Who Killed Marilyn Monroe?

     At three in the morning on August 5, 1962, Marilyn Monroe's housekeeper, Eunice Murray, saw a light under the movie star's bedroom door. After knocking and getting no response Miss Murray called Monroe's psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson. The doctor arrived at the Brentwood, California hacienda shortly after being summoned and upon entering the bedroom found the 36-year-old actress dead. Following a considerable passage of time Dr. Greenson called the Los Angeles Police. (Before alerting the authorities, Monroe's psychiatrist phoned Peter Lawford, an actor friend of Monroe's who rushed to the scene. Peter Lawford happened to be President John F. Kennedy's brother-in-law. Mr. Lawford was also rumored to have fixed the president up with Monroe.)

     The first detective didn't arrive at the scene until 4:30 that morning. Based on the state of Monroe's rigor mortis (postmortem body stiffening) the officer estimated the time of her death to be 12:30 AM, give or take an hour. In the bedroom the detective found 15 bottles of prescription drugs and an empty bottle of champagne. The scene was never processed for latent fingerprints.

     Because of the delay between the time of death and the arrival of the police valuable evidence from the bedroom and the house could have been removed and destroyed. For example, Marilyn Monroe was known to have kept a diary. Had she been sexually involved with President Kennedy and later with his brother Robert, the U.S. Attorney General, her journal might have contained revealing and embarrassing information related to, among other things, a motive for  her murder. The diary was never recovered. Monroe's phone records also turned up missing. Regardless of how Marilyn Monroe died, the case had all the earmarks of a cover-up.

     Five or six hours after Marilyn Monroe's sudden and unexplained death her body was turned over to the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office for autopsy. The so-called "Coroner to the Stars," Dr. Thomas Noguchi, performed the autopsy. According to all accounts he did a thorough job which included a careful examination of Monroe's body for signs she had been injected with something toxic. The forensic pathologist did not find any evidence of foul play.

     A toxicology test of Monroe's blood revealed high levels of Nembutal (38-66 capsules) and chloral hydrate (14-23 tablets). Based on Monroe's autopsy, the apparent circumstances surrounding the death, and the toxicology report, Dr. Noguchi ruled her death a "possible suicide."

     The medico-legal examination of the corpse, however, was not complete. Because samples had been "lost," there was no toxicological analysis of Monroe's stomach and intestine contents.

     In 1982, twenty years after Marilyn Monroe's death, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office reviewed the case and issued a report. The cold case investigators, aware of the flaws and problems with the initial inquiry, concluded that she had probably died of an accidental overdose. However, not everyone, then and now, ruled out the possibility of homicide. Perhaps the most popular theory of murder, and the motive behind it, involved keeping Monroe from spilling the beans about her affairs with the Kennedy brothers. The well known forensic pathologist, Dr. Cyril Wecht, publicly expressed his opinion that Monroe could have been injected with a toxic substance.

     In 2011 the Associated Press, anticipating the 50th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe's death on August 5, 1962, attempted under the Freedom of Information Act to acquire the FBI's voluminous file on Marilyn Monroe.

     J. Edgar Hoover, as part of his war against domestic communism, monitored the activities of hundreds of novelists, actors, musicians, screenwriters, sports figures and politicians. In 1955 the bureau opened an on-going intelligence file on Marilyn Monroe. Agents kept track of where she went, what she did and who she associated with. FBI investigators conducted hundreds of confidential interviews of people who knew the actress. None of this information was made public.

     Nine months after its request for the Monroe FBI file, the bureau replied that the agency no longer possessed this material. The Associated Press then requested the files from the National Archives which also denied possession of the Monroe data.

     In January 2013 the FBI finally released its file on Marilyn Monroe. Heavily redacted, most of the information focused on Monroe's travels and associations with people suspected of being communists. There was no proof that Monroe was herself a communist, and no information that added insight into the manner of her death.

The Crime Victim's Plight

     In our criminal justice system, when one commits a crime, it's not against the victim of that offense, but against the state. This legal fiction is derived from English common law where all crime was against the king. The crime-against-the-state concept means that real victims of crime have no say in how or if their cases are prosecuted, or even if they are investigated. The system is completely under the control of police and prosecutors. As a result, many victims of crime are victimized twice, first by the criminal and then by the legal system.

     The small percentage of crimes that lead to someone's arrest are usually offenses that require little or no investigation. Criminal investigators hate mysteries, and prosecutors avoid complicated, difficult cases that may not result in convictions. At least 90 percent of this country's criminal convictions are the result of plea bargains. Over the years fewer and fewer criminal cases go to trial. As a result very few convicted criminals end up in prison for the crimes they have actually committed. For example, criminals who commit aggravated assault plead guilty to simple assault, rapists plead to lesser sexual offenses and murderers go to prison for voluntary manslaughter.

     Usually the victims of crime, when it comes to their criminal cases, are ignored and kept in the dark. The only time they play a role in determining the fate of the people who victimized them is when they are called to testify on behalf of the prosecution. This, of course, exposes them to grueling cross-examinations by aggressive defense attorneys. In many rape cases it's the victim who ends up on trial.

     Among the most abused victims of crime are children who satisfy the perverted sexual urges of America's huge pedophile population. The victims of these sexual predators are thrown to the wolves by organizations like the Catholic Church and The Boy Scouts of America who are more interested in self-preservation than child protection and criminal justice. Because their victims are powerless intimidated children, only a small percentage of pedophiles end up in prison. And when some of these degenerates are eventually identified the passage of time makes it impossible to prosecute them.

     For people who live in cities where district attorneys no longer prosecute what they consider low-level crime, the likelihood of being harassed in the street by a homeless person begging for drug money, having one's car broken into, or losing a wallet or purse to a mugger, increases dramatically. The crime rates in these decriminalized cities has skyrocketed. In places like Los Angeles, News York, Seattle, Chicago and Philadelphia, these "progressive" prosecutors blame society for driving poor oppressed criminals into lives of crime. In other words, the victims of crimes are not only ignored, they are blamed for their own victimhood.

     Crime victims, particularly in cases of celebrated offenses, are brutalized by the media. This is because in America true crime sells newspapers and books and attracts television viewers. The more horrific the crime the more value it has as entertainment.

     In the late Twentieth Century attempts to provide victims a larger say in the criminal justice process led to the formation of a variety of victim's rights organizations that lobbied for such reforms as victim impact statements at sentencing hearings, victim compensations funds and notification rules that require the authorities to notify crime victims of the early release of prisoners.

     The crime victim's plight is not limited to the way our criminal justice system works. Society itself, particularly with regard to murder cases, does not fully know how to deal with, or fully understand, the profound and prolonged suffering of murder victims' families. This reality has led to the formation of victim support groups like Parents of Murdered Children, an organization with chapters across the country.

     While crime victims today have it slightly better than before, most of the attention and concern among politicians, defense attorneys and academics is directed at the criminal. For example, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders believes that even convicted terrorists should be allowed to vote. Nancy Pelosi took offense when Donald Trump referred to MS 13 gang members as "animals." 

     Criminal justice reform legislation usually ends up letting more criminals out of prison. When too many Americans break our drug laws, state legislators across the country make more drugs legal. And while it's hard to believe, there are attorneys in the country who devote their entire careers to saving the lives of death row inmates who have committed unspeakable crimes. Meanwhile, the families of victims who were tortured, raped and murdered by these criminal sociopaths are ignored.

Homeless Crime Victims

     During the early morning hours of July 3, 17 and 19 in 2012 someone in downtown Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Hollywood stabbed two homeless men and a women while they slept outdoors. The attacker fled the scenes leaving the wounded victims, all in their 50s, with large hunting knives stuck in their backs. None of the street people were robbed and they all survived their wounds. Beyond the similar MOs the assaults were linked by so-called "death warrant" notices left at each stabbing site. The typewritten documents were signed by a person using the name David Ben Keyes.

     Los Angeles detectives found a Facebook entry under the above name which included a photograph of a black man in his mid-30s. Police officers distributed copies of this photograph around the skid row neighborhoods where the homeless lived. Street people were advised to spend their nights in shelters until the stabber himself was identified and taken into custody. 

     At 8:40 in the evening on Friday July 20, 2012 a man who identified himself as Courtney Anthony Robinson called 911 and claimed responsibility for the three stabbings. The 37-year-old said he would surrender to the police at the Hong Kong Express Eatery in downtown Hollywood. When officers took Robinson into custody they noticed he matched the Facebook photograph of David Ben Keyes. When asked why he had stabbed the sleeping street people the arrestee assured his captors that this information would "come out in the court proceedings." There was no indication that Robinson knew his victims.

     According to David Ben Keyes' Facebook page he was a musician and writer from Santa Barbara California. In his Facebook profile, laden with schizophrenic sounding nonsense about his intent to restructure the "Holy Roman Catholic Church and Empire," Keyes-Robinson claimed to be the CEO of a $250 billion Beverly Hills entertainment corporation. In reality he was homeless like the people he had stabbed.

     On the day of his arrest Mr. Robinson was charged with three counts of attempted murder. He was held under $500,000 bond at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles.

     In February 2015 a jury found Mr. Robinson guilty as charged. In the second phase of the trial to determine if the stabber had been sane at the time of the attacks the same jury found the defendant legally insane and therefore not criminally culpable for the crimes. The judge ordered him to be sent to the Patton State Hospital where he would stay until the psychiatrists deemed him sane enough to be released back to the streets.

     Most crimes against the homeless are committed by mentally ill street people off their anti-psychotic medication. At one time insane people who were dangerous were held in mental institutions. Thanks to do-gooders who fought to set them free they now live on the streets. Some spend their nights in shelters but many prefer to remain outdoors around the clock. These are the people most vulnerable to assault and murder committed by offenders like Mr. Robinson.   

The Michigan State Police Child Pornography Fiasco

     In March 2005 troopers with the Michigan State Police seized a computer they had reason to believe had been used to download child pornography. The suspect, 35-year-old Billy Joe Rowe from the town of Clio not far from Flint, Michigan admitted downloading the pornography. But for some reason the case fell between the cracks and was forgotten. As a result Billy Joe Rowe went on with his life as though nothing had happened.

     In March 2011, six weeks before the six-year child pornography statute of limitation barred prosecution in the Rowe case, Michigan State Police Sergeant Ronald Ainslie found the computer stored at the Computer Crime Unit in Lansing. When forensically examined officers found numerous images of child pornography on the computer seized almost six years earlier in Clio from Billy Joe Rowe.

     On March 2, 2011 a prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Billy Dean Rowe, a hard-working man without a criminal record who lived near Albion, Michigan 120 miles from where the child pornography computer had been seized in March 2005. While Billy Joe Rowe was six-foot tall and now 41, Billy Dean Rowe was five-foot-four and 45-years-old.

     On March 11, 2011 Michigan State Police officers showed up at Billy Dean Rowe's house near Albion. When the innocent man came to the door, one of the officers asked, "Are you Billy Rowe?"

     "Yes," the puzzled homeowner answered.

     "We have a warrant for your arrest."

     "What did I do?" asked the startled citizen.

     "We can't say. We are taking you to Flint, Michigan."

     "Why am I going to Flint? I've never been to Flint."

     "You'll find out when you get there."

     In Flint, when booked into the Calhoun County Jail, the officers informed Billy Dean that he had been charged with possession of child pornography, a felony that carried a prison sentence of up to six years.

     During his three-day incarceration in the county jail Billy Dean Rowe tried to get someone to believe they arrested the wrong man. Eventually, Sergeant Ainslie, after he questioned Billy Dean and showed his photographs to Billy Joe's relatives in Clio, realized they had the wrong man behind bars.

     Sergeant Ainslie notified a judge of the case of mistaken identify. Billy Dean Rowe was released from custody and the charge against him were dropped. When he returned home he learned that he had been fired from his job as a meat cutter in Jackson, Michigan.

     Because the statute of limitation ran out on the 2005 child pornography case Billy Joe Rowe once again went on with his life as though nothing had happened.

     Billy Dean Rowe in 2014 filed a false arrest lawsuit against the Michigan State Police. The agency immediately raised the defense of sovereign immunity. Per standard operating procedure in law enforcement no one from the Michigan State Police apologized to Billy Dean Rowe for the stupid and traumatizing foul-up. The state police also owed the public an apology for blowing a potentially successful child pornography case.

     Billy Dean Rowe, on January 3, 2020, died of pneumonia and cancer. His false arrest suit had been dismissed.

The Mandy Matula Murder Case

     Twenty-four-year-old Mandy Matula lived with her parents in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, a town of 60,000 12 miles southwest of Minneapolis. A graduate of the University of Minnesota at Duluth, she worked for the Eden Prairie Public Works Department. In high school Mandy was a standout softball player.

     In September 2012 Mandy Matula ended her relationship with David Roe, a 24-year-old from Victoria, Minnesota who was a classmate of her's at Eden Prairie High School. From 2007 to 2009 Roe attended the University of St. Thomas where he played football. After the break-up he and Mandy remained friends.

     On the night of Wednesday, May 1, 2013 David Roe showed up at the Matula house and asked to speak with Mandy. Leaving her cellphone and purse in the dwelling she and Roe sat outside the house in his 2013 Ford Escape SUV. Around eleven-thirty that night Roe drove off with Mandy in the vehicle.

     Mandy didn't return home that night and didn't show up for work in the morning. This prompted her worried mother to call David Roe to find out what happened to her. According to him they had continued their discussion in Miller Park near the Matula house. Following an argument she got out of his vehicle. He presumed she walked home. Mrs. Matula at eight-thirty that morning called the Eden Prairie Police Department and reported her daughter missing.

     As the last person seen with Mandy Matula, David Roe was the obvious person of interest in her disappearance. For that reason a detective with the Eden Prairie Police Department, on Thursday, May 2, 2013 asked him to come to the police station for questioning. That afternoon, after getting out of his SUV in the police department's parking lot David Roe put a handgun to his head and shot himself.

     Paramedics rushed David Roe to the Hennepin County Medical Center. At three the next morning he died from his self-inflicted head wound.

     As a result of David Roe's suicide investigators lost the best lead they had regarding Mandy Matula's whereabouts and status. A search of Roe's vehicle produced a note that, according to the police contained "limited writing."

     On Saturday, May 4, 2013, 300 volunteers searched Miller Park for Matula's body. In the Victory Lutheran Church parking lot a searcher found a .40-caliber bullet.

     In October 2013 Mindy Matula's body was found in a shallow grave not far from where she went missing. A forensic firearms identification expert determined that she had been shot by the same gun David Roe used to kill himself. Investigators believed the murder had taken place at the Victory Lutheran Church. After murdering Matula, Mr, Roe disposed of her body where it was later found.

The Kurt Myers Killing Spree

      There has been over the years several spree-shooting cases involving elderly white men. Generally this is not a demographic usually associated with criminal homicide. What drives these older men to mass murder?

     At nine-thirty in the morning of Wednesday, March 13, 2013 64-year-old Kurt Myers started a fire in his apartment building in the upstate New York village of Mohawk 65 miles east of Syracuse. The tense, jittery loner with a full white beard was not married and seldom spoke to his neighbors. Other than an old DUI arrest he did not have a history with the police.

     After starting the fire Mr. Myers walked around the corner to John's Barber Shop. He entered the place carrying a shotgun. Speaking to the  owner, John Seymour, Myers said, "Hi John, do you remember me?"

      "Yes, Kurt, how are you?"

     Without saying more Mr. Myers raised his shotgun and shot the barber, wounding him severely but not killing him. Myers then fired on the three customers in the shop. Harry Montgomery, 68 and Michael Ransear, 57 were killed on the spot. Mr. Ransear was a retired corrections officer. Dan Haslauer, the third customer, was shot in the hand and hip. He survived the shotgun blasts.

     Having murdered two men and injuring two others, Kurt Myers climbed into his red Jeep and drove to Herkimer, a town of 7,770 one mile from Mohawk. At Gaffey's Fast Lube he shot and killed employee Thomas Stefka and a 23-year veteran of the state Department of Corrections named Michael Renshaw. All of the shootings appeared random.

     By that Wednesday afternoon a small army of police officers had Myers trapped inside an abandoned building in downtown Herkimer. At one point Myers fired at the police from a window. The stand-off dragged on through Wednesday and into Thursday. Joseph Malone, the chief of police of both Mohawk Valley towns told reporters that Myers "...had come out of nowhere. He was not on our radar and hasn't caused any problems." A woman who for the past ten years has waited on Myers at a local bar said that "He wasn't a people person and he would never talk to anyone."

     Myers worked as a machine operator in the early 1980s at Waterbury Felt, a manufacturer of industrial textiles. The Waterbury Felt executive who hired him, Steve Copperwheat, ran into Myers three months earlier in a Walmart parking lot. The two men had not seen each other in ten years. Copperwheat described the encounter to a reporter with The Washington Post: "I yelled over to him and he looked at me and said my name, said he was retired and just went booking away. It was almost like he didn't want anybody to know where he was. He was trying to be very distant, which surprised me." According to Mr. Copperwheat, Myers, who had never married was an exemplary employee who worked twice as fast as his fellow workers.

    Late Thursday morning, March 14, police officers stormed the abandoned building on Main Street. As the SWAT team entered the structure Kurt Myers fired on the officers. The police returned fire, killing the 64-year-old mass murderer. An FBI dog was shot and killed in the exchange.

     When things went quiet again in Herkimer and Mohawk, citizens of these communities were left with six shooting victims and the mystery of what turned Kurt Myers into a mass murderer at the age of sixty-four.

The Miami Beach Check-Out Line Murder Case

     On Monday December 1, 2014 at the M & L Market in Miami Beach, Florida, 58-year-old Mohammed Hussein found himself standing in the express check-out line behind a man with a basket overloaded with groceries. Mr. Hussein, the father of two, complained to this shopper that he was in the wrong line, that he had far too many items to check out. The express line violator ignored Mr. Hussein and continued to unload his grocery basket.

     When Mr. Hussein again objected to what the shopper in front of him was doing, the man told him to mind his own business. This led to an exchange of angry words. In the midst of the argument the offending shopper, without warning, delivered a vicious backhand that knocked Mr. Hussein off his feet.

     The unconscious victim fell backward and his head bounced off the grocery store floor. Blood immediately began pooling around his skull. As the man who struck him fled the store an employee called 911.

     Paramedics rushed Mr. Hussein to the Ryder Medical Center where he slipped into a coma with a fractured skull and severe bleeding on the brain. Back at the M & L Market detectives viewed surveillance camera footage of the assault.

     On Thursday night December 11, 2014 officers with the Miami Beach Police Department arrested 53-year-old Roger Todd Perry at his home in Palm Beach County. A Miami-Dade County prosecutor charged Perry with felony battery of Mr. Hussein. Shown the surveillance camera footage and informed that several witnesses had picked him out of a photo line-up, Mr. Perry confessed to striking Mr. Hussein in the grocery store check out line.

     Two days after officers arrested Roger Perry, Mohammed Hussein passed away. His autopsy revealed he died of "complications of blunt force head injury." Roger Perry was booked into the Miami-Dade County Jail.

     On December 15, 2014 the Miami-Dade County prosecutor upgraded Roger Perry's felony battery charge to second-degree murder. At his arraignment on the murder charge Mr. Perry asked the judge, "Did that man pass away?"

      Mr. Perry's attorney, public defender Elliot Snyder, in arguing for a bail amount the defendant could afford, informed the arraignment judge that his client was mentally unstable. According to the defense attorney, Roger Perry suffered from two disorders: bipolar and post-traumatic stress. Attorney Snyder also cited a 2002 Broward County case involving two elderly men who got into a fight at a movie theater. The victim hit his head and died. The prosecutor charged the 74-year-old suspect with manslaughter. The defendant pleaded guilty to that charge in exchange for a six month jail sentence.

      The judge ordered an evaluation of Mr. Perry's mental condition and denied him bond.

     Residents at Roger Perry's apartment complex told reporters that the murder suspect had indicated that he had been a member of the Marine Corps.

     On September 30, 2016 Roger Perry pleaded guilty to manslaughter. The judge sentenced him to seven years in prison. 

The John Adams Wrong House SWAT Raid

     Sixty-four-year-old John Adams and his wife Loraine lived in Lebanon, Tennessee, a town of 20,000, 14 miles east of Nashville. John, suffering from arthritis, retired after working 37 years for the Precision Rubber Company. With his lump-sum disability payment he purchased a new Cadillac and a double-wide trailer on Joseph Street, a short, dead-end road on the eastern side of town. His place and the house next door were the only dwellings on the block.

     At 10 o'clock Wednesday night October 4, 2000, John and Loraine were watching television in their living room when someone pounded loudly on their front door. Loranine got out of her chair, "Who is it?" she asked. Whoever it was didn't respond. The pounding grew more intense. Realizing that someone was breaking down the door, Loraine, thinking that criminals were invading their house yelled to John, "Baby, get your gun!"

     John Adams grabbed the cane next to his easy chair and hobbled out of the room. Seconds later five men wearing helmets and ski masks and dressed in black combat fatigues burst into the house. They shoved Loraine against a wall and forced her to her knees. Handcuffed and terrified she said, "Y'all have got the wrong place! What are you looking for?"

     Officers Greg Day and Kyle Shedron, rookies in their mid-twenties, encountered John standing in the hallway holding a sawed-off shotgun. Mr. Adams fired one shot and the officers returned fire, hitting him in three places. Mr. Adams crumbled to the floor and died four hours later on the operating table at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.

     At a news conference the following day Lebanon chief of police Billy Weeks admitted his officers had raided the wrong house. He acknowledged that because there were only two residences on that block and one was a house trailer people had a right to know how this could have happened. Chief Weeks said that the narcotics officer in charge of the case, a person he would not identify, had written the correct address on the search warrant. This address belonged to the drug suspect's house located next door to the Adams dwelling. The narcotics officer, in directing the SWAT team to the place to be entered, relied on the description of the raid target rather than the address written on the warrant. Nobody could figure out what the hell that meant.

     According to Chief Weeks the narcotics officer who acquired the search warrant had watched the drug suspect's house for more than a month. The judge issued the warrant after this officer had sworn to him that an informant purchased drugs at this house. The drug suspect's car had been parked in the Adams's driveway which may have caused the mix-up. Although this explained how the narcotics cop might have incorrectly assigned the drug suspect's address to the Adams trailer, it also suggested that the officer had not actually witnessed the snitch enter the suspect's place to make the buy. If he had the wrong description would not have ended up on the search warrant. Nevertheless, Chief Weeks said, "We did the best surveillance we could do, and a mistake was made. It's a very sincere mistake, a costly mistake. They [Mr. and Mrs. Adams] were not the target of our investigation. It makes us look at our own policies and procedures to make sure this never occurs again." Mr. Adams had been shot, the chief went on to say, because he fired a shotgun at officers Shedron and Day. The incident (the homicide) was being looked into by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI).

     Chief of Police Weeks called a second news conference on October 19, 2000 to update the media on the status of the case. Having earlier assured the public that "We did the best surveillance we could do," he now revealed that "We lost sight of our informant, and that never should occur." It seemed the head of the narcotics unit who watched the suspect's house and acquired the search warrant had not actually witnessed him enter the dwelling for drugs. "What we think happened is that we have a particular [narcotics] supervisor who made a very unwise decision." The "unwise decision" presumably, was to lie to the magistrate who had issued the search warrant.

     Chief Weeks placed the narcotics supervisor on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the TBI investigation. "We are not trying to make excuses for what happened. But I can tell you that we did identify ourselves, and maybe they [the occupants] got confused. [Mr. and Mrs. Adams were not confused. They were in the right house.] And I know we were reacting to him [Mr. Adams] shooting at us. But obviously, this wouldn't have happened if we had not been in the man's house."

     John Fox, the mayor of Lebanon, also appearing before reporters that day, made the point that wrong house or not Mr. Adams would be alive had the SWAT team not been deployed in the first place. "We're going to back off this knocking down doors," he said. "There's going to have to be some really strong evidence that something life-threatening is actually there. I told him [Chief Weeks] to get rid of those damn black uniforms, get rid of them!" [The Lebanon SWAT team had been trained by DEA agents who recommend that officers dress in the "narco ninja" style which consists of all-black outfits and ski masks.] When we go up to knock on a door, we're going to have our suit and tie, or our [regular] police uniform, and that's it. And when they open the door, a citizen is going to be a citizen until there is actually proof of guilt."

    Mayor Fox also provided information that possibly explained how the narcotics supervisor had confused the suspect's residence with the Adams' trailer. According to the mayor the confidential informant was merely an anonymous tipster. Moreover, the so-called surveillance was nothing more than a "drive-by" scan of the neighborhood. If this were true it's hard to imagine how the narcotics officer could have acquired the search warrant without fudging the facts.

     The TBI completed its investigation, and on November 3, 2000, a Wison County grand jury indicted Lieutenant Steve Nokes, the head of the Lebanon narcotics unit. Lieutenant Nokes stood accused of criminal responsibility for reckless homicide, tampering or fabricating evidence, and aggravated perjury, all felony offenses. At his trial, Nokes pleaded not guilty and in June 2001 the jury acquitted him of all charges.

     The city of Lebanon, in May 2002, agreed to pay Loraine Adams the lump sum of $200,000. Pursuant to the court settlement she would also receive $1,675 a month for the rest of her life. The city also paid Mr. Adams' $45,000 hospital bill and his $5,804 funeral expenses.

Irina Gaidamachuk: Russia's "Satan in a Skirt"

     Irina Gaidamachuk, a 41-year-old mother of two in the remote Urals region town of Krasnovfimsk, had a big thirst for vodka. But her husband Yury wouldn't give her money to buy the drink. So, Irina decided to earn it herself.

     From 2003 until June 2010 Gaidamachuk, by posing as a social worker, gained entry into the flats of women living on government pensions. Using this ruse she used a hammer to smash the skulls of 17 women between the ages 61 and 89. Each murder brought a small amount of cash from the victims's purses.

     Following Gaidamachuk's arrest in June 2010 the accused serial killer confessed that she murdered these women for vodka money. At her trial in western Russia's Yekaterinburg, the country's fourth largest city, three psychiatrists testified that the defendant was sane when she hammered her victims to death.

     On June 6, 2012, after the trial judge found this cold-blooded serial killer guilty of 17 murders, he sentenced the so-called "Satan in a skirt" to 20 years in prison. While members of the victims' families were shocked and outraged by such lenient punishment, Gaidamachuk's attorney immediately filed an appeal demanding an even lighter sentence. That appeal was denied.

     One would expect that in Russia of all places the cold-blooded murder of 17 women would bring, at the very least, life in prison without parole. (In the United States, while the death sentence would be out because she was a woman, Gaidamachuk could expect life without parole.) Assuming she served her full sentence this serial killer would be back on the streets of Krasnovfimsk at age 61. 

     While Irina Gaidamachuk was being tried in Yekaterinburg, a 22-year-old woman in Russia's Udmurtia region beat a man to death with a blunt object on the eve of her wedding. The killer's fiancee looked on as his bride-to-be murdered the man who supposedly owed her money.  

The Woman in the Freezer

     In July 2010 a family member found 80-year-old Maria de Jesus Arroyo unconscious in her Boyle Heights home in Los Angeles. At the White Memorial Medical Centre an emergency room doctor declared her dead from a heart attack.

     A few days later Maria Arroyo's body was taken out of the hospital freezer and transported to a funeral home where it would be on display. When the mortician zipped open the body bag he found the corpse uncharacteristically face down in the postmortem container. Moreover, the frozen woman's nose had been broken and her face was covered in cuts and bruises. Family members who had seen Mrs. Arroyo just before the ambulance rushed her to the hospital hadn't noticed any injuries. They assumed that hospital personnel had in some way mishandled the body.

     Mrs. Arroyo's husband and eight of their children filed a lawsuit against the White Memorial Medical Centre alleging abuse of corpse. In December 2011 at a hearing pertaining to the suit, Dr. William Manion, a forensic pathologist hired by the family testified that Mrs. Arroyo had not died of a heart attack.

     It was Dr. Manion's opinion that Mrs. Arroyo had died from asphyxiation and hypothermia. In other words, hospital personnel put a body bag containing a live person into the hospital freezer. Mrs. Arroyo regained consciousness inside the bag and struggled to get out. In so doing she broke her nose and cut and bruised her face. If this were true this woman had undergone a terrifying death. Instead of saving her life hospital personnel killed her in a most horrible way.

     In May 2012 the Arroyo family attorney, Scott Schutzman, upgraded the lawsuit against the hospital to medical malpractice. (If Mrs. Arroyo in fact died in the hospital morgue freezer some of the people responsible for her ending up there could also face charges of negligent homicide. According to Dr. Manion this had not been a natural death.

     In 2013 a Los Angeles Superior Court judge threw out the Arroyo lawsuit because the one year statute of limitations for malpractice suits ran out before the case was filed. The Arroyo family appealed that decision.

     In March 2014 justices sitting on the California 2nd District Court of Appeals overturned the lower court ruling. The one year statute of limitations did not start running in this case until the plaintiffs learned that Mrs. Arroyo might have gone into the hospital freezer alive. According to the appellate judges the family had no reason to suspect Mrs. Arroyo died after being placed into the body bag. The Arroyo lawsuit, therefore, could move forward.

     No criminal charges were filed in connection with the 80-year-old woman's unexplained, mysterious, and suspicious death. The lawsuit was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.