Shocker in the Dawn Viens Missing Person's Case

by Cathy Scott

As promised by Los Angeles County Sheriff's Lt. Dave Coleman in 2011, detectives planned to talk at length with David Viens, who has long been suspected of killing his missing wife, Dawn.

Investigators did more than that. They interviewed David Viens' daughter, from an earlier relationship, about the goings-on immediately after Dawn disappeared in 2009 from the quaint village of Lomita, California.

In 2011, investigators jack-hammered and tore down interior walls of the Thyme Café, owned by Dawn and David Viens. Deputies also used a cadaver-sniffing dog.

They were on the right track. This week, the sheriff's department announced a shocking revelation gleaned from interviews with the daughter and the confession of her father. It is this: David Viens told police he "slow cooked" his wife's body for four days in a brand-new cooker he'd purchased for the cafe. He then hid her skull and jaw in his mother's attic.

David had been having an affair with a younger woman and, a week after Dawn's disappearance, witnesses saw him tossing out Dawn's clothing. Then he moved his new girlfriend into his home. On top of that, the girlfriend took over Dawn's duties at the cafe.

Dawn, who was in her late 30s, was last seen by friends on October 18, 2009 leaving her the cafe.

Not long after her disappearance, however, as law enforcement zeroed in on David, as a deputy tailed him while driving on Pacific Coast Highway, David stopped his car, ran to the cliff and jumped 80 feet to the beach below. He survived but suffered multiple fractured bones and internal injuries. After he recovered, he confessed to police and he was indicted for murder.

Meanwhile, in exchange for the daughter's damning statements about her father David and to secure her eventual testimony in court, the daughter reportedly was given immunity from prosecution. She told deputies that the day after Dawn disappeared, David Viens gave her Dawn's cell phone and asked her to pose as Dawn and send text messages to Dawn's friends and family saying she needed time for herself and would be out of town for a few days. As days turned into weeks, David became the main person of interest.

These kinds of details, albeit some of them grisly, have the makings for a true crime story. In fact, the Dawn Viens story is my next true crime book (I started the manuscript late last year). You can't make this stuff up.

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Drew Peterson's Body Language During Verdict, and Sociopathic Seduction of Women

by Dr. Lillian Glass

When we look back at the trial of serial killer  who received the death sentence, Ted Bundy, it was reported that he showed no emotion.

When we look back at the reaction of Scott Peterson who was convicted to death for killing his wife and unborn baby, we all witness that he had a mask like facial expression and showed no emotion. Now we have seen the same thing with Drew Peterson. As soon as the "guilty" verdict of was read for killing his third wife Kathleen Savio, Drew Peterson showed no emotion.

That lack of emotion is typical of a sociopath’s reaction when found guilty. They detach and tune out as though the situation had nothing to do with them. They may even joke and make light of their situation. Peterson was overheard saying, after hearing the verdict,  “I guess that ruins my Christmas.”

His joke clearly reflects that he feels no remorse for what he did.

Peterson  will be spending the rest of his natural life behind bars where like most sociopaths will insist he did nothing wrong and how it was everyone else’s fault he is in prison. This sociopath will be where he deserves to be so he can no longer seduce, marry,  and harm women who fall prey to him.

He fancies himself  as being irresistible to women. Like many sociopaths, his seductive personality  lured them in. The fact that he was a policeman and considered to be on the right side of the law, initially  made many women feel safe and secure. But once he got  them into his clutches, it was a different story.He became controlling and  abusive.

Thank goodness 24-year-old Christina Raines' father put an end to her engagement with Peterson a few years ago. Her father told the media that Peterson tried to control his daughter and use her to watch his kids.

The young woman’s father was her savior; he went to Peterson’s home with police in tow to collect his daughter, escorting them to and from he home with police units. Peterson, who was  more than twice the young woman’s age, blamed her father and the press for the breakup. In typical sociopath form, Peterson said, "This is what the media always does to me. As soon as the story got out on Chrissy, I knew it would be a problem for us.“

If you listen close enough to what a sociopath says, they often reveal themselves as  Peterson did in his "Nightline" interview years back when  Peterson said, after he was asked about Christina Raines’ family, “I’d be wary of me too.” He also  admitted  when the romance is gone in his relationships he tends to have flings and move on.

Thankfully, his comments sparked a fight between the couple, and Christina Raines returned the engagement ring and a cell phone.

Christina Raines, 24, is still alive. It's unlucky that Stacey Peterson, who is still missing,  was just 17 when the affair began while he was still married to Kathleen Savio. Kathleen was 10 years his junior when he married her. Most of the women he married or went after were  young and petite. These were women  Peterson  felt he had some control over.

I had the opportunity to  briefly see Peterson when I was at CNN. Peterson was there to do the Larry King show and was in the makeup room, where,  according to the makeup artist, he  hit on her. She told me that he stared directly into her eyes and didn't break the gaze as she applied his makeup.

Perhaps Peterson  wanted to see if he could control this curly haired, glasses-wearing,  pierced, short-statured woman with colorful and strange tattoos all over her arms, chest and neck. The eye stare was no doubt  his test to see if he could assert control over  this different-looking woman. Most likely, Peterson has played this staring game with many other women. Those who blinked, turned away, or women he sensed were intimidated  by his stare were the ones, if circumstances allowed, he probably took to the next level of seduction.

Even though Peterson will live out his years behind bars, don’t be surprised if you hear that he has landed another relationship. Unfortunately, there are emotionally disturbed women out there who are attracted to men behind bars and who feel empowered by defending them.  They have the illusion  the criminal  would never do any harm to them because they are special and they have control over the situation, which is only true  when the perpetrator is behind bars.

Little do they realize that sociopaths like Peterson will still be in control as he plays mind games with them in an engaging way with manipulation and emotional abuse, which is  typical of a sociopath like Drew Peterson.

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Eerie Deaths in Thailand of 2 Sisters

Wikipedia Commons

by Deborah Blum

The Phi Phi Islands sit off the western coast of Thailand, floating like jewels in a turquoise sea, a picture-perfect image of a tropical getaway. Director Danny Boyle filmed his 2000 psychothriller, The Beach, on the largest of those islands and if you know the movie, you know, despite the gem-like setting the story ends badly.

They say, though, that the movie put the largest of the islands, Ko Phi Phi Don, on the map as a tourist getaway, a reasonably priced home to glittering beaches and unlimited partying. And that’s undoubtedly what drew two young sisters from a small Canadian village, just north of the Maine border, to travel there for a summer break from their university studies.

Noemi Belanger was 26 and her sister, Audrey, 20, when they planned the June vacation. Both sisters lived in their hometown of Pohenegamook, Quebec. Did I mention that it was small, the kind of place where people know each other, stay close? The population is about 3,000 and both girls worked for their father, Carl, in his grocery store before starting university classes. They were happy girls, friendly, residents say, involved in their community, helping out at the local library, at public beaches.

This summer, they were ready to fly a little, indulge in a splashy vacation. So they saved their money and flew to Thailand in June, went to visit the Phi Phi Islands. And there, as a flood of mid-June news stories made obvious, things went very wrong. Very, very wrong.

The stories were puzzled, horrified. A story in Canada’s National Post described a hotel maid finding the sisters dead in their room, with lesions tracked across their bodies, their fingernails and toenails turned an odd grayish blue. They were huddled in their beds, relayed the Global Post, smeared with vomit and blood.

Rumors flew of an exotic poison, of a lurking killer. Dismissive statements from the police added to the sense of mystery. “We found many kinds of over-the-counter-drugs, including ibuprofen, which can cause serious effects on the stomach,” one investigator said, sounding as if packing painkillers was the real problem. Mysterious poison deaths of tourists visiting the Phi Phi Islands were recalled: the 2009 death of a Seattle woman, still unsolved today. The similar and also unexplained death of a 22-year-old woman from Norway the same year. An odd cluster of deaths in another Thai city during winter of last year, including a 23-year-old woman from New Zealand. The conspiracy theories expanded to include the unexplained deaths of two young women in Vietnam this summer. “Is this a cover-up?” asked a letter writer in the Bangkok Post after the police went on from the ibuprofen theory to one that involved food poisoning.

And not just any food poisoning. A leak from the investigation suggested that detectives were considering the possibility that the sisters had dined – somewhere – on either poisonous mushrooms or blowfish, sometimes called pufferfish or fugu. The fishes are considered a delicacy but they must be carefully prepared to exclude any contact with the liver or other internal organs, which contain an exceptionally potent neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin.

Neither of these suggestions, though, were an ideal match for the described symptoms. Tetrodotoxin is most famous for its ability to induce a corpse-like paralysis in victims; they may remain alert but unable to move or communicate, gradually suffocating as the lungs fail. Poisonous mushrooms tend to kill by gradually destroying the liver. As quickly as the suggestion was floated it seemed to disappear, leaving the questions to further simmer over the summer.

Until last week, when a preliminary autopsy report was announced, which apparently indicated a toxic level of exposure. According to news reports, toxicologists in Thailand now believed that the two sisters had been drinking a popular local cocktail that contains Coca-Cola, cough syrup, ground up leaves from the kratom tree, and the well-known mosquito repellent DEET and is admired for its hallucinogenic qualities. In their case, apparently, too much DEET had ended up in the drink.

Or as the tourism-focused island paper, Phuket Wan, wrote following the announcement:

Phi Phi is renowed as a rites-of-passage destination for 20-somethings and it transforms from a haven for day-trippers in the sunshine to a less beguiling island party after dark. Alcohol is just one of the many ingredients that Phi Phi’s party people mix in their buckets. Each bucket is a concoction of all kinds of juices and substances that are mixed into containers of various sizes and usually sucked through straws all night long.

It’s a nicely sinister portrait of cocktails in the Phi Phi islands. Still my first reaction was a kind of “DEET, really?” skepticism. We’re not talking about anything like tetrodotoxin here; this is a compound we routinely spray all over ourselves on camping trips and summer hikes. Our Environmental Protection Agency estimates that about 30 percent of the U.S. population uses a DEET-infused product every year. Plenty of us have accidentally swallowed a little during an over-enthusiastic assault on mosquitoes without getting sick (including myself). Not that you’d want to take it by the tumbler, of course. But it’s reasonable to ask whether it would take a tumbler to kill you

The short answer, yes, pretty close to that. DEET, by the way, stands for N.N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide, which is basically chemist-code for a formula that includes the familiar elements carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen. It apparently works as a repellent by disrupting insect olfaction-detection systems. And an EPA analysis found that it is slightly toxic to birds, fish, and aquatic invertebrates and has”very low toxicity potential” in mammals, such as ourselves.

So, it’s not surprising that the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry reports that people have committed suicide with the repellent but only by drinking full “bottles of DEET” along with quantities of alcohol. In other words, The stories were puzzled, horrified. A story in Canada’s National Post described a hotel maid finding the sisters dead in their room, with lesions tracked across their bodies, their fingernails and toenails turned an odd grayish blue. They were huddled in their beds, relayed the Global Post, smeared with vomit and blood.

Rumors flew of an exotic poison, of a lurking killer. Dismissive statements from the police added to the sense of mystery. “We found many kinds of over-the-counter-drugs, including ibuprofen, which can cause serious effects on the stomach,” one investigator said, sounding as if packing painkillers was the real problem. Mysterious poison deaths of tourists visiting the Phi Phi Islands were recalled the 2009 death of a Seattle woman still unsolved today, and the similar and also unexplained death of a 22-year-old woman from Norway the same year. An odd cluster of deaths in another Thai city during winter of last year, including a 23-year-old woman from New Zealand. The conspiracy theories expanded to include the unexplained deaths of two young women in Vietnam this summer. “Is this a cover-up?” asked a letter writer in the Bangkok Post after the police went on from the ibuprofen theory to one that involved food poisoning.

And not just any food poisoning. A leak from the investigation suggested that detectives were considering the possibility that the sisters had dined – somewhere – on either poisonous mushrooms or blowfish, sometimes called pufferfish or fugu. The fishes are considered a delicacy but they must be carefully prepared to exclude any contact with the liver or other internal organs, which contain an exceptionally potent neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin.

Neither of these suggestions, though, were an ideal match for the described symptoms. Tetrodotoxin is most famous for its ability to induce a corpse-like paralysis in victims; they may remain alert but unable to move or communicate, gradually suffocating as the lungs fail. Poisonous mushrooms tend to kill by gradually destroying the liver. As quickly as the suggestion was floated it seemed to disappear, leaving the questions to further simmer over the summer.

Until last week, when a preliminary autopsy report was announced, which apparently indicated a toxic level of exposure. According to news reports, toxicologists in Thailand now believed that the two sisters had been drinking a popular local cocktail that contains Coca-Cola, cough syrup, ground up leaves from the kratom tree, and the well-known mosquito repellent DEET and is admired for its hallucinogenic qualities. In their case, apparently, too much DEET had ended up in the drink.

Or as the tourism-focused island paper, Phuket Wan, wrote following the announcement:

Phi Phi is renowed as a rites-of-passage destination for 20-somethings and it transforms from a haven for day-trippers in the sunshine to a less beguiling island party after dark.

Alcohol is just one of the many ingredients that Phi Phi’s party people mix in their buckets.

Each bucket is a concoction of all kinds of juices and substances that are mixed into containers of various sizes and usually sucked through straws all night long.

It’s a nicely sinister portrait of cocktails in the Phi Phi islands. Still my first reaction was a kind of “DEET, really?” skepticism. We’re not talking about anything like tetrodotoxin here; this is a compound we routinely spray all over ourselves on camping trips and summer hikes. Our Environmental Protection Agency estimates that about 30 percent of the U.S. population uses a DEET-infused product every year. Plenty of us have accidentally swallowed a little during an over-enthusiastic assault on mosquitoes without getting sick (including myself). Not that you’d want to take it by the tumbler, of course. But it’s reasonable to ask whether it would take a tumbler to kill you

The short answer, yes, pretty close to that. DEET, by the way, stands for N.N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide, which is basically chemist-code for a formula that includes the familiar elements carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen. It apparently works as a repellent by disrupting insect olfaction-detection systems. And an EPA analysis found that it is slightly toxic to birds, fish, and aquatic invertebrates and has”very low toxicity potential” in mammals, such as ourselves.

So, it’s not surprising that the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry reports that people have committed suicide with the repellent but only by drinking full “bottles of DEET” along with quantities of alcohol. In other words, evidence is that it would take that tumbler full to kill you. I also looked at the other ingredients in the suspect cocktail, except for the Coca-Cola (which hasn’t contained cocaine for more than a century). The codeine in cough syrup could, in a high enough amount, add to a sleepy buzz. And kratom – while known to be hallucinogenic – can also bring on a numbing lethargy in too high a dose. It is generally, though, considered to be most risky for its addictive qualities than for its acute toxicity issues.

Which brings us back to the DEET theory of death. And that requires someone to pour a ridiculously large quantity of this pale yellowish liquid into a drink served to two sisters from Canada. Could someone be that careless? Sure, especially if they were enjoying the island brew themselves. Still, only the Belanger sisters died after that night on the beach; under this theory only one over-toxic cocktail was served. And that does raise a few other questions. For instance, why – as you may have noticed from my fatality list – is it mostly young women who are dying of mysterious chemical poisonings in a tropical paradise?

Even Phuket Wan (which seems remarkably tough-minded for a publication focused on tourism) seems unconvinced by the mosquito repellent hypothesis, noting that it would be unusual for only two people to be poisoned by a shared bucket drink.

Could it be a cover up, the paper asked, for a heavy-handed use of insecticide in the sisters’ room? Insecticides have been suspected in some of the other deaths. Could it be that island authorities were trying to hide the existence of a killer who was deliberately spiking drinks? Or, slightly less creepily, that the women had been killed by excessive use of insecticides by hotel management and that authorities were moving to protect reputations? “All options remain open,” the paper warned, until the authorities produce evidence of a much more meticulous investigation.

And, yes, you’ll find me in the “options remain open” camp as well. It may well be that this is as simple as it sounds, two trusting travelers from rural Canada drinking an untrustworthy bar drink.

Still, at the moment, if I felt a sudden urge to go party in the Phi Phi islands, you would find me insisting on a nicely capped container – and, I think, opening that bottle myself. Which, frankly, makes good sense -- most of the time anyway.

evidence is that it would take that tumbler full to kill you. I also looked at the other ingredients in the suspect cocktail, except for the Coca-Cola (which hasn’t contained cocaine for more than a century). The codeine in cough syrup could, in a high enough amount, add to a sleepy buzz. And kratom – while known to be hallucinogenic – can also bring on a numbing lethargy in too high a dose. It is generally, though, considered to be most risky for its addictive qualities than for its acute toxicity issues.

Which brings us back to the DEET theory of death. And that requires someone to pour a ridiculously large quantity of this pale yellowish liquid into a drink served to two sisters from Canada. Could someone be that careless? Sure, especially if they were enjoying the island brew themselves. Still, only the Belanger sisters died after that night on the beach; under this theory only one over-toxic cocktail was served. And that does raise a few other questions. For instance, why – as you may have noticed from my fatality list – is it mostly young women who are dying of mysterious chemical poisonings in a tropical paradise?

Even Phuket Wan (which seems remarkably tough-minded for a publication focused on tourism) seems unconvinced by the mosquito repellent hypothesis, noting that it would be unusual for only two people to be poisoned by a shared bucket drink.

Could it be a cover up, the paper asked, for a heavy-handed use of insecticide in the sisters’ room? Insecticides have been suspected in some of the other deaths. Could it be that island authorities were trying to hide the existence of a killer who was deliberately spiking drinks? Or, slightly less creepily, that the women had been killed by excessive use of insecticides by hotel management and that authorities were moving to protect reputations? “All options remain open,” the paper warned, until the authorities produce evidence of a much more meticulous investigation.

And, yes, you’ll find me in the “options remain open” camp as well. It may well be that this is as simple as it sounds, two trusting travelers from rural Canada drinking an untrustworthy bar drink.

Still, at the moment, if I felt a sudden urge to party in the Phi Phi islands, you would find me insisting on a nicely capped container – and, I think, opening that bottle myself. Which, frankly, makes good sense -- most of the time anyway.

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How to Save Your Daughter's Life

by Pat Brown

There once was a girl who, after having a fight with her boyfriend, left their apartment in a huff. While she as out wandering around, she decided she might as well check a few places to see if there were any jobs available she might apply for. She walked into the local bowling alley and talked with the manager. She filled out an employment form and they chatted. He was cute and sweet, and he asked if she wanted to hang out and go smoke a joint when he went on break. She was in a bad mood, so she said yes.

He directed her to a door that led into an unused area of the building. He said he would slip in through the back and let her in; he didn't want the other employees to see him sneaking out with her. She followed his directions. He let her into the other part of the building, and they sat down just inside on the floor and smoked the weed and chatted. Not so abnormal for a couple of young people (she was just twenty-two and he was about thirty).

After twenty minutes, his break was over, and he told her he had to get back to work. He instructed her to follow him out the back so he wouldn't get caught "playing hooky" with her. He indicated they would need to go down some stairs into the basement and out the back way.

Suddenly, the girl felt something was wrong. She felt the "gift of fear," as security specialist Gavin de Becker would call it. (Becker is the author of the book of that name in which he advises women to pay attention to their gut feelings about danger.) She told the man she wouldn't go out that way, and she stood next to the glass door at the front. 

He looked at her with dead eyes and said, "You think I am going to kill you, don't you?"

She looked straight back at him and said, "Yes, I do."

He let her out the  front door. Whether he did this because he knew she would put up one hell of a fight or because he admired her for being so direct with him, we will never know.

One thing I do know: I am happy to be alive, because that dumb girl who went off to smoke dope with a stranger was me.

(excerpt from How to Save Your Daughter's Life: Straight Talk for Parents from America's Top Criminal Profiler by Pat Brown)

For more on the book, listen to my interview on Elliot in the Morning.

                 

How to Save your Daughter's Life by Pat Brown available now in local bookstores and online at from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.


Included in this book, what parents of teen girls need to know about:

The Early Years
Partying, Drinking, Drugging, Casual Sex (Hooking Up), and Gangs
Date Rape
The Dangers of Social Networking and the Internet
Risky Relationships
Stalkers
Child Predators, Serial Rapists, and Serial Killers
The Sex Trade and Sex Trafficking

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10 Clues to the Modern Poisoner

Wikipedia Commons

by Deborah Blum

Ever since I wrote my story of early 20th century toxicologists learning to catch killers, The Poisoner’s Handbook, many people have asked me what has changed since then. The short answer is: not much as we might hope.

Contrary to what many people think, except in political killings, poisoners don’t make much use of  exotic new compounds. They use – as they always have – what’s at hand. They kill for the same old reasons -  for anger, jealousy possessiveness, greed. They are rare, as this analysis shows,  farmore rare than other forms of killing. And that’s probably the most important change. Poison homicides don’t occur as often as they did a hundred years ago, mostly because scientists are better at solving these mysteries.

But if you’re the kind of person who likes to be prepared against all possible harm, then I’ve put together this short list of warning signs based on a scatter of recent cases. Don’t take them too seriously, as I said, this kind of thing is rare. But still, there’s a few reasonable assumptions here. For instance, you  should probably pay attention if:

1. Your bowl of Rice Krispies tastes like  solvent.

In January, a southern California man poured the paint remover Goof Off into his wife’s evening cereal snack. After swallowing a spoonful, she turned to her daughter saying “Something’s in it. Something’s in it.” Her daughter called 911. When police came to the hospital, the husband fled the building (he was arrested later at a nearby convenience store). He pleaded guilty in March and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

2. The coffee in your morning cup turns green.

In March a Kentucky man was charged with poisoning his estranged wife’s coffee. She called the police after she noticed the dark liquid in her cup had an oily greenish tint. A lab analysis found a sludge of rat poison in the bottom of the pot. He told  the police  that he was merely trying to make her a little sick. But she said friends had warned her that he planned to kill her after she started divorce proceedings.

3. Your coffee is, maybe, a little too bitter.

In 2010, a Long Island man pleaded guilty to killing his wife by putting cyanide in her coffee. The couple, who had two sons,  had separated after he told her that he’d realized that he was gay. But he later told police he’d also realized that he didn’t want her to be with anyone else.

4. Your iced tea is, maybe, a little too sweet.

In July, police brought murder charges against a Cleveland, Ohio woman, accusing her of poisoning her fiance with antifreeze in 2006. Although evidence of ethylene glycol – the key ingredient in antifreeze – was found early in the investigation, it took police years longer to build a conclusive case for the poisoning itself. Detectives said ethylene glycol, which is known both for  its strong, sweet taste and ability to destroy the kidneys, was mixed into the victim’s iced tea. She was ready, they said, for the relationship to be over.

5. Your mother mixes you up a cocktail when she has never done so before.

One of the more notorious recent poison killers, Stacy Castor of Clay, New York, was convicted of murder in 2007 for killing her husband with antifreeze.  She then tried to frame her daughter for the crime, writing a fake suicidal confession, and serving the girlan unexpected cocktail of orange juice, soda, and crushed painkillers. The girl told police that the drink tasted “nasty” but she swallowed at her mother’s urging. Her survival led to a break in the case.

6. Your husband insists that you take those “special” calcium supplements he’s found for you.

In 2010, a Cleveland, Ohio doctor was found guilty of murdering his wife with cyanide, which he had carefully injected into her calcium supplements. His wife died in 2005 after she collapsed from the poisoning while driving and crashed her car. Before she crashed, she had told a friend that she felt increasingly ill and wondered if it was related to the mineral supplements her husband had provided.The investigation suggested that he was tired of being married.

7. Your wife works at a pharmaceutical laboratory where certain supplies have gone missing.

In March of last year, New Jersey prosecutors charged a Bristol Meyers Squibb chemist with poisoning her husband with thallium stolen from her employer. They were at the time going through a divorce.  Thallium is a potent, systemic poison once widely used as a pesticide until it became considered too dangerous for general use.  Today it’s mostly found in manufacturing facilities only.

8. Your wife takes a sudden interest in growing her own salad greens.

In 2008, the wife of a Missouri police officer decided she was ready to end the marriage but didn’t want to go through a divorce. Instead, she served her husband salad mixed with leaves from foxglove plants in the garden. Foxglove contains the compound digitalis which, in the right dose, can stop the heart. She’d researched the poison in the internet, police said, but she got the dose wrong anyway. Her husband survived and she pleaded guilty to assault in 2010.

9. Your jilted lover adds some secretly acquired “herbs” to food in your refrigerator.

After a London man broke off a 15-year affair and decided to get married, his ex-mistress used an old key to enter his home and add seeds from the monkshood plant (sometimes called the Devil’s Helmet) to some leftover food in his refrigerator. The plant contains an extremely powerful neurotoxin. He died and his fiancee was in a coma for two days.  The killer pleaded guilty in 2010 and was sentenced to life in prison.

10. A cautionary note. If you see serious warning signs and ignore them, you may want to leave a letter.

In 2008, Wisconsin resident Mark Jensen was convicted of murdering his wife Julie by spiking her wine with antifreeze. The actual death had occurred a decade earlier and was at first thought a suicide. Jensen had been having an affair at the time and angry divorce discussions were underway. But Jensen had left a letter in case of her death, detailing her husband’s suspicious behavior. Wisconsin prosecutors were able get this “letter from the grave” admitted under a rule allowing evidence of the dead woman’s state of mind in response to the suicide claims.  Jensen was convicted of murder in 2008; the conviction was upheld in 2010.

And, finally: You begin to realize that your wife just knows way too much about poison. My husband hasn’t let me pour him a cup of coffee since I wrote the book.

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Janet Danahey Deserves Special Consideration for Clemency

Janet Danahey, N.C. Department of Correction

Photo Caption

by Diane Dimond

Any parent would agree that young people can do impulsive and thoughtless things.

But what if one of their stupidly spontaneous acts accidently turns deadly? Should society give that young person special consideration? Should it depend on the kid’s past good or bad character? Should the justice system treat them the same as career criminals?

The case that caused these questions to pop into my mind comes from Greensboro, North Carolina, and involves a young woman named Janet Danahey. It doesn’t take much imagination to see that what happened to Janet could happen to any one of our kids.

It was Valentine’s Day 2002, and since Janet and her boyfriend, Thad, had recently (and amicably) broken up, the then-23 year old got together with two girlfriends that night to play cards and drink some wine.

Their circle of friends was always playing pranks on each other and this night the three girls – Janet, Nicole and Adrianne – schemed about what kind of trick they could pull on Thad. They decided to sabotage his car and visited a grocery store looking for fish oil or something smelly to pour into the young man’s fresh air vent. They bought a bottle of clam juice and headed to Thad’s apartment building. When they discovered his car wasn’t there Janet grabbed charcoal lighter fluid and set a small fire atop an old futon outside Thad’s door. They could hear people inside the apartment and the idea was to knock and run leaving Thad’s roommates to stamp out the flames.

The night was windy and the fire soon engulfed the apartment building. Four people were killed – sisters, Rachel and Donna Llewellyn, ages 21 and 24; Ryan Bek, 25; and Elizabeth Harris, 20.

Janet never stopped to think what heartache would result from that childish and senseless act.

Janet admitted to police and to the father of Elizabeth Harris that she had set the fire and begged for forgiveness. But she was soon faced with the cold reality of North Carolina’s felony murder statute which dozens of other states also have on the books. Under the felony murder rule if anyone is killed during the commission of a felony (in this case – arson) the perpetrator of the felony can be charged with murder and sentenced to death. It holds even if the victim’s death was an accident.

Janet had to choose between pleading guilty and receiving life in prison with no chance of parole or going to trial where, if found guilty, she would automatically get the death penalty. She pleaded guilty. (The felony murder rule is applied differently depending on the jurisdiction, but, generally speaking, the underlying felony must present a “foreseeable danger to life.” In some cases, accomplices can also face the ultimate penalty too – if they exhibited “extreme indifference to human life” – but in Janet’s case, her two girlfriends never spoke to her again and were not charged. Janet assumed full responsibility.)

As you ponder this tragedy realize that before this happened Janet had been an exemplary child. As a high school student she was described as “sweet, responsible, and very respectful.” Janet had won the Girl Scouts top award, was active in several clubs including the Young Christian Society. She played the viola, carried the Olympic torch during part of the run to Atlanta’s 1996 Summer Olympic Games and she made the dean’s list in college. None of this, of course, absolves her of blame but the record shows Janet Danahey made one awful decision on one horrific night.

On the other hand, as prosecutors rightfully pointed out in court Janet was an intelligent college graduate – a woman who should have known that using an accelerant and setting a fire on a windy night could result in catastrophic damage. And, the state maintained, Janet and her friends exhibited complete indifference by leaving the scene without making sure the fire was actually put out.

Now, 10 years later, Janet’s lawyers note that she has been a model prisoner and they have filed a petition for clemency with the outgoing governor to have her sentence reduced to time served. The attorneys call what happened on that February night, “A joke … A foolish prank. A thoughtless act, but with no malicious intent.” They have asked for an adjustment: “To a sentence that is out of all proportion to the conduct involved.”

One of Janet’s most visible supporters is Elizabeth Harris’s father, Robert, who said he forgave Janet years ago. His words are part of the clemency petition:

I still picture Janet, standing with outreached hands, handcuffed, trembling, shaking almost violently, crying intensely, speaking almost incoherently, ‘These are the hands that are responsible for Beth’s death.’ My reactions were instinctive. I went over to her, held her tightly … (and) whispered …‘I forgive you, Janet’ several times.

At this writing there have been no comments from other victim’s family members so there is no way to know if they will challenge the clemency request.

As one North Carolina newspaper pal wrote me recently, “Two-and-a-half years per life doesn’t seem like much punishment for a deliberate act of arson that went bad.”

I guess I agree with that but I have this nagging feeling that our felony murder laws should be adjusted for people like Janet. I think only career criminals should get life in prison with no chance at parole.

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Book Excerpt: The Millionaire's Wife by Cathy Scott

Today's post is an excerpt from the first chapter of Los Angeles Times bestselling author Cathy Scott’s latest true-crime book, The Millionaire’s Wife: The True Story of a Real Estate Tycoon, is Beautiful Young Mistress, and a Marriage that Ended in Murder. George Kogan, a wealthy businessman, was cut down in broad daylight on an Upper Manhattan sidewalk. It's a fascinating read with lots of twists and turns.

A Cool Manhattan Morning

by Cathy Scott

A light rain fell over Manhattan on a weekday morning like any other. But life can change on a dime, and that’s exactly what happened as middle-aged business tycoon George Kogan hurried back to his ultra-chic Upper East Side apartment with a bag of groceries on each arm in anticipation of break- fasting at home with his young lover. The late morning of Tuesday, October 23, 1990, turned out to be anything but a typical day in the city.

On the busy sidewalk, George, who’d recently celebrated his forty-ninth birthday, turned the corner onto East Sixty- ninth Street and headed toward his mid-block building, between Second and Third. As he hurried down the tree-lined street, he didn’t notice anything unusual other than the cool morning temperature. He continued walking toward the canopied entrance to the co-op where he’d lived for the last two years with Mary-Louise Hawkins, a twenty-eight-year-old rising star in the public relations world. Across the street, carpenters noisily worked on the new Trump Palace high-rise apartment building. A few blocks away, Central Park was alive with pedestrians, bicyclists, and joggers as they coursed through the park’s major arteries to their destinations in New York City, where the drone of urban traffic awaited them. George enjoyed walking the neighborhood. He’d lose himself in the bustling sights and sounds of the city. And this day was no different.

Walking from the neighborhood Food Emporium, he looked forward to spending the late morning with Mary- Louise. Quiet breakfasts were how their relationship had moved from platonic to romantic, and they especially appreciated those moments. Plus, George was anxious to prepare for an afternoon meeting with his son, William, who was acting as mediator to nail down an agreeable divorce settlement with George’s estranged wife, Barbara, and bring to a conclusion the marriage that in essence had ended two years earlier.

As George headed home that morning, William telephoned his father’s apartment to confirm their afternoon appointment. Mary-Louise told him she’d have George return the call when he arrived home from the store. George was optimistic about the settlement and finally getting the lengthy divorce behind him, so he and Mary-Louise could move on with their life together. Also uppermost in George’s mind was settling the divorce to help repair the damaged relation- ship he’d had with William, who had sided with his mother after his parents’ separation.

As George continued his walk home, the usual cast of characters were out and about—nannies pushing babies in strollers, residents leaving their high-rises to walk their dogs, business people hurrying to the subway entrance just steps away. George, distracted with the nagging thought of the afternoon meeting, quickened his pace when his limestone building came into view.

He lived in the heart of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, once called the Silk Stocking District, so named for the attire worn by the rich people who had once lived there. Long gone was the 19th-century farmland, as well as the market and garden districts that had peppered the area. Left were skyscrapers, rows of stylish townhouses, mansions, and the occasional walk-up apartment building.

For a millionaire antiques and art dealer who had once had interests in a casino and several properties in Puerto Rico and New York, George lived a surprisingly modest life on New York’s well-to-do Upper East Side—broadly defined as the area from Fifty-ninth to Ninety-sixth Streets, east of Central Park. His living quarters with Mary-Louise Hawkins were definitely nice, although small, with just one bedroom and a marbled-bath washroom. And while the apartment had a prestigious address with the coveted 10021 zip code in a luxurious high-rise complex, it was not quite up to the elite level of Fifth Avenue, which serves as the symbol of wealthy New York, where George once lived with his now-estranged wife Barbara. Still, he admired the high-end building that housed his current apartment.

The Upper East Side has a legacy of outstanding eclectic architecture, including George’s pre-war apartment. The facade of his co-op, a mix of limestone and beige brick, created a grand entrance with its surround and above-the-door stone molding, with tall arched relief details and shallow columns on either side and carved renaissance-style capitals. Above that was a heavy, stately ornamental stone molding.

The variety of styles added a touch of grace and grandeur from a bygone era. As a connoisseur of fine antiques, George appreciated the artistry that went into the face of the building and enjoyed walking through the double-glass doorway, framed in oak, with its etched Art Deco design. What George could not know was that he would never again walk through that entryway, and the anticipated meeting with his son and his soon-to-be ex-wife to finalize the divorce was not to be. What happened next, he never saw coming.

As he neared the entrance to his Sixty-ninth Street apartment, his face flushed from the damp morning air, what he heard next was startling. It sounded like an explosion, most probably coming from the construction site across the street.

“What the—?” George cried out a nanosecond later, when it dawned on him what the noise really was. It was the distinct sound of gunfire.

No, no, no! he said to himself, and then, Mary-Louise!

The force of the bullets entering George’s back thrust him into a forward dive and catapulted him into the air; he landed in a skid on the rain-soaked concrete. He was face down just yards from his apartment lobby. Seconds felt like minutes.

Coins, bills, and groceries—a carton of eggs, a slab of cheese, a bottle of milk, pieces of fresh fruit—tumbled to the ground, along with George.

Sprawled on the sidewalk next to the wall, with his arms stretched out in front of him amidst the scattered groceries and money, George lifted his head and cried out, “Help me!”

The book is available at bookstores and online at Amazon.com.

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