It’s hard to forget your high school boyfriend/girlfriend. You also remember their character attributes. In this true crime, because her high school ex-boyfriend had certain attributes and life experience, she knew he was the right guy to do her dirty work.
Her second husband fell for her charade of being an abused woman at the hands of her first husband. She groomed him to want to kill her first husband because of what he’d done to her. The second husband said in an interview, he wanted to kill him. Then she changed her mind. Eventually, their marriage ended. Perhaps she recognized he wasn’t the type of person who could kill someone.
After 15 years of marriage to her third husband, she rekindled an online relationship with her high school sweetheart. The divorced father had served 20 years in the military, been in combat and had special forces experience on his resume. He, too, fell for her claims of being abused by her then husband.
They communicated via text and email. He lived in one state, her in another. She groomed her high school sweetheart much like she had her second husband. To the extreme of creating two fake email accounts—one in her husband’s name and one in a friend’s name. She sent taunting emails from the fake account in her husband’s name, saying how he planned to beat her and rape her. From the fake account in a friend’s name, she sent him emails detailing the faked abuse and included stock photos she’d copied from the internet.
The grooming lasted about six months. The high school boyfriend drove across the states to her neighborhood where he sat and waited hours for the husband to go outside. When the man and wife walked outside to take their dog for a walk, the ex-boyfriend shot the husband multiple times, he didn’t survive.
Caught on the neighbors’ security cameras, the authorities knew the gunman drove a specific type and color of a truck with a unique sticker on the back window.
Thinking they’d gotten away with the perfect crime, the widow pleaded with the community to provide any details of the gunman or his truck to law enforcement. A caring friend set up a Go Fund Me account to help her and her 17-year-old daughter cope with their sudden loss. She spent almost $60,000 on her high school sweetheart as a thank you for saving her. When she tried to collect life-insurance money on her deceased husband, the insurance company told her they couldn’t release the funds until the authorities cleared her in the investigation.
The news that she hadn’t been cleared in the investigation cause her to begin the cover-up—deleting emails and texts between her and her high school sweetheart, resetting her cell phone to factory settings, telling him to remove the sticker from his back window, and creating believable stories so they agreed should they be questioned.
Unbeknownst to the widow, the authorities had already identified the owner of the truck and were doing aerial surveillance at the high school sweetheart’s home.
When the authorities questioned the widow, she gave permission for them to look in her phone, which gave them permission to work with the phone company. They were able to retrieve 14,000+ communications between the two.
The authorities arrested her high school sweetheart and charged him with murder. They also arrested the widow. Rather than go to trial she pleaded guilty to orchestrating a murder which took the death penalty off the table—provided the sentencing judge agreed.
A U.S. State Attorney associated with the case said,
“[The defendant] put on quite a performance in the wake of her husband’s murder. She poured out her sob story to reporters and law enforcement, then headed home to orchestrate her coverup.”
He went on to say,
“But crocodile tears didn’t stop the feds. We were committed to getting justice for [her husband], and with the Judge’s imposition of a life sentence this afternoon, we’re one step closer.”
A federal judge sentenced the 49-year-old widow to life in prison and said she was pure evil. The judge also ordered her to pay $6,500 for her husband’s funeral expense and fined her over $200,000.
As a part of her plea deal, besides admitting her high school boyfriend shot her husband, she also had to state for the record that her deceased husband did not abuse her. #truecrime #murder
The high school sweetheart ‘s trial is pending. To be continued….
Source: United States Department of Justice, CBS News, Law & Crime, People