Staged Scenes

Killers who dressed up a crime as an accident, a suicide or someone else’s work.

28 cases

The Burning Barrel

On a July evening in 1981, Charlotte Grabbe never came back from the soybean fields of her family's Marshall, Illinois farm — her tractor parked in the shed, her lunch box untouched, and her divorce from the violent Fred Grabbe still unfinished.

Master and Slave

Elaine O'Hara vanished near Dublin in August 2012, the day after her release from a psychiatric hospital — and the investigation that unfolded over the next three years exposed one of the most shocking crimes in Irish history.

The Security Chief

Chris Coleman guarded world-famous televangelist Joyce Meyer for a living, yet couldn't seem to protect his own family from an anonymous letter-writer's threats — until police climbed through a window of his Columbia Lake home into a scene reeking of spray paint.

The Dexter Wannabe

A first date arranged on plentyoffish.com came with strange instructions — sneak in under the half-open garage door — and Gilles Tetreault stumbled out of that dark garage having barely escaped a man in a hockey mask following a script.

The Repo Man

Repo man Mike Adams kept his Frisco, Texas showplace in flawless order — labels facing forward, a couch no one could sit on, handguns sorted by caliber — and his fixations turned menacing after Nicole Leger and her teenage son moved in.

Captain Cash

London heroin dealer Ken Avery — 'Captain Cash' to the underworld — lost everything when he turned informant, so he changed his name to Ken Regan and fixed his ambitions on a wealthy Heathrow freight importer named Amarjit 'Neil' Chohan.

The Oxford Murder

Oxford student Rachel McLean met charming bartender John Tanner one Blackpool summer, and his stream of love letters grew as intense as his frustration with the distance — then Rachel missed an appointment she never would have missed.

The Killer Bride

Days after her Kalispell, Montana wedding, reluctant bride Jordan Graham was confiding doubts to friends — and then her new husband Cody Johnson disappeared, followed by a mysterious email claiming he had fallen from a cliff in Glacier National Park.

Mr. Mom Killer

On Valentine's Day 2007, stay-at-home dad Stephen Grant walked into the Macomb County Sheriff's office to report his jet-setting executive wife Tara missing — and wept for the cameras while searchers worked nearby Stoney Creek.

The Tiger Parents

Hann and Bich Pan pushed their daughter Jennifer toward perfection at any cost — and when she told police three armed men had burst into the family's Toronto-area home, investigators noticed her story didn't quite add up.

The Alligator Theory

On the morning of his sixth wedding anniversary, Mike Williams set out alone to hunt ducks among the stumps of Lake Seminole and never returned — and with no body to recover, investigators reasoned the lake's alligators had left nothing to find.

Unlucky 13

On Friday the 13th of April 2012, Brittany Killgore was packing to leave Fallbrook, California when Marine Louis Perez offered a Hornblower dinner cruise in San Diego — an evening entangled with Dorothy Maraglino, a woman who despised her.

Devious Dixie

On Halloween night 1984, accountant Mel Dyson worked late at his Huntington Beach office while his common-law wife Dixie kept to her routine — a routine that, along with two men named George Ira Lamb and Enrico Vasquez, would draw hard questions from detectives.

Lost in the Desert

Taw Benderly answered Loretta Bowersock's room-for-rent ad penniless and charming, and stayed for eighteen years — until December 14, 2004, when he rushed up to a Tucson mall security desk claiming Loretta had simply vanished from outside Dillard's.

I Found Mom!

Leonard Tyburski, dean of students at Detroit's Mackenzie High School, was obsessed with order, cleanliness, and control. During a screaming argument at the bottom of the basement stairs, his wife Dorothy taunted him one time too many — beside the family's chest freezer.

Like Mother, Like Son

In Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, Cheryl Kunkle raised her son Greg Rowe on resentment and control. When sixteen-year-old Kristin Fisher refused the abortion Greg demanded and gave birth to baby Kaylee, mother and son came to share far more than a grudge.

A Heartless Mother

After her young son David died, St. Louis mother Ellen Boehm bought a new car rather than pay his $2,348 funeral bill — and seemed more upbeat than ever. She still held a $5,000 life insurance policy on each of her surviving children.

Her Dissociative State

Betty Devore carried the scars of a brutal Iowa childhood — beatings, rape, and a mother in and out of mental institutions. Three weeks after meeting charming antique dealer Harold Frieberg at a singles meeting in Fairfield, she married him. Her buried past came along.

The Dinner Theater Murder

Hoping to rekindle a stagnant marriage, Steven Hricko booked a Valentine's weekend at a Maryland resort featuring a murder-mystery dinner theater show. His wife Kimberly — a surgical technologist whose job included disposing of unused drugs — was suddenly, surprisingly affectionate.

Mommy's Little Helpers

Hilma Witte's Indiana household was ruled by her husband Paul's beatings — until it wasn't. Before the story ended, a grandmother lay dead in her bed, shot with a medieval crossbow as she slept, and Hilma's teenage sons carried the secrets.

A Staged Scene

Daniel Carlson came home to the family's trailer in tiny Kapowsin, Washington, to find his wife Lisa shot to death on the couch. On the 911 call he spoke in a flat monotone, unable to recall his own address — and police found no forced entry.

A Bad Actor

Struggling Orange County actor Daniel Wozniak needed money for his wedding and honeymoon. His friend and neighbor Sam Herr, an Army veteran, had $62,000 in combat-pay savings — and Wozniak had written himself a script no one saw coming.

The Second Chance

Louise Ellis set off from Ottawa for a weekend getaway in Quebec's Gatineau Hills in April 1995 and never arrived. Her boyfriend Brett Morgan reported her missing — after her distinctive Suzuki Sidekick turned up abandoned and locked on a rural roadside.