Forensic Files Archives - Forensic Files Now (2024)

Q&A With McCracken Poston, Who Solved the Virginia Ridley Case
(Forensic Files, ‘Killigraphy’)

The strange and ultimately beautiful story of Virginia Ridley’s life with her oddball husband has captivated Forensic Files viewers since it first aired 25 years ago. A recent survey ranked “Killigraphy” in the top three favorites of all 400 episodes of the series.

But the narrative would have had a much different conclusion if not for McCracken Poston, the lawyer tasked with proving Alvin Ridley’s innocence in the 1997 death of the reclusive Virginia.

Alvin owned a television repair business in the town of Ringgold, Georgia. Everyone agreed that he did a great job of replacing cathode ray tubes, but few had anything else good to say about him.

He threatened people who came to the door of his house, hid in his own bushes to spy on passersby, and motored around town with a fake woman in his front seat.

Most troubling of all, he had a real wife at home who almost never appeared in public — and she cut off contact with her family members despite their attempts to reach her. When Virginia Ridley turned up dead with petechial hemorrhages at the age of 49, law enforcement concluded that Alvin had held her hostage for decades and then strangled her.

Fortunately, inside Alvin’s sloppy hovel of a house, Poston discovered evidence that Alvin and Virginia were just two unusual people who suited each other.

Virginia had hypergraphia — an affinity for constantly writing down the minutiae of everyday life.

Pieces of paper with her handwriting described a contented home life with Alvin. The topics included what she and Alvin ate for dinner and which TV shows they watched; one of the papers listed the cast of The Waltons.

At the trial, Poston argued that Virginia stayed inside the house because she wanted to — she had epilepsy and feared having seizures in front of anyone but Alvin — and that she died of natural causes.

In his 2024 book, Zenith Man: Death, Love, and Redemption in a Georgia Courtroom, Poston describes how Alvin Ridley, who died at age 82 on July 2, 2024, turned into a sympathetic character and how his own relationship with Alvin evolved into a friendship.

“Alvin was neurodivergent. That’s modern parlance for autistic,” said Poston. “I think Virginia was on the spectrum too. Alvin was her perfect partner.”

Poston, who is a former Georgia state legislator and a onetime candidate for U.S. Congress and now has a solo law office in Ringgold, indulged some of my curiosity about the case. Here are excerpts from our Zoom interview on July 22:

Reports describe the Ridleys’ house as co*ckroach-infested. It’s hard to believe a woman would live that way by choice. What’s your take? Virginia kept a neat home. The pictures of the house were taken after she died. Alvin was the one who ate and left half-eaten food around the house. He had a vehicle that he ate in, and a rat came in it. After the trial, I was in the house very briefly when we were doing media, and the house had gotten worse with hoarder-packrat stuff.

The house turned out to be a gold mine when you noticed that Alvin had covered the walls with papers with Virginia’s handwriting — describing a happy home life. Had you heard about hypergraphia before then? No. Shortly before I put the epilepsy expert on the witness stand, he asked if there was anything else strange about Virginia. I said, yes, she wrote down everything she’d ever done. He said, I’ve heard of that. A lot of my patients have hypergraphia.

[Poston also learned that epileptic seizures sometimes cause petechial hemorrhages — enabling him to counter the prosecution’s contentions that the marks came from manual strangulation; Virginia died from having an epileptic seizure during sleep, he argued.]

Did Virginia’s hypergraphia extend to the outside world? Yes, she corresponded with elected officials. She wrote to President Richard Nixon about being evicted from public housing, because the law is under HUD. U.S. Senator David Henry Gambrell wrote her back, noting her letter to President Nixon.

How did you end up getting so close to Alvin? He felt comfortable in my law office. We began meeting for lunch regularly after the trial.

I knew he had a kidney problem and tried to get him help. When he went into the hospital, I said that they’d better keep him there for a few days. They got his kidney function up and he moved to a step-down facility, and then he allowed me to put him in another rehab-nursing home, so that Medicaid would kick in once his funds were exhausted. Then, he had a heart attack.

In the hospital, I said, did you ever think that Virginia and your parents are calling to you? He said, no, I want to stay here with you. He said he was going to live to 110. I said, you just want 30 more years of free lunches from me. I didn’t ever think he would die so soon.

The last time I saw him, he was in great distress. It looked like another coronary issue. I said, Alvin, I’m looking forward to meeting Virginia, and he said when we get up there, I’ll show you where you can fish and catch 30 fish an hour. Then he said, ‘Oh Lordy.’ I was holding his hand when died.♠

That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR

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A Pastor Drowns His Wife to Save His Job
(‘Ghost in the Machine,’ Forensic Files)

Early in life, Bill Guthrie acquired a way with all things biblical. While at Natrona High School in Wyoming, he took home the Outstanding Boy award at a local Christian service camp. He was later sent to Oklahoma to compete in a youth preacher contest at the Kiamichi Clinic, a religious retreat for men.

He met Sharon Ann Provance at Platte Valley Bible College in Gering, Nebraska. They married in 1963 when they were both 20 years old. The nuptials featured an organist and a vocalist who sang “Whither Thou Goest” and the Lord’s Prayer. The wedding notice said that Sharon’s “only jewelry was a drop pearl necklace, a gift of the groom.”

By 1999, the couple had three daughters and Bill was serving as a pastor at two churches at the same time. Worshippers filled up the pews to hear his sermons.

But Bill didn’t always practice what he preached. He indulged in one of the Seven Deadly Sins (lust) and forgot about two of the Ten Commandments (adultery, murder). Unfortunately, it was his wife who paid the ultimate price for his waywardness.

For this week, I looked for more details about the case. So let’s get going on the recap of “Ghost in the Machine”:

On May 14, 1999, Bill Guthrie called 911 to report that he found his wife unresponsive in the tub. Bill said that when he left their residence to pray for 10 minutes at the United Presbyterian Church next door, Sharon was fine; she was drawing a bath. After returning home at about 7 a.m., he found Sharon, 54, unconscious and face down in the water.

Sharon’s friend Nancy Holst, who was on duty as an EMT that night, remembered that Bill sounded appropriately desperate on the phone.

Court papers say that first responders found Bill, also 54, on his hands and knees crying and asking for help — and Sharon was naked, face down in the empty tub. Bill had tried to lift her out but was unable, so he drained the water, he explained.

The EMTs revived Sharon’s heartbeat, but she had no brain activity and was pronounced dead the next day.

The loss of the popular and outgoing Sharon was a horrible tragedy for the family and the community around Wolsey, a South Dakota town with dirt roads and a population of fewer than 1,000.

Sharon had a way with children and she would tell them stories before her husband’s sermons. She had also been a teacher’s aide for handicapped young people and was working for the Reed Clinic in Huron at the time of her death.

“We lost that bubbly personality that she was,” Holst said during an interview on Forensics: You Decide.

Forensic pathologist Brad Randall, M.D., found no sign of trauma on Sharon’s body. She had low levels of antianxiety medications Diazepam and Lorazepam — which she had prescriptions for — in her blood. Tests also found that she had ingested the equivalent of as many as 20 Temazepam tablets, not a fatal dose but enough to cause unconsciousness.

Randall suspected murder but had no evidence, so he reluctantly gave accidental drowning as the cause of death.

Three weeks after losing her mother, middle daughter Jenalu decided to go ahead with her planned wedding because it was what Sharon would have wanted. Bill performed the ceremony.

But the authorities weren’t likewise committed to letting things continue as normal for Bill. Investigators found out that the Temazepam in Sharon’s system came from Bill’s prescription. In the weeks before Sharon’s death, he had filled his prescription at Statz’s drug store, and then lied by saying he lost his Rx so that he could get a second bottle, at a Kmart pharmacy.

Bill said that perhaps Sharon had ingested the Temazepam by accident while she was sleepwalking.

Sharon had no confirmed history of sleepwalking.

And Bill had a mistress, who court papers identify as Debbie Christensen, a woman he knew from his previous job as a pastor for a church in Orleans, Nebraska. The affair with Debbie, a married elder at the church, had started in 1994. When officials learned of it, they suggested Bill resign.

The affair continued after the Guthries moved to South Dakota in 1996. There, Bill worked at the United Presbyterian Church and Bonilla Presbyterian Church.

Bill told his employers that he needed to travel to Nebraska periodically for treatments for impotence. In reality, he was going to the Cornhusker State to see Debbie, and they had plenty of sex, she would later tell investigators.

But Debbie was tired of secret rendezvous in motel rooms. She wanted to go out to a movie or dinner with Bill sometimes. She left her husband so that she and Bill could take their relationship public, but he was reluctant to end his marriage to Sharon because it would hurt his career and image.

A frustrated Debbie broke up with Bill but, according to court papers, she mentioned getting back together if he divorced Sharon.

At some point, Bill decided to get rid of his wife without the hassle of dividing assets or changing jobs.

Sharon experienced a couple of suspicious brushes with death (Bruce Moilanen, Ted MacArthur) before the lethal drowning. Bill once asked Sharon to join him downstairs in the basem*nt and she nearly tripped on a cord someone had stretched across the staircase for an unknown reason. Another time, Sharon was washing her hair in the sink or tub (accounts vary) while the bathroom light wasn’t working, and Bill brought in a corded powered-on electric lamp, which “accidentally” fell in the water.

Fortunately, Sharon wasn’t injured either time.

The drowning plan came next. Bill set the stage early by taking Sharon to a clinic on April 29, saying that he was worried because he couldn’t wake her up. She might have taken sleeping pills while sleepwalking, he said. The next day, Sharon felt well and remembered nothing of the incident.

Just two weeks later, Sharon was dead in the bathtub and police had a murder investigation on their hands.

But Suzanne had talked to her mother that night on the phone and she was fine.

Suzanne told investigators that her father might have used Sharon’s favorite beverage to convey the Temazepam. “Chocolate milk was her drink — everybody knew that, and she’d buy it by the gallon,” Suzanne told Forensics: You Decide.

A computer forensics expert discovered that a month before Sharon’s death, Bill had searched for information about sleeping pills and drowning in a bathtub. He had spent time on a website for the book Worst Pills Best Pills: A Consumer’s Guide to Avoiding Drug-Induced Death or Illness.

It’s not clear whether the Guthries’ younger daughters, Jenalu and Danielle, knew about the affair, but Bill was fairly open about the fact that he no longer loved his wife. According to court papers, he told Danielle that he found Sharon unattractive, that she was fat and ugly. (Apparently, Bill didn’t mind admitting that he was a man of the flesh as well as the spirit. He was also a hypocrite — he wasn’t exactly slim and handsome himself anymore.)

With all the tawdriness swirling about, the surviving Guthries issued a statement: “Please remember our family has lost a wife, a sister, a mother anda grandmother. We stand as a family and with God and ask the Christiancommunity to be with us in prayer through this whole time.”

In August 1999, Beadle County charged Bill with murder and assigned prosecutor Mike Moore to try the case. Moore had originally been tasked with clearing Bill Guthrie, but incriminating evidence got in the way.

The Committee on the Ministry of Presbytery of South Dakota, however, believed Bill was innocent and gave him indefinite paid leave.

Some towns folk restrained themselves from making the case too much of a sensation, according to the Associated Press. “There’s some that talk of it a lot among themselves, and others who are completely hush-hush,” George McDonald told the AP. “It’s a pretty amazing story. I guess most people would agree to that.”

The trial kicked off on January 10, 2000, and it turned out to be quite salacious just the same. People who once flocked to pews for Bill’s sermons now occupied seats in the Beadle County Courthouse.

The prosecution contended that Bill murdered Sharon because a divorce might cause him to lose his job (or jobs) again.

Investigators alleged that, on the day Sharon died, Bill sneaked a high dose of Temazepam into her chocolate milk. Lab tests showed that the drug doesn’t affect the beverage’s taste.

Then, he dashed out to the church to give the drug time to knock Sharon out. Upon returning, he dragged her unconscious body to the tub and let her drown.

Bill’s claim that he tried to get Sharon out of the tub didn’t make sense because his hair and clothing were completely dry by the time first responders came. Also, an expert noted that, when people drown in tubs, they’re rarely found face down.

One witness testified that Sharon told her that she and Bill hadn’t had sex since they moved to South Dakota. Apparently, Sharon bought her husband’s story about erectile dysfunction.

But Bill’s side came up with evidence that could have been a game changer for the trial: a suicide note from Sharon. Dated the day before her death, it was addressed to Suzanne and consisted of an apology for ruining her wedding and a pledge not to ruin Jenalu’s. The note had no signature by hand; it was entirely typed.

Bill said he found it hidden in a liturgy book in a church office.

The reference to ruining Suzanne’s wedding had to do with a 15-minute argument between Sharon and the mother of the groom. Suzanne testified that it was a family joke and no big deal.

Suzanne also said that she couldn’t believe her mother would take her own life. “My mom always taught me that there’s ways out of things,” Suzanne would later say during an appearance on the Montel Williams Show, “and suicide is not one of them.”

The prosecution had concrete evidence to back up Suzanne’s testimony. An old computer that Bill had given to Suzanne shortly before the trial contained a file named Sharon.doc, with some of the writing from the purported suicide note — and whoever composed the note interrupted it to write sermons.

Apparently, Bill worked on the note on the family’s home computer as well as the church’s machine — and it was written in August, after Sharon’s death.

Bill admitted to writing a suicide note in Sharon’s voice because he was “trying to bring some reason into what had happened,” according to court papers. He said it helped him work through his grief over Sharon’s death.

Defense lawyer Phil Parent continued to push the suicide theory. After Debbie Christensen told the court about her relationship with Bill, Parent contended that Sharon found out about the affair and that it threw her into a state of depression that spurred her to commit suicide. Alternately, the defense contended, Sharon intentionally took the nonlethal overdose of pills as a cry for help but then accidentally drowned herself.

Jenalu said that her mother had once overdosed on Benadryl and needed medical attention. She would later tell Forensics: You Decide that Sharon was stressed out about her weight and taking diet pills to slim down before the wedding. Jenalu also implied that her mother did dramatic things to get her husband’s attention.

But the jury of five men and seven women didn’t buy it.

In a crowded courtroom with his three daughters present, Bill heard the verdict of guilty of first-degree murder. He showed little reaction, the AP reported. When asked if he’d like to say anything to the court, Bill answered, “No, your honor.”

Sharon’s body was removed from its South Dakota grave and reburied in her native Nebraska. That gave investigators the opportunity to get her fingerprints. They didn’t match fingerprints on the suicide note.

The Nebraska Supreme Court rejected Bill’s appeal in 2001. A 2009 appeal also failed.

Bill died in the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls in 2011 at the age of 66 — a man of God who had a lot of explaining to do when and if he made it to the other side.

That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR

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Photographer Charles Rathbun Is Secretly a Savage
(‘Photo Finish,’ Forensic Files)

Before jumping into “Photo Finish,” I want to let folks who watch Forensic Files on HLN know that you can find a daily list of updates and recaps on Facebook and Threads. Those who watch the show elsewhere can use the table of contents to find related blog posts.

And speaking of devotees of the series, I think most would agree that “Photo Finish” is about as Forensic Files as an episode can get: The deceased had a sunny personality and was known for reliability. The suspect changed his story during the course of the investigation and ultimately settled on “she died by accident and I covered it up out of fear” (John Boyle). Oh, and the sex was consensual. (Thomas Jabin Berry).

But wait, there’s more: The criminal had been arrested years earlier for another horrible crime and either gotten a light sentence (Clay Daniels) or beaten the charge entirely (David Copenhefer).

Sweet and friendly. For this post, I checked into whether killer Charles Rathbun has won any leniency of his own with the criminal justice system. I also filled in some biographical details about him and victim Linda Sobek. So let’s get going on the recap of “Photo Finish” along with extra information from internet research:

On November 16, 1995, Linda Sobek, 27, vanished on her way to a photo shoot. She was a busy model and aspiring actress living in a house just off the boardwalk in Hermosa Beach, California.

Linda made friends easily and was outgoing, but sometimes could be “as vulnerable as a wounded fawn,” according to the book Death of a Model by Clifford L. Linedecker. At age 17, she slit one of her wrists amid romantic problems.

The LA Times reported that she called her cat, Boo, her best friend.

Calendar girl. She was also spiritual and belonged to Baycities Community Church in Redondo Beach. She called her mother, Elaine Sobek, who lived in Lakewood with her father, every day.

From 1989 to 1993, Linda worked as a cheerleader for the Los Angeles Raiders. A friend recalled that, as a Raiderette, Sobek “was able to dress more quickly than others because she was so beautiful she didn’t have to spend much time putting on makeup,” the Press-Telegram reported.

At no more than 5-foot-4-inches, she wasn’t tall enough for the runways of Paris or Milan, but she was well-proportioned and looked great in a swimsuit. The Brand Model Agency in Irvine represented her, and she got gigs posing in bikinis for calendars and auto magazines and appearing at conventions, according to Death of a Model.

A no-show. Not all of Linda’s career consisted of wearing sexy clothes. Shortly before she died, she had plans to appear in a catalog featuring fashions of the 1940s.

On the day she went missing, Linda got a page directly from a photographer — not through her agency — for a last-minute shoot. She left a message for Elaine, an administrative assistant at Bechtel Corporation, that she would call her later to talk about a barbeque they had planned.

But she never did.

Weight for her. And the usually dependable Linda also missed a date with Married With Children that day. Forensic Files said that it was for an audition, but Death of a Model wrote that she had already won a small part on the TV show and it was a wardrobe fitting that she missed. The sitcom about a crass family of four never received critical acclaim, but it launched the successful careers of regulars Katey Sagal, Ed O’Neill, and Christina Applegate as well as then-unknown bit players like Matthew LeBlanc and Pam Anderson.

For Linda to willingly skip out on an appointment like that would have been unthinkable.

The last place anyone remembered spotting Linda was at a Redondo Beach Gold’s Gym, where she worked out in the morning.

Huge response. Elaine immediately reported her daughter missing. Linda’s roommates worried that some dodgy person she might have met at a trade show lured her to a photo shoot to get her alone, according to Death of a Model.

Police started getting 100 calls an hour with tips, according to Oxygen. Law enforcement considered the Angeles National Forest ground zero for the search effort.

Final resting place. The National Forest Foundation describes the 700,000-acre expanse as the “backyard playground to the huge metropolitan area of Los Angeles.” But law enforcement knows it as a backdrop to homicide.

“Somebody once said, if all the bodies in the Angeles National Forest suddenly got up and walked out, the county population would jump by 10,000,” sheriff’s deputy Steve Crider told the Orange County Register.

Police mobilized dogs and helicopters to search the forest, but the first valuable clue came from a man serving community service as part of a work crew. Bill Bartling, 49, who was paying off traffic tickets by picking up trash, found discarded pictures of Linda as well as her day planner — with the date she went missing ripped out. A garbage can also held a contract to borrow a black Lexus prototype Lx 450 sport utility vehicle for an Autoweek assignment. The document bore the name of Charles Rathbun.

Suspect makes a slip. A 38-year-old freelance photographer, Charles Rathbun told police that he met Linda for breakfast at Denny’s in Torrance on the morning she disappeared to discuss her portfolio, but he decided she wasn’t right for the shoot. He claimed that she drove away in her car, but police found her white Nissan 240-SX at 182nd Street and Crenshaw Boulevard, right near the restaurant.

According to Real Murders of Los Angeles, while speaking with police, Charles blurted out that he was the last person to see Linda alive. How did he know that? Her body hadn’t turned up. A crime lab that checked out the Lexus he’d borrowed found small amounts of blood despite that someone had cleaned the vehicle thoroughly.

While under surveillance, Charles fired a gun toward his driveway and one shot ricocheted and hit the arm of a woman friend. She wasn’t badly hurt, but it gave LA police grounds for arresting him.

In his home, police found more than 100 firearms and a bag with cords, tape, and alcohol.

So who was this No. 1 suspect?

Harrowing story. Charles Edgar Rathbun was born the last of four children on October 2, 1957. He grew up in Worthington, a section of Columbus, Ohio. According to the Los Angeles Times, he became interested in photography early on and started taking pictures for the school paper, The Chronicle.

He later took classes at the Ohio State University while working at a Kroger grocery store.

Investigators discovered something alarming buried in his history: the alleged rape of a married co-worker in 1979. The woman, a clerk at Kroger, had given him a ride home from work because he had a flat tire.

No consequences. She was interested in photography and accepted his invitation to take a look at his work inside his home, where he attacked her, she said. She begged Charles to leave her alone, but he threatened to kill her if she cried out for help, and he raped her on the floor, she said.

But Charles claimed they’d had consensual sex, and the judge in the case believed him.

And, back in those pre-internet days, the story didn’t follow Charles. The young man, who loved cars as well as photography, moved to the Detroit area to get his fill of all things automotive. He then relocated to California circa 1987.

Charles gained a reputation as a talented photographer for car magazines. He could make sleek cars look even sleeker and he also understood the mechanics of the vehicles, according to the LA Times.

Man of dualities. The Ohio native’s work appeared in such publications as Car and Driverand Motor Trend.Steve Spence, managing editor of Car and Driver, told the LA Times that nothing about Charles suggested he was in any way capable of murder. The two men had enjoyed a visit to Sicily together so Charles could test out the tires of a new Mustang on the Targa Florio race course.

Other associates described Charles as friendly and sociable, and comfortable around women.

Yet a few people who spoke to the LA Times characterized him as a loner, someone who lived in Hollywood for eight years and never seemed to have a girlfriend. After the murder, some models he’d worked with came forward to say he’d gotten out of line with them.

Serial revisionist. According to Forensic Files, Charles harbored some hostility toward women with blond hair and didn’t like Linda, whom he had previously worked with.

Investigators found out that he had a bad temper that had cost him some freelance work.

During police questioning, Charles changed his story, admitting that he had hired Linda as a model to pose with the Lexus around a dry lakebed called El Mirage in the Angeles National Forest. The assignment required her to kick up sand by making doughnuts with the car, he said. While demonstrating how to drive the car in circles, he accidentally hit her with the Lexus, then panicked and buried the body in the forest, Charles claimed.

Flowers and tears. He agreed to lead police to her body, but a series of spots he pinpointed yielded nothing. Charles was stalling for time, hoping the body would deteriorate enough so they couldn’t find evidence on it, according to Forensic Files.

Finally, investigators told him that they believed his story about the accident and that recovering Linda’s body would help prove his innocence. On November 25, 1995, from a helicopter, Charles identified her resting place. Police found Linda’s body buried in a shallow grave near a rock and a culvert.

Because of the cold temperatures there, her body hadn’t decomposed.

Tie to OJ. Meanwhile, mourners began leaving floral wreaths and sprigs outside Linda’s shared house. The Los Angeles News-Pilot published a photo of Kelly Flynn tending to them.

Tanya Brown, the sister of Nicole Brown Simpson — whose murder led to the O.J. Simpson trial of the century — attended Linda’s funeral. “I feel like I know her, and it’s just as tragic as it was ours,” Tanya told NBC News: Today.

In fact, the funeral, at the First Baptist Church of Lakewood in Long Beach, drew some 1,000 people, including friends from Linda’s modeling career, Raiderette alums, and former running backs Eric Dickerson and Christian Okoye. A violinist and guitarist played “Over the Rainbow” and “Yesterday.” White doves were released.

Medical examiner’s report. The media was there too. “She was an angel when she was with us and she is an angel now,” one friend told the Press-Telegram.

The minister spoke of how there should be a buddy system for models so they don’t have to meet photographers alone. (He’s right, it’s a good idea, but to me, that’s a form of blaming the victim. Not every woman has a friend available to accompany her anywhere anytime.)

Soon, Linda’s family had to bear disturbing news from the autopsy results. Linda died of asphyxiation, not injuries from a car accident.

Cover-up effort. Investigators believed that Linda had refused sexual advances from the 6-foot-3-inch photographer and he then hit her on the head and sodomized with a foreign object, perhaps a gun. Linda had internal hemorrhages. Bruising on her legs pointed to sexual assault as well. Ligature marks matched the size of the rope found in his house.

To eliminate evidence, Charles had washed her — she had no makeup on when police found her — and changed her clothes before disposing of her body, investigators believed.

Charles was charged with first-degree murder and sodomy with a foreign object. A judge set his bail at $1 million.

Play-acting? Los Angeles County put a heavy hitter in charge of the prosecution, Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kay, who was part of the team that prosecuted Charles Manson.

By this time, Charles Rathbun had already tried — or wanted it to appear that he had tried — to shoot himself, according to CNN. He would later testify that he drank half a liter of Scotch, wrote suicide notes, co*cked a handgun, and then passed out. When he awoke, his friends talked him out of it. He blamed the attempt on anguish over not finding good legal representation right away.

Then, while in custody, Charles cut his wrists with a razor and wrote in his own blood, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.” But the cuts were superficial and not life-threatening, and police believed it was a sympathy-seeking stunt, according to Oxygen.

Robert Rathbun, brother of the accused, claimed to have found five rolls of film in the desert that would prove Linda had willingly participated in sex. While the first four rolls showed her posing in dresses, the fifth consisted of double-exposed photos of female genitalia, which Charles said Linda willingly posed for.

Alcohol involved. The prosecution, however, found evidence that the explicit photos were taken in an Oldsmobile, not a Lexus, and they didn’t come from Linda.

Prosecutors contended that Linda fought back against the photographer’s advances. He forced her to drink tequila, resulting in her blood alcohol level of 0.13% when she died. (According to those who knew her, it wasn’t like Linda to drink on the job, or drink at all.) After the rape, Charles strangled her to death.

And there was also the matter of what Autoweek publisher Leon Mandel said: Rathbun’s assignment was to photograph the Lexus in a rural setting — not a desert forest — and the shoot wasn’t supposed to include any models, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Strong convictions. Models Tiffany Richardson and Amy Weber, who had worked with Charles Rathbun, testified that a year before the murder he had referred to Linda as a bitch. He told Weber that Linda “deserved what she got coming to her,” as reported by the LA Times.

In what must have been excruciating for the Sobeks, portions of Linda’s diary were read in court. They mostly portrayed her struggle to find and maintain true love. It came out that she had recently had renewed thoughts of suicide and that she had once allowed an admiring stranger to buy her a $1,000 bed.

“I don’t want to drag Linda Sobek through the mud,” defense lawyer Mark Werksman said. “But the fact is my client is facing the death penalty.”

The jury didn’t believe any of Charles’ story about the death resulting from consensual sex. “You couldn’t get me to believe that’s something any woman would agree to,” juror Greg Mars later said, as reported by the Daily Pilot, a news service owned by the LA Times.

As the jurors filed out of the courtroom, Linda’s parents and brother hugged each one, creating a “tearful, impromptu reception line,” according to the Daily Pilot.

Where the money went. Mark Werksman said his client had been afraid he would be wrongfully convicted. Robert Rathbun, himself a lawyer, said that his brother was a kind and gentle person who never wanted to harm others and that his family believed Linda Sobek’s death was a tragic accident.

The Sobeks thought that Robert Rathbun should have faced charges for providing false evidence to cover up the murder and rape. Sobek family lawyer Wayne Willette noted that Robert claimed to have destroyed maps that Charles had given him so that he could find the missing rolls of film. (I found nothing to indicate Robert Rathbun was ever criminally charged.)

The $100,000 in the reward fund would go toward helping abused women “so that Linda’s death will bring about positive change,” Willette said.

Remember the grocery clerk. Linda’s family took out an ad in the Mercury News a decade after the murder: “It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years since you left us. We’ll always remember your smile, contagious laugh, and the light you shed that is still spreading. The world will never be as good as it was before you left.”

It’s still galling today to remember that, had the judge believed the other, alleged rape victim back in 1979, Linda Sobek would probably still be alive.

Perhaps the Sobek family can also take comfort in the knowledge that Charles Rathbun’s life without parole sentence stands. The state corrections website notes that he remains incarcerated at the California Institution for Men in Chino.

For Forensic Files viewers, however, some loose ends to the story remain.

More felonies? The episode mentions that Charles Rathbun was at first suspected of involvement in the then-mysterious murder of another model, Kimberly Pandelios. She died after meeting a photographer at a Denny’s and her remains turned up not far from Linda’s.

Plus, the LA Times reported that authorities were investigating Charles for “unsolved slayings and disappearing young women from Michigan to California.” During the investigation into Linda’s death, police had found scores of photographs of models in “death poses” and attempted to contact them to ensure they were only play-acting for the camera, according to an Associated Press story.

For an upcoming post, I’ll check into an epilogue for those parts of the story.

In the meantime, you can watch the Real Murders of Los Angeles on the Oxygen network’s website if you create an account.

Until next time, cheers. — RR

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Greedy Lovers Kill a Once-Famous Singer
‘The Cheater,’ Forensic Files

Forensic Files went all in on “The Cheater,” the episode about the rise and fall of vocalist Walter Scott. The producers scored interviews with the victim’s mother and father — plus Bob Kuban, the leader of the group that Walter helped to land on the Top 40 list. Forensic Files even got the man who murdered Walter to speak on camera.

Before seeing the episode, I had never heard of Walter Scott, but the show’s portrayal made me want to learn more about his trajectory from blue-collar worker to nationally known celebrity to wedding singer — and ultimately to homicide victim.

Making the band. So let’s get going on the recap of “The Cheater,” along with extra information from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch‘s great reporting as well as other internet sources:

Bob Kuban, the founder of Bob Kuban and the In-Men, was a DuBourg High School music instructor who once studied under the head percussionist of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.

Drawing upon his most promising former students, Kuban formed the eight-piece group in 1964.

Hygienic youths. Although a musical act with more than five people — including brass instruments, no less — seemed a little anachronistic in the age of the Beatles, the group did well.

In a 1966 interview, Kuban lauded the group’s wholesome image. He noted that the members styled themselves in a clean-cut manner, took baths daily, and in general distinguished themselves from the rock musicians who were “long-haired freaks” and wore Victorian costumes (not sure who he was taking a swipe at on that one).

According to Forensic Files, the band owed much of its appeal to its blond frontman, Walter Scott. Born as Walter Scott Notheis on February 7, 1943, he grew up in St. Louis and married when barely out of his teens. He and wife Doris had two sons, Wally and Scott.

When Walter joined Bob Kuban and the In-Men, he was working as a crane operator during the day.

Tuned up. The group first gained fame in their native St. Louis. The boys “cast a spell over teenagers” around town and spread the magic around the country, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

In 1966, the band created the song that would become its legacy.

On April 30, 1966, Bob Kuban and the In-Men performed “Look Out for the Cheater” on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.

The record reached No. 12 on the Billboard chart and stayed in the Top 40 for seven weeks. It would go on to sell a million copies.

In their heyday, the boys appeared on a soap opera called Never Too Young and continued to play at many St. Louis-area venues. The normally quiet Catholic Youth Council dances became all the rage when Bob Kuban and the In-Men performed there.

Lightning not striking twice. Walter, who had azure eyes and sometimes wore a blue tuxedo on stage, acquired many female fans. “Take a good-looking guy and he was like a movie star back then to a lot of women,” Kuban told Forensic Files. Locals who knew Walter described him as a nice person, too.

The band followed up with the songs “The Teaser” and “Drive My Car,” but they didn’t make it into the Top 40. Bob Kuban and the In-Men never had another hit like “Look Out for the Cheater.”

Walter quit the band and continued on his own, hoping to become the next blue-eyed soul phenomenon, according to a Daily News story. Many people who heard his disembodied voice assumed he was African-American, a 2016 retrospective in The Australian said.

Holding his own. His solo records didn’t sell well and he never became a singular sensation, but he made a living for himself for 17 years singing with cover bands that played at private events and street fairs. St. Louis Post Dispatch stories from 1967 note “Walter Scott and the Guise” appearing at Stoppkoette Roller Rink and Christ the King Parish Hall.

By 1975, he had formed a band called Walter Scott and the Cheaters, playing at such venues as the Harbour House Hotel in Lynne, Massachusetts. He might not have been a major star anymore, but his voice still sounded great as evidenced by a 1980 recording of Walter Scott performing live.

Walter’s career required a lot of time on the road and, as Forensic Files pointed out, he was not only singing about a cheater but also becoming one.

Scandalous goings-on. After years of being unfaithful to Doris, Walter divorced her. He then married his mistress, the olive-skinned Joann Calcaterra — described as one of Walter’s starstruck fans by an Exhumed: Killer Revealed episode titled “Murders on the Edge of Town.”

Walter’s parents, Kay and Walter Notheis Sr., told Forensic Files that Joann, who worked as a secretary at a TV station, was selfish and untrustworthy.

Things got more sordid and sad from there.

Walter, who shared a twin son and daughter with Joann, had an affair with a dancer from his act. In turn, Joann cheated with a sloppy-looking electrician named James “Jim” Williams — who was married.

“It was like Peyton Place,” said Kay Notheis. “Everyone was running around with each other’s wives.”

One last chance. In October 1983, Jim’s wife, Sharon Almaroad Williams, with whom he shared two sons, died at the age of 42 after her Cadillac Seville crashed into a ditch.

That same year, there was some good news. Bob Kuban decided to get his original band back together, and signed Walter on.

But the reboot was not to be.

Taking a break from a gig at a Playboy Club in Hershey, Pennsylvania, Walter returned to St. Louis to spend Christmas of 1983 with Joann — and promptly vanished. He left the house to replace a car battery and never came back, according to Oxygen.

Badmouthing a dead man. Wally Notheis, one of Walter’s sons from his marriage to Doris, first heard the news from his stepmother that his dad was missing. “I just didn’t know what happened,” Wally told Exhumed. “His life was pretty secretive.”

When reporting Walter’s disappearance, Joann immediately went into smear-the-victim mode (Ken Register, John Boyle). She told police that Walter was involved in the drug trade, associated with underworld figures, and tended to carry a lot of cash, according to Autopsy 3: The Cheater.

Police found the car he was using, a dark green Lincoln, abandoned at the St. Louis Airport. And, yikes, when Kay and Walter Notheis Sr. stopped by the house that their son shared with Joann, they found Jim Williams — a bear of a man at 6-foot-6-inches and 300-pounds — sitting at a table with Walter’s jewelry spread out in front of him. He was inspecting it with a magnifying glass.

That was fast. Within 24 hours of Walter’s disappearance, Joann canceled all of Walter’s singing engagements. Jim Williams began spending the night at Joann’s; she told police that Jim slept on the couch and they were just friends. Jim said they were merely consoling each other.

Crypt located. In 1987, investigators finally got a break, from one of Jim’s sons, who was in prison at the time. Thanks to Jim Jr.’s tip, deputies zeroed in on a cistern on his father’s property. Little Jim recalled that his father had covered it with a wood-lined concrete planter around the time that Walter disappeared.

Law enforcement officers quickly converged on the structure and pried open the cistern. They found what was left of Walter’s body, dressed in a blue jogging suit, floating in the water. Someone had tied him up and put a bullet through the heart. When the deputies lifted out his corpse, the head — a skull by this time — tumbled away from his spinal column. Medical examiner Mary Case, who had arrived at the scene minutes earlier, quickly retrieved the skull and made sure police carefully handled his torso, which had some delicate flesh attached.

Police arrested Jim Williams Sr. for Walter’s murder. Investigators built a case that he also killed Sharon Williams. Investigators found evidence suggesting that Sharon’s car accident was staged; her exhumed body showed injuries inconsistent with what the auto wreck would have caused. She had gasoline on her body, which they attributed to a failed attempt to incinerate the car.

It took years for the justice system to build a solid case against Joann and Jim Williams.

Major irritant. In the meantime, Walter’s father took comfort in driving past Jim and Joann’s house from time to time. “I think he just wants them to know we’re still around,” Kay told the St. Louis-Post Dispatch in 1990. “We’re still watching them.” Sometimes, Jim would come out of the house and stare at the car until they drove away.

Neighbors said that Joann usually stayed inside the house, but they would see Jim doing woodworking projects outdoors or fishing in the backyard on the banks of Pershing Lake.

”To see that guy in your own son’s house, it just gripes me no end,” said Walter Notheis.“I’d like to go in there and blow his head off.”

Authorities theorized that Jim got in an argument with Sharon at home and used an implement to strike her head. He staged the auto accident and set a fire near the car to cover up the murder, they alleged.

Not an agonizing decision. As for Walter, the prosecution made a case that Jim shot him in the back before burying him on his property where, Jim thought, no one would find him. One witness told the court that, before Walter’s body turned up, Jim Williams said that Walter was gone and never coming back. There was also testimony that Jim had tried to hire hitmen to kill Walter.

The jurors quickly found Jim guilty, but they rejected prosecutor Thomas Dittmeier’s request for the death penalty. Jim Williams, then 52 years old, received two sentences of life without the possibility of parole for 50 years for the murders of Sharon Williams and Walter Scott.

Joann had been arrested, too, although investigators didn’t have quite enough evidence of her involvement to guarantee a murder conviction. She would later say that her only crime was falling in love with the “kind and gentle” Jim Williams, but she pleaded guilty to hindering prosecution. She received a five-year prison sentence, served 18 months, and then disappeared from public view. (There’s a 2015 obituary on the internet for a Joann Calcaterra, but it’s not the same woman.)

Time for the finale. During his Forensic Files interview, Jim Williams denied committing murder and tried to cast blame on his own son, Jim Jr., for Walter’s homicide (Stacey Castor).

Williams served time in maximum security at Missouri’s Potosi prison. He died of cancer in an infirmary hospice at the age of 72 in 2011.

Bob Kuban called Walter’s mother to give her the news of Jim Williams’ death. “I was wishing he would live longer so he would have to suffer a little longer,” Kay Notheis, then 88, told Stlouistoday.com. “But you don’t always get what you want.” (Walter Notheis Sr. had died in 2003 at the age of 81. )

Kay lived until she was nearly 100, dying in 2022.

Wait, there’s more. He also said he’d rather be a one-hit wonder than a no-hit wonder.

Walter got a lot of mileage from that song as well, but he didn’t learn much from it and, unfortunately, he was cheated out of everything in the end.

You can watch the Autopsy episode about the murder on YouTube. The Exhumed episode is also on YouTube, but it’s behind a paywall and mostly concentrates on the murder of Sharon Williams.

That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR

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Update and Timeline for the Mitchell Brothers’ p*rnography Palace
(‘Sibling Rivalry,’ Forensic Files)

The last post covered the story of Jim and Artie Mitchell, the California brothers who progressed from small-time p*rnographers to famous showmen before becoming tragic figures.

Much of the Mitchells’ glory centered on the O’Farrell Theatre, where they staged the most-graphic live sex shows San Francisco had ever seen. But older brother Jim Mitchell had a “knack for seeming more naughty than nasty,” according to Los Angeles Times writer Garry Abrams.

The business, housed in a structure built in 1924, drew serious devotees of adult entertainment as well as folks who were just a tad curious. Many Japanese tourists made the O’Farrell a stop on their itineraries, according to the San Francisco Examiner. The theater’s hardcore productions also drew attention from the San Francisco Police Department. The local government wanted to shut the O’Farrell down.

The Mitchell brothers spent millions defending the O’Farrell and other California theaters they later opened. They paid the legal costs for employees arrested in raids, according to San Francisco Gate. (For the most part, however, the performers didn’t face prosecution.)

For this post, I looked for more details on the O’Farrell’s history and what’s shaking with it today. So let’s get going on a timeline with more information than Forensic Files could fit into “Sibling Rivalry”:

1969: The Beginning
Jim and Artie Mitchell turn a building that had most recently housed a Buick dealership into the O’Farrell Theatre. The adult-entertainment venue, at 895 O’Farrell Street in San Francisco, shows short p*rnographic movies and clips that the brothers produce.

The building features a huge lighted marquee projecting from the front entrance. A video of a 1969 police raid shows the interior as having typical cushioned cinema-style seats and a wall with a dark red curtain.

1980s: Business Evolves
The advent of the VCR forces the Mitchells to think beyond adult films, which consumers can now watch at home. They begin staging live sex shows featuring themes like lesbian bondage.

But the O’Farrell continues its commitment to clothing-free entertainment. A 1988 classified ad in the Sacramento Bee solicits nude dancers and promises a clean, safe work environment and “good $$$.”

The theater’s renowned Shower Show features naked woman dancing around a set that looks like a locker room. Afterward, for $5 tips, they “assumed positions that wouldn’t be out of place in a gynecologist’s office,” the Los Angeles Times reports.

1991: Unimaginable Crime
The Mitchells once again attract worldwide attention, when Jim shoots Artie to death. Jim said that he went to Artie’s house to force him to go into drug and alcohol rehab, and the confrontation turned deadly. He is convicted of voluntary manslaughter and serves three years. He then returns to the O’Farrell.

1994: Employer Out of Step
Former O’Farrell dancers Ellen Vickery and Jennifer Bryce sue Jim Mitchell. They allege that the only pay they received came from tips and that performers had been charged stage fees of $100 to $200 a month, the Associated Press reports. It comes to light that the Mitchells’ entertainment company shifted dancers’ status from employees to independent contractors to justify making them pay fees and not giving them benefits. Eventually, 500 former employees join the suit and the O’Farrell settles the case for $2.85 million, according to the San Francisco Examiner.

In 1999, the O’Farrell’s 30th anniversary, Marilyn Chambers announces that she will be returning for some live performances. Chambers, who is 47 years old and three-times divorced with an 8-year-old daughter, tells San Francisco Gate that being at the theater is strange without Artie Mitchell there.

2000: O’Farrell Enters the Millennium
Hollywood actor Emilio Estevez produces the movie X-Rated in 2000. The film depicts the events leading up to the shooting, with Estevez and brother Charlie Sheen portraying the Mitchells. The real Jim Mitchell bans the film from the O’Farrell Theatre and asks Estevez how he would like it if Charlie died and someone made a movie about it. Jim doesn’t have to worry; the Esteves-Sheen film is an utter failure.

In 2007, history repeats itself when a group of former dancers files a class-action suit alleging that the O’Farrell took a portion of their tips, a violation of California law. The plaintiffs say that when they didn’t attain their quota of dance fees paid by customers, they were obliged to pay the O’Farrell to make up the difference, according to the San Francisco Examiner. Again, the dancers win the suit.Superior CourtJudgeMary Wissrules that, in addition to other compensation, the theater has to reimburse dancers for the purchase of required costumes such as nurse and policewoman uniforms.

2010s: New Generation of Mitchells
Artie’s daughter Jasmine Mitchell is arrested in connection with an identity-theft ring in 2014.

Around 2018, with Jim’s daughter Meta managing the business, the family puts the 12,920-square-foot O’Farrell up for sale, marketing it as office space. They seek $10 million for purchase or $39,000 a month to rent, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The newspaper notes that real estate agents show the property only during morning hours, before the $60 nude lap dances commence.

No deal materializes.

Even as business slims down, it continues to attract celebrities, including Trevor Noah and Justin Bieber, according to SFist.com.

The 2020s: Curtain Comes Down
In 2020, family members of the Mitchell brothers close the O’Farrell amid the covid pandemic. “We all kind of grew up there in a sense,” a 35-year-old dancer tells San Francisco Gate. “We went from being teenagers up to no good to women with purpose. It’s a sisterhood I’ve never experienced with any other job I’ve ever had.”She also says she could make $1,000 a night at the O’Farrell.

In December 2022, the O’Farrell is listed for sale for $12 million as residential space with the potential to develop it into 339 units.

In 2024, Corcoran touts the O’Farrell as a commercial redevelopment opportunity that “promises to redefine the city.” Sale price is $4,950,000.

There are no takers to date.

Finally, as a side note, it should be mentioned that longtime O’Farrell detractor Dianne Feinstein, who went on to become a U.S. senator, got the satisfaction of seeing the theater close before she died at the age of 90 in 2023.

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Tubi or Amazon

Adult-Entertainment Kings Clash
(‘Sibling Rivalry,’ Forensic Files)

In the 1970s, the world’s most famous purveyors of adult entertainment were Hugh Hefner, owner of Playboy magazine and clubs, and Bob Guccione Sr., founder of Penthouse magazine.

Around the same time, another pair was making a splash in the industry. The Mitchell brothers didn’t lounge around in silk bathrobes in a mansion the way Hefner did. And they couldn’t carry off unbuttoned shirts and gold chains the way Bob Guccione did.

Jim and Artie Mitchell looked more like birthday clowns than emperors of erotica.

‘Two’ much? But they offered a type of p*rnography that Playboy and Penthouse didn’t: hardcore, both live and on film. And while the Mitchells never attained status equal to that of Hefner or Guccione, they had some glory days just the same.

The Mitchells built a profitable adult-entertainment empire including one particular movie that crossed over into popular culture and elevated their status from mere p*rn peddlers.

Their own story, however, ended in tragedy. Jim Mitchell killed Artie, the younger brother he once cherished.

Skin in the game. The “Sibling Rivalry” episode of Forensic Files covers Jim and Artie’s rise and fall. Because it was the first time I’d heard of the Mitchells, I looked for more details to flesh out their story. So let’s get going on the recap of the episode along with extra information from internet research:

James Lowell Mitchell and Artie Jay Mitchell were born in 1943 and 1945, respectively, in San Joaquin County, California to Georgia Mae and James Robert Mitchell. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Georgia Mae was a teacher and James Robert was a card shark. The New York Times described him as someone who “tried poker for a living.”

Growing up, Artie was the outgoing son, Jim the serious and reserved one. Jim loved his younger brother and tried to look out for him all of their lives. Once, when Artie was trapped by riptides while swimming off of Ocean Beach, Jim jumped into freezing-cold water alongside rescue workers to help save him.

Brotherly love. After Jim finished high school, he studied cinema at San Francisco State College. He supported himself by giving women $10 to pose nude for photographs, and then selling the pictures at a profit to local p*rnographers, according to the New York Times.

Later, Jim and Artie produced peep shows — the short sexually explicit films that customers viewed via coin-operated devices at adult-entertainment establishments.

As they branched out into owning the kind of venues that bought their films, Jim and Artie remained an inseparable team who worked in harmony for many years. “They shared business decisions, friends, fishing expeditions, drugs and a desire to set staid San Francisco society on its ear,” the Globe and Mail wrote.

Fertile ground. At one point, they operated 11 adult movie theaters in California. Their jewel in the crown was the O’Farrell Theatre in San Francisco. The establishment, nicknamed the Carnegie Hall of Sex and the Cadillac of whor*houses, kicked X-rated entertainment up a notch with nude cabaret and live in-person sex shows. It was the p*rnographic toast in town.

As Forensic Files noted, San Francisco was a good territory for the brothers because of its longtime tradition of tolerating sexual expression and offering adult entertainment, dating back to the Gold Rush, presumably to serve the desires of lonesome prospectors. The San Francisco Examiner would later say that the brothers “reigned over San Francisco’s flourishing p*rnography market.”

In fact, the Mitchells came along at the right time for the entire United States. The sexual revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s made p*rnography closer than ever to mainstream entertainment. Women were even starting to accompany their husbands to erotic fare.

Great exposure. Jim and Artie began producing longer adult films. The peak of their careers came in 1972, when the Cannes Film Festival showed their 72-minute X-rated movie, Behind the Green Door. It was hardcore but, unlike most such films, this one had a plot. It portrayed a woman’s abduction and sexual awakening amid interracial and group encounters, some of which took place on a trapeze.

Behind the Green Door got an extra dose of publicity thanks to some irony. Marilyn Chambers, the star of the movie, had recently posed as a mother holding an infant for the cover of the Ivory Snow detergent box.

The Mitchells created the movie on a budget of $60,000 and it initially grossed $25 million, according to The New York Times. Despite that she had no dialogue in the movie, Marilyn Chambers became a household name.

Tied up in court. These were the glamor years of p*rno chic. “We were superstars,” Marilyn Chambers later told San Francisco Gate. “We rode around in limos, drank Cristal champagne and stayed at thePlaza Hotelin suites.”

The Mitchells maintained a relationship with celebrated journalist and book author Hunter S. Thompson, who worked as a night manager at O’Farrell Theatre early in his career. According to the LA Times, Robert Crumb, the cartoonist who created the Keep on Truckin’ drawing, enjoyed cordial relations with the Mitchells, and Black Panther leader Huey Newton was known to drop by the theater, which had card games and pool tables in addition to the sex shows.

Not everyone felt warm and friendly toward the Mitchell brothers, however. They had to defend themselves against almost 200 obscenity and prostitution cases from local and state governments and law enforcement, according to San Francisco Gate.

The late Senator Dianne Feinstein, who served as mayor of San Francisco early in her career, tried to shut down the O’Farrell. Local station KRON News recorded a police bust of the theater, with patrons shielding their faces from the camera.

Leading lady remunerated. By 1981, the California city of Santa Ana had filed several court actions against the Mitchells in attempts to revoke the license from their adult theater in Honer Plaza Shopping Center. As part of the trial proceedings, Judge Claude Owens had to watch such explicit films as Teenage Pajama Party and The Devil in Miss Jones, according to the LA Times. The Mitchells managed to keep the Santa Ana theater open until 1990.

In fact, they successfully defended themselves in most of the cases.

So how rich did Jim and Artie get from their films and string of theaters?

The Mitchells didn’t get to keep all of the Behind the Green Door millions. Marilyn Chambers had negotiated for a cut; it’s not clear whether or not there were outside investors who needed to be paid off as well.

Advent of video. The value of Cinema 7 Inc., the Mitchells’ entertainment company, ranged from $50 million to less than $1 million over its lifetime. According to the San Francisco Examiner, Jim Mitchell at one time drew a salary of $150,000 to $200,000 a year from Cinema 7, when it was grossing more than $3 million a year.

The 1980s brought the threat of the VCR, which enabled seekers of adult films to watch them in their own bedrooms. Still, the Mitchell brothers had a lock on live sex shoes — few consumers could stage those in their own homes.

Perhaps the real threat to having a stable business, however, was the younger Mitchell’s growingly reckless lifestyle.

“Party Artie” was overindulging in alcohol and drugs and sadomasoch*stic sex. Artie once took out a pistol and waved it around during lunch at a restaurant, a friend of his would later testify. He got the gun away from Artie, but Artie choked him until he agreed to give it back.

Home invasion. Jim would later say that Artie, 45, had threatened Jim’s girlfriend as well as their own mother. In an interview with Forensic Files, Artie’s former wife Karen Hassall said that Artie had refused urgings to seek help for his problems. Artie had been having violent thoughts but said he’d rather die than go to therapy.

By 1991, Artie was living in a tract house in San Corte Madera, about 30 miles from San Francisco, with 27-year-old girlfriend Julie Bajo. They met during her employment as a nude dancer at the O’Farrell Theatre.

On the night of February 27 that year, Julie heard someone enter the house while she and Artie were in bed. Sources vary as to how the intruder got in. He either kicked in the front door or walked through it because it was unlocked. Whatever the case, Julie got scared, grabbed a phone, ran inside a closet, and dialed emergency services. The recording picked up the sound of gunfire.

Julie screamed in terror.

Martyr mission? Police arrived to see Jim Mitchell, 47, limping away from the scene with a .22-caliber rifle in his pant leg. He had a revolver in a shoulder holster, according to an Associated Press account. The officers arrested Jim.

Artie, 45, lay inside with three bullet wounds including a fatal one to his head.

Jim claimed that he went to Artie’s place to force him into drug and alcohol treatment because he was out of control. He said that he took the firearms for self-defense and that when Artie approached with what looked like a gun, Jim pulled the trigger of one of his own. Jim fired seven shots. Three of the bullets hit Artie.

Inevitable end. The story made for numerous front-page headlines such as “S.F p*rn King Jailed in Slaying of Brother” and “A Tale of Sex, Drugs and Brotherly Love: Dead Reckoning.”

Marilyn Chambers said that Artie’s death came as no surprise to her given his risky lifestyle. She expected him to overdose or kill himself in a car accident, she said. On the night Artie died, his blood-alcohol level was at 0.25 percent, triple the legal limit.

Yet others never saw trouble brewing. “Everyone is distraught. Everyone is just flabbergasted,” a Mitchell brothers employee told the Los Angeles Times. The employee said that he sensed no discord between the brothers.

Foolish with firearms. Regardless of any culpability, Jim Mitchell grieved his lost brother. He organized a bereavement ceremony for Artie’s friends at the O’Farrell. “As journalists, politicians, and the rest of the brothers’ coterie … nibbled on finger sandwiches, nude ‘exotic dancers’ undulated to canned music and simulated sex on a fur rug,” the New York Times News Service reported.

Jim went on trial for murder in 1992. The Mitchell brother’s mother, Georgia Mae, testified that Artie’s life was spiraling out of control. Jim’s girlfriend, Lisa, said Artie had made threatening phone calls.

Artie’s friend Donald Dossett told the court that Artie often went on alcoholic benders but the most recent one, right before the shooting, was the worst, the San Francisco Examiner reported. Artie’s personality had changed and he had grown more violent, said Dossett, a physician from San Francisco.

Animated argument. Ballistics tests as well as the audio tape analysis from the 911 call indicated that the gunfire came from Jim’s gun and suggested that Jim shot Artie in the shoulder and abdomen before Artie took refuge in the bathroom. For 28 seconds, the shooting stopped. Investigators believe that, during that time, Jim crouched down and then took aim at Artie’s head when Artie opened the bathroom door and peered out to see whether the coast was clear.

The prosecution showed computerized animated re-creations of the shooting. The defense, led by New York lawyer Michael Kennedy, countered that the video added subjective elements and that the ballistics tests used for the re-creation weren’t conducted in Artie Mitchell’s house.

Jim’s lawyers implied that Artie had a gun that night (none was found) and suggested that Artie was holding a beer bottle that Jim mistook for a gun.

Over the course of the proceedings, jury members listened 11 times to the 911 call, which demonstrated that there were enough pauses in between the gunshots to discredit any accidental shooting theory.

Sacrificed bonus. On the stand, Jim said he didn’t remember shooting Artie although he recalled firing one shot into the ceiling.

Jim cried and said he wished that he had died instead of Artie.

Kennedy also played up the love between the brothers. “Science doesn’t tell us of the workings of the heart, the workings of the mind,” Kennedy said. He countered the contention that Jim wanted Artie’s $1 million life insurance policy. The brothers’ accountant, Ruby Richardson, testified that Jim had once used his own $50,000 bonus from the O’Farrell Theatre as a gift to Artie because he needed the money more. A secretary at the law firm used by the Mitchells testified that Jim sought legal help to forcibly place Artie in rehab for his own good.

Lesser charges. Prosecutor John Posey, on the other hand, argued that brotherly concern wasn’t Jim’s motivation for his visit to Artie’s house that night.“He was tired of Artie Mitchell, his antics over the years,” Posey said. “He didn’t want to deal with him anymore.”

A jury declined to convict Jim of first-degree or second-degree murder but found him guilty of voluntary manslaughter, meaning that it was a crime of passion or perceived as self-defense. The jury also found Jim guilty of brandishing a firearm and discharging a gun in a house.

Meanwhile, the murder prompted what the San Francisco Examiner called a cottage industry of lawsuits. It included a demand against Jim from Julie Bajo for $450,000 for her trauma from having to hide in the closet during the shooting. Artie’s children sued for an unspecified amount. Life insurance company Summit National wanted to prevent Cinema 7 from getting the $1 million dollar life-insurance award, according to the San Francisco Examiner.

Artie’s estate, which he left to his six children, included a 45% stake in Cinema 7 Inc. (worth about $270,000 at the time of his death), $38,000 in cash and bank accounts, $200,000 in pension funds, and a life insurance policy, according to the San Francisco Examiner. It’s not clear whether the $1 million policy the prosecution implied served as a motive for the murder was meant for the business or for Artie’s heirs. Legal fees to fight bids from local governments to close down their theaters ate into the fortunes of both brothers during their careers. According to the LA Times, law enforcement had been trying to shut down the O’Farrell Theatre since it opened in 1969.

Daughter’s perspective. Artie’s children eventually settled their claims out of court. Julie Bajo received at least $6,000, but it came from her appearances on tabloid TV shows Hard Copy and Inside Edition. (The Chicago Tribune reported that she made $500,000 from the shows.)

Jim Mitchell died of natural causes in 2007 at the age of 63. Two years later, Marilyn Chambers succumbed to heart disease.

In 2014, Artie’s daughter Liberty told her story via a stage show, The p*rnographer’s Daughter, set in the 1970s.

By 2020, Behind the Green Door‘s gross had risen to $50 million, according to San Francisco Gate. It’s the second-highest-grossing X-rated movie of all time, right behind Deep Throat.

More on the Mitchells. The O’Farrell Theatre, the showpiece of the Mitchells’ empire, has gone through many changes over the years. I’ll write an update on its history in a future column.

In the meantime, you can read the book X-Rated: The Mitchell Brothers by David McCumber.

The Showtime movie version of the brothers’ lives, Rated X, starring Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez, got bad reviews from newspapers and magazines and, perhaps as a result, doesn’t stream anywhere except possibly Showtime; you can buy the DVD version on Amazon. Or save your money and enjoy the Forensic Files‘ episode, with Peter Thomas lending his tasteful narration to the sordid saga of Jim and Artie Mitchell.

That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR

P.S. Read Part 2: Whatever Happened to the O’Farrell Theatre?

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or Tubi or Amazon

Larry Bruce Goes Unpunished — But Only for Two Decades
(‘Soiled Plan,’ Forensic Files)

Stories about people who overcome obstacles a bit later in life offer hope to others. Such was the case with Judy Bruce, who had a severe speech impediment. It didn’t stop her from getting married or having children, but she stayed close to home and remained in the background socially.

Then, at age 34, the Ohio housewife had surgery that made her feel more comfortable going out and meeting new people.

Combined family. Unfortunately, the inspiration that husband Larry Bruce drew from Judy’s transformation was negative. With Judy able to speak more easily, she might get away from him and tell authorities about things he wanted to pretend never happened. So Larry decided to silence her forever.

For this week, I looked for more details on Judy Bruce’s mysterious life. So let’s get going on the recap of “Soiled Plan” along with extra information from internet research.

Judy Ann Phillips came into the world in Bucyrus, Ohio on December 23, 1941, a daughter of Robert and Edna Phillips. She had varied siblings including one full brother named Robert Phillips, a half-brother, a stepbrother, and a stepsister, according to family obituaries.

A set of twin sisters died at birth.

Odd sequence. Judy had a cleft palate, a common birth defect, but her parents didn’t get corrective surgery for her despite that it had long been available by the 1940s.

Somewhere along Judy’s trajectory, she met Larry Dean Bruce, a delivery driver two years her junior. He also came from Bucyrus.

Larry and Judy had a son together, LeRoy Harvey Bruce. Here’s where things get strange. Judy’s younger child, Melody Phillips, was described as Larry’s stepdaughter.

Not all bad. Forensic Files didn’t mention it, but Larry and Judy had been married for less than three years before her death, meaning that the couple had LeRoy circa 1965, and then Judy produced Melody with someone else around 1967 before getting officially hitched to Larry in the 1970s. (Not that there’s anything wrong with all that, but it’s unusual.)

The family lived on Lindaire Lane in Ontario, Ohio.

In some ways, the kids had a conventional childhood. During her Forensic Files appearance, Melody spoke of outdoorsy family fun like riding on pontoon boats on Charles Mill Lake.

Guerilla warfare. But there was also the physical abuse Larry inflicted on Judy, who was less than 5 feet tall and had a slight build.

She fought back as well as she could. According to court papers, Judy set fire to Larry’s boat and broke one of his fingers by throwing an ashtray at him. She once changed all the locks to the house, Gannett News Service reported.

Larry didn’t exactly make life at home any more peaceful by allowing Judy to find out that he accompanied Milena Davey, a former girlfriend, and Milena’s daughter on a school trip to Cedar Point, a popular amusem*nt park in Sandusky.

A transformation. But amid all the tumult, something wonderful happened for Judy. The Ohio State Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation in conjunction with the United Way paid for her to have surgery to repair her cleft palate in 1976.

After the operation, the United Way helped fund speech therapy for her.

“A new confident woman has emerged from the tiny, silent victim of cleft palate congenital defect,” the Mansfield News Journal wrote in a human-interest story about Judy.

Changes for the better. Judy could speak clearly and she felt more comfortable talking to people outside her family. She applied for a job for the first time in her life and ended up taking a position in housekeeping at Mansfield General Hospital. Soon, she got a driver’s license and started forming new friendships.

“I like working,” Judy told the paper. “I bought a car and the job helps pay the bills.”

But Judy only got a couple of years to enjoy her second act before the curtain came down.

Something’s not right. On the morning of November 2, 1978, Larry told the kids that Judy didn’t feel well. Melody, 11, glanced into the bedroom and saw Judy lying down with her face turned away from the door. Melody and LeRoy left for school on foot. Larry drove to work, waving to them as he cruised by.

Judy, 36, went missing that night.

Ontario Village police officer Ronald Dille searched for any strange tracks around the property but found none. No money or property was missing from the house, and Judy’s Mercury Bobcat remained in the garage. “My impression at the time was one of extreme suspicion,” police officer Denny Reid would recall at the trial.

“It appears that the only thing missing from the house was Mrs. Bruce and the clothes she was wearing,” investigator Scott Reinbolt would later tell Forensic Files. “Her car was still there. Her purse was still there. Her prescription drugs were still there.”

Suffocated. Later that day, a maintenance worker reported seeing a dead body in a dry creek bed at a local Girl Scouts campground. Police found a pajama-clad Judy Bruce wrapped in a blanket, which still had a sticker on it from a garage sale the Bruces once held. Larry allowed the police to search the house.

They found a little blood and urine on a blanket in the Bruces’ bedroom, but the DNA testing needed to identify it didn’t exist at that time. Police officers noticed parts of the mattress in the Bruces’ bedroom were soaked with urine.

A coroner determined that Judy had died of suffocation, which causes the bladder to empty. But there was no urine at the dumping site. Police believed someone killed her in one place and then took the body to the campground.

Another wife. Two days after Judy disappeared, her former co-worker James Isaac died in a traffic accident. In a classic Forensic Files red flag — shifting blame to somebody else (Tim Permenter, Bill Lipscomb) — Larry said that Isaac, age 22, had been having an affair with Judy and that perhaps Isaac killed her and then committed suicide via automobile.

That theory didn’t get any traction.

Judy Bruce’s murder case turned cold.

Larry went on with his life. He married Milena Davey in 1981 and moved her into the same house he once shared with Judy.

Starting around 1983, Larry spent a year in prison for the sexual battery of stepdaughter Melody Phillips (more on that in a minute). Milena divorced him in 1984.

Second look. But, back in those days before Google and the national sex offender registry, Larry managed to put some shade on his terrible crimes against Melody. He snagged another wife, a woman named Jill. At some point, Larry moved to 126 Buckeye Road in Mansfield.

He continued his existence undisturbed until 2000, when Richland County established its Unsolved Homicide Unit, funded with $25,000 from the local government and headed by Scott Reinbolt.

Investigators from the unit took a new look at Judy’s murder as their first case. They didn’t exactly find a smoking gun, but they discovered smaller things that added up to a lot.

Troubled soles. LeRoy Bruce told investigators that Larry had burned a bed sheet shortly after Judy disappeared; Larry said the dog had an accident on it. (Burning stuff, another red flag, Ken Otto.)

Former co-workers at Roadway Trucking remembered hearing Larry brag about knowing how to commit the perfect murder.

Larry’s shoes, which police had hung onto since 1978, had traces of calcium carbonate. The material is found in the limestone gravel used to pave some streets, including Walker Lake Road, situated next to the campground where Judy’s body turned up.

Special attachment. Infrared spectroscopy identified synthetic fibers from the death blanket as matching those from the trunk lining of Larry’s turquoise 1971 Cadillac.

On January 10, 2002, a Richland County grand jury indicted Larry for the murder of Judy Bruce.

Larry remained free on $100,000 bail on the condition that he wear an electronic monitoring device. The trial took place from May 14 to May 17, 2002.

Explosive information. It kicked off with the bombshell of Melody’s testimony that Larry had molested her repeatedly from ages 5 to 14. “If I wanted to go do something, he would tell me that I had to do something for him first,” she said in court.

According to the prosecution, Judy had once walked in on Larry when he was sexually abusing Melody. The couple had a horrible argument during which he took a swing at Judy but missed and hit his hand against the wall, breaking a bone in his arm.

The fact that Judy knew about the sexual abuse gave Larry a reason to silence her. She could use it in any upcoming divorce proceedings.

How the homicide happened. Some YouTube commenters criticized Judy for not reporting it to the police immediately. But the molestation started around 1972, long before the sexual abuse of children was discussed in school, at home, or in the media. And perhaps Judy herself suffered sexual abuse in her youth — she would have made an easy target — and thought of it as horrible behavior but not an actionable violation of the law.

Prosecutors made a case that Larry wanted Judy dead either to cover up the sex crimes or so that he could marry Milena Davey without the hassle of dividing up money and property in a divorce.

Investigators believed that, during the night, Larry killed Judy on their bed, causing urine to soak into the mattress. After the kids left for school, Larry quickly loaded Judy’s body into the trunk of his Cadillac. As he drove past his children, he made sure to wave goodbye as an alibi. He left Judy’s body in his parked car during his entire workday, then drove to the campground to dispose of it.

Curiously still. The prosecution took 40 minutes to lay out its case. Bob Castor and James J. Mayer portrayed Larry as a gambler, wife-beater, adulterer, and child molester.

The defense only filled up 90 seconds with its refutation, Gannett News Service reported. “Is this Unsolved Mysteries or unsolved homicides?” defense lawyer Steve co*ckley said. “It’s built on a house of cards. Pull one card out of the bottom and it all falls down.”

LeRoy testified that the day of his mother’s disappearance, she lay motionless in bed when he entered the bedroom to ask his father to sign a school permission slip. Larry told him not to bother his mother because she was sick, but LeRoy had a second look and noticed she had boots on. LeRoy also said he heard the sounds of choking and medicine bottles being knocked over coming from his parents’ bedroom the night before Judy disappeared.

But he thought his mother was simply getting up to find some medicine. Investigators alleged that what LeRoy heard were the sounds of Judy being asphyxiated and that Larry placed her in bed with her face away from the door to make it look as though she were just sleeping.

Two witnesses reported seeing a car similar to Larry’s in the vicinity of the campground on the night of the murder, according to court papers.

Brutal attack. Milena Davey served as a witness for the prosecution. Frank Myers, Judy’s uncle, testified that Larry had once said that Judy was hard to kill.

The trial got theatrical at times.

“In the summer of 1978, he grabbed this little woman with force and violence and pitched her down the basem*nt stairs,” Mayer said while recounting instances of Larry’s violence.

Not noisy enough? Mayer called out the Cedar Point trip as the tipping point, when Judy decided to get out of the marriage.

The defense presented no witnesses.

Capital punishment not happening. When the jury announced its guilty verdict, Larry’s mother, Annabelle Bruce, broke the silence in the courtroom by starting to sob. Outside, Jill Bruce and Larry’s brothers, Roger and Kenny, consoled Annabelle.

Melody later told Forensic Files that it had been hard for her to admit to herself that the sexual abuse really happened, but she was glad to see justice done.

Larry didn’t qualify for the death penalty because it wasn’t part of Ohio law when he murdered Judy. Instead, he got a sentence of 15 years to life.

In 2003, a three-judge panel rejected an appeal from Larry.

Inglorious end. Two years later, Forensic Files made a stir in the Mansfield area when it produced “Soiled Plan,” the episode about the case. The News Journal reported that Randy Bruce said he would be watching the show despite that he believed in his brother’s innocence. “I’ll probably even record it because [Larry] wants to see it, too,” Randy told the paper. “We go out and see him every two weeks.”

Larry Bruce died at the age of 76 on April 23, 2020, while serving his sentence at Marion Correctional Institution. Newspapers didn’t give a cause of death, but the News Journal reported that it was unrelated to Covid.

Sadly, it looks as though Judy and Larry’s son has passed away as well. A 2022 obituary for Randy Bruce mentions the death of his nephew, LeRoy Bruce.

Melody Phillips, the only surviving member of the immediate family, has kept a low profile over the years.

That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube

Kathleen Lipscomb Dies for Learning a Secret
(‘True Lies,’ Forensic Files)

Kathleen Lipscomb’s life was going off-kilter. A respected nurse, Kathleen had separated from William “Bill” Lipscomb, an Air Force sergeant with whom she shared custody of two children. That wasn’t going smoothly.

To complicate matters, the attractive platinum-haired Kathleen had fallen in love with a co-worker, a handsome gynecologist. He planned to leave his wife for her, he said. Kathleen probably didn’t know that, over the years, he had made that same promise to other women and not kept it.

Dangerous tale. Bill Lipscomb, who was blond and good-looking, had been cheating with one of his colleagues as well.

Still, the Lipscombs’ marriage could have given way to a functional, albeit acrimonious, divorce. And at barely 30 years of age, Kathleen had time to reroute her romantic trajectory — or she should have.

She learned of a secret about her husband that was way more explosive than any gossipy workplace affair, and it led to her doom on June 8, 1986.

For this week, I looked for more information on Kathleen’s young life and an epilogue on Bill. So let’s get going on the recap of “True Lies” along with extra information from internet research:

Nursing career. Ella Kathleen Adams was born on September 1, 1956 in Shreveport, Louisiana. She and Bill Lipscomb went to New Caney High School in Texas together, and both of them came from military families who had moved around a lot. Bill could be charming, said Darlene Koons, Kathleen’s sister. Kathleen and Bill were high school sweethearts, according to the Houston Chronicle, although the Military Murder podcast says they merely knew each other in high school and started a romance later.

After graduation in 1974, Bill joined the Air Force. Kathy took classes at Steven F. Austin University and then West Texas University but left school when she and Bill got married, according to the Houston Chronicle. They had two children, Karl and Laura. Kathleen returned to college to study nursing, getting a bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas San Antonio.

She worked for the UT Health Science Center in San Antonio. Bill was an instructor assigned to Lackland Air Force Base.

Different kind of G-man. The marriage started to go askew after the children came along. Bill became verbally abusive to Kathleen and used harsh corporal punishment on the kids.

For Kathleen, things were going much better at work than at home. She excelled at her work in the gynecology department and hit it off especially well with a colleague, a doctor whom Forensic Files calls David Pearle. “She loved what she did, she absolutely loved it,” Darlene Koons said in an interview on “Worth Killing For,” an episode of My Dirty Little Secret. “I think that, because he was a doctor in that field, it added to her infatuation with him. I think he was a very astute individual. He knew the words women like.”

Whereas Bill felt threatened by Kathleen’s success, Dr. Pearle took pride in her accomplishments and encouraged her, according to an interview with Houston private investigator Tom Bevans on “Sex, Secrets and Sergeants,” an episode of Scorned: Love Kills. Kathleen and Dr. Pearle spent time together at his apartment

Big man on base. But Dr. Pearle had another home, a house he shared with his wife. She probably didn’t know about the apartment. Or perhaps she accepted a story about his using it on late nights when he needed to collapse into bed.

Kathleen believed that the Pearles had separated.

Meanwhile, Bill was deriving plenty of ego-gratification at his job. He had been promoted faster than any master sergeant in Air Force history, according to Forensic Files. His colleagues respected and feared him as the one who gave orders to new recruits and put them in their place.

No show. In 1985, Kathleen filed for divorce. Bill scooped up the kids and fled across state lines. Kathleen dropped the divorce and the family reunited briefly.

She refiled in 1986 and they began living separately.

But there would be no divorce. On June 6, 1986, Kathleen’s colleagues grew concerned when she didn’t show up for work on time. As Forensic Files devotees have observed, victims tend to be prompt and reliable. (No word on whether she also had a smile that lit up a room).

The kids were staying with Bill, and he told police that Kathleen didn’t come to pick them up when expected.

In the fold. Later that same day, a passerby spotted a woman’s body lying near a road northwest of San Antonio in Bexar County. She was naked and posed in a suggestive way, perhaps the work of a sex criminal — or a killer who wanted police to assume so.

“Someone wanted her found,” said Bexar County Deputy Sheriff Dalton Baker.

Her clothing had been rolled up neatly in military fashion and left at the scene. Police recovered some strands of dyed-red hair there as well.Kathleen’s legs were folded as though she had lain in a cramped space.

A medical examiner determined that Kathleen had been strangled to death shortly after eating Chinese food, that the murder probably took place somewhere other than the site where her body turned up, and that she had intercourse within 24 hours of death. The presence of sperm indicated that the person she’d had sex with wasn’t Bill; he’d had a vasectomy.

Red herring. The Lipscombs’ children backed up Bill’s alibi that he was with them at the time of Kathleen’s disappearance.

Neighbors said they saw a suspicious person, a red-haired woman, exiting Kathleen’s apartment around the time of the murder. It made for tantalizing theories. Perhaps it was a man dressed as a woman to throw off suspicion.

Bill told investigators that Kathleen had frozen him out sexually and might have been having a lesbian affair — and maybe that’s where the red hairs originated.

Police brought the doctor in for questioning. Accounts differ as to whether he came in alone or brought his wife with him. He admitted that he saw Kathleen shortly before she died. Then, he clammed up and called his lawyer.

Smooth operator. I’m not sure how the doctor pulled it off, but he did a great job of keeping his name out of the press amid all the scandal. Forensic Files calls him “David Pearle,” and a couple of other television sources mention “Dr. Pearle” without giving his first name. But newspaper articles I found mentioned “a doctor” but didn’t give any name at all. It’s not clear whether part or all of the names that Forensic Files and other TV shows assigned to the doctor were pseudonyms.

“He had everything to lose, his career, his family,” Darlene said. And he probably had no intention of leaving his wife. Kathleen was being played, according to Darlene.

But the doctor didn’t have red hair, and police found no forensic or circ*mstantial evidence linking him to Kathleen’s death. Over the years, he’d had affairs with other women without harming them, except perhaps for breaking their hearts.

Nice try. For a time, investigators considered the doctor’s wife, who might have wanted to get rid of the other woman, as a suspect. But that theory went nowhere.

Next up, one of Kathleen’s neighbors got an anonymous phone call, a man who said, “You’re next.” Could a serial killer have murdered Kathleen? No more calls took place and no serial killings happened.

The police kept searching for Kathleen’s killer, but had little luck for two years.

Lady’s home journal. In the meantime, Bill found a new wife, Beverly, and transferred to Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, where he served as a motor pool chief. The couple lived in Poquoson as a combined family with Beverly’s child and Bill’s son and daughter from his marriage to Kathleen, according to newspaper accounts.

Kathleen’s family members still suspected Bill. About two years after the homicide, they hired Tom Bevans to investigate.

The big break came when Bevans took note of an entry written in Kathleen’s diary: “baseball tournament” and “Shannon Gilbert there.” (Again, that name might be a pseudonym. My Dirty Little Secret calls her Teresa.)

Other woman. Kathleen had attended one of Bill’s baseball games and seen him and Shannon engaging in PDA like a couple of newlyweds. Others later corroborated the story.

When Bevans, who described Shannon as good looking and well built, showed up at her door, Shannon immediately said she needed a lawyer. She arrived for questioning in full military dress, and her lawyer made sure she won immunity from prosecution before she divulged anything.

Shannon said that Bill had told her he wanted to kill Kathleen.

Soon all sorts of evidence came tumbling out.

Second failure not an option. Bevans found an entry in Kathleen’s diary mentioning WAPS, the Weighted Airman Promotion System, a test that encompassed career skills and overall military knowledge — and counted toward 43 percent of the points needed for a promotion.

The private investigator looked into a theory that Bill had cheated on a test to move up the ranks. Early in his Air Force career, Bill had failed a test for a promotion — and wanted to make sure that never happened again, Bevans suspected.

It turned out that Bill had not only cheated on the test for his own advantage but also created what the Daily Press called a cheating ring. Bill was paying informants for answers to various tests and collecting them in a study book. Bill presumably sold, or planned to sell, the answers to other test takers, according to the San Antonio Express-News.

Child speaks up. Bevans believed that Kathleen planned to use that information to give her an advantage in the custody dispute. If Kathleen disclosed the cheating, it could ruin Bill’s career and anger colleagues who took part in the scam.

Bill also had a financial motive as he had raised the amount of life insurance on Kathleen, to about $315,000, shortly before her death. He had already collected most of it.

Word of more deception surfaced: Kathleen’s daughter, Laura, told her grandmother, Nadine Adams, that Bill lied about having her and her brother the whole night on the evening their mother disappeared. Up until that time, the children had feared Bill’s temper too much to implicate him. A friend of Bill’s — whom Forensic Files calls Tony Barello but whose real name appears to be Staff Sgt. Clint Nicholas Richards — took the kids out to dinner that evening, according to Laura.

Off his chest. Thanks to a new girlfriend, Richards had started going to church by the time the investigation heated up. His conscience began to bother him, or maybe he just wanted a deal. Richards told investigators that, while he and the kids were at McDonald’s, Bill killed Kathleen and stored her body in a cedar chest — her legs stayed folded because of rigor mortis.

After Richards brought the children home and Bill put them to bed, Richards returned to collect Kathleen’s body and then left it by the side of the road. Although accounts don’t elaborate, he probably rolled up her clothes neatly out of force of habit, then posed her body to suggest someone had perpetrated a sex crime against her. More important, he left the body where someone would find it — proving Kathleen was dead and paving the way for Bill to collect on her insurance.

Bill asked Richards to dispose of the chest. Sources vary as to whether Richards neglected to do so or dumped it at the Scenic Loop off of Texas 16 highway. Regardless, investigators found it and recovered Kathleen’s blood inside.

Caught off guard. Investigators believed that, on the night of the murder, Bill asked Kathleen to pick up the kids at his place earlier than usual — when in fact they were still at McDonald’s. When Kathleen arrived, they argued and he strangled her to death.

During Bill’s questioning, an investigator asked him why he killed Kathleen; Bill said he didn’t know. Realizing what he had blurted out, Bill leaned forward, crossed his arms and said, “I did not kill my wife.”

His arrest on July 10, 1989 brought some relief to Kathleen’s family. “It’s been a nightmare that’s almost over,” Nadine Adams told the Houston Chronicle.

Admits to rape. Bill cracked and starting telling the truth. He admitted that when Kathleen came to pick up the children, “we entered into a conversation, sir, and during the course of that conversation, I used the cable,” according an AP account.

He confessed to sodomizing Kathleen before killing her, although My Dirty Little Secret says that the two of them had been dividing up family photographs when he sneaked up behind her with the cord and choked her, which meant that he sodomized her after the murder.

As for the sperm found in Kathleen’s body, a lab mishandled the specimen and could never determine the source. It presumably came from consensual sex with the doctor.

Husband stands alone. A judge sentenced Bill Lipscomb to life for rape, murder, and obstruction of justice. He was transferred from the barracks at Ft. Leavenworth in Kansas to a federal lockup in Pennsylvania. The Air Force demoted him, dishonorably discharged him, and canceled any future pay.

His prison sentence was shortened to 60 years.

In return for his cooperation, Clint Nicholas Richards got immunity and an honorable discharge. Shannon Gilbert changed her name and went into a witness protection program.

Unrepentant widower. The red hairs at the murder scene, investigators believe, were placed there to throw off investigators. And the mysterious flame-haired lady was just a concerned co-worker who stopped by Kathleen’s apartment to check on her. She had nothing to do with murder.

In 2004, Darlene and Nadine appeared on the Montel Williams Show. Darlene said that Bill never apologized for what he did. “I think Bill needs to realize that he’s very selfish,” Darlene said. “For a very selfish reason, he affected so very many lives.”

Below the radar. As for the cheating scandal that set the homicide plot in motion, it didn’t do enough to discourage others. In 2006, Capt. Rhonda McDaniel of the 45th Aeromedical-Dental Squadron faced court martial for allegedly compromising controlled test material before her promotion to commissioned officer.The scam resulted in charges against other Air Force personnel and was believed to have been going on for 10 years in the U.S. and overseas.

As for Bill, the Federal Bureau of Prisons lists three inmates named William Lipscomb, all of them released. It looks as though Kathleen’s former husband, William T. Lipscomb, got out at the age of 68 in 2021, and is keeping a low profile.

That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR

Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube or TubiTV or Amazon Prime

Elwood Jones Surprises a Hotel Guest
(‘Punch Line,’ Forensic Files)

Back in 1996, the case against hotel worker Elwood Jones seemed as solid as cast iron. The handyman had prior convictions for theft and possessed a master passkey for rooms at the Embassy Suites in Blue Ash, Ohio.

Two years after guest Rhoda Nathan was discovered beaten to death and a piece of her jewelry turned up in Elwood’s car, Judge Ralph Winkler sent him to death row.

But in a surprising development in 2023, Elwood exited prison on two feet after a different Hamilton County judge ordered a new trial.

Social gal. A look into the reasoning behind that decision seems in order — but first, here’s a recap of the Forensic Files episode “Punch Line” along with extra information from internet research:

Rhoda Silverman was born in the Bronx on January 15, 1927 and then lived in New York City for 18 years, according to her obituary in the Asbury Park Press. She married Robert Nathan and had two sons, Valentine and Peter.

Rhoda and Elaine shared Room 237, along with Elaine’s boyfriend, Joe Kaplan.

Egg in the a.m. The hotel was configured with an atrium surrounded by guest rooms. No one could slip into a room without chancing detection.

Or so it seemed.

According to the Cincinnati Post, unlike other rooms, Rhoda’s had an exterior door partly blocked by plants and a low wall.

On the day of the event, September 3, 1994, Elaine and Joe left the room early in the morning to grab a bite in the atrium — where the hotel had an omelet station — and give Rhoda a chance to shower and dress in privacy.

Sudden terror. Unfortunately, it was just enough time to allow a thief to sneak into what he probably thought was an empty room.

When Joe, Elaine, and Elaine’s daughter Cynthia Kirsch returned from breakfast, they allowed Cynthia’s 6-year-old son to turn the key in the lock. The door opened to the sight of Rhoda on the floor.

Elaine screamed in horror.

Guests try to help. Although Season 4 of the Accused podcast said that police at first thought Rhoda had simply suffered a heart attack, her friends described her as having a face so swollen and battered that they could barely identify her — far more physical trauma than a cardiac arrest would cause. Rhoda had a shattered jaw and broken ribs. Investigators would later identify door chains and a walkie-talkie as objects possibly used in the attack.

“They just beat the living daylights out of her,” police chief Michael Allen said, as reported by the Associated Press.

A cardiologist and a nurse staying at the hotel tried to revive Rhoda, with no luck.

Emotionally scarred. Dorothy Cantor told the Cincinnati Enquirer that she was stunned to learn that the nice woman she and her husband had just met was now gone.

Cynthia would later tell the Accused podcast that Elaine Shub was never the same after that day.

Rhoda’s son was devastated. “As she passed away, so did my family,” recalled Valentine Nathan in a video on the Justice for Rhoda Nathan website. “We drew apart. There was nothing there to draw us back in together. It was horrible.”

Dental damage. Because of her facial injuries, the Nathans had to give Rhoda a funeral with a closed casket. “My baby, my baby,” said Rhoda’s 92-year-old mother, Sarah Silverman, as she looked at the coffin.

Meanwhile, the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office had sent detective Peter Alderucci to the crime scene. He found one of Rhoda’s teeth on the floor; another would turn up in her stomach. A necklace given to Rhoda by her husband, who had it custom-made with diamonds once belonging to his mother, was missing and so was $500 in cash from Elaine’s purse.

The Hamilton County Coroner declared Rhoda’s death a murder. Because she had few defensive wounds, prosecutors believe someone overpowered her completely. She was naked, making it unlikely that she opened the door to let the anonymous killer in.

Handy clue. Investigators turned their attentions toward Elwood Jones, a 42-year-old handyman for the hotel. He started work at 6 a.m. on the morning of the homicide. Later that day, he acquired a bandaged wound on his left hand, and he went for treatment four days later.

“The virulence of that infection was a clue to the mystery,” intoned Forensic Files narrator Peter Thomas.

Violent provenance. Elwood told the doctor that the cut came from a trash bin lid, but hotel employees recalled that he blamed it on metal stairs. Another version had Elwood saying he got the cut when he fell onto a garbage bag containing glass and later aggravated the wound while breaking down a dance floor at the hotel, according to a Northeast Suburban Life article from June 5, 2019.

Lab tests revealed the infection came from eikenella corrodens bacteria, found in oral plaque. The doctor identified the wound as a “fight bite” — from a fist coming into violent contact with human teeth.

So who was this man who quickly became the chief suspect in a beloved grandmother’s murder?

Respectable beginnings. Elwood “Butch” Jones came into the world in 1952, born to schoolteachers in Ohio. In addition to their own seven children, Elwood’s parents took in kids who didn’t have good homes.

At some point in Elwood’s life, he started accruing theft convictions — at least one of them for a burglary.

Having already married and divorced once, Elwood was living with his girlfriend, Yvonne, in the East Walnut Hills neighborhood of Cincinnati at the time of the homicide. He was also having an affair with a co-worker named Earlene Metcalf.

Sharp-dressed man. A search of his and Yvonne’s apartment turned up the Embassy Suites master passkey in Elwood’s possession, even though he no longer worked at the hotel by that time. A toolkit in the trunk of his car contained the necklace given to Rhoda by her husband.

Police arrested Elwood, and he was indicted in 1995. With his sleek physique and tinted aviator-style frames, he looked more like an opening act for Sammy Davis Jr. than a maintenance man gone homicidal.

Alternate suspects? Prosecutors believe Jones saw Elaine Shub and Joe Kaplan leave for breakfast on that morning of September 3 and thought the room was empty. He took along his toolkit so he could say he was doing maintenance work if the occupants returned unexpectedly. When Rhoda surprised him by emerging from the bathroom, he beat her with his fists, door chains, and possibly his walkie-talkie and stole the necklace plus Elaine’s cash.

Elwood’s defense team argued that police, who had access to his car keys, planted the necklace in his toolkit to frame him.

Tow-truck driver Jimmy Johnson said that, in the course of doing repair work on Elwood’s car on September 4, 1994, he dumped out all the tools in Elwood’s trunk and saw no necklace like the one that detective Mike Bray said he later discovered.

There was also the matter of a local jailbird named Linda Reed who said that a woman she met while locked up admitted that her husband murdered someone and then framed a Black man.

Typical accusation. The defense contended that investigators launched the case against Elwood because of public pressure to solve it after they muddied up the murder scene.

(I’m always skeptical about contentions that police erred by failing to keep crime scenes pristine. In the case of Rhoda, first responders didn’t know a murder had taken place. And even if they did suspect it, they had to walk into the room and move things in the course of trying to revive her and then removing her body.)

In 1996, a jury found Elwood guilty of aggravated murder and he received a death sentence. He stayed on death row for 27 years, all the while claiming innocence and writing letters to ask for help.

Steadfast story. On September 10, 2000, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported seeing court papers suggesting that Ohio judges had criticized prosecutors for using improper courtroom statements to win death-penalty convictions in numerous cases, including that of Elwood Jones. Among the prosecutors’ offending statements was that Elwood valued a stolen necklace more than Rhoda Nathan’s life. But that revelation didn’t lead anywhere for his case.

It wasn’t until 2022 that Elwood had some real luck. Pro bono defense lawyers, including Erin Barnhart, who called the prosecution’s evidence junk science, persuaded Hamilton County Judge Wende Cross to rule that he deserved a new trial because 4,000 investigative documents, including 400 hotel guest surveys, had been withheld from the defense during the trial.

Criminals aplenty. According to reporting from WLWT, the defense lawyers’ salvos included the allegation that some hotel guests said they saw a white man dashing out of the building and into the woods around the time of the murder and that the local police reported that they received a confession to the crime from someone other than Elwood Jones. There was also a confusing contention that Rhoda Nathan’s necklace was merely a piece of mass-produced jewelry.

“I’m not a murderer,” Elwood said in an interview. “I was a thief and I’m the first to tell you I’ve got a past.” According to the Accused podcast, the Embassy Suites in Blue Ash employed other people with police records — the hotel was having a tough time filling positions and it qualified for a tax credit for employing those who had trouble securing jobs. Over the years, the property had received many complaints of items disappearing from their rooms, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

His defenders also pointed out that Elwood’s narrative has remained the same since the murder happened in 1994. “A few stories have changed since then, but not Jones’,” the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote.

Rhoda Nathan’s family begged Judge Cross to keep Elwood in prison until the new trial. The state of Ohio tried to persuade her, too. “He’s 70 years old,” said assistant prosecutor Seth Tiger. “He’s got a lot of crime left in him.”

Elwood won. Wearing an electronic monitoring device on his leg and having posted no bond money, he emerged from razor wire on January 14, 2023

Comfort and reunions. “Because of all the bad rulings that have come out over the years,” Elwood told USA Today, “it’s kind of hard to comprehend when something good happens.”

In a March 2023 interview with USA Today, Elwood said he’s grateful to be able to make his own coffee and enjoy the company of his sister’s American bulldog while staying at her home on house arrest. Other family members come to visit him.

He spends some of his time sewing stuffed animals to give to people who have helped him, according to USA Today.

Fans materialize. The Nathans and prosecutors dismiss Elwood’s plea of innocence as a typical attempt at a SODDI (some other dude did it) defense.

“The issues Judge Cross rested her decision on have been decided on by the sixth circuit court of appeals, the federal court, at the district level and at the court of appeals, and all were rejected,” said Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters, adding that it’s a rare day that he doesn’t think about Rhoda Nathan.

Chief Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor Mark Piepmeier complained about the existence of what he termed Elwood Jones groupies.

Kickoff coming in 2024. “Now, thanks to misleading TV crime shows and inaccurate podcasts, Elwood Jones has gained enough support to be granted a new trial,” Valentine Nathan said in a video interview on the Justice for Rhoda website. “My mother is not here and this guy is still breathing and still appealing. Him constantly trying to do these appeals and bring everything back is torment of me and torment of my family.”

Elwood’s adversaries and supporters await his new trial, originally scheduled to begin on February 5, 2024 — but now delayed with the possible start time of summer or fall 2024 (thanks to reader Marcus for sending in the update). Because of a medical condition, he no longer has to wear an electronic monitoring device.

In the meantime, rewinding all the way back to 1994 for a moment, what happened with the bar mitzvah plans that prompted Rhoda’s fateful visit to Cincinnati? The ceremony actually did take place right after the tragedy, according to Dorothy Cantor, who cited the Jewish tradition of using happy occasions to help people celebrate life amid horrible events.

That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR

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Ken Otto Tries to Obliterate His Victim
(‘Best Foot Forward,’ Forensic Files)

He’s out.

Then there’s Fred Grabbe. In 1981, he killed wife Charlotte Grabbe after repeatedly choking her until she passed out, waiting until she regained consciousness, and then starting the process over. He disposed of her body in an unthinkable way.

He’s out, too.

Young homebody. Thus a check on the incarceration status of another sad*stic criminal, Ken Otto, seems in order. He enjoyed harming living things, starting with animals and ending with a human being. So let’s get going on the recap of “Best Foot Forward,” along with extra information from the Hartford Courant and other internet research:

After opening with an especially long montage of strippers, the episode introduces us to Shamaia Smith, a 22-year-old dancer at the Kahoots club in East Hartford, Connecticut.

Despite her risqué vocation, Shamaia lived at home with her parents, Gloria Frink and Barry Smith Sr., on Indian Hill Road in East Hartford. Shamaia hoped to attend Goodwin College and open her own hair salon someday, according to her obituary and the Hartford Courant. In the meantime, she was making a living under the stage name Unique.

Moneyed barfly. When Shamaia didn’t come home from work on March 14, 2007, her mother reported her missing to the East Hartford police. Shamaia’s boyfriend, Jamel McDonald, said he hadn’t seen her since she caught a ride to work at 3 p.m. with someone he didn’t know. Jamel’s story sounded suspicious at first, but investigators quickly cleared him.

They then turned their attention toward Ken Otto, 56, a well-to-do local man who frequented Kahoots. Ken said he gave Shamaia a ride to the club and then headed home and went to sleep the night she disappeared.

Security footage, however, showed that Shamaia never entered the club on that day.

No free lunch. Kahoots employees told police that they knew Ken Otto as a frequent customer who paid a lot of attention to Shamaia. He would later tell investigators that he suffered from erectile dysfunction and couldn’t have sex with her. Ken admitted that he gave her $500 — “to continue her education.”

Monique Frink, Shamaia’s sister, said that she told Shamaia to be careful because Ken would be expecting something in return (Rachel Siani) for the $500. On a hunch, after Shamaia disappeared, Monique called Ken, identified herself as Shamaia, and left a message asking Ken to give her a call back.

He never did.

Colleagues like the guy. So who was this affluent strip-club denizen? Kenneth John Otto Sr. was born on January 4, 1951. He and his wife, Kathleen, married in 1974 and went on to have a son and daughter. The family lived in a four-bedroom house at 21 Windmill Road in Ellington, Connecticut. Kathleen worked as a pharmacy technician. According to the Hartford Courant, Ken was a manager for Bodycote Thermal Processing, a metallurgical-services company in South Windsor. A Boston Herald story described Ken as an engineer. Whatever the case, during each of the three years leading up to Shamaia’s disappearance, Ken earned about $230,000, according to court papers.

His co-workers had no inkling of any brutality on his part. “He was outgoing and jovial, a very friendly guy,” Alan Madden, a company HR director, told the Hartford Courant.

Ken had no criminal record.

Grisly hobby. Descriptions of his relationship with Shamaia vary according to the source. The two were dating or he was paying her for sex or they were just friends.

Cell phone pings from days before Shamaia went missing indicated that she had been near a 75-acre plot of wooded land that Ken Otto and his son owned in the town of Stafford. When Ken allowed law officers to search the property, they took note of a burn pit with the smell of gasoline. After cadaver dogs came on the scene, they picked up a scent of bodily remains at the burn pit.

Ken explained that he had recently killed a beaver, chopped it up, and burned the pieces. He liked to cut dead animals into pieces, he said.

Vandalizes own property. He then revoked his permission for the search, and sent the police team home.

By the time police got a search warrant to study the land again, Ken had torched some of the property and used a backhoe in an attempt to bury his newly wrecked trailer.

Investigators found a piece of carpet that looked as though a human body had once made an impression on it. A mop recovered from the trailer contained Shamaia’s blood, according to the Connecticut Law Tribune.

Firearm evidence. In the burn pit, they recovered small pieces of human bones without enough DNA to test — before finding a burned human foot with some flesh still attached. Its DNA matched that of Shamaia’s relatives. A torched key at the alleged crime scene opened the door to Shamaia’s residence.

Ballistics tests linked three cartridges found on the property to a semiautomatic pistol in Ken’s safe.

As detectives continued their sleuthing, the Ottos made some crafty moves of their own. After the East Hartford police interviewed Kathleen in April 2007 and told her that Ken had paid Shamaia Smith for sex — and was being investigated in Shamaia’s murder case — Kathleen and Ken headed to Tewksbury, Massachusetts. There, Ken transferred ownership of a condominium to his wife. Back in Connecticut, he signed over his 2004 GMC Envoy to her as well, and then, with his support, Kathleen consulted a divorce lawyer, according to court papers filed by a representative for Shamaia’s family.

Big bail. Meanwhile, Monique Frink complained that her sister’s disappearance got only scant coverage in the media. But she soon received some satisfaction, when authorities arrested Ken Otto at Bradley International Airport in May 2007. He was carrying a suitcase with $10,000 and foreign currency, according to the Hartford Courant. He also had Cialis and condoms with him.

Ken said that he was headed to a business meeting and needed the cash for legal fees, according to information available on CrimeLibrary.org.

A judge set his bail at $5 million cash, although prosecutors had asked for $10 million after calling Ken an extreme flight risk.

Trailer terror. Bodycote Thermal Processing suspended Ken and extended condolences to Shamaia’s family. (The company also employed Kathleen and Ken’s son, Kenneth Otto Jr., and he continued working there.)

While awaiting trial, Ken received three disciplinary tickets in jail, including one for possession of a key to handcuffs, according to the Hartford Courant.

At the court proceedings, prosecutor Kenneth Zagaja contended that Ken, as he admitted, picked up Shamaia for work. But, he alleged, instead of dropping her off at Kahoots, he took her 30 miles away to his property in Stafford. In Ken’s trailer, they had some type of exchange that culminated in his shooting her twice, rolling her in a piece of carpet, and burning her body for days in the pit.

Some other dude. At the trial, police said Ken Sr. admitted to dating Shamaia but not to murdering her.

His lawyers offered up the SODDI defense. An Otto family friend testified that many people used the Stafford property for recreational purposes — dirt biking, camping, and target shooting — and that parties other than the Ottos sometimes used the burn pit.

The defense also had an explanation for the abused trailer. Kenneth Jr. said that he and his father partially buried it because they planned to use it as the base of a log cabin.

Tapped out. Unimpressed by the defense’s argument, the 12-member jury convicted Ken Sr. of murder and tampering with evidence. Superior Court Judge Thomas O’Keefe Jr. called him a cold-blooded killer and gave him a sentence of 60 years.

“It’s life,” said Gloria Frink, as reported by the Hartford Courant. “That’s what we were looking for.” Monique Frink said it still haunted her that no one knew the reason for the murder or what Shamaia’s last words were.

In 2012, the Connecticut Supreme Court unanimously rejected Ken Otto’s claim that the state didn’t have enough evidence to prove he intended to kill Shamaia. By this time, Ken had public defender Adele Patterson — rather than a private lawyer — representing him. He had already used $264,000 from his retirement accounts to pay for legal representation, according to the Hartford Courant.

Million-dollar judgment. The following year, Ken tried the ever-popular “ineffective counsel” claim, but the Superior Court of Connecticut shut it down.

In the meantime, Stephen McEleney, a lawyer for the victim’s family, successfully argued that the Ottos violated the Uniform Fraudulent Conveyance Actby transferring property to Kathleen before their divorce and thus conspiring to deprive Shamaia’s estate of compensation. It was ruled that the family should receive a remedy of $670,000.

Shamaia’s family also won a $9 million claim against Otto.

Stuck behind razor wire. It’s not clear whether Shamaia’s survivors actually received any of the money.

“The guy’s locked up for a significant period of time and obviously doesn’t have any income,” one of Ken’s lawyers, Richard Brown, told the Connecticut Law Tribune. “It isn’t just about economics always. I assume the plaintiffs did it for reasons other than just the money. They’re extremely angry about what my client was convicted of and felt the need to seek civil damages.”

But Shamaia’s family is, so far, seeing justice done to the killer. Ken, now 72, resides along with 1,329 other inmates in MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield, Connecticut. The state Department of Corrections lists a release date of May 15, 2067 — when he’s 116 — and makes zero mention of parole eligibility.

Business gets makeover. As for an update on the victim’s family, Gloria Frink died at the age of just 53 in 2014. Her obituary mentioned that, in addition to Shamaia, her son Barry Smith Jr. preceded her in death. Shamaia’s sister Monique Frink, who Forensic Files watchers will remember from her on-camera interview, has since married and is known as Monique Cooper. She has a career working with people with autism.

The club where Shamaia and her killer met has changed over the years. Kahoots adopted a no-touching policy in 2010, meaning no lap dances or tips placed in dancers’ clothing. The establishment closed amid legal problems in 2013, but has since reopened as a restaurant trumpeting attractive waitresses, not exotic dancers. Let’s hope the business also has no obsessive customers who cause tragedies like Shamaia Smith’s death.

That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR

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