The Journey to Justice: Garvin County, Oklahoma

By Susan Murphy-Milano

On October 14, I arrived in Garvin County, Oklahoma. I was brought in by family members to review and bring attention to their cases involving possible murder, cover up and corruption. I went to Oklahoma, knowing there were threats to harm me, but I felt this trip was important to secure information about each of these cases in front of new eyes.

What I found was beyond what I expected. There is a difference when meeting these families face to face and going to the actual areas where the crimes took place at "ground zero" instead of looking at photos or talking on the phone. It was immediately apparent to me that something, many things, were wrong with the initial "howdy doody" so-called investigations. This included staging the original crime scenes from bogus shell casings to cleaning up a bloody witness, and removing blood-soaked sheets, blankets or rugs, to actually dragging a body from the inside of a home out to the backyard. And at least one additional murder, possibly two, also directly relate to the cases

Meeting with each individual family was an eye-opener. Seeing, for myself, the landscape in which these crimes were committed would now give these cases a chance at justice. After reviewing never-before-seen crime scene photos, documentation and, in my opinion, new evidence added by the sheer determination of these families, I put the cases of Chanda Turner, Sheila Deviney and Tom Horton, now identified as “The Garvin County Three,” into a national spotlight. I had a lot of help, including a former prosecutor with whom I would report my findings. We would strategize my daily methods of gathering solid information and shipping it out by carrier the next day. You need to establish what is known as "a pattern of conduct." If you build the framework around this, you definitely have a case. And indeed, I did.

It was interesting to go into restaurants and businesses and see firsthand the treatment these families received--some good, some not so good. Like being shunned, or having a contagious disease, people were obviously in fear of being seen talking to them. It was gut-wrenching as I witnessed this happening before my eyes. It reminded me of a time when my own hero of a father murdered my mother before taking his own life. Those in my Chicago community, many of whom I had known my entire life, would publicly turn their backs or threaten my life if I continued “disgracing the Chicago Police Department and maligning my father’s good name."

By day three of my investigation at “ground zero,” the hostile climate turned and the curtain of fear in the surrounding towns of Paul’s Valley, Lindsey, Norman and Maysville began to rise. People were talking about the truth, the facts I was releasing nightly on the nationally syndicated program The Roth Show. People were coming forward providing crucial evidence and supplying statements. One by one, townsfolk expressed their embarrassment for how their community has been portrayed in the national spotlight. You saw them taking a stand with the truth, knowing that if things continued as they always had in Garvin County that justice would never be served and that others might be harmed in the process, possibly one of their own children or loved one.

Working within a system with a scandalous medical examiner’s office, a questionable sheriff, and a small town where families with money help keep things in control, the families of “the Garvin County Three”would not give up. My greatest pleasure, and the best part of my trip, was getting to know them better. These are real people who have been handed one of life’s biggest disservices, injustice.

As my time in Garvin County continued, I was surprised to see that other families were contacting either myself or attorney Jaye Mendros of Justice for the Dead site. This included people who had a lot of information surrounding these cases. It almost seemed as if there was a new consciousness, and some were finding that maybe their own consciences were finally getting the best of them after so many years of holding the secrets. Those secrets are now documented.

In the midst of a controversial upcoming election for a new sheriff in Garvin County, I found the tensions mounting all around me. Many people in the county were trying to keep the old guard in office to keep things as they have been for the last 11 years. Also, maybe some were trying to keep their own loved ones from facing the music they were hiding from behind the very ones who were present on each of the crime scenes of Sheila Deviney, Chanda Turner and Tom Horton, The Garvin County Three.

On November 2, the people of Garvin County spoke up loudly and clearly that it was finally time for a change. They elected to give the old sheriff the boot and bring in someone who has promised to do what is necessary to get their cases re-opened and re-examined. The task facing new Sheriff Larry Rhoades is daunting, and we have to believe that he will see this through.

There is still a lot of work to do in Oklahoma, but the process has begun to get the ball rolling in the right direction. Justice will be served for The Garvin County Three.

There are so many people I would like to thank, and you all know who you are, especially my colleagues here at Women In Crime Ink. Without your support and prayers, this journey would have been much more difficult. Also, a special thanks to Dr. Laurie Roth and Doug Hagmann; I always knew you had my back every step of the way. And to those now at the beginning stages of the preliminary investigation as it relates to the long-awaited truth for Chanda Turner, Sheila Deviney, Tom Horton and each of their families who know justice is now a step closer.

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Getting Away with Murder

by Kathryn Casey

We like to think that the bad guys get caught, and that when a murder takes place, the person responsible is held accountable and punished. Unfortunately, that often doesn't happen. One of the most disturbing headlines I've seen ran in the Houston Chronicle on a recent Sunday: People Are Getting Away with Murder.

Reading the piece, I learned that the national clearance rate on homicides is a dismal 64 percent. As the cause, the article cites a lack of money, manpower, too many murders and not enough folks in law enforcement investigating. It points out that in a city like Houston, with six million folks, there's more crime than cops to go around. In all, 120 Texas communities didn't even reach the national threshold, with clearance rates of 63 percent or lower. Take Galveston, for instance, where of the 32 murders committed in 2004, only seventeen were solved. That means that fifteen families are still waiting for justice. San Antonio is even worse, with a clearance rate of only 39 percent. The trend isn't new. One study showed that from 1980 to 1996, the national clearance rate dropped by 7 percent, and since then it's continued to slide.

Why? Multiple reasons. The above study noted an increase in stranger-on-stranger killings, which are harder to solve than crimes of passion. While another study, one from 2001, agreed that the main issue may be manpower, both stressed that quality police work is also an issue, especially the actions of the first officers on the scene. Was homicide notified quickly? Was the CSI unit called? Were witnesses identified and statements taken?

Yet, one of the cases in the Chronicle article was particularly disturbing, because three years after Bridgette Gearen's murder, the 28-year-old's family is still waiting for the lab results to come in that could point to her killer.

From its first moments, the Gearen case has been both perplexing and terrifying. This young mom disappeared one night simply by walking out a door.

It was July 2007, and Gearen was staying at a beach house with friends, enjoying a bit of R&R, needed time off from the stress of work, watching over an elderly grandparent and caring for her toddler, Kyra. The group planned to take a drive on the beach at midnight, and Bridgette was the first one out the door. She walked down the stairs, and they heard the gate close behind her. Minutes later, her friends followed, but by then, Bridgette was gone.

Beachcombers discovered her body near the shoreline the next morning. The autopsy said Bridgette had been strangled, battered and raped.

Some witnesses have come forward to say that they heard screams and others that they may have seen Gearen get into a dark-colored SUV, although they couldn't tell if she did so voluntarily. Many wonder why Bridgette was the first one out the door, since she had a fear of going out at night and rarely would alone. Did she see someone she knew? Or was there a stranger waiting in the shadows?

Perhaps some or all of these questions could be answered by the lab results. But the forensic evidence analysis in the Gearen murder is still bogged down at the apparently overwhelmed Texas Department of Public Safety's crime lab.

"It's horrible that a case like this takes so long," Detective Tommy Hansen of the Galveston County Sheriff's Office told the Chronicle. "You can have the suspects committing more crimes, but we can't do anything until we get the results back."

So Gearen's family and friends wait. The community waits. And, at least for now, one or more murderers remain free, with nothing to prevent them from taking other lives. In this age of strained resources, Bridgette Gearen's case is far from an anomaly. I talked with a homicide detective a few weeks ago who told me he literally had dozens of murder investigations assigned to him, some recent but others cold and growing colder. And every day when he walked into his cubicle, there were more case files on his desk crying for his attention.

Bridgette's daughter, Kyra, was 2 when her mother disappeared. She's 5 now. At some point, she'll grow up and begin asking questions. Let's hope that by then law enforcement will have answers for Kyra, and, looking at the bigger picture, that this disturbing trend will be reversed. Resources are tight, it's true, but is that sufficient reason to allow killers to get away with murder?

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Solo Act?

by Susan Murphy Milano

The intruder used a hammer to smash a first-floor window and enter the Illinois home of a successful, long-time local business owner and his family. The sound of glass shattering at 3 a.m. on March 2, 2010, woke those inside. Moments later, the intruder fired, killing 48-year-old Lori Kramer, her husband Jeffrey, and their 20-year-old son Michael. An overnight guest and another family member sleeping in the basement managed to escape, and a daughter in an upstairs bedroom hid in a closet and dialed 911. The intruder fled as police cars approached, sirens screaming from several blocks away.

To the layperson, this crime looked like a deadly, random home invasion. But as on an episode of "CSI Miami" or A & E’s popular crime show "48 hours," this tragedy would prove otherwise. Detectives worked the case diligently from Illinois to Indiana and on to Florida. They contacted cell-phone carriers. Like a footprint, the cell-tower signals steered police to an IHOP restaurant dumpster in Indiana, where they recovered various items including the gun used by the killer.

By the next morning, Florida police picked up the cell signal and arrested 23-year old Jacob Nodarse. The young man waived extradition and was returned voluntarily to DuPage County, Illinois.

While in a Florida jail, Nodarse spilled his guts out to authorities. Within hours of Nodarse's capture, another man in Illinois, Johnny Borizov, was also taken into police custody.

The Kramers' daughter Angela, 25, found hiding in a bedroom closet when police responded to the shooting, had lived with her parents for about a year. She and her infant child moved in after a messy break-up with -- guess who? -- Johnny Borizov, a man Angela Kramer feared and who was fighting her in family court over visitation rights and child support.

Once police interviewed Angela, the pieces of the crime fit together in a neat package. Her former boyfriend and father of her child was angry at Angela and her parents; he didn't want to pay out 20% of his earnings to support his own child.

Allegedly, a month before the shooting, Johnny Borizov (near right) hired his best friend, Jacob Nodarse (far right), to kill Angela and her parents.

The evening of the shooting, Borizov was at a Joliet casino, captured on casino video which he could conveniently claim as an air-tight alibi. According to sealed DuPage County court documents, Angela and Borizov had been scheduled to appear at a hearing a week after the killings.

I realize investigators have a long way to go as they continue to gather information and process evidence. I understand that a person isn't guilty when accused or charged with a crime, but only after being convicted in a fair trial. That is our legal system.

But as an expert on family-violence issues, I have difficulty holding my tongue and remaining on the sidelines.

In my opinion, 28-year-old Johnny Borizov planned out the execution-style murder of a woman he once loved and with whom he has a 13-month-old son. In the mind of an angry and controlling abuser, death is the ultimate punishment for someone who ends and/or leaves the relationship and for those who aid or assist her.

It made me think of yet another case, 30 miles away. Perhaps the detectives on the Angela Kramer case can cross over to Will County and work on the unsolved December 2009 murder of abuse victim Lacey Gaines, 20. She was found stabbed and strangled, with no signs of forced entry or a struggle in her Justice, Illinois, home.

In March of that year, in a Cook County court, her baby's father, Sanchez Regelio (Sanchez has used several aliases in the past; I'm not sure what legal name he is currently using) filed a petition to establish parentage. Everyone called Sanchez"Daniel," including the late Lacey. Sanchez took the paternity test and was proven to be the baby's father sometime in May of 2009.

But in September of 2009, Sanchez withdrew his petition for custody of the child -- because, in my opinion, he had decided to take matters into his own hands. He either allegedly hired someone to kill his former girlfriend and mother of his son, or he did it himself. This case is yet another example of a "family hit" that will remain a cold case because very few in law enforcement are properly trained in domestic-violence crimes and intimate-partner homicide.

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CSI and Me

by Kathryn Casey

A few years back, I sat across a desk from Henrico Police Captain Jan Stem in his Richmond, VA, office, talking about the Piper Rountree case. Rountree (photo left), a Houston attorney, was charged with murdering her ex-husband, University of Richmond professor Fred Jablin (with Piper in photo right below). It was a particularly violent conclusion to a War-of-the-Roses-style divorce, two years of domestic warfare. Rountree hadn’t liked the outcome of the divorce; a self-envisioned super mom, she’d lost custody of the couple’s three kids. The police figured that she’d attempted to right what she perceived as a great wrong by ambushing Jablin in the family driveway while their kids slept upstairs in the house.

Yet another example of how motherly love can go tragically askew.

Talking with Stem that day, it was obvious that the evidence against Rountree relied heavily on such modern-day devices as cell phones and the Internet. It got me thinking about how many of the cases I now investigate rest on evidence unheard of when I started writing about crime fresh out of journalism school as a fledgling reporter for Houston City Magazine back in the eighties.

At the appropriate moment, I asked Stem, a middle-ager like myself, who’d been in the crime game for a couple of decades, to quantify for me how much the cop business had changed throughout his career. Stem ran a thick hand through his soft brown hair and frowned. Shrugging, he said, “Old fashioned police work is still important, but almost everything’s different these days.”

The case, the subject of my book Die, My Love (HarperCollins 2007) is fascinating, full of twists and turns and terror in the night. But that day in Stem’s office, another murder was on my mind as well, the first murder case I ever covered, the one we at Houston City called the “Piney Woods Love Triangle.” It happened in and around a small East Texas middle school, back in the mid-eighties. The victim, Bill Fleming, was a young football coach. The accused was none other than the principal, one Hurley Fontenot, a courtly man with an East Texas drawl. Both Fleming and Fontenot were married, and both had affairs with the school secretary, a pretty, dark-haired woman with a self-effacing manner, Laura Nugent.

There’s no doubt that the prosecution had a circumstantial case: Fontenot and Fleming had been feuding over Nugent for months. Testimony pegged the principal as the last one seen with the coach the afternoon he disappeared. But there was potential forensic evidence as well: Bill Fleming’s decomposing body found dumped in a deserted oil field, nearly a week after the murder, and human blood spray in the inside of the 4H camper Fontenot had on his pickup that weekend. The truck and camper were cleaned at a car wash the day after Fleming’s disappearance, but police found diluted human blood collected on the truck axle as well.

But remember, this was 1984, a lifetime ago in the CSI business.

I spent seven weeks in a Livingston, TX, courtroom as prosecutors and well-known Houston defense attorney Dick DeGuerin battled it out. Today it would be a simple matter. Even with a single bone or a wad of spit, DNA could be collected and mapped, compared to the blood in the trailer and on the axle. Back then, however, DNA was just a theory. At that time – and remember this is just a little over twenty years ago – police labs couldn’t even type blood from a corpse in an advanced state of decomposition. The bottom line: Prosecutors had no way to convincingly tie the blood inside the trailer and on Hurley Fontenot’s truck axle to Bill Fleming.

Still, we’re talking about human blood, not something normally found inside a trailer or sprayed inside a camper. And there must have been a considerable amount to mix with the car wash water and collect on the axle. How could the defense explain that? For much of the trial, I thought the blood evidence would be the prosecutors’ ace in the hole.

The defense attorney offered an alternate possibility. The blood didn’t belong to Bill Fleming at all, DeGuerin countered. Family-man Hurley regularly used the trailer and pickup to transport household garbage cans to the dump. Inside were plastic bags, some of which contained his wife’s menstrual pads. That wasn’t all. When DeGuerin asked Mrs. Fontenot some rather embarrassing questions, she explained that she was enduring what women today call menopause and which they then euphemistically referred to as “the change,” and that she was thus experiencing an unusually heavy flow.

Although I never quite understood how blood could have not only come off the pads, but leaked through garbage bags and the garbage cans, so much that it splattered inside the trailer and collected on the axle, I guess the jury did. The four men and eight women charged with deciding his fate acquitted Hurley Fontenot.

Hurley wasn’t a healthy man. He had heart problems, and not much later he died. No one else was ever prosecuted for Bill Fleming’s murder. Whenever questioned about the case, prosecutors said they believed they had the right man but simply lost in the courtroom. To this day, DeGuerin says he doesn’t believe Fontenot committed the murders. But, of course, we’ll never know. With Fontenot acquitted and deceased, there’s no reason to do DNA on Bill Fleming or the found blood, that is if any of the evidence even remains stored in a cold case box.

So, when I sit back and look at a case like Piper Rountree’s, as fascinating as it is, with all the advantages of modern police work, I can’t help but recall the decades-old murder of Bill Fleming. It reminds me how long I’ve been covering courtrooms, and how many safeguards science offers today to ensure that a jury’s decision is based on real evidence. When done correctly, modern science has the power to free the innocent and condemn the guilty.

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No Justice for Angie-Part 2

by Donna Weaver

Angie Yarnell and her mother, Marianne Asher-Chapman were very close. Angie was even maid of honor at her mother's wedding (Marianne and Angie pictured left). Mother and daughter talked on the phone frequently and saw each other often. So when Angie did not show up at her niece's birthday party at Marianne's home, her mother knew something was horribly wrong. She called and left several messages for Angie.

After leaving a final message that "if she (Angie) didn't call me by the next morning. I was going to drive to her house and bang on the door", it was Angie's husband, Mike, who showed up at Marianne's door. Mike took Angie's two dogs and drove to Marianne's Holts Summit home and told her that the last time he had seen Angie was exactly seven days before, on October 25, 2005. He said that Angie had left him for another man.

The following morning after Mike's visit, Marianne made the 90-minute drive from her house to Mike and Angie's Ivy Bend home. She says one of the first things she noticed was that 2 freezers were missing from the house. Marianne says that Angie had told her in a recent phone conversation about how she had been filling the freezers, stocking them up with meat for the coming winter. The same day, Marianne files a missing persons report with the Morgan County Sheriff's Office. She says another thing that went missing shortly after that was Mike's truck, and as far as she knows, there was no effort by law enforcement to locate either the truck or the freezers after she filed the missing persons report on Angie.

Two weeks later, Marianne received a postcard from Angie, postmarked November 8, 2003, saying that she was on her way to Texas with someone named Gary to visit Gary's family and that she would call when they were settled. It was this postcard that eventually proved to be Mike Yarnell's undoing.

Marianne says that Angie confided in her that there was trouble in her three year marriage to Mike. Angie said Mike was "verbally and emotionally abusive." Marianne also states that approximately 2-3 weeks before Angie disappeared Angie told her, "Mike said he didn't love me anymore and that he never loved me."

In the meantime, Ra'Vae Edwards kept the story of Angie's disappearance alive in the News Tribune hoping that someone would come forward with new information.

Mike Yarnell Disappears

Two years after Angie was reported missing, Marianne received a call from the Montel Williams Show. They had read Ra'Vae Edwards' coverage of Angie's story in the News Tribune and asked Marianne to appear on the show to talk about Angie's disappearance.

Five days after the segment aired on national television, Mike Yarnell disappeared. It seems Yarnell had a habit of disappearing when he was in trouble. Some years before marrying Angie, he fled to Mexico after going AWOL from the Navy. He was arrested there on drug charges and spent 3 years in a Mexican prison.

Then Marianne and Ra'Vae hatch a brilliant plan: Marianne, as his mother-in-law, files a missing person report for Mike Yarnell in March of 2008.

Yarnell is Found

Marianne's missing person report on Mike Yarnell eventually leads to his arrest--but not at first.

When Mike Yarnell applies for a job at an Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi, a background check is run as part of the employment process and it is discovered he is a not only a missing person, but a person of interest in the disappearance of his wife, Angie. However, when law enforcement in Morgan County are first notified that Mike Yarnell has been found, they told authorities in Biloxi to let him go.

Marianne was convinced the postcard she received from her daughter two weeks after her disappearance was not written by Angie. She suspected it was Mike who had written the note to her mother saying she was running away with another man.

Reporter Ra'Vae Edwards contacted Peggy Walla, a Forensic Handwriting Document expert who agreed to analyze the postcard. Comparing the writing to both samples of Mike and Angie's handwriting, Walla definitively determined that it was indeed Mike who had written and sent the postcard to Marianne saying Angie had left for Texas.

Armed with this new information, Marianne takes it to Morgan County investigators who travel in August 2008 to Biloxi where Mike Yarnell still resides. Yarnell spoke to authorities about his missing wife and admitted to sending the postcard to Marianne, but provided no other information at that time about what really happened to Angie.

Yarnell Confesses to Killing Angie

In early November 2008, Mike Yarnell is arrested in Mississippi and jailed in Morgan County, Missouri on charges of forgery and tampering with physical evidence for writing and mailing the postcard to Marianne, trying to make her believe that Angie was alive and well.

Then in December 2008, more than five years after Angie disappeared, Yarnell makes a startling confession to Morgan County detectives. He admitted that during a domestic dispute on Oct 26, 2003, he shoved Angie off of the deck of their Ivy Bend home causing her to fall 4 feet to her death. He said that "after he sat with her awhile, he freaked out, then loaded her body in the car intending to drive her to Versailles."

Yarnell said he freaked out again, turned the car around, returned home to pick up the couples' canoe, and drove Angie's body to a boat ramp on the Lake of the Ozarks. He said he then put Angie into the canoe and rowed about 4 miles to an island. But when Yarnell reached the island, he said his adrenaline rush had passed and he was unable to get Angie's body onto the shore and lost her in the water.

Detectives were unable to locate Angie's body where Mike said he left her.

The trial of Michael Shane Yarnell for the murder of his wife Angie had been set for September 2009. But on Monday, June 8, 2009, Mike Yarnell was sentenced to seven years in prison as part of a plea agreement for murdering his wife. Many people were incredulous over the deal made by Morgan County, Missouri Prosecuting Attorney, Marvin Opie just six months after Yarnell confessed to killing Angie.

Marianne says the confession and plea agreement doesn't change anything--she will continue to search for Angie's body. She believes that if Angie is found, her remains will tell a different story than the one Mike Yarnell confessed to.

Marianne says she feels obligated to help other families with missing loved ones. She says she keeps a sign on her refrigerator that says, "The duty of a good citizen is to keep her mouth open"

In 2007, Marianne, along with Peggy Florence, whose daughter Jasmine Haslag also disappeared, formed Missouri Missing, an organization dedicated to support families of missing persons and spread awareness in the cause of the missing and unidentified.

It is possible Mike Yarnell could end up doing as little as three years in prison for murdering his wife. In the meantime, Marianne Asher-Chapman's life sentence of heartbreak goes on.

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No Justice for Angie--Part 1

by Donna Weaver

Every family with a missing murdered loved one knows all too well how elusive justice can be-- myself included. But I cannot imagine how devastating it must be to finally have justice within your grasp only to have it slip right through your fingers.

The trial of Michael Shane Yarnell for the murder of his wife Angie had been set for September 2009. But on Monday, June 8, 2009, Mike Yarnell was sentenced to seven years in prison as part of a plea agreement for murdering his wife. Many people were incredulous over the deal made by Morgan County, Missouri Prosecuting Attorney, Marvin Opie.

As part of the plea agreement, Opie agreed to accept Yarnell's offer to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the first degree if all other charges against him were dismissed. Yarnell was originally charged with second degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, first and second degree involuntary manslaughter, forgery, and tampering with physical evidence. Mr. Opie did not return a phone call at the time of this publication.

Ironically, it was the forgery charge that led to Mike Yarnell's confession years after the fact of murdering his wife Angie during what he claimed was a domestic dispute.

That Mike Yarnell is serving a prison sentence at all for Angie's murder can be attributed to the love and courageous perseverance of her mother, Marianne Asher-Chapman, and the tenacity and heart of one lone journalist, Ra'Vae Edwards, formerly a reporter for the News Tribune.

I hope you will be as outraged and horrified as I am over Mike Yarnell's plea agreement and sentence after reading how events unfolded in the disappearance and murder of Michelle Angela "Angie" Yarnell.

October 25, 2003 was the last day anyone saw 28-year-old Angie Yarnell alive. One week later, Mike Yarnell told Angie's family that she left him for another man after she failed to show up at her mother's home for her niece's birthday party.

Two weeks later, Marianne received a postcard from Angie, postmarked November 8, 2003, saying that she was on her way to Texas with someone named Gary to visit Gary's family and that she would call when they were settled. It was this postcard that proved to be Mike Yarnell's undoing.

Mike Yarnell didn't file for divorce. He knew Angie would never be coming back.

Tomorrow, in Part 2: Angie's disappearance, a botched investigation, and Mike Yarnell's surprising confession.

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Clear and Present Danger

by Susan Murphy Milano

Like most of us I am deeply disturbed by the escalating number of parents murdering their own families. This past weekend was no exception as police discovered 9-year-old Duncan Connolly (left) and 7-year-old Jack Connolly (right) were found murdered in rural Putnam County, IL. Their father was found dead not far from where his car was left. According to police sources, the boys' father had a rope around his neck when he was found.

The discovery brought to a close a national three-week search for the man and the boys, precipitated by Michael Connolly's abduction of his sons following a weekend visitation.

The last time Amy saw her two boys alive, something was not right. Connolly was acting strange when they met at the police station. Amy refused to hand over her boys on March 7th, an officer threatened her if she didn't give them to their father, she would be arrested according to her lawyer.

Amy Leichtenberg filed orders of protection against Michael Connolly more than once after his repeated physical and emotional abuse in the later years of their marriage. Amy filed for divorce that year and moved out of their home. In a 2006, a petition for a protective order against her husband was filed, saying that his "controlling and obsessive behavior" included threats to kill himself and others along with a series of bizarre demands he made of her. Within a 15-month period, Connolly violated the orders of protection 57 times.

In 2007, Amy was awarded full custody of the boys with Connolly given supervised visitation. According to court reports from the family visitation center, Connolly's behavior was dangerous enough to temporarily cease all visits with the boys. In my experience, when a family visitation center terminates interaction between parent and child, it sends a red flag of danger. Connolly, the ever witty and clever abuser, was able to resume visits when his psychiatrist sent a "sympathy letter" to the judge "if my client is able to spend more time with his sons, Mr. Connolly's depression and outbursts would lessen."

The judge responded by setting a series of "behavioral guidelines." This included obtaining employment, housing and continued therapy.

"(He) tells me if I ever take the boys away he will hunt me and my parents down and cut us open," Amy Leichtenberg, then known as Amy Connolly, stated in the 2006 petition seeking an order of protection. Amy said during their marriage Connolly had tried to isolate her from her family. A common characteristic among abusers.

Despite the 57 violations of the protection orders, dangerous behavior and deadly threats, McLean County Judge James Souk "rewarded" Connolly unsupervised visitation with his sons.

Connolly filed numerous motions with the court, basically wearing the judge down. Despite pleas from Amy and her lawyer, which were ignored. This mother’s plea for supervised visitation was dismissed without regard to serious safety concerns.

There is an automatic presumption that it is in the best interest of a child “regardless of court orders”, prior violence or threats, to maintain visitation with both parents. Victims of domestic violence face a double edged sword. Either expose their children to imminent danger, or defy the court system refusing to allow visitation. Like so many others before her, Amy tried to deal with a violent relationship in a family court environment.

In family court the two parties are presumed to be on a level playing field--law abiding individuals who have a disagreement over a private family matter. A core assumption of family law is that family disputes are not criminal disputes. As such, there are few safeguards built into the family court system to protect against the criminal dynamics that dominate family disputes in cases of family violence. In addition, the accusations the victim makes in family court, no matter how serious, carry no more authority than one person's say so. One of the most serious consequences is that when a family violence victim opens a case in family court against her abuser, the abuser is given equal opportunity to fight back against the victim's accusations, often because the abusers past is not an issue. Unless, of course, he is brought in from county or state prison sporting an orange jump suit and leg shackles.

There are lawyers and men’s groups who argue using domestic violence with a broad brush is not a reason to deny fathers visitation with their children. Accusing mothers of lying or making up stories to keep fathers’ from their children.

Under the current laws, a parent without custody is entitled "reasonable visitation." There is a high burden of proof as evidenced in this case when a court refuses to take into account dangerous abusers pose to their children.

Until we place the issue of labeling these cases as a "private matter" or an isolated incident, expect the death toll among children to rise. Expect the courts to continue to ignore clear and present danger signs when a victim of violence seeks a divorce.

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The Christmas Killer

by Connie Park

On Christmas Eve, when families gathered together to enjoy the holidays and to celebrate the season, the small suburb of Covina, 25 miles from Los Angeles, received news of a devastating tragedy right in their neighborhood: a "Santa Gunman" had killed nine family members and torched their house to the ground. This year's Christmas celebration turned into a tragedy that the Ortega family will never forget.

At approximately 11:30 p.m., 45-year-old Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, dressed in a Santa Claus suit, showed up at the doorstep of his former in-laws' home, where his ex-wife, Slyvia Pardo, and her three children by a prior marriage, had been living for the past year.

This Santa Gunman wasn't there to deliver presents or to spread joy. Bruce Pardo (pictured above) was armed with 4 pistols and a flame thrower containing racing fuel. This man came to seek revenge on his ex-wife. It was apparent Pardo didn't care who got in his way or who he was going to hurt or kill. He was a cowardly man who shot an 8-year-old girl in the face when she opened the door to Santa. Pardo also fired a gun into the back of a 16-year-old girl. He continued shooting towards the 25 family members and friends who were at the house and then sprayed racing fuel all around the house, setting the home on fire.

Next, Pardo drove to his brother's house in San Fernando Valley and killed himself. At three in the morning on Christmas Day, the mass murderer's brother, Brad Pardo, found Jeffrey dead with a gunshot wound to the head. Police discovered $17,000 strapped to Pardo's body and a plane ticket to Canada. Unfortunately enough, this Christmas present of Pardo killing himself didn't come soon enough for the Ortega family.

Police stated the vehicle found outside Pardo brother's house was tripwired to set off 500 rounds of ammunition. A second vehicle was recovered in Glendale, California on December 28, but no explosives were found. By early Christmas morning, the house was engulfed in flames and 9 family members were killed. According to the authorities, the bodies were so charred that they were not able to make any identifications at the scene.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Bruce and Sylvia married in 2006. However, Sylvia filed for divorce after discovering that for the past several years, Bruce Pardo had been claiming his brain-damaged son from a previous relationship as a tax exemption. Also, in July 2008, Pardo lost his job in with ITT. He had accumulated extensive debt. The final divorce settlement ordered Pardo to pay $10,000 to Sylvia and to give back the diamond ring and custody of the dog.

From the scene, it was apparent that Pardo had been planning the massacre for several months. He rented the Santa Claus suit earlier in September asking for a extra large suit to hide "big presents."

The 9 family members who were killed were Sylvia Pardo; her parents, Alicia and Joseph Ortega (70 and 80 years old); Teresa and James Ortega (51 and 52); Cheri and Charles Ortega (45 and 50); and Alicia Ortiz and her 17-year-old son, Michael. As a result of this tragedy, 16 children were left without one or both parents. The 8- and 16-year-old girls miraculously survived the shooting and are recovering from the injuries.

The facts and evidence of this multiple homicide-suicide will be documented. But the question of why Pardo resorted to that level of violence—rather than, say, simply taking his own life instead of embarking on a complicated killing spree—will remain incomprehensible.

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Speculation of the Talking Heads—Is it or isn't it Caylee Anthony?

by Stacy Dittrich

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, the breaking news in the Caylee Anthony case has the talking heads literally squawking. I can say this because I am one, and though I can't speak for the rest of them, it's my opinion that the speculations, predictions, and eventual outcomes have turned tiresome.

In case you’re one of those in the cave, just last week an Orange County Florida utilities worker stopped by a wooded area to use the restroom. As he walked back into the woods he saw a garbage bag and proceeded to kick it, sending a small human skull tumbling out. Obviously horrified, the man called 911. Needless to say, the human remains were found less than a quarter of a mile from the home of George and Cindy Anthony. Subsequently, the investigation into missing Caylee simply exploded—along with the media.

Now, for the last seven days, we have been subjected to expert after expert commenting on what the police could have possibly found, how it will be processed, whether or not the remains are really those of little Caylee, will the grandparents be charged or should they be charged, was there duck tape around the mouth or just on the garbage bag? These are just a few. As I’ve said, I am just as guilty but have grown weary of my own commentating as well as others. The bottom line is that the Orange County Sheriff’s Department has done a phenomenal job of keeping the evidence and circumstances surrounding the remains under lock and key—they’re doing their job. We can all speculate until the end of time, but we won't know a thing until the sheriff’s department gives us the information. Sorry, I refuse to get my information from the likes of Leonard Padilla.

The only information we know for a fact, at this very moment, is that an innocent 2-year-old girl is missing and is most likely dead—something we won’t know for sure until there's a positive identification. We know that her mother is sitting in jail and charged with the murder. We know that she has acquired her own dream team consisting of those anxious to jump aboard the Casey Anthony Circus and Media Magnet’s Train. We know that her parents have their own attorney, and the sheriff’s department is still processing the scene.

We will all know soon enough if the remains found at the scene were Caylee Anthony’s. As for the condition of the remains, and other evidence found, these are facts that will most likely come out at the trial—and we’ll all know then. Needless to say, we should all take a deep breath, sit back, and let law enforcement do their jobs effectively.

I apologize for such a short post but I have to run, I am a scheduled guest on a radio show giving my expert law enforcement opinion. The topic?

Caylee Anthony . . . I think my train is leaving now.

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YOUR TURN: When a Convicted Killer's Wrong Makes a School Teacher Write

by Narelle Bitunjac

When I open the mailbox and see another letter from John, I always feel lucky. Aside from the fact that his letters are intriguing, there’s something special about someone taking the time to hand write a message and send it by post. Of course, e-mail isn’t an option for John—he’s housed in a prison.

I’m usually terrible at correspondence and rarely remember to send birthday cards. So it was out of character for me, an Australian school teacher, to initiate a "pen pal" relationship with anyone, never mind a complete stranger who resides in an American prison, convicted of murdering his wife.

My interest in John began after I watched a documentary about his trial. His case seemed extraordinary and I couldn’t get him or his situation out of my mind.

I had conversations with friends about John and the fact that he was an intelligent, articulate man who had no history of violence. We analyzed testimony that supported John’s assertion that he loved his wife. We tried to figure out why he’d been convicted given that the physical evidence was inconclusive and the prosecution’s case seemed patchy.

It wasn’t long before I began to feel uncomfortable that I’d become emotionally invested in John’s life and he didn’t know anything about mine. I'd hoped that writing a letter of introduction would balance the scales. It did.

Over the last two and a half years, our correspondence has grown into a friendship. We discovered early on that we were both working in a teaching capacity. He was teaching basic literacy and numeracy skills to inmates and I was teaching much the same thing to my second-graders.

Our early conversations about teaching slowly moved onto more personal subjects. I wrote to him about life as a newlywed and he wrote back about his adult children and the realities of prison life.

The prison stories were usually shocking, sometimes frightening but occasionally funny. I remember that I burst out laughing when he revealed that "chick lit" and romance novels were the most popular books in the prison library. “Closest thing the inmates can get to porn,” he explained.

As interesting as writing to John was, it wasn’t bringing me any closer to understanding how he ended up convicted of domestic homicide. If anything, our friendship made his conviction more difficult to comprehend.

To learn more about domestic homicide and the men who commit it, I began reading court transcripts, academic papers and media reports. In observance of Domestic Violence month, I will share some tips on how women in abusive relationships can lower the risk of homicide:

· Don’t live with an abuse partner. Refusing to live with an abuser significantly lowers the risk of abuse becoming fatal;

· Treat any abuse during pregnancy as an absolute deal breaker;

· Report domestic violence. The incidence of domestic homicide is lower in men who have been charged with abuse;

· Take death threats seriously;

· Hide or remove all guns and ammunition from the home;

· Keep your plan to leave a secret and leave when your partner is not home;

· Take extra care for the first 12 months after separation, especially if the abuser is controlling;

· Take action: speak out and seek help from friends, family, police, and local domestic violence agencies.

I soon discovered that the crime John was convicted of was intimate partner homicide, not domestic homicide. Intimate partner homicide and domestic homicide are erroneously thought to be the same.

Intimate partner homicide involves killing a spouse, ex-spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend and happens at a rate of more than three per day in the United States.

Domestic homicide is a broader term and refers to the killing of children, extended family, current partners, and suicide.

I expected to see a history of controlling and violent behavior in relationships ending in homicides. However, I was surprised to learn how often abuse during pregnancy preceded homicide. In fact, recent studies have revealed that homicide is the number one cause of death for pregnant women.

Having never been a victim of abuse, I've found it difficult to understand why women in abusive relationships don’t just leave. Yet statistics confirm what victims know instinctively–the risk of homicide spikes significantly when a woman leaves an abuser. Violent men don’t step aside and let their partners walk out.

Although this information provided me with some insight into intimate partner homicide, I didn’t feel any closer to understanding why John had been convicted as none of the predictors of homicide applied to his relationship.

I kept reading and eventually found a flip side to the crime lurking in the details of the high-profile cases, those cases which attracted major media attention because the accused wasn’t a serial abuser who’d gone too far. Without a history of violence, the flip-side murders initially seemed random and unbelievable. But there was a common thread, and while it wasn’t as blatant as bruises and broken bones, it was there.

In every case, the accused could be described as: a habitual liar, narcissistic, unfaithful, materialistic, egocentric, charming and manipulative with absolutely no regard for anyone else.

Who doesn’t tell the occasional white lie, flirt every once in a while and think of themselves first? That’s not the same as being a pathological liar, an unrelenting cheat and narcissistic beyond what could be considered a normal level of self interest.

In contrast to the serial abuser, who seeks complete control over his wife, it seems these men wanted to be rid of their wives. They used murder as a cheaper and more permanent alternative to divorce. Most stood to gain financially via life insurance, avoiding costly property settlements, or sidestepping alimony and child support. The "cheaper than divorce" theory is strengthened when you consider that the victims either had children or were pregnant at the time they were of murdered.

I’m still writing to John and given our friendship, I have lost my perspective in terms of his guilt or innocence. A friend asked me recently what I’d do if John told me he was guilty.

I said that John and I rarely discuss his case but if he did confide in me, I would continue writing.

Apart from my friendship with John, which I consider genuine, any details he shared would help me realize my goal of fully understanding this complex crime and sharing that understanding with other women.

Narelle Bitunjac is a 41-year-old elementary school teacher from Sydney, Australia. She is a member of the Domestic Violence Coalition Committee and actively supports its campaign for the introduction of Domestic Violence Fatality Review teams in Australia. This is Narelle's first published piece, written for Women in Crime Ink and subsequently accepted for publication with a quarterly women's journal, Honestly Woman, "an Australian magazine for enterprising women."

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Why Are Smart Women Carried Away by Fakes?

by Michele McPhee

Clark Rockefeller, the kidnapper captured in Baltimore this past Saturday—six days after he snatched his 7-year-old daughter from the ritzy Back Bay enclave during a supervised visit—had no driver’s license.

No Social Security card.

No work history.

No record of education.

No family members to speak of.

In 1994, he did marry a woman (after first falling in love with her identical twin) but he did not file for a marriage license. He spread stories of owning Lear Jets, built a bizarre moat around his New Hampshire home, led neighbors to believe he was a descendant of the Rockefellers—the famed industrialist clan—and he swore he graduated from Yale. All lies.

In the words of one Boston Police law enforcement source, “He’s a ghost.” A broke ghost that lived off of his wife’s lucrative income.

But that did not stop Harvard-educated, high-powered political consultant Sandra Boss from marrying Rockefeller. Or Clark Rock. Or Michael Brown. Or whatever Rockefeller’s real name is. She was married to the man for more than a decade, but, astonishingly, she would never know who her husband and father of their child (who has since reunited with her mother) really was. In fact, Rockefeller took a “substantial amount of money” to relinquish custody of his little girl (pictured above) and even signed off on paperwork to change her name from Reigh Rockefeller to Reigh Boss.

Sandra Boss is not the only smart woman to fall in love with an impostor. Two decades of crime reporting have shown me that women are often willing to clench their eyes shut to the possibility that the man they have fallen in love with is not who he said he was—like whistling in the dark to keep away ghosts. Recent murder trials have shown us that much.

Rachel Entwistle, the beloved teacher from the South Shore, who was shot dead alongside her nine-month-old daughter Lillian Rose, thought she had found a loving husband and doting dad in Neil Entwistle, who was pulling in $10,000 a month as a computer consultant for British intelligence. In fact, Rachel (pictured right) created a Web site to keep family members abreast of the Entwistles' perfect life and signed each message the same way, “Love, the happy family.” Neil Entwistle was in fact a broke, cowardly sex addict who pumped bullets into his baby’s belly and his wife’s head. He was convicted this summer.

Weeks later, in the same courthouse, another so-called loving husband, former WRKO radio talk-show host James Keown, was convicted of killing his wife Julie by spiking her Gatorade with antifreeze. As she died slowly and painfully in their Waltham home, Julie Keown (pictured left) was still convinced her husband was a Harvard Business School student (he forged acceptance letters), a man who was heartbroken over the inexplicable sickness of his wife. In e-mails to friends, Julie wrote about her unending love for James, and even expressed fear that her illness would “mess up” his life.

When sentencing Keown, a judge remarked, "I am truly in the presence of an evil person." Why couldn't intelligent women, in intimate relations with these men, sense something shady beneath the façades? Why are smart women so ready to believe obvious lies? Have we become so focused on advancing our careers that we ignore our personal lives—failing to see the "ghosts," the evil, right before our eyes?

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