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A general practitioner in Germany, identified only as Dr. Joern K., was killed in March 2019 when he picked up a package in front of his medical office in Enkenbach-Alsenborn, and it exploded. Then, a woman and her daughter were injured when they touched a bomb hidden in the firewood they used for their stove. The device exploded inside their home in Otterberg, not far from Dr. K’s office. Police immediately investigated, shared notes, and concluded that the woman, her daughter, and the GP all shared one thing in common. They knew Bernhard Grauman, a 59-year-old gardener who died a few days before the death of Dr. K. Grauman was found dead in his bed in the small town of Mehlingen. At the time, it was thought he might have poisoned himself. Could Grauman, somehow, be involved in the death of the doctor and the wounding of the woman and her little girl? Could he have taken revenge from beyond the grave? Very possibly. You see, Grauman had experience working with black powder, used in both explosive devices, as part of his association with groups that staged medieval festivals and reenactments. And the dead and injured had run-ins with Grauman in the past. With the Kaiserslautern public prosecutor’s office, Udo Gehring said he wouldn’t be surprised to find Grauman planted more bombs before he died. “It is all about clearing up the cases around the explosives. What is behind it? Might there be something else behind it? How did it come to it? And most of all, whether there might be more explosives out there,” Gehring said. Because of that, police immediately set up a hotline for people who might have had personal or business relationships with Grauman that went bad. Talk about a big club. Grauman must have had plenty of enemies, or at least people he’d felt wronged him. More than sixty people who were concerned enough that Grauman might have targeted them called a special hotline. The police didn’t find any other bombs, but the investigation remained open. Grauman left behind, in addition to his exploding presents, a wife and two children. WTF! Who Buried The Mercedes? Yeah. Good question. Who buried a 1990s Mercedes convertible on the property of a mansion in Atherton, California? Better question: why? This mystery broke the morning of October 20, 2022, when a landscaping crew unearthed the expensive auto buried four to five feet under the lawn of an expensive home. Since it was such a surprise and immediately opened a Pandora’s Box of questions, the Atherton Police Department was called. Police officers responded with a crew of cadaver dogs because, well, why not? And guess what? These dogs, in the words of the official police department press release, “made a slight notification of possible human remains.” In other words, these highly trained canines sniffed a dead body. Maybe. Oh, good, Lord! Could there be a body buried near the car? Maybe or maybe not. Police Commander Dan Larsen says the dogs might be responding to human blood or vomit instead of a body. Is anything else suspicious? Well, yes. Police also discovered several unopened bags of concrete inside the buried Mercedes. Wow! Does that have “gangster” written all over it, or what? Investigators are betting this car was buried sometime in the 1990s. And you aren’t going to believe who owned the home in the 300 block of Stockbridge Avenue at that time. None other than Johnny Lew, that’s who! The Mercury News reports Johnny built the 12,000 square-foot French-style estate in the 1990s, about the time of the burial. And did he have a criminal record or what? Johnny Lew was convicted of second-degree murder in the 1960s but got out on a technicality. Then he did time behind bars in the 19700s for two cents of attempted murder. And in the late 1990s, he was arrested on insurance fraud charges. Johnny, no rocket scientist, tried to get a couple of undercover agents to sink his $1.2 million yacht. The Mercury News wrote that Johnny said he did that on orders of “his people” in an Asian mob. Okay. Now, we can’t talk to Johnny about this. The guy died, damn it. More on the Mercedes: It was stolen from Palo Alto, California, in 1992, and the auto’s owner is also dead and buried now. Legally, it seems. Next-door neighbor Gary Dillabough, was out of town when landscapers found the car. He says this phone lit up with fifty text messages from friends, and he still can’t believe this is happening. “It’s just such a weird, out-of-the-box thing,” Gary said. “It’s just hard to get your arms around. It’s like, maybe you bury people, but bury a car? It’s so stupid.” Now, as of the writing of this post, police had not found a human body. Nor were investigators saying anything else about why that car might have been buried in the lawn. Stay tuned! It’s November 2, 1945. 3 p.m. Thomas McMonigle is racing through Campbell, California, driving faster than humanly possible, with a fourteen-year-old girl beside him. She’s screaming bloody murder, clawing at the passenger-side window, desperately trying to escape. Thomas would love to give her a good punch to the back of her head to get her to shut the fuck up, but he keeps both hands on the wheel and stares straight ahead. The last thing he needs right now is to run into a cop. Oh Damn! This is nearly as bad. A woman at her mailbox is staring into Thomas’s car, looking like she’s seeing worse than a ghost. The lady’s looking right at the girl who’s still screaming at the top of her lungs. Thomas wonders, Did she see me? The Murder of Thora Chamberlain: A Shocking True Crime Story Read More...

Wesley Brownlee was on a mission, says Stockton, California, Police Chief Stanley McFadden, “he was out hunting” when he was arrested before the sun rose, October 15, 2022. For McFadden and his team, it was the end of a year-long investigation of what seemed to be a serial killer. A gunman had been killing people in Stockton the past year; seven shootings, six fatal, all linked by ballistics and video evidence. Juan Vasquez Serrano, 39, was the first to fall. He was shot multiple times in Oakland at about 4:15 a.m. on April 10, 2021. Like Juan, all of those killed were all men. One woman who was shot survived. She, and the men, were all attacked within a few miles of each other. Beyond that, was there a common denominator that the victims all had in common? Well, several were homeless, and five were Latino. But that’s all. The killer was caught on video at several crime scenes. Still, McFadden says investigators didn’t have a single solid lead and, indeed, no suspects until community leaders convinced residents to come forward with information. From there, it was “old-fashioned police work,” McFadden says, that led his team to Brownlee. After receiving several solid tips, officers started by staking out the suspect at his home. On the morning of October 15, a team followed Brownlee as he drove away from his house at about 2. a.m. Brownlee drove through parks, and areas with little street lighting, stopping, looking around, and then moving again. McFadden is convinced Brownlee was looking for his next victim when he was arrested. But the chief has not said yet what might have motivated Brownlee to pull the trigger so many times. Brownlee is expected to make his first court appearance on October 18, 2022. The teacher’s got a “kill list.” (Not this teacher!) The world must be spinning out of control. That’s all I could think of when I heard about what has to be the most incredible and shocking true crime story I have heard in a while. Quite simply, a fifth-grade school teacher writes a “kill list.” And she shows it to one of her students, a girl named Portia Jones. “She said she wanted to choke us and kill herself,” Portia says. Now the teacher, although Portia’s name was on the list of those whom the teacher wanted to kill, the little girl’s name, the teacher said, was toward the bottom of the list. So she wouldn’t be one of the first to die. Little Portia was not reassured by that, so she did exactly what she should have done. Portia ran to her counselor and the principal of St. Stanislaus School in East Chicago, Illinois, and told them about the kill list. School officials immediately talked to the teacher, Angelica Carrasquillo-Torres, and she said Portia had told the truth. Angelica admitted to having a list of teachers and students she wanted to kill. Then, school officials did exactly what they should not have done. They sent the teacher home and told her not to come back until a full investigation was completed. “They should have never let her walk out them doors,” Portia’s father, Quiannis Jones says. “They should’ve called the police right then and there. That’s a threat on the school.” The cops were not notified of this for another four hours. The Lake County Prosecutor’s Office issued an emergency detention order that evening. Angelica was taken into custody the following day. As this was written, East Chicago police said the investigation was ongoing. But still…what a shocking true crime story. Did you ever think you’d read about an elementary school teacher with a kill list? Teachers and sex crimes While we are thinking of teachers who are more than just creepy, there is the case of Eugene Pratt, a 57-year-old former principal, elementary school teacher, and coach. Eugene taught at-risk children in many Michigan public schools. He’s charged with first-degree criminal sexual assault involving at least 15 boys and young adult men. Now, remember, he has not yet been convicted. However, Eugene is just one of many teachers and school officials accused of sex crimes this year. Fox News Digital discovers the shocking true crime news that in 2022, 269 of America’s educators were arrested for suspected sex crimes involving children. The study covers January 1 to September 30, 2022. So that works out to about one teacher or school administrator, like a principal, arrested daily. At least 199 of the arrested involved alleged crimes against students. The charges range from grooming to raping underage students, according to the story published in the New York Post. “The number of teachers arrested for child sex abuse is just the tip of the iceberg — much as it was for the Catholic Church prior to widespread exposure and investigation in the early 2000s,” Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “The best available academic research, published by the Department of Education, suggests that nearly 10% of public school students suffer from physical abuse between kindergarten and twelfth grade.” “According to that research, the scale of sexual abuse in the public schools is nearly 100 times greater than that of the Catholic Church,” he said. “The question for critics who seek to downplay the extent of public school sexual abuse is this: How many arrests need to happen before you consider it a problem? How many children need to be sexually abused by teachers before you consider it a crisis?” January 14, 1927 — A.J. Mathis, a wealthy, elderly chicken rancher is missing. One of the last of the cowboy sheriffs, Jim McDonald, is convinced A.J. is dead, murdered. And McDonald says he knows who did it and vows to “prove it on her.” McDonald’s leading, and only, suspect is a former salon singer and prostitute, Eva Dugan. Short, stocky, and plain, Eva takes off with a younger man in A.J.’s Dodge Coupe. They drive from Arizona to Texas, before Eva makes her way to White Plains, New York. While she’s on the run, her young friend, Jack, vanishes. And A.J.’s skeleton is discovered buried in a shallow grave. After she’s captured, Eva proclaims her innocence, but is convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Eva says if she was more attractive, if she was a “flapper” she would not have been convicted and certainly would not have been sentenced to death by hanging. A movement grows among people opposed to capital punishment to spare Eva’s life. They fail, and Eva walks to the gallows, all the while proclaiming her innocence. What happens next changes the way Arizona treated those sentenced to death for capital crimes. Never again will anyone hang for murder in Arizona because of what happens the day Eva Dugan dies. Was justice done? Kill. Bury. Forget. A Shocking True Crime Story. You be the judge.

(Lucy Letby) Lucy Letby, a 32-year-old nurse, Oct. 10, 2022, denied charges that she murdered five baby boys and two girls; and tried to kill ten other babies in the neonatal unit of Countess of Chester Hospital in the U.K. Prosecutors at Manchester Crown Court called Lucy a “constant malevolent presence” in the hospital. They accused her of trying to kill one child three times while another died after being injected with air. According to a BBC report, the babies were sometimes injected with air, and other times, they were fed insulin or too much milk. Nick Johnson KC, prosecuting, told jurors the babies’ deaths were “no accident,” nor were they “naturally-occurring tragedies. “Sometimes a baby that she succeeded in killing she did not manage to kill the first time she tried, or even the second time, and in one case even the third time,” Johnson said. Letby’s trial could last as long as six months. Boiling Mommy’s Head on the Stove He doesn’t want anyone to jump to conclusions about his guilt or innocence, but Joel Guy Jr., a 32-year-old from Knoxville, Tennessee, has requested he be executed if convicted of first-degree murder for the deaths of his parents. Joel is accused of not only murdering his parents in their home four years ago, but chopping up their bodies. In fact, police say Joel boiled his mother’s head in a saucepan and tried to dissolve both of his parents’ corpses. Knox County Sheriff’s investigators say they found other parts of Joel’s parents stored in Tupperware. And, yes, his mother’s head was in a saucepan on the kitchen stove. Both Joel Guy Sr. and his wife, Lisa, suffered multiple, vicious stab wounds. Knox County Sheriff’s Office Detective Jeremy McCord labeled his findings as "the most horrific thing I’ve ever encountered in police work – in my life," Joel requested his execution in a letter to the court: Joel wrote: “In the event that I am eventually found guilty of first-degree murder, I contend that the waiver above, if permitted by the court, would free the court to sentence me to death, imprisonment for life without the possibility of parole or imprisonment for life, in spite of the district attorney general’s failure to satisfy the notice requirements of Rule 12.3(b).” But he also wrote that “nothing in this filing is intended to be an admission of guilt…” Investigators think the Guys were killed and butchered by their son a day or two after Thanksgiving 2016. During his trial, the jury was presented with a plan written in Joel's handwriting, an expert said, that detailed how he would kill his parents and cut up their bodies. Joel was sure he'd purchased enough lie to erase any trace of his parents. The plan also included steps to dissolve their bones. It took the jury only three hours to return with a verdict of guilty on five charges: one count of felony murder for killing his mother while committing the first-degree murder of his father. Joel was also found guilty of two counts of felony murder while committing theft and two counts of a corpse's abuse. One question left to answer as of this writing is whether Joel will serve the five life prison terms that come with those convictions consecutively or concurrently. However, there is still one more question that is unanswered. Why? Sheriff’s Major Michael MacLean told reporters, “usually there’s a motivation behind (a crime such as this), but in this case we just don’t know what it was.” January 14, 1927 — A.J. Mathis, a wealthy, elderly chicken rancher is missing. One of the last of the cowboy sheriffs, Jim McDonald, is convinced A.J. is dead, murdered. And McDonald says he knows who did it and vows to “prove it on her.” McDonald’s leading, and only, suspect is a former salon singer and prostitute, Eva Dugan. Short, stocky, and plain, Eva takes off with a younger man in A.J.’s Dodge Coupe. They drive from Arizona to Texas, before Eva makes her way to White Plains, New York. While she’s on the run, her young friend, Jack, vanishes. And A.J.’s skeleton is discovered buried in a shallow grave. After she’s captured, Eva proclaims her innocence, but is convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Eva says if she was more attractive, if she was a “flapper” she would not have been convicted and certainly would not have been sentenced to death by hanging. A movement grows among people opposed to capital punishment to spare Eva’s life. They fail, and Eva walks to the gallows, all the while proclaiming her innocence. What happens next changes the way Arizona treated those sentenced to death for capital crimes. Never again will anyone hang for murder in Arizona because of what happens the day Eva Dugan dies. Was justice done? Kill. Bury. Forget. A Shocking True Crime Story. You be the judge.

(Mary Stella Gomez-Mullett) Roberto Colon, of course, was quoting a famous line from the movie “Godfather” when the man with close-cropped white hair and beard told Boynton Beach Police in Florida that his wife was “swimming with the fishes.” Pretty ballsy, no? Wait. Roberto’s not finished. After the “fishes” line, Roberto, 68, challenged the police to find his 45-year-old wife’s body. “Find the body, find the body, find the body,” he chanted. Mary Stella Gomez-Mullett, a pretty, slim, dark-haired immigrant, had been missing since February 20. Her friends feared the worst. One of the friends said she heard Mary screaming, “No, Roberto, no,” during a phone conversation two days earlier, before the line went dead. The friend called back several times, but Mary Stella never picked up. That’s why police showed up at Roberto’s home. Roberto and Mary Stella were newlyweds. They got together, according to what he told police, “after meeting her as part of a deal that she would take care of his mother (who suffered from dementia) in exchange for U.S. citizenship through the marriage.” Roberto and Mary Stella exchanged wedding vows at the courthouse in Delray Beach in January; just a few weeks they met and signed the quid pro quo deal. So, this relationship started off a little dicey, to say the least. And, it did not go well. Roberto told police that he discovered his new wife had ripped off his mother. He accused Mary Stella of stealing several thousand dollars, so Roberto fired her, sent her packing, then went to see his doctor. That was the last time, Roberto said, he ever saw his wife. But rational thought soon went out the window. After he said Mary Stella was, well, you know, with the fishes and actually challenged investigators to find her body, the CSI team went to work. Uniformed cops had already discovered what would later be confirmed as human blood splatters on the walls, floor, and ceiling of Roberto’s garage workshop. He agreed it was blood but said it had not come from his wife. Roberto admitted that Mary Stella had walked into a garage wall a few days before she vanished but said she wasn’t hurt. Instead, Roberto claimed his dog had been shaking violently in his cage before the animal died in the garage workshop five months ago, and he’d buried the dog in his backyard. That must be where the blood came from, Roberto said. Honestly, he told the cops I never even noticed it before today. Honestly? Nope. The dog may have died in the garage and been buried in the yard (along with five or six other dogs), but lab tests confirmed the blood found on the garage floor and walls was from a human. Investigators also found a blood-soaked purse about three miles from Roberto’s house. Inside the bag were broken, white rosary beads, just like Mary Stella wore in a recent photo that family members had shown detectives. Also, in the bag, police found what they described as “documents” that showed Mary Stella lived with Roberto’s mother in Hialeah. Roberto said he only learned Mary Stella was missing after returning home from that doctor’s appointment that followed his decision to boot her out of the house. He had no idea where she could be. Police thought they could find more evidence in and near Roberto’s home. Also, one of Mary Stella’s friends said Roberto, in January, had threatened to strangle his wife and bury her in the backyard. So, police started digging up the backyard. And, guess what they found? You’re right; a human cadaver with fingerprints that matched those of Mary Stella. A day before police found Mary Stella’s makeshift grave, Roberto was arrested on a marijuana charge. As they were putting him into a squad car, Roberto yelled to a neighbor who’d come out to watch, “there’s one thing they can’t do. They can’t put, what’s his name, Humpty Dumpty back together again.” He was also heard telling another neighbor, “there’s really nothing they can take from my house…except parts and s—t.” Then Roberto laughed. This guy just doesn’t know when to shut up, does he? If Roberto is laughing now, he’s doing it behind bars. The day after he was busted on the marijuana charge, prosecutors filed a new indictment against Roberto Colon — a single count of first-degree murder. Conviction on that charge would keep Roberto in jail for the rest of his life. Do you think anyone saw this coming? Of course not. Roberto’s neighbors told a local TV reporter from WPBF he was just a nice, quiet guy. “Everyone is surprised,” Dieusel Seide said. “It’s something we do not expect to happen in this neighborhood because this part of Boynton Beach is very quiet. Everybody knows everybody.” As this was written, Dieusel’s friendly neighbor was being held in the Palm Beach County Jail. Police were also continuing their investigation, had yet to release the cause of Mary Stella’s death, and they were also still working on the motive. “Our heartfelt condolences are with Mary’s family and loved ones,” Police Chief Michael G. Gregory said. “We remain dedicated to this ongoing investigation and bringing justice to her family.” Seems like an iron-clad case. And it was. March 9, 2022, Robert was convicted of first-degree murder and immediately sentenced to life in prison. Suspenseful Internet Killer Thriller. Joy, a reporter dreaming of a big-city newspaper career and her protégée, Amanda, set off on an impassioned crusade to stop an internet serial killer before he strikes again. One of the online sex-world’s favorite cam girls, Emily Underwood, is missing. Her biggest fans are crushed. They reach out to the police, but the cops don’t care. Just another hooker who picked up the wrong John as far as they are concerned. So Emily’s fans turn to the St. Isidore Chronicle for help. Teenage girls and young women have been vanishing from the streets of St. Isidore for years only to wind up dead in the city park’s forest. Suicides or murders? The local cops don’t have a clue, so Joy and Amanda push their way into the biggest murder investigation of their lives. They decide to bust this story wide open, save Emily, and at the same time, launch fabulous careers for themselves. At least that’s Joy’s plan. One other woman decides it’s time to turn the gun on this killer. She’s tired of being hunted. She wants to be the hunter. And she wants to make him dead. Shocking twists, turns, and page-turning suspense from beginning to end won’t let you stop reading this book, as you join the race to catch an internet killer before another woman dies. Never Again: An Internet Killer Thriller. Read more for free...

Scheme to Steal from Crop Insurance Programs Lands Farmers, Insurance Agents in Prison A Kentucky tobacco warehouse owner, several insurance agents and adjusters, and more than a dozen tobacco farmers have pleaded guilty to criminal charges in a widespread, multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud both federal and private crop insurance programs. In total, 23 people have been criminally charged, while another 17 people have agreed to pay civil fines or penalties. FBI Forensic Accountant Tressa Whittington has been working this case with agents from our Louisville Field Office, the IRS, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) and Risk Management Agency (RMA) since a 2014 tip to the OIG hotline reported suspected fraud at Clay’s Tobacco Warehouse in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. From that tip, the investigation rippled through farming communities in Central Kentucky. Whittington said some of the defendants cheated the program out of less than $10,000. Others admitted guilt in multimillion-dollar frauds. “Whether the theft was of a few thousand dollars or millions, these individuals took advantage of the program,” Whittington said. “They were stealing money from taxpayers and stealing money from the honest farmers who now pay a higher premium.” How the Fraud Worked Whittington said the individuals involved used a number of different schemes to defraud the programs, but the most common one was carried out like this: A farmer would raise a crop of tobacco. The crop would be of good quality, but the farmer would conspire with insurance agents and adjusters to attest to the fact that the crop had been damaged by storms or pests. For this service, the insurance agents and adjusters were getting kickbacks, according to investigators. With the report of a ruined crop, the farmer would file an insurance claim and be paid insurance money. In the meantime, the farmer would still sell the good crop to a tobacco company. Many of the farmers had contracts with large companies to deliver regular tobacco crops. These were valuable contracts that the farmers wanted to maintain. But because the farmer had reported a ruined crop to the insurance providers, it took additional sleight of hand and additional fraud to make the transaction with the tobacco company look legitimate. The farmers had to show that they “purchased” the tobacco they sold to the tobacco company while selling off the supposedly poor-quality tobacco they had grown. Charging papers show the farmers were able to pull off such scams with help from employees at Clay’s Tobacco Warehouse, including Debra Muse, who worked at the warehouse. She also happened to be a crop insurance agent. Muse helped the farmers get fake paperwork to show they had purchased their quality tobacco from Clay’s. “More importantly,” said Whittington, “when the farmers would take their tobacco to the warehouse to have it graded, they would need a NoG rating or a not salable rating. Muse would provide that documentation.” Whittington said the warehouse would reuse the same bad bales of tobacco when the crop graders would come by, rotating out the tickets used to label them. Whittington said Muse’s case was the first related to this investigation to reach the courts. She admitted to urging and assisting farmers to file false tobacco insurance claims and was sentenced in September 2018 to five years in prison. It was another three years before Roger Wilson, the owner of Clay’s Tobacco Warehouse, was sentenced to 12 months in federal prison for his part. The longest sentence in the case went to Michael McNew, who was sentenced to 86 months. By misusing his role as a crop insurance adjuster, and at a different period as a crop insurance agent, McNew admitted to causing losses in excess of $23 million. The Aftermath “The individuals who participated in this scheme caused the United States government and insurance carriers to sustain over $40 million in losses,” said Special Agent in Charge Jason Williams of the USDA-OIG. “The outstanding work of the USDA-OIG agents, USDA staff, and our FBI partners who investigated this case along with the prosecutors of the U.S. attorney’s office made it possible to bring these fraudsters to justice. Farmers in this industry deserve an honest marketplace that is free from fraud due to false claims.” In addition, the RMA, which is part of the USDA, changed its nationwide policy on NoG-graded tobacco based on this case. If the tobacco is graded “unsalable,” the farmer is required to destroy the crop with an insurance adjuster as a witness. This shift is designed to prevent farmers from reusing damaged crops in future insurance claims. The USDA is also assessing related program vulnerabilities in an effort to curb future fraud attempts. January 14, 1927 — A.J. Mathis, a wealthy, elderly chicken rancher, is missing. One of the last of the cowboy sheriffs, Jim McDonald, is convinced A.J. is dead. Murdered. And McDonald says he knows who did it and vows to “prove it on her.” McDonald’s leading and only suspect is a former saloon singer and prostitute, Eva Dugan. Short, stocky, and plain, Eva takes off with a younger man in A.J.’s Dodge Coupe. They drive from Arizona to Texas before Eva makes her way to White Plains, New York. While on the run, her young friend, Jack, vanishes. And A.J.’s skeleton is discovered buried in a shallow grave. After she’s captured, Eva proclaims her innocence but is convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Eva says if she was more attractive and a “flapper,” she would not have been convicted nor sentenced to death by hanging. A movement grows among people opposed to capital punishment to spare Eva’s life. They fail, and Eva walks to the gallows, proclaiming her innocence. What follows changes how Arizona treats those sentenced to death for capital crimes. Never again will anyone hang for murder in Arizona because of what happened the day Eva Dugan died. Was justice done? Kill. Bury. Forget. A Shocking True Crime Story. You be the judge. Read for free...

Anthony Villani, said to be a Luchese Crime Family soldier, and five other men were indicted Sept. 14, 2022, on charges of overseeing and operating a large-scale online gambling operation under the protection of the Luchese mob. Breon Peace, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York said Villani and the others, associates of the Luchese organized crime family, ran an illegal online gambling business called Rhino Sports from at least 2004 through December 2020. Records obtained from the Gambling Business’s website indicated that Villani’s illegal gambling operation regularly took bets from between 400 and 1,300 bettors each week, most of whom were based in New York City and the metropolitan area. As alleged, Villani’s bookmakers regularly included members and associates of the Luchese crime family and other La Cosa Nostra families. As part of the scheme, Villani employed co-conspirators Louis Tucci, Jr. and Dennis Filizzola, as runners to assist in operating the business. Villani is alleged to have received more than $1 million annually from the business. During law enforcement searches related to this matter in December 2020, agents recovered over $407,000 in cash from one of Villani’s residences, as well as brass knuckles and gambling ledgers. “As alleged, this conduct demonstrates how members of La Cosa Nostra continue to engage in illegal gambling operations and money laundering money-marking schemes that lead to threats of violence against anyone who stands in their way and has resulted in millions of dollars in profits to the Luchese crime family,” stated United States Attorney Peace. “These charges,” Peace added, “illustrate this Office’s continued commitment to rooting La Cosa Nostra out of New York.” The Murder of Ronda Mechelle Blaylock The thermometer out in front of the local bank shows the temperature is 87 degrees. The farm show on the radio says the dew point is a little over 60; just another steamy, late August afternoon in North Carolina. This is the first week of public school for the 1980-81 scholastic year. With a bright smile on her face and pigtails in her hair, Ronda Mechelle Blaylock is walking home from classes at Atkins High School in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with a friend. Both girls are 14-years old. While walking near Rural Hall Bowling Lanes, a blue Chevy pickup pulls up alongside the girls. The driver offers Ronda and her friend a lift home. It’s not unusually hot and sticky for August in North Carolina. But even for two kids who grew up in this heat, it’s uncomfortable. So it’s no surprise they accept. Ronda’s friend is dropped off along some railroad tracks near Tuttle Road and Priddy road. She continues on her way home, walking alone, with no hint of what lays ahead for her friend, Ronda. A few hours later, Rebecca and Charles Blaylock call Ronda’s friend, asking if she’s heard from Ronda. Shortly after that, Rebecca and Charles file a missing persons report. They would never see Ronda, alive, again. August 29, 1980: Ronda is discovered dead, only partially clothed, her body left in a wooded area, near Sechrist Loop Road In Surrey County, about 18 miles from the spot where Ronda and her friend got into that blue pickup truck. A medical examination shows that not only was this child murdered, but she was also raped. There’s no doubt about the friend’s story. There are plenty of people who saw the two girls get into that Chevy truck and drive away. But who was behind the wheel? No one knows. Ronda’s friend tells detectives he had straight brown hair, feathered on the sides and a light beard. He was wearing a black T-shirt, white tennis shoes, faded jeans, aviator-style sunglasses, and a baseball cap. However, the teenager can’t give detectives his name, and no one had noticed the truck’s license number. Two years later, the case goes cold. But in 2015, Surrey County Sheriff Graham Atkinson forms an unusual, multi-agency task force with one purpose: find the killer of Ronda Mechelle Blaylock. Those on the task force have an advantage over their fellow officers who worked this case in 1980. Now they’re backed by new crime-solving methods and something law enforcement couldn’t even dream of four decades ago, DNA technology. Detectives begin collecting evidence and looking through forensic material from the crime scene. They start to focus on a guy by the name of Robert James Adkins. He’s been married with an adult son. Adkins has lived in the area where Ronda and her friend were walking in 1980. On August 2, 2019, with his brown hair and beard gone white and stringy, wearing a grey t-shirt and blue coveralls, Robert James Adkins stood for a mug shot. Looking at least ten years older than his age of 64, he was arrested and charged with killing and raping young Ronda. Adkins, who most recently lived in Dobson, North Carolina, would plead guilty to reduced charges in December 2020 of second-degree murder and second-degree rape. Chances are, Adkins will never go home again. At least that’s what Ronda’s family hopes. Thanks to a plea deal, Adkins was sentenced to 21 to 25 years in prison on each rape and murder charges. The sentences will run concurrently. Rebecca and Charles Blaylock never learned that their daughter’s murderer was captured. Both died a few years ago. A cousin of Ronda’s, Kevin Thomas says the family wasn’t happy with the plea deal. They wanted to see Adkins sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder and rape. The end of this case, he says, leaves the Blaylock family with an empty feeling and without any sense of closure. “We just hope with all things considered that he dies in prison,” Kevin says. “We didn’t have any say in the matter. All we can do is accept it.” Serve That Heart with Fried Potatoes Maybe Leon Pye was worried when he heard a knock at the door of his Chickasha, Oklahoma, home. "Who's that?" Leon probably said to his wife, Delsei. She might have shrugged and held their granddaughter, Kaeos Yates, a bit tighter, a little closer. After all, nobody got many unexpected visitors these days, what, with the pandemic and its lockdowns. Everybody stayed closed to their knitting. But, still, it would be worse than impolite to just leave whoever was out there, out there. So, Leon slowly opened the door. And he had to be shocked when he realized who'd come knocking. It was none other than his forty-two-year-old nephew, Lawrence Paul Anderson. "Lawrence, how'd you get out of prison?" Last Leon had heard, Lawrence was doing a twenty-year sentence for a drug conviction and other related crimes. No surprise to anyone who'd taken the time to read Lawrence's rap sheet. And then there were Lawrence's mental health problems. Leon looked back over his shoulder at Delsei. Both of them just smelled trouble brewing. After all, how the hell could Lawrence be standing on their porch? Wasn't the system supposed to tell the Pye's when Lawrence got out, so they'd be ready for the trouble that just naturally came with somebody who naturally got into trouble? Well, nobody had bothered to tell Leon and Delsei anything. Leon raised his eyebrows, at once asking Delsei what he should do and then inquiring if it would be okay to slam the door and send his nephew away. The answers to both the former and the latter were obvious. Still, it wasn't an easy decision to allow Lawrence inside. Leon had half a mind to close the door in Lawrence's face and leave him out on the porch. But Lawrence was family, and anyone who knew the man's history would know that he wouldn't take that kind of insult very well at all. So Leon decided to welcome Lawrence inside. He reached out to shake his hand and only then noticed what Lawrence was carrying. God only knew how he came by it, but it didn't take a doctor to realize that Lawrence was carrying a human heart that was dripping blood, and God knows what else on the porch. Lawrence pushed by Leon and went right to the kitchen. Dropped the heart in a pot, Lawrence did, then pulled out a pan. He sliced up some potatoes, threw some oil into a skillet, and fried up some potatoes. Then, he added the human heart. When it was finished, Lawrence told Leon, Delsei, and four-year-old Kaeos it was time to eat. "Absolutely not," Leon probably said as forcefully as possible. He would have pointed at the meal, at the country-fried heart, and said, "There's no way we are going to sit down at the table with this." The child had to be scared out of her mind, clinging to Delsei. "You will eat this,' Lawrence demanded. "It's the only way to release the demons!" He'd brought a sharp carving knife with him from the kitchen. Not long after dinner was served, a 911 dispatcher answered a call for help from the Pye family home. The caller only said someone needed help, then ended the conversation with a click. Police responded, not knowing exactly what was going on, but figuring it had to be some kind of a domestic violence call. Standing outside Leon's house, the officers thought they heard someone inside pleading for help. The door was open. They went inside Leon's house. There, the officers found a home bathed in blood. Leon and little Kaeos were down on the floor. Both would soon die. Delsei was grievously injured. Stabbed in both eyes. She'd survive. Lawrence was also injured and was taken to a local hospital. There, he confessed to killing Leon and Kaeos and stabbing Delsei. And there was more. Lawrence told the officers standing alongside his hospital bed about busting into a neighbor's house and ripping out her heart. Officers were immediately dispatched to the home of Andrea Lynn Blankenship, where they discovered a horrific scene. Lawrence had bashed his way into her house, using his shoulder as a battering ram on the frightened woman's front door. Once inside, he didn't waste a moment. Lawrence grabbed a knife, used it to slice into her chest. Then he ripped her rib cage apart and cut out Andrea's heart. Police found her body and other evidence, enough to conclude that Lawrence had told the truth when he explained what had happened. During his video arraignment, Feb. 23, 2021, Lawrence pleaded with Judge Regina Lowe, "Oh God, I don't want no bail, your honor. I don't want no bail." Well, he got what he wanted. No bail. Lawrence is awaiting trial now, as this story was written. However, Andrea Lynn's eighteen-year-old daughter Haylee wants Lawrence to die for his crimes. “I hope he gets the death penalty,” Haylee told a reporter from her local station, KFOR-TV. “I hope that he spends the rest of his life thinking about it until he gets his life taken, just like he took those people’s lives.” As for the question of how Lawrence got out of prison, well, it turns out it was a legal escape. A judge commuted his sentence. Plenty of people in Oklahoma were outraged by that, including Grady County District Attorney Jason Hicks. "We have seen 'criminal justice reform' in the state of Oklahoma now for several years," Hicks told reporters after filing charges against Lawrence. "We have put politics and releasing inmates in front of public safety. The goal that we have set in Oklahoma is to decrease the prison population with no thought for public safety," Hicks added. "And that's not fair." Thanks for spending time reading my newsletter again this week. Before I go, I wanted to let you know about a new book written by friend and fellow true crime author Ryan Green: Drop Dead Dangerous - The Lethal Attraction of Road Trip Killer, Paul John Knowles In 1974, the US East Coast was whipped up into a frenzy of fear. Locking their windows and doors, everyone was terrified of becoming the next victim of the strikingly handsome but deadly “Casanova Killer”. And he was on the move. After being released from jail and promptly abandoned by his fiancée, Paul John Knowles embarked on a spate of gruesome murders on a road trip up the Pacific Coast. No room for fear, no room for guilt, just the road. As the man-hunt gathered pace, the cold-blooded killing spree continued to defy detectives. With no visible pattern in the age, race nor gender of the victims, Knowles’s joyride of kidnap, rape and murder tore across multiple state borders. It became a race of tragically high stakes. How many more lives would be lost before the police finally caught up? Drop Dead Dangerous is a chilling account of Paul John Knowles and one of the most disturbing true crime stories in America’s history. Ryan Green’s riveting narrative draws the reader into the real-live horror experienced by the victims and has all the elements of a classic thriller. CAUTION: This book contains descriptive accounts of torture, abuse and violence. If you are especially sensitive to this material, it might be advisable not to read any further. Those of you in the U.S. can click here for more: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BGHK4KMP For international readers, click this link to go to your country’s Amazon page: https://geni.us/dropemail And of course, I have a new book out: Eva Dugan needs to get out of Arizona as fast as the Dodge Coupe she’s riding in can take her across the state line. It’s January 1927. Flappers are everywhere, young women wearing short skirts, knee height, no less, and bobbed hair. At the same time, they listen to jazz music, smoke cigarettes and drink booze in public, have sex at petting parties whenever they want, and even drive automobiles. These young Gibson Girl wannabes are having the time of their lives. Eva Dugan thinks about that with a smirk on her face. She did all that before these girls were born when Eva was a saloon singer during the Klondike gold rush. Those were the days. But now, she’s old, fat, and her voice is gone. And Eva is on the run with a boy named Jack, an unlikely pair drawn together not by love but by need. Why? Cuz A.J. Mathis is dead and buried, that’s why. Other men in Eva’s life have disappeared. Maybe everyone will forget about A.J. Mathis too. Maybe not. Here’s one guy who won’t — the last of the Cowboy Sheriffs in Arizona — Jim McDonald. He’s certain Eva killed A.J. and vows to “prove it on her” if it’s the last thing he does. Kill. Bury. Forget., A Shocking True Crime Story: the death of a chicken rancher, the woman accused of the crime, and the ‘last of the cowboy sheriffs’ who tracked her down. And you won’t believe what happened the day Eva Dugan died. ( Here’s a hint: Jack Nicholson’s character in “Departed” might say, “she fell funny.”) To read more about this book, click here. As always, thanks for reading. Rod

(Isabella Thallas) Michael Close was behind the wheel of his black Mercedes SUV careening through the streets of Denver. The man had substance abuse problems — he drank far too much, too often — and an undiagnosed personality disorder. But he’d never had any trouble with the police. There was not one single arrest on his record. Hell, Michael didn’t even have a history with the Denver P.D. That changed today, just before noon. It was 11:40 A.M.to be exact. Michael heard a man by the name of Darian Simon outside his ground-floor apartment telling a dog to dump its load. “Just go poop,” the man said. Then, the woman who was with the dog walker, Isabella Thallas, said it too, “Just go poop, baby.” Again. And again. For some reason, Michael, who had been on edge all morning, snapped. He’d been waiting for a friend to take him to a therapist. Michael’s skin had crawled as he waited for his friend, thinking about sitting across from a stranger, talking about the way he’d been abused as a child, what his parents had done to him. He hadn’t eaten a thing today and not much last night. Michael opened his window and hollered, “Are you going to train that f—-king dog or just yell at it?” Actually, Michael wasn’t just yelling; he was holding a rifle. The people outside didn’t look at him. A man and a woman, both in their twenties, Michael figured. If they had glanced his way. They might have seen the business end of the rifle pointed at them. They might have run. She might have lived. But they were focused on the dog. The dog that still hadn’t pooped. Michael couldn’t take it. He squeezed the trigger. Not once. Not twice. But twenty-four times. Michael fired twenty-four rounds at the couple. Both of them went down. Michael froze. He felt like he stared at the scene outside his window for an hour. But it was only moments. He carried the rifle and ran outside. To the garage. To his Mercedes. All he could think about was getting away as fast and as far as possible. Driving through Denver, Michael called his girlfriend, Chelsea Thompson. He had to explain what had happened. Michael needed to apologize. And, he had to say goodbye to Chelsea. “What are you talking about?” Chelsea said. She was even more frantic than Michael because, on top of the fear coursing through her emotional highway, Chelsea was trying to figure out what the hell Michael was talking about. “You shot two people. You are kidding, right? No. You’re not. Oh, My God! Michael.” Chelsea had to see for herself. Maybe Michael was hallucinating. He couldn’t have actually shot and killed two people. She knew he had problems. God, she knew that only too well. And yes, Chelsea had seen the rifle. She knew Michael kept the damn thing loaded. Hell, he’d had an arsenal of weapons in that damn apartment. And she knew he’d been drinking and getting back into cocaine, too. But, still, she could not, Chelsea would not, believe it until she saw this for herself. So, she drove as fast as possible to Michael’s apartment building. Chelsea had to pull over for an ambulance speeding the other way, its lights flashing, and siren wailing. Oh, My God. Arriving in minutes, stomping on the brake, slamming the transmission into Park, suddenly Chelsea couldn’t breathe. Time froze. She threw up in her mouth and swallowed it back down. Cops were everywhere, both uniformed officers and plainclothes detectives. Crime scene tape was up. A lonely yellow tarp was stretched out over the ground. Police were looking under it. Oh, My God. “Two people got shot,” a man said as he glanced at Chelsea, the newest on the scene. “I heard the woman who got hit is dead. The guy she was with will live,” said another on the public’s side of the yellow tape. Chelsea stood by her car, crying. She couldn’t move. That attracted a police officer’s attention, a woman, who approached Chelsea slowly and asked quietly if anything was wrong. That’s all it took. Once Chelsea started talking, she didn’t stop. The officer, listening, glanced at a detective, and motioned him to join her. Chelsea pointed to the window of Michael’s apartment. Two detectives now were talking to her. Both looked at the apartment window and, knowing that’s where the gunfire originated, took Chelsea to a squad car. Inside, sitting in the front seat, listening to the squawking police radio, unable to take her eyes off the colossal shotgun locked to the dashboard, Chelsea gave the detective Michael’s cellphone number. With that, they were able to find him. Detective Joseph Trujillo would testify days later that Michael was crying when Jefferson County Sheriff’s deputies arrested him in Pine Junction. The deputies found a rifle and a handgun on Michael’s car floor when they stopped him on Highway 285. Michael offered no resistance as he was taken into custody for, among other charges, first-degree murder for the death of the woman who was gunned down two days after her 21st birthday. Said Detective Trujillo, “He just kept apologizing, over and over, again.” A month later, Isabella’s mother led a group of friends and neighbors in a renovation of the park near where her daughter died. They also painted a mural of Isabella’s face on a nearby wall. Isabella’s mom, Anna, said, looking at the painting of her daughter by a local artist who goes by the name, Detour, “I know that her energy and her soul and everything about her and the people that love her the most are all right here.” March 8, 2021, Michael pled “not guilty by reason of insanity.” September 22, 2022: Michael is convicted of first-degree murder and attempted murder. The Associated Press reported Michael cried as the verdict was red, so did Isabella’s mother. “We’ve been waiting 2½ years for this day and what happened in there just went by… almost as fast as my daughter was slaughtered,” she said through tears. “And our lives were changed forever.” The Murder of Thora Chamberlain: A Shocking True Crime Story It’s November 2, 1945. 3 p.m. Thomas McMonigle is racing through Campbell, California, with a fourteen-year-old girl beside him. She’s screaming bloody murder, clawing at the passenger-side window, desperately trying to escape. Thomas would love to give her a good punch to the back of her head to get her to shut up, but he keeps both hands on the wheel and stares straight ahead. The last thing he needs right now is to run into a cop. Oh Damn! This is nearly as bad. A woman at her mailbox is staring into Thomas’s car, looking like she’s seeing worse than a ghost. The lady’s staring right at the girl who’s still screaming at the top of her lungs. Thomas wonders, Did she see me? Read more...

"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned" From "The Mourning Bride" by William Congreve March 19, 1928 — Orville Bond, a guy who lives in the suburban Los Angeles community of Monterey Park, won’t be going home anytime soon, thanks to his wife. The wife, Lenore Bond, was frantic. Orville drove off in her automobile several weeks ago, and she hadn’t heard boo from him. Three long weeks went by with no word from Orville. Was Orville hurt and lying unconscious in a hospital bed? Or worse, was Orville dead? Lenore didn’t have a clue. But Leonore has a bit of the gumshoe, private eye detective in her. Somehow she traced her husband to a local hotel where he was shacked up with a couple of teenage girls — eighteen-year-olds from Arizona. Lenore having no mercy in her heart for a husband who cheats on her with a couple of teenage girls, called the police. Orville was quickly arrested when discovered in the hotel room with Irene Cooper and Helen Jordan. Now, Orville swears he intended to marry Miss Jordan. Guess Irene was just along for the ride, or maybe she’d be the matron of honor. Something like that. Doesn’t matter much. Since Orville took these girls from Arizona across the state line into California, prosecutors plan to charge him with violating the Mann Act, the interstate transportation of women for immoral purposes. As for Lenore, she got her car back. Will she take Orville back? What do you think? For the Love of a Woman March 1928 -- Thirty minutes with the woman he loves will cost Frank LaBrado another four months in jail and a $200 fine. Frank was doing time for “daytime burglary,” which was considered less of a crime in 1928 than a nighttime breaking and entering. I don’t know why; it just was. Frank was doing his ninety days inside an Arizona county jail in such an honorable way that he was made a trustee. That meant he had much more freedom than a regular county convict. One day, Frank went to the jail’s basement to get some coal when he noticed a door to the outside world was open. Hot damn, Frank must have thought. This is my chance. So glancing to the left, right, and rear, Frank saw he was in the clear and ran through the door to freedom. He went right to the home of his sweetheart, a woman who herself had just been released from the county jail. It was there, by the way, that the woman and Frank fell in love, or at least lust. But that’s another story. So, Frank goes to the woman’s house. His absence was noticed at the jail fifteen minutes after Frank walked out the open door. Deputies John Farrell and Carmen Mungia told the warden of Frank’s infatuation with his young lover, and they were dispatched to her home. Guess what, or who, Carmen and John found at the girlfriend’s house. That’s right. Frank. He claimed not to be responsible for his actions. Frank claimed he’d come across some bootleg whiskey inside the jail, got drunk, and made a wrong, alcohol-induced decision. You’d think this career criminal would know better. It’s not like he was a rookie. Frank used at least four aliases in his work on the wrong side of the law and had a prison record in several California cities. But he wasn’t thinking with his brain, was he? Now, Frank will have to live with the consequences of spending fifteen minutes with the love of his life. More jail time. Let’s hope she was worth it. Notice those stories were out of Arizona circa 1928? That is not a coincidence. I discovered the stories in the pages of the Arizona Daily Star, published March 20, 1928, while I was doing research for “Kill. Bury. Forget. A Shocking True Crime Story. Kill. Bury. Forget. A Shocking True Crime Story This is the story of Eva Dugan, a woman who was a salon singer, a prostitute, and finally, a convicted murderer. And, like Jack Nicholson’s character in the movie “Departed” said, “she fell funny.” Click here. Read the book. Then you’ll understand.

A Montana man nearly had his throat slashed by his ex-girlfriend who jumped out from behind a bedroom door brandishing a machete. Samantha Ray Mears, 19, pushed the sharp blade against her ex-boyfriend’s neck and told him point blank either he had sex with her or it would be the last time he said to any girl, “No thanks, not tonight, honey.” What’s a guy to do? He was with the young woman on the bed in his Great Falls, Montana home. Samantha ordered him to strip naked and lay on his back on the bed. What’s a guy to do? If a woman wants sex terrible enough to threaten you with a machete, you do what she wants. He also knew this young woman meant business. He had to call the police on Samantha a few months before this attack when she punched him in the face, tried to rip the hair out of his head, and then attempted to strangle him. He thought about fighting back. Samantha is not a large woman. No more than 125 pounds and probably 5-3. He could take her. But what if he did beat her up? What kind of criminal charges might face? And, she did have that machete at his throat. So, he did what he was told. Samantha took her pants off, jumped on top of her ex and away they went. But she didn’t drop the machete. But at the last minute, the guy had second thoughts. He’s got a naked woman riding him, holding a machete, and he tries to quit. Samantha was having none of that. She said she wanted more and bit the man on the arm to make her point. After she was satisfied, Samantha sat nude on the bed holding that machete and let the man take several photos of her. Of course, this guy was going to press charges, if he got out of the bedroom alive. The pictures would help him make his case. But it didn’t end that smoothly. Samantha became upset. They argued. Samantha ripped some trim off the bedroom wall. She climbed on top of the bed and peed. (Stay classy, Samantha!) Time to call 9-1-1 the guy decided. When the dispatcher answered, he pretended to talk to one of his buddies, Doug. The cops showed up, arrested Samantha, and the state has filed a restraining order against Samantha. She’s also been charged with aggravated assault and burglary and several misdemeanors. One more note: this kind of violence is not all that unusual. “Intimate partner homicides” grew 139 percent in 2015-2016. "There's a need to change our culture and the way we think about domestic violence," Eric Parsons, a program specialist at the Montana Department of Justice told the Great Falls Tribune. "We've come a long way in the past 30 years about how we think about domestic violence... in a lot of cases it's still considered a family issue or 'none of my business.'" Sex Dolls & Psychos! Jeffrey Dahmer wanted his lovers to be as still and quiet as sex dolls, so he started drugging them and then raping their unconscious bodies. That's what professor Kathleen Richardson, who studies the ethics and culture of robots told The Sun. Dahmer said it himself. He confessed to making love to a sex doll before going on to murder and cannibalize 17 young men. He went on a bloodthirsty, murderous spree beginning in 1987 in which he also tried to create "zombie sex slaves" by drilling holes into the heads of his victims when they were out cold. Richardson says men who get into sex dolls could become murderous psychopaths, like Dahmer because the human-like sex toys remove all human feeling and emotions from sex. “You cannot learn empathy from a doll. It’s not a person," Richardson said. "It’s not alive and the only thing going on is what’s inside you.” Russian sexologist Lev Shcheglov agreed and warned the creation of robot sex dolls with AI technology could "end badly" for humanity and result in "psychopathic disorders." "Sex with a robot is just a fake imitation. And it can lead to psychopathic disorders and isolation," Lev told Sputnik. "Sex with robots won't bring into a person's life the emotional effect that gives us a true communion," Lev added. "You can eat pseudo-food to still hunger. But over time it will still end badly." A company in Toronto that's setting up sex-doll brothels around the world. Or at least that's the goal. The Detroit Free Press reports a suburban Detroit, Mich. community -- Southfield -- has already been approached and said "no!" Think about it: a sex-doll brothel. Who gets hurt? The dolls? Well if you watched the BBC series “Humans" you might have something to say about that. In the Free Press article, human customers are advised to wear condoms even though the dolls are all thoroughly washed after every use. Yuch! But here's a problem you can't ignore. If you believe the first paragraphs of this blog post, you have to assume these sex-doll brothels would be nothing but breeding farms for psychopaths. What do you think? Let me know. My email is always open, rod@rodkackley.com. It’s November 2, 1945. 3 p.m. Thomas McMonigle is racing through Campbell, California, driving faster than humanly possible, with a fourteen-year-old girl beside him. She’s screaming bloody murder, clawing at the passenger-side window, desperately trying to escape. Thomas would love to give her a good punch to the back of her head to get her to shut the fuck up, but he keeps both hands on the wheel and stares straight ahead. The last thing he needs right now is to run into a cop. Oh Damn! This is nearly as bad. A woman at her mailbox is staring into Thomas’s car, looking like she’s seeing worse than a ghost. The lady’s looking right at the girl who’s still screaming at the top of her lungs. Thomas wonders, Did she see me? The Murder of Thora Chamberlain: A Shocking True Crime Story Read More...

“He was always coming over, and I still expect to hear the back door open and to hear him holler, ‘Mom,’” said Mildred Pierce. Lisa Shuler, 32, knew Mildred’s son, Charles Pierce, 49, had nude photos of her. They weren’t just pictures of Lisa naked. They were photos of her and Charles having sex. She was scared that the pictures would wind up in the hands of her estranged husband, Brandon. The southern Indiana woman did the only thing she could think of to correct the situation. It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing. Lisa had a problem, so she created a plan to solve that problem. And then, she worked the plan. Lisa invited Charles to her home. Obviously, it wasn’t the first time. They had a history. The Louisville, Ky. man had no reason to expect anything from Lisa except sex. And that is what he got. Not long after Charles arrived, Lisa dropped to her knees. She undid the buckle of her illicit lover’s pants, pulled them to his knees, smiled at Charles, and then pulled down his underwear. It was perfect for both of them. When they were finished, before Charles could catch his breath and pull up his pants, Lisa drew a .45 handgun from a holster on her belt. She unloaded the entire clip into his body. The deed was done. Charles was still breathing. But Lisa was confident he would soon die. Her soon-to-be ex-husband would never see Lisa’s nude photos. Now Lisa had to do her best to stay out of prison. She didn’t think that would be a problem. It was part of her plan, too. Lisa got herself together. She collected her thoughts, picked up Charles’ phone, and started trying to delete the racy texts she and he had exchanged during their affair. She deleted close to 200 texts from her phone. Lisa did the best she could with Charles’ phone. She knew the texts had not been completely deleted. But if police bought into her story, Lisa saw no reason that the messages would matter. So she dropped Charles’ phone, grabbed hers, and punched in 9-1-1. When the operator answered, Lisa breathlessly described how a man had broken into her home and tried to rape her. She had no choice but to shoot him dead. It was self-defense, pure and simple. Charles was still breathing when police and an ambulance arrived. Since Lisa had reported a shooting, paramedics and the officers who took her statement had been dispatched. Lisa had to be worried that Charles was still alive. After all, she had emptied a clip of .45 bullets into him. What was it going to take to kill this guy? She didn’t have to be concerned. Charles just barely made it to the hospital before he died. That was one part of her problem out of the way. Now she just had to convince investigators that it was a case of self-defense. Lisa deleted hundreds of text messages from her phone and Charles’ phone. But she would have been better off disposing of both of the devices. Once police got into those deleted texts — Lisa discovered belatedly that no e-message, mail, or text, was ever deleted — investigators had evidence of Lisa’s racy affair with Charles. Lisa couldn’t keep up her act. She was not a career criminal. At least Lisa could not be even close to a match for a trained police detective. Certainly not a cop who had evidence that Lisa not only knew the man who had allegedly broken into her home — she had slept with the guy. Lisa cracked. She confessed. Lisa told detectives she and Charles had done this before. It was a “rape fantasy” game she said they played together. Lisa told them the whole story. She talked about the breakup of her ten-year marriage with Brandon. Lisa spoke of the fear that Charles would release the naked pictures they had taken together. Lisa admitted she had planned to kill Charles and took a plea bargain. She got forty-five years in prison for a guilty plea. Charles’ mother said Lisa should have gotten life. Mildred Pierce was too torn up to read her statement when Lisa was sentenced. Chief Deputy Prosecutor Steven Owen did it for her. “I lost my youngest son,” Owen read to the court. “The hole that has been left cannot ever be filled.” Lisa apologized to the Pierce family while dressed in a green-and-white striped jumpsuit. Her grandmother, Iretta Michael, said Lisa’s family had also experienced a loss. “She was raised in a Christian family. I don’t know. She went down, she chose to go the other way, but she’s repented of it. She’s going to pay for it in 45 years,” Iretta told reporters. “But we’ve lost her as well as they’ve lost their son.” “If it hadn’t been for drugs, alcohol, and perverse sex,” Iretta said, “neither one of them would be lost.” “...drugs, alcohol, and perverse sex” is one of the Shocking True Crime Stories you’ll read in “Murder’s Always Murder.” Read more...