These books focus on real cases, real people, and real consequences—examining crime with empathy for victims, respect for those who serve, and a commitment to understanding what actually happened.
When Anne Levey trusted a priest to help her troubled twelve-year-old son, she thought her prayers had been answered. She didn't know that Father Gerald Ridsdale—a predator who had already offended before—was using her faith against her. Paul was sent to live with his abuser in the Mortlake presbytery, where he was raped almost daily for close to a year. It would be decades before Paul found the words for what happened to him, and decades more before the Catholic Church admitted what it had always known: that Ridsdale was one of the most prolific pedophiles in Australian history, protected, reassigned, and shielded by leaders who chose the institution over its children.
On February 18, 2025, Ridsdale died in prison at ninety, still unrepentant, his last known reply to a question about his victims: "Hundreds." For Paul, the call that it was finally over brought relief—and a fresh wave of the trauma that has never fully left him. But Ridsdale's death didn't end the story. As the Church now fights survivors in court and quietly shuffles billion-dollar assets into subsidiaries it claims not to control, Paul is still telling the truth about what was done to him and to how many others. The Boy in the Presbytery is Paul Levey's account of survival, silence, and the refusal to let either the man or the institution that protected him have the last word.
Paul Levey’s life wasn’t always a nightmare. In his early years, he was the beloved son to Geoff, an Australian Army soldier, and Anne, a staunch Catholic. Paul attended public primary school in Melbourne but as a good Catholic himself, he regularly attended religious education classes. Later in life, he followed in his father’s footsteps, serving in the army. He married in his twenties, but quickly divorced due to his alcohol abuse—he had been using alcohol and drugs from a young age. Paul became a man whose every thought was haunted by the demons of his past. He kept his troubles to himself, telling no one, not even his closest friends or family. That is until the day his life changed forever and he became “the boy in the presbytery.”
The year that Paul’s living nightmare would begin was 1980. He was 12 years old when his mother’s friend, a nun, introduced the family to Gerald Ridsdale. Risdale was a Catholic priest who was studying at the National Pastoral Institute in Melbourne. Paul’s parents were going through some marriage troubles at the time. Gerald became a regular visitor at the Levey home. He was always offering to help Paul’s parents. Sister Genevieve, the nun who had introduced Gerald to the family, mentioned he and his brother Peter Ridsdale were going camping at White Cliffs in New South Wales. The two regularly went there to fossick for opals. Sister Genevieve thought it might be a good idea for Anne and Paul to go. There would be other children there for Paul to play with and it would be a good chance for Anne to clear her head.
Paul remembers enjoying the first part of the trip. He quickly discovered that it was quite easy to find opals that had been left by miners in years gone by. “They would peg out an area and you would find a lot of opals,” Paul said. “The miners only took the white ones. They left the blue, red, and green ones behind.” Paul said camping at White Cliffs was a dream for young boys with a keen sense of adventure. “It was like nothing we had ever seen…. Opal mines as far as you could see. It looked like the moon.” At night Ridsdale would take the boys out shooting rabbits—another source of excitement for Paul, who had never used a gun before. Peter’s son Kevin (not his real name) and another of Ridsdale’s nephews, Edward (not his real name), along with a few other boys, were also on the trip. The boys would often be alone with both brothers. Paul and the other boys were told to call Gerald “Gerry.” It was one of the many tactics he would use to try to convince Paul and other he was their friend.
Anne, who was taught from a young age that priests were messengers of God, was happy that her son, who was beginning to play up at school, had such a positive influence in his life with Ridsdale.
The camping site didn’t have a shower block. That was in town a short distance away. Peter would offer to take the boys to town with him so that they could shower. This was fine with Paul. The boys had become mates and they would shower without incident. However, as Ridsdale built trust with the other adults, he started to offer to take one of the boys to town with him to “grab some bread and milk.” He would slyly add that the boy could shower while they were there, and he would take the other boys in later to do the same. No one batted an eyelid. Why would they? This was a man of God, someone who would help steer the boys onto the right path in life. He had dedicated his life to the church, had sacrificed other pursuits in order to teach the word of the Lord.
On one of these trips to town, Paul discovered that Ridsdale had an evil plan. He accompanied him to the shower block. And that’s when Paul’s world was turned upside down. “When we got to the shower block we undressed and got into the shower[s]” separately, Paul said. He could hear Ridsdale saying “make sure you wash properly and wash your hair.” A short time later Ridsdale came into Paul’s shower. That’s when his descent into hell began. Paul was shocked and confused. Ridsdale placated Paul, telling him not to tell anyone about what had happened. Paul didn’t know what to do. Ridsdale was a priest. Paul had been taught to look up to him, to listen to him and follow his guidance. On top of that, such matters were not something that “good Catholics” spoke about—ever. Sex was a word never uttered. Masturbation was considered a sin. Lust was viewed as weakness. Paul did as he was told. He kept his mouth shut.
When he got back to camp Paul thought he would be able to escape Ridsdale’s abuse for a time at least. But Ridsdale’s brother announced he was taking the other boys into town to shower. When they left, Ridsdale made Paul sit on his knee and fondled him. “That was the end of the excitement at being on the trip,” Paul said. He recalled that Ridsdale always tried to find an excuse to take the boys to shower one at a time. He also tried to take the boys shooting alone. “I would hope he wouldn’t pick me but my turn would come,” Paul said. “He would then abuse you in the car.” Paul believes he was molested by the priest five to six times while at White Cliffs in New South Wales. In later years Ridsdale purchased a dugout at the campsite and built a makeshift place to stay. “It was just another place to sexually abuse children, including his own nephews,” Paul said. In a small win for Paul and other victims, when Ridsdale was jailed locals took the law into their own hands and destroyed the sex den.
Years later, a victim known as BAF told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse about being abused by Ridsdale at White Cliffs. The commission heard allegations of sexual abuse in a range of institutions, including the Catholic Church. BAF said that he was forced to sleep in the same bed as Ridsdale at White Cliffs when he was 16. BAF said Ridsdale started touching him on his arms and legs and then his genitals. “I asked him to stop, but he would not…. He made me masturbate him and forced me to give him oral sex. I was crying and emotionally upset and wanted him to stop. He apologised and he said he would not do it again. The following night, similar events occurred.” Shockingly, Ridsdale sent BAF a card. “I depend on you more than anything or anyone else for support,” he wrote. For BAF, this was not just a one-time thing. Ridsdale began to reach out to BAF on a regular basis, alluding that it was helping him resist the urge to abuse others. “That weekly phone call and a card in the mail gives me the energy to keep going ‘straight,’” he wrote. Ridsdale said he didn’t know how much BAF had “guessed” about him but concluded he wanted to open up to him.
In 1927, a married railroad official and a woman caught in a forbidden relationship were found brutally murdered on a lonely road outside Birmingham, Alabama.
The killings of Auburn Moore and Ruby Thornton became known as the Tryst Murders, a sensational case filled with sex, scandal, fear, rumor, and public outrage.
But the story did not end with the murders.
As newspapers fed the frenzy and investigators chased conflicting theories, the case moved through the machinery of Jim Crow Alabama, where race, class, police power, political pressure, and public morality all shaped the search for someone to blame. At the center of what followed was Horace DeVaughn, the man whose conviction would lead him to Yellow Mama, Alabama’s newly built electric chair.
In The Alabama Tryst Murder Mystery, S. Thorne Harper looks beyond the headlines to examine the crime, the investigation, the shifting evidence, the press coverage, and the larger world that made the case possible. This is not a fast, flashy true crime retelling. It is a careful, deeply researched account of a double murder, a questionable prosecution, and a state eager to prove the power of its new instrument of death.
The result is a true crime history about more than who pulled the trigger. It is about how a violent event becomes an official story, and what that story can hide.
Praise for The Alabama Tryst Murder Mystery
“It would be accurate to say S. Thorne ‘Sam’ Harper has written a beautiful, well-researched book about Alabama’s first execution in the electric chair known as Yellow Mama. It would also be accurate to say he has, through the little known case of Horace DeVaughn, captured in dramatic detail the state’s century long love affair with death. I am, frankly, jealous.”
— John Archibald, author of Shaking the Gates of Hell and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize
When she was a little girl, a stranger used the one thing he shouldn’t have known—her father’s love of fishing—to nearly walk her out of a crowded Oklahoma bowling alley.
Her father’s scream stopped him in time. He was never caught.
Forty years later, LaDonna Humphrey—now a cold-case investigator who has spent her career searching for other people’s missing daughters—turns that same skill on her own case. She releases a composite sketch. She reopens court records. She finds men who almost fit and watches hope collapse each time a date or a location doesn’t line up.
What starts as a search for one man becomes something larger: a map of how many ordinary men moved quietly through the same small towns and how many families never got the answer she’s still chasing.
The Man at Hilltop Lanes doesn’t end with an arrest. It ends with a harder, truer question: what do you do with a story that refuses to close?
Part memoir, part cold-case file, told by a woman who has spent her life on both sides of that question.
The Man at Hilltop Lanes releases on July 17, 2026. Order yours today!
Some stories disappear long before they are ever solved.
A missing woman becomes a faded headline. A murdered girl becomes a file stored in a box somewhere inside a courthouse basement. Families learn to live between hope and grief while communities slowly stop asking questions. Over time, silence settles in where outrage once existed.
The Lost Girls of Arkansas confronts that silence head-on.
In this powerful investigative work, award-winning author, journalist, and victims’ advocate LaDonna Humphrey examines missing persons cases and unsolved murders that continue to haunt Arkansas decades later. Through deeply researched storytelling, firsthand investigative work, and a victim-centered approach, Humphrey explores the lives behind the cases — not as statistics or sensational headlines, but as daughters, sisters, mothers, and human beings whose stories deserve far more attention than they received.
Set against the backdrop of rural highways, isolated communities, river towns, and dense Arkansas forests, the book traces the lingering impact of unresolved violence across generations. It examines how poverty, addiction, indifference, institutional failure, media disparities, and social stigma often shaped which victims received urgency and which were quietly forgotten. In many cases, the investigations stalled long before the pain did.
Rather than glorifying violence, The Lost Girls of Arkansas focuses on the emotional and societal aftermath when justice never comes. Families fracture beneath unanswered questions. Witnesses carry secrets for decades. Entire communities adapt to fear, rumor, and uncertainty while predators sometimes remain hidden in plain sight.
Humphrey brings both investigative rigor and emotional depth to these cases, challenging readers to look beyond the surface of true crime and confront the broader realities surrounding unsolved violence in overlooked places. The result is a haunting and deeply human examination of memory, loss, justice, and the enduring fight to make sure victims are not erased by time.
LaDonna Humphrey is an award-winning author, investigative journalist, filmmaker, and nationally recognized advocate for victims of crime. She is the co-founder of All the Lost Girls and host of investigative podcasts focused on missing persons, cold cases, and justice reform. Her work has earned recognition for its ethical approach, relentless research, and commitment to giving voice to victims and families too often ignored.
Every name matters. Every story counts. Some cases should never be forgotten. LaDonna Humphrey is currently working on additional investigative volumes including The Lost Girls of Alaska, The Lost Girls of Oklahoma, and The Lost Girls of Washington. To suggest a case, share information, or learn more about her investigative work, visit LaDonnaHumphrey.com.
4.9from 7 readers
Chapter One — The Name in the File: Dana Stidham
The first time I encountered Dana Stidham’s name, it did not come to me through a headline, a memorial post, or a grieving family’s plea for renewed attention, but through the quiet interior of a homicide file, where names are often reduced to investigative reference points and human lives are compressed into typed lines and procedural summaries. I had been seated for hours with the Melissa Witt investigative materials spread across the table in front of me, moving slowly through reports, timelines, lab findings, and comparative analyses, when I turned a page and noticed another victim listed as part of a prior cross-case review. The notation was brief and clinical, indicating that investigators had once examined whether a connection existed between Melissa’s murder and the disappearance and homicide of a young woman from Northwest Arkansas, and the conclusion beside the notation stated that no evidentiary link had been established and that the comparison had been closed. (More on Melissa Witt in Chapter Eight)
Even so, experience has taught me that names discovered in the margins of major case files are rarely insignificant, because investigators do not make cross-case comparisons casually, and when two murdered young women appear within the same analytical frame, even temporarily, it reveals the kinds of patterns and offender possibilities detectives were weighing at the time. Comparative elimination does not erase tragedy; it simply clarifies that there are multiple unresolved harms instead of one, and it leaves you with the uneasy awareness that while the cases may not connect to each other, the violence still connects to the same landscape. I wrote Dana’s name down in my notebook before I finished reading the page, not because I believed the cases were linked — the file was clear that they were not — but because I have learned that closed leads do not cancel open grief, and separate cases still deserve to be held with the same seriousness, the same refusal to let them dissolve into the background.
At that moment, Dana Stidham was simply another unsolved Arkansas victim whose story required careful, factual reconstruction, but advocacy work has a way of narrowing distance between research and reality, and what begins as a name on paper can become something far more personal without warning. In the months that followed, through nonprofit and service circles where advocacy, recovery work, and community leadership often overlap, I developed a friendship with Sammy Laney, a woman whose compassion and steady commitment to helping others was evident long before I knew anything about her family history. Our connection formed through shared mission rather than shared tragedy, which made what I later learned feel less like coincidence and more like convergence, because when I discovered that Sammy is Dana Stidham’s first cousin, the emotional distance between file notation and human loss collapsed in an instant. The case I had first encountered as an investigative cross-reference became something closer and heavier, and the realization did not feel incidental; it felt directional, as though the work itself had circled back and placed Dana’s name in front of me again, not as a footnote, but as a responsibility.
Dana Lanell Stidham was eighteen years old in the summer of 1989, newly graduated from Gravette High School and standing at that hopeful threshold where young adulthood begins to take shape through plans, applications, and practical next steps. She had been accepted to Northwest Arkansas Community College and was moving forward with the steady, grounded energy that those close to her described as characteristic of her nature. At the time, she was living in Centerton with her brother Larry and her cousin Kristy Smith, while still maintaining close and frequent visits with her parents, Lawrence and Georgia, in Hiwasse, reflecting the kind of tightly woven family structure where independence grows without severing connection.
On July 25, 1989, she spent part of the day at her parents’ home, helping with ordinary responsibilities and moving through the familiar rhythm of a summer afternoon. Her father was feeling ill, and she agreed to run a short grocery errand for him — a small act of care, a routine favor, the kind of trip no one remembers twice under normal circumstances. She left the house at approximately 2:45 in the afternoon for what should have been a quick four-mile drive to the Phillips grocery store in Bella Vista, and store register records later confirmed that she completed her purchase at 3:17 p.m., creating a timestamp that stands as the final verified marker of her movements while alive. A receipt found later inside her vehicle preserved that moment with indifferent precision, ink on paper marking the end of the known timeline.
Witnesses reported that she spoke briefly with an older man near the store entrance area, an interaction that did not raise alarm at the time and appeared ordinary to those who observed it. There was no recorded sign of distress, no visible struggle, nothing to distinguish that moment from thousands of other brief public exchanges that occur every day in grocery store doorways and parking lots, and that ordinariness is part of what makes it so unsettling to revisit. Somewhere between that completed purchase and the expected return home, her day — and her life — was violently interrupted.
Concern grew quickly when she failed to return within a reasonable timeframe, because Dana was known for her reliability and for communicating even small delays, and her unexplained absence did not fit her character. By that evening, her brother reached out for help, and a family friend who was also a sergeant with the Benton County Sheriff’s Office began the early response process, gathering descriptions and initiating a countywide alert so that patrol officers would be watching for her vehicle. Those first hours in a missing person case can be decisive, but they are also frequently marked by uncertainty, and Dana’s case began with urgency but very little actionable information, which is one of the cruelest combinations a family can endure.
The following morning brought the first major development when her gray 1984 Dodge Omni was located along Highway 71 near Wellington Road in Bella Vista, positioned on the shoulder in the southbound lane with a flat left rear tire, unlocked, with the keys still in the ignition. Inside, investigators found the grocery receipt confirming the previous afternoon’s purchase time. Detectives surveying the scene were immediately troubled by directional inconsistency, because both Dana and her parents lived in the opposite direction from where the car had been left, suggesting that something — or someone — had altered her route after she exited the store parking lot, and the totality of the scene suggested interruption rather than a voluntary stop.
A Bella Vista officer later reported that during the previous night, before the vehicle had been linked to a missing young woman, he had observed a pickup truck stopped behind the Omni with a man positioned near the rear tire, appearing to examine something mechanical. At the time, the observation did not trigger alarm, but in hindsight it became one of the most haunting near-intersections in the timeline, representing a moment when proximity to the offender may have occurred without recognition, a moment that reads like a warning nobody knew how to hear.
As investigators retraced Dana’s likely route, some of her personal belongings were discovered scattered along nearby roads, findings that suggested deliberate disposal rather than accidental loss, and shifted the working theory firmly toward abduction. Search efforts expanded to include law enforcement personnel, volunteers, friends, and community members who combed surrounding areas hoping to locate either Dana herself or additional trace evidence. Detectives conducted interviews across her known social and relational circles, including former romantic partners, verifying alibis and reconstructing movements, following standard elimination protocols while pursuing every viable lead, because in the early stage of an investigation the goal is not to confirm a single theory but to remove every false one until only the truth remains.
Nearly two months later, in mid-September, a hunter discovered skeletal remains in a wooded area of Bella Vista near a dry creek bed, but the discovery was not immediately reported, adding delay to an already devastating development. Investigators responded to the scene and began careful recovery procedures, and the remains were sent to the State Medical Examiner’s Office in Little Rock, where dental comparison confirmed Dana’s identity. The case was formally ruled a homicide, and because of the condition of the remains and the passage of time, officials did not publicly release the specific physiological cause of death, preserving forensic details for investigative integrity. Evidence at the scene included materials indicating restraint, including duct tape and lengths of tied twine, reinforcing the conclusion of criminal violence.
Dana was born in March 1971 and would now be in her fifties, a reality that forces the mind to imagine the decades she never experienced — the career she might have built, the relationships she might have formed, the ordinary milestones that were stolen before they could occur. Her disappearance and murder shocked her community, and the grief that followed settled deeply into the lives of those who loved her. Over the decades since, many central figures connected to the early investigation and family circle have passed away, including her parents and several original investigators, yet the case itself has not been closed. Cold case units continue to review the file, reassess evidence, and seek new leads through modern methods, maintaining its status as open and active.
What remains most striking is how memory has endured even where answers have not, because classmates, relatives, and family friends still speak of Dana not as a case but as a person — kind, dependable, warm-hearted — and they continue efforts to keep her name visible so that time does not succeed where violence failed in erasing her. Community advocates and relatives maintain awareness efforts so that population growth and generational turnover do not bury the story under unfamiliarity, and the passage of thirty-five years has changed the landscape but not the obligation.
When I think back to the moment I first saw Dana Stidham’s name in the Witt case file — a brief comparative entry concluding no connection — I understand now that while the crimes are not linked by offender, they are linked by duty, because every unsolved murder of a young woman (or of anyone) creates the same unfinished demand for truth. Discovering that my friend Sammy Laney is Dana Stidham’s first cousin did not alter the investigative facts, but it removed any remaining emotional distance, and with that nearness came certainty that telling Dana’s story fully, factually, and without dilution is not optional work. It is necessary .
The Innocence Machine examines what happens when the search for justice becomes its own kind of runaway system. Wrongful convictions are real, and innocence organizations have helped free people who never should have been imprisoned. But the same movement can also create powerful stories that overlook evidence, minimize victims, and turn convicted criminals into symbols before the facts have been fully weighed.
Through a series of true crime cases, Steve Scarborough looks at the darker side of innocence campaigns, from high-profile documentaries and podcasts to public “Free” movements, celebrity cases, alternate-suspect theories, DNA claims, and appeals based on technical errors. The result is a hard look at how emotion, media pressure, and selective storytelling can reshape public belief.
This is not an attack on the work of freeing the truly innocent. It is a call for caution. Every case deserves scrutiny, but scrutiny must include all the evidence, not only the pieces that support a preferred narrative.
For readers of true crime, criminal justice, and wrongful conviction stories, The Innocence Machine offers a challenging view of a system built to correct injustice and asks what happens when that system begins creating its own.
Some Initial Thoughts
The Innocence Machine: A new approach to true crime cases under scrutiny.
The Innocence Project, and many of its chapters and similar organizations around the country, are dedicated to bringing justice to those people incarcerated who they feel are innocent. While this is a noble purpose, a closer examination of their cases can quickly muddy the waters. Many factors from multiple factions outside the criminal justice system influence and alter the outcomes of these cases, while the quest for actual innocence is lost and corrupted. Many times, this comes with disastrous and deadly results, sometimes costing the lives of those involved along with the people they are trying to exonerate.
Walking a tightrope between the positive and negative aspects of innocence campaigns, The Innocence Machine shows both sides of the fight to exonerate wrongly convicted people and delves into the oversaturation of the innocence craze. It exposes the truth behind these external investigations that derail the criminal justice system and can cause the release of dangerous criminals back into society.
The innocence system is broken. It has gotten way off track. The Innocence Machine is a product of that broken system.
In this book, you will take a deep dive into some of these innocence programs, and, along the way, will be able to examine the murders that prompted the calls for the innocence of these convicted criminals. This book highlights numerous true crime cases, examining the details, why innocence organizations promoted the convicted person’s innocence, and the results of their actions.
Innocence programs typically try to address the flaws in the justice system, but this book addresses the weaknesses in innocence programs. The concept behind The Innocence Machine is that the innocence craze raises many questions and concerns about how innocence advocates select cases and how those cases are investigated.
In a very revealing statement made by a defense attorney on a Dateline program, Bob Dudek said, “In my 22, 23 years of being an appellate defense attorney, [name redacted] is the only one of about two or possibly three people I genuinely believed was innocent.”
If you follow true crime, watch any of the multiple true crime documentaries available on streaming channels, and have any tendency to believe in a convicted person's innocence, this book is for you.
The Innocence Project has evolved into a craze that is becoming an Innocence Machine, and it appears to be based on the assumption that almost everyone who has been convicted could be innocent. Incomplete reinvestigations of cases are often conducted by individuals untrained in detective work and investigation, where bias and the omission of pertinent evidence are common, leading to disastrous consequences.
It is essential that there is accountability and separation from the Innocence Project. The Innocence Project provides valuable and commendable work. However, the Innocence Machine is the craze to seek out and uncover innocent, convicted people, sometimes without thoroughly vetting the case. This can be based on the media and public innocence campaigns. As seen in the example of the Porter case, featured within, it is sometimes based on the machinations of the convicts themselves. Once the Innocence Machine gets started, it rolls away, unstoppable and out of control.
The Porter case demands that all innocence cases be viewed with extreme skepticism. The actions that occurred post-conviction demonstrates that siren calls for attention can lead to inappropriate conduct. They can also lead to ignoring specific facts to reach the point of innocence, as seen in many other cases reviewed throughout this book.
The Porter case, along with several others, is one in which the convict initiated and controlled the narrative; there are others in which the public controlled it, and still others in which the media, at times, controlled it, when it would seem that the actual innocence organizations should be steering the narrative.
In almost all the cases presented in this book, crucial inculpatory evidence is ignored or dismissed by the innocence activists to present the convicted person as innocent. Innocence activists sometimes seem to overlook specific pieces of evidence and instead focus on ambiguous evidence, which can lead to a misrepresentation of the facts. Also, they often lack the investigative skills required for a thorough, unbiased investigation. Oddly enough, it seems they frequently accuse the police of the same thing. A common refrain from defense attorneys is that the police had tunnel vision and ignored other suspects. Are innocence advocates using that same tunnel vision after they see publicity suggesting a convicted person’s innocence, and are they ignoring crucial and incriminating evidence indicating their guilt?
Familiarity with the defendant or convicted person appears to be a factor in how people perceive the case, especially if that defendant is a famous person. It has often been said that everyone in prison claims to be innocent, and many of them are likable and persuasive. Are those lawyers and innocence activists who visit the people in prison or interview the defendant’s family more susceptible to thinking that they are innocent?
One way that defendants and innocence activists draw the attention of innocence organizations is by promoting their concerns through a marketing strategy that utilizes signage and local protests, as well as more widely through websites and media attention.
With every single one of the cases reviewed in this book, there is a vast discrepancy between the evidence presented at trial and the re-creation presented on the call-for-innocence websites. In fact, it is difficult to find the actual evidence in these cases because so many entries are biased in favor of the defendants, even by legitimate media outlets. The language used can be very persuasive, but it always gets in the way. For example, in the Marcellas Williams case, discussed in more detail later, almost none of the media entries list all the inculpatory evidence pointing to Williams.
Proof of innocence is vague and disjointed. It feels very subjective at times. These cases create an enigma. Would you rather a guilty man goes free or an innocent man not? It is easy to fall into the mind game of who is really innocent. Many of these cases feature people who are hardened criminals and hardly innocent in their past crimes. Steven Avery (discussed next) could be an example of that.
Making A Murderer: An Incomplete Documentary Film
Many recent documentaries have exploited the convicted person as the innocent victim of the justice system. This is evident in such cases as the Laci Peterson murder case (discussed later). There is a tendency to conveniently overlook crucial incriminating evidence for the sake of a gripping story. One production that follows the model of the wrongfully convicted innocent person is the 2015 Netflix documentary Making a Murderer.
Making a Murderer is a compelling and engaging view of the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach. The film is an excellent true crime documentary, featuring all the required elements of police corruption, tainted evidence, false confessions, tunnel vision, and, of course, a wrongly convicted person.
Making a Murderer won several well-deserved awards, including four Emmy awards in 2016. With the first scene, the film hooks the audience, eager to see what happens next. The “murderer” is Steven Avery, and through many on-screen interviews, his demeanor is so convincing that, as a viewer, one really believes his side of the case. Since Avery was previously wrongly convicted of another crime, the documentary is successful in making the viewer sincerely doubt his guilt in the Halbach murder and think he was railroaded once again.
If perhaps the creator of Making a Murderer thought they were following in the footsteps of the Thin Blue Line (discussed later), a review of the actual evidence shows otherwise. This was Hollywood-type moviemaking. Numerous websites and books, including one by the prosecution, address the incriminating evidence left out of the film. Upon analyzing all the evidence, it becomes clear why the jury reached its guilty verdict. In fact, despite Making A Murderer presenting scenes suggesting that Avery’s cousin was completely innocent, it is easy to see his culpability in the crimes that occurred at the wreckage yard in Wisconsin.
If the purpose is to create controversy, these documentaries can be very effective, as they possess tremendous power to change people's minds or generate specific thoughts. But if it turns out that they didn’t present all the evidence, then what is the value? Do they end up merely like a horror movie, accomplishing their goal of creating emotion and controversy? Or are they essentially empty? Then they become a noble quest worthy of admiration and respect without any payoff.
A Fully Complete Incriminating Case
Due to the documentary series, Making a Murderer, first released in 2015, many people still believe Steven Avery is innocent of the heinous crime he committed. Innocence advocates have called for his exoneration.
One can suppose that Steven Avery, once released from prison on a wrongful conviction for a 1984 sexual assault, must have thought he was invincible. That he could commit a murder in his front yard, of a woman he had called to his house, and get away with it.
A photographer for Autotrader magazine was declared missing after she failed to check in with her employer following an appointment on October 31, 2005. It was discovered that Teresa Halbach had an appointment on the grounds of Avery’s Auto Salvage to photograph a minivan. The police immediately responded to the auto salvage yard and began a search, assisted by volunteers, including law enforcement personnel and local residents.
Halbach’s car was eventually found by searchers, partially covered by brush, at the very back of the salvage yard. This discovery led to a thorough search of the vast salvage yard, including the area where Halbach was supposed to meet the caller who had requested a photograph of the minivan. It was learned that the vehicle belonged to Steven Avery's sister.
It was also discovered that Steven Avery had previously had Halbach respond to his residence on the property for a photograph, and that Halbach had asked not to ever respond to any of Avery’s future requests. She told her boss that she was uncomfortable with Avery as he had opened the door in a towel. Avery may have known this because, during the call to Autotrader, he provided another name and address; however, the caller, who had used Star 67 to conceal his phone number, had specifically requested Teresa Halbach.
After researching Avery’s background, the police reviewed his record. Avery had been convicted of burglary in 1981 and had served 10 months in jail. In 1982, Avery burned his cat in a bonfire and was convicted of animal cruelty. Avery was also accused by the wife of a Manitowoc County officer of exposing himself to her as she was driving in Manitowoc.
In 1985, Avery threatened his cousin with a gun and threatened to kill her for telling people he had been flagellating himself on his front lawn. He was convicted and sentenced to six years for "endangering safety while evincing a depraved mind" and possession of a firearm by a felon.
Steven Avery was arrested in November 2005 and charged with the murder of Teresa Halbach. During the trial, the evidence discovered in Halbach’s vehicle and a search of Avery’s property were presented. Investigators had found incriminating evidence from Halbach’s vehicle, Avery’s bedroom in his house, Avery’s garage, and the front- and back-yards of Avery’s property.
Halbach’s bent license plates were found along one of the long roads between stacks of damaged automobiles on the salvage yard property. Her vehicle was found on a rise along the very rear of the yard, partially hidden by wood and branches.
The car was searched and processed for evidence. Teresa Halbach’s DNA was found in the trunk area of the vehicle. Steven Avery’s blood was found in the interior on the ignition, on a CD case, and on the seats of the vehicle. Avery’s touch DNA, most likely from sweat, was found in numerous places in the car and on the hood latch. The CSI unit processed the hood latch because Avery’s nephew, Brandon Dassey, said in interviews that Avery always disconnected the battery when he brought new cars into the yard.
Brandon Dassey was also charged in the Halbach case after he confessed to helping Avery kill Halbach and dispose of her body. Even though the confession, as shown in Making a Murderer, revealed that police conducted the interrogation improperly, Dassey did provide critical information that led to the police discovering significant evidence. He told them about the battery on her vehicle, he told them about the shooting in the garage and using the rifle from Avery's bedroom, and about the disposal of the body on Avery’s property. Dassey refused to testify at Avery's trial but testified at his own trial and never mentioned any police coercion. Brandon Dassey was convicted of complicity in the murder in a separate trial.
During the trial, Avery's attorneys focused on the blood evidence from Halbach’s vehicle (deflecting away from his touch DNA) and presented a vial of Avery’s blood with a puncture hole visible in the stopper, speculating the blood was extracted and place in the vehicle by law enforcement, as part of the defense’s overall case of Avery being framed by police.
However, the prosecution presented testimony by FBI technicians who tested the blood recovered from Halbach's car for EDTA, a preservative that is used in blood vials for blood collection, and found it was not present. Therefore, it was not blood from that vial.
Based upon the previous handling of Avery’s assault case, and because Avery sued Manitowoc County, the Manitowoc County department ceded control of the murder investigation to the neighboring Calumet County Sheriff’s Department.
Investigators learned from Avery’s cousins that he had had a bonfire that night on his property. Dassy also told police that he had seen Avery burn some girl’s clothes in the fire. They then searched a burn pit near Avery’s home and found bone fragments that were later identified as Halbach's. In a burn barrel near the burn pit, investigators found Halbach’s damaged phone, her camera, and her Personal Digital Assistant.
As a result of the search of Avery’s home, they found a .22 rifle stored above his bed and spots of dried blood in his bathroom. Upon a subsequent search of Avery’s bedroom, they found Halbach’s car keys hidden behind a bookcase. They photographed the keys, not exactly where they found them, which would have been difficult to do, but on the floor below the bookcase. The car keys were tested, and Avery’s DNA was located on them.
Dassey also told investigators that Halbach had been shot with the .22, and police researched the garage and found a bullet that was fired from Avery’s rifle with Halbach’s DNA, from passing through her body.
Interestingly, the defense focused on the blood evidence as being planted by the police. However, even if that was possible, how did the police obtain Avery’s sweat or skin cells for his DNA on the vehicle and the keys found in Avery’s bedroom? The film successfully promoted the evidence-planting allegations by using blood evidence, but skipped informing the audience about finding Avery’s transfer DNA within the victim’s vehicle.
Following the release of the Making a Murderer documentary, over 120,000 petition signatures were gathered and sent to the White House, calling for Avery’s release.
Steven Avery had previously been released from prison on September 11, 2003, after serving 18 years for a 1985 wrongful sexual assault conviction. He was exonerated by DNA evidence.
Avery’s case gained widespread attention from innocence activists and the media. The Republican chairman of the Wisconsin Assembly established a task force to reduce the likelihood of wrongful convictions. A bill known as the Avery Bill was passed in 2005 to reform the criminal justice system.
However, many people did cry foul over Making a Murderer’s depiction of the case. The prosecutors on the case wrote a book, Avery: The Case Against Steven Avery and What Making a Murderer Gets Wrong, published in 2017. Numerous websites address the documentary, including 14 pieces of troubling evidence that Making a Murderer left out, Here's What Was Left Out of Making a Murderer, and Making a Murderer: Key Pieces Of Evidence The Show Leaves Out.
Due to the mountain of evidence, including DNA evidence, Avery was convicted of the murder of Teresa Halbach and remains in prison today.
It seems that the public has a never-ending thirst for stories about the broken justice system, police corruption, and the conviction of innocent people. It takes a concerted effort to cut through the noise and find the truth.
The innocence movement coincides with the vast interest in true crime. In this age of the never-ending public appetite for true crime, have we become incapable of objective thought, of reviewing the evidence from an impersonal clinical perspective? Are we too concerned with who the good guys are and who the bad guys are? Making situations too black-and-white rather than accepting the nuances that occur in real life?
As you read through the cases in the rest of this book and learn more about innocence campaigns and their tactics in trying to establish innocence, maybe you’ll understand why more scrutiny and skepticism are necessary. You will also learn the formula and strategy that the Innocence Machine uses to facilitate its program. And perhaps the next time you watch a true crime documentary, you’ll be able to be more impartial and cautious in your conclusions.
Kills His Savior
On June 10, 2010, Miami-Dade 911 received a frantic call from a man claiming that his girlfriend had tried to kill herself.
The caller was Yathomas Riley, a professional boxer. When paramedics arrived at the apartment in Homestead, Florida, they found 31-year-old Koketia King unconscious on her bed. She had a bullet wound in her leg and had been shot in the face. Blood was around the room, and Riley also had blood on his clothes. Riley told police that his sometime girlfriend and the mother of his child had shot herself in a jealous rage.
When police responded to the hospital to talk to Koketia King, they observed she had extensive damage to her head, and doctors said that she would have permanent facial impairment. After she regained consciousness, she told police that Riley purposely shot her. Riley said he was innocent and did not shoot his girlfriend.
At the scene, the police found two spent bullets and two casings. Because King had three wounds, she thought she had been shot three times. Doctors at Jackson Memorial Hospital deduced from her injuries that she had only been shot twice, as one bullet had entered above her left buttock and exited her left thigh, and another bullet had entered her face. Some people would later see this as important in the case.
Yathomas Riley would be arrested based on the charge by King that he had shot her. Riley was adamant that he was innocent. Koketia King was a corrections officer at the Dade Correctional Institution in Florida City, and the police determined that the weapon was hers.
Riley had been an amateur boxer who had a string of successful fights when he met King at a family reunion. They soon moved in together, and King became pregnant around Christmas 2005. Their son was born in September 2006. They then moved to California so Riley could train for a fight.
Eventually, Riley obtained a professional contract with a promoter in New York, and around that time, King and their son moved back to Florida. Riley and King entered into a long-distance relationship.
Riley met Lisa Amodio, a medical student, at his training gym in New York, and they became friends. Soon, Amodio was working in Riley’s corner as a cut person. As a pro, Riley was also a successful fighter, going 4-0 in his first year. Riley and Lisa Amodio became engaged in 2009, which, of course, upset Koketia King.
When Riley moved back to South Florida to train for a fight at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, he stayed with King at her apartment in Homestead, Florida.
In June 2009, police responded to King’s apartment and arrested Riley for molesting King’s 12-year-old daughter. After an investigation, police had doubts about the statement from King’s daughter, and the prosecutors subsequently dropped the charges.
Riley returned to New York for more successful fights, but in June 2010, he visited King in Florida. During this visit, Riley stated that he discovered a letter indicating King was assisting inmates in filing tax returns with falsified information, which led to an argument between the two. (Koketia King has never been charged with any crime.) That is when the shooting took place.
While Riley was being held in jail on this attempted murder charge, several people began showing support for his innocence. Lisa Amodio made public statements about his innocence in the case. She was even on the local TV news professing his innocence. The Cryon below her name on the TV news said, “Riley’s Fiancé said King was shot twice, once in the buttocks and once in the face.”
The fact that she was shot twice seemed to support King’s statement, and not Riley’s claim that she shot herself, as who would shoot themselves in the leg before shooting themselves in the face? There were several statements by Riley’s supporters that mentioned King had changed her story multiple times. Of course, it was possible that being shot in the head had disrupted her memory.
As often happens in innocence-craze cases, and as you will see throughout this book, often the benefit of the doubt is not given to the victim but to the defendant. All of King’s statements were dismissed as lies rather than as the result of confusion.
There was an extensive “Free Riley” campaign, and one of Riley’s supporters was Miami New Times, which published articles suggesting that King’s statements were unreliable and that the tax letter showed it. Investigators reviewed the case, and on August 17, 2012, Yathomas Riley was released.
Riley and Amodio eventually settled into a large house in Leesburg, Georgia, in August 2013. They were married in April 2015 and had a son together in the fall of that year. Lisa was an emergency room physician, and Riley ran a car repair business and opened Riley’s Boxing Gym.
On June 14, 2015, Lisa Amodio Riley, now 34, was found unconscious inside her Leesburg home. She filed a complaint against her husband, stating he had assaulted her and threatened her with a gun, and Yathomas was arrested.
He was charged with battery and assault and ordered to stay away from Lisa and to give up his firearms to the police. He maintained his innocence. Riley was released on bond.
On July 9, 2015, while Yathomas was still out on bail for the assault charge, he made a 911 call to report that his wife, Lisa, had shot herself. Lisa was pronounced dead at the scene. Riley was arrested on the prior domestic assault charge, and police began investigating the shooting death. Police later believed Yathomas had shot and murdered his wife.
During the murder trial for Yathomas Riley, the prosecution closed their arguments by stating that Yathomas had killed Lisa on July 9, 2015, while she was on her knees.
On June 24th, 2016, Thomas Riley was found guilty of the murder of Lisa Amodio-Riley, and he was sentenced to lifetime imprisonment without parole.
It seems that the woman who believed in his innocence, who had campaigned for his release, had eventually been murdered by him. This is a perfect example of the emotional attachment that is a component of the Innocence Machine — fullhearted faith in the innocence of a convicted person.
In 1927, a married railroad official and a woman caught in a forbidden relationship were found brutally murdered on a lonely road outside Birmingham, Alabama.
The killings of Auburn Moore and Ruby Thornton became known as the Tryst Murders, a sensational case filled with sex, scandal, fear, rumor, and public outrage.
But the story did not end with the murders.
As newspapers fed the frenzy and investigators chased conflicting theories, the case moved through the machinery of Jim Crow Alabama, where race, class, police power, political pressure, and public morality all shaped the search for someone to blame. At the center of what followed was Horace DeVaughn, the man whose conviction would lead him to Yellow Mama, Alabama’s newly built electric chair.
In The Alabama Tryst Murder Mystery, S. Thorne Harper looks beyond the headlines to examine the crime, the investigation, the shifting evidence, the press coverage, and the larger world that made the case possible. This is not a fast, flashy true crime retelling. It is a careful, deeply researched account of a double murder, a questionable prosecution, and a state eager to prove the power of its new instrument of death.
The result is a true crime history about more than who pulled the trigger. It is about how a violent event becomes an official story, and what that story can hide.
Praise for The Alabama Tryst Murder Mystery
“It would be accurate to say S. Thorne ‘Sam’ Harper has written a beautiful, well-researched book about Alabama’s first execution in the electric chair known as Yellow Mama. It would also be accurate to say he has, through the little known case of Horace DeVaughn, captured in dramatic detail the state’s century long love affair with death. I am, frankly, jealous.”
— John Archibald, author of Shaking the Gates of Hell and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize
California is famous for sunshine, beaches, palm trees, Hollywood dreams, and postcard-perfect views.
But beneath the surf and sand lies another California — one marked by missing girls, unsolved murders, serial killers, cold cases, and families still waiting for answers.
In California: Surf, Sand & Murder, Bob Cyphers takes readers on a chilling journey through the Golden State’s darker history, town by town and case by case. From Los Angeles and the infamous Black Dahlia murder to Santa Cruz, Anaheim, San Diego, Bakersfield, San Francisco, Eureka, Shasta Lake, and beyond, these stories reveal the violence that has haunted California’s highways, beaches, neighborhoods, motels, campuses, and quiet small towns.
Some cases are legendary. Others belong to victims whose names have nearly been lost to time. Together, they form a troubling portrait of a state where beauty and brutality often exist side by side.
Inside, readers will find stories of vanished daughters, unidentified remains, chilling phone calls, murder scenes hidden in plain sight, serial predators, forensic breakthroughs, and cold cases that still may have one more chance at justice.
This is not true crime for spectacle. It is true crime as memory.
Because every cold case was once someone’s child, someone’s friend, someone’s whole world — and sometimes the past is not as silent as it seems.
25 Frozen, 1 Thawed (Murder and Mayhem in the Midwest) takes readers deep into the heart of unsolved and unforgettable crimes from America’s Midwest—cases as haunting as the winter nights they were born from. Through meticulous research and vivid storytelling, veteran journalist Bob Cyphers unravels the chilling details behind murders, disappearances, and mysteries that refused to fade with time.
From the quiet streets of St. Louis to small towns where everyone knows everyone—and no one will talk—these true accounts lay bare the human stories behind the headlines. A young mother gunned down steps from her home, her life cut short by a killer who may have been closer than anyone guessed. A teenager snatched from a bike ride and never seen again, her absence still echoing through her community decades later. A journalist-in-training whose promising future ended in a shallow creek, leaving two suspects and questions that still divide a town. And a sorority sister found beaten on her own front lawn just before Christmas break, in a case that still unsettles a college campus.
Blending compassion for the victims with a reporter’s drive for facts, Frozen doesn’t just revisit the evidence—it brings readers into the emotional center of each story. These are not distant, cold cases; they are stories of lives interrupted, families searching for truth, and communities forever changed.
Go on call with a homicide detective. Work through thirteen real homicide cases, interviewing witnesses, identifying evidence, and using current technology to identify suspects and ultimately solve a murder. Each case focuses on aspects of the criminal justice system ranging from writing search warrants, to interpreting autopsy reports, to preparing for a complex criminal trial. Experience the stories of the victims and their families as they pursue justice. Each case is broken down in detail, from the detective that actually worked the investigation. You learn the facts of the case as the detective learned the facts of the case. You are on the inside of the homicide investigation, following the facts and evidence to a logical conclusion. No homicide case is cut and dry, these cases are not always what they seem, and there is always a surprise.
On Call: Inside Homicide Investigations is a manual for Homicide Detectives. There is guidance on creating and presenting photo lineups, direction on using the proper verbiage regarding firearms terminology, and advice on dealing with legal challenges like dying declarations, hearsay, and justification of the use of deadly force. Whether you’re a true crime enthusiast, a writer, or an aspiring homicide detective, each case study offers lessons learned and real-world skills that will prepare you to be an experienced and well-versed homicide investigator.
5.0from 2 readers
CHAPTER 1 – THE ONE-ARMED MAN
On Memorial Day weekend in 2012, I was one of three detectives who were on call for all of Mesa, Arizona. I wasn’t in the Homicide Unit; I was in the Robbery Unit. Early in the morning, I was called out to assist the Gang Unit with a shooting that had occurred at a house party. Gang detectives handled the major parts of the investigation, but they needed help with interviewing dozens of witnesses and party attendees. I completed my assigned tasks in the late afternoon and went home to have dinner with my friends. Just as I finished cooking, I received a call on the dreaded department cell phone.
The on-call sergeant told me a male had been stabbed and pushed off the top of a parking garage in downtown Mesa. There were several witnesses, and patrol officers were actively looking for a possible suspect. The victim also told a first responding officer that he knew the suspect; he said his name was Deshawn. I was told the victim was in critical condition and undergoing surgery at a local hospital. I was also informed that I would be the case agent.
To understand criminal investigations, you should know the jargon that is the titles assigned to various functions done by detectives. Case agent is the title given to the lead detective in the case. In the Mesa Police Department, a case agent is always a detective, not a supervisor (such as a sergeant or lieutenant). The supervisors make sure the case agent gets the resources he or she needs and updates executive staff members (assistant chiefs and the chief of police) on the case status. In the Mesa Police Department, supervisors for a specific unit did not have to have experience in that unit’s specialty. In most cases, supervisors did not have any expertise in the units they supervised, so they really relied heavily on the knowledge of their detectives. Supervisors were also responsible for administrative duties, including approving overtime and the verbiage used in charging documents. Supervisors acted as a safeguard to make sure detectives operated within department policies, state laws, and county attorney protocols. As a case agent, your main focus is identifying the person(s) who committed a crime and developing probable cause to support an arrest and conviction. I want to reiterate the word “conviction.” Patrol officers are trained to develop probable cause for an arrest; a professional detective develops probable cause to make an arrest and secure a conviction in court. A professional detective digs deeper into cases and explores every aspect of the case than the average patrol officer. The case agent is responsible for ensuring all the facts in the investigation are accurately presented to the county attorney, who formally charges a potential suspect. The case agent’s role is very demanding as it involves understanding what all the other detectives and units assisting in the case are doing or have done. This can be difficult as most police officers have type-A personalities and will almost always go above and beyond their normal duties.
When I arrived at the crime scene, I was rushed by a flurry of officers and detectives. In the forty-five minutes it took to get from my home to the crime scene, officers and detectives who were on scene had identified a potential suspect and were actively looking for the person. This is when it becomes difficult as a case agent since you have to control everyone else’s overwhelming desire to put handcuffs on a suspect and then hand the individual to you to figure out the probable cause. A professional detective has to be methodical and logical when handling a complex investigation. You also have to be careful not to be dismissive of an officer’s enthusiasm because as a detective you need all the information you can get, in this case and any future cases. Consequently, I listened to everyone shouting out why Deshawn was the suspect and all the places he frequented, his criminal history, and how he matched the physical description given by the victim.
Normal protocol for investigations where detectives are called to the scene hours after the incident occurred calls for the detectives and supervisors to be given a briefing by first responders. This gets all the parties involved in the investigation on the same page so that everyone has the same information.
Over the course of my career, I’ve learned that briefings can be biased in nature. As a detective, you have to take in the information, but without evidence or witness statements to support that information, you cannot take it as a fact. It’s not that you don’t trust your fellow officers, but we’re all subject to confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is when we think we are right about something and then form our explanations around our presumptions to support what we think. This happens all the time in law enforcement and in society.
In the incident briefing, I learned that the Mesa Police received a 911 call stating that a man was yelling for help as he was hanging over the side of a two-story parking garage. Witnesses were walking back to their vehicles after attending a Memorial Day event. As the man was hanging from the side of the parking garage, a one-armed man was hitting or stabbing the victim’s hands in an attempt to make him let go. The victim eventually let go and fell to the ground, and his head struck a concrete curb. The bystanders rushed to the victim’s aid and noticed he was bleeding not just from the head but also from his chest. A SWAT officer was in the area doing directed patrol for the special event; he heard the radio traffic about the injured man and quickly responded to the scene. He was the first officer on scene. Being a SWAT officer, he had been trained in attending to traumatic situations, and he began assessing the victim. The SWAT officer noticed the victim had been stabbed several times in the chest and had stabbing-type wounds on his forearms and hands. The SWAT officer was present in the briefing and told us the victim was conscious when he attended to him. The victim was able to give his name and describe the man who stabbed him as Deshawn, a homeless male who was missing his lower right arm. The victim told the SWAT officer Deshawn had been arrested many times by the Mesa Police and they should know who he is.
A patrol sergeant interjected that the victim was in critical condition and was immediately rushed to surgery when he arrived at the hospital. The extent of his injuries was not known, but hospital staff stated the victim had numerous stab wounds to the upper torso and was bleeding internally.
A fellow detective chimed in that he was in the area when the call was initiated, and he arrived on scene with most of the patrol officers. He identified two witnesses who told him they heard the victim yelling for help and saw him hanging from the side of the garage. As the victim was yelling for help, they saw a male stabbing the victim’s hands. Both witnesses recalled the attacker was using his left hand to stab the victim. Both witnesses stated they would recognize the attacker if they saw him again. The assisting detective continued and said that he created a photo lineup and showed it to the two witnesses, who positively identified the attacker as Deshawn.
As the briefing continued, a patrol officer spoke up that he routinely patrolled this area, and he had contacted Deshawn many times. Deshawn did not have an address and had been arrested several times for trespassing and public intoxication. The officer confirmed Deshawn was missing the lower portion of his right arm. Finally, I was told the victim’s backpack and a lot of blood was on the second floor of the parking garage.
At the conclusion of the incident briefing, the sergeant usually makes case assignments. I was already assigned as a case agent. Normally, a detective would be assigned to conduct the crime scene investigation and another detective would be assigned to interview witnesses. However, since this seemed to be a straightforward case, the sergeant decided to send the other detectives home and I would take care of anything that needed to be done. The sergeant coordinated with the supervisor of the undercover unit that was looking for Deshawn and told them to contact me when they found him. While I was looking at the crime scene and planning the collection of evidence on the top floor of the garage, the sergeant called me and told me he was on his way home for dinner. As I mentioned before, the sergeant in this case was new to investigations.
As a case agent, you have to always be prepared for the next stage in the investigation. I was mentally preparing for Deshawn’s apprehension. I knew once he was in custody I would have to write a physical characteristics search warrant for his fingerprints and DNA. The victim’s property was scattered all around the top floor of the parking garage. There was also a broken pair of eyeglasses that had blood on them. It looked like there was a fight at the top of the garage.
Case agents also have to think about what will be challenged by defense attorneys. In 2012, the Mesa Police Department did not have officer-worn body cameras, and there was not audio or video proof of what the victim told the SWAT officer about his assailant. I met with the SWAT officer and made sure that he understood the importance of his supplemental report. Being that the victim was in surgery and was not fully interviewed, probable cause to arrest Deshawn was primarily derived from what the SWAT officer heard from the victim. I wanted to convey the importance of this fact to the SWAT officer and make sure he fully documented every detail that he recalled about his conversation with the victim.
Police departments are tribal by design. Each division or unit has a very specific function, and the members of those divisions and units are very good at their duties for their particular function. Where law enforcement flounders at times is mixing the mentalities of different units. In the police world, detectives are considered “pencil pushers” and “desk jockeys.” This is true most of the time. For every hour in the field, I would spend double the hours in the office documenting my actions. I rarely put handcuffs on suspects and would only carry a sidearm (no extra magazines) and a cell phone (not a police radio). SWAT officers, on the other hand, spend hours in the field and minutes in the office. Most SWAT officers do not even write reports on their actions because they operate in a group setting. Usually the lowest-ranking SWAT officer will write a report on what the entire team did.
In this case, I explained to the SWAT officer that if the victim were to pass away, his report would be the only documentation of the victim’s statement. Legally, the victim would be making a dying declaration to the officer and the officer could testify to that in court. His conversation with the victim was the probable cause that we had to arrest Deshawn. I also reiterated that this case might not go to trial for several years, and a well-written report now would help the officer’s memory when he had to testify. The SWAT officer admitted he had not considered any of that. We discussed what the victim said, the victim’s voice inflections, and the victim’s mannerisms, and made sure all the details the officer remembered were accurately documented. After speaking with the SWAT officer, I felt confident that the victim believed Deshawn stabbed him.
Next, I met with each witness who had positively identified Deshawn and confirmed where they were standing when they saw the attack. I had photographs taken from the witnesses’ vantage points to prove they could actually see what they said they saw. Information is not a fact until there is evidence to support it.
Finally, I walked through the parking garage, starting at the first level and continuing up to the second level. I learned the parking garage was overflow parking for the Mesa Fire Department vehicles and open to the public. Because it was open to the public, I could search the property and collect any evidence. As I got to the second floor, I noticed there was a large amount of blood where the victim was hanging onto the side of the garage. But there was also blood on almost every vehicle parked on the second level. Every parking spot was occupied with fire department vehicles or personal vehicles, and there was blood and blood smears on a majority of those cars. The victim’s backpack was by a light pole at the entrance ramp to the second level. The nylon backpack had been ripped open, and personal belongings were scattered around the concrete floor. Next to the torn backpack were a lighter and a pair of eyeglasses, and each had blood smears on them. The contents of the backpack identified it as belonging to the victim.
I determined that from the torn backpack to the spot where the victim ultimately fell off the parking garage was over 600 feet. It appeared as though the victim was stabbed and was chased for that distance before he tried to avoid the suspect by jumping over the side of the parking garage. My impression was this was a more violent encounter than previously portrayed. The fact that the victim would risk a jump from the second floor of the garage led me to believe he was desperate to get away from his attacker.
As my crime scene investigation was ending, I got a call from the hospital where the victim was. I was told that he was being moved to “comfort care,” and it was just a matter of time before he passed away. The nurse told me the victim had been stabbed numerous times in the sides and chest; despite several hours in surgery, doctors were unable to control the internal bleeding. At that time, the sun was just coming up, and I had been on this case for about nine hours. I called the sergeant and notified him that the victim was going to die and we should get the Homicide Unit briefed on this case. He instructed me to call him when the victim passed and then he would contact the Homicide Unit.
An hour later, I was notified that the victim had passed away from his injuries. This was no longer an aggravated assault case but was now a homicide investigation. The protocol in this instance was the Homicide Unit sergeant would be contacted by my sergeant. I would give an incident briefing to homicide detectives, and they would take over the investigation. I began preparing my notes and getting all the information I was going to need to get the Homicide Unit up to speed on the case. I was also in constant communication with the detectives looking for Deshawn. However, I did not tell the apprehension detectives that the victim had passed away as I didn’t want them to overreact when confronting Deshawn. I only wanted Deshawn detained for questioning and to obtain fingerprints and DNA from him.
I met with homicide detectives in their conference room. Just as I was preparing to start the briefing, I received a phone call that Deshawn had been located at a hotel less than a mile from the crime scene. He was contacted by detectives and detained without incident. “Without incident” in the police world means a person was put in handcuffs and no force had to be used, the suspect was not injured, and no officers were injured. The detective told me Deshawn’s outer clothing was covered in blood.
After briefing the homicide detectives, I was told I was relieved and could go home. However, the new case agent, a senior homicide detective, complimented me on my attention to detail and suggested that it would be a great help if I monitored his interview as I knew so much about his case. Although I was exhausted, I caught my third wind and stayed to help out.
Deshawn was interviewed about his involvement in this incident and at first denied knowing the victim. Later, he admitted to knowing the victim but said he hadn’t seen him in years. Then he changed his mind and stated he had seen the victim earlier in the day and had an argument with him about a girl they were both dating. However, Deshawn denied being present during the murder and vividly recalled riding his bicycle to a nearby town that was twenty miles away on a day when it was over 100 degrees. He could not recall how he got to the hotel where police found him. In an almost five-hour interview, Deshawn gave inconsistent statements about where he was during the murder, on the day of the murder, and his relationship with the victim. After being confronted with his lies several times, he finally told the detective he wanted a lawyer and didn’t want to talk to police anymore.
Deshawn was booked for second-degree murder. Subsequent forensic processing of the eyeglasses and lighter found near the victim’s torn backpack revealed the blood belonged to the victim, and Deshawn’s fingerprints were found on the lighter. Interviews of the victim’s mother and friends led detectives to believe the motive for the fight was a dispute over a female. The female was interviewed and initially denied knowing the victim or the suspect but later admitted to knowing them both. Due to her heavy intoxication and drug use, she couldn’t remember what exactly the two men were angry with each other about.
Deshawn proclaimed his innocence, and this case went to trial. The trial took place two years after the murder occurred. A jury of his peers found Deshawn guilty of second-degree murder. Several times during my testimony, Deshawn blurted out my last name. When I was answering questions presented by the lawyers, Deshawn would yell out, “Those aren’t even real words! That shit’s made up!” and laugh. Deshawn and his lawyer were warned several times during my portion of testifying to remain quiet. I wasn’t present for all the witness testimony, but the homicide case agent told me Deshawn heckled every witness and despite being warned repeatedly to be respectful to witnesses was never removed from the court.
During the course of the trial, the defense raised two major challenges to the evidence against Deshawn. One of them was the “dying declaration” made by the victim to the SWAT officer. The defense questioned every word the SWAT officer heard and documented in his report, questioning if there was bias in his meaning and understanding of what the victim was saying. The defense wanted to convince the jury the SWAT officer misunderstood what the victim was saying. The second issue presented by the defense was the photo lineups. The defense objected to their use and stated the photographs selected for the lineup were prejudicial and biased the witnesses to inadvertently select Deshawn.
At this point in my career, I hadn’t really considered testing for the Homicide Unit since I didn’t believe I had the experience to handle those types of cases. But after working closely with the homicide detective that took over this case, I learned that I was already doing most of what was done in a homicide case. The detective encouraged me to test for the unit and would later become a mentor and good friend. I tested for the Homicide Unit one month later and four months later was accepted into the unit.
When tragedy struck, the entire system answered the call.
On the morning after Christmas in 2000, the small city of Wakefield, Massachusetts, faced something no one could have expected: a workplace turned into a scene of mass murder. In just a few short minutes, seven people were killed inside a tech company office by one of their own—a quiet employee named Michael McDermott.
The shock didn’t end with the tragedy. It marked the start of the largest homicide investigation in state history. Murderous Rage follows the case from the first police radio call to the final court ruling. Told by one of the lead investigators, this book shows how detectives, prosecutors, and forensic experts worked side by side, piecing together evidence, interviewing witnesses, and staying focused through media pressure and public fear.
Through snowstorms, crowded courtrooms, and hundreds of interviews, the investigative team pushed forward. What they uncovered wasn’t just how the crime happened, but why—and what could have been done to prevent it.
This book isn't about heroes or villains. It’s about professionals doing their jobs with care, teamwork, and a shared commitment to justice for the victims. It’s a powerful look at how real investigations happen, far from the way they’re shown on TV.
Chapter 1: T’was the Day After Christmas
It was Tuesday, the morning after Christmas, and it was brutally cold outside. The thermometer on the kitchen windowsill stayed locked on minus 1 degree. Greater Boston was stuck in an unusually cold weather pattern, and according to the weather folks, a return to normalcy was still days away. Unless skiing up north or playing pond hockey were your passions, it was a good day to stay home and open a book by the fireplace.
I downed two cups of hot coffee and a steaming bowl of oatmeal before I dressed in layers of my warmest clothing and headed out to work. I always enjoyed working the day after Christmas. The day was usually low-key, with a skeleton crew and very few phone calls or visitors. It was what we referred to on the state police as “holiday routine”: a time to catch up on paperwork and take a second or third look at a couple of unfinished investigations. Besides, I preferred saving my days off for a visit to the beach where I’d lather my face with suntan lotion, not Chapstick.
Traffic was thankfully light because the heater fan in my old and tired unmarked state police cruiser was balking and didn’t wheeze out any warmth until I crossed over the Longfellow Bridge, which separates Boston from Cambridge and lies just a few blocks from my office in the Middlesex County Courthouse.
I had my choice of parking spaces because, even though the administrative offices and district courts were open, there was little foot traffic and no superior court trials on the schedule. Once inside, I passed through the safety checkpoint, made a stop at the coffee shop in the lobby, and ordered up two larges before walking up the wide cement staircase to our office on the second floor.
The huge metal doors to the office featured the blue and white circular seal of the Massachusetts State Police, centered and positioned eye-high, leaving no doubt who was on the other side. One door was propped open, and the only one home was Duke Donoghue. He and I would be it for the day. Duke was the newest trooper assigned to the office, and as the “junior man,” it was the norm for him to have the duty call responsibilities for the day after Christmas. On the state police, seniority in rank dictates the bidding for almost everything, including vacations and time off. It has been the case since the inception of the department in 1921. Everyone knows it, and no one complains. As the boss and ranking officer, the reverse was also true: it was my responsibility to be there in case there were any events requiring supervisory decision-making. Duke and I were at the opposite ends of the family spectrum. He was single and without kids, and I was married with two. One was a college freshman, and the other worked as a dispatcher for the Wellesley Police. Therefore, the need to be home with young kids wasn’t an issue for either of us.
In the quiet of the morning, Duke and I had some time to sit and talk without worry of interruption or the need to be somewhere else. I had looked forward to a candid, private conversation about his thoughts and perspectives as he approached his one-year mark in the office. I wanted to know how he felt he was adapting to the world of death investigations, the increased and diverse workload of cases, and the added responsibilities that came with them.
As we sipped our coffee, we talked about the first time we met. It was during the summer of ’91. One weekday afternoon, they randomly assigned us to the same tee box at a state-operated golf course. I had been on the job for fifteen years and was on my first tour at Middlesex as a sergeant. Duke was a year out of college and working for a company doing title searches in the probate courts. As we walked down the first fairway, he started a conversation by asking me where I was a police officer. It pissed me off because identifying myself as a police officer while I was on time off was simply not something I ever did. He would later tell me it was a wild guess. He thought I looked too much like a cop not to be one. Duke looked like a high school kid whose face hadn’t yet known the feel of a razor blade. To make a long story bearable, as we talked, I learned that Duke’s dad was a state trooper who had passed away suddenly when Duke was only ten. I had known his dad. He was a gentleman and natural leader, one of those people that a young trooper could talk to and look up to for mentoring, guidance and instruction with positive feedback. In a para-military agency, that wasn’t always the case. As Duke and I walked the course, we talked and shared a few stories and a couple of laughs. I gave him my card and told him to stay in touch. Fortunately for both of us, he did. He wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps, and I wanted to help him in any way I could. As the son of a cop who couldn’t wait to follow in his own father’s footsteps, I always looked out for others in the same situation.
In 1993, Duke entered the state police academy where, over the following six months, he learned about policing, personal commitment, and self-discipline. He grew and matured while excelling at every phase of the training. After a few years patrolling the highways around Boston, he transferred to the attorney general’s office. He spent his days working on public corruption cases and nights as a fixture in the Boston club scene, working undercover buying significant quantities of ecstasy and ketamine. Duke’s open and friendly style, coupled with his youthful looks, made his work almost effortless. Most nights the dealers looked for him and not the other way around. We spoke one afternoon at a chance meeting at headquarters. He mentioned that he enjoyed the corruption cases but the drug work had grown repetitious, and the challenges were diminishing. As he put it, “I feel like I’m shooting at ducks in a barrel every night at the clubs.”
I asked him if he was ready to take on homicide cases. His face lit up with a smile, and without hesitation, he said, “You know that is my goal. I will jump at the first opportunity.”
A few months later, there was a vacancy in our unit, and I reached out and encouraged him to apply for the position. A month later, after completing the application process and the interviews, Duke’s work address changed from Boston to Cambridge.
We began our impromptu year-in-review with Duke talking about the change in environment and responsibilities and the anxiety and self-doubt that everyone struggles with when they first arrive. He said he questioned whether he had the experience and ability to handle death investigations. He had arrived early in January, a time when things were relatively quiet. As is customary with any new addition to the unit, he shadowed the case officers and responded day and night to all of the reported suicide and unattended deaths in the county, and there were plenty of them. It’s a swift and total immersion into the work and creates a perfect opportunity to meet and learn from the other folks in the office as well as the crime scene specialists, the local detectives, and the crew from the medical examiner’s (ME) office. When he wasn’t going to death scenes, he reviewed old-and-cold homicide cases and just tried to learn and fit in with everyone.
“I had seen dead bodies at motor vehicle fatal scenes, so I knew I could handle the blood and guts part,” he said. “At the AGs, I did a lot of interviews and interrogations and wrote a few search warrants. My real goal was always to do homicides, and I really felt prepared to step up to the next level. But what I hadn’t thought about or realized was the intensity and the demands that are inherent in all homicide cases. Looking back, the drug work was interesting and challenging at times, but there was very little stress. Losing a case was never good, but it also wasn’t the end of the world or career ending. Homicides, though, are a completely different animal. I have to be on my game all the time. Seriously, if I ever lost a case because I messed up and did something wrong, I could never live with myself. The mental angst is by far the hardest part of the work.”
“You were barely here a month when you caught that horrendous murder in Everett,” I said. “What were the odds that your team would have the homicide call that day? That type of a case presents a once-in-a-career scenario, if ever, for most investigators; it may be the most extreme and intense homicide setting you will ever be in.”
“Homicides by explosion are extremely rare,” I continued. “This one was beyond horrific and challenging: a beautiful young woman’s life extinguished in a millisecond when she opened a package with a pipe bomb inside left on her doorstep by an a-hole she refused to date,” I said, shaking my head. “Not to mention that the day had the harshest weather conditions I can ever recall at a crime scene. It was freezing, and the wind was so strong it drove a stinging sleet storm sideways for hours. The MBTA kindly sent us a bus so we could take breaks and warm-up, and a nearby funeral parlor set up a tent with coffee and donuts and warmed it with a propane heater. It was brutal. Add to that a convoluted crime scene that was both inside and outside because the explosion blew out the ceiling, the outer wall, and the kitchen window sending debris, body parts, and evidence in every direction. While we got a quick lead on who might have killed her, the diabolical bastard was on the loose. I can tell you, unquestionably, that it was the most complex crime scene I had experienced in my twenty-six years on the job. I can also say, though, that with our crew, I never doubted we would solve it and every bit of it done right, from the interviews and the search warrants to the crime scene processing and beyond. It was a monumental team effort by everyone and every agency involved. We had him in custody by the end of the night. I couldn’t have been prouder of everyone’s efforts from the call through the conviction.”
Duke replied, “You have talked to me many times about the way things worked in the office, including the checkpoints that were in place to prevent big mistakes from happening and safety nets that provided a soft landing without much damage if you went a little sideways and lost your balance. I understood what you were saying then, but it wasn’t until that day that I actually experienced it. I learned more about teamwork and relying on others to get things done right in those first few hours than at any other time in my career.
“Seriously,” he went on, “I was the new guy, and I wasn’t sure how to take Eddie Forster and his constant ball-breaking. You know, introducing me to people as a college intern, calling me kid, and telling me to get coffees and all that stuff, but when I saw him in action that day, I was impressed. He had some incisive thoughts and ideas, and when we went to the guy’s house, he was very respectful to his mom and sister. In turn, they were cooperative and willing to answer questions and provided us with information that supported probable cause for the warrant. The same with Jimmy Connolly: he was so calm and composed I never doubted that we were going about things the right way. It was incredibly tragic, but it was also a great learning experience for me. Working with the assistant district attorneys and recognizing that we were equal parts of the same team was new as well. I wasn’t used to having them working alongside us from the get-go, but it really was reassuring to have them guiding us through a huge number of legal issues. Tom O’Reilly thinks and acts like us and his experience and explanations of why we do, or don’t do, certain things has not only opened my eyes to the process but also instilled some real confidence in the way I approach things.”
“The beauty of working in Middlesex County,” I explained, “is the diversity that comes with being the largest county in New England. Our jurisdiction not only covers fifty-four cities, towns, and twenty-one major colleges and universities but they are spread out over urban, suburban, and rural areas. Each is unique and different with their own police departments, a variety of political structures, demographics, and geographies. No two are the same. We usually respond to twenty-five to thirty homicides a year and hundreds of other unattended death scenes where the cause of death turns out to be a suicide, accident, natural causes, or in rare cases, undetermined. We get to see a lot of everything and can gather experience and insight quickly, and because of the variety in the cases, you learn to stay open-minded and always on your toes. You learn to follow the evidence and not be predisposed to how you think it might have happened or who must have done it based on a narrow assessment from your limited experience. You may see that kind of thinking in areas where almost all of the homicides are drug- or gang-related with predictable fact patterns, but you will never see that happen in our office.
“I was at the FBI National Academy back in ’95 and taking a class in behavioral analysis taught by one of the agency’s top profilers. One day, toward the end of the program, he stopped me as I was leaving class. ‘I haven’t figured you out,’ he said. ‘You are either the biggest liar I’ve ever met, or you are in the midst of a career that any detective would kill for. No matter what topic I bring up you have had a case or two that fits it. I honestly have never had that happen to me before, and I’ve been teaching this stuff for years.’ I assured him I wasn’t a liar and simply blessed to be constantly in the thick of psychological thrillers. After that exchange, he called on me all the time.
“I’m happy when the facts are simple and straightforward and we wrap up a case in a day or two, but I enjoy it a lot more when we are faced with a true whodunnit and we have to work hard to resolve it with an arrest. A good example is the fire this summer at the condo in Malden. Based on the crime scene and the amount of blood on the carpet and walls, our gut feelings tell us it is a murder, but without a body, we can’t prove it. It is frustrating as hell, but it takes a lot more than a missing body to deter us. I’m hopeful Eddie Forster was right when he said our victim will turn up in the spring thaw and we can move forward with an arrest and prosecution of our person of interest. Discovering a body in that manner may be atypical, but not unheard of, and with Adrienne Lynch as the assistant DA on the case, you know we aren’t going to file it away as a cold case. I am confident we will solve it.”
In the summer of 2000, a small fire in a condo basement in Malden, Massachusetts, seemed like just another routine call. But behind the smoke was something far more disturbing—a violent scene with no victim in sight. Detective Lieutenant Bill Powers of the Massachusetts State Police and his team of seasoned investigators joined forces with local detectives to uncover what happened in that quiet building.
As the team dug deeper, they faced a complex case without a body, a confession, or clear answers. Clues came slowly: strange behavior from a tenant, a missing person no one had reported, and a hidden crime scene soaked not only in water and gasoline—but in blood. With persistence and teamwork, they traced the path of a young woman, Kelly Hancock, a runaway who had vanished without a trace.
This book follows every step of the investigation, from the moment firefighters broke down the door to the final verdict in a packed courtroom. Along the way, it reveals the work of detectives, prosecutors, forensic scientists, and everyday people who helped bring justice to a victim whose voice was almost lost.
Told with care and clarity, When the Smoke Cleared isn’t just about solving a murder—it’s about what it takes to stand up for someone when no one else will.
Chapter 1
The Crime Scene
Few things can piss off a cop or firefighter quicker than an unexpected, surprise callout at the end of a shift. Just ask any one of us and watch for the narrowing of the eyes and the scowl or wince that crosses our face remembering times when it happened. The recall is usually negative because it caused the cancelation or alteration of premade plans. On occasion, though, you might hear, “Except there was this one time when something seemingly small and inconsequential turned into something big and far-reaching, and we later found out we were standing on the tip of an iceberg—and I’m glad I was there and that we got it right.”
Tuesday, July 18, 2000, was a warm, muggy summer morning in Malden, MA. The rising sun was barely visible as it strained to bore a hole through the overcast sky and shine its blinding orange light onto the awakening land below. It’s what guys on the mid-shift referred to as God’s searchlight, making an opening to brighten the day. For those rolling out of their beds it was a welcome sight, but for those up all night it meant squinting through some tired eyes, as the glare made for difficult driving at the end of a shift.
An unremarkable twenty-four-hour tour of duty was winding down for the firefighters assigned to the trucks at the Salem Street Fire Headquarters. They were packing their ditty bags and watching the clock. At seven a.m., they would be out the door and heading home to get breakfast for their kids or off to their second job in one of the trades. However, at precisely 6:21 a.m., the blare of the stationhouse alarm signaling a report of fire disrupted their getaway plans. The call came from Master Box 3121 at the Malden Mills condo complex at the corner of Eastern Avenue and Linwood Street, a building less than a half mile away.
“Shit, shit, shit! I swear to Christ this happens every freaking time we are ready to go and I have family plans!” one of the guys bellowed out. It was what everyone else was thinking. “You know it is some dipshit who burned his bagel while he played in the shower and it tripped the freaking alarm,” he added.
But it wasn’t a call they could ignore or a decision they had to make. Like it or not, they had just moments to gear up and jump onto the truck as the huge white overhead doors rolled up, the red lights flared to life, and the high-pitched scream of the siren announced to the neighborhood that they were pulling out and needed clear passage.
The deputy chief led the way in the company car, and both Engine 1 and Ladder 1 followed as they rolled across Salem Street. They screamed down Holden Street past Malden High School on the right before taking a left onto Eastern Avenue, and after a few hundred yards, they took a quick right and immediate left into the parking lot for the condo complex. The entire trip took less than a minute and a half.
As they jumped from the apparatus, the firefighters could hear the alarms blaring inside and watched as the residents slowly streamed into the parking lot in their nightclothes or business attire. There was a noticeable but faint smell of smoke with no visible flame. This was certainly more than the burnt toast they had groused about as they dressed for the call.
They went about the business of coupling and pulling hose from the truck, attaching it to the nearby hydrant, dragging it into the building, and once the nozzle man was poised and ready to enter the fire scene, they would charge the line with water and ready for the attack.
The deputy ran up the front stairs, entering through the glass doors, and located the fire alarm annunciator panel on the wall. A flashing icon indicated the alarm was coming from the basement level in the function room located down a flight of stairs from the atrium-style entrance. He detected a light haze of smoke wafting up from the stairwell.
Captain Trimble from Engine 1 hooked a nozzle onto a hose neatly tucked into the wall beside the first floor standpipe and stretched it out. This would be a backup to the larger hose and would draw its water from inside of the building. They descended the stairs to the basement level and headed toward the function room in the familiar attack formation firefighters trained on for decades. There were two doors to the function room and the deputy, with a key handed to him by a trustee, unlocked the nearest, and apparently safest, one.
There was light smoke coming from the edges of that door, but the firefighter’s eyes focused on a second entrance door about thirty feet farther down the hallway. They noted smoke and soot marks at the top of the door and smoke and water pouring out the bottom and into the hallway rug, a clear sign to them that was the hotspot, or the place where the fire was concentrated.
Trimble opened the door cautiously, and saw the billowing smoke gather and rush into his direction. He slammed it shut and told the other firefighters to mask up before they pushed their way in.
Dan Thoman, an eighteen-year veteran, was the nozzle man from Engine 1 and the first to enter the room in front of the captain. The big hose was perched on his shoulder, the activating lever at his fingertips ready to set in motion at the first sight of flame. The open doorway now provided a natural exit route for the thick, acrid smoke that had been building inside. It charged toward the firefighters with fury, turning the visibility to zero. The stench from the smoke had the unmistakable odor and taste of a petroleum product, probably gasoline. Trimble put his hand onto Thoman’s back, and they inched deeper into the room with their right shoulders rubbing along the wall, grasping the hose like a lifeline that would allow them to back out of the room if it became treacherous or unbearable inside.
The firefighters entered the room into a small kitchenette area. On the left side of the room there was a makeshift dining area with portable tables and chairs. After twenty feet, the right wall ended and the room opened wide to a living room area complete with a couch, comfortable chairs and a glass table. The second wave of firefighters entered from behind, and using their Halligan tools, smashed the four ceiling level windows to vent the smoke and then shut down the sprinkler system. After the heaviest smoke made a hasty escape, their view became a lot clearer. They pushed up their masks and quickly surveyed the scene. They extinguished what remained of the smoldering fire, which appeared limited to the living room section. The flood of water that poured from the ceiling sprinklers suppressed the spread of flame, so the fire damage was minimal and limited to the rug and furniture, but the damage from the smoke and water was extensive. The room was in disarray, and a love seat and chair lay tipped over, as did a glass table. There were several inches of water on the floor streaked with an iridescent sheen, and a strong odor of gasoline remained in the air, all unmistakable signs of an arson—and based on what they saw, maybe other crimes as well.
Seventeen years of training and experience told the captain this was likely an arson case and a criminal police matter.
“Hey, guys!” Captain Trimble bellowed over the commotion. “I think this room is definitely a crime scene, so treat it accordingly. Continue to search for victims and hotspots, and vent the smoke and water, but don’t, under any circumstances, touch or move anything, or you’ll be in court explaining to the judge why you did.”
He called into the dispatch center and requested they summon Malden PD detectives to the scene. Sergeant Steve Ruelle and Inspector Johnny Rivers from the criminal bureau were heading in for the day shift when they heard the call and rerouted their approach to the fire scene at the occupied condo complex.
Ruelle and Rivers had a long, cooperative history with the deputy and the captain. Rivers had been the department’s Arson Investigator for years and responded to virtually every suspicious fire scene. The four met outside the building, and the deputy got right to the point.
“This is a weird set of circumstances,” he started, “the sprinklers knocked the fire down before we got here, but there was a huge mass of thick black smoke and it reeked of gasoline, so I obviously thought it might be an arson. When we got to the source, though, there were chairs and a table knocked over, and it didn’t come from us. I’m no expert, but it looks like there may be some blood on the furniture and maybe the walls, but it could be soot from the fire. I’m just not sure. But you guys taught me that it is your call and always better to be safe than sorry. That’s why I called for you.”
They all went inside, and after a few minutes of looking around and smelling the obvious accelerant, Rivers said he wanted to reach out to the State Fire Marshal’s office for added expertise. When he called, he specifically asked that they bring Lucy, their arson-sniffing dog, along for the ride.
The detectives were sloshing around the function room in their rubber boots, rough sketching the scene, and documenting their initial observations when Lucy poked her head into the room. She announced her presence with a series of excited whines, and she was straining on her leash and panting to get to work. Lucy was a highly trained and decorated accelerant detection canine. At the other end of her tether was Paul Horgan, a state police sergeant attached to the Fire Marshal’s office. Lucy and Paul had met more than seven years earlier at a training in Connecticut, and they were inseparable from that moment on. They trained together every step of the way, always receiving their certifications as a team.
There were still a couple of inches of water flowing out the door and into the building’s drainage pipe when Lucy first put her nose to the water. She alerted on four distinct stain areas, sitting and wagging her tail each time, looking up to Horgan for approval and a couple of kibbles from his pocket. When she wasn’t signifying an alert, normally Lucy would stand and wait for the next command. This day, however, she bent her head down and lapped at the water around the stains in the carpet. No matter how many times Horgan tugged at the leash to keep her focused, Lucy kept going back to the water.
He turned to Rivers and said, “John, I know this sounds crazy, but the only time I have to pull her away from drinking water at a fire scene is when there is blood or ‘deco’ (body decomposition) in the mix. I think we have a lot more than an arson here.”
###
Pat Silva, another investigator from the Fire Marshal’s office, arrived shortly after Horgan to help with the investigation. Pat began his professional career as a full-time firefighter a few miles up the road in Salem, MA, where he worked for eight years before switching gears and careers when he joined the ranks of the state police. It was safe to say he knew his way around both a fire scene and an investigation. The responsibility of determining the cause and origin of the fire would fall to him. After some introductory conversation about what they knew and what they were learning, Pat thought it was critical to reach out to Crime Scene Services for a trained specialist to photograph, fingerprint, and document the entire room.
When the water level was near zero and the smoke had cleared, a couple of large pinkish-colored stains appeared on the rug and there were similar noticeable spots and blotches on the furniture. Deeper and closer inspection of the wall by the door showed what appeared to be reddish-brown smears and possible blood spatter. Lucy’s instincts were right on the money, and she earned a bonus cookie or two for her efforts.
Silva then called the crime lab and requested assistance from a chemist to collect the arson evidence for further analysis and to test and collect any of the apparent bloodstains that were starting to show through the saturated surfaces.
In an unconventional and unscientific way, Lucy confirmed what Ruelle and Rivers were already thinking. Her instinctive behavior changed the focus and concern from the original call for an arson to a more intense investigation of a potentially violent crime.
Johnny Rivers made the call to the state police office in the Middlesex DAO to request assistance. He thought it might not turn out to be a homicide, but there was no sense waiting for a victim before they activated the full team. Ruelle and Rivers preferred to be proactive in cases like this where the need for a death investigation was apparent. They wanted a full team in place advancing the case together from the beginning. Experience told them things always went better that way.
###
I was at my desk when the phone rang at around eleven a.m. Lana fielded the call. Her seat was located a few steps from my office and within easy hearing range. I wasn’t eavesdropping, but I caught her friendly voice, “Hi, Jimmy, where are you guys? With Rivers and Ruelle? That must be good for a few laughs.”
For a few seconds, she was quiet and a small gasp seeped out while she listened Then, in a much different tone, she commented, “Oh wow, really? Oh my God! Seriously?” and then a pause, followed by, “Yeah, he’s right here. I’ll put him on.”
Lana had a cheerful disposition, and her delightful laughter usually filled her conversations, but not this time. I sensed trouble when she turned in her seat and simply said, “Billy, I have Jimmy Connolly on the phone, and he needs to talk to you.”
Lana transferred the call, I answered and listened as Jimmy said, “Good morning Boss. I don’t know if you got the heads-up on this, but I’m with Duke and Eddie, and we are over in Malden at a fire in a condo building. It’s an interesting situation. It looks as though someone started a fire in the function room to try to cover up a crime scene. There’s a couple of big pinkish stains on the floor and what looks like blood spatter on the walls. So far, the firefighters have pumped out about a foot of water that poured out of the sprinkler system and smothered the fire before it could do any heavy damage. They cleared the residents to return, but most of them are just grabbing some stuff and leaving or going to work.
“It might be a good idea if you filled the DA in and then headed this way. We are at the Malden Mills Condo building on Linwood Street where it intersects with Eastern Avenue.”
My first thoughts were that it had all the indicators of a major crime scene that could gain a great deal of media attention and we would need to prepare for that eventuality. More importantly, and because of the complexity of issues, particularly the potential legal ones around search and seizure as well as evidence collection, we needed to have someone from the DAO on-scene to guide us through the maze. I asked Jimmy if Adrienne Lynch, the chief of the Malden division of the Middlesex DAO was aware of the situation. He reminded me that she was in Columbia, SC, lecturing at a DA’s conference and wouldn’t be back until Monday. Gerard Butler, a senior ADA, was filling in for her, and he expected him to arrive shortly.
The distance from our office in the Cambridge Courthouse to the scene in Malden was a little less than six miles, and with regular congestion and traffic it could be a half an hour ride. Flashing blue lights and a blaring siren could open the pathway and shorten the travel time, but as the crime scene was secure and under control, my arriving a few minutes sooner wasn’t going to help solve anything and would only piss off every commuter I passed. The slower trip also gave me plenty of time to think through the facts, as I knew them, and start to formulate a game plan to make sure all our bases were covered. It was a great comfort knowing that the best-trained crime scene specialists were either on-scene or would be in short order and that the detectives from both the Malden PD and the state police were experienced and knowledgeable. Most importantly, we had worked together in the past on other homicides with very successful outcomes.
My fundamental role as the detective lieutenant throughout a death investigation was one of oversight and direction. Experience and guidance mattered most, the institutional memory gained from literally hundreds of past investigations coupled with the battle scars and remembrances of both screw-ups and successes. My goal was always to diminish the former and accentuate the latter.
The detectives working on the case did the bulk of the work. In this instance, as in most others in my office, my detectives had a history of working together and great investigative instincts, a passion to solve the case, and most importantly, relied on one another to prevent mistakes. We all worked as a team and had no tolerance for lone wolves who wandered off and followed their impulses rather than the plan. When working with competent detectives and ADAs, it often reminds me of a quote from Mahatma Gandhi, “There go my people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.”
When I arrived at the scene, firefighters were washing down the equipment and returning it to their trucks. Strands of dark smoke were still streaming out of the broken windows on the building’s ground level, and there was a noticeable stench of gasoline in the air. There were several people milling around in the lot that I presumed were residents and neighbors.
Jimmy Connolly and Johnny Rivers walked over to me as I approached the building's entrance. A few moments later, Steve Ruelle, Duke Donoghue, and Ed Forster broke away from what they were doing and joined the conversation.
They were gathering information from personal observations and conversations with firefighters, and were in the beginning stages of interviewing residents, neighbors, and people working in nearby businesses. Canvassing is a long and tedious part of any investigation and perhaps the second least favorite, just ahead of diving into putrid dumpsters looking through garbage bags for hidden evidence.
We talked for a few minutes about the uniqueness of what they discovered, then they brought me in to look at the crime scene firsthand. After a quick familiarization with the room and the scene as the firefighters first encountered it, I spoke with Pat Silva. Although a trooper now, Pat still spoke in firefighter’s jargon. He talked of the “fire load” and said it was limited to the furnishings in the living room section of the function room. He said there were no accidental heat sources that could have caused a fire. He went on to describe what he considered a pour pattern (the manner of distribution of the accelerant prior to ignition). He pointed out a trail of burn areas and soot marks that supported his comments and mentioned that Lucy’s “hits” for accelerants were consistent with what the physical evidence showed. Lastly, Silva pointed to the six sprinkler heads in the living room section and noted that the fire activated four of them, which poured down with enough pressure and volume to drown the fire shortly after it began. He noted the four open heads centered in the area where the fire occurred. There was still a lot of work to do, but he said he was confident that he would be able to establish the cause and origin of the fire.
In addition to the two pinkish blotches in the rug by the furniture, there were also areas of reddish-brown stains on lower parts of the wall nearest to the unlocked door. John Drugan, the crime lab chemist, joined the conversation. “Guys, I think these preliminary tests are affirming what we thought. They have all been positive for blood, and the quick reaction to the chemicals has been dramatic.”
Silva’s experienced eyes allowed him to offer an initial opinion that someone caused the fire by spreading an ignitable liquid over the love seat, chair, and flooring, and then introduced an open flame to the accelerant. The fire spread laterally across the floor and onto the chair and love seat. As the fire progressed, the increasing heat set off the sprinkler heads, which consumed and extinguished the flames. It was the collective opinion of all present that someone had set the fire intentionally and deliberately to cover up and contaminate the scene of a violent crime.
A quick study of the visual evidence, including the bloodstains, suggested there had been a chaotic fight in the room prior to setting it ablaze.
While the specialists continued to comb the crime scene for signs of trace and physical evidence, my team wandered away to pick up where they left off, interviewing anyone and everyone in the area who might have seen or witnessed something unusual or remarkable before, during, or after the fire alarm sounded.
Perhaps the most difficult circumstance at the start of every case is that detectives come in blind and work backward to gain information. Initial observations of a crime scene are important, but what we see is the aftermath of the event. We need to find witnesses with information that supports and/or explains what we, the detectives, saw. As the saying goes, “We don’t know what we don’t know,” and the only way to learn is by talking with people and learning from them. Eyewitnesses are the best sources, but unfortunately, like all gems, they are rarely easy to find. In many instances, they have left the scene to go about their business, thinking someone else will be there to fill in the blanks for the police. At other times, they are afraid of real or imagined consequences and leave hoping to remain anonymous. In yet other circumstances, they are in the wrong place at the wrong time and have a fear of discovery because their presence could put their marriage or employment in jeopardy. On occasion, they just don’t like or trust the police or the criminal justice system. Regardless of the reason, locating honest cooperating witnesses can be a difficult task.
The canvassing spread out in two directions: first with the condo residents then with the people working at the neighboring businesses. Most of the initial resident interviews were quick because many had left after the fire alarms went off, and those who remained had mostly been asleep at the time and had nothing to offer in the way of observations or personal thoughts. To be thorough, my investigators would return later that evening and for several days afterward to ensure they spoke with every resident. This gave everyone the opportunity to share information about not only the fire but also any suspicions they may have about people they had seen in the building or scuttlebutt they had picked up from neighbors about possible suspects or persons of interest. There didn’t appear to be any forced entry into the building, so there was every reason to believe the assailant was either a resident or a guest of one.
Just as important as the gathering of information, the opportunity to create some face time between the police and residents is valuable. First impressions are lasting and can go a long way in building trust. Knowing there is a police presence and an active investigation helps to calm some of their fears. A simple handshake and exchange of a business card can be the opening to a positive dialogue that might not take place at that moment or for weeks, months, or even a year. Then, if that person either learns more information or has prior information they were initially unwilling to share, they have a number to call, and the person on the other end will be a detective with whom they have already met and shared a conversation.
It was evident from speaking with several residents that they were understandably scared and concerned for their safety and security. From our initial dialogues, we learned that they were not all cut from the same bolt of cloth. Most of the units were owner occupied, but several were sublets. Many residents worked at white and blue-collar mid-wage professions, while others were, for any number of different reasons, without work and around the property most days. This was by no means a homogeneous community. This wasn’t the setting the writers considered when they created Melrose Place. None of the residents shared that there was a big, happy family feeling atmosphere throughout the building. It was a decent place to live but not one with smiley face welcome mats lying beneath unlocked doors.
There were pockets or small groups that knew one another in a superficial but friendly way. They might share some Chinese food from the restaurant across the street, watch a movie together, or even go halves on the cost of some recreational drugs, but that was about it. Most stayed to themselves and, at least while they were there, walked softly and wore blinders and earplugs.
With the outside interviews completed and the function room in the competent hands of the crime scene and arson specialists, my onsite detectives ventured into the management office on the first floor to learn a bit more about the building and the people who called it home. They got a list of the residents and a floor plan showing fifty-five housing units that corresponded with those names. The manager was cooperative and knowledgeable, answering questions as best he could. He also provided a little insight regarding a few of the residents, and why they might or might not be willing to speak with us. The manager told them that the function room was not a gathering spot, and rarely did anyone use it at night. The doors remained locked, and the only way to access it was with a key. Keys were few, and they were in the sole possession of the trustees or in the management office. He only loaned out the keys for planned, preapproved events and always got them back from the renters.
Steve Ruelle was combing through the manifest when he noted the name Lester Morovitz in Condo Number 115. “Isn’t he the guy who owns the taxi company across the street?” he asked.
“Yes,” was the reply, “but he doesn’t live here. He’s on the deed, but his kid lives there with a woman and two kids. His name is Tommy Crouse. He is an odd duck, coming and going all hours of the day and night, but he doesn’t cause problems. I think he works for his old man. He would be a good person to speak with, but I don’t think he was around this morning. I didn’t see his Chevy Blazer out there.”
The taxi service operated twenty-four hours a day, so there was always someone fielding calls in the office’s dispatch center. Eddie, Duke, and Ruelle took a walk across the street to see if Morovitz was in his office. Fortunately, he was, and he invited them in. After introductions and small talk about the fire and the weather, they asked him what he knew about Tommy Crouse.
“Oh, Tommy’s my stepson; I’m married to his mother. When they fixed up the building and turned it into condos a few years ago, I bought one of them so Tommy, his girlfriend, Esther Fournier, and their kids would have a place to live and I could keep an eye on him. He works here for me. He’s an unreliable employee, but what am I going to do? He’s family.”
They asked if he knew where Tommy was, and he said the whole family had gone to visit with Esther’s family in New Hampshire earlier in the morning.
“They were fortunate,” he recalled. “They left a few minutes before the fire alarm went off. Tommy called me early this morning and told me Esther had the ‘itches’ really bad and she had to go to a doctor but her medical insurance was in New Hampshire and she had no coverage in Massachusetts.”
Morovitz reached for his cell phone and quickly scanned through it to see what time he had spoken with Crouse in the morning. “Here, he called to tell me at five forty-five a.m.” Eddie Forster asked him if he thought five forty-five a.m. was a little early for a wake-up phone call from his stepson to say he wouldn’t be in for work. Lester told them he had thought it was a bit odd at the time, but so were many things about Tommy Crouse. He said he thought it would be best if they talked directly to him about the fire and his early departure. He added that he spoke with Crouse several times during the day and he got the impression that Tommy wasn’t planning on coming back tonight. Morovitz gave them Crouse’s home and cell phone numbers as well as an address in Candia, NH, for Esther’s parents.
As the day wore on, our team made telephone calls to area hospitals asking about emergency room visits with unexplained, serious injuries. We alerted the OCME to the situation, and they promised to notify us if they received a call to any death scenes with unexplained injuries.
The canvass wore on, and my detectives approached people on the street, at the bus stop in front of the building, and in the parking lot of the condo complex, and questioned them about anything they may have seen that seemed unusual or out of the ordinary as they headed out earlier in the day. Most shrugged their shoulders and had little or nothing to offer. The condo owners were just glad the sprinklers suppressed the fire with minor damage and they were able to return to their homes. The check marks next to the names on the building’s roster grew by the hour, but there was little information gained.
A tenant who lived in a unit on the third floor that overlooked the parking lot and Eastern Avenue was different. He turned out to be the guy who inaugurated the flow of relevant information that the officers were waiting to hear. Duke and Pat Silva spoke with him as he arrived home from work. Duke opened the conversation and told him they were investigating a small fire in the function room. Duke only referred to the fire and not their suspicions of violence. The tenant said he had wanted to speak to the police all day about his early morning observations.
“I have a regular daily routine I follow on workdays,” he said. “Today was no different. At around five thirty a.m., I took the elevator down to the first floor and was heading toward the front door and out to my car for the short drive to where I work in Cambridge. I remember when I stepped out of the elevator; I heard voices coming from the doorway of the condo to my immediate right. The guy who lives there is Tommy Crouse; he lives there with his girlfriend, and they have two kids. When I walk through the lobby toward the front door I pass by an open area, and I can see right down to the floor below where the function room is located. I don’t remember seeing or smelling anything unusual.”
He continued, saying that normally he never saw anyone in the parking lot that early in the morning but that day had been different.
“Once I stepped outside, I noticed Tommy Crouse walking away from his blue Chevy Blazer, pulling an empty child’s wagon behind him. He has his own parking spot, but he’d parked in a space reserved for visitors and close to the handicap ramp that led into the building. We never said anything to each other, and I don’t know if Crouse even saw me.”
The tenant asked a few questions, focusing on whether or not the fire was deliberately set. Pat simply replied, “That is what we are trying to determine, and the information you are sharing is very helpful to us reaching a conclusion.” The tenant went on to tell Pat and Duke that he first learned of the fire when his girlfriend called him at work with the news around seven a.m.
“I’ve been thinking about it all day and how odd it was to see Crouse pulling a kid’s wagon in the parking lot at the crack of dawn.” He said he was relieved that the officer’s spoke with him and gave him a chance to share what little he knew. Neither the tenant nor the investigators realized it at that moment, but they had just begun to pry the lid off Pandora’s Box.
After talking with the tenant and Morovitz, everyone started to feel and believe that the slow, painstaking, but logical march toward the truth had begun. We knew we had a crime scene with bloodstains and blood spatter on the walls, obvious signs of a brutal fight, and an accelerant-rich fire that was apparently set to destroy any physical evidence. That was a good start, but we still had no victim, no known eyewitnesses, no weapon, no talk on the street, and no missing person report. We were officially nowhere, but we were starting to head somewhere.
The initial crime scene processing was completed by late afternoon, and until everything inside dried and the smoke completely cleared, there was little more that could be done. Before the troopers, crime lab chemists, and the Fire Marshal’s officers left, they briefed Connolly on what they were able to do and what still needed completing. They collected several pieces of possible evidence, including blood and water samples from the floor, walls, and furniture and burnt areas of cloth from the furniture and the rug. The seized samples would go to the state police crime laboratory for testing. The crime scene officers would be back in a day or so when the room had dried and the smoke had completely cleared to finish their work. The Fire Marshal’s officers would be back as well to further inspect and test the fire suppression system and seek out other evidence and witnesses. We planned to be back very early in the morning to pick up where we left off. Canvassing and the search for witnesses and evidence would come first for us.
An issue that arises at the start of all investigations is the urgency of getting the primary work done and then prioritizing the next steps. Everyone involved has an already open and burgeoning caseload that requires him or her to break away for days at a time to complete a myriad of responsibilities surrounding their other cases. The big advantage to the team concept is that members can drop from sight for a day or a week to attend to other business and the investigation will continue seamlessly with the other team members filling in as and where needed.
It is also the reason that team members meet or speak daily, either in person or on the telephone. They share and review the information gathered from new interviews, talk about potential leads that require follow-up, and discuss lab results that trickle in from evidence seized at the crime scene, autopsy findings, and questions from the medical examiner. The meetings keep everyone engaged and updated so there is no disruption or need to reeducate later.
###
Darkness was settling in, and the summer air was cooling off after the rain had passed. It had been a miserable day punctuated at several points with drenching downpours. The early momentum was waning, and fatigue was growing. Everyone was physically and emotionally exhausted and very, very hungry. The initial adrenaline rush for all of us had long since passed. Everyone had sweated through their clothes more than once that day, and we all smelled of the oily, acrid smoke that had settled into our shirts and pants from the time spent mucking around in the function room. There was a feeling in all of us that this was probably a good time to hit the pause button and stop for the day. Go home, throw the grungy clothes into a plastic bag, shower, grab a beer and some food, and get a good night’s rest. We could gather at the Malden PD early in the morning, review what we had learned, discuss any new information that might come in overnight, and formulate a game plan for the day. There were always things to do, but we also had to follow the evidence and be prepared to adjust the plans when more relevant and important information became available. Adapting to a changing environment and redirecting our attention happens in every case; following a predetermined template never works.
As we stood in the condo parking lot and discussed our next steps, the one piece of information we couldn’t get away from was that Tommy Crouse had left at the break of dawn to go to New Hampshire with his family—and they had fortuitously left moments before the alarms went off.
“Seriously,” Jimmy Connolly said, “who does that? Think about it. At five thirty in the morning, you wake up two little kids and your girlfriend from a sound sleep, get them dressed, pile them into a car, and drive an hour-plus to New Hampshire. The only urgency to the trip is your girlfriend has the itches and wants to see a doctor in New Hampshire. It makes no sense at all.”
There was concern that waiting overnight wasn’t the right answer. Johnny Rivers spoke up and said, “Look, Crouse is Morovitz’s stepson, and whether he likes him or not, we know he’s already been on the phone telling him we were there and asking questions about him and his early departure and we were looking to talk with him. Crouse and his girlfriend are probably already trying to create an alibi and get their story straight.”
There was a unified and, at least for this group of detectives, obvious reaction. Duke said what everyone else was thinking.
“Look, we don’t think they are returning tonight. We know what we want to do and really must do: blitz them with questions now. Let’s jump in a cruiser, head up to New Hampshire, and catch them by surprise. They will never expect that we would be knocking on their door tonight. They will be shocked and disorganized when they see us. Let’s go and catch them off guard.”
We all agreed. With a new shot of adrenaline to the system, there was a noticeable and collective rise in the energy level. Steve, Johnny, Eddie, and Duke piled into Eddie’s unmarked Crown Vic and headed north at “state police speed,” which normally cuts fifteen minutes off an hour and a half ride. On the way up Route 93 to New Hampshire, they talked over what they had learned, what they didn’t yet know, and what they hoped to learn from the interviews. They came up with a few common questions for both Crouse and Fournier so they could compare their memories and answers. They also wanted to speak with her parents and see what they knew and what they had observed during the day.
Earlier in the evening, a couple of Malden’s night detectives had dropped by for a briefing on the case and to offer their help. Once the cruiser headed off to Candia, they headed back to their station to continue the search for a victim. With no information other than a blood-soaked crime scene, it was going to be a difficult task.
Even though we made calls earlier in the day to try to locate a possible victim, there had been shift changes and new personnel manning emergency rooms and the OCME. The detectives started by re-contacting more than a dozen hospital emergency rooms in the Greater Boston area. Malden’s only hospital closed the previous year, so by then, most ambulance transports brought the victims to Massachusetts General Hospital or one of several other outstanding Boston trauma centers. The steady answer was, “No, not here, sorry. We will call you if anyone comes in reporting they were the victim of an assault.”
After an hour or so of nothing but no, they turned their attention to checking the teletype files for recent missing persons or unidentified victims of a violent assault, both dead and alive. They started locally but then spread the area of concern throughout New England and eventually nationally. They constructed a message about an apparent arson scene in their town with signs that it was possibly a cover-up for a violent crime. They electronically distributed the message throughout New England hoping the other departments would post it on detective bulletin boards and in dispatch centers and speak about it at shift roll calls. The midnight shifts would be coming on duty shortly, and they would most likely be the ones to take note of any strange encounters from the previous night.
Jimmy Connolly and I remained at the complex for a bit longer, tying up loose ends and making sure to secure the function room doors. At our request, the building manager had had the locks replaced by a locksmith earlier in the day, and the only set of keys was in our possession. The room was still an active crime scene, and just in case a defense counsel raised the issue of evidence contamination or tampering during a trial, we could respond that we closed, locked, and secured the room for the day. Jimmy and I headed home just as the other team members were rolling up on the Fournier home.
My trip home, although punctuated with a lot of uneasiness about unanswered concerns and questions, was more relaxed than the drive to Malden earlier in the day. While we had no known victim, we did have sufficient evidence that had the appearance of a homicide scene. Until we learned otherwise, we would proceed on that premise and not specifically consider it an arson scene. If we waited for a dead body to turn up critical evidence would be lost, altered, or destroyed and rendered useless. Likewise, memories would fade or change as residents shared information with one another, and eyewitnesses might go quiet.
Massachusetts law only requires the local police contact the DAO when they learn of a death, not if or when they suspect one. There was great comfort knowing that our office, the state police, and the DA had worked with the Malden detectives on a number of past homicide cases. The combined detective units shared a genuine respect and camaraderie that allowed us to work together as a harmonious and unified team. I was grateful that they brought us in on the case right away.
From my perspective, we were in a very advantageous situation. Bringing the investigative units together at the beginning of the day eliminated any friction, distrust, or finger pointing about lost or damaged evidence. Likewise, having an ADA working alongside lessened the chances of legal missteps during interviews, searches, or identifications. Gerard Butler was one of the most knowledgeable ADAs, and there was nobody more discerning and thorough than his supervisor, Adrienne Lynch. We were off to a very promising start.
As was always the case in these kinds of mysteries, we had no idea how long it would take to solve and prove. None of us realized we were just a few steps down a long, dirty road with more twists and turns and highs and lows than an amusement park roller coaster. This case could turn out to be the most challenging ride of our careers, but we all buckled in and prepared for whatever lay ahead.
Learn how to spot the signs of truth—and deception.
Have you ever watched someone speak and thought, “Something feels off”? Whether you’re talking to a friend, watching a news interview, or trying to understand a high-profile case, this book gives you the tools to see what’s really going on.
In Uncover the Truth, Mike Ruggiero shares techniques he’s used throughout his 30-year career in law enforcement to evaluate body language and the way people speak. You’ll learn how small changes in posture, word choice, and even eye contact can reveal what someone might be hiding.
This book is filled with real examples—from major cases in Mike’s career to stories in the public eye. Step by step, he explains how to look for clues that often go unnoticed and how to make sense of them.
Whether you’re in law enforcement, work with people every day, or are simply curious about human behavior, these skills can help you better understand the world around you—and the people in it.
In the glitz and glamour of 1960s Hollywood, Jay Sebring stood as an icon of innovation and style. A visionary who invented men's hair care and design concepts, Sebring wasn’t just a hairstylist—he was the architect of a $100-billion-a-year industry. His revolutionary techniques and signature charm drew legends like Frank Sinatra, Steve McQueen, and Paul Newman to his chair, making him a trusted confidant to Hollywood’s elite. From inauspicious roots in Michigan to Hollywood's "star among the stars," Jay Sebring embodied the American Dream.
Yet, in a cruel twist of fate, his extraordinary legacy was overshadowed by the horrifying Manson Family murders. Instead of being remembered for his groundbreaking work and larger-than-life personality, the media painted Sebring as a symbol of Hollywood’s so-called decadence—a distortion that served salacious narratives and tarnished his name.
Jay Sebring….Cutting to the Truth, now illuminated through exclusive insights from Sebring’s family, collaborators, legal and forensic authorities, and criminal perpetrators, reveals the man behind the myth. Discover how Jay Sebring’s influence lives on, shaping our culture in ways we often take for granted. It’s time to reclaim his legacy from the shadows of his tragic end and celebrate the dazzling contributions that made him a Hollywood pioneer and historical figure.
Lauren Samples never planned to become a true crime investigator. But when a podcast she co-hosted led her deep into the world of unsolved cases, she found herself drawn to the voices often overlooked—the families still searching for answers, the victims whose stories had faded from the headlines.
In this compelling blend of memoir and investigative journalism, Samples shares the cases that changed her, from missing persons and cold cases to the complex realities of grief, justice, and advocacy. With a background in law enforcement, a degree in paralegal studies, and a deep commitment to uncovering the truth, she brings a thoughtful and compassionate perspective to the mysteries she explores.
More than a collection of crime stories, this book is about the impact of loss, the resilience of those left behind, and the power of storytelling in the fight for justice.
For readers who seek true crime with heart, Through the Shadows: Unsolved Crimes and the Search for Truth offers an inside look at the pursuit of answers—and the people who refuse to stop searching.
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Chapter 1
Hello, My Name is Lauren
Picture this: It's early 2018, and I'm just minding my own business, maybe binging on too much Netflix. And, suddenly, a metaphorical door swings open—like in those cheesy motivational videos your aunt keeps sharing on Facebook. Except, spoiler alert: Instead of leading to self-discovery or a career in motivational speaking, it invites me into the chaotic world of true crime podcasting. Yes, me. A total amateur.
At first, I thought, “Wow, what a fun little distraction!” Who doesn’t want to delve into the dark corners of human nature? So there I am, diving headfirst into this domain without any training, degrees, or even a clue about audio editing. Just a burning curiosity and a fierce desire to share tales that are equal parts fascinating and disturbing.
Before I dive too far into this story, I need to introduce you to Ken—my knight in shining armor, though his armor is more paint-chipped than polished and his bravery was rooted in the sturdy reliability of a 1998 GMC Sierra pickup truck. Ken has been my unwavering co-host and partner in both my podcasting adventures and the rollercoaster of everyday life.
A chance encounter facilitated by a mutual friend cemented our friendship through shared laughter, effortless conversations, and buffalo chicken wings. At first glance, he was not what I deemed "my type"—he was older, composed, and inherently good-natured. As I reflected on my past romantic entanglements, a pattern emerged, one painted with the hues of heartbreak and mistreatment. Ken stood in stark contrast to the men of my past.
It took a couple of months, but eventually, I made the first move. Believe it or not, Ken is shy, despite what you may think after listening to our podcast! I got tired of waiting for him, so I just went for it, and I am glad I did! He’s stuck with me now.
Enough of the mushy stuff. I convinced Ken to start this true crime podcast with me. We named it Paradise After Dark. You’ll understand the name better as you keep reading. But seriously, how hard could it be? We would research a case and record ourselves talking about it. Pretty simple, right? I bought cheap gaming headphones on Amazon, downloaded a free audio mixer on my laptop, and we got started.
And, oh boy, did I quickly learn that my lack of podcasting credentials raised quite a few eyebrows. Friends probably wondered if I’d lost a bet or if I was experiencing some midlife crisis too soon. Meanwhile, I’m over here thriving on chaos, experimenting with sound bites, and learning about audio editing. What I thought was a podcast could often pass for a crime scene investigation—or at least that’s how my early recordings sounded.
But you know what? Every awkward moment and every editing mishap became a stepping stone. My passion for sharing these stories became my best guide. And while I couldn’t tell you a single thing about “proper” podcasting, I could tell stories that kept listeners on the edge of their seats (or at least awake during their daily commutes).
So here I am, an accidental podcaster, navigating this uncharted territory with way more enthusiasm than technical skill. And honestly? Who needs a textbook when you’ve got a unique fascination with the human psyche and an endless supply of riveting tales to share? Welcome to my world!
But let’s peel back the layers, because it turns out that behind every chilling episode is a world of research that would make a detective proud. Forget just sitting in front of the mic and rolling with it. This job is more like being on a never-ending treasure hunt, where the treasure is buried under mountains of police reports, witness statements, and, oh, let’s not forget, the charming array of YouTube videos and the dreaded Reddit threads discussing the very crimes that haunt my sleep.
Don’t get me wrong; I love diving into the twisted tales of true crime, but have you ever tried sifting through grim details for hours while trying not to lose your mind? Let’s say my laptop and my sanity are in a constant tug-of-war. I’d love to tell you that I was doing it for the love of storytelling, but, eventually, it felt more like a weird form of self-punishment.
But here’s the kicker: Through all the research, the sleepless nights, and the risk of permanent damage to my eyes and wrists, I carved out my niche in this chaotic world of podcasting. And I’ve got to admit it’s empowering. Even with all the hiccups and plot twists along the way, the belief in the stories and the connection with my audience fuels the fire.
I’m getting ahead of myself here. Allow me to introduce myself. Hi, my name is Lauren. I was born and raised in Naples, Florida. First, let's talk about Florida in general. It's the land of sunshine, shrieking cicadas, and the most bizarre news headlines known to humankind. Honestly, if there were a contest for the weirdest stories, I’m sure our little corner of paradise would win first place. "Florida Man" has practically turned into a cultural icon—who needs superheroes when you have someone wrestling an alligator while wearing nothing but flip-flops?
Growing up here, you learn to embrace the eccentricity. Who wouldn’t want to be a proud embodiment of the quirks and oddities that come with the territory? It's as if the state handed me a quirky edge and my driver's license, almost like some rite of passage. You know, “Congratulations! You can legally drive, and here’s a whole bucket of weirdness to go with it!”
And Naples. A little slice of paradise where the beaches are pristine, the sun shines bright, and the darkest secrets lurk just beneath the surface. You know, the kind of place where joggers wave cheerily at each other while sipping overpriced lattes, blissfully unaware of the drama unfolding behind the facades of those luxurious mansions.
I became obsessed with uncovering the secrets beneath the surface of this seemingly perfect town. Here I was, revealing stories that would make your jaw drop. You’d think a place like Naples would be all beach days and high tea, but nope! There’s crime, scandal, and a healthy dose of drama lurking around every corner. It’s as if the town dared me to explore its underbelly, like some ironic treasure hunt.
Let’s talk about Port Royal, shall we? The neighborhood practically screams, “Look how fancy I am!” Beneath those elegant roofs and manicured lawns, there are some crazy stories. We’re talking about bombings, suspicious disappearances, and lives shattered by addiction—all swept neatly under the plush Persian rugs, of course. After all, we wouldn’t want to ruin anyone's brunch with the grisly details.
The cases of Terrance Williams and Felipe Santos highlight troubling failures within law enforcement. Both men disappeared in the early 2000s in North Naples after having encounters with Stephen Calkins, a Collier County Sheriff's Deputy.
Santos, involved in a minor car accident in 2003, was cited by Calkins. He was last seen being driven away in the officer's patrol car under dubious circumstances. Calkins claimed he dropped Santos off at a gas station, but no formal booking occurred, and Santos has not been heard from since.
Just months later, Terrance Williams faced a similar fate. After being illuminated by Calkins and pulling into the local cemetery parking lot, cemetery staff observed the officer patting Williams down and placing him in his vehicle. Like Santos, Williams was reportedly dropped off at a gas station; however, again no incident report was filed, and Williams has not been seen since. Calkins was later fired for providing conflicting information regarding both disappearances.
Despite national attention, a wrongful death lawsuit against Calkins lagged in meaningful results, culminating in a judge dismissing the appeal and making Williams' mother pay Calkins’ legal fees.
The question remains painfully obvious: Where are Terrance Williams and Felipe Santos, and how many more cases like theirs are buried beneath bureaucracy and indifference?
And then there’s the unforgettable tale of Stephen Benson, tobacco heir extraordinaire. Who could forget that delightful little family outing on July 9, 1985? A surprise pipe bomb in the family car adds a touch of drama to the typical butterflies and sunshine narrative. Just a little inheritance squabble gone awry—who hasn’t been there?
And speaking of mysterious circumstances, let’s discuss Robert Ludlum, the author who brought us Jason Bourne. Now that’s a plot twist! Did he spontaneously combust while sitting in his recliner in his high-rise apartment? Or was it a case of mixing too much drama with your cocktail, darling? His wife was in the kitchen preparing a fresh drink while the firemen doused her poor husband?
So, here I am—a proud product of Florida. Call me unconventional, call me ironic, call me whatever you want. I’ve learned that, sometimes, the things we can’t have, like a perfectly normal life, are exactly what we need to uncover the fascinating messiness of reality.
As a 12-year-old, I was captivated by shows like Forensic Files and books like Mind Hunter, written by the renowned John Douglas, which sparked my interest in criminal psychology. This has shaped my worldview, as I now see potential profiles and motives in every news story and crime scene. I see it as a puzzle waiting to be solved.
I’ve always loved reading books, so it’s no surprise that I’m now writing one. I started with R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series—nothing quite screams “I’m a budding horror aficionado” like a green book with a giant eyeball on the cover. We thought that was high literature back in fifth grade, didn’t we? From there, I graduated to the Fear Street series by R.L. Stine, which was essentially the same as Goosebumps but featured teenagers instead of children. I loved it.
And then, in my teen years, I jumped headfirst into the dark, twisting world of Stephen King. The "Master of Horror," they call him. But honestly, it's like calling an entire buffet “just food”—the man does so much more than scare you; he dives deep into the messy, delicious bits of human life with a sprinkle of supernatural chaos. Who knew you could get existential dread while battling a giant spider named "It," right? Sorry, spoiler alert!
But the scariest Stephen King book I have read to date is Mr. Mercedes. It isn’t about the supernatural; it's about a real person—an evil person. Evil exists in our world, and I have definitely discovered that.
Fast forward to today. My interests as a child didn’t just teach me about crime; it instilled confidence in my ability to analyze, empathize, and understand the complexities of human nature. And isn’t that a skill worth having? Whether you end up in law, criminology, or another field, your passion will always set you apart. That drive for more profound understanding makes you a potential profiler and a keen observer of life.
I honestly have no idea when or where Stephen King made this statement, but it’s always stuck with me: “Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.” I relate to this in so many ways. I think you will understand once you have read this book.
True crime isn’t merely a hobby for me; it’s woven into the very fabric of my identity. It became my lens, my intrigue, and, ultimately, my calling. Reflecting on my journey, the pivotal four years I spent as a military police officer in the Navy stand out vividly—each memory is a thread intricately tied to my understanding of humanity and morality.
As I donned my uniform each day, I witnessed things that tested every moral fiber within me. From tense military incidents to civilian disputes, each scenario left an indelible mark. The psychological depth I encountered taught me that crime is not simply an act; it’s a complex interplay of choices, circumstances, and the often-overlooked stories behind each individual involved.
Upon transitioning out of the service, I didn’t just hang up my badge; I took my experiences and channeled them into academia. I pursued a degree in paralegal studies, eager to bolster my understanding of the law—an extension of my experiences as a military police officer. This degree didn’t merely add a layer of sophistication to my narrative; it was integral in shaping my worldview.
Having worked closely with prosecutors and defense attorneys, I was granted a front-row seat to the great justice division. The prosecutors painted a world of black and white, where the rules were clear and often unforgiving. In contrast, the defense attorneys navigated the murky waters of “innocent until proven guilty,” prompting me to redefine my perception of right and wrong. This duality became more than just knowledge; it morphed into an intricate dance—a ballet of justice and humanity that I found utterly captivating.
Through these experiences, I understood that law is not a rigid script; it is a living, breathing entity. It reflects our society’s values, fears, and its myriad hypocrisies. I find this dance fascinating, a kaleidoscope of human experiences unfolding right before my eyes.
So here I am, armed with a wealth of knowledge and a passion that ignites my storytelling. As I recount chilling tales, I don’t just narrate, I dissect and analyze. I reveal the layers, exposing how the pieces fit together in a greater narrative. I am not just another voice amidst the clutter of true crime podcasts; I am a storyteller who has lived, seen, and dissected the very essence of this genre.
Ken and I knew we wanted to focus our podcast on Florida. Initially, we covered cases close to home, which inspired the show's name, Paradise After Dark. In the beginning, we didn’t limit ourselves to true crime; we also explored themes like ghosts, urban legends, and unsolved mysteries in the area. As I mentioned earlier, Florida has its quirks, ensuring we will never run out of content in these categories. We decided to kick off our first episode by discussing an urban legend from our own backyard—the legend of the squallies.
Let’s dive into this local legend from Golden Gate Estates, a rural neighborhood located in Naples, Florida. This area is known for its tight-knit working-class and middle-class families, but there’s a side that is definitely a bit more... mysterious.
Legend has it that deep in the woods surrounding this community, there’s a colony of peculiar little creatures called squallies. Imagine short, humanoid beings that sport pig-like snouts—it’s like something straight out of a storybook, right? These little guys have become part of the local folklore, and it’s said that around 40 to 50 of them still roam the woods to this day. But here’s the kicker: If they catch you, you might just end up as their dinner!
There are a couple of spine-chilling theories about how these squallies came to be. One story suggests they are the aftermath of a government experiment that went awry—think mad scientists and top-secret projects gone wrong, much like the premise of the popular Netflix series Stranger Things. The other theory is even wilder, claiming a nutty scientist created them all by himself and still protects them like some mad guardian out in the woods. Both stories agree on one thing: There is an old man who is just as crazy as they come, sitting like a guard dog over the territory where the squallies hang out. If you’re thinking about snooping around, be warned: He’s said to shoot on sight.
The area where these creatures are believed to be lurking is what folks around here call Naithlorendum Sanctuary. It’s a place that sounds enchanted but might hold chilling secrets instead. So, if you’re in Golden Gate Estates and feeling adventurous, think twice before stepping off the beaten path. The squallies might just be keeping a close eye on you!
Reflecting on the evolution of our podcast, I realize that each twist has not only shaped our narrative but also my worldview. As mentioned, initially, we focused on sensational true crime stories featuring notorious figures, ghosts, urban legends, and unsolved mysteries. However, as I delved deeper, I felt a growing responsibility to amplify the voices of those who had been silenced—families yearning for answers and friends holding on to hope amid despair.
This realization spurred a significant transition. We eventually shifted our focus exclusively to missing persons and unsolved crimes, shedding light on often-overlooked tragedies. This was more than a change in content; it was a commitment to fostering awareness and compassion. Our rebranding as Paradise After Dark: Missing & Unsolved encapsulated our mission to invoke action and support.
The overwhelming audience response validated our path. Listeners connected with stories of love and loss, and I found renewed passion—an urge to champion the marginalized. Each episode became a tribute to resilience, a reminder that hope for answers always exists.
The journey transformed me. It morphed from simple storytelling into a deep exploration of humanity and truth. Behind every statistic is a life, a family, a story begging to be heard.
This is one of the concepts that pushed Ken and I to create The Florida Themis Project. Themis, as we call it, is a non-profit organization. Themis, the Greek goddess of wisdom, good counsel, and the interpreter of the other gods' will, is widely recognized as the goddess of justice. We support loved ones and victims of unsolved crimes by providing financial assistance for investigative tools, including DNA testing, carried out by law enforcement professionals and private entities to help resolve these cases. We also assist victims' families by facilitating awareness campaigns, which may include billboards, printed media, flyers, and podcast episodes.
Fun fact: Ken is the reason this book exists. It was the spring of 2023 when I was having an identity crisis of some sort. Who am I, and what am I even doing here? I found myself navigating the complexities of life, character, and purpose—a maze I now recognize as both a blessing and a curse. I am an empath, the type of person who feels deeply and constantly, a bleeding heart that pulses with the hopes and sadness of others. This duality has been my compass, guiding me toward a destiny I have yet to grasp fully.
For so long, I believed that success was synonymous with profit. My ambitions were fueled by the need to amass wealth, to conform to a narrative that equated financial gain with personal worth. Then I stumbled into the world of true crime, and everything shifted.
As Ken and I embarked on our podcasting journey with Paradise After Dark: Missing & Unsolved, it offered us modest financial gains, but it also introduced us to an exhilarating, complex realm of storytelling that resonated with my soul. Although the financial rewards have been modest compared to what we had hoped for, what we have gained is far more immeasurable. We have forged friendships with talented individuals, traveled the world, and gathered an array of experiences that have brought color to our lives.
We had just gotten home after attending a live show featuring a couple of our podcast friends who have soared to great heights in this business. As I watched them bask in their success—crowds eagerly hanging on their every word—I felt not a trace of jealousy, only overwhelming pride. I have thrived in the warmth of their achievements, recognizing the common thread that connects us all: a passion for storytelling and the pursuit of truth.
But even amidst joy, a nagging insecurity found a foothold in my heart. What are we doing wrong? Why haven’t we sold out a live show? Will we truly make it in this industry? These concerns lingered, casting shadows on our journey, but I chose to reflect instead on what we had accomplished up to this point.
Ken provided a much-needed perspective: “You can’t confuse success with money,” he told me. It rang true. Ken reminded me that my path has been filled with incredible endeavors: multiple podcasts, extensive research, and hundreds of episodes that resonate with the voices of lives touched. I’ve fostered meaningful collaborations, traveled to conventions, and even taken the stage in Las Vegas to deliver a presentation. Those moments felt significant, far surpassing any dollar amount.
“I bet you could write a book about the Sims case,” Ken said. Ah, the Sims case. My great white whale. The murders of Robert, Helen, and Joy Sims in Tallahassee, Florida, on October 22, 1966. It was one of those unthinkable incidents that have stuck with me over the years. I will share the entire story later in this book.
After meticulously reporting on the tragic murders of Robert, Helen, and Joy Sims, I found myself ensnared by the intricate mystery surrounding their untimely deaths. Perhaps my involvement was personal—a close friend happens to share a birthday with one of the victims—adding an emotional layer to the case. Furthermore, the unsettling fact that I had engaged in multiple conversations with a primary suspect left me with an eerie feeling, making the whole situation even more consuming. Whatever the underlying reason may be, this perplexing case burrowed deep into my mind, persistently refusing to let go, compelling me to seek answers amidst the shadows.
I never considered writing a book about the infamous Sims case, despite my years of dedicated research into its captivating and perplexing details. During my exploration of the case, I found myself drawn to a different medium: storytelling through a serialized podcast titled Massacre on Muriel Court. In this podcast, I meticulously unraveled the intricate layers of the case, guiding listeners through each episode with gripping narratives and insightful analysis. Although the podcast allowed for a deep dive into the events and characters involved, the concept of transforming my extensive research and rich storytelling into a book format continued to remain an elusive aspiration, just out of reach.
I strongly believe that this case has the potential to be solved; however, I harbor a deep fear that it may never truly achieve the closure it so rightfully deserves. A former prosecutor who worked closely on that case cautioned me, saying, “The only court this case will ever see at this point is the court of public opinion.” His words resonate deeply in my mind, compelling me to reflect on the situation. Yet, despite this weighty realization, I find myself repeatedly asking: What steps can I take to make a difference?
I considered writing a book on the Sims case and capturing the many stories I've encountered. Each case we’ve explored carries significance, painting a portrait of humanity filled with heartache, resilience, and hope. I’ve met individuals whose time with me extended beyond traditional storytelling; their words are engraved in my heart.
So why not take the time to write it all down? Document the invaluable lessons learned throughout the years, account for the shadows that have been tallied, the laughter that has been shared, and the tears that have been shed along the way? I envision a book that encompasses my entire journey—one that not only reflects my personal struggles and growth but also articulates my ultimate purpose. This book would stand as a heartfelt tribute to the countless cases I have encountered, capturing the essence of what it truly means to connect with people. It would delve into the depths of their pain, celebrate their victories, and convey the profound impact that these shared experiences have had on my life and the lives of others.
This book is my roadmap to exploring my quest for value and purpose in a world that often confuses worth with wealth. Ultimately, my true success lies not in financial outcomes but in the stories that endure—that I feel compelled to share with the friends, family, and loved ones I support. The world deserves to hear these stories, and I am ready to share them. Here begins my next chapter.
In the quiet town of Mount Pleasant, Iowa, the idyllic calm of 1978 was shattered by a series of brutal murders. Karol Beavers, a vivacious high school junior, and her mother, Clementine, became the unsuspecting victims of a heinous act of violence that left the community reeling. For six months, the case went cold, fear gripping a town unaccustomed to locking its doors. Then, another shocking murder occurred, tying the threads of horror together.
A Monster in Mount Pleasant delves into the unraveling of this dark chapter. Drawing from years of meticulous research, the story reveals not just the pursuit of justice, but the profound emotional scars left behind. From the shattered dreams of a bright young girl to the lifelong grief of families torn apart, this book captures the deep humanity behind the headlines.
This compelling narrative is told through the eyes of a classmate of Karol—and the murderer. Now a federal judge, the author unearthed the societal cracks that shaped both the victims and the perpetrator. It’s a haunting journey into a community forever changed by tragedy, where resilience and the quest for truth stand as testaments to those lost too soon.
SMITTY: My Marriage to Serial Killer Charles Schmid, the Pied Piper of Tucson unveils an unforgettable tale of love, betrayal, and survival. Diane Schmid thought she had found her Prince Charming when she met Charles Schmid, a charismatic and mysterious man who swept her off her feet as a teenager in the mid-1960s. But her fairytale quickly unraveled when her husband was arrested for multiple shocking murders that captured national attention.
Set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing America, this deeply personal memoir recounts Diane’s journey from a young girl in love to a woman facing unimaginable revelations. Through vivid memories and unflinching honesty, Diane reveals how she navigated a life overshadowed by her husband’s heinous crimes while striving to protect her family and find peace.
Written with co-author Marshall Terrill, this book offers a unique perspective on one of the most infamous cases in American history, shedding light on the devastating human cost of living with such a dark secret. Blending gripping storytelling with heartfelt reflection, SMITTY captures the strength of a survivor who chose to share her voice after decades of silence.
SMITTY is a compelling and haunting read for those who seek a deeper understanding of resilience in the face of unthinkable events.
SMITTY: My Marriage to Serial Killer Charles Schmid, the Pied Piper of Tucson unveils an unforgettable tale of love, betrayal, and survival. Diane Schmid thought she had found her Prince Charming when she met Charles Schmid, a charismatic and mysterious man who swept her off her feet as a teenager in the mid-1960s. But her fairytale quickly unraveled when her husband was arrested for multiple shocking murders that captured national attention.
Set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing America, this deeply personal memoir recounts Diane’s journey from a young girl in love to a woman facing unimaginable revelations. Through vivid memories and unflinching honesty, Diane reveals how she navigated a life overshadowed by her husband’s heinous crimes while striving to protect her family and find peace.
Written with co-author Marshall Terrill, this book offers a unique perspective on one of the most infamous cases in American history, shedding light on the devastating human cost of living with such a dark secret. Blending gripping storytelling with heartfelt reflection, SMITTY captures the strength of a survivor who chose to share her voice after decades of silence.
SMITTY is a compelling and haunting read for those who seek a deeper understanding of resilience in the face of unthinkable events.
In the glitz and glamour of 1960s Hollywood, Jay Sebring stood as an icon of innovation and style. A visionary who invented men's hair care and design concepts, Sebring wasn’t just a hairstylist—he was the architect of a $100-billion-a-year industry. His revolutionary techniques and signature charm drew legends like Frank Sinatra, Steve McQueen, and Paul Newman to his chair, making him a trusted confidant to Hollywood’s elite. From inauspicious roots in Michigan to Hollywood's "star among the stars," Jay Sebring embodied the American Dream.
Yet, in a cruel twist of fate, his extraordinary legacy was overshadowed by the horrifying Manson Family murders. Instead of being remembered for his groundbreaking work and larger-than-life personality, the media painted Sebring as a symbol of Hollywood’s so-called decadence—a distortion that served salacious narratives and tarnished his name.
Jay Sebring….Cutting to the Truth, now illuminated through exclusive insights from Sebring’s family, collaborators, legal and forensic authorities, and criminal perpetrators, reveals the man behind the myth. Discover how Jay Sebring’s influence lives on, shaping our culture in ways we often take for granted. It’s time to reclaim his legacy from the shadows of his tragic end and celebrate the dazzling contributions that made him a Hollywood pioneer and historical figure.
The Laney Gwinner Effect: How One Cold Case Mobilized a High School to Make a Difference explores the unsolved murder of 23-year-old Alana “Laney” Gwinner and the ripple effect it had on a small community. When Laney disappeared in 1997, her case became a haunting mystery, with her body discovered weeks later in the Ohio River. Though her killer remains at large, her story continues to inspire.
This book chronicles the journey of high school teacher Randy Hubbard and his students as they delved into Laney’s cold case, sparking a classroom movement that brought forensic science to life in ways no one could have predicted. Through their dedication, Laney’s case took on new meaning, giving birth to a phenomenon that challenged minds and ignited passions.
More than just a true crime story, The Laney Gwinner Effect highlights how one life, tragically cut short, can still have a profound impact, creating waves of change and inspiring future generations.
4.8from 11 readers
Chapter 1 - “I’m on my way”
“The Last Words Spoken Echo in the Dark Forever”
~ Randy Hubbard
The calm rain I was watching from my patio when I started this book is nothing compared to what hit us in 1997. The greater Cincinnati area was hammered by torrential rainstorms that spring. I remember this because my childhood home, which my parents still live in, is less than one hundred feet from the Great Miami River. They had lived in that home for more than forty years, and it had never reached the house before. That March we spent about twenty-four to forty-eight hours moving furniture and watching the water rush through the basement as if the river had decided to take anything in its path. The Ohio River had risen to a record 64.7 feet and had taken over the streets of downtown Cincinnati. Many small towns along the river from Manchester, Ohio, to Louisville, Kentucky, were destroyed like the mythical city of Atlantis.
Maybe the raging river was foreshadowing the cold secrets it would carry later that year.
I had moved away from my hometown of Fairfield, Ohio, about five years earlier to build a life with my wonderful new bride in Kansas City, Kansas. We loved our time in Kansas, but we knew after our first daughter was born in 1996 it was time to return home to be with family. We found a perfect house for us in Burlington, Kentucky. We were back. Back to see the Cincinnati Reds flounder to a 76–86 third-place finish. Back to watch the Bengals miss the playoffs for the seventh year in a row. It was home, and we were so happy to be back.
That year, I started a new teaching position at Harrison High School. I was always proud of being innovative in my classroom. Doing something different to make the classroom more enjoyable for my students was always something I strived to accomplish. Heck, I even talked my principal into letting me take over an old industrial arts room and make a zoo. I guess you could call me the Tiger King of small rodents, reptiles, and birds. As I taught my biology class about the circulatory system and blood, using the relatively new idea of weaving in forensic science, I did not realize an event that would occur on December 10, 1997, would rejuvenate my passion for teaching and helping others after twenty years. It would be the catalyst to open my mind to the intrigue of true crime, new friendships, and professional connections, and, most of all, introduce me to a young woman I would never get to meet in person.
As Forrest Gump said, the 1990s “was like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.” It was the era of boy bands and the Harry Potter series. Y2K signified the world’s end in the year 2000, and music icon Prince wanted us all to “party like it was 1999.” On the world stage, the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, got his well-deserved sentence of death from the courts, while in that same month, the world lost a true princess with the awful death of Princess Diana. Here in the Cincinnati area, towns were starting to put the pieces back together from the damage caused by the rising rivers earlier that year. The city was actively trying to improve its highways. The city council even talked about building a light rail to move people along the I-71 corridor to improve business ventures. Now we know how government projects work. It is twenty-five years later, there is no light rail, and the I-71/I-75 roadwork seems to never end.
Despite the endless construction zone of doom, Cincinnati and the surrounding areas were really progressing back then to make this part of Ohio a place that would attract more people. Things seemed to be going well, but like all cities, big and small, there are always underlying stories of tragedy. On December 5, 1997, the Cincinnati Police Department was rocked by the sudden loss of Officers Ronald Jeter and Daniel Pope. An individual they were serving a warrant to ambushed the two highly decorated officers, killing them both with gunshot wounds to the head. This story hit hard on the emotions of this town that seemed to be changing its reputation as a rough place to be.
These were the stories crowding the front page of the newspapers, but what about those stories that were hidden in the small box on page one or in section B of the paper? The ones that didn’t seem to draw the same attention. One of those was that of a twenty-three-year-old young woman who had gone missing. On the front page of the Cincinnati Post on December 19, 1997, a small story found on the right side of the page showed a small picture of Alana “Laney” Gwinner with her beautiful smile. At the time, Laney had been missing for nine days with no leads or ideas about where she or her car could be. Her friends and family had been searching every place they could possibly think Laney might go. Hundreds of phone calls to anyone that may have a connection with her had been made. There was still no sign of her.
I noticed that the article wasn’t only about Laney. The article discussed other missing women, whom I later learned were considered deceased because of the time that had gone by since their disappearances. I felt a bit upset that the attention had been taken off Laney. I know that the author of that article was in no way trying to minimize Laney’s story, and I’m not sure why it upset me like it did, other than the fact that her story had now seemed to become personal for Evan and me. Don’t get me wrong, those other stories were extremely tragic in their own right and definitely deserved to have attention drawn to them. At the time, though, Laney was still out there, and finding her was at the top of the list for her family, friends, coworkers, and those who may have seen her that night.
December 9, 1997, was a normal day for Laney: get up early, prepare for work, and start the day like any other. According to her boss, she was a very conscientious, hard-working employee. Laney was always on time and ready to work. He said she would call before leaving home if she thought she was going to be late, even by one minute. This gained her great respect from her boss. These types of characteristics are often rewarded with a promotion, which is exactly what happened for Laney. Things were going well. Her life wasn’t always easy, but for the moment, it appeared as if the stars were aligning for her, at least in her professional life.
Like most of us, distractions occur during the workday. Laney was no different. The morning of December 8th started out with a simple email to a friend, Angie, saying, “What’s up?”
The work day continued, and Laney and Angie corresponded back and forth. Laney ended with telling Angie about having a confrontation with a female at her current boyfriend’s house over the weekend. Angie responded about her day and asked more about the weekend events. Laney expressed her need to study for her accounting exam coming up the next day. She ended the conversation with, “Give me a call later and I will fill you in on his reaction to the whole situation and try to get your input on it. I think Shad, Joy, and I are going to BW3’s tomorrow after my exam, wanna go? Call me.”
It should be noted that in 1997, cell phones were not the extra appendage most people have today. If you had a cell phone, it was considered to be a luxury or it was specifically used for work.
That being said, the conversation ended at the end of the workday, and both went on with their separate lives that evening. Tuesday morning, December 9th, began with a continuation of the conversation from the day before.
Laney wrote, “Nothing is up with Shad… He was out with Eric in Chicago all weekend. Eric said they had a blast, it was just like old times. We are just going to BW3’s to chow down on some wings!!! Maybe shoot a little pool. Sound Good? I have my exam tonight so I don’t know what time we are going.”
Unfortunately, Angie’s son was sick, and she did not want to leave him with anyone, so she had to explain to Laney that she most likely would not make it that evening. That would be the last exchange Angie would have with her beloved friend.
Laney’s day continued like normal. She knew that, at the end of the day, she would have to go take her exam. Like almost all students, she wasn’t that excited to take that test. Did she study enough? Was she prepared, or was this going to turn out badly? Her boss remembered that she left a little early that day to put in a last few minutes studying before the exam.
Laney had made plans with friends to meet at BW3’s near Forest Fair Mall later that evening to celebrate the end of classes. The idea was to meet there to have some dinner and then venture somewhere to play some pool. Laney was an avid pool player. Some might even say she was a bit of a sandbagger. She would act like she didn’t know how to play to lure someone, particularly a man, into a false sense of security, then proceed to kick their ass and take their money. This could be a good thing or it could be a bad thing, depending on who she was playing and how much she had taken from them. From stories I have heard about Laney, she wouldn’t back down from anyone. She may have been small, but she was tough. Playing pool against her could start a ruckus.
During the day leading up to dinner, unfortunately, some of her friends contacted her to let her know that they would not be able to attend the get together. That left only Laney and her friend Shad to go out that evening. They arrived at Bdub’s, as they called it, between eight and eight thirty p.m. They had a few drinks and downed those wings she liked so much. Between nine and nine thirty p.m., they arrived at the Gilmore Bowling Lanes in Fairfield, Ohio. It is not clear who decided to go there, because according to most people who knew her, she had never been to Gilmore Lanes until that night. How did they know that they could play pool there? Was it well known that Gilmore had pool tables? I guess we will never know the answer to that question, but that is where they ended up that night.
Gilmore Bowling Lanes has been in Fairfield for quite a long time. It actually used to go by the name of Coleman Lanes when I was a kid, but more than forty years later, it still looks almost exactly the same with only the name change. It’s kind of funny how some places seem to get trapped in time. Like almost all bowling alleys, there are lanes in the back of the building, and out front there is a bar. Most of the bars I’ve seen in these alleys are not places you would take a date to dinner, but they do have alcohol, which draws all kinds of people. Most of those bars draw the bowlers in there in between frames, and then a few may stop in after bowling to have a nightcap before heading home.
This night seemed different for some reason.
The bar that night was a hopping place with a combination of bowlers, local car salesmen, pool players, and a group of friends partaking in a weeknight drinking party, just for the hell of it. This tiny bar was kind of crowded, especially for a Tuesday night. According to some of the workers, who still work there today, the bar usually closed around eleven thirty p.m. on a weeknight, but that night they stayed open because there were many people still having a good time and, well, that meant they were making a little extra cash. The question is why did everyone stay late that evening? Could it have been that beautiful, twenty-three-year-old woman with the jeans that fit just right and the brilliant smile that lit up a room? Laney was only one of two or possibly three women in that bar that night. There may have been an older woman who was a bit of a regular and an eighteen-year-old who was hiding in the corner drinking beer with her friends hoping that the cops didn’t come in and catch her. The men were from different backgrounds and ages, and having a good time, but all must have noticed that beautiful girl playing pool. One person took a serious interest in the “hot girl” in the room.
As the night began to wind down, Laney had to go to the restroom, considering she’d had quite a few drinks while celebrating with Shad. Someone had stated they saw her stop by the payphone by the front door to make a call. It was later established that she did make a call to her current boyfriend to let him know, “I’m on my way.” There may have been a few other calls made before she made it to the restroom, but she eventually made it there and returned to the bar to quickly say her goodbyes.
She slipped out the door without most people, including Shad, seeing her leave.
Somewhere between twelve thirty a.m. and one a.m., Alana “Laney” Gwinner, now trapped in time, slipped out into the dark, cold December night.
Guard: A True Story of Duty, Sacrifice, and Leadership in Kentucky's Maximum Security Penitentiary
In 1978, Philip Parker started his decades-long career as a prison guard at the Kentucky State Penitentiary, a place known as "The Castle" for its medieval look. On his first day, a mass escape set the tone for the dangerous and intense journey ahead. Over the years, Parker faced numerous challenges, from federal court allegations to life-threatening situations, including a dramatic hostage crisis with a notorious inmate.
Parker's memoir takes readers through the emotions and realities of prison life. From handling daily violence and suicides to witnessing murders caused by racial tension and other conflicts, Parker describes the harsh environment of the prison. Guard includes detailed accounts of harrowing events, like the highway crime spree where two of his colleagues were shot.
The book also covers the evolution of the prison itself, from its early days with medieval punishments to modern-day improvements. Parker shares his experiences as a warden, dealing with staff corruption, inmate violence, and the heavy responsibility of carrying out court-ordered executions.
Guard is a vivid and honest account of a life spent managing the worst in human behavior while finding moments of compassion and redemption. It highlights the dedication and resilience required to maintain order in such a challenging environment, and offers a unique perspective on the sacrifices made by those who work in the prison system.
In Obsessed: My Relentless Pursuit of the Zodiac Killer, Dr. Mark Hewitt invites readers into his gripping journey of unraveling one of America's most enduring mysteries. Dr. Hewitt, an expert on the Zodiac case, shares his transformation from a pastor to a dedicated true crime investigator.
This memoir details Dr. Hewitt's meticulous research, personal encounters, and the profound impact of the Zodiac case on his life. Moving to California reignited his passion, leading him to explore crime scenes and connect with other enthusiasts. His relentless pursuit is not only about the Zodiac but also about understanding the complexities of human nature and the quest for truth.
Obsessed: My Relentless Pursuit of the Zodiac Killer provides a unique blend of personal narrative and investigative insight, offering readers a compelling look at the determination and challenges faced by those who seek to solve cold cases. Join Dr. Hewitt as he navigates the twists and turns of this enigmatic case, shedding light on his life's work and his unwavering commitment to uncovering the truth.
Embark on a gripping 25-year journey delving into the author's investigation of insurance crimes in Miami, spotlighting Special Investigation Units (SIU) –an investigative world invisible to most, yet one for which we all pay.
In YOU PAID FOR THIS, Richard Wickliffe takes the reader from routine burglaries to art theft on the high-seas, arson for profit, and even failed ritual sacrifices. He describes a variety of cases he encountered, including the Russian mob and organized crime, boat thefts linked to unconscionable human trafficking, sunken cars that conceal deadly secrets, and the pitfalls of faking one's death. The book culminates with the SIU's involvement in Miami's harrowing Pain & Gain double murder case, featuring kidnapping, extortion, and mutilation.
With an informative yet witty tone, YOU PAID FOR THIS exposes the creative and chilling facets of insurance crimes, cautioning and advising readers on how to protect themselves from potential victimization in their own lives.
On January 12, 2007, what began as a felony tax trial for Ed and Elaine Brown in Plainfield, New Hampshire, spiraled into the longest armed standoff in U.S. Marshals history. Refusing to appear in court and surrender to federal authorities, the Browns transformed their home into a fortress, drawing support from militia groups and anti-government activists nationwide.
No One Has To Die offers an in-depth look at the tense and perilous nine month standoff that tested the resolve and tactics of the U.S. Marshals Service. Steve Monier, with contributions from Gary DiMartino and Dave Dimmitt, recounts the meticulous planning and tactical negotiations aimed at resolving the situation peacefully, against a backdrop of rising militia activity and public scrutiny.
This compelling narrative dives into the Browns' extremist beliefs, the challenges faced by law enforcement, and the strategies employed to prevent another Waco or Ruby Ridge. Through detailed accounts and personal insights, the book highlights the importance of communication, patience, and strategy in averting violence and ensuring that no one has to die.
4.8from 11 readers
Chapter 1
Not Just Another Day…
U.S. Marshal Stephen Monier arrived at his desk at approximately eight a.m. on Friday, January 12, 2007. This was going to be the fourth day of the trial for Ed and Elaine Brown of Plainfield, New Hampshire, on felony charges for conspiracy to commit federal income tax violations. The government had a very strong case, and the Browns were representing themselves.
A friend sympathetic to their cause, Michael Avery, from the suitably named Outlaw Legal Services of Florida, was serving as a “paralegal.” He had helped Ed and Elaine prepare all their pre-trial motions. He was seated at the defense table to “advise them.” The Browns had rejected any representation by an attorney.
It wasn’t going well for the Browns. Ed Brown’s spurious arguments against having to pay federal income taxes were rejected by the court, and his theories on the federal tax laws were shut down by presiding Judge Steven McAuliffe at several points. The government’s witnesses were showing that Ed and Elaine had stopped paying their taxes in 1996 and owed more than $625,000 in unpaid income tax. They were also charged with structuring, the intentional manipulation of financial transactions to evade reporting requirements.
As was his custom on getting to the office, Marshal Monier checked in with the control room upon arrival and spoke with the two court security officers manning the cameras and other systems monitoring courthouse activity that day. All was quiet, they said.
Marshal Monier and his chief deputy, Gary DiMartino, were both concerned about this trial. The U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) had deemed that the trial was “high risk” given that Ed Brown, a self-described “retired exterminator,” had become a leader in the militia group, U.S. Constitution Rangers. Membership in the rangers had grown in the aftermath of federal law enforcement’s attempts to serve arrest warrants at Ruby Ridge in Idaho and at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. Chief DiMartino and Inspector Brenda Mikelson had ordered extra courtroom security and intelligence gathering for the trial. They had ensured that court security officers were being extra vigilant in screening people involved with, or attending, the trial in the U.S. District Court in Concord, New Hampshire.
Marshal Steve Monier and Chief DiMartino had worked together for the past five years in the District of New Hampshire. Chief DiMartino was a career deputy U.S. marshal who had risen through the ranks to become a chief deputy in the Marshals Service, the number two person in every one of the ninety-four district offices of the USMS.
Deputy U.S. marshals are highly trained federal law enforcement officers, not unlike career FBI, ATF, and IRS agents. They apply for open positions in the Marshals Service, take written and physical exams, and are subjected to background investigations prior to being hired. They attend, and must successfully complete, the USMS Academy and other advanced training programs throughout their career.
Gary DiMartino began his law enforcement career in a Rhode Island police department before applying for, and beginning, his calling with the USMS.
Because he had served in several supervisory positions on both the East and West Coasts during his long tenure with the agency and had taught at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Academy in Glynco, Georgia, he was a highly respected and well-known chief in the USMS. Marshal Monier considered him a very qualified, competent, and professional member of the service and was pleased that when President George W. Bush had nominated him to become the U.S. Marshal for the District of New Hampshire, Gary was his chief deputy.
Unlike the deputy U.S. marshals, who form the corps or “backbone” of the USMS, each U.S. marshal (USM) who heads the district offices of the USMS is nominated by the President of the United States and must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate before taking the oath of office. This has been the case since the U.S. Marshals Service was created in 1789 by the 1st Congress of the newly formed United States government.
When the 1st Congress of the United States stood up the federal judiciary, they realized there was no agency to enforce court orders, apprehend offenders, or help run the court system. In the Judiciary Act, the 1st Congress created the United States Marshals Service, with each marshal in each district to be appointed by the president with the “advice and consent” of the United States Senate.
President George Washington swore in the first thirteen U.S. marshals, including the first marshal of the District of New Hampshire, in 1789. The U.S. Marshals Service is our republic’s oldest federal law enforcement agency, with the broadest of authority in enforcing federal law and orders from the U.S. courts. For over 234 years, the U.S. Marshals have done everything from protecting the courts, to taking the census, to protecting the President of the United States.
In the twenty-first century, their core mission is the protection of the U.S. courts, enforcing court orders, apprehending fugitives, running the witness protection program, finding missing or abducted children, and taking the lead on enforcing the provisions of the Adam Walsh Act to track and monitor convicted sex offenders.
Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice made several legislative and administrative changes to how the work of the USMS was conducted over the decades, and in particular, in the twentieth century. Originally, each U.S. marshal could appoint his own deputies as needed, to carry out orders from the court.
As David S. Turk, the official historian of the Marshals Service, noted in his seminal work entitled Forging the Star, “[L]ong after gaining their Old West reputation with personnel such as Seth Bullock, Wyatt Earp, Bass Reeves, Bat Masterson, and Heck Thomas, U.S. Marshals and their deputies followed a winding trail of transition.”?i
At approximately nine-thirty on that Friday morning, Chief DiMartino stuck his head into the marshal’s office and said, “Marshal, Ed and Elaine failed to show up this morning for the continuation of their trial.”
It was a decisive moment in the long run-up to this point in the case of the United States v. Edward L. Brown & Elaine A. Brown. Their failure to appear was long feared by both Monier and DiMartino.
Both had had uneasy feelings about this case, since the district court’s magistrate judge released them on conditions, at their arraignment on May 24, 2006, on the income tax and other charges.
Among the conditions of release were that the Browns surrender all weapons to the USMS and the U.S. probation officers who would accompany them back to their Plainfield home. Further, they were to cooperate with, and report regularly to, the U.S. probation officers at the U.S. district court and appear at all future court proceedings.
Deputy U.S. marshals and U.S. probation officers drove Ed and Elaine back to their home in Plainfield to remove their weapons that day in May of 2006. Sharp-eyed deputy marshals noted the layout of the Browns’ home on the property, took photographs, and later sketched out the interior layout of the home. This proved to be pivotal in what ensued in the continuing Brown saga.
The deputies who went there also told Chief DiMartino that they didn’t believe Ed Brown had surrendered every weapon in his possession to the U.S. probation officers. The property, they reported, was simply too large and the house and outbuildings had too many places where firearms could be concealed.
Within a few hours of the morning the Browns failed to appear for the continuation of their trial, the news got worse. The USMS learned that heavily armed militia members and supporters of Ed Brown had gathered at the end of their long driveway leading to their hilltop home in Plainfield. Judge Steven McAuliffe issued warrants for the Browns’ arrest on failure to appear.
Initially, at the USMS and the prosecution’s request, the warrants were sealed. Chief Gary DiMartino counseled that the best course immediately was to call the Browns and convince them to return to court for the remainder of their trial. The marshal and Judge McAuliffe concurred, as Gary had carefully established a rapport with Ed and Elaine while they were detained in the Marshals Service’s detention facility at their arraignment in May.
“I had faith in Gary’s ability to use his considerable communications skills to convince the Browns that they should return to court to finish the trial,” Monier reported. Instead of immediately attempting to arrest the Browns at their home, where Ed’s armed followers had gathered, he consented to Gary’s suggestion that he try and convince them to return for the remainder of the trial.
Gary DiMartino spent the next three days talking with Ed and Elaine via telephone to do just that. The fact that the Browns took every one of his calls over that weekend was a positive.
At one point, it looked like the chief would be successful and that both Ed and Elaine would return to the court on Tuesday morning. Elaine was more noticeably willing to do that given the chief’s convincing arguments that this was a financial crime and that they need not take this to any further level.
Gary argued that it would be hard for them to continue to mount a defense if they weren’t in the courtroom to do so. The jury, he said, “will only hear the government’s side, and not yours.” As it turned out, Chief DiMartino was only partially successful.
Chief DiMartino continued to speak with them directly over the phone throughout the weekend and into the day on Monday, which was a holiday. On Tuesday morning, January 16th, Gary had brokered the return of the Browns for the remainder of their trial. Elaine Brown got into the car to return to the courthouse in Concord. At the last minute, however, Ed demurred and refused to get in the car.
This was a partial victory for the Marshals Service. While it isolated Ed Brown from Elaine, Ed was not alone. He was left with some die-hard armed militia supporters who shared his belief about the “corruption of the federal government.” Soon thereafter, others joined the group, including members of the “Free State” movement in New Hampshire who, while not professing violence themselves, joined in the discussion about the “overreach” of the federal government into the lives of ordinary Americans. A select number of the New Hampshire Free Staters, who preached an extreme form of libertarianism, supported the Browns.
In a letter posted on the internet shortly after Ed Brown’s public announcement that he would not be returning for the remainder of his trial, New Hampshire native William D. Miller wrote on a blog posting, “I am going to see Judge McAuliffe and U.S. Attorney Colantuono and various other officials hanged for treason for these actions.” In response, the U.S. Marshals Service issued a “be on the look-out” (BOLO) to area law enforcement in an attempt to locate Miller.
Miller, a New Hampshire resident who was living in Florida at the time, had a history of local law enforcement contacts. He was also an early disciple of Ed Brown and the Constitution Rangers and had been one of Ed’s followers for some time.
When Bill Miller learned of the trial, and Ed’s vow to fight any attempt to force him to return to the courtroom, Miller got in his car and drove nonstop from Florida “to protect Brown” at all costs. Miller was armed and ready to take on the role of “chief of staff” to Ed Brown when he arrived in Plainfield, New Hampshire, twenty-four hours later.
With Miller’s help initially, Brown made use of the internet, emails, blog postings, and media interviews almost immediately upon deciding that he was going to fight any attempts to arrest him or force him from his property.
“I will defend my property, and I am willing to die before going to jail…” Ed Brown told his followers. Apparently, Ed had concluded that he and Elaine were likely to be convicted at the conclusion of the trial. He was publicly critical of Judge McAuliffe and his rulings and, in interviews with the gathering media, called it a “kangaroo court.”
Word was quickly spreading through the militia, U.S. Constitution Rangers, and the sovereign citizen communities that things were heating up in Plainfield. Comments on blogging websites and emails about the federal government unfairly targeting the Browns were spreading hourly. Supporters were calling for all good patriots to stand up for them. One message being spread on anti-government websites was titled, “Will Plainfield be another Waco?”
Local and state media also began covering the Ed and Elaine Brown story. The NH Union Leader, New Hampshire’s only statewide newspaper, and the Concord Monitor, published in New Hampshire’s capital and widely distributed, and the Valley News (covering the Hanover, Lebanon, and Plainfield region) all took note. The marshal and chief assigned a deputy, who was particularly adept at high tech, IT, and the internet, to begin monitoring all activities related to the Browns. In a call to HQ, they asked that the Investigative Services Division (ISD) and the Intel Unit do the same.
On January 12, 2007, Margot Sanger-Katz, a reporter for the Concord Monitor (a prominent New Hampshire newspaper covering the capital city region) wrote one of her first news stories about the Browns’ trial when she reported on the first two days of it. The trial had already gained a local interest amongst the state’s papers and the statewide ABC-affiliated TV station, WMUR-TV 9, as supporters of the Browns demonstrated in front of the U.S. district courthouse.
Dave Ridley of Keene, New Hampshire, a member of the “Free State” movement in the state, held a sign reading “Ministry of Torture” in reference to “government-sanctioned torture with taxes.” “That’s why I support Ed,” Ridley told the Concord Monitor. “He’s standing up to the federal government.”
Ironically, Sanger-Katz’s article about the trial’s proceedings appeared on January 12th, the same day Ed and Elaine Brown both refused to return to the courthouse. The government was close to resting its case against the Browns after the testimony of the lead IRS agent handling the investigation and testimony from several postal service employees about the Browns’ habit of purchasing multiple postal money orders just below the $3,000 limit required for notification to the government of the transaction.
According to the government’s witnesses, this “structuring” of money orders is a common method to avoid paying income taxes. Over a two-year period, the Browns purchased more than $300,000 in money orders. Ed and Elaine, according to postal service investigators, would separately each wait in line and purchase a money order for $2,800.
At the close of the court’s proceedings on January 11th, both Browns told the court that they would begin their defense in the morning, and both told the judge that they planned to testify in their own defense.
Both, however, failed to return to court on Friday, January 12th.
On Tuesday, the 16th of January, 2007, the day that Elaine agreed to Chief DiMartino’s entreaties to return to court, she also agreed to have a court-appointed attorney, Bjorn Lange, represent her. Michael Avery, the paralegal, continued in his role and sat in on the plea negotiations between the government prosecutor and Attorney Lange.
Learning of the plea negotiations, Judge McAuliffe agreed to postpone the couple’s trial for another day when it appeared that Elaine Brown would be willing to reach a deal with the prosecution. That is, if she pled guilty to the extent of her criminal liability and conduct. As a dentist, Elaine Brown earned most of the couple’s income. She also had been charged with failing to collect employment taxes from the staff at her dental office in Lebanon.
The judge continued the trial for another day so that the government could calculate what they expected Dr. Brown would pay in back taxes and penalties and the terms of a prison confinement. Elaine was given until ten o’clock the following morning to make a decision on whether to accept a plea deal. If there was no deal, the judge ruled, the trial would continue with or without Ed Brown in the courtroom.
Because Elaine had failed to appear on Friday, the judge ordered new bail conditions for her. He ordered Dr. Brown to stay with her son in Worcester, Massachusetts, and not to return to her Plainfield, New Hampshire, home. She was only allowed telephonic contact with her husband, and she was ordered to wear an electronic ankle bracelet so that U.S. probation officers could monitor her whereabouts.
The Waco Branch Davidian standoff lasted fifty-one days. When both the Browns failed to appear on January 12, 2007, it set in motion what would become a nearly nine-month standoff, the longest armed standoff in the 234-year history of the U.S. Marshals Service. Would Plainfield, New Hampshire, join the lexicon of American history as another Waco or Ruby Ridge?
District of New Hampshire Chief Gary DiMartino, U.S. Marshal Steve Monier, and USMS Chief Regional Inspector Dave Dimmitt were determined not to let that happen.
Guard: A True Story of Duty, Sacrifice, and Leadership in Kentucky's Maximum Security Penitentiary
Step Behind the Bars: Experience life inside “The Castle,” Kentucky State Penitentiary, through the eyes of a seasoned prison guard.
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Relive Harrowing Moments: Discover chilling details, including a highway crime spree where two officers were shot, and the struggles of managing executions.
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Perfect for True Crime and Memoir Fans: An unforgettable read for those captivated by real stories of duty, sacrifice, and leadership under extreme conditions. Dr. Norman Rose, professor of Sociology and Criminology at Kent State University, will be pairing Guard with his book, A Career in Corrections, for use with his students. When used together in a course, the books offer students the opportunity to read insightful perspectives of an instructor within the discipline and a correction officer within the field, providing them with a holistic and comprehensive understanding of work within the corrections system. https://titles.cognella.com/a-career-in-corrections-9798823310499
