The Ron Jeremy Sexual Assault Case: The Legacy of a Former Porn Star

     Ronald Jeremy Hyatt, born in 1953 into a middle class family, grew up in Queens, New York. Following a stint as a school teacher he tried to establish a career as an actor on Broadway. When that didn't pan out the chubby, five-foot six aspiring actor moved to the Los Angeles area to pursue a career in the film industry. Hyatt, now going under the name Ron Jeremy, found his place as a Hollywood actor when in 1979 the 26-year-old appeared in his first porn flick. (According to porn film fans, inches that would have made Jeremy six-foot three, ended up elsewhere. For the porn industry he was tall in the right place.)

     By 2018, having appeared in more than 2,200 adult films, Ron Jeremy, having acquired the nickname "Hedgehog" because of his stature and hairy body, had become an icon in the porn business. According to the Guinness Book of World Records he held the record in the category "Most Appearances in Adult Films." Moreover, his fame reached beyond the porn community into popular culture where, through endorsements and his "acting," he became a multi-millionaire. In 2001 Jeremy was the subject of a documentary called "Porn Star: The Legacy of Ron Jeremy."

     On November 15, 2017 Rolling Stone published an article by EJ Dickson that discussed a June 2017 YouTube video posted by a woman named Ginger Banks. In that ten-minute clip Banks told the stories of several women who claimed to have been sexually assaulted by Ron Jeremy.

     Ron Jeremy's attorney attempted to get Rolling Stone to retract the damning piece, but the magazine stood behind the reporting.

     In 2018, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Special Victims Bureau launched an investigation into the sexual misconduct allegations against Ron Jeremy.

     On June 23, 2020, Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies arrested the former porn star. The Los Angeles District Attorney's Office charged Jeremy with raping a 25-year-old woman in her home in West Hollywood in May 2014. He also faced charges related to the sexual assault, on separate occasions, of two women in a West Hollywood bar. The alleged assaults of these women, ages 33 and 46, took place in 2017. The final charge involved the alleged rape, in the same bar, of a 30-year-old woman. This offense allegedly occurred in July 2019.

     The 67-year-old former porn star, incarcerated in the Los Angeles County Jail under $6.6 million bond, pleaded not guilty to all charges. If convicted as charged he faced a maximum sentence of life in prison.

     On August 31, 2020, Ron Jeremy was back in court to face 20 additional sexual assault charges involving 13 women ages 15 to 56. The oldest alleged crime took place in 2004.

     The new charges included six counts of sexual battery by restraint, five counts of forcible rape, three counts of forcible oral copulation and two counts of forcible penetration by a foreign object. Ron Jeremy also stood accused of one count each of sodomy assault with intent to commit rape, penetration by a foreign object on an unconscious or sleeping victim and lewd conduct with a 15-year-old girl.

     The most recent sexual allegation against Ron Jeremy took place on January 1, 2020 when he allegedly assaulted a 21-year-old woman outside a business in West Hollywood.

     Ron Jeremy pleaded not guilty to the August 31, 2020 sexual assault charges.

     In January 2023 a judge found Jeremy incompetent to stand trial due to "neurocognative decline." Nine months later the 70-year-old defendant, with dementia and declining health, was released from his jail cell in Los Angeles to a private residence. In November 2023, Ron Jeremy was found incompetent to stand trial.

The Police Killing of David Hooks

     David Hooks, a respected and successful businessman lived with Teresa his wife of 25 years in an upper-middle class neighborhood in East Dublin, Georgia. Hooks' construction company did a lot of work on area military bases such as Hunter Army Airfield and Fort Stewart. This meant that he passed background investigations conducted by the Department of Homeland Security and the ATF.

     On September 22, 2014 a meth-addled burglar named Rodney Garrett broke into Mr. Hooks' pickup truck. The burglar then stole the family's Lincoln Aviator SUV. The next day Mr. Garrett surrendered to deputies with the Laurens County Sheriff's Office.

     Perhaps to curry favor with the police, Rodney Garrett told deputies that in Mr. Hooks' pickup he came across a bag that he opened hoping to find cash. Instead he found 20 grams of methamphetamine and a digital scale. Before searching Mr. Hooks' house for drugs officers knew they would need more than the word of a meth-addicted burglar and car thief to get a judge to sign off on a warrant. In an effort to bolster this unreliable evidence a deputy sheriff told the issuing magistrate that in 2009 another snitch said he supplied David Hooks with meth and that Mr. Hooks had resold it.

     The local magistrate, based on the word of a meth-using thief in trouble with the law, and the six-year-old word of another snitch in another case that had gone nowhere, issued a warrant to search 

David Hooks' residence for methamphetamine. By no stretch of the imagination was this warrant based upon sufficient probable cause.

     To execute the Hooks drug warrant the sheriff, in an enforcement overkill, deployed eight members of a SRT (Special Response Team) to raid the dwelling with officers armed with assault weapons and dressed in SWAT-like combat boots, helmets and flack-jackets.

     At eleven in the morning of September 24, 2014, just two days after Rodney Garrett broke into Mr. Hooks' pickup truck and stole his SUV, Teresa Hooks, while on the second-floor of her house heard vehicles coming up the driveway. She looked out the window and saw several masked men with rifles advancing on the residence.

     Teresa Hooks ran downstairs into a first-floor bedroom where her husband was sleeping. She shook him awake and screamed, "the burglars are back!" Mr. Hooks jumped out of bed, grabbed his shotgun and walked out of the bedroom as members of the raiding party broke down his back door and stormed into the house. In the course of the home intrusion officers fired eighteen shots. Mr. Hooks did not discharge his weapon. At some point in the raid he was shot twice and died on the spot.

     According to the official police version of the fatal shooting of a man in his own home, Mr. Hooks came to the door armed with a shotgun. Officers reported they broke into the dwelling after knocking and announcing their presence. When Mr. Hooks refused to lower his weapon the officers had no choice but to shoot him dead. 

     A 44-hour search of the Hooks residence by deputy sheriffs and officers with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation failed to produce drugs or any other evidence of crime.

     On October 2, 2014 the Hooks family attorney, Mitch Shook, told reporters that the police had forced their way into the house without knocking or announcing themselves to execute a search warrant based upon bogus informant information. The attorney said Mr. David Hooks had been a respected businessman who had never used or sold drugs. The police, according to Mr. Shook, had no business raiding this house and killing this decent man.

     Attorney Shook on December 11, 2014 made a startling announcement: When the police shot Mr. Hooks in the back and in the back of the head he was lying face-down on the floor. The attorney said he asked the FBI to launch an investigation into the case.

     In July 2015 a Laurens County grand jury declined to indict any officers in the David Hooks killing. According to a crime lab toxicology report David Hooks at the time of his death had methamphetamine in his system.

     The FBI decided not to launch an investigation into this SWAT related shooting death.  

The Christie Lynn Mullins Murder Case

     Christie Lynn Mullins resided with her parents on a residential street on the north side of Columbus, the central Ohio capital of the state. At one-thirty in the afternoon of Saturday August 23, 1975 the 14-year-old and her girlfriend of the same age were walking to the Woolco Department Store located in the Graceland Shopping Center a few blocks from their homes.

     Mullins' girlfriend had received a telephone call from a man who claimed to be a disc jockey at a local radio station. According to this man the radio station was sponsoring a cheerleading contest to be held at the department store at one-forty-five that afternoon. The winner of the event would be awarded a free pass to the Ohio State Fair. The girls were to wait for the man outside the store.

     When the girls arrived at the Woolco Department Store Christie Mullins' companion went inside to get the time. When she came out her friend was gone. She waited twenty minutes before going to another friend's house.

     At two o'clock that afternoon a man and his wife were walking in a wooded area behind the Woolco store. The couple spotted a man hitting something on the ground with a two-by-four board. Realizing he had been seen, this man ran off. When the witness and his wife walked to the spot they found the partially clad body of a girl who had been bludgeoned to death.

     The local medical examiner identified the murdered girl as Christie Mullins. Her hands had been tied with telephone wire and she had been raped.

     The couple who discovered the body provided the police with a detailed description of the man they had seen at the crime scene. A few days later police officers arrested a man walking on the sidewalk in downtown Columbus. The suspect, a man named John Carman, did not fit the couple's description of the  crime scene assailant. Moreover, Mr. Carman suffered from severe mental retardation.

     Following an intense grilling at the police station John Carman confessed to killing Christie Mullins. Soon after he agreed to plead guilty to kidnapping, rape and murder. A judge sentenced him to life in prison. But shortly after his imprisonment the case became controversial when the public learned that the suspect possessed the mental age of a ten-year-old. The judge, a week after the story broke, appointed Mr. Carman a new defense attorney who immediately petitioned the court to allow his client to withdraw his guilty plea. The judge granted the motion.

     Notwithstanding the withdrawal of the guilty plea the state went forward with its case against Mr. Carman. In December 1977 John Carman went on trial for the kidnapping, rape and murder of Christie Mullins. During the week-long trial the prosecutor put a surprise witness on the stand. The so-called eyewitness to the crime, Henry Newell Jr., was at the time serving a stretch in prison for burning down his own home. The arson occurred about a year after Christie Mullins' murder.

     According to the prosecution's star witness the 27-year-old saw the defendant kill the victim behind the department store. Mr. Newell testified that after John Carman fled the crime scene, he, Newell, covered the dead girl's face with his shirt. He also said he had touched the board used to bludgeon the victim to death.

     After the defense attorney thoroughly discredited Henry Newell on cross-examination he put several witnesses on the stand who testified that at the time of the murder the defendant was on the other side of the city.

     The jury, after a short deliberation, found John Carman not guilty on all charges. The jurors found the alibi witnesses credible and suspected that the real killer was Henry Newell Jr. The jurors also believed that the defendant did not have the mental capacity to commit such a brutal murder.

     Notwithstanding the outcome of the murder trial and the belief by most people familiar with the case that Henry Newell Jr. had kidnapped, raped and murdered Christie Mullins, the police insisted that the jury had let a man guilty of an heinous crime go free.

     Henry Newell Jr. died in 2013 of cancer at the age of 63. By then, cold case homicide investigators with the Columbus Police Department had come to the conclusion that Newell had indeed committed the crime and that the police at the time had horribly bungled the investigation. Before he died Mr. Newell confessed to several people that he had murdered the girl.

     On November 6, 2015 Columbus police sergeant Eric Pilya, the head of the cold case unit, announced at a press conference that the detectives who worked on the case originally, now both deceased, had used "improper investigative techniques." Sergeant Pilya said he wanted to "formally and publicly apologize" to Christie Mullins' family who for years insisted that Henry Newell was the guilty party. 

The Shannon Kepler Murder Case

     Shannon Kepler and his wife Gina joined the Tulsa Police Department as patrol officers on August 13, 1990. He was  30-years-old and she was 24. In 2002, the childless couple adopted 6-year-old Lisa.

    Lisa Kepler, diagnosed with a personality disorder called reactive detachment, became a difficult child. Due to her behavioral problems the parents, over the years, spent thousands of dollars on various programs, camps and therapy. None of this treatment altered the girl's anti-social behavior. By 2014, the parents were at their wit's end. They simply had no control over their 18-year-old daughter.

     On July 30, 2014, the fed-up parents, in hopes that a dose of reality might prompt Lisa to change her ways, kicked her out of the house. They dropped her off at a homeless shelter in downtown Tulsa.

     While living at the homeless shelter Lisa met 19-year-old Jeremey Lake. Shortly thereafter Lisa moved into Lake's parents' house in north Tulsa. On August 5, 2014 Lisa and Jeremy announced their romantic relationship on Facebook.

     That Tuesday night, August 5, 2014, at nine-fifteen, Shannon Kepler pulled up in front of Jeremy Lake's house where he encountered Lisa and her boyfriend walking along the street. Following an exchange of angry words the police officer shot at Lake three times then allegedly turned his gun on his daughter and fired three more times. Lisa escaped injury but Jeremey Lake died on the spot. After the shooting Officer Kepler drove off in his SUV.

     Not long after the shooting a Tulsa police officer spoke on the phone to Gina Kepler who said she and her husband planned to turn themselves in. She said she'd leave the gun in the trunk of her car.

     Accompanied by an attorney, Shannon Kepler and his 48-year-old wife surrendered at police headquarters. (Mrs. Kepler was charged with accessory to murder after the fact.) On the advice of their lawyer the couple did not agree to interrogations.

     Officers booked the Keplers into the Tulsa County Jail. The 54-year-old police officer and instructor at the Tulsa Police Academy faced charges of first-degree murder and shooting with intent to kill.

     The judge denied the suspects bond and the chief of police suspended the couple with pay. Mr. Kepler entered a plea of not guilty based on a claim of self defense.

     A few days after the arrests of her parents, Lisa Kepler spoke to a local television reporter. Regarding her dead boyfriend she said, "He was just really sweet and caring and he didn't pretend. I've known him a week. He was everything. He gave me a place to stay, food to eat and a bed to sleep in. He meant a lot to me and dad came and took him away."

     On August 22, 2014 the defendants made bail and were released from custody. They had both been fired from the Tulsa Police Department.

     The Kepler murder trial was delayed several times due to a series of procedural motions filed by the defense involving claims that the judge and the case prosecutor were biased against the defendant. The motions were denied.

     In 2015, 2016 and 2017, Shannon Kepler went on trial for murder three times, and three times the juries were deadlocked on a verdict.

     A fourth jury, on October 19, 2017 found Shannon Kepler guilty of first-degree manslaughter. On November 20, 2017 Tulsa County District Judge Sharon Holmes sentenced him to 15 years in prison. 

     In 2017, the Tulsa County prosecutor dropped the accessory after the fact charge against Gina Kepler and in December 2019, following arbitration, she was re-instated as a Tulsa police officer.

Murder in a Small Town: The 1957 Fordney-Barber Case

     In 1957, whenever someone in the United States committed murder-suicide the story almost always made the front page of the local newspaper and led the TV news that night. Today there is an explosion of murder-suicide cases across the nation, but in the 1950s such mayhem, particularly in small town America, was virtually unheard of. But it did happen, and it happened on May 28, 1957 in a small town in western Pennsylvania.

     John D. Barber and his wife Grace, a childless couple, adopted 8-year-old Judy Rose in 1946. The family resided in Grove City, Pennsylvania. In 1953 when Judy turned fifteen the family moved fifteen miles west to New Wilmington, a quiet borough of 1,800 in Amish country ninety minutes north of Pittsburgh. The Barbers took up residence in a modest home at 256 North Market Street near the center of the one-red light town.

     Two years after moving to New Wilmington, the home of Westminster College, Mr. and Mrs. Barber separated. Grace moved a few miles north where she took up residence in Blacktown in adjacent Mercer County. At the time Mr. Barber, a small aircraft pilot and member of the Shenango Valley Flying Club, worked the night shift at a factory twenty miles west in Youngstown, Ohio. Following her parents' separation Judy elected to remain in New Wilmington with her father.

     In September 1956 at the beginning of her senior year at Wilmington Area High School, Judy Barber announced her engagement to Homer Miller, a young man from Grove City who joined the Marine Corps. Notwithstanding her engagement to Mr. Miller, Judy continued to see Theodore George Fordney, a 28-year-old New Wilmington postal worker she had been involved with since July 1956. Early in 1957 following Homer Miller's discharge from the Marine Corps, Judy returned his engagement ring. She continued to go out with Ted Fordney, a man ten years her senior.

     On May 21, 1957 Mr. Barber, in anticipation of Judy's graduation from high school the following week, bought her a car. Although she was a mediocre student with a lot of absences, Judy lined-up a job as a secretary in a department store in the nearby town of Sharon. Having flown several times in a small plane with her father, she aspired to someday become an airline stewardess.

     Ted Fordney, Judy's on and off boyfriend, quit high school in 1945 during his senior year. Ted, a slender, clean-cut kid of average height known as an excellent swimmer and diver, while no more of a prankster than many students in his class, alway seemed to be the boy who got caught. According to his friend Kenny Whitman, Ted was one of those bad luck guys who walked around under a cloud. Before dropping out of school, Fordney and Whitman washed dishes at The Tavern, a New Wilmington restaurant known throughout western Pennsylvania.

     Growing up in New Wilmington Ted was raised by his mother. No one seemed to know much about his father, George A. Fordney. After leaving school Ted joined the Army and was stationed in Fort Lee, Virginia. In May 1947 fresh out of the service he worked at the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company in Youngstown, Ohio. In 1953 he landed a job at the post office in New Wilmington. He also joined the New Wilmington Volunteer Fire Department.

     In 1957, Ted, 29-years-old, still single and working at the post office, resided in a two-story dwelling at 512 West Neshannock Avenue. The house was owned by his mother. His 54-year-old mother, Mary Virginia (Fischer) Fordney, a practical nurse, lived and worked in Florida. For several months Ted had been living with terrible pain caused by a slipped disc in his spine. Because he couldn't stand for any period of time he missed a lot of work at the post office.

     On May 21, 1957 Ted underwent an operation at the Jameson Memorial Hospital in New Castle to repair his ruptured disc. Mrs. Fordney returned to New Wilmington from New Orleans to take care of her son as he struggled to recover from the operation. Mrs. Fordney had been in New Orleans visiting Madeline, one of Ted's three grown sisters.

      Six days following his hospital stay Ted ran into his lifelong friend, Kenny Whitman. When Kenny asked Ted why he hadn't been around to visit, Ted said the pain in his back was so intense he couldn't sit very long in a car.

     Judy Barber, although she continued to date Ted Fordney, occasionally entertained younger men at her house. Whenever this happened a jealous Ted would drive slowly back and forth on North Market Street past her home. On Monday, May 27, 1957, just four days before her high school graduation, Judy and a Westminster College freshman from West Hartford, Connecticut named Warren Howard Weber watched a late night television movie at her house. At one o'clock that night the college student left the North Market Street dwelling and walked back to his dormitory.

     The next morning, May 28, at nine o'clock, John Barber returned home after working the night shift at the factory in Youngstown, Ohio. In the front hallway to the house Mr. Barber discovered his daughter's dead body sprawled out on the floor. She was dressed in a pair of blue polka-dot pajamas and white, knitted socks. An electrical cord from a vacuum cleaner was wrapped tightly around her neck and knotted. There were no signs of forced entry into the house and Mr. Barber did not see any indication that his daughter had struggled with her killer.

     Mr. Barber picked up the telephone and reported his daughter's murder to an officer assigned to the Pennsylvania State Police Barracks in New Castle, a town of 50,000 nine miles south of New Wilmington. After speaking with the Troop D officer, Mr. Barber called Ted Fordney's house and spoke to his mother. Mrs. Fordney, immediately following Mr. Barber's call checked her son's bedroom and saw that his bed had not been slept in the previous night. Where was he? After seeing his car parked near the house, Mrs. Fordney walked into her back yard where she found Ted about five feet from the porch sprawled next to a .12-gauge shotgun. He had blasted himself in the face.

     Back at the Barber house, shortly after officers from the state police arrived at the death scene, Dr. Frank C. McClenahan, a local physician, came to the dwelling to examine Judy Barber's corpse. The doctor, based on the fact that rigor mortis had not set in, estimated that the girl had been murdered sometime between two and four that morning.

     Two state police officers, Sergeant Harold Rise and Corporal William S. O'Brien, were assigned the task of getting to the bottom of the two violent deaths. At the Barber house Trooper O'Brien noticed that the killer had ripped the vacuum cleaner cord out of the wall so violently the plug had detached.

     At the Fordney home investigators found Ted's wallet, watch and some loose change on his dresser drawer which led them to theorize that before killing himself in the back yard he emptied his pockets. On his bedroom walls the officers notices scratch marks that could have been made by the fingernails of a man in severe pain. The investigators did not find a suicide note.

     Later on the morning of Ted Fordney's suicide, after police officers and firemen left the Neshannock Avenue house, Mrs. Fordney called the Sharp Funeral Home a few blocks away. Bob Brush, a 19-year-old who happened to be visiting his friend Pete Sharp at the funeral home that day, accompanied Pete and his brother Bud to the Fordney residence. Bob, a 1956 high school graduate, lived on North Market Street a few houses from the murder scene. While Bob was acquainted with Judy Barber he only knew Ted Fordney as the older guy with a bad back who spent every day during the summer at the New Wilmington public swimming pool. In the back yard of the Fordney house Bob Brush took one look at the man lying next to the shotgun and turned away in horror. 

     Dr. Lester Adelson, the forensic pathologist with the Cleveland Crime Laboratory who three years earlier had examined the body of Marilyn Shepard, the murdered wife of Dr. Sam Shepard, performed the Judy Barber autopsy. Dr. Adelson noticed a fresh abrasion on the victim's left temple that suggested the killer had knocked her out before wrapping and tying the cord around her neck. According to the pathologist's estimation, the five-foot-tall high school senior had died of asphyxiation by ligature sometime between two and four on the morning of Tuesday, May 28, 1957.

     Warren Weber, the Westminster College freshman who had been with Judy just hours before the murder, contacted the state police almost immediately after he got word of her death. That Tuesday afternoon Lawrence County District Attorney Perry Reeher and County Detective Russell McConhay questioned the shaken student at the county courthouse in New Castle. Weber informed his interviewers that between ten-thirty and eleven o'clock the previous night he and Judy had seen a man peeking into one of the living room windows. The only thing Weber recognized about the man was that he had a crew-cut. Judy told him that she thought the window peeper was Ted Fordney.

     Troopers Rice and O'Brien questioned several witnesses who saw Ted Fordney, at ten-thirty Monday night walking toward the Barber house. Witnesses also saw the victim and Mr. Fordney riding around town in her new car the afternoon and evening of the day before her death. According to some of Judy's girlfriends she did not want to marry Ted and was thinking of ending their relationship. Whenever she entertained a boy her age Ted would pay Judy a visit shortly after her date went home.

   New Wilmington weekend police officer John D. Kyle questioned Ted Fordney's next-door neighbor, Mrs. Elmer Newton who said that she and her husband, between four and five o'clock Tuesday morning, heard a noise they thought was thunder. Officer Kyle presumed the couple had heard Ted Fordney shoot himself in the head.

     At this point in the investigation the homicide investigators as well as the Lawrence County District Attorney believed that Ted Fordney had gone to the Barber house an hour or so after the college student went home. Judy let him in, they argued and he punched her on the side of the head. As she lay unconscious on the hallway floor he wrapped and tied the electrical cord around her neck. After returning to his house Ted grabbed his shogun, walked into the back yard and shot himself in the face.

     On Wednesday morning, May 29, the day after the murder-suicide, the dead girl's father allowed himself to be interviewed by reporter Bryant Artis with The Pittsburgh Press. Artis' comprehensive front-page article about the mayhem in New Wilmington featured a large yearbook photograph of Judy Barber. According to John Barber, just minutes after reporting his daughter's murder to the Pennsylvania State Police, he telephoned Ted Fordney. "I called him simply because he knew everybody in town," the father said. Regarding his daughter's relationship with a man ten years older than her, Mr. Barber said, "He wouldn't show up for a month at a time. But they both loved to dance and off they'd go." Asked about his feelings toward Ted Fordney, Mr. Barber said, "It's not fair to accuse him until we know."

     Lawrence County Coroner John A. Meehan, Jr. held the coroner's inquest in New Castle at the country court house on August 6, 1957. Following the three hour session in which six witnesses testified, the coroner's jury, after deliberating twenty minutes, delivered its verdict. The inquest jurors found that Judy Barber had been strangled to death by Theodore Fordney who committed suicide shortly after the murder. This meant there would be no further investigation into these deaths. The case was closed.

     Because no one saw Ted Fordney murder Judy Barber and he did not confess, the case against him was entirely circumstantial. Moreover, there was no physical evidence connecting Mr. Fordney to the killing. According to reportage in the weekly New Wilmington Globe, forensic scientists at the state police crime lab in Butler found hair follicles from the victim on the sweeper cord. Latent fingerprints were lifted from the ligature, but because they were partials they could not be identified.

     Warren Weber, the Westminster College student from Connecticut did not return to New Wilmington. And who could blame him? He had come to a small quiet community to end up having a date murdered just hours after he left her house. It probably dawned on Weber that Ted Fordney could have come to the Barber house that night with his shotgun. Before turning the gun on himself Ted Fordney could have murdered the college student along with the girl.

     Ted Fordney's mother, on February 1, 1996, while living in a convalescent home in Hermitage, Pennsylvania died at the age of 93.

      Ted Fordney did not have a history of criminal violence and he was never treated for any kind of mental illness. So what could have driven this ordinary man to commit murder and suicide? Perhaps the answer lies in the fact he was in extreme pain. It is possible he was taking pain-killing drugs that altered his personality. (In the 1950s patients suffering from post-surgical pain often took a powerful over-the-counter drug called Paracetamol. Even in small doses Paracetamol was known to cause kidney, liver and brain damage. If combined with even small amounts of alcohol the drug was especially dangerous.)

      The memories of Judy Barber and Theodore Fordney, today remembered by a handful of people, are intertwined forever as they lay buried in the same cemetery outside of New Wilmington, Pennsylvania. In criminal homicide the smaller the town the bigger the murder.

Leroy Kuffel: A Police Pension For a Sex Offender

     Round Lake Beach is a northern Illinois town of 26,000 on the Wisconsin state line. In 2009, Round Lake Beach police officer Leroy Kuffel, a 29-year veteran of the force, got into serious trouble. In February and March of that year the 52-year-old cop had sex with his son's ex-girlfriend. She was sixteen. Following his arrest officer Kuffel admitted giving the teen gifts and taking her out to dinner, but he denied having sexual relations with the minor.

     In January 2010, following a three-day trial in a Lake County court, the jury found Kuffel guilty of aggravated criminal sexual abuse. (Had the girl been a few months younger he could have been charged with statutory rape.) The state prosecutor recommended that Kuffel be sentenced up to seven years in prison. The defendant's attorney pushed for a probated sentence. In speaking to the court, Kuffel apologized for what he called "bad decisions."

     Sentencing-wise, Judge Daniel Shanes took the middle ground. He sentenced Leroy Kuffel to sixty days in the county jail followed by thirty months of nighttime incarceration at a halfway house where the inmate would be allowed to work during the day. The judge also ordered the ex-police officer to seek sex offender treatment. (Since Kuffel considered his relationship with the minor nothing more than a "bad decision," what good that would do.) At the conclusion of the thirty-month work-release program he would be under probation for three years.

     On September 20, 2009, while working during the day and spending nights in custody, Kuffel began receiving his $48, 000 a year police pension. Following a legal challenge by Round Lake Beach municipal authorities, the town's mayor, in January 2013, announced that Illinois state law required that Mr. Kuffel, notwithstanding his sex offense conviction, be paid his police pension.

     Under Illinois law no pension benefits will be paid to a retired police officer convicted of any felony relating to, arising from, or in connection with his law enforcement job. Since Officer Kuffel had been off-duty when he had sex with the minor, the above law did not apply to him. (One could argue that Kuffel's victim might have been intimidated or impressed by the fact he was a cop.) Had officer Kuffel, while off-duty, murdered his wife, under Illinois law he'd still be eligible for his pension benefits.

     By 2013, Kuffel's increased monthly pension benefits were based on an annual  income of $53,709. When the ex-cop turned 65, he would rake in $70,079 a year. If Kuffel lived to the year 2026, he would receive, in total pension benefits (not including health care), more than $1 million. Not bad for a registered sex offender.

Chad Wolfe's Mysterious Death

     On Thursday night, March 14, 2013, Chad Wolfe and Jessica Price, his girlfriend of ten years, boarded Delta Flight 2233 out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania en route to Atlanta and their final destination, Tampa, Florida. Wolfe resided in West Newton, a Westmoreland County town of 3,000 twenty-five miles southeast of Pittsburgh. The 31-year-old worked in a Sewickley Township body shop with his father. Chad and Jessica planned to meet up with friends in Tampa, rent a car then drive to Daytona Beach to participate in Bike Week festivities. They also planned to visit a few automobile auctions.

     The couple flew into the Tampa International Airport from their layover in Atlanta just before midnight. They had been arguing. Chad took an elevator from the third floor of the main terminal to the 7th floor parking garage while she picked up their luggage from baggage claim. When Jessica returned to the main concourse with the luggage, Chad wasn't there. When she couldn't find him she alerted an airport security officer who organized a search party.
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     At ten o'clock the next morning airport maintenance workers found Chad Wolfe's body lying on top of an elevator car stopped at the third floor of the main terminal. In his pocket investigators found an empty Xanax bottle. (He had a prescription for Xanax and Paxil.)

     Investigators found, on the seventh floor not far from the bank of elevators, Chad's cellphone and carry-on case. This discovery raised questions of what Chad was doing in the parking garage, and how his body end up on top of the third floor elevator car.

     The authorities who looked into this mysterious death, certainly a suspicious one, came to the conclusion that Chad Wolfe had somehow accidentally fallen down the elevator shaft. But the young man's father, Garland Wolfe, didn't believe his 150 pound son had the strength to pry open the elevator doors. Don Cassell, an elevator expert, agreed. According to Mr. Cassell, opening the doors of a working elevator with one's bare hands was next to impossible.

     Jessica Price revealed that Chad had taken a Xanax pill to ease his anxiety about flying, He had also consumed a drink on the plane. Did her confused boyfriend go to the parking garage to smoke a cigarette? Still, how did he get into the elevator shaft?

     In May 2013, the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner issued the report on Chad Wolfe's death. The cause of this young man's demise went into the books as "blunt force impact to the head and neck." The manner of death: an accident.

     According to the medical examiner's report, the deceased had Alprozolam and Paxil in his system. In the report, a forensic investigator wrote: "It appears the deceased forced open an elevator door to gain entry into the elevator shaft."

     According to a report submitted months later by the airport, witnesses on Wolfe's flight from Atlanta to Tampa said that he had been drinking alcohol, popping pills and acting rudely on the plane. At the airport a witness saw a belligerent man banging on the seventh floor elevator door. Tampa airport detective Kevin Durkin, the lead investigator in the case, concluded that Mr. Wolfe forced open the landing doors on the elevator. He then wrapped his arms and legs aground "the elevator cable inside the shaft with the intention to slide down the cable to the elevator car roof. As he descended down the elevator cable, friction wounds caused him to let go."

     Detective Durkin concluded that Chad Wolfe had fallen and died when he landed on the top of the elevator car.

The Eli Weaver/Barbara Raber Murder Case

     In 2009, Eli Weaver, his wife Barbara and their five children resided in central Ohio's Amish heartland. He owned a gun shop near his Wayne County farm near Apple Creek. Over the past several years leaders of the local Amish community had thrown him out of the church for running around with English women he met online. Eli would ask for forgiveness, be accepted back into the fold, then get into trouble again with the same un-Amish behavior.

     The 23-year-old Amish man, in 2003, met Barbara Raber, a woman who grew up Amish but left the church. The 33-year-old from Millersburg, Ohio made extra money driving Amish people from place to place. The relationship between Eli and his driver eventually became sexual.

     Beginning in the fall of 2008, Weaver and Raber began discussing how to murder his wife. In 2009 they exchanged a series of text messages in which they discussed various plans on how to pull off the crime.

      At seven on the morning of June 2, 2009, one of the Weaver children ran to a neighbor's house with shocking news. Someone, during the night, shot and killed his mother in her bed. Eli, at that moment, was fishing on Lake Erie. The neighbor and the boy entered the Weaver house where Barbara Weaver lay in her blood-soaked bed with a gaping gunshot wound in her chest.

     At 11:30 that morning, Wayne County Coroner Dr. Amy Joliff pronounced Barbara Weaver dead at the scene. Dr. Lisa Kohler, the Summit County Chief Medical Examiner performed the autopsy. According to the forensic pathologist the victim had been killed by a single shotgun blast to the right side of her chest. Several shotgun pellets were removed from the corpse. Dr. Kohler estimated the time of death as sometime between midnight and three o'clock that morning.

     John Gardner, a firearms expert with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation identified the death scene pellets as number six shot. While this ammunition could have been fired from shotguns of four different gauges, the firearms identification expert believed the murder weapon was a .410-gauge shotgun.

     Detectives with the Wayne County Sheriff's Office seized two .410 shotguns from Eli Weaver's gun shop. Officers also recovered a box of .410 shells with one round missing. Investigators in the murder house found an amount of cash sitting on a table suggesting that robbery had not been the motive in this killing.

     Questioned by detectives upon his return from the Lake Erie fishing trip, Eli Weaver denied any involvement in his wife's murder.

     On June 10, 2009 detectives arrested Mr. Weaver after he confessed to helping Barbara Raber murder his wife. She pulled the trigger while he was fishing.

     That day, pursuant to a search of Raber's house in Millersburg, officers found a notebook in which she had written out a list of various poisons. At the police station following her arrest she denied knowledge of the murder. She explained the incriminating text messages to and from Eli as nothing more than joking around.

     The day after Raber's arrest, upon further questioning, the suspected trigger woman admitted going to the Weaver house around four in the morning armed with a .410-gauge shotgun. Eli had left the basement door unlocked for her. She said her intent was merely to frighten Barbara Weaver, but when she entered the bedroom the gun discharged accidentally. Raber's interrogators didn't buy the accidental shooting story but asked her to sign a written statement to that effect. She refused and asked to see a lawyer. The interrogation at that point came to an end.

     On August 17, 2009 Eli Weaver agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit murder. As part of the plea deal he promised to testify for the prosecution at Barbara Raber's murder trial.

     The Raber murder trial got underway on September 16, 2009 in Wooster, Ohio with Judge Robert J. Brown presiding. Wayne County prosecutor Edna J. Boyle, following testimony from the county coroner, the medical examiner and several police officers put Dena Unangst on the stand. Unangst had been the defendant's cellmate at the Wayne County Jail. According to this witness, Barbara Raber admitted to her that she purchased a .410 shotgun after Eli Weaver, on numerous occasions, begged her to murder his wife. Raber also asked Unangst if she knew how long a fingerprint could last on a gun. (Under ideal conditions 50 years or more.)

     Gun store owner Larry Miller took the stand and testified that the defendant had purchased a .410 on November 15, 2008.

     On September 30, 2009, prosecutor Boyle put the shunned Amish man on the stand. Elie Weaver, now 29, testified that when he mentioned getting rid of his wife, a woman he didn't love, Raber "ran away with the idea." At one point, during one of their homicide planning conversations she gave him a bottle of what she called "poison pills." Eli said he rejected poisoning as a way of killing his wife.

     On the day before the murder, Eli Weaver informed Barbara Raber that at three the next morning he would be leaving the house on a fishing trip. He'd leave the basement door open for her. Shortly after he left the house that morning she sent him a text in which she asked how she was supposed to see in the dark. "It's too scary," she wrote. Eli advised her to take a flashlight.

     At 3:25 AM Raber texted, "I'm scared, where are you?" Texting that he was in Wooster, Eli cautioned Raber not to leave anything behind at the murder scene.

     According to the prosecutor's star witness, on June 9, 2009, the day before he and Raber were arrested, they had a conversation in his barn. She described the night she killed Barbara Weaver and said she was "sorry for everything." Before parting company she asked Eli how to clean a gun so it looked like it hadn't been recently fired.

     Assistant public defender John J. Leonard tried to convince the jury that Eli Weaver, not his client, had murdered the victim. The defense attorney described Raber's incriminating statement to detectives as the product of fear and confusion. Leonard rested his defense without putting his client on the stand.

     On October 1, 2009, the jury found the defendant guilty as charged. Judge Brown sentence the 39-year-old woman to 23 years in prison. Eli Weaver had been sentenced by this judge the day before to 15 years to life.

     Weaver's light sentence illustrates, from the point of view of a guilty murder mastermind, the value of pleading guilty and testifying against an accomplice. Raber's sentence, given the cold-bloodedness of the killing and the innocence of the victim, was also lenient.  

The High-Profile Sanford Rubenstein Rape Allegation

     On October 1, 2014, prominent Manhattan, New York defense attorney Sanford A. Rubenstein attended civil rights activist Al Sharpton's 60th birthday party at the Four Seasons restaurant. Following the gala affair two female party attendees accompanied Mr. Rubenstein back to his penthouse apartment. One of these women, Iasha Rivers, sat on the board of Sharpton's civil rights organization The National Action Network.

     The 43-year-old board member's companion left the Rubenstein apartment sometime after midnight. Iasha Rivers, however, decided to spend the night with the rich lawyer. The next morning Mr. Rubenstein's driver took her home.

     Iasha Rivers, 36-hours after being driven home from Rubenstein's penthouse, went to a hospital with bruises on her arms and vaginal bleeding. To hospital personnel, and later the police, she claimed that Sanford Rubenstein had drugged and raped her that night.

     In her police complaint Iasha Rivers said that after her party companion left the penthouse she began to feel "foggy" then lost consciousness. According to her account of that night, when she awoke Mr. Rubenstein had her arms pinned and was raping her.

     The rape allegation against Mr. Rubenstein led to a three-month investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. On January 5, 2015 Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance announced that after his investigators questioned dozens of witnesses, reviewed medical records, looked at surveillance camera footage, and considered toxicology results, he didn't have enough evidence to support a criminal charge against Mr. Rubenstein.

     In justifying his decision not proceed with this case, prosecutor Vance said that a toxicology test of the alleged victim's blood failed to show the presence of anything other than traces of alcohol and marijuana.

     Benjamin Brafman, Mr. Rubenstein's attorney, said this following the district attorney's announcement: "What happened in this case was consensual sex between two adults who were fully alert and fully awake throughout."

     Kenneth J. Montgomery, Iasha River's attorney, in calling the district attorney's office investigation "incredibly inept" accused investigators of ignoring evidence such as his client's bruised arms and a bloody condom that had been recovered from Rubenstein's apartment. The attorney criticized the district attorney for not presenting the case to a grand jury.

     In questioning the results of the toxicology test Mr. Montgomery pointed out that his client did not use marijuana. "I think," he said, "they never wanted to pursue this case from the very beginning." The lawyer also announced he had filed a civil lawsuit against Mr. Rubenstein on behalf of his client.

     Mr. Brafman, speaking for his client Mr. Rubenstein, said, "Rape is undoubtedly a serious offense; to falsely accuse someone of rape, however, is equally offensive."

     On January 6, 2015, the day following District Attorney Vance's announcement The New York Daily News, citing a source within the NYPD, reported that officers found in Mr. Rubenstein's penthouse a prescription for Viagra issued in Al Sharpton's name.

     Al Sharpton responded quickly to the tabloid's Viagra story. "I don't know anything about that," he said. "No, I don't know anything about that." According to the civil rights leader, this Daily News reportage was nothing more than a New York City police conspiracy to embarrass him. "If the motive of the cop was to embarrass me, at sixty years old, I am unembarassable."

     Rank and file New York City police officers were offended by what they considered Al Sharpton's anti-cop rhetoric in the wake of the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases. Sharpton was considered by many to be an unrepentant race-baiter who used his clout in the black community to extort money from corporations afraid of being labeled as racist. It was not a stretch of the imagination to believe that New York City police officers would want nothing better than to embarrass this man. Al Sharpton's claim that he could not be embarrassed, based upon the history of his career, had the ring of truth.

     In March 2016 the attorney for Iasha Rivers and the attorney for Sanford Rubenstein quietly agreed to drop their clients' lawsuits against each other.

Morena Costello's Revenge

     In January 2010, when Bella Costello died of heart failure while being treated at the Staten Island University Hospital, his distraught 38-year-old daughter, Morena Costello, blamed the 65 year old's doctors and nurses for his death. Morena had been caring for her ailing father, a retired musician, in his home in the Port Richmond section of Staten Island. Following his demise she sank into deep depression and brooded over the role she believed doctors and nurses played in his death.

     In late July 2010, Morena, who blamed two of her father's doctors and a pair of nurses for Mr. Costello's fate, reached out to a friend who was at the time in trouble with the law. Morena informed this man that she was looking for someone to kill the doctors and the nurses she believed responsible for her father's death. At first the murder-for-hire intermediary brushed the request off as the frustration of a grieving daughter. But as time passed and after a series of phone conversations her friend became convinced that Morena Costello was dead serious when she said she wanted these healthcare workers murdered. She meant business and there was no way he could talk her out of her murderous mission.

     Morena's friend, after notifying the FBI of Morena Costello's intentions, called her on October 22, 2010 with the news he had located a hitman. The contract killer would be in touch with her soon. Five days later Morena and the "hit man," an undercover FBI agent, met in his car. The FBI recorded the meeting with a hidden camera in the agent's vehicle.

     Morena showed the agent a photograph of her father and a copy of his death certificate. She handed him a handwritten list containing the names, addresses, work schedules and physical descriptions of the people she wanted the hitman to murder. She said she wanted these people to suffer like her father had suffered. When the agent asked Costello specifically what she wanted him to do with the people on the list, she pointed to the word "death" on her father's death certificate. She also wrote him a note that read: "Just do it." To seal the deal she handed the agent $400 as downpayment for the murders. Upon receipt of the blood money the agent identified himself and took Costello into custody.

     Following Morena Costello's arrest a federal grand jury returned a murder-for-hire indictment. Her attorney, while not presenting his client as innocent of the murder for hire plot, told reporters that Morena was seriously depressed and psychotic.

     On October 18, 2012 before a federal judge in a Brooklyn, New York district court, Morena Costello pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of obstruction of an investigation. In June 2013 the judge sentenced her to three years' probation. She could have received up to 57 months in prison.

     Had this woman reached out to the wrong person (or from her point of view the right person), who knows how many people might have been murdered? The fact she was depressed and having mental problems would have not made her victims any less dead. As a mastermind in a murder-for-hire solicitation case, Morena Costello got away with conspiracy to mass murder.

Bernard Goetz: The Subway Vigilante

     In the 1980s, muggers, rapists and panhandling bums ruled the streets, trains and subway stations of New York City. The Bronx looked like a post World War II city that had been bombed to rubble. Prostitutes, pimps, x-rated store fronts, strip joints, three-card monte stands, street corner drug dealers and thieves selling their loot were entrenched in Manhattan's Times Square. New York had become a seedy, smelly, dangerous place. Tourism had dropped off and people doing legitimate business throughout the city struggled. Corrupt and incompetent politicians had let the Big Apple rot. Law abiding residents of New York were angry, frightened and fed-up. 

     In 1981, a gang of muggers in a Canal Street subway station beneath Manhattan beat-up and robbed 34-year-old Bernard Goetz. After the attack, Mr. Goetz, the owner of a small electronics business in Greenwich Village, started carrying a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver.

     On December 22, 1984, at five-thirty in the evening, while riding the Number 2 train under Manhattan, four black teenagers approached Bernard Goetz and asked him for money. Believing that the youths were about to rob him, Goetz pulled out his S & W 38 and shot each kid once. The boys survived, but one of them, Darrell Cabey, was left brain-damaged and paralyzed.

     The subway shootings grabbed headlines in New York City and baffled the police who had no idea who shot the teens. Nine days after the incident Bernard Goetz turned himself into the police and identified himself as the so-called "Subway Vigilante." The case divided New Yorkers by race. Blacks vilified Goetz as a trigger-happy racist. Many whites hailed him as a crime-fighting hero. The subway vigilante case symbolized a citizenry fed-up with out-of-control street crime and a broken criminal justice system.

     Manhattan's district attorney, fearing massive civil disorder, threw the book at Mr. Goetz, charging him with attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment and criminal possession of a weapon. In January 1988 the jury in the high-profile trial acquitted the defendant of all charges but the third-degree weapons offense. The judge sentenced Goetz to one year in jail. Nine months later he was free.

     In 1990, Darrell Cabey, the person Goetz paralyzed, sued him for $50 million. Six years later the jury awarded Cabey $43 million in damages. That year Goetz declared bankruptcy.

     In 2001, Bernard Goetz ran for mayor. He lost and became a vegetarian activist who spent his time nursing injured squirrels. 

     On December 22, 2011, twenty-seven years to the day he was shot by Goetz on the train, James Ramseur was found dead of a drug overdose. Asked to comment on Ramseur's death by a reporter with the New York Daily News Goetz said, "It sounds like he was depressed."

     On Friday, November 1, 2013 a female undercover cop cracking down on Ganja (a highly resinous form of cannabis) peddlers in Union Square Park at Fifth Avenue and 14th Street in Manhattan, was approached by a tall, thin man in his sixties who asked if she wanted to get high. When the cop said yes, Bernard Goetz said he would go to his apartment and return with $30 worth of marijuana. Upon his return from his Greenwich Village dwelling with the weed, the undercover cop placed him under arrest. A Manhattan prosecutor charged Goetz with the misdemeanor offense of criminal sale of marijuana. Suddenly Bernard Goetz, the Subway Vigilante, was back in the news. 

     Shortly after Goetz's marijuana arrest, the prosecutor dropped the charges and Bernard Goetz, once a household name, returned to obscurity.

The Michelle Byrom Murder-For-Hire Case

     In 1999, 42-year-old Michelle Byrom lived in Luka, Mississippi, a small, rural town in the northeastern part of the state. She resided with her abusive 58-year-old husband, Edward Byrom Sr. and their 25-year-old son Edward Byrom Jr.

     On June 4, 1999, Edward Byrom Sr. was found dead in the bedroom of his house. He had been shot in the head at close range. Sheriff David Smith of Tishomingo County brought young Edward in for questioning. According to Edward Jr., his friend Joey Gillis committed the murder on behalf of his mother, Michelle Byrom. The dead man's son said that after the shooting he went to the hospital where his mother was being treated for double pneumonia. When he informed her that Gillis shot Edward Sr. as planned, Michelle instructed him to return to the house to make sure his father was dead. If in fact the shot was fatal, young Edward was to call 911 and report the homicide.

     Edward Byrom Jr. told Sheriff Smith that his mother promised to pay Gillis $15,000 from her husband's $150,000 life insurance policy.

     Joey Gillis, when questioned by the sheriff, denied any involvement in the murder case. 

     After interrogating Edward Byrom Jr. for several hours the sheriff questioned Michelle Byrom at the hospital. The heavily medicated patient, after being told that her son confessed to the murder-for-hire plot, made statements interpreted by the authorities as incriminating.

     A Tishomingo County prosecutor charged Joey Gillis with capital murder. Edward Jr. and his mother were charged with conspiracy to commit capital murder. If convicted as charged they each faced the possibility of being sentenced to death.

     In early 2000, Edward Byrom Jr., while incarcerated in the Tishomingo County Jail, wrote his mother four letters in which he exonerated her and confessed fully to his father's murder. According to his revised account of the shooting, on the day of the killing, his father slapped him in the face and called him a no good bastard. After brooding awhile in his bedroom Edward Jr. found the 9 mm handgun and used it to shoot his father in the head.

     According to young Byrom when interrogated by the sheriff, "I gave him one BS story after another to save my ass….I was scared, confused and high. I just started spitting out the first thought that turned out to be this big conspiracy theory. It was all BS, that's why I had so many different stories."

     In October 2000 Michelle Byrom went on trial for conspiracy to kill her husband for his life insurance money. While Joey Gillis, the supposed triggerman, did not testify, Edward Jr., having recanted his jailhouse confessions to his mother took the stand for the prosecution.

     Michelle Byrom's attorney decided to withhold the introduction of her son's jailhouse letters until Edward Jr.'s cross-examination. But when it came time to enter the letters into evidence, the judge ruled they could not be introduced mid-trial. While the defense attorney was allowed to grill Edward Jr. about the contents of his confessions, not having the actual letters as exhibits hurt the defense.

     On November 18, 2000 the jury found Michelle Byrom guilty as charged. On the advice of her attorney she waived her right to a jury-determined sentence, instead putting her fate into the hands of the trial judge. This turned out to be an unwise decision. The judge handed Michelle Byrom the death sentence.

     In 2001, Joey Gillis, the alleged triggerman, in return for a lighter sentence pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and accessory after the fact. Upon his release from prison in 2009 he denied having any involvement in Mr. Byrom's murder.

     Edward Byrom Jr. also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder. Rewarded for his testimony against his mother he walked out of prison in August 2013.

     In the meantime, death row attorneys working on Michelle Byrom's behalf appealed her conviction on the grounds she had not received adequate legal representation. In 2006 the Mississippi Supreme Court, in a five to three decision, ruled that Byrom's trial attorney's performance had not prejudiced her case. Bryom's appeal for a new trial was denied.

     In March 2014 the Mississippi Supreme Court took up the Byrom appeal again. This time the justices ruled in her favor by reversing the murder-for-hire conviction and remanding the case back to the state circuit court for a new trial. The 57-year-old had been on Mississippi's death row for more than thirteen years.

     Following the Mississippi Supreme Court ruling a local prosecutor re-charged Byrom with conspiracy to murder her husband.

     On July 15, 2015, Michelle Byrom, while maintaining her innocence, pleaded no contest to the murder conspiracy charge. As part of the plea deal the judge sentenced her to time served. For the first time in 16 years she was free.

Dr. Lisa Tseng: When Does a Physician Become a Drug Dealing Murderer?

     In California, as in most states, a cocaine dealer can be convicted of second-degree murder if a person he sold the drug to dies of an overdose. Such a conviction is based on what is referred to as the felony-murder doctrine which holds that if in the commission of a felony (selling cocaine) someone dies, the felon can be held criminally culpable for that death. The element of criminal intent applies to the commission of the felony, not the resultant death. In other words, it doesn't matter that the cocaine dealer didn't intend to kill one of his or her customers. It's still murder.

     Dr. Hsiu-Ying (Lisa) Tseng and her husband ran a storefront medical clinic in Rowland Heights, California, an unincorporated community of 50,000 in Los Angeles County's Gabriel Valley. The clinic had a reputation among prescription drug addicts as a place one could go to acquire prescriptions for drugs such as Xanax, Oxycodone, Methadone, Soma and Vicodin. Dr. Tseng allegedly issued prescriptions for these pain and anti-anxiety drugs without asking too many questions or requiring an acceptable medical reason.

     In 2010 reporters with the Los Angeles Times linked Dr. Tseng's drugs to eight overdose deaths. (Not all of the people who overdosed acquired the prescriptions from the doctor, many of her patients sold the drugs to others who overdosed on them.) According to the Times, Dr. Tseng, from 2007 through 2010 had written more than 27,000 prescriptions for pain and anti-anxiety medicine.

     In March 2012 state, county and federal narcotics officers arrested Dr. Tseng for murder in connection with the 2009 overdose deaths of three men in their twenties, all of whom had gotten prescription drugs at the Rowland Heights clinic. The authorities also charged Dr. Tseng with 20 felony counts of prescribing drugs to patients with no medical need for the medicine. (If this government-imposed standard were enforced strictly across the country we'd need a dozen new prisons just for physicians and chiropractors, and street corner cocaine dealers would see their businesses shoot through the roof.) The 42-year-old doctor was placed in the Los Angeles County Jail under $3 million bond.

      At the time of Dr. Tseng's arrest there had only been a handful of prescription drug/felony-murder overdose prosecutions in the country. The Tseng case was the first of its kind in Los Angeles County. In June 2012, at a preliminary hearing before judge M. L. Villar de Longoria in a Los Angeles Superior Court to determine if the state had sufficient evidence to move the case to the trial phase, the assistant district attorney put on several witnesses. (In preliminary hearings held to determine if the government has a prima facie case there are no defense witnesses.)

     An undercover DEA agent took the stand and said he (or she) had been prescribed pain and anti-anxiety drugs without exhibiting tangible evidence of a physical injury. (What are the physical signs of chronic back pain?) Several family members of Tseng's patients testified that they had begged the doctor to quit issuing their addicted relatives prescription drugs. A representative of the Los Angeles Coroner's Office said he warned Dr. Tseng that many of her patients were dying of prescription drug overdoses.

     On June 25, 2012, after three weeks of testimony, Judge Villar de Longoria ruled that Dr. Tseng could be held over for trial on the three murder charges. The judge, in justifying the ruling, told the defendant that she had "failed to heed repeated red flags" that her patients were drug addicts." (Since it's the role of a jury to make fact determinations like this, the judge's remarks were, in my opinion, inappropriate.)

     Assuming that Dr. Tseng had in fact intentionally or recklessly issued prescriptions to drug addicts, prosecuting her for second-degree murder was risky jurisprudence in a country with millions of prescription drug junkies. Retailers who sell booze aren't prosecuted for murder when drunks kill themselves in car wrecks. Gun dealers who sell firearms to people who use the weapons to blow their brains out aren't prosecuted for murder.

     If convicted of three counts of murder because she prescribed pills to junkies who overdosed on the drugs, Dr. Tseng faced up to life in prison. This was at a time when residents of 18 states, including California, could legally buy "medical" marijuana.

     In October 2015 a jury in Los Angeles County Superior Court found Dr. Tseng guilty of second-degree murder. The judge, on February 5, 2016, sentenced her to 30 years to life in prison.

     In 2017 Dr. Tseng appealed her conviction to California's 2nd District Court of Appeals. In December 2018 the 3-judge panel found there was overwhelming evidence that the appellant, in prescribing drugs to patients who had overdosed, had been recklessly indifferent to their lives. Dr. Tseng's attorneys appealed this decision to the California Supreme Court which in March 2019 declined to review her case. Her conviction stood.  

Postulant Sosefina Amoa's Secret

     Sosefina Amoa came to the United States from the Pacific nation of Samoa to become a Catholic nun. The 26-year-old postulant sought admission to the Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic order that operated nursing homes and assisted living residences for impoverished old people in the United States and around the world.

     On October 15, 2013 Sofefina, following a 7,000 mile journey, arrived at the Little Sisters of the Poor Elderly Center, a 100-unit complex in Washington, D. C. located across the street from Catholic University. Five days later, while alone in her convent room, Amoa gave birth to a six pound two ounce boy she named Joseph.

     To muffle the infant's cries Sosefina covered his nose and mouth with a wool garment. Unable to breathe, the baby died.

     The day after she suffocated her child, Sosefina told one of the nuns she found the dead infant on the sidewalk outside the convent. She and the nun carried the little corpse in a satchel to a nearby hospital.

     When questioned at the hospital by detectives, Sosefina Amoa admitted the baby was hers. Not knowing she was pregnant the stillborn infant had been a complete shock. Police officers, skeptical of her story, searched Amoa's room at the convent.

     A few days later, while being interrogated at the police station, Sosefina Amoa admitted that in trying to silence the infant with the garment she killed him. She said she considered throwing the body into the trash but decided instead to alert one of the nuns.

     Following the autopsy the medical examiner's office announced that Baby Joseph had been asphyxiated. The medical examiner ruled the death a homicide.

     On October 15, 2013 a District of Columbia prosecutor charged Sosefina Amoa with first-degree murder. If convicted she would spend no less than thirty years in prison. Held without bond, jail authorities put the murder suspect on suicide watch.

     At a preliminary hearing on October 24, 2013 the prosecutor offered Amoa a plea deal. If she pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, thirty years in prison would be the maximum rather than the minimum sentence. Her public defender attorney said he and his client would consider the offer.

    In February 2014 Sofefina Amoa pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter. At her sentencing hearing on May 23, 2014 defense attorney Judith Pipe asked federal judge Robert Morin to sentence Amoa to time served after which she would be sent back to her family in Samoa. "Of course this is a case that deserves punishment," said attorney Pipe. "But she will be punished by it every day of her life."

     Assistant U.S. Attorney Cynthia Wright pointed out that Amoa had been "plagued by fear" of being thrown out of the convent and made a "conscious decision" to end her baby's life. The prosecutor argued that Amoa chose to have the baby herself in her room then lied about how he had died.

     Judge Morin sentenced Sofefina Amoa to four years in prison and five years of supervised release. Upon completion of her sentence she would face deportation back to Samoa.

     This sentence, in view of the facts of the case, was lenient. Four years in prison for the killing of an infant was outrageous. By agreeing to the plea of voluntary manslaughter the prosecutor cheapened the life of this infant. 

Jacob Limberio's Death: A Bungled Investigation

     Deputies with the Sandusky County Sheriff's Office, in response to a shooting call, arrived at a house near Castalia, Ohio at nine-forty-five on the night of March 2, 2012. Officers with this northern Ohio sheriff's department found 19-year-old Jacob Limberio lying in a pool of blood on the living room floor. According to the three young men in the house with the body, Mr. Limberio had been dead about fifteen minutes.

     A superficial examination of the corpse revealed an entrance bullet wound on the left side of Limberio's head, and on the opposite side of his skull, the gaping exit wound made by the slug and pieces of the victim's skull. Lying not far from his feet the officers found a .367-Magnum revolver, the presumed source of the fatal head wounds. On the living room floor deputies discovered several spent shell casings (in a revolver the shell casings are not automatically ejected which means these casings had been manually removed from the gun). The death scene was also littered with empty beer bottles.

     According to the three witnesses they each fired the .357-Magnum that night in the backyard. After firing the revolver they returned to the house where, at nine-thirty, Jacob Limberio, while talking to someone on his cellphone, pressed the gun's muzzle to his left temple and pulled the trigger. (Since he was right-handed that would have been awkward.)

     The Sandusky County deputies left the shooting site that night without taking measurements and making sketches of the death scene. The officers also failed to recover the presumed fatal bullet lodged in the ceiling or test the three witnesses for the presence of gunshot residue. The .357-Magnum was not processed for latent fingerprints, no one was asked to take a polygraph test and the slug in the ceiling was not matched with bullets test-fired from the death scene revolver. In other words, there was no investigation into this young man's sudden violent death.

     Just three hours after the fatal shooting Sandusky County coroner Dr. John Wukie, without the benefit of an autopsy, wrote the following in his report: "Reason for death: Gunshot wound to head. Deceased shot self in head, may not have realized gun was loaded." Dr. Wukie ruled Jacob Limberio's death a suicide. (If Limberio didn't know the gun was loaded the manner of his death would have been accidental.)

     In the early morning hours of March 3, 2012 Jacob Limberio's body was released to a local funeral home where the next day it was embalmed.

     That summer, Sandusky County detective William Kaiser, in his report closing the Limberio "investigation," wrote he had found nothing in the case to indicate that this young man's death was nothing more than a "horrible accident." This deputy's conclusion did not square with the coroner's ruling that the death was a suicide. At this point it became obvious that these law enforcement officials didn't know what they were doing.

     On September 25, 2012 Jacob's parents, Mike and Shannon Limberio, paid to have their son's body exhumed and sent to the renowned forensic pathologist in Pittsburgh, Dr. Cyril Wecht. The former medical examiner of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania over his long career had performed thousands of autopsies and testified in hundreds of high-profile murder cases.

     Dr. Wecht's autopsy led him to conclude that Jacob Limberio had been shot from two feet away. In his December 12, 2012 report Dr. Wecht wrote: "I find it extremely difficult to envision a scenario in which Jacob Limberio could have shot himself accidentally or with suicidal intent. Accordingly, it is my professional opinion, based upon a reasonable degree of medical certainty, that the manner of death in this case should be considered as homicide."

     In January 2013 a Sandusky County judge appointed Lucas County prosecutor Dean Henry to head up a new inquiry into Jacob Limberio's death. No arrests had been made and Dr. John Wukie had not changed his manner of death ruling from suicide to homicide.

     In speaking to a local newspaper reporter in October 2012 about Jacob Limberio's death Dr. Wecht said, "Even in the most remote county in America, this is a case that would require an autopsy. It's a no-brainer, not even a close call. It's a case that requires extensive investigation by homicide detectives. It requires the collection of all evidence, including the bullet that's still lodged in the ceiling."

     In July, 2013 Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine took control of the criminal investigation into Mr. Limberio's sudden and violent death.

     In August 2015 Jacob's parents, Mike and Shannon Limberio, appeared on the "Dr. Phil" television show along with Dr. Wecht who opined that the young man's death had been a criminal homicide. The show also featured two of the witnesses to the shooting who said they had grown tired of being considered, by many, as homicide suspects. As a result they wanted to take polygraph tests to clear their names.

     On November 20, 2015, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine announced that a Sandusky County grand jury concluded that the Limberio shooting had been an accident. This finding closed the case as a criminal matter. 

The Leila Fowler Murder Case

     Barry Fowler lived with his fiancee and his three children in Valley Springs, a central California town of 7,500 60 miles southeast of Sacramento in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

     On Saturday evening, April 27, 2013, Barry Fowler's 12-year-old son Isiah and his 8-year-old daughter were home alone while he attended a little league baseball game. That evening Crystal Walters, the children's mother received a call from her son Isiah who reported that an intruder had just run out of the house. Crystal called 911 and informed the dispatcher that, "My children are at home alone and a man just ran out of our house. My older son was in the bathroom and my daughter started screaming. He [the boy] came out and a man was in the house. They [the children] said they're okay. My daughter is freaking out right now." 

     Deputies with the Calaveras County Sheriff's Office, upon arrival at the Fowler house, found the 8-year-old girl, Leila Fowler, bleeding to death from several stab wounds. (She died shortly after arriving at a nearby hospital. Based on the context of Crystal Walter's 911 call, Leila was presumably stabbed sometime between her brother's call to their mother and the arrival of the police.)

     The victim's 12-year-old brother Isiah described the intruder as a tall man with long gray hair. At some point after the man ran off the boy discovered his dying sister. (I don't know if crime scene investigators recovered a bloody knife, made a blood spatter analysis or collected the clothing worn by the brother.) According to media reports the officers found no evidence that theft had been a motive for the intrusion. There was no physical evidence of a break-in. The intruder could have gained entry by knocking on the door.

     The forensic pathologist who performed Leila Fowler's autopsy determined the cause of death to be shock and bleeding. The manner of death: homicide by stabbing.

     Investigators with the Calaveras County Sheriff's Office, operating on the intruder theory, launched a massive manhunt for Leila Fowler's killer. The investigation included rounding up and questioning the area's registered sex offenders. With a murderous home invader on the loose residents of the community locked their doors and loaded their guns.

     A week or so into the murder investigation rumors surfaced that detectives now considered Isiah, the Fowler boy, as a prime suspect. On May 11, two weeks after the murder, deputies arrested the victim's 12-year-old brother. Detectives also searched the Fowler house and walked away with several knives. (This suggests they did not have the murder weapon.) Charged as an adult with second-degree murder the Fowler boy was placed into a juvenile detention center.

     At a press conference following Isiah Fowler's arrest, Sheriff Gary Kuntz said, "Citizens of Calaveras County, you can sleep a little better tonight."

     On May 13, 2013, two days after Isiah's arrest, the murder suspect's father told an Associated Press reporter that he will believe his son is innocent until he sees evidence that proves otherwise. "If they have the evidence, well that's another story. We're an honest family," Barry Fowler said. (Detectives must have interrogated the boy without acquiring a confession.)

     On May 15, 2013 after a closed juvenile hearing, defense attorney Mark Reichel in speaking to an Associated Press reporter said his young client may have lied about encountering a long-haired man in the house. Reichel added that such an admission was not evidence of the boy's guilt. "How does a 12-year-old commit the perfect crime?" he asked.

     The murder suspect's second attorney, Steve Presser, raised doubts that his client was old enough to assist in his own defense. "Can a 12-year-old be psychologically, intellectually and emotionally mature enough to aid his attorneys in defending himself against the most serious of charges? We have no reason to have any doubts about our client's innocence," he said. "We have questions. Why do the police think the minor did this? And how did it not lead to an immediate arrest and take 2,000 hours of resources by the sheriff's office and the FBI?"

     In October 2015 a Calaveras County judge in a trial without a jury found Isiah Fowler guilty of second-degree murder. The juvenile's attorney appealed the conviction on the grounds the boy's confessions were unalike and not supported by the evidence. According to the defense the boy had been pressured by his father to cooperate with detectives.

     In February 2018 three judges on Californian's 3rd District Court of Appeals reversed the conviction. 

     Isiah Fowler was retried for second-degree murder in June 2018. He was found guilty by Superior Court Judge Susan C. Harlan who sentenced the 17-year-old to 16 years to life in prison.

The Robert Taylor Murder Case

     At eight-thirty in the morning of September 11, 2008, 52-year-old Robert Taylor called 91l to report the downing of his 63-year-old wife in their south Manatee County, Florida swimming pool. From 1994 to 2007 Mr. Taylor had been a Manatee County Sheriff's Office corrections deputy. He met his wife Pamela in 2004. She was a nurse at an assisted living facility and at the Manatee County Jail.

     Sheriff's deputies responding to the 911 call found Pamela Taylor lying at the edge of the pool. Robert Taylor said he went to bed around midnight and when he got up that morning found his wife floating face-down in the water. Although Mr. Taylor said he just pulled his wife's body out of the deep end, his clothes and shoes were not wet. When the first officer arrived at the scene Mr. Taylor, with his dead wife's body sprawled out beside the swimming pool, was making himself breakfast. While investigators suspected foul play the case wasn't seriously investigated and Robert Taylor was not charged with causing his wife's death.

     In December 2010, medical examiner Dr. Russell Vega ruled Pamela Taylor's death a homicide by drowning. (Since Dr. Vega conducted an autopsy it can be assumed that Pamela's body had been exhumed, and that the initial autopsy had been performed by someone who  ruled the death accidental or undetermined. It's even possible there was no initial autopsy.) The delayed manner of death ruling was followed by a criminal investigation which in turn led to Robert Taylor's arrest on February 8, 2011. Charged with second-degree murder he was booked into the Manatee County lockup a few days later. (He was later transferred to the Sarasota County Jail.) Since the suspect had not confessed and there were no eyewitnesses to his wife's drowning the case against him was circumstantial.

     The Taylor murder trial got underway in Bradenton, Florida on May 1, 2012. Prosecutor Art Brown put the medical examiner, Dr. Russell Vega, on the stand. Dr. Vega testified that the drowning victim had bruises on her legs, fractured ribs and a large contusion on her skull. Because the water was only five foot six inches deep at its deepest, Mrs. Taylor could have tip-toed out of the deep end.

     Ruth Mueller, a neighbor, told the jury that on the night of the drowning she heard Mr. and Mrs. Taylor yelling at each other. Next came a sound consistent with a body hitting cement, then the sound of gurgling water. On one occasion Mrs. Taylor had come to Mr. Mueller's house with a bruised and bloodied face. The witness cleaned her wounds and escorted her back to her kitchen where Mueller saw blood stains on the wall. "Robert," she said, "look what you've done to your wife." He didn't respond.

     Another neighbor, Eric Barr, took the stand and said that just days before the drowning Mrs. Taylor, in referring to the defendant, had said, "He's going to kill me." When the witness asked Mr. Taylor to "chill out," the defendant threatened his life.

     On Wednesday, May 2, 2012 the prosecutor played a video-tape of the police interrogation of the suspect conducted shortly after his arrest. The defendant said that he last saw his wife at 8:15 on the evening of her death. He was playing a computer game and she complained that his chair was making noise. This led to an argument. According to to Mr. Taylor his wife had been drinking sherry and scotch was drunk and in a "nasty" mood. (At the time of her death the victim's blood-alcohol level was twice the driving legal limit of .08 percent.) The next day, when the defendant got up at eight he heard dogs barking out by the swimming pool. That's when he found his wife floating face-down in the water.

     Jennifer Fury, the defense attorney, did not put the defendant on the stand. Because the prosecution's case was circumstantial, attorney Fury argued that the state had not proven her client's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. (The case was being tried before an eight-person jury.)

     The lawyers made their closing arguments on the morning of May 4. 2012. Defense attorney Fury asked the jury to consider Pamela Taylor's death a tragic accident. The intoxicated older woman tripped over a garden hose and fell, unconscious, into the pool and drowned. The prosecution, the defense attorney said, had no direct evidence proving that Robert Taylor had caused her death.

     Prosecutor Brown presented the death as an intentional homicide motivated by money. After Mrs. Taylor's death the defendant received a $180,000 life insurance payout. Two weeks before killing his wife the defendant tried to take out another life insurance policy, but the premium check he sent to the insurance company bounced.

     The jury, after deliberating less than three hours found Robert Taylor guilty of second-degree murder. The judge sentenced the 56-year-old to twenty years in prison.

Timothy Tyler's "Three Strikes and You're Out" Sentence

    In 1991, 22-year-old Timothy Tyler, an avid user of the hallucinogenic drug LSD was a so-called "Deadhead" who traveled the country attending Grateful Dead concerts. That year while en route to a rock concert in California DEA agents arrested him on the charge of conspiracy to possess LSD with the intent to distribute.

     Tyler from his home in Florida had mailed an out-of-state friend five grams of the drug. As it turned out, the friend was a DEA snitch. Timothy Tyler had been arrested twice before on LSD charges. On both of these occasions the judge sentenced him to probation.

     In 1986, five years before Tyler's third LSD arrest, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act that contained a "three strikes and you're out" provision. Under the new federal sentencing guidelines judges, without regard to a defendant's age, lack of violent crime record, mental state or drug addiction, were required to impose a sentence of life without parole on a defendant's third drug conviction.

     Under the 1986 Anti-Drug Act prosecutors were supposed to use the law to bring down major drug traffickers. Instead, as could be predicted, prosecutors went after low-level drug offenders like Timothy Tyler. Federal prosecutors did this because it was easy and made them look like real crime-fighters. (The three strikes and you're out sentencing provision is no longer in effect.)

     The federal prosecutor in Florida offered Tyler a plea bargain. If he agreed to testify against his co-defendants he would go to prison for ten years. Since his father was one of the co-defendants in the case Tyler turned down the deal. Unfortunately for him his public defender attorney failed to inform him of the mandatory life without parole sentence for three-time losers. Tyler pleaded guilty but refused to testify against the others. When he learned of the mandatory life sentence law he tried to withdraw his guilty plea but it was too late.

     In 1992, a federal district judge imprisoned Timothy Tyler to life without parole. His father was handed a lesser sentence and died in prison on April 2001. Tyler was serving his time at the federal prison in Waymart, Pennsylvania in the northeastern corner of the state.

     On April 23, 2014, Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole announced proposed changes to the presidential clemency criteria. Pursuant to the new policy, clemency could be granted to persons who met the following conditions: The clemency applicant must be a low-level, nonviolent offender without a significant criminal history. If convicted today for the same offense, the modern sentence would be shorter than the one imposed. To be eligible for clemency under the new policy, the applicant must also have served at least ten years of his sentence, and his prison record must reflect good conduct.

     The clemency policy announcement gave Timothy Tyler some hope that he might not spend the rest of his life behind bars for mailing five grams of LSD in 1991.

     In August 2016, Tyler was one of 111 federal prisoners granted reduced sentences by President Obama. He was released from prison later that year.

The Halifax Mass Murder Plot

     On Thursday morning February 12, 2015 a caller on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Crime Stoppers tip line caused serious concern with a disturbing report. The tipster said that 19-year-old James Gamble from Timberlea, Nova Scotia, a suburb of Halifax; a 23-year-old woman named Lindsay Kantha Souvannarath from Geneva, Illinois; and a 20-year-old Nova Scotia man, Randall Steven Shepherd planned to shoot as many shoppers as they could on St. Valentine's Day at the Halifax Shopping Centre on the west side of the city.

     The informant said the group had acquired the necessary weaponry to commit Canada's version of America's 1929 St. Valentine's Day massacre. After the mass murder the plotters planned to take their own lives.

     The persons identified by the RCMP tipster revealed through photographs and comments on an Internet chat stream their obsession with serial killers and bloody murder scenes. The American, Lindsay Souvannarath wrote messages on her Twitter account she didn't want posted until after her self-inflicted death.

     At one-twenty in the morning of February 13, 2015 police officers watching James Gamble's Timberlea residence observed a couple believed to be the suspect's parents drive away from the house. After pulling the parents over a detective called the house and spoke to their son.

      James Gamble, whose house was surrounded by an Emergency Response Team, told the detective on the phone that he was unarmed and ready to exit the dwelling. Instead he shot himself to death in the dwelling. Inside the house, besides Gamble's body, officers found three loaded rifles.

     An hour after the suicide in Timberlea, officers took Lindsay Souvannarath into custody when she flew into the Halifax International Airport from her home in Illinois. Police officers also arrested Randall Shepherd who was at the airport to greet her.

     Shortly after her arrest Lindsay Souvannarath confessed that she and the others intended to randomly murder as many people as possible at the Halifax shopping mall.

     A local prosecutor charged the American woman and her 20-year-old Nova Scotia accomplice with conspiracy to commit murder. In the meantime detectives with Nova Scotia's Serious Incident Team were looking into the background of the conspirator who committed suicide. The investigators were trying to determine the extent of his participation, if any, in the mass shooting plot.

     At a press conference held on Saturday February 14, St. Valentine's Day, Justice Minister Peter MacKay announced that the mass murder plot was not "culturally motivated" or linked to Islamic terrorism. The justice minister called the murder conspirators "murderous misfits." Mr. MacKay acknowledged, however, that murderous misfits like the ones in custody could be exploited by terrorist organizations. He said, "An individual who would so recklessly and with bloody intent plot to do something like this I would suggest would also be susceptible to being motivated by groups like ISIS and others."

     On February 17, 2015 Charles Aukema, one of Lindsay Souvannarath's professors at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, told a reporter with the Cedar Rapids Gazette that his former English student "knew how to put together a sentence and had a command of detail." The professor added, "Sometimes it was pretty sick detail."

     On April 11, 2017 Lindsay Souvannarath pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder in the Halifax mall murder plot.

     In September 2018 the judge sentenced Lindsay Souvannarath to life. The judge sentenced Randall Steven Shepherd to ten years in prison.

Donnie C. Lance's Death Sentence

     Sometime between the hours of midnight and five in the morning of November 8, 1997, 40-year-old Donnie Cleveland Lance kicked in the front door of a house in Maysville, Georgia and murdered his ex-wife and her boyfriend. Mr. Lance killed the boyfriend, Dwight "Butch" Wood Jr. by shooting him twice with a shotgun. He murdered his ex-wife Sabrina "Joy" Lance by beating her to death with the butt of the weapon.

     Charged with two counts of first-degree murder Donnie Lance went on trial in February 1999. The prosecution, without a confession, an eyewitness, the murder weapon or any physical evidence connecting the defendant to the crime scene had a relatively weak, circumstantial case. Besides the testimony of a pair of jailhouse snitches who claimed Mr. Lance while in custody talked about killing his wife and her boyfriend, the prosecutor had to rely on the defendant's motive and past bad behavior.

     During his marriage to Joy Lance as well as after the divorce the defendant stalked, beat and kidnapped her. He had on numerous occasions threatened to kill her and once asked one of her relatives what it would take to "do away with her."

     In April 1999 the jury found Donnie Lance guilty as charged and sentenced him to death.

     Lance's appeals attorneys contested the death sentence on grounds that the trial lawyer failed to present evidence of the defendant's serious mental impairment due to low I.Q., brain injuries caused by car wrecks, a gunshot wound and prolonged alcoholism. In April 2009 a Georgia appeals court re-sentenced Donnie Lance to life in prison.

     The Lance case prosecutor appealed this decision to the Georgia Supreme Court which in 2010 reinstated the death sentence.

    On September 2019 a state appellate court denied Lance's request for DNA testing and a new trial. In early January 2020 the United States Supreme Court declined to halt the scheduled execution.

     On January 29, 2020 at the state penitentiary at Jackson, Georgia, 66-year-old Donnie Lance was put to death by lethal injection.