Location |
Defendant(s) |
Date of Alleged Crime |
Madison
County, AL |
Betty Wilson |
May 22, 1992 |
Betty Wilson and her twin sister, Peggy Lowe, were tried for allegedly
hiring handyman, James White to kill Betty's wealthy husband, Dr. Jack
Wilson, at the Wilsons' home in Huntsville. White was certifiably mentally ill,
diagnosed with delusional schizophrenia. He had spent his life in and out
of jail and mental institutions, was an alcoholic, a drug abuser, and a
child molester. He was dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Army for
stabbing an officer and shooting at his own men.
After making a deal for life in prison for himself, he admitted he had lied
about Betty Wilson. The state had acknowledged that without White's
testimony there was no case against Betty Wilson. White was not tried until
after he testified at both sisters' trials. He has stated that the
prosecution coerced him to testify against the sisters by threatening to
send him to the electric chair for capital murder. Peggy Lowe was acquitted
but Betty was convicted and sentenced to life without parole. The case was
profiled on a 48 Hours episode. (BW)
[5/05] |
Los Angeles County, CA |
Patricia Wright |
Sept 19, 1981 |
Patricia Gordy Wright was convicted in
1999 of the 1981 murder of her ex-husband, Willie Jerome Scott. Jerome was found stabbed
to death in his motor home while it was parked in a bad area in downtown Los
Angeles.
Jerome's homosexual lifestyle led to the dissolution of the couple's
marriage. It also led him to some unsavory partners and placed him in some
dangerous situations. No physical or forensic evidence connects Wright to
the crime.
Read More by
Clicking Here
|
San Diego
County, CA |
Jane Dorotik |
Feb 13, 2000 (Valley Center) |
With little evidence, Jane Dorotik was
convicted of murdering her husband Bob. Though physically incapable of
lifting her husband, the prosecution contended she carried her husband's
body long distances and lifted it into and out of a large pickup truck.
The
prosecution withheld evidence from the defense that two eyewitnesses had
seen Bob twelve hours after he was allegedly murdered. These witnesses
placed him near or with two Hispanic looking men at a location that was
close to where his body was found. (JD30
p3) [9/06] |
San Diego County, CA |
Cynthia Sommer |
Feb 18, 2002 |
Cynthia Sommer was convicted of murdering her husband,
23-year-old Todd Sommer. She was alleged to have poisoned him with
arsenic. Todd was a U.S. Marine Corps sergeant and
died in February 2002 after collapsing at the couple's apartment at Marine
Corps Air Station Miramar. A pathologist first suggested that Todd's
death was due to a heart attack. Months later, an examination of
Todd's organs found large amounts of arsenic in his liver and kidneys.
At trial in Jan. 2007 there was a lack of evidence that Cynthia bought any arsenic or
poisoned Todd. Since the science of arsenic poisoning was fuzzy,
defense experts were prepared to argue that Todd died of the effects
of the now-banned weight loss pill Ephedra, or a prescription drug taken for
diarrhea, or a rare, undiagnosed condition.
Cynthia's mother testified
that, in the days after Todd's death, Cynthia curled into a fetal position
on her bed and wept. Cynthia got a tattoo with her husband's name,
birth date, date of death and the Latin words Semper Fidelis, or “always
faithful,” the Marine Corps motto.
However,
prosecution rebuttal witnesses testified that Cynthia used her husband's
life insurance money to have her breasts enlarged, have sex with three Marines,
hold raucous parties, and perform in a thong and wet T-shirt contest at a
Tijuana bar, flashing her breasts.
In Dec. 2007, Cynthia's conviction was overturned due to ineffective
assistance of counsel. After the prosecution performed new tests on
tissue samples taken from Todd's body, experts could find no evidence of
arsenic. Because of the new evidence, the prosecution dropped charges
against Cynthia in April 2008 and she was released from prison. She
had been imprisoned for more than two years. (www.freecynthia.com)
(LA
Times) [8/09] |
Volusia
County, FL |
Virginia Larzelere |
Mar 8, 1991 (Edgewater) |
Virginia
Larzelere was
convicted of murdering her husband Norman in their dental office. She was
sentenced to death. An intruder had robbed the office safe of gold coins,
cash, and narcotic drugs and had shot her husband through a closed waiting
room door. (JD04) |
Butts County,
GA |
Jean Long |
Jan 23, 2003 |
Beverly Jean Long was charged
with murdering her husband, James Long, in his workshop. According to
police, she cracked his skull, dragged his body, poured an accelerant on top
of him, and ignited it. Investigators claimed to find pour patterns on the
floor where the accelerant puddled. They said Jean's story that the fire
started when James was filling up a kerosene heater did not make sense.
They noted that the red filling can that Jean mentioned was found undamaged
outside the workshop.
Defense
investigators debunked the pour pattern evidence. According to them, James
mistakenly poured gasoline into a hot, but unlit kerosene heater. Gasoline
residue was found in the heater. The gasoline exploded, setting James and
his workshop on fire. While he was running around on fire, James apparently
hit his head on a metal worktable, cracking his skull. The red filling can
found outside the workshop was apparently not the one that was used as it
contained kerosene. At trial, Jean Long was acquitted. (Forensic Files)
[9/07] |
Ada County, ID |
Donna Thorngren |
Jan 12, 2003 (Meridian) |
Donna Kay Thorngren was convicted of the murder of her 42-year-old husband,
Curtis Thorngren. Curt was found shot to death in a bathroom in
their home. Two months before the murder, Curt's life insurance,
payable to Donna, had been increased to a payout of $320,000. The
change was effective as of Jan 1, 2003, 11 days before Curt's murder. However, at Hewlett-Packard, Curt's place of employment,
all employees were
given the opportunity to increase their policies with new benefits effective
the same date.
Read More
by Clicking Here
|
Bristol
County, MA |
Christina Martin |
Jan 21, 1990 (Westport) |
Christina Martin was
convicted of murdering her boyfriend, Richard Alfredo, 61. Alfredo died in
his home after a long history of heart disease. Initially, it was assumed
the disease was the cause of his death and no autopsy was performed.
Alfredo's assets worth about $25,000 went to his estranged wife and her
children while Martin and her children continued to live in the home she had
shared with Alfredo. Four weeks after Alfredo's death, rumors surfaced that
Alfredo was poisoned. Martin's daughter had told high school friends that
Alfredo had made sexual advances toward her, and that her mother got revenge
by serving him Jell-O laced with LSD.
Read More by
Clicking Here
|
Genesee
County, MI |
Sharee Miller |
Nov 9, 1999 (Flint) |
While married to a different man,
Sharee Miller had an online romance with an ex-police detective, Jerry
Cassaday, from Reno, Nevada, whom she met on the Internet. Sharee had told
him numerous lies such as being wealthy. She had also traveled to Reno five
times and had a physical affair. In her emails, she said she was married to
a terminally ill husband, Jeff, who would die soon and that they could be
together soon. Then she told him her husband died, but she had to marry his
brother, Bruce, because of family pressure. She twice told Jerry she was
pregnant with his child.
Read More by
Clicking Here
|
Forrest County, MS |
Stephanie Stephens |
May 1, 2001
(Hattiesburg) |
Stephanie Stephens was convicted of the murder of her
59-year-old husband, Dr. David
Stephens. David was chief of surgery at Hattiesburg's Forrest General
Hospital. David appeared to have died in his sleep, while Stephanie
slept next to him. However, two drugs were found in his system, Etomidate, an anesthetic, and Atricurium, a drug used to relax muscles
during surgery for patients on life support. Without life support,
Atricurium is lethal as it will paralyze a person's heart and lungs.
Read More by Clicking Here
|
Clark County, NV |
Tabish & Murphy |
Sept 17, 1998 (Las Vegas) |
Rick Tabish, a trucking
contractor, and Sandy Murphy, a one-time topless dancer, were convicted in
2000 of murdering Murphy's boyfriend, Ted Binion. Binion, 55, was formerly
an executive of the Horseshoe Casino and had an estate worth $50 million.
Tabish and Murphy allegedly killed Binion by forcing him to swallow a
mixture of black tar heroin and the sedative Xanax. Murphy stood to inherit
about $1.5 million from Binion's estate. Tom Dillard, an investigator hired
by the Binion family, gathered evidence against the pair and got police to
file charges. Defense argued at trial that Binion was a well-known heroin
addict and had simply overdosed.
Binion
reportedly became depressed in March 1998 after the Nevada Casino Gaming
Control board permanently barred him from his family's casino because of his
reported drug use and his association with a known mobster. The day before
Binion's death, he was prescribed a month's supply of Xanax, which is useful
for combating the withdraw symptoms of heroin. However, it seemed unlikely
that he planned to use the Xanax for that purpose, for later that day, he
bought 12 balloons of black tar heroin from a drug dealer. Tabish and
Murphy's convictions were overturned in 2003 and the two were acquitted on
retrial in 2004. (L.A.
Times) (American Justice) [12/06] |
Nye County, NV |
Shasta Roever |
Jan 17, 1993 (Pahrump) |
“Shasta”
Lerlene Evonne Roever was charged with murdering her live in fiancé, Ian Wilhite,
in part because Wilhite was shot with a .22 caliber bullet and she owned a
.22 caliber gun, although ballistics soon ruled out her gun. Wilhite had
moved to Pahrump from Las Vegas because his life had been threatened there.
At trial the key witness and main investigator lied on direct examination
and impeached their testimony on cross-examination. Throughout the trial,
this investigator fraternized with the jurors in the jurors lounge, not just
on the day he testified. His excuse was that it was the only smoking area
in the court building. Roever was convicted but the Nevada Supreme Court
overturned the conviction and noted, “There was no physical evidence to link
the defendant to the crime.”
At the second
trial Roever insisted on testifying, but her public defender avoided or
refused to ask important questions regarding her husband's background and
associates. The subject was not even broached. Roever's public defender
refused to subpoena anyone on the two-page list of witnesses that she gave
him and even insulted her uncle, the only witness that was there for her.
This time the DA admitted there was no evidence, so he felt justified in
trying her based on whatever stories or opinions his witnesses could
fabricate about her.
As an example,
one witness testified that Roever had stated she had killed her own mother
and a baby. Roever had shared with this witness the story of the drowning
death of her mother and the story of the death of her child who was
asphyxiated during delivery by his own umbilical cord. Roever had an
ex-husband whom she had thrown out years before for lying and stealing;
his relatives were there to testify. The ex-husband's mother who once told
Roever she was in love with her fiancé (the murder victim) and wished he
would be interested in older women, told some tales that Roever hadn't a
clue about. Even though the jurors stated their concern about the lack of
evidence, Roever was convicted again. Later the Chief Deputy DA argued in
his response to the Nevada Supreme Court that ultimately, the truth behind
the stories is immaterial. In fact, he said, prosecutors assumed the
stories weren't true.
Roever has
repeatedly been offered plea bargains which would have allowed her to get
out years ago, so maintaining her conviction is a matter of pride for
prosecutors rather than a feeling that she must be locked up as a danger to
society. (JD02)
[6/05] |
Angelina County, TX |
Desiree Shaw |
Aug 11, 1996 (Diboll) |
Desiree Ann Weaver Shaw was convicted of the shooting murder of her husband,
Royce Shaw. (IIPPI) |
Cameron County, TX |
Susan Mowbray |
Sept 16, 1987 |
Susie
Mowbray was convicted of murdering her husband, J. William “Bill” Mowbray,
Jr. After
incessantly protesting her innocence, she was granted a retrial in 1996 by a
Texas appeals court that ruled prosecutors concealed a crucial report on the
blood splatter evidence that supported Mowbray's innocence. When retried in
1998, forensic evidence supported the defense claim that Mowbray's husband
committed suicide while she was asleep next to him in bed. Dr. Herbert
MacDonnell testified that it was likely Bill Mowbray committed suicide.
Mowbray was acquitted. [10/05]
|
Harris County, TX |
Frances Newton |
Apr 7, 1987 |
Frances Elaine Newton
was sentenced to death for the of murders of her husband and two children.
The husband, Adrian Newton, was found shot to death in the family's
apartment along with
the couple's two children, Alton, 7, and Farrah, 1. The
apartment was located at 6126 West Mount Houston Road, Houston, Texas. Less than
a month before the murders, Frances purchased a $50,000 life insurance policy
on Adrian and forged his name to complete the deal. She also purchased
a separate $50,000 policy on Farrah. At the time of the murders both Frances
and Adrian were seeing other people.
Read More by Clicking Here
|
Powhatan
County, VA |
Beverly Monroe |
Mar 4, 1992 |
Beverly Anne Monroe was convicted of the murder of Roger Zygmunt Comte de la
Burdé, her wealthy lover. De la Burdé, 60, died at Windsor on his
220-acre estate. His body was found on a couch in his library with a
bullet in his head from his own revolver. Monroe had been his
companion for 12 years. In 2002, a federal judge overturned Monroe's
conviction due to the withholding of exculpatory evidence by the
prosecution. The judge also ruled that “The physical evidence
necessary to show whether [de la Burdé's] death was a murder or a suicide
was . . . either tainted or lost.”
Monroe was subsequently released from prison. (TruthInJustice)
[5/08] |
Wise County,
VA |
Merry Pease |
Nov 18, 1993 (Exeter) |
Merry Pease was convicted of murdering her husband, Dennis Pease. Merry
maintains her husband shot her, after which he turned the gun on himself and
committed suicide. Merry was prosecuted on the theory that she shot
her husband, and then shot herself to cover-up her crime. The case
prosecutor withheld evidence at trial such as a medical examiner's report
that ruled her husband's death a suicide. Merry's conviction has been
overturned twice, but the Virginia Supreme Court reinstated her second
conviction. Merry was paroled in 2006.
(Bristol
Herald Courier) (American
Justice) [12/05] |
|