Murphy Milano's Exceptional Victims Handbook is Here!

by Women in Crime Ink

Just when the public has begun to believe that domestic violence is a crime of the past, the case of "Survivor" producer Bruce Beresford-Redman makes headlines. The case contains all the ingredients of a domestic homicide.

We have seen domestic violence creep back into pop culture and celebrity justice -- a la the Chris Brown and Charlie Sheen cases. There's no arguing that there's a problem, but one can’t help but ask: What can we do?

Leaving the abuse is the only solution, but that's a lot easier said than done. But leaving, and preparing to leave, just got a leap easier thanks to tireless victims' advocate Susan Murphy Milano. In her new book Time's Up, Murphy Milano offers clear directions on how to leave without being killed.

It's an understatement to say Murphy Milano hits the nail on the head (again). She calls the well-crafted, timely guide the culmination of the years she spent helping save the lives of women escaping domestic violence. In this soup-to-nuts handbook of 12 clearly written chapters, she provides the ABCs of getting away from an abusive relationship with your life. Her concrete instructions give victims of domestic violence a stronger position in the criminal justice system.

For example, in Chapter 4 (Declaration of Independence), Murphy Milano describes and prescribes an Evidentiary Abuse Affidavit –- a document to help in the serious, dangerous, and daunting process of leaving an abuser. The concept is simple yet genius: leaving your abuse requires planning. The chapter has a usable sample document. The affidavit is a wonderful tool for documenting injuries or other evidence of violence -- violence that perhaps leads to the affiant's murder -- and offers hope of holding the abuser criminally responsible. With this sample, you would write out your wishes, the details of the abuse, sign it, have someone witness it, get it notarized, and keep it somewhere secure, safe and out of the abuser's reach.

Take these circumstances for example:

You are in a dating relationship. The guy lives out of state. He's angry that you broke off the relationship. You have sense that he is planning to harm you because he can't have you in his life anymore. He leaves threatening messages on your voice mail or in texts that make you uneasy and afraid. His e-mails are emotional and may contain threats of what might happen if you do not come to your senses. Maybe he sends a threatening e-mail threatening to take his own life if you don't return to him. This suicide threat is also a sign you might be in danger. You need to complete this document and follow the instructions provided.

The biggest gem in the book is the recommendation to film the Declaration. From a prosecutor’s perspective -- for so many reasons -- this video explaining why you are leaving, why you are concerned and afraid, describing your history of being battered and/or stalked, will be the best evidence in the worst possible scenario.

If you trust someone at work to record you, or you belong to a church that's willing to make a brief recording for you – take the opportunity to do it, and then send the tape somewhere where the abuser can't find it.

One thing I would add to Murphy Milano's suggestions to victims: if you can't get a will notarized or have a witness present (perhaps because your abuser is watching you, or you need to leave in a hurry), I would recommend creating what is known as a holographic will. This is a will that has been entirely handwritten and signed. Normally, a will must be signed by a witness who attests to the validity of the document. However, in many jurisdictions, holographic wills will be treated equally under the law.

Can you imagine how valuable it would have been for Stacy Peterson’s family to have a Evidentiary Abuse Affidavit and/or video, or a handwritten (holographic) will? Stacy is still missing, and her family has no peace. Most people are convinced her husband had a hand in her disappearance, but she left no message behind. Her children and parents have no idea what to do with her belongings. You can see how far this simple preparation would have gone in the Peterson case.

Escaping domestic abuse often takes many baby steps. Frightened women whose husbands or boyfriends have beaten, threatened or stalked them need some hand-holding through the process. As she has done one at a time in the past, Murphy Milano reaches out a hand in a way she hopes will save far more women and children than she can in person. Now it's up to those women to garner the courage to find the book and use all the advice Murphy Milano studded it with. Do it now! Do it fast! Don't spend one more day in an abusive relationship that could end in death. But, as Murphy Milano warns, plan well for that escape, and don't give the abuser the faintest hint that you are leaving.

Thank you to Susan Murphy Milano for giving us what Nancy Grace aptly describes as a succinct, well-written guidebook that is a must-have for anyone who is a domestic-abuse victim, knows one, or works with abused women. It is Murphy Milano's life dream that this book will be a staple at divorce-attorneys' offices, police stations, emergency rooms, libraries, battered women's shelters, religious buildings, and doctors' offices.

Tweet

A Holiday Nightmare

by Kathryn Casey

You probably wouldn't have noticed him in the crowd, the bearded, 36-year-old man at Wal-Mart two days before Christmas, scouring the tool aisle. He picked up one item after another, examining each, perhaps testing their weight, considering how they were made, the quality of a hatchet, a machete, and a variety of knives. What Jason Bouchard settled on, what he paid the cashier for and walked out the door with, was a crowbar.

Miles away at her Houston home, Terri Sanvincente, a well-known Adam Lambert fan and an assistant manager at a Walgreen's drug store, worried about Bouchard, a man she'd once loved who'd systematically tormented her life.

Two years earlier, she'd had the ex-army paratrooper formally evicted from their home. The separation, however, had dragged on, with Bouchard seeking custody of their three children, ages eight, six and three. Yet that, too, had recently been settled in Sanvincente's favor; six weeks earlier, after an 18-month battle, jurors granted primary custody to Sanvincente. Perhaps it wasn't surprising. At the hearing, Bouchard, who represented himself, surprisingly well, one expert says, admitted drug use and frequent masturbation. The jury ruled that he'd be allowed only supervised visits with his children.

Forty-year-old Sanvincente, it would later appear, took little comfort in the ruling. She continued to worry that she and her children (one dressed as Lambert on the right) remained in danger from a man who'd pushed her and hurled constant insults. “She was always afraid of what he was going to do next,” said Tabitha Charlton, Sanvincente's first family attorney, who walked away from the case fearing for her own safety. “Jason is brilliant in an evil way.”

In the wake of the court decision, Sanvincente became obsessed with protecting her children. She fretted constantly about Bouchard, what he was planning, what he might do to her, to their children. In hindsight, it would seem wisely so.

Last Christmas morning at four a.m., Bouchard parked in front of 16411 Sky Blue, Sanvincente's home, the one in which his three children, their mother and a babysitter slept. With him, he carried the newly purchased crowbar and a gallon gas can. Outside the house, he pulled up the hood on his sweatshirt to cover his head from a stormy night, then walked to the back of the house. Once there, he poured gasoline on a window ledge near the door and ignited it, to trap those inside. As the fire spread, Bouchard circled the house to his children's bedroom. It was there that he used the crowbar for its first intended purpose: breaking the window. Inside, his eight-year-old son heard the commotion, saw the fire, and ran to wake the others. Later Bouchard would say, "I was proud of him at that moment. He wasn't afraid anymore. He took charge."

By then, Bouchard was on his way to the front door. He wasn't finished.

Beating on the door, he waited for Sanvincente. When the door opened, her mind must have been swimming, so much that at first she misjudged the situation. "Have you called them yet?" she asked Bouchard, most likely referring to 911 and the fire department.

"Called who?" he replied. Later, he'd say, her eyes grew wide.

"Oh, my God," she cried. It was then that Bouchard used the crowbar for its second purpose, pummeling Sanvincente. With the first blow to the face, she fell, shouting at her children to run. But Bouchard didn't stop. In all, he struck her at least twenty times, while his two sons watched.

Apparently believing he'd accomplished what he'd come for, Bouchard woke up neighbors, who rescued the children. When police arrived, he surrendered. "I don't think she knew I was going to kill her," he'd say later. "... I thought I'd killed her, yet she lived another fourteen hours."

Why did he savagely beat the mother of his children? In a rare admission, Bouchard gives insight into the psychology of such killers. In a chilling letter to the Houston Chronicle, he wrote: "Killing Terri Sanvincente was my only option left before too much time under Terri Sanvincente's manipulation and influence forever took them down a path of future self-hatred ..."

What Bouchard's letter to the Chronicle gives us is a window into his diseased mind. What we see is a man without remorse, one who has manipulated facts and events to justify his actions and feels blameless. Killers like Bouchard feel entitled. It's what they want that counts.

The rest of us are expendable.

Tweet

Did the “Black Widow” Kill Her Husband?

by Cathy Scott

News late last year that convicted murderer Margaret Rudin was granted a new Las Vegas trial came as a big surprise. After all, the courts and the media, who dubbed her “The Black Widow,” had convicted her eight years earlier.

Margaret wrote me from jail after a friend of hers e-mailed me about Margaret’s hopes for a new trial. Coincidentally, I’d met Margaret before. When my mother and sister, antiques dealers, visited from out of town. we’d always stop by Margaret’s antiques store on West Charleston Boulevard not far from the home she shared with her fifth husband, 64-year-old millionaire realtor Ron Rudin.

Margaret was soft spoken, polite, and unassuming. Other than that, seeing her in her store half a dozen times was unremarkable. It was that quiet demeanor, I believe, that led to half of her troubles.

Imagine my surprise when I learned that Margaret, the quiet shop owner, was named a suspect in the murder of her husband. Prosecutors contended that Margaret and an unknown accomplice shot Ron several times in the head as he slept in the master bedroom of the couple’s home.

The prosecution claimed that Margaret and her accomplice cut off Ron’s head to fit his body into an antique trunk, and then they took the body and the trunk to Nelson's Landing at Lake Mohave and set it on fire. In January 1995, as a father and his boy hiked the area, they stumbled across Ron Rudin’s skull, which had rolled down a hill from the burned out trunk above.

Margaret’s story gained national notoriety when, as police and the district attorney’s office started closing in on her. Instead of staying to fight, Margaret, shy and reserved, fled town. She was featured several times on Fox TV’s “America’s Most Wanted” show. Two years after fleeing Las Vegas, a man in Massachusetts recognized Margaret as a neighbor and turned her in to police. A sting was set up when Margaret and her roommate ordered pizza. She was arrested by in a Boston suburb after a police officer posed as a pizza deliveryman. Police surrounded the house and they pulled Margaret, wearing a black wig, from a closet, where she’d hidden from them. She had been living, first in Arizona, then in Massachusetts, for two years under an assumed name. Because Margaret fled, many figured she was guilty; otherwise, why would she flee? If you believe Margaret, it was because she was losing her legal fight against the trustees of husband's estate, who had turned on her. She was afraid she couldn't win.

Margaret wasn't the only one who stood to gain from Ron Rudin’s death. The defense suggested there were others who had a motive to murder Ron, including the trustees and beneficiaries, who took control of Ron’s fortunes after Margaret was accused of murder. Many gained millions from his death. Margaret, because she was accused, then convicted, of killing Ron, was ousted from the will.

The mantra in the Rudin case this time around looks like it will be “follow the money.” With Margaret, who was given 60 percent of her husband’s estimated $10 million in assets, out of the picture; the trustees’ cut of the estate was much larger. According to testimony of Ron's associates, he wasn't the most popular man in Las Vegas and was known for his falling outs with people. Others, the defense contended at the time, had reasons to want Ron dead. It all will play out again in a Nevada courtroom, probably in early 2010.

District Court Judge Joseph Bonaventure, now retired from the bench, presided over the first trial, which lasted nine weeks. At Margaret’s sentencing, Bonaventure told Margaret, “You're going to be locked away in the cold confines of your prison cell, never to be heard from again.”

It seems Margaret Rudin has the last word after all.

Scott is a true crime author who splits her time between Las Vegas and San Diego. Her latest book—The Rough Guide to True Crime (Penguin)—is scheduled for release Aug. 31.

Photo courtesy of CBS News

Tweet

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.

Tweet

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.

Tweet

The "Best" Spousal Murder Stories

by Laura James

Books about spousal murder, when done well, can make for the most insightful psychological reading around. That's why we love to read them. That's why we love to study these cases. That's why spousal murders have been one of the most perennially popular themes in literature, fiction and non-. When we crack open the bedroom door on a marriage that went to hell, we often wonder, do we see anything recognizable?

The greatest strength and appeal of well-written books in this theme lie in the psychological analysis of the principals. Sometimes this is done by the author, who comes right out with her conclusions about the causes of matrimonial disasters. Sometimes the facts speak for themselves, and perfect reporting with nary a hint of error or fictionalizing can speak powerfully to the character of the husbands and wives who end up at one another's throats. By the time we're done with the best of these books, we can fathom the endings.

The best five books about a spousal murder that I have ever read -- the most insightful, the most revealing of the nature of a couple -- strictly non-fiction, true crime, of course -- are these five books.

A Crime of Passion by Stanley Loomis - L'Affaire Praslin, a spousal murder story of great human drama involving French royalty, played out in the weeks immediately prior to the bloodbath of 1848. Searing in its perceptions of the husband and wife -- a Duke and Duchess, murderer and murderee -- it is a terrific book published forty years ago that deserves to be better known and loved today. It's a true spine-tingler.

Until the 12th of Never by Bella Stumbo - The murder of Dan and Linda Broderick by Betty Broderick. It’s impossible to finish this without having a strong opinion on the case.

Dead by Sunset by Ann Rule - The murder of Cheryl Cunningham by Brad Cunningham. Said Kirkus: “This book is better plotted than the murder itself.”

She Wanted It All by Kathryn Casey - The murder of Steve Beard by Celeste Beard and Tracey Tarlton. An even better title might have been She Couldn’t Wait.

Gone Forever by Diane Fanning - The murder of Susan McFarland by Richard McFarland told in chilling detail through the victim's diary and the murderer's confession.

I'd love to hear your suggestions along these lines... or the reason you find yourself drawn to macabre stories of marriages that ended in bloody tragedies.

Tweet