What defines a cold-blooded killer? It may be subjective, I think a Dateline Investigative Reporter nailed it when she made the following statement about the man in this true crime,
“Driving eight hours by yourself with your own thoughts in the car, you have a lot of time to change your mind.”
And still, he didn’t turn back.
They met while deployed overseas, both in the military. She held an intelligence position with top-secret security clearance. He was a sergeant. When the couple learned they were expecting, they married after the baby was born even though they were at two difference bases, 500 miles apart.
The marriage lasted one month. Not only did the wife want a divorce, but she also secured a protective order through the military against her husband—prohibiting all contact.
He put a lot of thought into his cold-blooded plan. Leave his car where neighbors could see it and use the girlfriend’s car. Have the girlfriend purchase and fill gas cans so he wouldn’t need to stop anywhere along the route. Have the girlfriend stay at his place watching Netflix shows and leave his cell phone with her. He still had a key to his wife’s off-base home—he let himself inside. He shot her three times at close range, made it appear to be a sexual assault, and then placed their four-month-old baby in her arms before he left.
He attended his wife’s funeral. At the funeral, he told his wife’s mother,
“For all we know, the killer is among us.”
With a seemingly rock-solid alibi, the husband had been so cocky and sure he’d committed the perfect crime, he gave permission for the investigators to search his home, his car, his cell phone, his bank records, and gave a DNA sample.
In the phone records, they found text messages he’d deleted to and from a woman. When the authorities looked more closely at the woman, an ex-boyfriend of hers contacted the police to disclose he’d helped the woman get rid of her weapon which he believed may have been the gun used to kill the current boyfriend’s wife.
The girlfriend turned on her boyfriend and gave the authorities everything they needed to arrest the husband—including the location of the weapon which the authorities retrieved. She testified at his trial.
After an eleven-day trial, the jury found him guilty of domestic violence resulting in the murder of his wife and using a firearm during the commission of a crime of violence. The judge sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole and ordered him to pay over $450,000 in restitution for his ex-wife’s family.
When it came time to sentence the girlfriend for interstate travel to commit domestic violence resulting in death, the judge took her cooperation into account and gave her 17 years in federal prison, followed by five years of supervised release.
Source: United States Department of Justice, CBS Baltimore, Oxygen True Crime