Tortured to Death

by Donna Weaver

What happened to Dorothy Dixon did not happen in some third world country or as an act of war. It happened in the basement of a rented house in the Mississippi River town of Alton, Illinois.

Dixon--the developmentally disabled mother of a 1-year-old boy--was six months pregnant at the time of her death caused by months of torturous abuse at the hands of the people she lived with. She was frequently beaten with an aluminum bat and was burned with a glue gun. Her housemates had set fire to the few clothes she owned, leaving her to walk around naked. She and her year-old son, who weighed only 15 pounds, were virtually held captive, forced to sleep on the basement floor. Dixon's autopsy also revealed deep-tissue burns as a result of being scalded with hot liquid that peeled away her skin, and approximately 30 BBs embedded in her body.

Charged with first-degree murder, aggravated and heinous battery, intentional homicide of an unborn child, and unlawful restraint are: Michelle Riley, 35, Judy Woods, 43, Michael Elliott, 18, Benny Wilson, 16, and Riley's 15-year-old daughter, LeShelle McBride. Riley's 12-year-old son is also charged as a juvenile. Police say Riley was the ringleader--befriending Dixon and moving her into her home in order to steal Dixon's monthly Social Security checks.

Reading the CNN story about the sweet and childlike young mother's slow horrific death I had to wonder if her murder could have been prevented. Neighbors Chad Hudson and Terri Brandt were interviewed after the homicide saying:

"Michelle was evil, vindictive. Manipulative," said Hudson, convinced the teenagers were Riley's powerless minions.

"She was angry, vicious," added Brandt.

Riley considered Dixon her slave, making her rub Riley's feet until Riley fell asleep and forcing her to run naked around the house when she got in trouble, the neighbors said.

"Being in their house was like being in a prison day room," Hudson said. "They just sat around the kitchen table and fought."

Sometimes being a good neighbor means minding your own business. Sometimes doing the right thing means minding your neighbors.

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The Chuck Stops Here

by Vanessa Leggett

Several months ago, the Harris County District Attorney’s general counsel gave his boss some bad news. A federal judge had issued an order compelling D.A. Chuck Rosenthal to produce copies of all e-mail correspondence for a designated period. The order was issued in relation to a civil rights lawsuit filed by two brothers in Houston.

Back in 2002, Harris County deputies conducted a drug raid on their street. During the raid, the brothers and their family watched the activity next door and observed what they considered abuses of power. The brothers decided to document the raid with a video camera. A deputy noticed and demanded the camera and film. The brothers refused. Without a warrant or any evidence of probable cause, deputies entered the brothers’ home, assaulted them, seized the camera and film, which was ultimately destroyed, and hauled the brothers to jail for “resisting arrest.”

After their arrests, the brothers asked the D.A.’s office as well as the Sheriff’s Office to investigate the deputies for civil rights violations. Their requests were ignored. During the discovery phase of the lawsuit, the brothers’ attorney asked for all e-mail correspondence regarding the matter. He believed he would find messages between Chuck Rosenthal and the Sheriff that would establish an agreement between the two lawmen to ignore the brothers’ requests for an investigation of official oppression. A federal judge deemed it a valid inquiry and ordered the production of all e-mail correspondence.

What happened next landed the D.A. in the hot seat for contempt of court. Last November, the prosecutor who serves as general legal counsel for the D.A.’s office personally informed Rosenthal that the court had issued the order for the e-mail messages. The discussion took place in Rosenthal's office. Rosenthal gave him permission to check the index of e-mails on the District Attorney's computer to get a sense of the scope of what they might have to produce.

"He sat at my chair,” Rosenthal later testified at the contempt hearing. “I sat behind him and he performed some manipulations on my desktop computer.” Those "manipulations" consisted of a half hour of the assistant district attorney taking “screen shots” to capture images of the skeletal index of messages. The contents of the messages were not read or printed. As the backseat driver of his own computer, Rosenthal would have seen that no messages were opened or copied. The only document printed was the index, which displays limited information regarding e-mail transmissions, i.e., dates and times messages were sent and received. The real manipulations took place as soon as the assistant district attorney left Chuck Rosenthal's office.

That same afternoon, Rosenthal recently admitted, he sat in front of his computer and went through around four thousand e-mail messages, selectively deleting more than 2,000. Unfortunately for Rosenthal, his general counsel provided a copy of the screen shots of the e-mail index to the plaintiffs’ lawyer. When the e-mail messages Rosenthal finally produced fell short—by a couple thousand—of the number displayed on the index of messages, all hell broke loose.

Did any of those missing messages suggest a conspiracy between the D.A.’s Office and the Sheriff’s Office to stonewall the brothers whose rights were violated? It’s impossible to tell, since none of those 2,000 messages was recovered. At least the brothers have been exonerated of any criminal wrongdoing. Recently, the county settled with the brothers for $1.7 million dollars. Rosenthal has since been forced from office. But he has yet to face justice. A critical piece of business remains: a ruling on the plaintiffs’ motion to hold Rosenthal in contempt of court for his destruction of potential evidence.

Ironically, I found myself in a similar situation in 2001, when a federal judge held me in civil contempt of court for my refusal to surrender confidential source material for a book in which Rosenthal is a character. In fact, the day that I was released from jail is the same day Rosenthal's current problems began, when the brothers' civil rights were violated. Thus my open letter here.

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An Open Letter to Judge Kenneth M. Hoyt

The Hon. Kenneth M. Hoyt is a United States District Court Judge for the Southern District of Texas. Judge Hoyt is expected to rule on whether to sanction former District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal for contempt of court. Rosenthal could receive six months in jail, a fine, or both. Read more about the case that led to the motion for contempt here and here.

Dear Judge Hoyt:

I was in your courtroom a few weeks ago, when you held a hearing on a motion for contempt concerning Chuck Rosenthal. I understand you are currently deciding if the former District Attorney should be punished for violating a court order to produce documents. I do not envy your having to determine whether to order the incarceration of a public official.

The decision could not have been made easier by a declaration Rosenthal recently made to the court, blaming prescription drugs for significant inconsistencies in his sworn statements. Perhaps you are aware that in a press release announcing his resignation from office he wrote this: "Although I have enjoyed excellent medical and pharmacological treatment, I have come to learn that the particular combination of drugs prescribed for me in the past has caused some impairment in my judgment."

A month earlier, you'll recall, he told a different story under oath during the contempt proceeding. "I'm specifically asking," you probed, "whether or not there is any medical or other condition that would prevent you from having any particular recollection."

Rosenthal hesitated, then said, "There is no medical reason that I would not have a recollection."

But now Rosenthal claims that prescription medication impaired his judgment. He has seized on the only lifeline his lawyers could extend—an intoxication defense—to keep their client from drowning in a sea of inconsistent sworn statements. In the contempt hearing, there was no mistaking that the District Attorney had repeatedly lied to you about material facts regarding destruction of potential evidence. He was making a mockery of the court.

At first, his story was, I was merely "cleaning" my desktop, freeing up storage space. But when presented with facts to the contrary—proof that he had selectively deleted e-mails and had done so willfully and painstakingly on the heels of a court ordered-subpoena—his theory went out the window. The District Attorney had committed perjury. The courtroom was stunned. The hearing abruptly halted. I learned it can be a defense to perjury to withdraw false statements if the retraction occurs before termination of the proceeding. You were merciful in allowing the hearing to be continued so that Rosenthal's attorneys could attempt to save him from perjury charges.

I'm sure there are many defendants who wish they could have withdrawn their false statements. In a court pleading to you, the plaintiffs' attorney in the underlying lawsuit named three: Martha Stewart, Barry Bonds, and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Rosenthal may believe he is above the law, but he should be no more immune to fines and jail time than Scooter Libby, the former Chief of Staff for the Vice President of the United States of America, who was convicted and sentenced to 30 months in prison. (President George W. Bush commuted the sentence.)

I am only a writer. I was not so lucky. In 2001, your colleague, Judge Melinda Harmon, found me in contempt of court for my refusal to surrender confidential source material for a book. In a behind-the-scenes way, Chuck Rosenthal was instrumental in my jailing. Complying with the subpoena, which asked for my entire research archives, would have violated my confidentiality agreements with sources. I was incarcerated for 168 days. The court ordered my release when the grand jury completed its investigation. The government's target, Robert Angleton, was indicted without any confidential-source material sought from me.

Eventually, Angleton, who is the subject of my book, faced you in court for tax evasion. In 2005, I attended judgment day for him in your courtroom. To refresh your memory, Angleton was the bookmaker and murder-for-hire suspect who failed to pay all of his taxes to the IRS, reporting a $2.6 million gross profit when his business had taken in around $64 million for the three-year period in question. You may recall that after Angleton swore to the court that he had no money, agents found cash he had stashed in offshore accounts.

At Angleton's sentencing, you stated that his hiding cash and lying about it was "reflective of a continuing denial on your part that this is truly criminal. The psychology of this sort of escapes me. But I know that when people engage in this conduct over an extended period of time, their threshold level of conviction as [it] relates to their own wrongdoing is very, very, very high—meaning there is hardly anything that they can do that they believe violates the law. I've seen it in other crimes over these seventeen plus years, that it is very difficult, almost impossible for a person to believe that they have done wrong—that justice has been done—when the time comes to pay. And that's where we are at this point."

You have seen that sort of psychology again with Chuck Rosenthal. He has felt above the law for the thirty years he served as a prosecutor in Harris County. The "might makes right" mindset has warped nearly the entire office. A number of these public servants seem to have forgotten just whom they are supposed to serve. The level of entitlement is alarming. And personally disturbing.

During Rosenthal's contempt hearing, my jaw dropped when the general counsel prosecutor said this about the plaintiffs' demands for records: "It was such an unusual subpoena because it wasn't about a particular subject matter. [It was] overbroad. [And involved] onerous privilege and production issues." He maintained "the plan was we were going to assert undue burden." That did not work well in my case, Judge Hoyt, and I submit to you that my claim was legitimate. Rosenthal was asked for a few months worth of messages. My subpoena demanded four years worth of research in several states, countless documents, and taped interviews, any and all copies. My obligation was to protect sources I had promised confidentiality. That is why I asserted a qualified journalist's privilege. Rosenthal's "privileges" were all personal—to cover his own affairs, so to speak.

Rosenthal's latest sworn statement that prescription drugs caused him to violate your court order is disingenuous at best and criminal at worst. The fact is, Chuck Rosenthal has always been intoxicated. And I'm not referring to his pills or the bottle of whisky he kept in his desk at the office. "Prosecution [is] in his blood," Rosenthal once said, comparing himself to a colleague. "When you experience the joy of helping people who have been victims and get to do something about the perpetrators of crime," he told the Houston Chronicle, " it's so rewarding that it's intoxicating." To Rosenthal, the means always justified the end. In this case, the end—law enforcement getting off the hook for committing egregious civil rights violations—is an injustice. The deputies were not the victims here. The court has already exonerated the real victims whose civil rights were trampled upon.

In another Chronicle interview for an unrelated case, Rosenthal acknowledged that he "go[es] to extremes" when victims are threatened. "I wouldn't do anything illegal," he said, "but I would take very strong measures." I don't need to tell you that Rosenthal's willful violation of your court order was illegal. But I was surprised that this needed to be pointed out to Rosenthal at the contempt hearing. "It could be a crime to destroy documents," you noted. "It can be obstruction of justice. You prosecute people for that."

Your examination of Rosenthal revealed his illegal act was deliberate. He not only selectively deleted 2,000 messages he did not want the court to see. He then deleted all those erased messages from his Deleted Items folder to ensure they would never be recovered. He succeeded. Now he thinks he is above the law because he understood that absent the contents of those messages, there would be no way to prove that evidence was destroyed. And that is precisely why he did it.

I sat in your courtroom as the district attorney's perjury came to light. He has now submitted yet another sworn statement to you, this one stating why the previous statement was false. "While I believed the Declaration to be correct when I signed it," he wrote, "I now understand that I am unable to rely on my memory regarding the steps I took to manage the contents of my desktop and need to rely on reconstructing events from available documents and records." Maybe I'm missing something here, but if he's claiming his memory is unreliable because of medication and he acknowledges destruction of records, how can any events be reconstructed?

The former District Attorney for Harris County is acting like a knowledgeable criminal covering his tracks. No different from Angleton, as you recognized at his sentencing for tax evasion:

"The recordkeeping that was being done was being destroyed so that there would be no way that anyone could ever successfully determine what the true bookmaking business was earning."

Like Angleton, Rosenthal has destroyed evidence. Now the ex-D.A. is claiming an intoxication defense, resorting to criminal defense tactics to reduce his punishment. Angleton did the same thing by claiming he needed treatment for alcohol abuse. His problem was not with alcohol, but with sentencing. Angleton was advised that claiming dependency would shave time off of his punishment. It saved him a little time, but he spent the first part of his sentence at the Federal Detention Center. The same jail that held me for contempt of court. The same facility where Chuck Rosenthal would serve his sentence for contempt, if he is jailed.

I can tell you from personal experience that Rosenthal would be fine at the Federal Detention Center in Houston. I'm certain you are aware that even without a recommendation from you, the Bureau of Prisons will see that he is housed in administrative segregation for his own protection. He'll even get whatever medication he'll need, compliments of taxpayers. I don't know whether that will ease your mind. I doubt it would ease Rosenthal's, but perhaps his family would take comfort in that knowledge.

Deliberating on sending a former D.A. to jail for any reason is difficult enough. But a district attorney should be held to a higher standard. The public deserves reassurance that elected officials are not above the law. Whatever your decision, I expect you will state it eloquently and that your order will reacquaint Chuck Rosenthal with two key concepts he seems to have lost touch with: Justice and Mercy.

Sincerely,

Vanessa Leggett

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A Split Second—to a Never-Ending Journey

by Jenna Jackson

I see people when they’re going through the worst thing they could ever imagine would happen to them. A loved one has been murdered—or is charged with murder. Someone’s life has been taken—or is hanging in the balance. Until you’re caught up in the justice system in a very personal way, I don’t think you can understand the gravity of it. People believe, in theory, that you’re innocent until proven guilty. But the truth is, once the justice system sets its sights on you as a defendant, you have to prove your innocence. That may not be what the law says . . . but it’s the reality of the system.

It is excruciatingly stressful for a family to make the path through the justice system—an arrest, a trial—no matter whether they’re supporting the victim or the accused. And after nearly 10 years at 48 Hours and dozens of cases, I’m still generally unsure what the truth is in most cases. The family members and lawyers on either side of a case fully believe their truth. And when someone truly believes something, it’s difficult to argue with them. We challenge each side and let the viewers decide which version—or combination of both—they will choose to believe.

Sometimes this job wears on you emotionally, dealing with murders day in and day out. Years ago, I covered the case against serial killer Tommy Lynn Sells, who was arrested in Del Rio, Texas. (One of my fellow bloggers, Diane Fanning, actually wrote a book on this case.) The Texas Rangers allowed us to film part of their interrogation of Sells—and I sat in for much of it. It was eery how much he seemed to enjoy having me there to have to listen as he confessed to killing men, women and children during a spree of more than 20 years. After one particularly long day, I went back to the hotel and showered for almost an hour—trying to scrub off everything I’d had to hear that day.

On the flip side, in that same story was a little girl who inspired all of us—after Sells killed her friend in the bunk bed above her, he slit the throat of 10-year-old Krystal Surles (pictured above). She was incredibly brave. She played dead until he left and then walked, in the black of night, to a neighbor’s house. Her description caught this man who had been terrorizing people across the country for two decades.

And that is the reason I don’t think I’ll ever give up this job—it’s a window into human nature that few people see. The bad and the good. I remain fascinated with how criminals think and operate. But most of the accused I end up meeting are just people—there’s no black and white, good or evil—just a whole lot of gray.

That’s the most fascinating part—how a normal (or seemingly normal) person gets himself into a situation where he’s sitting in a courtroom, facing a murder charge. It reminds me that anyone, in a split second, can make a decision that will change the course of their life—and the lives of the ones they love—forever.

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OD'ing on Power

Hunt for Justice by Cynthia Hunt

Justice has a way of catching up to people.

I found it more than ironic that disgraced former Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal (pictured left) is now citing memory problems caused by prescription drugs as the reason he deleted thousands of e-mails subpoenaed in a federal lawsuit in Houston. Rosenthal, who was considered the most powerful prosecutor in Texas just a few months ago, now faces a possible federal contempt citation over the deleted emails.

Racism, Adultery & Pornography found in District Attorney's E-mails

Other Rosenthal e-mails released as part of the lawsuit pushed even Houston Republicans to demand that their fellow Republican resign. The most controversial e-mails were racist jokes. One e-mail entitled “Fatal Overdose” had a picture of a black man flopped out on a sidewalk surrounded by chicken bones and watermelon rinds. Other emails contained sexually explicit video clips.

Then there were the e-mails of an illicit nature that the married district attorney sent to his secretary with whom he admits having an affair. Yes, this is the same Chuck who wears a “What Would Jesus Do” bracelet around the courthouse. We all know Jesus had a few things to say about hypocrisy.

Rosenthal Blames Memory Problems

Now Rosenthal wants a black U.S. district judge to believe that memory problems caused him to delete e-mails in this civil rights lawsuit. Rosenthal has also testified that, oops, the memory problems caused him to testify incorrectly in this trial—opening him to a perjury charge.

Rosenthal is pushing the limits of even the most judicious, slow-to-decide among us.

Has Rosenthal Forgotten Andrea Yates Faced More than Memory Problems?

This is the same district attorney who charged Andrea Yates (pictured below) with capital murder. Yates is the Houston, Texas mom who drowned her five children in the family bathtub in 2001. The same D.A. who then pursued the death penalty against this sick woman.

Back then, Rosenthal chose to ignore the overwhelming evidence that this mother was suffering from the most serious kind of mental illness—a psychosis which is a complete loss of contact with reality. Evidence proved Yates was seeing images and hearing voices that didn’t exist and that she believed she had to kill her kids to save them from hell.

I was there reporting from the scene the day Yates drowned her five kids. Journalists quickly discovered Yates had been recently released from a mental hospital—not because she was well but because her health insurance company demanded that she be discharged.

I pursued this story for months looking for the darkness in Andrea Yates. Despite my dozens of attempts, I couldn’t find a single living person who had anything bad to say about Andrea—not one. The prosecutors couldn’t find anyone either. Heck, you could throw a rock within 10 feet of me in any direction and find someone with a criticism of me. Yet this killer had nothing but a stellar record of kindness and goodness dating back to childhood.

She also had a long and well documented record of mental illness and suicide attempts. On that tragic day, she was described as mute, walking in circles, and pulling her hair out.

The county’s own psychiatrist, who examined Yates immediately after the murder and for the year following the crime, concluded Yates was completely insane. That didn’t matter to Rosenthal.

During the trial, medical imaging proved Yates’ repeated psychosis had left the former high school valedictorian and nurse with brain damage. Her rambling jail cell letters to her mother with misspellings of common words supported that evidence.

Famous Hollywood Psychiatrist also Faced "Memory Problems" & Lied

Rosenthal and his team of assistant district attorneys swept into the courtroom and paid famous forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz $50,000 in taxpayer money to testify that Yates knew what she was doing when she drowned her kids and that she understood it was wrong.

He also incorrectly testified that he had consulted on an episode of Law & Order that followed this same plot line—mother drowns kids but gets off because jury finds her insane. Rosenthal’s prosecutors told the jury that Andrea Yates loved the show Law & Order and lifted her murder plot from the show. The jury convicted her and sentenced her to life in prison.

Now we know that Dietz lied to the jury. There was no such episode of Law & Order. The conviction was overturned. Yates was tried again four years later and found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Under Rosenthal’s leadership, hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money was wasted and even many die-hard death penalty advocates were a little sickened by his handling of the Yates' case.

My Memory of the Good Rosenthal

As a citizen of Harris County, I once contacted Rosenthal’s office because I was being threatened by a man. A judge had issued a restraining order against the man, but as a reporter I know how those often come just before the woman is killed.

I spoke to Rosenthal himself and he was quick to make me feel safe. He also listened to my situation and said he would file charges as soon as the law allowed him. That was the Chuck Rosenthal who was tough on criminals—the one victims loved—the one who used the law to nail the bad guys.

Remember This, Chuck

Yates’s medical records and experts proved that her treating psychiatrist, a man who obtained his medical degree in Pakistan, had given her enough strong psychotropic drugs during the weeks leading up to the murders to drive a sane person to kill. Now Chuck Rosenthal wants us to believe prescription drugs caused his brain to have memory problems, which caused him to possibly commit two crimes—lying to a jury and destroying evidence. Is he crazy?

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Sam Lutfi Back in Court

by Tina Dirmann

Since I posted a story on Britney Spears, some of you have asked me for an update on the Sam Lutfi case (the temporary restraining order). Sam is scheduled to be in court today, actually. But I don't expect anything to be resolved just yet. This could go on awhile, guys. He's still fighting to have the TRO removed.

Also, here is a mildly interesting update from Radar.com. . . . Obviously, I don't quite agree with their take, "DARK DAYS Spears":

When Britney Spears is finally off restriction, her BFF will be there. But for the next 30 days, Spears ballcapped former walker Sam Lutfi (who was slapped with a restraining order) has agreed to lay off contact while his lawyers figure out a longterm arrangement. "Everything is quiet and peaceful on all sides," Lutfi spokesman Michael Sands tells Radar. Unless, of course, you're conserva-dad Jamie Spears. Sands' other client, self-declared Britney advocate, attorney Jon Eardley, is scheduled to go to court today with an evaluation of the Spears' conservatorship by renown UCLA law profession William McGovern. In it, McGovern rips the judge's ruling in the Spears case, essentially arguing that Spears' visitors are limited and she can't meet with an attorney to fight her way into independence. Sands also blasted out e-mails Sunday evening questioning whether Jamie Spears, who'd declared bankruptcy in the past, is fit to handle Britney's estate, and the News of the World is reporting that government officials are secretly looking into Spears financial affairs, a claim Sands has made to Radar before.

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Before There Was "To Catch a Predator" . . . There Was R. Stephanie Good

by Robin Sax

The numbers say it all: each day 2,500 children go missing in the United States, while one out of every five children has been solicited online by sexual predators. Inspired by her own child’s near tragic encounter with a sexual predator, R. Stephanie Good, a highly trained lawyer, house-mom and accomplished author, was compelled to take action.

In 2003, she began a harrowing collaboration with the FBI to track down sexual predators on the Internet– a journey into a perverted underworld that has resulted in the arrest and federal conviction of dozens of sexual offenders.

As Stephanie soon discovered through her undercover work, these predators are more often than not the last ones we would expect, lurking right next door and, frighteningly, having access into our own homes through the Internet. . . .

Sephanie's shocking story is told in EXPOSED: The Harrowing Story of a Mother's Undercover Work with the FBI to Save Children from Internet Sex Predators.

Stephanie worked closely with the FBI agents of Squad C-20, which handles crimes gainst children. Her frightening exposé follows Stephanie as she logs on to chat rooms using the fictitious user profile of a teen-aged girl. She is usually bombarded with instant messages in mere minutes. EXPOSED follows closely as Stephanie participates in Internet chats . . . disguises her voice to conduct wiretapped telephone conversations . . . takes part in dangerous arrest situations where federal agents swoop in to nab a perpetrator who believes he is meeting a minor girl for sex . . . and also as Stephanie comes face-to-face with some of the predators in federal court where she has been called to testify against them.

EXPOSED describes every detail of the process, with excerpts from the actual transcripts of her online chats and telephone conversations with the predators, and the meticulous care that Stephanie employs in her investigations to ensure that everything is done by the book – the results of which have earned Stephanie a 100 percent conviction record.

“Sexual predators have an addiction and will stop at nothing," she says. "And I will stop at nothing to find them and turn them over to the FBI. The fact is that my odds are much better than theirs. While there is no doubt that the Internet has dramatically increased the access of child predators to their young prey, it has also increased the chances that law enforcement officials will catch them.”

Some of the hundreds of predators arrested because of Stephanie’s work, and profiled in EXPOSED, include:

Steven Dovas - a respected teacher, lecturer, well-known filmmaker and commercial animator who had been praised for his work on projects and children’s television segments with Nickelodeon, HBO and Sesame Street. Steven pleaded guilty to the charges, and was sentenced to five years in federal prison and five years supervised release, a $10,000 fine and attendance in a sex offender program.

Jason Corso - a manager of Mutual of Omaha bank. Stephanie participated in the arrest after Corso insisted that Stephanie phone him from the shopping mall where he had scheduled the meeting. After she phoned him with her location, he arrived only to find a swarm of FBI agents awaiting him. Corso pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison, and three years probation.

John Hamilton - a baker from Kentucky. Hamilton, believing Stephanie to be a 15-year-old girl, purchased a bus ticket for Stephanie to leave her family in New York and meet him in the Midwest, where he would take her to his home and make her “disappear off the face of the Earth.” Stephanie says, “To this day, Hamilton is the most disturbed individual that I have had the unpleasant experience to come across on the Internet." Hamilton was sentenced to three years in prison and five years of probation.

Matt Brand - a thirty-six year-old teacher who arranged to meet 13-year-old "Stephanie" at the Port Authority bus terminal. He did not plead guilty, and Stephanie testified at his trial. He was sentenced to five years in prison.

Dennis Joseph - a forty-year-old musician who played at Carnegie Hall, conducted at Avery Fischer Hall, and performed with celebrities Ashford and Simpson, Stevie Wonder, Bill Cosby, Sting, and the Billy Strayhorn Orchestra. He was also featured on stage in the Broadway production of Fosse and played on the soundtrack for Martin Scorcese’s film, The Aviator. Stephanie testified against him at two trials. He was sentenced to ninety-seven months in a federal prison.

“Sexual predators are among us every which way we turn,” warns Stephanie, “and they are not who you often envision. Nobody ever expects the well-dressed businessman who lives next door and buys your child’s girl scout cookies, the soccer coach who pats a kid on the head after a great play, the school bus driver who pulls up to the house to drop off a child in the rain, the teacher who stays after school to tutor a child, the pediatrician, friends, siblings, or even a spouse. But the truth is they are most often the people we least suspect.”

EXPOSED is a chilling story, revealing one mother’s near-tragic personal story that compelled her to make a difference in the hunt for Internet sexual predators.

And R. Stephanie Good is a fine new addition to the lineup at Women in Crime Ink. Because her bio was not posted on launch day, here is more about the professional background of our newest contributor:

R. Stephanie Good, author of Law School 101: Survival Techniques from Pre-Law to Life as an Attorney, and co-author of the New York Times best seller Aruba: The Tragic Untold Story of Natalee Holloway and Corruption in Paradise as well as A Rush to Injustice: How Power, Prejudice, Racism, and Political Correctness Overshadowed Truth and Justice in the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case, received her BA in Political Science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa. She continued her education at Hofstra University School of Law in New York York where she earned her JD and an LLM in international law.

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What is the FBI Hiding?

by Diane Fanning

It makes a lot of sense when the FBI or any law enforcement agency withholds information when they are trying to build a case against a perpetrator still on the loose. But when the suspect in question is dead and the crimes are more than a decade old, what’s the point?

For months, the Fredericksburg Free Lance Star has struggled with the FBI over the seemingly simple matter of forensic testing. At one point, the FBI promised to process in evidence. But last month, the FBI told the newspaper that they were not going to perform additional tests out of deference to the families of the victims.

Funny thing, though, family members tell the newspaper that they want the testing done. They want answers.

In question are the abduction and murder of Alicia Showalter Reynolds on Route 29 in Virginia and the double homicide of Julianne Williams and Laura “Lollie” Winans (pictured above) in the Shenandoah National Park—all in 1996. The FBI vigorously pursued Darrell Rice as a suspect in the death of Alicia and charged him with the slaying of Julianne and Lollie. That case was thrown out by the court, in part, because preliminary results of DNA tests on two head hairs found at the crime scene of the double murder did not match Rice.

Those same results, however, could not eliminate another predator operating in the area at that time, Richard Marc Evonitz. In 2002 and 2003, I researched and wrote a book about this serial killer. I noted the possible connection to those three murders.

The book’s focus, though, was on three other deaths in Spotsylvania that authorities tied to Evonitz: the murder of Sofia Silva in 1996, and the double homicide of sisters Kati and Kristin Lisk in 1997. He was never arrested or charged in those crimes because when he was cornered in a coastal community after a high speed chase, he put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

But the FBI was secretive even then.

I filed a Freedom of Information Act request. It was denied—the office claimed an ongoing investigation. It made no sense. The perpetrator was dead. No evidence needed to be protected before a trial.

I appealed to the Attorney General. I won that appeal. The FBI was ordered to release documents to me. Following that decision, I contacted the local office, in the spring of 2003. I was informed that it normally takes two to three years to process and provide material. So I waited.

Sure enough, I received a letter in 2006 informing me that I needed to pay thousands of dollars to obtain a complete copy of the file. As offered in the correspondence, I wrote requesting someone to assist me in narrowing down the file to pertinent documents. I am still waiting for that assistance.

The veil of secrecy from the lack of cooperation shown to me to the indifference to finding answers to the murders of Alicia, Julianne, and Lollie, casts doubt on the FBI’s conclusions in the deaths of Kati, Kristin, and Sofia. Does the FBI fear that transparency would reveal problems in the Lisk-Silva investigation or more generically with the FBI lab itself? What secret is the FBI hiding?

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All is Fair in Love, War, and Politics . . . including Murder

by Pat Brown

On that fateful day of March in 44 B.C., Julius Caesar, the Roman "dictator for life," met his stunning demise: assassination by just about every one of his colleagues. Every one, that is, except Mark Antony, his right-hand man. Antony was outside the Senate building involved in a “long enough” conversation. It is said that the conspirators purposely distracted Antony so that he would not take his seat next to Caesar and thereby interfere with the assassination.

I guess it was possible for sixty men to plot against Caesar without Antony getting wind of it. (It is said Caesar heard rumors but because his health was not all that good, he simply didn’t care to fight back – a form of suicide by “closing one’s eyes to danger.”) Perhaps it was true Caesar did not care much for his life at that point--he was fifty-eight--but if Caesar knew something of the plot and ignored the rumblings out of exhaustion or arrogance, then it is hard to believe that Mark Antony was totally in the dark about the conspiracy. It is a stretch to believe Antony would blithely allow himself to be chatted up by Caesar’s guard whilst the leader of the country was being stabbed to death just a few yards away.

Not much has changed in 2000 years. One cannot necessarily take what one sees and hears at face value. As I sat watching Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over the course of the recent months, I noted how they trade barbs and then compliments and then barbs and then more compliments. I thought how superficial were both the positive and negative comments, that neither carried any definitive level of “truth,” and as soon as one of these candidates wins the Democratic nomination, we will see a new and total “respect” surface between Clinton and Obama as one assumes the role of Presidential candidate and the other is selected as his or her running mate. But just because they become running mates does not mean the one who ends up as Vice President on the Democratic ticket might not wish the presidential candidate to disappear from the picture at some point in time.

Politics attracts egomaniacs who want to win at all costs and, quite often, any appearance of humility or cooperation is merely a requirement of survival rather than any real sense of decency or fairness. In other words, actions speak louder than words. When someone is back stabbed, or as happened on the 15th of March that day in Rome - truly stabbed in the back (and just about every other part of the body), we may not get clarity as to the true motive behind the crime without doing a bit of serious analysis of previous behaviors of those involved, especially when it comes to achieving their desires in life. In analyzing the murder of Julius Caesar, we should ask, “Who truly had the most to gain by his death and whose behavior raises red flags?” The answer is, unquestionably, Mark Antony.

While many might gain something from Caesar’s death, two men had quite a bit more to gain: the very young Octavian, nephew to Caesar, who was to inherit his fortune and his position (but prior to death of Caesar even Octavian had no inkling he was to be his heir), and, Caesar's top general, Mark Antony, who may well have thought he himself would inherit Caesar’s fortune and position. Mark Antony was at that age of now or never, a man just over the age of forty, and if Caesar lived, then Antony was doomed to a subservient role for the rest of his life. Every year that ticked by would increase Octavian’s age, power, and relationship with Caesar while Antony would steadily continue to lose more and more ground as he aged.

So, there Mark Antony stood while Caesar was being stabbed to death, an "innocent man unaware of what was happening inside the Senate building." When the deed was done, Antony gave an impassioned speech on the terrible loss of Rome’s great leader and then he hurried on to have Caesar’s will read.

What a shock it must have been when Antony heard Octavian’s name read and watched as “his” country was effectively handed over to that hardly-of-age upstart! No doubt Octavian knew Mark Antony was not terribly happy over this turn of events, and, if Antony was not nearly so ignorant of the plot to kill Caesar, he would always be a threat to Octavian.

Sure enough, Octavian and Antony eventually had their showdown. Rome was doomed to get its "king"; it just remained to be seen which one would be left standing alone. In the end, it was Octavian.

Will there be an Ides of March (figuratively speaking one would hope) in the next U.S. election? It will be a fascinating year of politics and history may repeat itself in our country in some form or fashion. Rome and Washington DC may not be so far apart in either political thinking or time as we think. Beware the Ides of March, my fellow countrymen, and cast your votes well!

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Extra Cash? Please send . . .

by Kathryn Casey

Okay, we need to pass the plate for Linda Lay, widow of the Enron debacle’s chief crook, Ken. This is the Ken Lay who was convicted but then had the audacity to die before he even started serving his sentence. Since he had no time to appeal (Laws are convoluted at times, don’t ya think?), the conviction was set aside. At the center of the current controversy is the family high-rise, Linda’s home sweet home, and some of the most expensive real estate in Houston, Texas.

What’s that old theme song? You know, the one from "The Jeffersons"? Sing it with me: We’re moving on up, to the big time, to a deluxe apartment in the skyyyyyyyy. . . .

Well, that’s what the Lays did during the flush Enron years, when Ken’s ill-gotten gains flooded in like a tropical storm and Space City was their playground. Linda and Ken, then darlings of the social set, bought a condo on the 33rd floor of the tony Huntingdon (pictured above), with four bedrooms, four bathrooms, three half-baths, and four fireplaces now valued at $4.75 million. Linda’s current dilemma is that first the government filed suit on the estate for $13 million, including the condo. Now, alas, there’s also the little matter of more than $100,000 in unpaid condo fees. To add to the widow Lay’s problems, the condo board has also filed suit, threatening to take away her 12,827-square-foot abode.

Now is that fair?

Of course, this is the same woman who appeared on national television early in the Enron catastrophe crying: “We’ve lost it all.” At the time, we later learned, the Lays owned dozens of homes all over the country and the world. I’ve got the feeling that Linda’s definition of being hard up doesn’t quite mesh with regular families’ budget woes?

So start passing that plate. Linda Lay needs help! I’ll donate, as soon as I find a couple million extra I don’t need for house payment or groceries.

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Tension Rising in Knoxville

by Stacy Dittrich

A monstrous storm is brewing in Knoxville, Tennessee. Considering the elements that are affecting the double-murder case being tried there, it is pretty apparent why. Most probably haven't heard of the Christian-Newsom murders since the story has yet to be grabbed by the mainstream media. The white supremacists who rallied in the streets felt the media turned a blind-eye only because the victims, Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom (pictured above), were white, and the suspects black. Who counter-protested the skinheads? Groups of people dressed in clown suits. (I assure you I'm not making this up.)

The case has all of the required elements for the mainstream media to grab and exploit: racial overtones - check . . . A horrific and inhumane double-homicide - check . . . Public outrage and protests - check, check . . . And, as an added bonus, a legal system that has displayed the most buffoonery and ignorance seen since the O. J. Simpson trial - check, check, and double check! Rarely will I be one to criticize the good-guys (yes, I consider the district attorneys as such). However, in this particular case, they have fumbled and fouled quicker than you can say something wicked this way comes.

In January 2007, 21-year-old University of Tennessee student Channon Christian and her 23-year-old boyfriend Christopher Newsom were carjacked. The suspects, George Thomas, Lemaricus Davidson, Letalvis Cobbins, and Vanessa Coleman (pictured left to right, below) kidnapped both victims and drove them to a nearby residence.

For the next several hours, the couple was beaten, raped, tortured and sodomized before ultimately being murdered. Newsom's body was set on fire while Christian's was thrown into a dumpster. To imagine the fear and terror the victims were put through during their last hours of life is incomprehensible. As a parent, the grim details would throw me into a life of heavily medicated sedation--if I survived at all. So, what exactly is the problem in Knoxville?

I have my own thoughts, but keep in mind, I'm not familiar with Tennesse's Criminal Code or case law. I can only base the following on my experience with Ohio's courts. First, I find it astonishing that the district attorney would wait almost 12 months to file a motion to seek the death penalty with the court. A move that only pushed the trial further away than necessary.

With several death penalty cases in my jurisdiction pending, I know the death penalty motion is normally one of the first priorities. The Knox County Grand Jury issued the lengthy 46-count indictment on January, 31st, 2007. After the unthinkable details regarding the crime, it took them almost 12 months to decide on the death penalty? Regardless, once the motion was filed, the defense immediately demanded a trial delay to which the district attorney "loudly" objected.

Next, the issue I find perhaps the most disturbing, is the motion filed by the district attorneys for the suspects' DNA, which includes hair and saliva samples. What should have happened was the minute the suspects were in custody, a search warrant requesting all DNA samples should have been immediately filed and executed.

I have personally had a suspect sit before me while waiting for the warrant to swab his mouth with buccal swabs (your standard Q-tips) and pull as many hairs out of his head as I deemed necessary. I can also assure you that enough samples were taken to complete any and all testing sequences.

And take it a step further, the suspect's toothbrush and hairbrush should be included in the search warrant executed at his residence. When this occurs, the defense rarely files a motion to suppress knowing it would be a waste of time. If they do file a motion to suppress, they normally lose.

In the case of Knoxville, the prosecution filed a motion with the court to obtain such samples. A motion that can immediately be argued and objected to by the defense. Coming to their senses a year and a half later, the district attorneys say, "Eureka! We have a great idea. Let's withdraw the motion and execute a search warrant! " I merely scratched my head in wonder at this logic. As of now, the trial of the first defendant isn't set until January 2009 - two years after the murders.

After this (as if the above debacle wasn't enough), the defense files a motion for a change of venue as they are in the "throes of media scrutiny." He wishes. The judge, in all his wisdom, states that "no one has been shot at while coming into the courtroom so it's not that bad." Again folks, I'm not making this up.

So begins the stage of grandstanding and accusations of the Knox Police forming alliances with the KKK and leaking information to local media. Transforming the already on-going circus into a complete state of insanity. All the while - no trial, fueling the overwhelming tension that has gripped the city for over a year.

The true victims here are the families of the slain and the residents of Knoxville. In the eyes of the true justice system, the four monsters on trial should remain colorless. To imagine human beings capable of such barbaric savagery is outside the realm of our comprehension. The legal system in Knoxville needs to get their act together, commence the trials, and allow these families to grieve in peace, and the city to rest.

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Justice for Britney?

by Tina Dirmann

I am loathe to add to the endless volumes already written about the ups and downs of poor little rich girl Britney Spears and her ongoing mental health issues.

But I think it's appropriate to take a moment to address an angle I've been hearing a lot lately. Namely, that Jamie Spears, Britney's father, who has been named temporary conservator of his daughter's estate, is really only interested in getting his hands on his daughter's millions. The allegation is so outrageously inappropriate, I'm not quite sure where to begin.

Let's start with the obvious. Clearly, this is a young lady in trouble. We've all seen her very public meltdowns stretching back more than a year. And who was there, stepping in to "help" the fallen pop princess? A new boyfriend -- a married paparazzi photographer, actually. I'm sure his motives were pure. . . . And before that, a character named Sam Lutfi, who has since been accused of grinding up narcotics and putting them in Britney's food.

The situation became so sad, Jamie Spears had no choice but to intercede. And yes, I know the strikes against him. It's true, he is otherwise unemployed. He does have a bankruptcy in his background, while struggling to support his family, way before Britney ever hit it big. And he has been very estranged from his daughter in recent months. I contend, however, that the last point is a direct result of Britney's sick mind.

It's typical of people suffering from a mental illness (bipolar disorder, in Britney's case) to have extreme paranoid episodes and accuse those closest to them of siding with the enemy, whoever that enemy is.

And that's exactly what Britney did, accusing her father of betraying her when he publicly sided with an old manager who demanded Britney enroll herself in rehab. Jamie did do that, of course, but only because he could see his daughter was hurting and needed something, anything, to get better. Britney enrolled in the rehab, and hated them for it.

Of course, it turned out, she wasn't addicted to drugs. In fact, anything she did may have been an effort to self-medicate as a yet-undiagnosed mental illness began taking over.

Most recently, a judge ordered that Jamie Spears' conservatorship should not only continue, but that he should be paid, from Britney's estate, $2500 a week for his service. The estate was also ordered to pay for the lease of a car. I know, this feeds right into the conspiracy theorists out there who want to call Jamie a money-grubbing father with questionable interests.

But I disagree.

I don't have a problem with Jamie getting funds while managing Britney's affairs. For me, the bottom line is, he loves his daughter. I believe that. I've spoken to people in her inner circle who echo that.

And I do believe he is there to protect her from the likes of paparazzi boyfriends and other "pals" with questionable motives -- because without him, that's who would be running wild with her credit cards and check books. She'd be a lamb in a field of wolves, too mentally vulnerable to protect herself.

And let's not forget that Jamie has to check in every few months with a Los Angeles Superior Court commissioner, who reviews the case and has the discretion to either remove Jamie's role, or extend it, as he did on March 8, giving him conservatorship status until at least July 31.

I say it was a good move. I applaud the court. This was a "just" decision. And I think even Britney will see that, eventually.

Hopefully, she is finally getting the treatment she needs. And we'll only see her improve. It would be awfully nice to see again the beautiful, talented pop princess we all came to know and love.

But until then, her dad is standing by her side -- on her side.

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The Clutch

by Michele McPhee

Why do political wives engage in "the Clutch"? Silda Spitzer made me physically ill when I saw her make that long, slow, horrifying walk into the hot glare of TV lights and cast her eyes downward as throngs of hostile peppered her husband - who will now forever be known as Client No. 9 - with questions about the thousands he is accused of spending on high-end hookers. The man even paid extra to not use a condom, according to the FBI. The humiliation was etched into her face, but she was there clutching Eliot Spitzer's arm - not once, twice.

Silda Spitzer is not the only political wife who engaged in "the Clutch" in recent memory. There was Hillary Clinton's famous hand-holding when Bill Clinton wagged his finger at the American public saying "I did not have sex with that woman!" Larry "Senator Wide Stance" Craig dragged his poor wife into the cacophony of TV trucks and camera flashes when he was caught toe-tapping gay sex signals in a public restroom at a Minneapolis airport. David Vitter's wife was caught in the clutch after her hubby's name was found in the black book of the infamous D.C. Madam. Gary Hart's wife stood-by-her-man after he was photographed with a young hottie on his lap. Gary Condit's wife was in the clutch even after her husband's admitted lover Chandra Levy went missing. The worst clutch came from Dina McGreevy, who clutched the hand of the New Jersey governor Jim McGreevy as he declared: "I am a gay American."

If my boyfriend was unmasked as a prostitute paying-sicko, was caught having an affair with a college student, or was busted for toe-tapping a signal wanting a quick Monica Lewinsky in the stall of a mens room, the clutch I would engage in would happen lower than his hand . . . and it would probably make him weep with much more than regret.

Can't put a price on dignity.

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Hear No Evil - WCI Podcast

Scared Monkeys Radio was not afraid to give the mic to Women in Crime Ink . . . even when three of us shared airtime with wife murder suspect Drew Peterson. The Dana Pretzer Show featured Women in Crime Ink on Tuesday, March 11, 2008. Listen in on an interview with Criminal Profiler Pat Brown, Crime Writer Vanessa Leggett, and Sex-crimes Prosecutor Robin Sax. Other guests: former Bolingbrook police sergeant Drew Peterson with his attorney, Joel Brodsky, and a Scared Monkey on the Natalee Holloway case. Take a listen. We'll speak no evil.

FreeVideoCoding.com

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Hair-Raising Advances

by Andrea Campbell

How do police stay on top of criminals? By pushing the boundaries of science.

In the fall of 2000, hunters came upon the remains of a female murder victim near Interstate 80, west of Salt Lake City, at the south end of Great Salt Lake. Twenty-six bones, some hair, a tee shirt and a necklace were all that detectives found. The victim would have been about 5 feet tall, age 17 to 20. A facial reconstruction was formed a few months later and publicized nationally, but the identity is still unknown.

“We don’t know who she is,” says Sheriff’s Detective Todd Park, of Salt Lake County, “We don’t even know the cause of death.” But Park heard about using a new type of hair analysis and contacted the inventors in an effort to identify the murdered woman. “It’s a phenomenal method,” says Park, a member of his department’s cold case homicide unit, “I think it will help the law enforcement community a great deal.”

“You are what you eat and drink—and that is recorded in your hair,” says geochemist Thure (pronounced Tur-ee) Cerling, who led a new research effort with Jim Ehleringer, a distinguished professor of biology at the University of Utah, where Cerling is also a professor of geology, geophysics, and biology. Three years ago, they co-founded IsoForensics, Inc., a company that uses stable isotope analysis of forensic substances to find slight variations in a chemical element’s makeup.

Ehleringer developed a method now used by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to help learn where cocaine or heroin were produced, based on local variations in carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen isotopes absorbed into coca and poppy plants from soil and water. This same type of analysis and technique was used to help track counterfeit $100 bills, based on water used to grow the cotton with which the bills were made!

Recently Cerling and Ehleringer conducted a study that Ehleringer says, “We have found significant variations in hydrogen and oxygen isotopes in hair and water that relate to where a person lives in the United States. Police are already using this to reconstruct the possible origins of unidentified murder victims.”

So a single hair can help determine a person’s location during recent weeks to years, depending on the length of the hair sample and how much time it took to grow.

After hearing of Ehleringer’s research, Park contacted the team and arranged for the isotope analysis of his victim’s hair. “The samples I gave to Jim told me her approximate location for the last two years of her lifetime. She moved around within the Northwest—mainly in the Idaho-Montana-Wyoming area . . .”

After scientists conduct more tests on the woman’s teeth, they are hoping the isotopes may reveal where her teeth formed when she grew up. Then Park will check out missing persons records in areas the victim lived in hopes of identifying her. “Every little bit helps,” the detective says. “You put the pieces of the puzzle together to get a whole picture. And this is definitely something that will give us a piece of the puzzle.”

* See color-coded maps created by the team, showing how ratios of hydrogen and oxygen isotopes in scalp hair vary in different areas of the U.S. http://www.newswise.com/images/uploads/2008/02/19/thumbs/IsotopeMapsSimple.jpg

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Clara Harris's Cinderella Complex

by Kathryn Casey

The truth? I feel sorry for Clara Harris.

In my opinion, she suffers from the classic Cinderella Complex, believing both her dead husband, David, and her defense attorney, Houston heavyweight George Parnham, were Princes Charming. When they turned out to be just regular folks who didn’t always live up to her expectations, she couldn’t handle it. In the first case she committed a sensational murder. The second time around, she got mad and sued, a drama that ended two weeks ago in a civil court.

Harris, of course, is the dentist/convicted murderer in Texas’s sensational Murder-by-Mercedes case. For those of you unfamiliar with the details, in July 2002, Clara caught David cheating. He promised the affair was over, but alas – I know we’re all shocked – he lied. Harris hired a PI who tracked David to a hotel where he had a liaison with his lover

. The Harrises argued, Clara left but then, in the hotel parking lot, gunned the engine and ran over the philanderer not once but three times.

Ironically, the entire episode was caught on tape by the private detective, and the video became a key piece of evidence at her trial, played and replayed for the jury. I have no qualms about the jurors' decision to find Harris guilty. She murdered her husband, plain and simple. Sure it was a crime of passion, but that doesn’t excuse it.

So, why do I feel sorry for her? First, I’m not sure she deserved twenty years. I wrote a book about a cop who stalked and murdered a woman who got less time than Harris, who obviously snapped. But the main reason is that our Clara is apparently one of those women who assumes rather than take care of herself, someone else will save her. First, she labored under the fairy tale illusion that she could kiss her frog husband and turn him into a prince.

It’s true that the Harrises lived a lush lifestyle including not just the Benz but a McMansion and thriving dental practice. Yet rather than haul David into a divorce court, where his cheating ways could pay off in a lucrative settlement, Clara tried to lure him back. Not surprisingly, it didn’t work. Sure he had a wife and two young sons, but that didn’t make David Harris a good guy. Any man who draws up a chart for his wife comparing her attributes to his mistress’s, including breast size, lacks more than charm.

Then Harris did it again. She miscalculated her relationship with her attorney, Parnham. It just makes me want to shake my head and ask, “Okay Clara, but what were you thinking?”

After her conviction, Harris filed a civil suit against Parnham, charging that he gave her a shoddy defense and gouged her financially. It’s that lawsuit that just finished playing out in a Houston courtroom.

At issue was a $300,000 promissory note Clara signed four days after the jurors sentenced her. That was in addition to the $235,000 she’d already paid him. Harris says she so trusted Parnham, who she claims said he loved her and thought of her as a daughter, that she never read the paperwork. Parnham’s wife, Mary, Clara insists, described the paperwork as a way for her to “preserve her estate.”

Okay. So here’s the picture. You’re a well-educated, bright woman in jail who is about to be sent away to prison for 20 years, and your lawyer’s wife asks you to sign a $300,000 note. And you do it, without reading it? Is this woman insane?

For his part, Parnham contended that Harris got everything she paid for and more. In fact, he filed a counter suit claiming he was entitled to repayment for a $90,000 loan he took out to pay experts and consultants involved in Clara’s trial.

The he-said-she-said made for great courthouse drama. And the stakes were high. More so than money, on Parnham’s part, it was his reputation. So, who did the jurors believe?

Well, Clara has yet to find her happy ever after. Jurors returned on February 29th with a verdict for the defense. They awarded Parnham $70,250 for his expenses from the murder trial and $389,443 to pay his own attorney. Sigh. Of course, that’s in addition to the $3.75 million Clara was ordered to pay her former in-laws last year in a separate civil suit. I can only imagine poor Clara’s sadness as she takes the Texas Department of Criminal Justice van back to prison.

So what’s the moral of this fable? Run over your cheating husband with the family Benz and you’re likely to not only spend a couple of decades in prison but when you get out? Well, learn a craft while you’re behind bars. In Clara’s case, I’m not sure she’ll have dental patients lining up, and chances are she’ll need a job.

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