.

But Bonnie, who told Forensic Files that the only time she wasn’t thinking about Crystal was when she was sleeping, did get to have a bit of an adventure.

In the 1990s, she traveled to New York City to appear on Sally Jesse Raphael’s popular talk show along with county prosecutor Ralph Wilson, who later recalled that Bonnie packed instant grits in her travel bags in case Manhattan’s eateries didn’t serve them, according to a Sun News account.

Honored with a song. She also enjoyed a friendship with Ralph Wilson for years after Register’s conviction and often brought him small gifts of food from a garden she cultivated.

Bonnie Faye Todd died at age 79 on Sept. 3, 2014.

Toward the end of her life, she had become close to a niece who she “affectionately referred to” as her “adopted daughter,” according to Bonnie’s obituary.

A music video that two local gospel singers made as a tribute to Bonnie and her lost daughter has so far scored 12,000 hits on YouTube.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

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Darrell North: A Builder Is Torn Down

Pool Contractor Curtis Pope Goes off the Deep End
(“Constructive Criticism,” Forensic Files)

Practically everyone has a complaint about a contractor: He installed the sink basin so it’s crooked or he used the wrong accent tiles or he never cleaned up the paint that dripped on the microwave cart.

Over the years, Darrell B. North Jr., a wealthy construction-project manager, had so many encounters with disappointing results that he ended up firing his subcontractors fairly often.

Violence precipitated. And he didn’t let favoritism get in the way of quality. When Curtis Wayne Pope Jr., a pool installer who Darrell had mentored, did inferior work, he couldn’t let it continue.

No one knows exactly what was said between the two men as a rainstorm pounded away on the night of Feb. 22, 2000, but investigators believe that Darrell dished out some tough love, either criticizing Curtis or firing him, or both. Then, Curtis flew off the handle and stabbed him to death.

For this week, I looked into Curtis Pope’s whereabouts today and searched for more background on Darrell North.

So let’s get going on a recap of “Constructive Criticism” — which like so many other memorable Forensic Files episodes, takes place in Texas — along with additional information culled from online research.

Young lovebirds. Darrell Bonnett North Jr. was born on March 27, 1937, and lived at least part of his younger life in Lonoke, Arkansas.

At the age of 20, while still attending Abilene Christian College, he married native Texan Judy McGowen, 21, at the North Park Church of Christ in Abilene, Texas. The wedding announcement said Judy worked at Galbraith Electric Co.

Darrell later owned the North Construction Co., which seemed to afford the couple and their son and daughter a comfortable life.

American splendor. In 1979, the Oak Crest Woman’s Club Tour of Homes included the Norths’ house at 408 Arcadia in Hurst, Texas.

Curtis Pope as a young man — A youngish Curtis Pope. Despite his sketchy past, no one imagined him capable of homicide

The Star-Telegram noted its 28-foot-high cathedral ceilings, fireplace in the master bedroom, and “1890 Franklin stove in game room.”

By 1985, Darrell had either sold or closed his business. He joined Bigelow Development Corp., a firm that built Budget Suites hotels.

Nice chunk of work. It’s not clear exactly how and when Darrell met Curtis Pope, a swimming pool builder with a moderately troubling legal record, but Darrell saw potential in the younger man and took him under his wing.

In 1999, Darrell introduced Curtis to Bigelow officials and they agreed to hire him to build pools at the Budget Suites hotels, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Curtis also did some repair work to the Norths’ own pool and constructed a new one for friends of theirs.

But the Curtis-Darrell juggernaut slammed to a halt on February 22, 2000.

Ominous weather. That night, an electrical storm raged, leaving Judy North with no lights or phone as she waited for Darrell to come home for dinner.

When Darrell hadn’t shown up by 8 p.m., Judy hoofed it to a convenience store — she had no car because the electric garage door wouldn’t open —and called her son. He picked her up, dropped her off at home, and went to look for Darrell.

Mark and possibly his brother-in-law (accounts vary as to whether Mark was alone or not) drove to Darrell’s job site, a Budget Suites construction area on the 3200 block of Northeast Loop 820 in Fort Worth.

Conflict boiled over. He saw Darrell’s Ford Taurus sitting at the site but found the door to his trailer office padlocked shut. Peering through the window, Mark saw his father, 62, lying on the floor face down.

Fort Worth firefighters cut off the lock and found Darrell North’s lacerated body and a trail of blood and disarray throughout two of the trailer’s three rooms.

Clearly, a violent struggle had taken place.

Love turns to hate. Darrell had tried to fight back, possibly grabbing a hole punch and swinging it as a makeshift weapon (he should have just dropped it on his attacker’s foot — those things are heavy), but the assailant managed to stab him 46 times using two different knives, and nearly decapitated him.

Exterior of a Budget Suites Hotel — Bigelow Development Corp. made a fortune on Budget Suites hotels and, more recently, created a space-flight company

Investigators noticed the bent hole punch and a clean machete in the trailer. A second machete normally kept there was missing, they learned.

During his Forensic Files interview, Mark North said that his father’s body was so distressed that he made his mother and sister, Kelly Landis, promise they wouldn’t look at it. “If you don’t ever do me another favor in your life, do this for me: Don’t come here,” Mark recounted his words in court.

Him? Never. Police learned that on the night of the murder, all the workers at the job site had gone home because of the storm, but Darrell had stayed to keep a meeting with Curtis Pope at 5 p.m. They were going to discuss problems with a pool that Pope installed.

But Darrell’s widow, Judy North, told police they were wasting their time investigating Curtis Pope.

Curtis had once said that Darrell treated him better than his own father did. He also had sobbed over his lost friend at the subsequent funeral.

What a heel. Pope, 37, lived in New Braunfels, Texas, and had a wife and a young daughter — and a police record for petty theft and vehicular manslaughter. But he denied killing Darrell, and passed a polygraph test.

And police had another subcontractor with a motive to get rid of Darrell North. Darrell had fired roofing contractor Bob Johnson a couple of weeks before the homicide. Two days after Darrell’s death, Johnson called to see about getting his job back.

Investigators hadn’t found any forensic evidence pointing toward Johnson at the scene, however. In fact, at first, their biggest find was a heel print bearing the name Justin, a brand of locally made boots.

If the shoe fits. But the fact that the assailant wore Justin boots didn’t exactly crack the case wide open. “How common are they?” an investigator said in a favorite Forensic Files quote. “You’re probably not from here if you don’t own a pair.”

Judy North at home with her son and daughter — Mark, Judy, and Kelly North circa 2008

It turned out Bob Johnson had such big feet that even the heels of his Justin boots were distinguishably larger than the one in the heel print at the scene.

Curtis Pope soon became the No. 1 suspect. He wore the right size of Justins and there was plenty of circumstantial evidence stacked against him.

Blood will tell. Investigators discovered that Curtis’ swimming pool business was not all fun and games. He was drowning in debt and couldn’t pay suppliers, and his only remaining big client was Bigelow Development.

On Curtis’ home computer, someone had downloaded a book on how to beat a polygraph test.

Investigators found one perfect blood drop on Darrell North’s pants, which meant the bleeder was standing still above him, and DNA testing revealed it came from Pope as did blood stains in 10 other areas in the trailer. (Pope likely cut himself accidentally during a struggle for one of the knives.)

Bail, really? Investigators concluded that Curtis Pope and Darrell North argued in the trailer and Pope snapped.

Authorities indicted Curtis Pope in December 2001, and he posted $50,000 in bail.

But instead of showing up for the first day of his trial on Feb. 24, 2003, he high-tailed it toward the Canadian border (strange he didn’t flee to Mexico — it was a lot closer).

Curtis Pope in handcuffs — Curtis Pope in police custody

Northern exposure. At 11:30 p.m., local police in Watertown, New York, noticed a pickup truck driving in the wrong direction on a one-way street. The officers believed Curtis Pope’s claim that he was heading north to meet some hunting buddies in Canada. But the next day, they discovered he was a fugitive.

Media sources vary on how they found out. Police either plugged his license and registration number into a database or were informed by authorities.

They tracked Curtis down at the Econo Lodge — the night before, he had mentioned to the police where he was staying, according to an AP account.

Real-life drama. Twelve local and state police officers showed up at Curtis’ hotel the next day.

“The Lord just intervened in this,” Judy later told the Midland Reporter-Telegram. “If he had gotten into Canada, they might never had caught him, and my family would have lived in limbo like we have for the past three years.”

To those present, however, the big capture probably looked more like marginally divine comedy than divine intervention. As a Fort Worth Star- Telegram story described it:

Before police could nab him, Pope, wearing a jacket and no shirt, sneaked out the back and into 15-degree weather, [Watertown Detective Sgt.] Damon said. He slipped into a second motel about a block away and, once again, went out the rear exit as authorities closed in. Finally, realizing there was nowhere else to run, Pope surrendered at a nearby shopping plaza. “He just walked up to a patrol officer, put his hands up and said, ‘OK, you’ve got me,'” Damon said.

Curtis said he fled because he was innocent.

Neighborhood beef. The arresting police didn’t buy it, but Curtis Pope had plenty of believers back in Texas. Friends and family members showed up to support him on each day of the subsequent trial.

Curtis’ lawyers, Jeff Stewart and Stephen Handy, said their client loved Darrell and they implied that Darrell might have acquired some enemies closer to home.

A newspaper clipping showing Judy McGowen North in her bridal gown — Judy North, seen here in a clip from the Abilene Reporter-News, carried a “white bible topped with a white orchid and streamered with love-knotted satin” for her wedding in 1957

Darrell had threatened to sue people who were doing construction work near his house, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

The defense also contended that the blood evidence, tested by an independent lab called GeneScreen, had been mishandled and analyzed with outdated equipment.

Prosecutors Joe Shannon and David Lobingier countered that if the DNA testing really was below par, the defense would have called more blood experts to testify in Pope’s favor.

A Mother’s Love. In a bit of prosecutorial theater, Shannon counted out loud from 1 to 20 in court to connote the first 20 times Pope stabbed North. The prosecution alleged that Pope used his own knife in the attack, then grabbed the afterwards-missing machete to finish off Darrell.

In April 2003, a jury convicted Curtis Pope of first-degree murder.

Curtis’ wife and mother broke into tears upon hearing the verdict. The latter, Maggi Shepherd, said that Curtis was a Christian who had always been “passive” and incapable of such a crime, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported on April 12, 2003.

Attempted manipulation. At the sentencing hearing in May 2003, the prosecution noted Pope’s prior involuntary manslaughter conviction, for a Nevada car accident that killed one of his friends.

Meanwhile, the defense tried to pull the court’s heartstrings with mention of the Popes’ 10-year marriage and child.

District Judge George Gallagher handed Pope a life sentence, then gave the victim’s loved ones an opportunity to speak.

Poetic justice. “When you killed him, you killed half of me,” said Judy North, who was married to Darrell for 42 years, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.

North’s 16-year-old granddaughter, Shelby Landis, read an original poem including the verse, “God broke our hearts to prove to us that he only takes the best.”

The judge gave Curtis a life sentence.

Behind razor wire. Texas rejected Curtis Pope’s 2004 and 2006 appeals, which both questioned the blood evidence again. Court papers noted that the chance of the DNA coming from someone other than Pope was 1 in 41.7 million. The 2006 decision stated that tests of the scrapings under the victim’s fingernails pointed to Pope and excluded another onetime suspect, Donald Fortenberry.

Judy and Darrell North's house in Hurst, Texas

Today, Curtis Pope probably isn’t doing a lot of swimming. He resides in the James V. Allred Unit, a maximum security prison in Iowa Park, Texas.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice doesn’t provide a recent mug shot of him but, at 5 foot-11 and 237 pounds, he is presumably getting enough to eat.

Water damage. Eligible for parole in 2033, Curtis has plenty of time to wallow in his regrets.

As one YouTube commenter put it, “Yep, killing your last remaining client is totally going to save your business from going under.”

“Moral of the story,” another wrote, “swimming pools are money pits and they will ruin your life.”

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on Tubi or YouTube

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Shannon Mohr: In the Path of a Con Man

David Davis Preys on a Nurse on the Rebound
(“Horse Play,” Forensic Files)

Shannon Mohr’s romance started out as a fairy tale and ended as a cautionary tale: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

The “it” in this case was David Davis, a self-proclaimed millionaire.

As YouTube commenter BellaMarley1 wrote: “Never trust anyone who tells you he’s a millionaire…nobody decent would do that.”

Fortune hunter. Maybe it’s not so much decency as wisdom. People with a lot of money usually know that announcing it can attract scammers and gold diggers or at least mean getting stuck with the check.

Of course, David Davis didn’t need to worry about being victimized for his money — he didn’t actually have any.

He wanted a cash infusion and tried his hand at the ever-popular Forensic Files murder and insurance fraud combo.

Delving into personal history. For this week, I looked around for more information about what David Davis was doing in the eight years between Shannon Mohr’s homicide and his capture on a tropical island.

I also searched for biographical details on Shannon Mohr. Forensic Files mentioned only that she was a nurse who wanted a family.

So, let’s gallop into a recap of the Forensic Files episode “Horse Play,” along with extra information drawn from internet research:

Wholesome girl. Shannon Mohr was born on Sept. 1, 1954, in Toledo, Ohio, to a devout Catholic family.

The sweet, caring child was “daddy’s girl and mommy’s best friend,” according to a 2013 episode of Happily Never After.

She fulfilled her dream of becoming a registered nurse, but hadn’t made progress on the marriage and children front.

One night in 1979, she reluctantly went to a friend’s wedding without a date. She had recently broken up with a Toledo firefighter. “Go, maybe you’ll meet somebody,” her well-intentioned mother told her.

David Davis' farm, where he lived with Shannon Mohr — Shannon moved to David Davis’ farm after they married.

It worked.

At the nuptials, Shannon, 25, met David Davis, 35. He was handsome and charming enough to make her forget about the age difference.

Play for sympathy. David told her he owned farms all over the country and was worth seven figures.

He said that he was a veteran who had sustained an injury in the Vietnam War, then attended the University of Michigan, where he was on the football team — and played in the Rose Bowl — and graduated with a psychology degree.

Oh, and his fiancée died in a car wreck and he thought he’d never love again, he told Shannon, according to “Gallop to the Grave,” the Happily Never After episode about the case.

Shannon’s parents, Lucille and Robert Mohr, liked the charismatic bachelor, too. (Even the judge who later presided at the murder trial noted that he was smooth, articulate, and clever.)

Whirlwind romance. There were some negative indicators early on, nonetheless.

Shannon and David married in Las Vegas (bad sign) on Sept. 24, 1979, after knowing each other for eight weeks (really bad sign), and they took out $220,000 dollars of insurance on her eight days after the wedding (worst possible sign).

But the warning signs were probably lost amid all the joy of a new relationship.

Shannon Mohr as a girl — Shannon Mohr years before David Davis entered her life

Sole breadwinner. Shannon moved to David’s 100-acre farm in Hillsdale County, Michigan. He grew corn and soybeans. She got a nursing job at Flower Hospital in Sylvania.

Shannon’s pay was the only income the couple had, according to the Chicago Tribune, but he most likely came up with some Dirty John-esque story to explain it away. And the lovebirds weren’t together long enough to start arguing about money.

On July 23, 1980, just 10 months after the wedding, the couple rode their Tennessee walking horses to visit neighbor Dick Britton. While at Britton’s property, David helped him repair some machinery, and then he and Shannon trotted off toward home.

Teary-eyed. But David came rushing back to Britton’s house, saying Shannon’s mare bolted and Shannon hit her head on a rock.

Shannon was lying on her back with no shoes on and her blouse partly unbuttoned.

She was lifeless by the time the two men rushed her into the emergency room. Doctors attributed the death to head and spinal injuries.

Lucille and Robert Mohr arrived at the hospital to find David Davis crying.

Cash flow problem. In his grief, he managed to articulate that he wanted the body cremated, but he ultimately agreed to let the Mohrs bury Shannon back in Toledo.

Lucille and Robert Mohr's house — Lucille and Robert Mohr’s house in Ohio

David sheepishly told his in-laws that he couldn’t afford to pay for a funeral because his money was tied up in the farm and he didn’t have any life insurance on Shannon.

The Mohrs funded the funeral, which took a surprising turn when David Davis’ mother and stepfather, Joyce and Theodore Powell, showed up.

David had told the Mohrs he was an orphan.

Parents galore. His father, David Ellsworth Davis, was still alive, too. The Mohrs also discovered that their daughter’s husband wasn’t a millionaire, didn’t own multiple farms, hadn’t really served in Vietnam, never played college football, and hadn’t graduated.

So, who was he, really?

David Richard Davis was born in Flint on Sept. 27, 1944, and his parents split up when he was 12. His father described him as a good student at Southwestern High School who enjoyed archery and other outdoor activities.

Premium story. He had two daughters from a previous marriage, to a woman named Phyllis June Middleton (Shannon didn’t know he had an ex-wife). Phyllis and David lived together on the Michigan farm. Alleging physical abuse, she filed for a court protection order and the couple divorced in 1976, according to reporting from Gannett News Service on Jan. 10, 1989.

Phyllis probably didn’t realize how lucky she was to get out of that marriage alive — or maybe she didn’t have enough life insurance to put her in danger.

Although David denied it at first, he had a total of $330,000 in life insurance — the original policy plus some subsequent smaller ones — on Shannon Mohr. The policies were due to expire at the beginning of August 1980, just days after Shannon’s untimely death, according to the Sun-Sentinel, a Florida newspaper that always has great crime coverage.

David would later give various explanations for the existence of the policies, including that he didn’t pay attention and never knew about them, they each took out insurance on the other to help pay farm expenses in case one died, and that an insurance salesman sought them out and sold them on the idea of insurance.

Need that piece of paper. The Mohrs also discovered that David had plans to go on a trip to Florida with a girlfriend shortly after Shannon’s death, according to the Toledo Blade. David claimed he needed to get away and regroup — and his gal pal had invited herself.

While away, the grieving husband had neighbor Dick Britton forward him his mail. He needed multiple copies of Shannon’s death certificate for insurance purposes.

To the police, however, Shannon’s demise still looked like an accident, and they closed the case.

Intrepid reporter. The Mohrs launched a letter-writing campaign to persuade the Michigan attorney general’s office to continue investigating. Dick Britton also urged authorities to take a new look at the evidence against his former friend.

A month after Shannon’s death, her body was exhumed and an autopsy revealed a severe gash on her head and bruises on her face, hand, and arm.

Still, no forensic alarm bells sounded, and the case stayed closed.

Caught: Fugitive David Davis under arrest

Then, a Detroit Free Press reporter named Billy Bowles started poking around and discovered sketchy incidents from David’s past. He had twice profited from fire insurance on his farm — he “insured everything,” his father-in-law would later say — and collected worker’s compensation from a suspicious injury supposedly incurred while working for a car manufacturer.

Out at sea. Bowles also found out that David had taken some advanced courses in pharmacology at the University of Michigan. Investigators theorized that David used succinylcholine in the murder.

Michigan reopened the case of Shannon Mohr’s death.

Meanwhile, David had sold his Michigan property, collected five-figure payouts from Shannon’s smaller policies, and taken up residence on a sailboat in the Bahamas with a girlfriend. He was waiting for the final results of Shannon’s latest autopsy so he could get his hands on the bulk of the insurance money.

After a third autopsy, investigators farmed out lab work to Swedish scientists who had developed methods for detecting succinylcholine. They found high concentrations in two areas of Shannon’s body, suggesting someone had given her two shots of the drug, which is often used on horses.

Media aid. Investigators eventually concluded that the injections, not the head injury, killed Shannon. Succinylcholine paralyzes every muscle except the heart and makes it impossible to breathe without a ventilator. The drug probably left Shannon conscious as she slowly suffocated.

The authorities moved to arrest David Davis in Haiti in December 1981, but he fled, leaving his sailboat behind. He eluded them for eight years.

Then, Unsolved Mysteries broadcast an episode about the case.

A Beverly Hills dentist named Cheri Lewis later said that the fugitive looked like a man with odd thumbs whom she had dated, according to the Detroit Free Press. Lewis later noted that David garnered sympathy by speaking of his wife Shannon, “who drowned.”

And Hollywood stuntman Beau Gibson thought David Davis’ picture resembled his best buddy, “Rip Bell,” who had given him flying lessons, the Detroit Free Press reported.

Detroit Free Press clipping shows one of the wives David Davis didn’t kill

You’re busted. But only one of David Davis’ associates — who remained anonymous — actually called the toll-free number on Unsolved Mysteries. The tipster said the fugitive was living under the name David Myer Bell in American Samoa, where he and his 23-year-old wife resided in a tin-roofed shack.

Four FBI agents arrested David Davis at Tafuna International Airport in Pago Pago, where he was working as a pilot for Pacific Island Airways. (He met his wife, Maria Koleti Sua, on the job. She also worked for the airline.)

He admitted his real identity and peacefully submitted to the arrest, according to the Detroit Free Press on Jan. 7, 1989.

Tropics-wear. “Oh God, I don’t know what to say,” Lucille Mohr told the Detroit Free Press upon her ex-son-in-law’s capture. “It has been eight years of hell…my heart’s coming out of my chest.”

At a stopover in Hawaii, David, 44, wore a blue and white Aloha shirt during FBI questioning, according to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

In addition to identifying himself as a pilot, David had posed as a doctor, nurse, and “even as a harpsichord player” while on the run, according to an FBI spokesman quoted in an AP account.

Only the pilot claim was genuine. He earned FAA certification while on the lam.

Cold-hearted husband. By the time the feds nailed him, the once-rugged-looking David Davis was “overweight, slovenly” and “gray-bearded” but he “nevertheless cut a dashing figure,” according to the Detroit Free Press.

His trial kicked off in November 1989.

The prosecution would conclude that on the day Shannon died, David Davis suggested they have sex outdoors. While Shannon was getting undressed, he sneaked up on her and gave her one or two shots of succinylcholine to immobilize and kill her, but she fought back before the drug took effect. She left scratch marks on his arm, which the Mohrs noticed at the hospital. (He said they came from tree branches he brushed by in his hurry to summon help for Shannon.)

He then staged the horse accident by hitting her head with the rock, the prosecution believed.

Popping the question. Early on, sheriff’s deputies had noticed that the rock with the blood on it was the only rock anywhere near the scene of Shannon’s death.

Shannon Mohr as a child in her first communion dress — First communion: Shannon considered becoming a nun

And evidence of David’s con jobs and lies came spilling out.

David had asked a series of women to marry him after knowing them for just weeks, investigators discovered. Shannon was apparently the first one who said yes.

A gal pal named Jeanne Hohlman testified that David said he was a CIA agent assigned to protect Shannon. After Shannon died, he told her the mission was over and they could start dating again, according to Happily Never After.

David Davis chose not to take the stand.

Escape from execution.The jury took 2¹⁄₂ hours to find him guilty of first-degree murder. Noting that Shannon’s death by suffocation was “more despicable than a contract murder,” Hillsdale Circuit Judge Harvey Moes sentenced the wife-killer to life without parole.

Lucille Mohr said she wished Michigan still had the death penalty, but her husband noted that “being locked up in a cage the rest of his life is probably 100 times worse,” the Gannett News Service reported on Jan. 8, 1989

In captivity at Marquette Branch Prison, David continued to profess his innocence.

Bid rejected. “I could never have hurt her,” he told the Toledo Blade in 2001, still maintaining that Mohr fell from her horse and hit her head.

David filed an appeal with a federal court that year. There was continuing controversy over the lab work purported to reveal the presence of succinylcholine — a number of industry professionals regarded the tests as junk science — but it didn’t help David’s case much.

The real smoking guns were the insurance policies, David’s tall tales about his life, and the murder scene appearing staged.

He lost on appeal.

The death he deserved. In prison, David boycotted the television room when other inmates watched the TV movie about Shannon’ murder, according to the Toledo Blade story, which also noted he sported a “white beard and wrinkles.”

Ultimately, David got a taste of his own medicine.

He acquired neuromuscular disease and died at the age of 70 in a prison health care facility in 2014.

Lucille and Robert Mohr, who ultimately received the bulk Shannon’s life insurance payout, died in 2008 and 2012, respectively.

Intrepid cop. Billy Bowles, who Forensic Files viewers will remember from his appearance on the show, died the same year David Davis did. A colleague credited him with spending seven years toiling over a “10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle” until a picture emerged in the Shannon Mohr murder case.

According to the Chicago Tribune, another hero of the whodunit challenge was “tenacious state police officer Detective Sgt. Don Brooks,” who never bought the story that Shannon’s death was an accident. Brooks went on to appear on Forensic Files.

The obituary for Dick Britton, who died in 2021, notes that assisting with the investigation was among his favorite accomplishments. (Thanks to reader David Lewis for sending in the update.)

Shannon Mohr’s murder spawned many episodes of various true crime shows. No luck finding anywhere to see them for free online, but you can watch the made-for-TV movie, Victim of Love: The Shannon Mohr Story, on YouTube. The Philadelphia Inquirer called it “great trash TV.”

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

Jason MacLennan: Bad Memories

A Scrapbook Executive Dies at His Son’s Hand
(“Shoot to Thrill,” Forensic Files)

Note: This post was updated in October 2020.

When children kill their parents, money is usually the primary motive and the secondary one is a desire for freedom (Sarah Johnson).

Jason MacLennan as a young man — Jason MacLennan

Forensic Files killer Jason MacLennan had a third reason and, while it doesn’t justify shooting his father seven times, it makes the crime a little easier to comprehend: Jason resented the way his dad had neglected his mom while she was terminally ill.

For this week, I checked into where Jason and the buddy who helped him orchestrate the murder are today, and also looked for more family history.

Started up north. So let’s get going on the recap of “Shoot to Thrill” along with additional information drawn from internet research:

Jason MacLennan was born in Canada to Betty Irene Relf and Kenneth MacLennan on Feb. 22, 1985. The family moved to Orlando in 1997.

Kenneth traveled extensively for his job, often leaving Jason to care for Betty during her treatments for breast cancer in the late 1990s.

She had two mastectomies.

Jason would sometimes fall asleep in school because he had been up all night tending to his mother, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

That was fast. The family relocated to Oviedo, Florida, where Jason played lacrosse at Oviedo High School. Toward the end of Betty’s life, the MacLennans temporarily moved back to Canada so she could be close to relatives.

In 1999, shortly after — accounts vary as to whether it was two weeks or four months — his mother’s death, Kenneth’s girlfriend, Laurence Morand, moved into the MacLennans’ house.

The house where Jason and Kenneth MacLennan lived in Walden Woods — The murder scene on Chelmsford Lane in the Walden Woods neighborhood

Laurence had to fly back to Switzerland after every 90 days because of a visa problem, but she lived with Ken and Jason off and on for years.

Nostalgic work. Jason didn’t appreciate the Swiss businesswoman’s presence, and the two argued often. (Note: Forensic Files refers to her by the pseudonym “Alessandra.”)

In 2002, the MacLennans moved to St. Cloud, Minnesota, where Kenneth, a former Tupperware executive, nabbed a high-level management job at a scrapbook and photo album company called Creative Memories.

The family had a Jack Russell terrier named Mac, which probably made for some nice Kodak moments, but it didn’t compensate for Kenneth’s long absences. When he was in town, he often didn’t come home until 9 p.m., according to Star Tribune reporting.

Variety of bullets. Around midnight on Jan. 14, 2003, Jason called 911 to report that he’d discovered his father shot to death at the base of the stairs.

Responders found Kenneth MacLennan, 53, bloodied on the hardwood floor of the family’s house. His gun wounds came from four different types of ammunition, lab tests would later show.

Matthew Moeller, age 17 — Matthew Moeller circa 1999

At first, it looked like a robbery. Kenneth’s watch and cash were missing.

Outside, police found an unexplained set of footprints from Lugz boots, “popular in the world of hip-hop,” according to Forensic Files.

Jason, 17, said that two additional sets of tracks belonged to him and Matthew Moeller, a classmate from St. Cloud Technical High School. They had gone outside to smoke, Jason said.

Girlfriend abroad. Police found no gunshot residue on Jason’s hands.

Laurence Morand stood to collect $100,000 from Kenneth’s Creative Memories life insurance policy, but she was in Switzerland at the time of the shooting, so police ruled her out.

Soon, Jason’s classmates began speaking with the authorities.

He had been asking around for help killing his dad and told friends they would be rich and free of rules with Kenneth out of the way, the students said.

Partner cracks. Under police questioning, Jason stuck to his story that he had gotten out of the shower and then found his father dead on the floor.

Matt on the other hand, held back for a short time, then started singing like an American Idol contestant.

He said Jason had given him $1,000 for procuring the rifle used in the murder. Matt also mentioned using four types of ammunition — a fact that police hadn’t released to the news media.

Matt explained that the third set of footprints came from his own Lugz, which the two conspirators used in a bid to throw off investigators.

Firearm forensics. On a rural property owned by Matt Moeller’s parents, police found Jason’s bloody clothes, Kenneth’s charge cards, and $1,255 in cash. A glove had Jason’s DNA inside and gun residue on the outside.

A drop of blood inside the barrel of Matt’s 22-caliber rifle came from Kenneth MacLennan, who probably tried to grab the weapon in self-defense.

Matt and Jason were charged with murder just two days after the crime, on Jan. 16, 2003.

Prints in the snow. Prosecutors believed the motive was Kenneth’s $1.4 million estate and Jason’s hatred of his dad for being an absentee father and husband.

They alleged that on the night of the murder, Jason and Matt waited until Kenneth fell asleep. Then, they made the fake Lugz-footprints and Matt rang the doorbell. When Kenneth came downstairs, Jason fired repeatedly at close range.

Jason pleaded not guilty and changed his story, alleging that he feared his father and shot him in self-defense.

The judge refused the defense’s request to present testimony from a battered-child syndrome expert, but the jury did hear that Kenneth burned his son’s arm with a cigarette to punish him for smoking and threatened him with a knife during an argument.

Parent remiss. At the very least, there was alienation between Kenneth and Jason, according to reporting from the Orlando Sentinel: “‘There was no communication,’ said Bonnie Kulpak, whose daughter had gone to the prom with Jason. ‘This boy was a lost soul.'”

Jason and Kenneth MacLennan shown in a newspaper clipping — Minneapolis Star clipping of father and son

Matt Moeller described Jason’s father as “like a ghost figure,” the St. Cloud Times reported.

It came out at the trial that Kenneth had made 26 business trips for Creative Memories during the nine-month period leading up to the murder, the Star Tribune reported.

No husband of the year. Police found a suicide prevention card and Betty MacLennan’s death certificate in Jason’s basement bedroom.

One witness testified that Jason had begged her to take him away from his dad. Marie Buenrostro, the wife of Kenneth’s former tennis partner, told the Star Tribune that Ken acted like John McEnroe on the court and had a worrisome temper in general — which contributed to his firing from his Tupperware job.

Jason alleged that his dad physically abused his mother.

Betty sometimes locked herself in Jason’s room and slept on the floor, according to Buenrostro.

At the very least, Kenneth mistreated Betty emotionally, according to acquaintances who recounted Kenneth openly watching pornography at home — to the extent that a neighbor forbade his children to visit the MacLennans’ house — and he left Betty to drive herself to chemotherapy sessions, the Star Tribune reported.

Eyes on the estate. Meanwhile, Debbie Harris, the mother of Jason’s girlfriend Molly, described Jason as “the most nonaggressive teenager you could imagine … polite, sweet, loving” and said that he spent his spare time playing chess and watching the History Channel, the Star Tribune reported.

McCloud Tech High School — *Jason and Matthew* attended St. Cloud Tech High School together but ended up in separate Minnesota prisons

But friends testified that Jason frequently spoke of the wealth he would inherit upon his father’s death (although there was a contention that he was speaking of money he would receive from a trust when he turned 18, the St. Cloud Times reported). One acquaintance said Jason used Kenneth like “a bank,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.

Laurence Morand maintained that Jason and Kenneth both had bad tempers and argued frequently, according to court papers.

Time to pay. The prosecution called the attack on Kenneth a “premeditated ambush execution” and noted that both Matt and Jason had prior criminal records. Jason had a restricted license because of street racing in his Hyundai; it’s not clear what Matt’s offense was.

The jury agreed with the prosecution and convicted Jason of first-degree murder. He received life in prison.

Matt, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, got 30 years.

Recent mug shots of Jason MacLennan and Matthew Moeller — Jason MacLennan and Matthew Moeller
in recent mug shots

In 2005, the Minnesota Supreme Court denied Jason’s request for a new trial, rejecting his repeated contention that he was a victim of battered-child syndrome.

Grandmother faithful. Today, Jason lives in the Minnesota Correctional Institution – Stillwater, where custody level ranges from minimum to close.

He acquired a large neck tattoo while behind bars.

Jason’s paternal grandmother, Margaret MacLennan, either forgave Jason or thought he was innocent. Her 2010 obituary described her as the “loving grandmother of Jason MacLennan.”

Matt has moved from the Minnesota Correctional Institution – Moose Lake to Stillwater. The prison website lists his anticipated release date as Jan. 17, 2023.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Amazon Prime or Hulu

Sandra Duyst: Death of a Horsewoman

An Insurance Salesman Exercises Bad Policies
(‘Murder She Wrote,’ Forensic Files)

Sandra Duyst is picture wearing a riding hat. — Sandra Duyst

Many online viewers have expressed amazement that Sandra Duyst stayed married to a man who tried to kill her — particularly since he did so in a way that left no other interpretation.

David Duyst attacked his wife with an ax-hammer.

But instead of blaming him, Sandra told friends and medical professionals that her cranial injuries happened as the result of a horse-related accident. As sad as the case is, there’s nothing terribly surprising about it to me.

Kids in the equation. She appears to be the victim of a profound case of resignation fueled by low self-esteem and embarrassment.

But where did the low esteem come from? For this week, I looked for some answers.

There’s no need to check on her husband’s status — as the producers noted after the show, David Duyst ended up dying in prison. But the couple left three children, so I searched for information about how Erica, Timothy, and David Duyst Jr. handled the aftermath of their mother’s death.

So let’s get started on the recap of “Murder She Wrote,” along with additional information from internet research:

Sandra Anne Bos was born on Dec. 29, 1959, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. At the age of 3, she participated in her first horse show and went on to collect numerous equestrian awards. She was also MVP of her high school volleyball team.

She and David Duyst, the son of a history teacher and a librarian, met in high school and got married after they both attended Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The two had grown up in the area and had lots of friends, according to Beyond the Grave: The Murder of Sandra Duyst, an ID Network show produced in 2016.

The Duysts moved to a house in Alpine Township and built a stable on the property. She specialized in raising and training quarter horses and gave riding lessons.

Blame it on Dexter. David started his career as an Amway salesman, then joined his father-in-law’s insurance company, Northwestern Mutual Life. At one time, David also served as chairman of West Side Christian School, where Sandra coached girls volleyball.

Insurance salesman and murderer David Duyst wearing glasses and a mustache — David Duyst

It’s not clear exactly when trouble started brewing for the Duysts, but on Nov. 19, 1998, a severely wounded, bleeding Sandra crawled to a neighbor’s house for help, explaining that her horse Dexter had kicked her in the head while she was trying to feed him.

She would survive her injuries, but suffered from mood swings and depression afterward, according to people who knew her well.

Her personal physician, James Veldkamp, would later testify that she improved after he prescribed Paxil for her.

In 1999, she and one of her horses placed in the Top 5 at the All-American Quarter Horse Congress in Columbus, Ohio.

But on March 29, 2000, David Duyst called 911 and said his wife had committed suicide in her bedroom and was dead.

Improbable injuries. He told police that he had fallen asleep in the TV room and the sound of a gun woke him up. Sandra, 40, had shot herself with the couple’s Smith & Wesson 9-millimeter semiautomatic, he reported.

David, who admitted the couple had marital problems, told 911 that this was not Sandra’s first suicide attempt.

His story sounded credible until an autopsy showed Sandra suffered two bullet wounds. People don’t generally shoot themselves twice in the head.

Splatter revealed. David said the pistol must have double-fired, but testing of the gun disproved that theory. And two forensic medical doctors, Stephen Cohle and Vincent DiMaio, concluded that each one of her wounds was lethal enough to disable her immediately, which ruled out the possibility that she deliberately shot herself a second time.

She had no blood splatter on her arms or clothing.

Meanwhile, in another case of a murderer who didn’t watch Forensic Files often enough, David voluntarily handed over the clothes he wore on the night Sandra died.

The Duysts house with the barn and stable structure in the back — Sandra Duyst boarded horses in the stable behind her house

They looked clean enough to the naked eye, but a lab found tiny drops of high-velocity impact mist blood on David’s shirt.

Financial woes. And more incriminating news: David was having an affair with his secretary, Linda Ryan, who for some reason wanted to have the jerk all to herself.

Ryan, who kept a collection of Beanie Babies on her desk at work, admitted that she and David planned to split with their spouses so they could be together. She divorced her husband and started checking out engagement rings online, but David dragged his feet, according to Beyond the Grave.

There’s more: David and Sandra were in debt, behind on tuition for their kids’ schools.

And to complete the Forensic Files homicidal-spouse package, David had recently taken out life insurance on Sandra that would pay out $579,000, even in the event of suicide.

Mary Ellen Spring, Sandra’s sister, chimed in with another revelation. Sandra had told her that if anything happened to her, she should look for a piece of paper hidden in a china cabinet.

Far-fetched explanation. The letter written by Sandra told a different story about how Sandra got those head injuries in 1998. The couple had been arguing in the barn about money, and David struck her on the head with an ax-hammer her while she was feeding Dexter.

The document was the kind of voice from the grave that makes a prosecutor’s day for a month.

David fought the accusations, playing an answering machine recording of Sandra saying that he had pushed her “beyond” and that their marriage was over and so was her life.

He claimed that she meant the second part literally. Defense lawyer David Dodge alleged that Sandra had shot herself twice in order to frame her husband as a murderer — an act of revenge for his infidelity.

Linda Ryan, the mousy-looking secretary David Duysts started an affair with at the office — The other woman: Linda Ryan

David, 41, also contended that his wife had reason to be severely depressed at the time of her death, because he had just asked her for a divorce and told her that he “had an excellent chance of gaining custody of the children,” according to court papers.

Children faithful. His lawyer also said that the six-figure payday on Sandra’s life shouldn’t count against David: Insurance salespeople tend to take out large policies on their spouses to set a good example for their clients, Dodge contended.

The testimony of the couple’s children, who all reportedly believed in their father’s innocence, was a mixed bag that alternated between helping each side.

Erica Duyst, 13, testified that after Sandra recovered from the head injuries, she seemed depressed.

On the other hand, eldest child David Jr. and youngest Tim, 11, both said that on the day their mother died, her mood seemed fine. They also both testified that Sandra disliked guns.

But the boys also said that, after they awoke to the sound of gunshots on March 29, 2000, they heard their father’s footsteps coming from the TV room and moving to the bedroom — suggesting that Sandra was alone in the bedroom when the gun fired.

Forensic folks. Peter Duyst, the children’s grandfather, also supported David’s innocence. He had already suffered the death of his son Peter, a police officer who was electrocuted while trying to save a drowning man in 1994, according to the Grand Rapids Press.

Most of the testimony from forensic professionals helped the prosecution, however. Crime scene reconstruction expert Rod Englert said the death scene evidence was “consistent with someone firing the fatal shots while standing behind Sandra,” according to court papers.

Lovable guy? Sandra’s friend Cindy McCullough, who appeared on the episode, said that even after the horse stable incident, Sandra loved David and wanted to salvage the marriage.

As reporter Doug Guthrie wrote in the Grand Rapids Press, David Duyst did have some charm:

“Wearing a double-breasted blue blazer and looking every bit the insurance salesman he is, Duyst had jurors laughing and at ease almost immediately. Duyst exchanged smiles with his three children, who also appeared in the packed courtroom today. And he smiled as he told jurors that his eldest son — David Duyst Jr. — today is celebrating his 16th birthday. ‘He is getting his license today so watch out for the white Suburbans out there,’ Duyst said with a laugh, drawing smiles from jurors.”

But to others, his attitude didn’t sit right, especially when he unreluctantly badmouthed his late wife, alleging she had a negative attitude toward life.

Duplicate doubted. A jury found him guilty in March of 2001 and he received a sentence of life without parole plus two years for a felony firearms conviction.

In an interview with Wood TV8, juror Marie Hopkins commented that she felt David was cocky and overly relaxed on the witness stand. “No one could shoot themselves twice in the head,” she added.

The children the couple shared stayed with their maternal grandparents during the trial, but it’s not clear who took care of them long term.

An Associated Press story with the headline "Man Guilty of Killing Sleeping Wife"

Today, Tim Duyst appears to have a career in the military. Erica Duyst works in the health care industry. It’s not clear what David Duyst Jr.’s occupation is but, like the other two, he still lives in Michigan.

Their father’s obituary notes that both sons are married and that there are grandchildren in the family.

Finally, after researching Sandra Duyst’s life, I need to alter my theory that a typical case of low self-esteem made Sandra cling to the same man who struck her skull with a heavy implement.

The Grand Rapids Press reported that Ronald Baker, a pastor at the family’s church, said that “Sandra Duyst had been an assertive and confident woman before the incident, but became distant and timid after. He attributed her behavior to headaches she was suffering.”

It takes strength and initiative to exit a bad marriage, and the traumatic injuries Sandra suffered could have snuffed out her fortitude.

For all we know, Sandra at first covered up the ax attack because of embarrassment and then David Duyst begged her to forgive him — and put on a sweet, remorseful husband routine just long enough for him to figure out a way to finish the job.

Bids for freedom. He ended up serving his time at Saginaw Correctional Facility, which doesn’t sound like any country club prison. The facility is surrounded by a “buffer fence, double chain link fences, razor-ribbon wire, electronic detection systems, an armed patrol vehicle, and gun towers.”

But the convict never gave up hope. He busied himself with appeals, including the ever-popular ineffective counsel claim.

A Sign for Calvin College, alma mater of both the Duysts

He had no luck with the legal maneuvering and died after a short illness at age 58 in 2018.

(Duyst was fortunate to pass away of natural causes — a Saginaw inmate was recently found dead of blunt force trauma in his cell after his roomie allegedly beat him with a Master Lock tied to an electrical cord.)

More family woe. Lawrence and Sarah Bos paid tribute to their murdered daughter via a $3,000 scholarship for physical education or recreational majors at Calvin College.

Even more tragedy was to strike Sandra’s parents, when yet another adult daughter, the aforementioned Mary Ellen Spring, died prematurely.

You can watch the Beyond the Grave episode about Sandra Duyst’s murder on Daily Motion. It’s more of a dramatization than a documentary, but it features commentary from some of the real-life professionals involved in the case.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on Tubi or Amazon Prime

Diane King: An Anchor Silenced

A Newscaster Becomes the Story
(“News at 11,” Forensic Files)

Bradford J. King had a halfway decent career as a part-time professor, but he didn’t harbor aspirations of rising much higher.

He didn’t have to. He had a wife in a high-paying profession. Diane King was a morning anchor at station WUHQ-TV in Battle Creek, Michigan.

For Brad, her salary meant a comfortable life and sharing in her perks, including a company-paid rafting trip and occasional meet-and-greets with B-list celebs like Ted Nugent.

Party’s over. Brad’s uncluttered work schedule also allowed him plenty of free time to socialize outside the marriage.

That little arrangement threatened to come undone, however, because Diane, 34, wanted to quit her job and stay at home with the couple’s 3-month-old daughter, Kateri, and 3-year-old son, Marler.

Like so many other Forensic Files bad guys, Brad, 44, decided on murder and insurance fraud instead of divorce and starting over — and believed he could outfox the law.

For this week, I looked into where Brad is today and what happened to the children. But first, here’s a recap of “News at 11,” the Forensic Files episode about the case, along with additional information drawn from internet research:

Native American heritage. Diane Marler was born in Detroit on April 4, 1956, one of five children. She later took her stepfather’s last name, Newton. She served in the army’s signal corps and earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from Wayne State University.

A member of the Mohawk Nation, Diane wanted to one day make documentaries about Native American people, according to a newspaper account. She also thought about capitalizing on her striking features with modeling work.

In 1984, she married Bradford King, a divorced father of a teenage daughter named Alissa.

Brad had first declared his love for Diane at an EST meeting in Colorado. At their subsequent wedding, she pledged herself “to having this marriage be magical and fun,” according to the book The Eye of the Beholder: The Almost Perfect Murder of Anchorwoman Diane Newton King by Lowell Cauffiel.

The couple eventually moved from Denver to a rented house with a rustic barn on Division Street in Marshall, Michigan.

In addition to her job at WUHQ-TV in nearby Battle Creek, Diane helped out at a local soup kitchen and did volunteer work with disadvantaged children.

Laboring in academia. Brad had been a police officer in Pontiac, Michigan, from 1969 to 1983. After that, his job history gets a little patchy. At some point, he earned a degree in criminal justice and then taught college classes on the subject.

He was dismissed from an instructor job at Western Michigan University because he was “unable to meet his class on two occasions,” according to a Battle Creek Enquirer story from Feb. 1, 1992.

Although media accounts vary on Brad’s job status around the time of the murder, one source reported that he was entirely unemployed by the winter of 1991.

Diane’s career in broadcast journalism was sturdy thanks to her diligence in researching stories and her telegenic voice and appearance.

Bad hombre. Michael Moran, a colleague from Diane’s previous job at station KJCT in Grand Junction, Colorado, would later describe her as at times “abrasive and pushy” and “domineering,” according to a Battle Creek Enquirer story following the murder.

Maybe Diane was a bit difficult, but it’s also possible that a man with those same qualities would be described as a go-getter with a commanding presence.

Marshall, Michigan, is known for its small-town charm

Whatever the case, her work was well-regarded in the industry and community.

Precautions failed. Unfortunately, an anonymous fan admired her so much that he began leaving disturbing messages for her. She eventually received the kind of letter usually seen only on 1970s detective shows — with lettering cut from magazines and then pasted on paper. “You’ll be sorry you didn’t have lunch with me,” it read.

That threat rattled Diane’s nerves, so WUHQ-TV beefed up security around the station. Brad installed extra lighting at home.

But the worst case scenario came true on February 9, 1991, when emergency services received a hysterical-spouse call from Brad, who said he’d found Diane dead in the family’s driveway.

Diane had two bullet wounds, a fatal one to her heart and another in the pelvic area.

Brad said he’d heard shots earlier while he was taking a walk in the woods but figured they came from hunters.

Ginormous story. For the village of Marshall, known for its antiques shops and annual Victorian house tour, it was the first murder in recent memory.

“The cold-blooded killing of a woman in a glamorous, high-profile occupation was a shocking anomaly in this community of 6,800,” the LA Times reported on March, 29, 1992.

Sniper’s lair: Police theorized Brad King fired the first shot from the loft in the barn

It was “Marshall’s crime of the century,” according to Suburban Secrets, a series produced by Court TV and Sirens Media that covered the case in a 2008 episode.

Police began a slow but steady investigation.

Shell game. It was noted that Brad’s anguish over his wife’s death quickly gave way to stoicism, according to Suburban Secrets.

Brad explained that, as a former law officer, he was accustomed to talking about crimes while keeping his emotions in check, according to detective Jim Stadtfeld, who appeared on Suburban Secrets.

At the Kings’ property, police found a shell casing in the loft of the barn, about 70 feet from the driveway.

Investigators wondered why a Doberman pinscher who they believed was in the barn at the time of the shooting, didn’t raise a fuss about an intruder. (Media accounts vary as to whether the dog belonged to the Kings or was “borrowed” from a relative.)

Let’s paws here. The Doberman couldn’t answer any questions for investigators, but the police found another one to help with forensics: Travis the tracker.

The German shepherd followed a scent from the loft through the woods, and then to a .22-caliber Remington Scoremaster rifle discarded in a creek bed. Brad owned the same type of gun, and boot prints that matched his own were found nearby.

Travis then traced the killer’s path back to the spot where Diane died in the driveway.

While investigators were still working on the case, Brad scooped up his two younger children and moved to Colorado, saying he was tired of facing police questioning, the AP reported.

The threesome didn’t get much time to relax. In early 1992, Michigan authorities arrested Brad, charged him with murder, and set bail at $750,000.

He raised the money but ended up stuck in jail because he didn’t meet other conditions for release.

Twin rifles. At the trial, prosecutors contended that Brad had expected Diane to be alone in the car on the day of the murder. The couple had planned on leaving Kateri and Marler with their grandparents for the night. But one of the kids got sick, so she brought them both home.

The prosecution also alleged that Brad was lying about having sold his Scoremaster rifle in 1984. The police found seven witnesses who said they’d seen the gun in Brad’s possession in the intervening years.

Diane Marler Newton and Brad King in their respective high school days

Oddly, there was a second Scoremaster to the story. A neighbor said he found one in his attic when he moved to Division Street, but ballistics tests determined it didn’t fire the fatal bullets.

Much ado about nothing. Investigators believed Brad planted the rifle there to deflect suspicion away from himself.

And they suspected Brad sent the threatening note to Diane — and had used cutout letters because she could have identified his handwriting. In fact, the authorities wondered whether the whole stalker saga was a hoax staged by Brad.

The defense suggested that a burglar killed Diane — there was a broken window at the house. But the glass fragments were on the wrong side. Thieves generally break in, not out.

And damning intelligence about Brad’s character started rolling in.

Promiscuous man. Cauffiel, who appeared on Forensic Files, said that Brad, 44, enjoyed hanging around with college kids at a fraternity house and liked doing shots of tequila at Waldo’s, a bar where students drank.

Two students told police that they were having affairs with Brad shortly before the murder, the AP reported on Jan. 6, 1993. One of the liaisons, Anne Hill, 34, said Brad felt cut off from the family’s finances, the Battle Creek Enquirer reported on Nov. 13, 1992. Diane had reportedly frozen their checking account.

Police learned that Brad had set up a date with one of his girlfriends the day after the murder, according to Suburban Secrets.

One of Diane’s sisters, Denise Verrier, said that Diane wanted a divorce — apparently the magic and fun were waning — and Brad was “enraged” by the notion of getting a full-time job and paying child support.

False sense of security. Media accounts didn’t mention the total amount of life insurance payouts Brad had to gain by his wife’s death, but Cauffiel’s book pointed to a $54,000 policy from WUHQ-TV.

In 2011, an online commenter identifying herself as a co-worker of Diane’s said she recalled Brad’s going to the manager’s office to ask when he would get the money.

Prosecutor Jon Sahli contended that on the day of the murder, Brad left a light on inside the house so Diane would think he was home. (Because of the alleged stalker, Diane had been afraid to exit the car without anyone around to protect her.)

Brad waited in the loft, then shot Diane after she pulled into the driveway and emerged from the car, investigators believed.

Kids left at crime scene. Next, he walked over to Diane’s body and shot her at close range — before he realized the kids were in the car — Sahli alleged.

Investigators believed he then returned to the woods and did a quick 180 back to the house to “discover” Diane’s body. He couldn’t wait around for someone else to find it because the kids were strapped in the car on a wintery Michigan day (although Brad reportedly left them in the vehicle while waiting for emergency services).

Cauffiel believed that Brad, with his law enforcement experience, figured he could outwit the police via the fatal attraction-style messages and the decoy gun.

He also portrayed himself as a victim. His lawyer, John Sims, characterized the whole case as “the power of the state arrayed against Bradford King,” the Battle Creek Enquirer reported.

Sorry, no buttoneering. But Judge Conrad Sindt granted many concessions to the defense. He banned one of Diane’s BFF’s from testifying that Diane suspected Brad of having an affair while she was pregnant with Kateri and that he had lost interest in her sexually — it was hearsay, the judge ruled.

Sindt also forbade Diane’s friends and family from wearing buttons with her picture in the courtroom, and ordered her brother Allen Marler to stay away from Brad, who felt “stalked” by him; Marler denied the allegation.

In another win for the defense, Julie Cook, a college student Brad allegedly had an affair with, wasn’t allowed to testify.

But in the end, the jury had heard enough evidence to convict Brad King of first-degree murder. The Detroit Free Press reported that Brad “grabbed the table and appeared pale” when hearing the verdict.

Denise Verrier read a victim impact statement about her nightmares of her sister in the “cold gravel driveway — all alone with only the sound of her crying children to be heard.”

Forensic Files fellas. On Jan. 6, 1993, Brad received life in prison with no possibility of parole.

Today, Brad King occupies a cell in Thumb Correctional Facility in Lapeer, Michigan, the same prison occupied by another Forensic Files wife killer, Michael Fletcher.

The Kings’ small children lived with grandparents during the courtroom proceedings.

Now young adults, both Kateri King and Marler King still live in Michigan.

She works as a nurse assistant and medical technician, and he has a career as a detailing designer in the automotive industry.

Appearance-wise, the kids take after their mother.

And one more update, KJCT-TV ended up firing Michael Moran for publicly trashing Diane King after her she died. He works as a lecturer at Colorado Mesa University today.

Sample the book. In addition to Forensic Files and Suburban Secrets, A&E series City Confidential covered the case in an episode titled “Bad News in Battle Creek.”

You can read generous excerpts of Eye of the Beholder online and scroll through the book’s photos.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube of Amazon Prime

Paul Camiolo’s Trial By Fire

A Survivor Needs Rescuing
(“Up in Smoke,” Forensic Files)

The story of the house fire that made Paul Camiolo into an adult orphan is a horrible tragedy, but it’s free of evil or scandalous behavior.

Paul Camiolo, whose parents died in an accidental fire — Paul Camiolo

“Up in Smoke” doesn’t offer up a wife having an affair with a young janitor or a funeral director who took out five life insurance policies on the kid who washes the limousines. The closest thing to a bad guy is an anonymous flooring contractor who was probably just being a little bit cheap.

And the crucial forensics in the episode aren’t your typical gruesome Forensic Files evidence — no bone fragments or blood splatter. You can watch the show while you’re eating. It even has some fun facts.

For this week, I looked for an epilogue for Paul Camiolo, who Forensic Files portrays as a devoted son transformed into the No. 1 suspect for a double homicide that never happened.

Although I agree with the conclusion that he was innocent, online research yielded some information not mentioned in “Up in Smoke” that makes it easier to understand why the authorities believed in his guilt at first.

Multigenerational home. So let’s get started on the recap, along with additional facts drawn from the Web:

Software technician Paul Camiolo lived with his parents, Rosalie and Ed Camiolo, in a Colonial-style house in Upper Moreland, Pennsylvania.

Rosalie, 57, worked in the computer industry, and Ed, 81, was a retired government employee.

She had suffered a number of strokes along with other health woes, and he had one leg that was shorter than the other because of childhood bout with polio, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer account. He had also recently battled cancer.

The medical problems limited the couple’s mobility, so Paul, their only child, helped with tasks like shopping.

Horrific scene. In the wee hours of September 18, 1996, Paul called emergency services to report a fire in the living room.

Willow Grove volunteer firefighters arrived to find him getting dressed on the front lawn. He told them that his parents escaped through the backdoor.

Rosalie and Edward Camiolo had a May-December marriage, but it was apparently a happy one — Rosalie and Edward Camiolo’s May-December marriage was apparently a happy one

They discovered Rosalie severely burned on the back porch and Edward in cardiac arrest inside the house.

He died that night. She succumbed to her injuries 10 weeks later.

Wavering story. Paul, who was around 30 years old at the time, explained that his mother was a chain-smoker and had probably set the couch on fire accidentally. He threw a pitcher of water on the flames, but instead of smothering them, it fed them, he said.

According to Forensic Files, Paul said that he told his parents to go out the back door, then phoned for help and left via the front door.

What the show didn’t mention was that Paul allegedly gave shifting accounts about whether he was asleep or awake when the fire broke out and changed his story about the logistics of his attempts to save his parents, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Worrisome labwork. Former Assistant District Attorney Timothy Woodward, who appeared on Forensic Files, pointed out that Paul was the beneficiary of his parents’ six-figure life insurance payouts. Woodward wondered whether Camiolo was tired of caring for his mom and dad.

Tests on the flooring near the couch showed traces of gasoline. The authorities built a case around their theory that Paul used the accelerant to start a fire while his parents were upstairs, then escaped and left them to die.

Montgomery County, Pa., where Paul Camiolo and his parents lived

In January 1999, Paul was charged with first degree murder, arson, and insurance fraud and held without bail in the Montgomery County jail.

Excruciating aftermath. Thus Paul Camiolo traveled from a literal burning hell to a figurative one of public infamy. As the Philadelphia Inquirer reported on January 21, 1999:

“Paul Camiolo wanted money, Montgomery County authorities say, and he didn’t want to pay the health-care costs of his sick parents…Camiolo took care of both problems…[He] inherited more than $400,000 and moved to Bucks County.”

The article noted that he purchased a house for $77,000 in the town of Holland, Pennsylvania, after his parents died.

Fortunately for Paul, his extended family — including nephew Vince Camiolo, who appeared on Forensic Files — believed in his innocence. More than a dozen of his relatives showed up to support him at his preliminary hearing, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Loving kin. Vince Camiolo noted that his uncle Paul was “unusual,” but that didn’t make him guilty. Relatives attested to the fact that Paul was happy to transport his parents to family picnics and the annual Polenta Night at the Sons of Italy, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer story from March 30, 1999.

Bill Burns, who was Paul’s boss at Shopman Inc., a software business in Ivyland, called the charges against him “outrageous” and spoke of his patient, empathetic approach to helping customers. He said that Paul had never once complained about his parents.

Burns continued to pay Paul his salary while he was in jail and vowed to keep his job open for him until his release, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer piece.

Investing in quality. Paul had another supporter in Steve Avato, one of the volunteer firefighters who had responded to the blaze. Avato also worked as a special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms — and he doubted that the traces of gasoline found on the floor added up to arson.

During his Forensic Files appearance, Avato also noted he didn’t find it suspicious that Paul escaped via the front door — instead of the backdoor, with his parents — because people tend to flee fires through the door they normally use to exit.

Camiolo enlisted Thomas S. Cometa and William Ruzzo to defend him and paid $65,000 to hire “five respected fire experts,” according to a Times Leader report from 2000.

Heavy hitters weigh in. One of the experts, Richard Roby, PhD., built a replica of the house. After some testing, he determined that an intentionally set fire would have spread faster than the one in the Camiolo’s house that night in 1996.

In custody, Paul Camiolo faces reporters

Here’s where the interesting trivia comes in. John Lentini, another of the fire investigators hired by the defense, said that in the 1970s — when the house was built — some flooring contractors thinned out varnish with gasoline because it cost less than higher-quality agents.

That explained why the lab found traces of gasoline on the floor but not the rug.

Flare up. Also, tests had pegged the gasoline as leaded, a type of fuel not sold in Pennsylvania in more than a decade at the time of the fire. How could Paul have used leaded gasoline as an accelerant when there was no place to buy it?

And the most useful fact: Polyurethane, a material used in the Camiolo’s couch, burns more fiercely when it comes into contact with water. (One more reason to keep a fire extinguisher handy. Actually, I need to go to the hardware store.)

The episode contains a great quote from Lentini, who called arson investigation a “profession largely controlled and dominated by hacks. They make complicated decisions about chemistry and physics and they never took chemistry and physics.”

In other words, they weren’t bad guys — just wrong guys, whose overconfidence ended up saddling an innocent fire survivor’s life with an awful stigma.

180-degree turn. The defense theorized that Rosalie accidentally dropped a match on the polyurethane sofa. Like a grease fire, the flames on the polyurethane responded to water by getting bigger, lending credence to Paul Camiolo’s statement to investigators.

The prosecution did its own test with polyurethane and got similar results.

The Montgomery County attorney general’s office — which had announced in March 1999 that it was seeking the death penalty — reversed itself, dropped the charges against Paul Camiolo, and set him free in the fall of that year after 11 months of confinement.

He returned to his software job at Shopman Inc.

A new legal fight. In July 2000, Camiolo filed a lawsuit against the Upper Moreland police, fire investigators, and State Farm insurance for false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, bad faith, and even some RICO offenses. He asked for $150,000 in damages.

Three years later, a federal appeals court ruled that Camiolo couldn’t sue the authorities or the insurance company (which had settled with him for $240,000 in 1998). The decision, dated June 30, 2003, noted that there was no scheme “to defraud or to deprive Camiolo of something by trick or deceit.”

Although he didn’t win any money as a result of his legal ordeal, on January 14, 2007, Paul got the satisfaction of having the Philadelphia Inquirer — the same newspaper that ran numerous articles about him as a murder suspect — include him in a feature story about the havoc that shaky arson investigations can wreak.

“Where do you go to get your name back?” Paul told the paper. “The mere accusation is so disgusting.”

Conflict of interest? He also got to vent in a Tribune Review story that questioned the practice of insurance companies paying law enforcement to conduct arson investigations.

The Camiolos’ gravestone reveals they had a second son, who died at 21

“It’s sad,” Paul told the Tribune Review, “that there are cases all throughout this country where insurance companies function as police in a district attorney’s case.”

He got additional support from John Lentini, who dedicated the reference book Scientific Protocols for Fire Investigation to Paul Camiolo and others “for whom a second look at their fire made all the difference.”

And the court of public appears to have migrated over to Paul’s corner, as numerous online comments indicate.

So where is Paul today?

According to an internet posting dated 2016, he has moved to Argentina.

It’s not clear why he relocated to South America, but his presence on social media affirms that he still has the support of the large extended family of Camiolos, who knew firsthand of his kindness to his parents and always believed in his innocence.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Amazon Prime

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Sharon Zachary: Impatient Heiress

Robert Rogers Dies at the Hands of a Friend
(“Prints Among Thieves,” Forensic Files)

Greed can take hold of just about anybody, whether it’s a teenager working a funnel cake concession with an overflowing cash box or a county treasurer eyeing the public coffers and thinking he really deserves to be paid for OT.

Sharon Zachary

Most people can shake off the temptation, even if they do create a few mental blueprints for absconding with the funds.

“Prints among Thieves” tells the story of a respectable-seeming woman who followed her greed the whole way. She killed the man who stood between her and a pile of money. And she didn’t go about the homicide passively.

Curiosity stoked. Instead of “accidentally” leaving a tennis ball on the staircase or trying the Forensic Files tribute switcheroo of anti-freeze in a Gatorade bottle, Sharon Kay Zachary got up close and personal.

On April 26, 1996, she beat 80-year-old Robert Rogers to death in a bid to gain full access to his personal fortune.

A short update to her story appeared on this blog last year, but Google has logged so many searches for her name lately that a longer treatment seems in order.

Cash king. For this post, I looked around for more intelligence on Zachary and also tried to find out whether Rogers’ estranged son ultimately ended up with his dad’s assets.

So let’s get started on the recap with additional information drawn from internet research:

Robert Rogers was a colorful old coot who made a small fortune in real estate and trucking in Battle Creek, Michigan. He enjoyed throwing cash around in public. Local thieves preyed upon him multiple times, but Rogers continued to store large sums of cash in his home and on his person.

He had grown up during the Great Depression and didn’t trust banks.

Rogers lived alone in a house on a huge plot of land in Emmett Township, Michigan. His wife had died a few years before he met Sharon Zachary.

Rogers and his only child, an adopted son named Donald, went for long stretches without communicating. When they were together, they argued a lot.

Like a daughter. But Robert Rogers found an agreeable surrogate child in Zachary, a 31-year-old neighbor he hired as a caregiver. He had trouble with his eyesight, so he put Zachary’s name on his checking account and gave her power of attorney to handle his financial transactions.

He also made her the sole beneficiary of his estate.

Forensic Files didn’t mention it, but newspaper accounts reported that Zachary, her husband, Mike, and teenage son, Josh, lived in a house they were in the process of buying from Rogers at the time of the murder.

After one of the robberies, Rogers moved in with the Zacharys for a while and the four became like family, according to “Love Thy Neighbor,” an episode of Mansions and Murders.

Robert Rogers’ house at 1015 Raymond Road has been described as a mansion

Seamy undercoat. Mike Zachary did some kind of work for a carpet retailer, but he tended to have periods of unemployment, according to Tom Headley, a retired Emmett Township police officer who appeared on Mansions and Murders.

Sharon worked as a used-car salesperson, which probably explains a lot.

She may have had persuasive charm, but she was lacking in the common sense department.

It was foolish enough of her to start helping herself to Robert Rogers’ money, but why did she call attention to the theft by buying a car, a truck, a boat, and furniture and taking her family to the Caribbean?

Diminutive killer. Those extravagances added up to about $65,000, according to Forensic Files, and she also transferred another $55,000 in funds to her bank accounts.

At some point, Rogers discovered the financial shenanigans and decided to revoke her power of attorney.

Before he had a chance, a 911 operator got a call from Sharon Zachary to report what looked like a burglary at Rogers’ house. (Her rather husky voice on the phone doesn’t really match the photos from that time; she looks bookish and petite.)

Trace Christenson covered the case for the Battle Creek Enquirer

Initial suspect. Police arrived on the scene to find a hole in a sliding glass door to Rogers’ house, disarray inside, and Robert Rogers lying dead on the floor, struck at least 25 times in the head with a heavy object. Someone had gone through his pockets.

Sharon Zachary probably figured the alienated son would take the fall for the old man’s death.

At first, investigators did focus on Donald Rogers.

Shared animosity. While his father never lacked for cash, Donald had to work two jobs, a shift at General Motors and a part-time gig selling real estate. Donald had once tried, unsuccessfully, to get his father to give him power of attorney — a suspect move.

And the two men were short-tempered. One of their disputes allegedly got physical. All things considered, Donald must have seemed like the perfect patsy for Sharon Zachary.

But Donald had a solid alibi and passed a polygraph test.

“We argued, but it was just the way we got along,” Donald would later testify in court, according to the Battle Creek Enquirer.

Hidden mint. Meanwhile, detectives found a partial shoe print on a glass shard in the house that matched one of Sharon Zachary’s size 6½ sneakers. And next to a pond on Robert Rogers’ property, there was a set of house keys. A diver recovered a metal pipe that had been submerged in the pond but still carried a trace of Rogers’ blood.

After investigators uncovered Zachary’s financial misdoings, they theorized that she had bludgeoned Rogers to death, staged the scene to look like a burglary, and accidentally dropped her set of Rogers’ house keys while throwing the murder weapon into the pond.

Oddly, there was still more than $133,000 of cash stashed inside Rogers’ house. Zachary either missed it or didn’t want the risk of having to hide it somewhere. With Rogers dead, she’d inherit a great deal more from the will anyway. Newspaper accounts pegged the total at $500,000 to $750,000.

Out of the ordinary. Although the trial, which began in 1997, was no O.J. Simpson or Casey Anthony sensation, it did cause a stir in Battle Creek.

“In the 1990s, we had a boatload of homicides, but most of them were drug-related,” recalled Battle Creek Enquirer crime reporter Trace Christenson during a phone interview with ForensicFilesNow. “This one [the Robert Rogers case] was different so it was a bigger deal. And forensics was starting to be a new big thing at the time.”

At the trial, defense attorney John Hofman described Zachary as a caring human being. “She is afraid of blood, she is a small person, and she would not do this,” he said, according to the Battle Creek Enquirer.

Jailhouse rat. But Calhoun County prosecutor David Wallace portrayed her as a woman in the throes of greed, “like a kid in a candy store.”

Zachary’s cell mate, an embezzler named Michelle McCormick, told the court that Zachary had confessed that she and Rogers argued about money and she killed him.

It came out that Zachary had once been accused of misappropriating funds from a car dealership, according to court papers.

Feeling flush. Nicholas Batch, a lawyer who had done work for Robert Rogers, testified that he advised Rogers against selling a house to the Zacharys because they weren’t “credit worthy” — more evidence that her plans exceeded her means.

Donald Rogers in his Forensic Files interview

A witness named David Garity testified that Zachary and her husband told him they could contribute $80,000 to a business the three wanted to start, according to the Battle Creek Enquirer.

But Zachary would never get a chance to follow through on the venture.

She received a guilty verdict for first-degree murder and armed robbery.

On September 15, 1997, Circuit Court Judge Stephen Miller gave her life without parole plus 15 to 30 years.

Goodbye to you. Her son, Josh, 18, cried in the courtroom when he heard the sentence, according to a newspaper account. (By the way, Sharon Zachary was 32 years old at that time. So did she — yikes — give birth to Josh at 14?)

Sharon Zachary proclaimed her innocence after the verdict. According to the Battle Creek Enquirer:

“This will not end until the day I go home,” she said. “I think she’s home now,” Donald Rogers said a few minutes later.

In 1998, Judge Miller denied Zachary’s motion for a new trial. In 2000, a Michigan court of appeals reaffirmed her conviction.

Low-to-medium risk. Today, she resides in Huron Valley Complex in Ypsilanti. She’s probably feeling a little cramped lately, as Michigan has consolidated all female prisoners into Huron Valley, making it the state’s only facility for women.

There’s no shortage of adversity at Huron Valley.

In 2016, corrections officer Lauralie Herkimer complained of dangerous conditions in the facility, including ceilings so leaky that they shorted out the lights and employees so drained from working overtime that they had trouble doing their jobs.

That same year, a prison guard was charged with involuntary manslaughter in the death of 25-year-old inmate Janika Edmond.

On the bright side, the Department of Corrections has designated Zachary as Level II — on a scale of I to V — security-wise, suggesting that she has behaved herself well enough while behind razor wire.

Inflammatory situation. Incidentally, the house where she killed Robert Rogers continued to generate interest after the murder.

“There were rumors that there was more cash hidden in the house, and they had some issue with people going through the house,” Christenson said. “I don’t think they ever found anything.”

In March 2015, the property made news again.

It burned down in what newspapers described as a suspicious fire. No one was living in the house at the time.

The owner was listed as Donald Rogers.

So it looks as though Donald succeeded in supplanting Sharon Zachary as his father’s heir and received his rightful inheritance.

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

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Amazon Prime.

Tag: Forensic Files

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