Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Happy February. My name is Kristen Seavey, and this is a special episode of Murder, She Told.
For the Halloween season, I did a fun collab with 31 other podcasters to bring you a two-part special of spooky stories to get you in the Halloween mood. The collaboration was put together by my friend Shane at Foul Play Crime Series, and we're doing it again. Except this time it's a little bit shorter, and it's around a new theme, Valentine's Day. This special two-part episode brings you different stories told by different podcasters, each one in their own voice.
If you didn't check out the episode that dropped yesterday, my story was first up in part one, and it's a story that you've never heard on Murder, She Told. So check out the other podcasters, be sure to follow their show, grab a Valentine's treat, and enjoy. This is My Bloody Valentine, part two. Welcome back to My Bloody Valentine, our two-part Valentine Day special.
If you're just joining and haven't listened to the first part of this special, I suggest you do so. I have seven more podcaster friends who will be joining me for crime stories of love gone wrong in this episode. But first, are you curious who this mysterious St. Valentine is? Well, it's really a mystery. We know that the Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints by that name. One legend goes...
that Valentine was a priest that served during the third century in Rome. One of the Roman emperors decided to outlaw marriage for young men because they made better soldiers. A priest named Valentine defied the emperor and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. Later, the emperor found out and Valentine was put to death. But others will say it came from Valentine of Terni, a bishop who was also beheaded by the same Roman emperor.
Both Valentines became saints after their deaths. Whichever may be the case, Valentine's Day is a day of love until that love goes wrong. Which brings us to our next story from my friends Raven and Mandy from Sirens.
Please, please, please send an ambulance, please. What's the problem? My wife, my wife, my wife, I think my wife is dead. Sir? Please, sir. Please, listen, I'm a doctor. I've been trying CPR. Please send somebody, quick. Okay, is she not breathing? No, she's not breathing. I don't get pulse. Please, please. Okay, you're doing CPR on her? Yes, I'm trying. Yeah, I'm going to hang up so I can continue, please. All right, we'll be right there. Okay.
February 14th, 2001, Susan Hamilton had been strangled and brutally beaten in her own bathroom. Her naked body was discovered by her husband, John, that Valentine's Day morning. Dr. Hamilton was an OBGYN doctor who had privileges at several different Oklahoma City hospitals, one of which I worked at.
I was an office manager for a doctor and would see him in the doctor's lounge on several occasions. So according to Dr. John Hamilton himself, he had been up at dawn for a 7 a.m. surgery at an outpatient clinic. That surgery was over by 8 a.m. And afterwards, John stopped by the hospital where he had another procedure scheduled for later that morning. Afterwards, the doctor decided to swing back home.
He was only at home for a few minutes because at 9 a.m. his pager went off. It was the hospital calling him to get back for a second surgery. By 9.30, he was scrubbing up for the operation, a complicated removal of a tumor. The procedure went off without a hitch and later, none of the other doctors reported anything at all unusual in his behavior.
By 1045, he was on his way home again, which is when he says he discovered Susan in a pool of blood. So the timeline was extremely tight for the doctor to even be considered as a suspect. Investigators found a Valentine's Day card at the scene from Susan to John, and it was opened. The card had been found inside John's Jaguar. Susan's message inside said, quote,
Obviously, I bought this before last Monday, so I guess maybe they don't seem as appropriate now. But I do love you. Have a good day, Susan. Susan's friend, Susan Johnston, who lived next door, said Susan had noticed that John was getting a lot of cell calls. Susan demanded to see John's cell phone bill.
She finds a huge number and I'm talking close to a hundred phone calls to this phone back and forth to John. And she gets very suspicious and confronts John about it. John had an explanation for his wife that the patient had been having some serious psychological problems and had even threatened suicide.
John, the good doctor, was simply trying to counsel her, and while he may have stepped over his boundaries professionally, he said he never had an affair with her. Alina Aguirre, a topless dancer for eight years, testified she had performed table dances at two of the clubs in Oklahoma City for the doctor. She said that he overpaid her for dances that only cost $20 each. The
The dancer, also known as Nina, had first went to Dr. Hamilton in the early 90s when she saw him at his office for an abortion. She said he would give her samples of medication she needed for depression when she didn't have any money to buy any of the prescription drugs herself. Nina said that he was calling her like 10 or more times a day.
And on February 8th, after Susan learned of the cell phone calls that Dr. Hamilton wrote Nina in a letter saying he could no longer be her doctor, the dancer said Hamilton told her that he loved his wife and didn't want to get a divorce. Soon after arrival, the investigators started questioning Dr. Hamilton himself. By then, there'd been that neighbor's tip about problems in the Hamilton marriage from Susan, the next-door neighbor.
Hamilton had told the 911 operator he was performing CPR, but when the first responders showed up, firefighter David Bradbury arrived on the scene and he thought there was something odd about the way that the doctor was performing the chest compressions. David Bradbury said...
quote, he had one hand on her chest, one hand on her abdomen. The way that we are taught to do CPR, we interlock our hands. The palm goes on the center of the chest on
on the sternum, something in which Dr. Hamilton should have been well-versed in. Dr. Hamilton had said, I talked to the surgery nurse and she said the surgery before yours started 30 minutes late. I still had 15 or 20 minutes leeway in there, but because it was Valentine's Day, I wanted to give Susan her first Valentine's Day card. Start her day off right before she got busy with her meeting. And Susan's getting ready, you know, trying to get dressed and we kissed.
I gave her her Valentine's card. She went to the closet and got one and gave it to me. It is also stated that by Susan's daughter that Susan had threatened divorce in December but decided against it and to go to therapy with John. This was just two months prior to the murder. As the detectives looked more closely into the doctor's timeline that day of surgery, they learned that the second surgery originally scheduled for 9 a.m. hadn't actually started until 9.40 a.m.,
And why was it delayed? Because Dr. Hamilton was late. To investigators, that delay opened up the doctor's window of opportunity by up to an hour. Late that Valentine's Day afternoon, they arrested John Hamilton for the murder of his wife. The investigators then placed Dr. Hamilton in the back of the police car.
And it was there that they kind of noticed odd behavior. Detective Teresa Sterling said that he was acting very upset. He was banging his head into the screen. He was jailed immediately and denied any bail. She was talking about leaving him. And so the motive was lost love. Believing that Susan Hamilton's threat of divorce was enough to make the doctor snap,
Prosecutors developed a theory that the couple had argued that morning after exchanging the cards. The doctor then came back later with murder on his mind. In December of 2001, Dr. John Hamilton was being tried for her murder.
The medical examiner had determined that Susan had been strangled with two neckties, but her fatal injuries came from being bludgeoned with a blunt object never found at the scene. Investigators had to interpret the blood evidence left behind, and for that, they hired a bloodstain expert named Ross Gardner. Gardner carefully examined everything the doctor had been wearing that morning. A lot of the blood on his clothing could be explained by his attempt to administer CPR, but the
The expert looked at John's shoes, the left one in particular. The shoes were found near Susan's body.
John said that they fell off his feet as he was attempting to revive her. The expert, though, Gardner, was certain that whoever was wearing that left shoe that day was present when Susan was being bludgeoned also. But the most damning blood evidence of all may have been found in the doctor's car, on the steering wheel, and the driver's side seat and door sill.
Crime scene investigators recovered strands of Susan's hair and pieces of her flesh. Tom Bevel, the blood spatter expert hired by Dr. John Hamilton, as the last witness in the trial, he refuted a lot of the prosecution's findings and bolstered his client's case. The prosecutor tossed out an open-ended question.
Well, Mr. Bevel, is there anything that the state experts of Oklahoma City Police Department missed in their examination of the evidence? The blood spatter expert on the stand, on the payroll of the defense, something he noted and what would later be regarded as the atomic bomb of the trial of Dr. John Hamilton. It was about that bloody shirt taken from the doctor.
He said, The defense expert was saying that Dr. John Hamilton...
most likely created those bloodstains by bashing his wife's skull. On redirect, Dr. Hamilton's lawyer tried to diffuse the bombshell testimony, but his argument would not be enough. It took the jurors just two hours to reach their verdict. The doctor realized he'd been scuttled by his own man. A great way to spend Valentine's Day is to go shopping together. It can be fun and therapeutic.
And you can, of course, buy each other gifts to show each other how much you appreciate them, if that's their love language, of course. We are meeting my next friend here, Robin from The Trail Went Cold. So for this Valentine's Day special, I'm going to be discussing the perfect Valentine's themed cold case, as it involves a couple who got married on Valentine's Day, the husband being found murdered on Valentine's Day exactly one year later, and his wife becoming a suspect.
and there are just so many crazy elements to this story. The victim in question was 26-year-old William Edward Trimbach, who went by the name Billy, and he was originally born in Morgan County, Colorado, before he moved to Carlin, Nevada during his childhood.
Billy had two children with his first wife before their marriage ended in divorce, but on February 14, 1992, he got remarried to 37-year-old Cindy Trimbach, who had four children of her own from a previous marriage. The couple then moved to Billy's home state of Colorado, where he started his own automotive and diesel repair business in the unincorporated community of Stoneham.
However, Cindy would soon receive some life-changing news when she learned she had contracted the HIV virus, which developed into AIDS, so doctors gave her about two years to live. Since Cindy's ex-husband, Bob Osmunson, also contracted AIDS, she suspected that she originally got it from him. To further complicate matters, Cindy was also pregnant with Billy's child during this time period.
She would give birth to a daughter named Allison, who turned out to be perfectly healthy and did not have the AIDS virus. Most of the money Billy made from his business went towards Cindy's medical care, and they would even travel to Mexico to seek out experimental treatments for her disease. Well, on the couple's one-year wedding anniversary, which happened to be Valentine's Day in 1993,
Cindy contacted the Weld County Sheriff's Office in order to report Billy missing, claiming that she had not seen him since the previous morning of February the 13th. Cindy's 9-year-old son, James Osmunson, told police that he saw Billy leaving their house that morning with an unidentified man driving a white sports car, and he believed that Billy was planning to help the man repair something.
Well, on the same day he was reported missing, Billy's body was discovered in neighboring Morgan County in a snowbank on the north side of the Interstate 76 frontage road near the small town of Wiggins. He had been shot at close range in the head, abdomen, and arm. The location was about 45 miles away from Stoneham, and it was suspected that Billy was shot elsewhere before his body was dumped by the road.
In an odd coincidence, on the night before Billy's body was found, the Morgan County Sheriff had actually driven by that exact spot and recalled seeing multiple vehicles parked there. In retrospect, the Sheriff believed he may have unknowingly driven past Billy's killers, dumping his body. Investigators started to become suspicious of Cindy when she told them she had also driven by that same spot on the evening of February the 13th while she was searching for Billy.
But like I just mentioned, the location was 45 miles from where the trim box lived, and Billy and Cindy did not have any known ties to the area, so why would she have felt the need to drive all the way out there? It almost appeared as if Cindy was trying to fabricate a cover story in case any eyewitnesses saw her in Morgan County that night.
Investigators also discovered that a $440,000 insurance policy had been taken out on Billy's life shortly before his death, and it appeared that his name had been forged on the application. They decided to perform a search of Cindy's Chevy Suburban, and found some small amounts of dried blood on the back seat, which were consistent with Billy's blood. There were also some items in the vehicle, which seemed to match items which had been discovered near the spot where Billy's body was dumped.
While the murder weapon was never found, a 9mm handgun Billy owned was missing from his home, and his gunshot wounds were consistent with a 9mm. Due to the cloud of suspicion surrounding her, Cindy decided to take her kids and leave Colorado almost immediately after Billy's funeral, and they relocated to Cindy's original hometown of Butte, Montana. But then the case would go in a truly tragic and unexpected direction.
On April the 12th, 1994, the Butte-based newspaper, the Montana Standard, published an extensive article about Cindy's struggles with AIDS and her being a suspect in Billy's murder. It was common knowledge throughout the community that Cindy and her first husband, Bob, were both dying of AIDS, and their son, James, who was 10 years old at this point, was frequently teased and bullied by the other kids about this while attending Margaret Leary Elementary School.
Well, it appeared that James finally reached his breaking point, because on the very same morning that the Montana Standard ran their article about his mother, James showed up at school with a .22 caliber pistol. James then proceeded to pull out the gun on the playground, challenge one of his tormentors to a fight, and then fired off three shots. One of the shots wound up striking an 11-year-old student named Jeremy Bullock in the head behind the ear.
Jeremy died the following day, and to make the situation even more tragic, he was not one of the kids who had been bullying James, and was only caught in the line of fire. At the time, James was considered to be the youngest school shooter in American history, though that record has since been broken. Given his young age, James was too young to be charged with murder, so he was sentenced to two years in a residential psychiatric treatment center, and wound up being placed in foster care following his release.
By that point, James' mother and father had both died due to complications from AIDS, with Cindy passing away on March 1, 1995, at the age of 40. Morgan County investigators eventually decided to travel to Montana to re-interview James, and he finally admitted that his story about having seen Billy leave their house with a man in a white sports car was false, and he had lied to protect his mother.
However, even though Cindy is now deceased, the authorities do not consider this case to be closed, as they believe that she hired at least two people to kill Billy. Over the years, various informants have told law enforcement that a drug dealer from the municipality of Fort Morgan had bragged about murdering Billy with an accomplice.
It's been reported that one of these potential suspects was ready to confess to the crime, but his attorney would not allow him to be interviewed, and he decided to kill himself in 1998. The other potential suspect appears to be a man named James Samuel England, who was arrested in April of 2008 on unrelated burglary and car theft charges, and publicly named as a person of interest in Billy's murder by the Morgan County Sheriff's Office.
But it seems apparent that investigators lack the necessary evidence to file murder charges against England or anyone else who might be involved. In 2018, on the 25th anniversary of the crime, the authorities did confirm that the investigation was still open, and they believed there was still a killer on the loose in rural Colorado.
Well, we have now officially reached the 30-year anniversary of the crime, but unfortunately, the murder of Billy Trimbach continues to remain unsolved. So yes, I'll say it. I guess you could say... the trail went cold. And happy Valentine's Day, I guess. Skydiving with your valentine is fun if you're into thrills and adventure. You can both take the jump together to feel alive and energized for the rest of the year. Up next is Method and Madness with my friend Don.
Sweetheart my true heart. I know there are girls with more shapely bodies, but I'm not caring what they have I have the greatest part of all blessings a noble man's deep True eternal love how impatient I am and will be I want to look up into your dear face for hours as you touch my body close I
The words, the language, it was all indicative of the time period a century ago, the roaring 20s prohibition, jazz and Americans bringing the latest gadget, radios, into their living rooms. But these words were not lyrics from a ballad. No, these words were written in lead pencil on paper, found amongst other torn letters just like it,
in the grass, near the two bodies, on Phillips Farm. It was there, under a crabapple tree in a field of goldenrod, outside New Brunswick, New Jersey, that the lovers were discovered that Saturday, September 16th, 1922, purely by chance. It was a man and his underage girlfriend that came across the scene while out for a walk. It was obviously foul play.
the couple was lying on their backs next to each other she was dressed in a polka-dot dress and stockings her legs crossed he in a dark suit his coat torn and muddy from being on the ground for so long
and his Panama hat pulled down over his face. His right arm was outstretched, and propped against his foot was a business card that identified him. It read, Reverend Edward W. Hall, Church of St. John the Evangelist, New Brunswick, New Jersey. The 41-year-old pastor of the local church was a victim of a homicide, a single bullet to his right temple.
His companion was 33-year-old Eleanor Reinhart Mills, a soprano in the church choir. Her wounds hinted that the killer, or killers, had targeted her more aggressively. She had three bullet wounds to her head, and underneath a scarf covering her neck, a deep laceration to her throat, and it would be determined years later, her tongue had been cut out.
The pair had been dead for at least 36 hours. The scene, including the placement of the two bodies, suggested a purposeful, thought-out act of murder and staging, from love letters strewn about the bodies to the way the bodies were positioned. She called him "babykins." He called her his "wonderheart." The two victims, it turned out, were married, but not to each other.
Their affair began about four years previously in the church, igniting rumors and prompting whispers of a scandalous nature. A pastor, a member of the choir, love letters tucked safely inside hymn books and passed back and forth to each other on Sundays. Now, in a symbolic display, those letters were out in the open. The affair exposed the rumors confirmed.
The whispers now of a different, darker nature. Victim Eleanor Mills was married to James Mills, an officer of the church. Victim Reverend Edward Hall was married to Frances Stevens, a wealthy heiress. She was insistent that the relationship between her husband and Mrs. Mills was purely platonic, not romantic in nature.
The killer clearly wanted the public to believe otherwise.
But despite the not-so-subtle staging of the scene and potential for oodles of evidence, this double homicide was mishandled from the start. From the police arguing over jurisdiction to reporters handling the Reverend's business card. From the curious public flocking to the grassy area to snag pieces of dirt to peeling bits of bark from the crabapple tree to keep as souvenirs.
And that mishandling had a significant impact on the investigation. What could have been an open and shut case would drag on for years. Meanwhile, the tabloids were salivating. The crime had everything that sells newspapers, love, lust, betrayal, jealousy, violence, mystery.
Some headlines in the following weeks read, Murder of Popular Pastor and Choir Leader Stirs Entire State, and When Murder Lifts a Small Town's Lid. And the news was spreading outside of that small town, outside of that state. At breakfast tables all over the country, folks would sit down with their cup of coffee and their newspaper, eager to see what the latest headline would be.
The tabloids out of neighboring New York City fanned the fire and kept the country's interest in the case, so much so that today it's been said those tabloids may have been the reason a trial finally took place. They relentlessly reported on the lack of progress in the case with headlines like, Sorry Spectacle of Justice and Hall Slain a Year Ago, But Justice Slumbers.
Accusations had been aimed in all sorts of directions, at the couple who discovered the bodies, then to the spouses of the victims, of course, but ultimately, it was Reverend Hall's widow, Frances, her brothers, and her cousin that became official suspects, accused even by an eccentric woman that swore she witnessed the murders, despite doubts about her credibility.
And it wasn't until four years later, the same amount of time that the lover's romance had sustained, that a trial took place in nearby Somerville, New Jersey. The defendants were the Reverend's widow, Frances, and her brothers, Henry and William. Their destiny, if convicted, was the electric chair. It made sense, like a Shakespearean tragedy, the two lovers' ardent affair found out
There are written expressions discovered in a drawer by a jealous wife, the heroic brothers coming in to defend her honor, a confrontation by moonlight, and then the final scene. As the two traitors, the star-crossed lovers, meet their demise with more violent attention paid to the young mistress in an additional act of vengeance.
But alas, in the end, it was a comment in an article from the Daily News on November 20th, 1922 that predicted the outcome. Quote, "...indictments will either be returned or the case will be forever relegated to the annals of unsolved crimes." And so it was the latter. The trial ended in December of 1926 with no convictions.
All three suspects were acquitted, and a century later, those murders, still discussed in a more modern sense, on social media and Reddit forums. Books have been written, theories tossed around, but the case remains officially unsolved.
Although only three people stood trial for the Hall-Mills murder, and all three were acquitted, what happened on Phillips' farm in late September 1922? Was it the Reverend's wife? Had she discovered the truth about her husband's affair? Did she insist his relationship with Eleanor Mills was platonic as part of a greater plan to maintain innocence?
Or was it Eleanor's husband, the officer of the church, who set out one evening to kill his wife, the mother of his two children, and her prominent lover? Or another theory that it was the work of the Ku Klux Klan, who had been active in areas of New Jersey in the 1920s? If only that crab apple tree could talk.
The true extent of the romance between Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills, their love for one another, would live on through those letters they'd poured their hearts into, along with diaries they had each kept and wrote in daily, to express how much they missed each other, how one couldn't live without the other. Those writings would become their legacy.
Hey.
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Meeting us here is my friend Lainey from True Crime Cases with Lainey. A swinger's lifestyle can be great for some or it can be problematic for others. For one newly married couple, a wild night of sex and drugs turned deadly. Okay, on to the show. ♪♪
In March 2013, Akhtar Bankhead was released from the Indiana Department of Corrections. He had been convicted on February 13, 1997, of carjacking. Akhtar met Diane Lynn Smith shortly after leaving the Department of Corrections. After dating for a week and only knowing each other for less than four weeks, they married on April 23, 2013.
The couple moved into Diane's house on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street in Indianapolis. According to Actura himself, he found a job just a few days after being released from prison and was set on following the straight and narrow path
Actura also believed Diane was the love of his life and a godsend. On June 15, 2013, two bodies were found in a vacant lot in the 1100 block of Miley Avenue in Indianapolis, Indiana. An attempt had been made to burn the bodies. The two were identified as 27-year-old Michael Height and 34-year-old Crystal Lucas.
Akhtar Bankhead was soon arrested for the two murders, as it was Diane who had called the police to report the bodies and how they had gotten there. In the early morning hours of June 7th, 2013, Diane had come home from work. Diane and Akhtar were in bed when Akhtar received a phone call from Michael. He got up and went downstairs to talk to Michael. Now, not long after, Michael came over to their house, parking his car on Indianapolis Avenue near their house.
Diane stayed upstairs while Actora and Michael sat downstairs, drinking and talking. Sometime later, Diane heard a female's voice join in, and she heard Michael tell Actora he had just met this woman, Crystal, at the liquor store. Diane went to sleep, but just after she drifted off, Actora came to the bedroom and woke her up, asking her to drive the trio somewhere to get some crack.
Diane said no initially, but Actura kept on pestering her until she finally agreed. Diane drove them to an apartment at 38th Street and Boulevard Place, where Michael got out and went inside. He was in there for about 10 minutes before returning to the van. Once they returned to the house, Diane again went upstairs and went to sleep. Yet again, Actura came in and woke her up, saying he was high and he wanted all four of them to have sex.
Diane said she didn't roll like that and refused. But once again, Actura pestered her until she relented. Michael and Crystal joined them in the bedroom and they swapped partners. Crystal became upset when she realized Michael had sex with Diane without protection. Crystal knew Michael was HIV positive and related this information to Diane.
Diane became angry, and so did Actora, saying this was like a death sentence for Diane. Actora lured Michael into the basement where he attacked him with a stun gun. Once he had Michael subdued, he hogtied him and popped his neck. Worried about Crystal going to the police and believing Diane to be jealous of her, he decided to kill her too.
As with Michael, he lured Crystal downstairs and subdued her, then popped her neck too. Although it sounds as if he had broken their necks with his bare hands, the coroner reported that they had died from asphyxiation.
Crystal's hyoid bone was fractured, and Michael had a fracture to his thyroid cartilage. The next afternoon, Diane went to work, not knowing what had transpired in her basement. She returned home in the early morning hours of Saturday when Aktorah told her that Michael and Crystal were gone. When she asked for clarification, Aktorah made a hand gesture across his neck. He admitted to killing them and then took Diane into the basement to show her their bodies.
Diane saw the two naked and hogtied, lying on top of each other. Aktolder told her she would have to help dispose of the bodies, or she would wind up like them. Diane went to work on Saturday afternoon, and when she returned home early Sunday morning, they began disposing of the bodies. The two loaded the bodies into Diane's minivan. Then Diane drove, following Aktolder's directions.
He instructed her to drive to a vacant lot on Miley Avenue, and they placed the bodies in some trees at the edge of the lot. While Akhtar removed the plastic, Diane returned to the van. He put the plastic in trash bags, then poured gasoline on the bodies and lit them. Diane later told police that it was raining and the bodies would not stay lit. After they left, Akhtar had Diane drive to an apartment complex where he threw the trash bags in the dumpster.
After returning home, the couple removed valuables from Michael's car, including the stereo. Diane then drove it to another apartment complex before they returned home and went to bed. Over the next week, Actora kept a close eye on her and would not let her leave his side. During the same time, a friend of Michael's who knew he was at the Bankhead's house began distributing missing persons flyers in Diane's neighborhood.
Michael had called this friend and said he was visiting with Actora, and then the friend saw Michael's car on Indianapolis Avenue before Diane moved it. On Friday, June 14th, one week after the murders, Actora finally left Diane alone for a time. She called the Indianapolis police and changed the locks. Diane spoke to Detective Harry Dunn and told him about the murders and where to find the bodies.
When Detective Dunn sent an officer to the lot on Miley Avenue, the bodies were located in a severe state of decomposition and infested with maggots. In addition to the two murder charges, Akhtar was charged with intimidating Diane. While in jail awaiting trial, Akhtar met Jeremy Bullock. Jeremy was in jail awaiting trial on two burglary cases. Jeremy had previously been in prison for a murder he committed when he was 17.
While in prison for his murder charge, Jeremy had been attacked several times for being a snitch. When Akhtar went on trial, Jeremy testified that Akhtar had confessed to him in jail. Akhtar's attorney wanted to introduce evidence that Jeremy's sentence had been reduced due to his testimony in the David Cam case, but the state objected to this.
In a concession, however, the court did say the defense attorneys could question Jeremy about testifying in a different murder trial because his motive in trying to bargain for himself was relevant. The defense questioned Jeremy about his involvement with the 2006 murder trial and his sentence modification afterwards. They also mentioned his current charges and the expected sentence.
Interestingly, they also discussed how in October 2014, Jeremy had written a letter to a judge asking for leniency in his probation revocation case since he was cooperating with some murder cases in Marion County. Additionally, in the nine months he had been in jail awaiting trial, Jeremy had written eight letters to the Marion County prosecutor, each one talking about other defendants, most in jail on murder charges.
Despite the somewhat uncanny knack Jeremy seemed to have for hearing confessions, Actora was found guilty on two charges of murder, but not guilty on the intimidation charge. He was sentenced to 125 years in prisons, 60 years on one charge, 65 years on the other. Actora appealed his sentence, stating the prosecution prejudiced him by showing the photo of the bodies riddled with maggots. However, this photo was never shown during the trial, only mentioned.
He also appealed because his defense was limited by not being able to mention the David Cam trial. The third point of the appeal was the dubiousness of Diane's testimony. All three points were overturned and the sentence affirmed. On the second point, the appeals court said his attorneys were able to question Jeremy Bullock without mentioning David Cam's name.
The appeals court also said that the dubiousness of Diane's testimony was not valid because she was not the sole witness. Because Michael's friend knew that Michael was at the Bankhead's home, he also testified. Diane was never charged with anything, a fact that leaves Actora Bankhead puzzled and angry.
In writings he did available on the internet, he claims she was a master manipulator and a pathological liar. He says he did not have anything to do with the murders and accuses Diane, but this leaves some questions such as how did she get the bodies out of the house on her own? And how did she commit the murders? Akhtar continues to appeal his sentence and is confident he will get it overturned someday.
He writes from prison and wants to sell his work to try and earn money for a better defense. He claims he was railroaded from day one and says investigators overlooked obvious clues he was not involved, although he does not say what these are. Nothing about Diane could really be found, except she filed for divorce on June 26, 2015, and the divorce was granted on September 28, 2015.
A detailed obituary was not located for Crystal, just a passing mention about her services, which were held several weeks after her body was found. However, an obituary was found for Michael Hite. His family said he had a loving heart and was the epitome of a Southern gentleman. His smile lit up a room. Finding places where live music is playing and just relaxing is another popular date night.
The trick is to make sure you know what kind of music your partner enjoys and match their taste well. Otherwise, you may just be annoying them with music they hate for the entire evening. Up next is my friend Charlie from Crimelines. It is a story of love that turned to control and then to murder.
It started innocently enough with Daphne Wright logging into a chat room in the late 1990s looking for love. Having been born deaf, the internet introduced Daphne to a larger group of people to communicate with. She met a woman named Jackie from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and she moved from Maryland to South Dakota to start her new life.
This relationship didn't last, but the two remained friends and roommates. In August of 2002, Daphne met the love of her life, Sally Collins. Sally and Daphne left the state for a little while, but when they decided to move back to Sioux Falls, Jackie welcomed them to live in her house to help out with the bills.
The problem was that Jackie and Sally didn't get along well. In part due to this tension and in part due to her cooling feelings towards Daphne, Sally moved out. She found an apartment in a complex known as the Deaf Apartments because a lot of deaf people live there.
Though Sally had taken a big step away from her four-year relationship with Daphne Wright by moving out, they were still seeing each other off and on with Daphne growing more and more anxious as she was losing control of Sally's heart.
While playing cards one day at the local deaf club, Sally met 42-year-old Darlene Vander Giesen, and the two became fast friends. It was a friendship that made Daphne jealous, believing that Darlene was trying to steal Sally from her. It was an irrational jealousy because Darlene only dated men, and she and Sally were and always would be just friends.
One night in late January 2006, Daphne went over to Sally's apartment unannounced and found her hanging out with Darlene. Daphne's anger boiled over and she started signing to Darlene that she was ruining her relationship with Sally.
Sally told Daphne to leave, and when she refused, Sally then asked Darlene to leave just to defuse the situation. As Darlene left, Daphne made an obscene gesture towards her. Daphne and Sally continued to argue until Sally called the police and the police told Daphne to go. Daphne stormed off, telling Sally she would be very sorry.
Then, five days after the argument, Darlene Vandergeesen didn't show up to work. The next day, her parents reported her missing. A family member told the police that Darlene had been getting some insulting emails from a woman named Wendy Smith. These emails called Darlene fat and told her that she had elephant feet.
Darlene didn't know anyone with the name Wendy Smith, so she believed it was someone using a fake name to send these emails. The police took Darlene's computer in for a search and found the emails. Based on some of the specific grammatical errors, the investigators deduced the writer was likely deaf like Darlene, and English was their second language after American Sign Language.
In continuing to check Darlene's inbox, they also found an email from Daphne Wright that matched the same syntax from the emails that came from Wendy Smith. So they checked the IP on the Wendy Smith emails and it led them right to downtown Sioux Falls to the home of Jackie, where Daphne was still living. At first, Daphne denied to the police that she sent the Wendy Smith emails, but eventually fessed up to it.
Over the course of the interview, Daphne changed her story seven times, but she denied having anything to do with Darlene's disappearance. She admitted she wanted Darlene to stay away from Sally, but she insisted that she and Darlene had smoothed things over after the argument at Sally's apartment.
Based on the email sent and Daphne's changing story, the police got a search warrant for her house. And when they entered, they were immediately hit by a number of smells, the strongest of which were paint and cleaning chemicals. The smell grew stronger as they approached the basement door. When they headed down the stairs, they found swatches of blue paint on the walls and the floor and the stairs.
Not an even coat, but rather a quick, spotty patch job. In scraping the paint, they found small amounts of blood, tissue, and bone fragments and bone chips. And in a trash can upstairs, they found a half-empty bottle of chainsaw lubricant and a receipt for a chainsaw.
They sent the biological material to the lab to test it against Darlene's DNA. Believing that Darlene van der Giesen had not just been killed but also dismembered by Daphne Wright, they began a landfill search. The next day, the DNA results came back on the blood and biological matter from the basement. It was Darlene's. Additional DNA from Darlene was found on the bumper of an SUV that Daphne regularly used.
So even without a body, they felt they had enough to move forward with the significant amount of circumstantial and forensic evidence. 43-year-old Daphne Wright was arrested and charged in the murder of 42-year-old Darlene Vander Giesen. But this wouldn't continue as a no-body case for long.
The search of the landfill continued, and five days after starting the search, Darlene's partial remains were found, along with additional evidence linking her to both Daphne's home and to Daphne herself. More of Darlene's dismembered remains were later found in a ditch in Minnesota.
At trial, the state claimed that Daphne had lured Darlene to her house by telling her she was planning a Valentine's surprise for Sally. Once she had her there, Daphne killed Darlene and dismembered her in the basement. Daphne's defense was the Robert Durst defense. Sure, the state could prove Daphne dismembered Darlene, but they couldn't prove she killed her.
Perhaps Darlene had died falling down the stairs and Daphne, afraid of being blamed, dismembered her body and tried to dispose of the evidence.
The jury didn't buy it and convicted Daphne, but she was spared the death penalty. She remains in prison for murdering a woman she perceived as a romantic rival, who was really just being a good friend to the woman Daphne didn't just want to love, but to control.
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especially on trails you've never been on before. If you aren't comfortable with riding horses, carriage rides are always the next best thing. Up next is Love Murder with my friends Jesse and Andy.
Love. Nothing else has the incredible power to move people like love. A mother's love can give them the strength to lift a car to save their toddler. It can inspire incredible works of art and literature. It can bring communities together. But the flip side of love is a very dangerous thing indeed.
That kind of love is the kind that topples empires, burns down villages, and thirsts for revenge at any cost. After all, hell hath no fury like, well, anyone scorned. But today, yes, we are talking about a woman, and her name is Grace Lusk.
In 1913, Grace was a prim 31-year-old schoolteacher who had recently moved to Waukesha, Wisconsin. She was incredibly well-read, she was well-traveled, she had been to Europe a couple times, and she had a sterling reputation as both an educator and a loyal friend.
She was, however, a relatively shy individual. And it seemed like Grace had given up the idea of a grand love affair a long time ago in her life. She was pretty sure she wanted to stay single and be school marmish, for lack of a better word. That is until she met the dashing Dr. David Roberts at a party.
So Dr. Roberts was not only the local veterinarian, but he was also a wealthy man who ran a dairy operation, a cow tonic business.
Go back. Cow tonic business, which I believe was some sort of special dairy cow medication. Because again, this is 1913-ish. And he had also published a series of veterinary textbooks that had netted him the big bucks. Not to mention, he reportedly had a fine head of hair and a big, bushy mustache. Two things I definitely look for in a man. Don't we all? The only problem?
was that Dr. Roberts had a wife. Well, this was hardly an obstacle for the Randy couple who began a torrid affair. The relationship went on in secret for nearly four years until Grace got sick of being the side piece and began to put pressure on her beau to ditch his wife and make her the new Mrs. Dr. Roberts.
Gotta get that cow tonic money. Now, David Roberts was very happy to carry on and put Grace off this idea. Well, Grace wasn't having it and wrote the following letter to Mrs. Mary Roberts, who was 52 years old to Grace's 35. Grace wrote, It has been a desire with me for a long time to tell you finally about the state of affairs between Dr. Roberts and myself.
You must have known for a long time that your husband's affections have passed from you, that he cared for someone else. She went on to quote a feminist writer in saying, In the eternal triangle, our souls require the elimination of one character. Rough. Unfortunately, both women desired to eliminate the other.
Dr. Roberts cowardly told his wife that Grace was simply an unstable spinster with a crush. This drove Grace to madness. She appeared on the Roberts' doorstep with a gun and threatened Dr. Roberts while begging him to choose her. The not-so-good doctor called the police to escort his lover back to her boarding house.
The very next day, Mrs. Mary Roberts showed up at Grace's house and demanded an explanation for her, quote, asinine performance the night before. Wow. Man, they do not use words the same way they used to anymore. No. Grace showed Mary proof of the affair. There were some letters and photos of the two of them, at which point a furious Mary called her husband and demanded that he come to Grace's boarding house to have a conversation.
As Dr. Roberts approached, he heard the sound of three gunshots ringing out. He ran to the door and at the top of the stairs, he found his wife in a pool of her own blood, having been shot to death by his lover. Grace had then turned the gun on herself and was bleeding from the chest as Dr. Roberts flew up the staircase. "'Where is my heart?' she asked her veterinarian lover, who then pointed to his own chest."
Grace then fired the gun once more into her own chest, but did not succeed in killing herself. She survived. Oh my. Two gunshot wounds? Two gunshot wounds to the chest. Well, it took her nearly a year to be healed. So,
So by the time she had healed, she went to trial where her ex-lover was the star witness against her. Dr. Roberts painted Grace as a delusional temptress who refused to leave her alone. The defendant stood up and screamed at the man she had once believed to be the love of her life. That's not true, she screamed. That's not true. Oh, you dog.
Grace Lusk was found guilty and sentenced to 19 years in prison for the murder of her romantic rival, Mrs. Mary Roberts. Upon hearing the verdict, Spicy Grace leapt at the prosecutor and attempted to strangle him. Honestly, this is so dramatic. She went from not wanting to ever be with someone to killing someone to try to be with this.
this dude? I think it was repressed. I think that she got to a certain age. I mean, we're talking about 1913 at this point. So 31 was considered a little bit over the hill. Yeah, I think at that point she was like, well, I'm going to dedicate myself to my students. New year, new me. I'm going to do this thing all my own. And then she got a taste and she did not want to let it go. So five years later, the corporation
pardoned her in 1923 due to her supposedly failing health. And she did get out and marry a brave soul named Edwin Brown, which goes to show that there really is someone for everyone. She then did pass away in 1930 at the age of 52.
Speaking of marriage, that old dog, Dr. Roberts, was married a total of four times in his life. In December of 1948, he married his fourth wife at the age of 83. Stop it, was Mary number one? I am not entirely sure, to be honest. Okay.
His new wife, Andy, was 33 years old. She was 50 years younger than him. The old codger boasted to the AP, more than 50 women have told me that they loved me, but now I'll have to tell all the rest. Goodbye, girls. I'm through. Okay, mister. So that is the tragic tale of schoolmarm Grace Lusk.
who killed her romantic rival, Mrs. Mary Roberts. Wow, that was a real incredible short little Valentine's Day taste. Well, thanks so much for listening. It got real love murdery up in here. And thanks to all of you guys for giving us a shot. To close out this Valentine's Day special, my good friend Wendy and I will be sharing a story from my podcast, Foul Play Crime Series. Everything will be wonderful someday.
These words were tattooed on an arm that was found sticking out of a garbage bag that had been dumped in a ditch, along with a number of other body parts in Clay County, Nebraska. It was December 4th 2017 and the police knew immediately that they had found the remains of Sydney Louth, who had been missing since November 15th that year. So what had happened to Sydney that day and how had she ended up here?
Let's go back to Wednesday, November the 15th, 2017. Sydney was excited. Last night she had been on a date with Audrey, a lady she met on Tinder, and they had hit it off straight away. Sydney had even sent a picture of the two of them together to her friend Brittany. Sydney applied her makeup and pulled on a cream shirt before grabbing her white Colombian brand jacket to complete her outfit. She took a quick selfie and posted it to Snapchat.
saying ready for my date before heading out the door. Her mother Susan saw the message later in the evening and was excited for her daughter sending her a quick text saying how come you didn't tell me you had a date? She was glad that Sydney was getting out and meeting people and deep down hoped that this could be the start of happier times for her daughter who had been suffering from depression. The next morning Sydney failed to turn up for her shift at the local home improvement store that she worked in.
Her colleagues were concerned and went to her apartment where they found her car outside but nobody home. They contacted her mother, Susan, who lived 150 miles away. Susan was shocked to receive the call but also had a gut feeling that something was wrong. Sydney hadn't replied to her message last night and hadn't called her today. They were very close and spoke most days so she had already started to worry a little. Susan filed a missing persons report
Sheriff Alan J. Moore, the Sheriff of Sailing County, Nebraska, affidavit in court stated, "...on November 16, 2017, the Lincoln Police Department received a report of a missing person. The missing person was identified as Sydney Loof, a 24-year-old female, date of birth August 21, 1993, who had been residing in northeast Lincoln."
According to a co-worker, Sidney was last seen leaving her job at Menards, located at 3500 North 27th in Lincoln, Lancaster County, Nebraska, on the evening of November 15th, 2017. Sidney failed to show up for her shift on the morning of November 16th, 2017. Sidney was reported missing by her mother, Susan Loof, who lives in Neely, Nebraska,
at approximately 5pm on November 16th 2017." The search for Sydney began. Missing persons posters were issued showing three pictures of Sydney, including the selfie taken just before she went out on her date. She was described as 5 foot 7 inches tall, 135 pounds, with blonde hair and blue eyes.
Her family took to social media, begging people to come forward if they knew anything. Twelve days after Sydney's disappearance, Lincoln Police asked for the public's assistance. They were trying to locate two persons of interest: Bailey Boswell, aged 23, and Aubrey Trail, aged 51. No further information was provided. No connection to Sydney was specified. They just stated that it was part of an ongoing investigation.
And then the following day, on November the 29th, Lincoln Police Department posted a picture of Sydney on their Facebook page with the words, quote,
Searches are being conducted in multiple agencies, including the Gage County Sheriff's Office, Saline County Sheriff's Office, United States Marshals Service, Nebraska State Patrol, Lincoln Police Department, and the FBI. Investigators are searching for any evidence that may help locate Sidney. If you see law enforcement officers searching, we ask that you avoid the area to avoid disruptions to the search.
Sydney's family and law enforcement are diligently working to locate her and encourage anyone with information on her whereabouts to call LPD at 402-411-6000." In the comments under this post, there were many praising the police and supporting the family, but hidden between them were two posts that stood out.
A lady posted, "The suspects posted two new videos." With links to the videos in question on YouTube. These videos were removed very quickly. But I did find another video by Aubrey Trail, dated November 30th. Trail is a heavy set man with dark hair and is wearing a black zip-up hoodie. The video is just over nine minutes long. Here are some snippets. I've been watching a lot of posts and comments today.
So, so far today from the comments, we have apparently murdered this lady. We have apparently put her into human trafficking and sold her. And not only did we do that, we used the money. We went to the casino that weekend and used the money that we sold her for.
Bailey didn't drop her in a friend's house. She dropped her off in her drug dealer's house, Bailey's, according to the comments you guys are making. We've pretty much decided to turn ourselves in and see where this goes. Because now we're seeing on the news the people of Wilbur are terrified because I guess we're guilty by association, which is fine, because I've never made an excuse for anything I've done in my life. I do what I do.
And there is a second video from both Trail and Boswell, again denying all allegations that they were involved, but admitting that Boswell was the person who went out on a date with Sidney that night. The second video is really creepy. They are sat in a car, Boswell in a black hoodie, hood up, and large sunglasses.
Trail is off to the side in a black hat. Throughout the nine minute video, Boswell does not move, just staring straight faced into the camera. So how did the police find a link to Bailey Boswell and Aubrey Trail? The FBI traced the ping from Sidney's phone to Wilbur, Nebraska, about 40 miles from Sidney's apartment. And more specifically, the ping was from the apartments where Boswell and Trail lived.
Both of them had extensive criminal histories, including theft and scams, but nothing violent. When the police turned up to question them, they were nowhere to be found, but their landlady mentioned that their apartment had smelled strongly of bleach. A police warrant was obtained, and as they searched the basement apartment, they found a few unusual items. A dog leash, even though the couple did not own a dog. A sauna suit with a crotch cut out.
zip ties, a hatchet, a plastic drop cloth smeared with blood, and a book on anatomy. The apartment was filthy, untidy, and cluttered, apart from one room which had been scrubbed clean. Alarm bells were ringing. The police followed Boswell's cell phone data from the day that Sydney went missing, searching roadsides, ponds, and scrubland.
It was along one of these roads the first garbage bag was found in a ditch, quickly followed by a further 12 in the surrounding area. Most of Sydney's dismembered, bruised body was recovered, apart from her upper left arm and her internal organs, which have never been found. The autopsy showed Sydney's cause of death as suffocation.
Trail said that Sidney had died during a BDSM game gone wrong and that Boswell was not involved. Both Trail and Boswell were charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and improper disposal of human remains. Trail stood trial in June 2019.
During the trial, many women testified who said that they had met Boswell on Tinder and been given money and luxury items to engage in group sex and scams with Trail and Boswell. It was like a cult. And the trial became even more bizarre when Trail rose from his seat, shouted, quote, Sydney is innocent. I curse you all, end quote, and slit his throat with a sharpened pen. Trail survived.
He also suffered two heart attacks and a stroke during his three-week trial, but was finally convicted on all three counts and sentenced to death. This is what Trail had to say after his sentencing. I won't say I'm sorry, as that would be an insult to you after what I've put you through, and I won't ask for forgiveness as I don't believe there is such a thing. Boswell, whose trial took place in September 2020, was also found guilty on all three counts and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Thank you for listening. Tinder can be fun, but it can also be deadly. Stay alert, meet in a public place, and stay safe. And happy Valentine's Day. I hope you've enjoyed this special collaboration episode I've put together with my team. And I'd like to thank each of my podcaster friends for joining in with me and sharing their story. Love is desired, love is complicated, and sometimes love is deadly. But when you find it,
And when it's true, I'll argue, it's worth the journey and risk to find it. Just be cautious and be safe. All of the podcasts you heard from are listed in the show notes. Again, I'm Shane Waters from Foul Play. It's been my pleasure being your Valentine tonight.