One Reason I Am so Interested in True Crime

I guess you could say that I got interested in true crime at a very young age. I always liked watching shows about crime, but when someone I knew came up missing and then later murdered, I was hooked on trying to find out as much as I could about the murder. I am not going to mention any names, because I think the victims of the guilty parties deserve the chance to move on.

This case disturbs me because I knew the accused, the victim, and most of all the children involved.

When I was around 15, a man went missing in the town I lived in. I was very good friends with his step-daughter. However, there were some strange things going on about the time this man disappeared. The strangest thing was my friend's mom was sleeping with her daughter's boyfriend!!! She was around 35 and he was 17. I went to school with this "boy" also. The whole time the man was missing, his brother kept questioning the wife about her relationship with the "boy." Of course she denied there was a relationship, but a blind person could see what was going on.

About two weeks later, the man's body was discovered in an abandoned mine shaft about 80 miles from his home. Someone had beat him to death and tried to set him on fire to destroy his body. His body didn't burn though, so he was identified fairly quickly. After he was discovered the police again questioned his wife, her children, and the other "man." No one said anything about what they might have known about the crime. Basically life went on and this case was shelved.

The mother married the "other man," and they took her children and moved out of the county. Her new husband kept in touch with his family who still lived in the town where the murder occurred. Approximately seven years after the murder, they moved back, mistakenly thinking that the statute of limitations had expired. What they didn't know apparently, was in Colorado, there is no statute of limitations on murder. Around the time they moved back, the eldest daughter (who was my friend in high school), finally told her biological father what happened on that February night back in 1982. Her father then called the police.

The horror of what this "mother" put her children through and the death her then-husband suffered is beyond anything I can imagine.

The murder had been planned for a few weeks. The mother and her new boyfriend wanted to be together, but they didn't want to wait for her to be divorced. They figured the easiest way to get her husband out of the picture was just to kill him. They figured no one would be any wiser. The husband was an over-the-road truck driver, so he was gone a lot and may not have been aware about his wife's affair with her young boyfriend. I don't think if it was ever addressed whether or not the husband knew about the affair.

The husband arrived home one night in February of 1982. He walked into an ambush. The young boyfriend beat him to death with a baseball bat while the wife watched and the children were told to stay in their rooms until they were told to come out. The children heard the murder happen. The oldest daughter described the first hit as "ungodly." After the boyfriend was done beating the man with the bat, the mother made the children come out of the room and clean up the blood and other evidence while she and the boyfriend loaded the body into the car. Then, she made the children get into the car and go with her and the boyfriend to dump the body down the mine shaft.

This poor girl was threatened as were her siblings for years about WHAT would happen if they ever told anyone what happened to the victim. However, in 1989 the eldest daughter could no longer live with the secret and told her father. Both the wife and her husband were arrested very soon after the daughter told her father what happened. Two or three of the children testified at both trials about the horror of that night and the things they lived with since that horrible night.

Both the wife and her "new" husband were convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to 20 years to life. Both come up for parole in 2009. They divorced in the early 1990s, and she took the stand in her own defense to directly contradict the statement her "husband" gave to the police. She never once took any responsibility or apologized to her children for what she made them do. At least the "husband" made the effort to ask for the children's forgiveness as well as apologizing to the victim's family.

In 1993, I had the opportunity to talk to the "new husband" while he was in the same prison as a relative of mine was. He admitted to the murder and he told me he didn't think it was fair that he was tried as an adult, since he was only 17 when he killed the man. I told him I thought it was more than fair, and he should be thanking his lucky stars he was sentenced to death! As it stands right now, he has the better chance at making parole his first time before the board. At least he shows remorse for what happened, but I can't say that his ex-wife does. Personally, I think she just needs to stay in prison for the rest of her life. She destroyed her four children's lives because of her selfishness.

I should say there were other witnesses that actually knew what happened but stayed silent until they were told they would be facing charges unless they told the truth. It was amazing to me that these people could actually live with themselves knowing what happened.

My life has since been touched by a close relative dying in a very suspicious manner. I can say that until a family has answers there is no peace. I know I go to sleep wondering what I can do in order to find out what actually happened to my relative. It's almost like banging my head against a brick wall, because I have found out that the police aren't really interested in digging deeper in the case of my relative. Officially, the case is still "under investigation," but I have the feeling it's in the "round" file.

Well, that about sums up how I got interested in true crime.

Tezi