William Heirens: The Man Known as The Lipstick Killer

Was the teenager guilty of three heinous murders or did he spend his life in prison for crimes which he did not commit?  

(Photo source) 

Chicago

Chicago in the 1940s was a juxtaposition of poverty and prosperity, security and crime, and optimism and pessimism.  The city was segregated, with blacks and whites living in separate neighborhoods; the black middle class lived separately from the lower class blacks, as did the middle class and lower class whites.  

In January of 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to an unprecedented fourth term as president of the United States and the first American soldier since the Civil War was executed for desertion.  Three months later, in April, U.S. troops liberated the first Nazi concentration camp and landed in Okinawa, Japan, and Roosevelt died suddenly in Warm Springs, Georgia, making Harry S. Truman the 33rd president of the United States.  

Josephine Ross (photo source) 

Josephine Ross

World War II was in its last days on the afternoon of June 5, 1945 when the body of housewife and widow Josephine Ross was discovered in her apartment on North Kenmore Avenue.  Forty-three year old Josie had been widowed since July of the previous year and reportedly had dreams of opening a restaurant with the life insurance proceeds from her late husband's death.  Her body had been posed in her bed and her head had been wrapped in a skirt.  She had been stabbed repeatedly, including to her throat, before her body had been washed, the stab wounds covered with tape, her head covered with the skirt, and then her body posed.  Although her killer had washed her body, investigators managed to find dark hairs clutched in Josie's hand.  

Although nothing appeared to have been taken from the apartment, police assumed that Josie had surprised an intruder and been killed as a result.  Based on the dark hairs in her hand, they believed the killer to be a dark complexioned man.  

Several of Josie's previous boyfriends were questioned and all had alibis.  Despite the gruesomeness of the crime, it barely made a blip in the media.  

Frances Brown (photo source)

Frances Brown

The Josephine Ross case was still open, but with no leads, on December 10, 1945 when stenographer Frances Brown was found dead in her apartment on North Pine Grove.  Her apartment door was found open and a cleaning woman noted the sounds of a radio playing loudly.  Thirty-two year old Frances was found naked and slumped over her bathtub.  In addition to the gunshot wound to her head, a butcher's knife had been driven sideways through her neck with such force, the blade protruded from the opposite side.  Like Josephine Ross, after death, her body had been washed and her head wrapped (this time with a towel).  

Once again, nothing was taken from her apartment but the police still theorized she had surprised an intruder.  Unlike the Ross crime scene, this time the killer left a message.  On the wall in the living room, the killer had written a cryptic note in Frances Brown's red lipstick: 

"For heavens

Sake catch me

Before I kill more

I cannot control myself."  

(Photo source)

It was this widely publicized note that led to the press dubbing the unknown perpetrator "The Lipstick Killer."    

This unknown killer also left behind a bloody fingerprint smudge on the doorjamb to the apartment, as well as two witnesses.  George Weinberg heard gunshots around 4 a.m. and the apartment building's night clerk, John Derick, noted a nervous man get off the elevator and head to the street on foot.  Derick described the man as roughly 140 pounds and aged 35 to 40.

Inexplicably, the Chicago PD investigated the Brown murder for several days with the theory of her killer being a woman.   

Suzanne Degnan (Photo source) 

Suzanne Degnan

In January of 1946, the killer had circled back to his previous hunting ground on Kenmore Avenue.  At 7:30 on the morning of January 7,  James Degnan realized that his six-year-old daughter Suzanne was missing from her bedroom and notified the police.  Outside the girl's bedroom window, a ladder was discovered and in searching her room, the police found a crumpled, crudely worded ransom note demanding $200,000 and instructions not to notify the police or FBI and to wait for word from the kidnapper.  Nine hours passed, during which time several ransom calls were made to the Degnan residence before authorities received an anonymous call to check the sewers.  Suzanne's severed head was found floating in a sewer catch basin, blue ribbons still in her hair, less than a block away.  Over the next several hours, both of Suzanne's legs and her torso were discovered in separate nearby sewers.  Her arms were discovered a month later in a sewer drain, more than three blocks from the Degnan residence.  Each of the sewer drains was capped and covered with cast iron manhole covers weighing over 100 pounds but no witnesses came forward to state they heard them being removed or slid back into place.

A standard neighborhood search unearthed a basement laundry room in an apartment building very close to where Suzanne's head had been discovered.  In that laundry room, evidence was discovered in four tubs that seemed to indicate the child's body had been dismembered there.  The floor was mopped but blood was found in the drains of all four tubs.  

Suzanne's autopsy indicated her time of death was between midnight and 1 a.m. and that she had died from strangulation, leading authorities to theorize she had been taken from her home alive and strangled in a secondary location before being transported to the laundry room. 

Six months went by with no arrests and no answers for Chicago's worried residents until June 26, 1946. 

Heirens under arrest in 1946 (photo source) 

William Heirens

William Heirens was born in 1928 to immigrants from Luxembourg who ran flower shops in Evanston until their businesses faltered as a result of the Great Depression.  A younger son named Jere soon joined the family, which was quickly fracturing from the tensions.  Although his father managed to find work as a security guard, he spent most off his off-time drinking, forcing Heirens' mother to supplement the family's income by working various jobs.  

(Photo source)

From the time he was young, Heirens worked; first, alongside his father in the flower shops before becoming a delivery boy for a local grocery store, an electrician's helper at a steel mill, and as an orchestra usher.   

Heirens was an above-average and creative student, although noted to be prone to daydreaming.  His first arrest came just before his graduation, when he was busted for burglary; a large cache of stolen goods was discovered near his home.  As a result, Heirens was sent to a reform school for boys in Terra Haute, Indiana.  He was allowed to return home at the end of the school year but before the summer was out, he was arrested once again for burglary.    This second arrest sent him to be boarded at the St. Bede Academy in Peru, Illinois, where he excelled in his schoolwork and participated in the school's wrestling team and worked in the library.

Shortly after beginning his senior year at St. Bede, he was granted early acceptance to the University of Chicago, where he began studying electrical engineering.  He quickly fit into the social life of the university and soon had a girlfriend, and although he had told himself he would not burglarize anyone again, the financial pressures of school and dating soon had him back to his old tricks.  

On June 26, 1946, the seventeen-year-old Heirens had a date with his girlfriend planned for the evening but was short on cash.  He planned to cash in a savings bond but his plan was foiled when he found the post office closed on his arrival.  His Plan B was to fall back on his old habit of theft, which previous M.O. had been to check apartment doors and then burgle those that were unlocked.   He found an unlocked door at the Wayne Manor Apartments, the home of the Pera family.  He was stealing a dollar when he was spotted and took off running, with police officers in hot pursuit.  He later claimed that the officers shot at him first; the officers claimed that Heirens fired off the first bullets.  Heirens was carrying a gun in the back of his jeans, supposedly to protect himself from any potential muggers.  

It was an off-duty police officer, still clothed in a bathing suit from his day by the water, who stopped Heirens by smashing several clay flowerpots over his head and knocking him unconscious.  Heirens was taken to the hospital ward of the Cook County Jail, had his head stitched and was then subjected to a protracted and painful interrogation, during which he slipped in and out of consciousness.  Detectives felt they had their killer although Heirens did not and would not confess and so disturbing and questionable tactics were used.  A nurse was called in to pour ether in Heirens' genitals while Heirens was strapped down.  When that failed to elicit a confession, a police officer repeatedly punched Heirens in the stomach while shouting details of Suzanne Degnan's abduction and murder, believing that would trigger Heirens' memory.  When that did not work, Heirens was given a spinal tap without anesthetic.  Following the spinal tap, a polygraph was ordered but it was determined that Heirens was in too much pain for an accurate reading.  

While Heirens had been unconscious, his fingerprints were taken and said to have been a 9-point match to prints found on the Degnan ransom note.  His room at the University was searched, as well as his parents' home and a locker he kept at the train station.  Evidence of Heirens' years-long hobby of thievery was discovered but nothing tying him to the murders.  

Heirens' parents had hired attorneys to represent their son but they were denied access to him for six days.  Not until July 2 were they able to speak with him.  Instead, authorities informed the media they had caught The Lipstick Killer and provided Heirens' name.

During the four days that Heirens was interrogated he was also injected with sodium pentothal ("truth serum").  The injection put him into a state of delirium and in between pain and bare consciousness he spoke of someone named "George" who could have committed the murders.  As George was Heirens' own middle name, the cops believed it was Heirens' way of confessing.  

(Photo source) 

On July 12, 1946, seventeen days after he was arrested, William Heirens was indicted on twenty-three counts of burglary, for robbery, assault with intent to kill, and on three counts of murder.  

Chicago area residents felt they could breathe and sleep easier, not knowing that Heirens had been grilled and tortured for four days, that he had been denied legal representation, that his residences and locker had been searched without a warrant, that his handwriting did not match the ransom note or the printing on Frances Brown's wall, that the 9-point fingerprint match fell short of the 12-point requirement and that his so-called "confession" was disputed by nurses.  

The media played their part in "reporting" on the case.  Although Heirens had not confessed, George Wright, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, fabricated a full confession in order to sell papers.  Other newspapers picked up on Wright's article and not only reprinted his fabrication but began making their own.  All the newspapers called for Heirens to be executed for his crimes.

(Photo source) 

Decades later, Heirens would recall that after seeing the newspaper stories he felt he had little hope and wanted to avoid being executed.  He made a deal with the State's Attorney for three consecutive life sentences in exchange for pleading guilty on all three murder charges.  On September 4, 1946, he admitted his guilt in court.  Although he was given the opportunity to take the stand, he declined to do so.  The following day he was sentenced to three life terms, as well as a one-to life term for burglary, assault, and robbery.  That night, he attempted to hang himself in his cell.  He was revived by the jail physician.  

Heirens continued to deny his guilt in the murders.

Other Possible Suspects

The Office of Price Administration

James Degnan worked for the Office of Price Administration as a senior executive.  At the time his youngest daughter was killed, he had been recently transferred to Chicago and there was a nationwide meatpackers' strike.  The OAP had threatened to extend its rationing to dairy products as well, leaving some very disgruntled folks.  

At the time of Suzanne's murder, a man involved in the black market meat trade had been murdered and decapitated.  Another OAP executive had received threats against his children and armed guards were assigned to protect him and his family around the clock.

Chicago's mayor, Edward Kelly, received a note wherein the author stated he was sorry to get Suzanne instead of James Degnan and mentioned the OPA laws.  

Despite this, and other than considering that Suzanne's killer was a meatpacker, the authorities never looked into the OPA connection in the Degnan case. 

Hector Verburgh

A 65-year-old janitor named Hector Verburgh, who worked in the same building the Degnan family lived in, was arrested and initially considered Suzanne's killer by the police, who went so far as to inform the media.  Verburgh, like Heirens, did not fit the profile that was determined following Suzanne's autopsy.  The coroner believed the killer had surgical knowledge, or at least experience working as a butcher.

Verburgh was also a Belgian immigrant who did not know English well enough to write the Degnan ransom note.  

Verburgh was held for 48 hours and during the interrogations was subjected to beatings that left him with a separated shoulder, among other injuries, that sent him to the hospital for ten days.  He continued to deny his involvement.  Police even pressured Verburgh's wife to implicate him.  Verburgh later said that the police blindfolded him and pulled him up on a bar while handcuffed.  He was given no water or nourishment.  He said that had it continued for much longer, he would have confessed to anything.  

He later sued 17 members of the Chicago Police Department for $15,000, receiving $10,000 for himself and $5,000 for his wife, who had been pressured to implicate him.

S. Sherman

The examination of the Degnan crime scene uncovered a handkerchief that police initially thought could have been used to gag the little girl.  It bore a laundry mark reading "S. Sherman."  Going through records, including military records, they found Sidney Sherman, a Marine who had served in World War II and had been recently discharged.  His current address was the Hyde Park YMCA, roughly 15 miles from the Degnan residence.  Officers were immediately dispatched the YMCA to question Sherman but discovered he had left without checking out, even quitting his job without picking up his last paycheck.  Feeling it a clear sign of guilt, a nationwide manhunt ensued, ending in Toledo, Ohio four days later.  Immediately taken in for interrogation, Sherman denied the handkerchief was his and said he had left Illinois because he had eloped with his girlfriend.  He was given a polygraph test, which he passed and authorities cleared him of the Degnan abduction and murder.

The handkerchief was later found to belong to a gentleman in New York who had no idea how it got to Chicago.  As he himself was out of the country when Suzanne Degnan was kidnapped and murdered, he was not considered a suspect.

Theodore Campbell and Vincent Costello

Two local teenagers, Theodore Campbell and Vincent Costello, came under scrutiny in the Degnan murder.  Costello had a record, having been convicted of armed robbery at the age of 16 and he lived only blocks from the Degnans.   Campbell claimed that Costello had confessed to abducting and killing Suzanne and had coerced him (Campbell) to make the ransom calls to the Degnans.  Police arrested Costello and administered a polygraph exam to him.  The polygraph indicated that neither Costello nor Campbell knew or had anything to do with the murder.

Richard Russell Thomas

A 42-year-old nurse by the name of Richard Russell Thomas was briefly considered a suspect.  He had lived in Chicago at the time Suzanne Degnan was killed but had moved to Phoenix in the months after, where he had been imprisoned for molesting one of his daughters.  He had been convicted of attempted extortion, using a ransom note in which he threated to kidnap a little girl and had a history of spousal abuse.   Thomas's medical background matched the profile authorities had come up with for the Degnan killer and his jailers noted similarities in his handwriting and phrasing and that of the Degnan ransom note.  Furthermore, when he had lived in Chicago, he had often gone to a car yard located across the street from where Suzanne Degnan's arms were eventually found.  When confronted, Thomas admitted to having abducted and killed Suzanne.  It was June 26, 1946, the same day that William Heirens was arrested.  Authorities lost interest in pursuing Richard Russell Thomas and he eventually recanted his confession.  In 1974, he died in prison in Arizona.  The majority of his interrogation over the Chicago murders, as well as his prison records, have been lost and/or destroyed.  

The Newspaper War

In 1946, the year Suzanne Degnan was killed and William Heirens was arrested and convicted, Chicago had five daily newspapers, each struggling to best the others in the city's circulation fight.  The end of World War II left a dearth of news stories and pages to fill.  Postwar life was upbeat but it didn't sell papers.  An exclusive, or a juicy headline, could boost circulation by 30,000 in a day.

The murders of Josie Ross and Frances Brown, as terrible as they were, were not front-page stories.  The abduction of a senior executive's small daughter from the bedroom of her family home and her resulting dismemberment, however, was.  In a sickening and ironic way, the Suzanne Degnan case was the answer to the newspapers' prayers, as well as the eventual arrest of the white, middle-class teenager William Heirens.  The lack of an apparent motive by Heirens to commit the murders fed the public's morbid fascination.

The newspapers were fortunate that the police department and, eventually, the prosecution was incredibly cooperative, sharing every lead and even questionable suspicion they had and leaking false information to then be printed as fact.  With their help, the papers were able to cast Heirens in the most negative light possible, with everything involving him suggesting a sinister significance.  

Eventually, the reporters were in competition with the police, sometimes arriving before them at crime scenes and picking up leads before they did.  Although the papers initially relied on the police for information, they now mocked the police for failing to apprehend the killer.  Reporters found family members of the victims and pressured them to make a positive identification of Heirens; they contacted psychological experts for their expert opinions, opinions fostered by facts provided by the press, much of which they manufactured.     

It was the July 16, 1946 Tribune cover story, in which a manufactured Heirens confession was published, that broke the dam and pushed Heirens, still protesting his innocence, to accept a plea deal.

 

The Attorneys

From July 2, 1946, the day that Heirens' attorneys were finally allowed to speak with him, they had a nearly unprecedently cooperative relationship with the State's attorney.  Although they apparently had their own questions about whether Heirens was actually guilty, they worried that the slanted press would quickly earn their client a one-way ticket to the electric chair.  So their first priority was to keep Heirens from going to trial.  By doing so, they believed they could save his life, even if he were convicted for crimes he perhaps did not commit.

Equally uncertain, apparently, was the State's attorney, William Touhy, who worried that he might not get a conviction, once the reality of the paucity of evidence became apparent in a courtroom.  

And so the prosecution and the defense worked together, sharing practically every scrap of information, until a mutually acceptable plea bargain was conceived and born.  

(Photo source)

The Next Six Decades

William Heirens became prisoner number C-06103.  On September 5, 1946, while waiting to be transferred from the Cook County Jail to Menard Correctional Center, Heirens was asked if Suzanne Degnan had suffered.  "I can't tell you," he said, "because I didn't kill her.  Tell Mr. Degnan to please look after his other daughter because whoever killed Suzanne is still out there."  

Shortly after his conviction, the stress of the case led to Heirens' parents divorcing.  They, and Heirens' brother, changed their surname to avoid the connection with Heirens.  

The same year Heirens was convicted, 1946, Josie Ross's daughter, Mary Jane Blanchard, publicly stated her belief that he had not killed her mother.  

In 1952, Heirens filed a post-conviction petition.  By that time, many scientists were disavowing the value of sodium pentothal interrogations due to the high level of suggestibility to persons who had been administered the drug.   The State's attorney, William Tuohy, admitted after the petition was filed that he had known of the issues and problems with truth serum and that he had personally paid the psychiatrist to administer it to Heirens in 1946.  That psychiatrist, Roy Grinker,  said that same year that Heirens had never implicated himself during the sodium pentothal examination.  Furthermore, Grinker had filed a report back in the summer of 1946 that he believed Heirens to be "a disassociated psychotic schizophrenic," a "mentally sick boy."  Tuohy had been provided with Grinker's report but had chosen not to share it with Heirens' attorneys, who could have used it to plead insanity for their client.

The court found, in its answer to Heirens' petition, that he had not been coerced into a confession or accepting his plea.  

In 1953, a textbook called Lie Detection and Criminal Investigation was published.  In direct contradiction to Tuohy's claims that Heirens' two polygraph examinations were inconclusive, the authors said the tests were not inconclusive but clearly established him as innocent.

In June of 1965, Heirens completed his sentence for the murder of Suzanne Degnan.  His conviction was officially discharged on December 15, when he was given an institutional parole.  

Three years later, in 1968, another appeal was denied.  One judge dissented, feeling that Heirens' guilty plea and sentencing was nothing more than a "post-mortem of a prior public trial conducted by and in the press."  

By that time, in the late 1960s, although Heirens had a clean prison record with no infractions, and with his institutional parole asserting his rehabilitation, the public had grown weary of prison rehabilitations.  He would eventually be denied 29 times.

Based on the 1946 parole regulations, Heirens should have been discharged for the Brown murder in 1975, from the Ross murder in 1983 and from the other assorted charges six months after that.  At least one parole board member admitted that the publicity from the case was the sole reason Heirens was never granted parole. Other parole board members said that they believed Heirens was fully rehabilitated within a decade, or fifteen years, of his incarceration.  

In 1980, Heirens' father died.

In 1983, after an inmate named Gary Welsh set a precedent on overturning parole denial on the basis of deterrence grounds, Heirens, who had helped Welsh with his lawsuit, appealed his own parole. It went so far as federal court, where the Magistrate ordered Illinois to release William Heirens at once.

The public was outraged at the Magistrate's order.  Suzanne Degnan's brother and sister came forward and made an appeal to authorities to fight the ruling.  Their plea got the Attorney General on board, who suggested that only Heirens himself knew how many women he had actually murdered.  The AG promised to see that Heirens stayed put in prison.  The Illinois Senate stepped in with a resolution stating that the release of Heirens would be detrimental to the people of Illinois, as he was the confessed killer of Suzanne Degnan.  All parties ignored that Heirens had been legally discharged from the term of that murder nearly 20 years earlier.

The Illinois Department of Corrections asked the federal court to review the Welsh decision, which had to that point been uncontested.  The court did so and promptly reversed its decision, now saying that inmates convicted before 1973 could be held to post-1973 rules on deterrence.   

Also in 1983, parole rules changed and inmates, including Heirens, were no longer allowed to apply for parole each year but rather every three years - with threats of extending that to ten.  

Where once freedom had seemed within reach for William Heirens, it now appeared he would spend the remainder of his natural life behind bars.

In 1987, his younger brother Jere died.  

In May of 1993, the Illinois Prisoner Review Board notified Heirens that he had satisfied his lesser sentences. 

In April of 1995, a case for Heirens' innocence in the murders of Josephine Ross, Frances Brown, and Suzanne Degnan was presented before the Prisoner Review Board.  Defense attorney Jed Stone and his team, composed of psychiatrists, lawyers, handwriting analysts, fingerprint experts and even friends of Heirens, studied the evidence in each of the cases.  Although most of the evidence in all three cases had been either lost or destroyed, and almost all the principals involved in the original investigation were deceased, the Stone team found the evidence against Heirens to be weak.    

The team found that after analysis of the confession, numerous inconsistencies were revealed.  Heirens was wrong about the locations, times, related events and other basic facts of the case.  The bloody fingerprint found on a the doorjamb of the Brown apartment was a "rolled" fingerprint, like those found on police station fingerprint cards - not often found at crime scenes.   A fingerprint that had reportedly been found on the face of the Degnan ransom note was actually found on the back and like the Brown doorjamb print, was a "rolled" print; again, not often found on ransom notes or other random pieces of paper.    The handwriting on the Degnan note was not Heirens'.  The indentation handwriting that Chicago Daily News artist Frank San Hamel claimed to have found on the ransom note was a fraud; it didn't exist but the hoax helped to send Heirens to prison.  The lipstick message on the wall of the Brown apartment was not Heirens', nor did it match the author of the Degnan ransom note.  Perhaps most explosively, it was found that an enterprising newspaper reporter, arriving at the Brown crime scene before the police, had written the message himself in order to create more interest and headlines.

Stone's team brought the name of Richard Russell Thomas to the forefront once again. Their experts found that the handwriting on the Degnan ransom note very clearly matched Thomas's known writing.

The petition was denied in January of 1999, a year after Heirens' mother died. 

In 2002, Heirens, through his attorneys, filed a petition seeking clemency.  That petition was denied.  It would be the end of the legal line for Heirens.  

In 2003, former LAPD police officer Steve Hodel, who had done his own extensive investigation into the infamous Black Dahlia murder and who was investigating the crimes for which Heirens was convicted, met William Heirens and became convinced that Heirens was innocent, going so far as to write a letter of appeal to the Illinois Prisoner Review Board.

William Heirens Behind Bars

The first few years of Heirens' incarceration, suffering with depression and wanting to be out of the public eye, he was held in the Psychiatric Division at Menard Correctional Center.  In 1951, he transferred to Stateville Prison, where he would remain for the next 24 years.  

Heirens spent his first five years at Stateville at the Vocational School learning radio and television repair and teaching the craft to other inmates.  It was the start of many productive decades.  For ten years he was employed as an office manager in the prison garment industry.  For five years, he was secretary to the Stateville School Program Superintendent.  He filled in as a mathematics and English teacher when needed and helped fellow inmates to obtain their GEDs.  

In 1970, Heirens was transferred to the Stateville Honor Farm and spent five years in the radio-tv shop, maintaining radios and tvs for the institution and its staff.

In 1975, Heirens transferred to Vienna Correctional Center, a minimum security facility and enrolled in the Emergency Medical Technician.  He completed the program and worked in the prison's ambulance service for a brief period.  For seven years, he worked in the prison library, maintaining the law library and assisting fellow prisoners with their legal problems.  While at Vienna, Heirens became eligible for a day release program and worked in a nearby orchard.  He also worked as the secretary to the prison's chaplain, a position he held until 1998, when he left Vienna for Dixon Correctional Center.  Shortly before he left Vienna for Dixon, he took a course in computers.  In addition to his busy work schedule, Heirens founded the Seven Steps program, a self-improvement organization for inmates.  He also helped to form a three-day religious retreat at Vienna.   

At the time Heirens was initially incarcerated back in 1946, the prison did not provide college-level courses so he took correspondence courses from various universities at his own expense.  In 1972, he became the first Illinois prisoner to receive a degree when he graduated from Lewis University with a degree in liberal arts.  He continued to study after graduating, amassing 250 credit hours.  

Heirens also developed an interest in art while in prison, eventually becoming expert in watercolor painting and calligraphy; his paintings won ribbons in art shows.  

In his later years, Heirens suffered with diabetes, affecting his eyesight and swelling his legs to the point of needing a wheelchair.  On March 5, 2012, William Heirens died at the University of Illinois Medical Center at the age of 83, effectively serving his sentence in full.

(Photo source) 

Sources

All That's Interesting (December 5, 2018).  William Heirens Was 17 When He Was Convicted of Beheading a 6-Year-Old Girl But Did He Do It? 

Chicago Reader (August 24, 1989).  Kill-Crazed Animal? 

Crime Traveler (July 12, 2015).  William Heirens: The 1946 Lipstick Killer.

Northwestern University Law (April 2002)  Clemency Petition, 

Wikipedia (2021).  William Heirens.

Louis Nava: Abducted and Killed in Broad Daylight

(Photo source)

The Assassination of an Atlanta-Area Teenager Leads to His Killer's Controversial Claims of Mental Impairment

June 6, 1998

Louis Nava was sixteen years old in the summer of 1998, a member of the Dunwoody (Georgia) Takedown Club, captain of his Dunwoody High School wrestling team, and the second child and second of three sons in a family of four children.  In addition to wrestling, he had a dedication to teaching and instructing children.  On Saturday, June 6, he was only six days from turning seventeen.

The biggest news story in Dunwoody before the summer of 1998 was the F2 tornado that tore across the metro area in April.  Although it struck DeKalb, Fulton, Gwinnett and Cobb Counties, the most severe damage was in Dunwoody, where its half-mile wide width and more than 150 mile-per-hour winds caused one fatality, ten injuries and over $100 million in damage.  Hundreds of homes in the area had major damage with dozens that were destroyed.  

Unlike Georgia's capitol city of Atlanta, located less than 20 miles south, Dunwoody typically had little violent crime.  A former bedroom community, the growth of the metro Atlanta area and urban sprawl sent residents north and Dunwoody found its community and borders growing.  New neighborhoods, with single-family residences, townhomes, condos and apartment buildings sprouted up, as did commercial businesses.  Perimeter Mall, on busy Ashford-Dunwoody Road, and immediately off Interstate 285 and with a Marta train stop conveniently outside the mall, and its environs, was the largest of the commercial and retail spaces.  Dunwoody Village, the city's oldest shopping area, remained on Mt. Vernon and Chamblee-Dunwoody Roads and it was soon joined by an area called the Mt. Vernon Shopping Center, further down Mt. Vernon, toward Dunwoody Club Drive, by the Dunwoody Country Club, and Jett Ferry Drive.

The Atlanta Pet Supply and Grooming was in the Mt. Vernon Shopping Center, a strip center which also housed banks, a Harris Teeter grocery store, a drug store, a jewelry store, and restaurants, among others.  Seventeen-year-old Dakarai Sloley's family dog, Scotty, was being groomed at the Atlanta Pet Supply on that Saturday in June.  Like Louis, Dakarai was also a student at Dunwoody High; he and Louis were best friends.   Dakarai and his family were staying with his aunt after their home had sustained damage two months earlier during the tornado.  

It was Dakarai's aunt who agreed to let her nephew and Louis, who was hanging out at the house, drive her white 1995 BMW 318i to the shopping center to pick up Scotty from the groomers.  It was around 6 p.m. when the two boys left in the BMW.

Louis as a wrestler (photo source)

Meanwhile, 20-year-old Riorechos Wilson, known as Rio, 20-year-old Eric Perkinson and Eric's two brothers, 18-year-old Cicero and 30-year-old Walter Jerome, known as Jerome, were hanging out together that Saturday at their family home in Cartersville, the county seat of Bartow County and nearly 45 miles northwest of Dunwoody.  Around noon, the quartet decided to head to a flea market in Stone Mountain but not before they talked about stealing a vehicle.  Their vehicle of choice was a BMW, as they felt it would garner them the most money.  In fact, on Friday Eric and Rico had talking about hijacking a car should one become available so that Rico could use the money to pay off a debt.  A .9 millimeter pistol was acquired for that purpose.

The four left in Cicero's green Toyota Camry, armed with the pistol.  They traveled to Stone Mountain to the flea market before heading into Dunwoody, a relatively affluent community with no shortages of BMWs.  It was around 6 p.m. when they finished eating and spied exactly what they were looking for: a white BMW.

Dakarai and Louis had been told that the Sloley dog was not ready to be picked up and so they decided to head back to the car and sit and wait for the half hour or so until the dog was ready.  Neither would have been concerned or worried about doing so; it was early evening, still light, on a Saturday evening in Dunwoody.  There was both vehicle and foot traffic not only in the Mt. Vernon Shopping Center but the Williamsburg Shopping Center, a busy center with banks, a McDonald's, an Arby's, and a Dominos Pizza, among others, directly across the street.  Certainly neither boy would have noticed the green Toyota scoping them out as they had pulled into the parking lot, gotten out, walked into the store and then returned.  

Cicero, seeing Dakarai and Louis exit the BMW, commented that they were "two suckers" and pulled the Toyota into the parking space behind the white car and waited.  

As Dakarai and Louis climbed back to the BMW, Eric and Rico climbed from the Toyota to the back seat of the BMW.  Eric had the pistol and after robbing the two boys of the few dollars they had, he pointed it at the front seat, instructing Dakarai, who was behind the wheel, to follow the Toyota being driven by Cicero.  

The Toyota left the shopping center, pulling onto Mt. Vernon Road and then taking a left on Tilly Mill Road before turning onto North Peachtree Road, the BMW following.  The two-car caravan pulled into the parking lot of St. Barnabas Anglican Church, with the Toyota parked a few spaces from the BMW.  Dakarai and Louis were told if they tried to run, they would be shot.  The keys to the car were taken from Dakarai by Eric, who ordered him into the front passenger seat and Louis into the trunk.  Rico took over the driving duties of the BMW, while Eric sat in the back seat.    

Rico steered the car to the Interstate 285 on-ramp at North Peachtree and headed west, with the green Toyota carrying Jerome and Cicero following.  Despite having just committed armed robbery and kidnapping, the two vehicles played a game of racing and passing each other on the freeway.  Eric noticed a pair of black gloves that Dakarai had and forced the teen to turn them over to him.      

As the two cars headed toward the 75 northbound freeway, Dakarai attempted to communicate with his captors.  He told Rico and Eric that the car belonged to his aunt and if they wanted it, they could have it.  He begged them not to kill him and Louis.  Rico reassured Dakarai that neither he nor Louis would come to any harm; they would be let out but it had to be far from Dunwoody.  Eric added that while Dakarai was "a brother" like them and might be trustworthy, Louis was not.  

The terrifying drive lasted 45 minutes, during which Dakarai noted the license plate of the Toyota during one of the occasions it passed the BMW as Rico and Eric laughed and smoked cigars.  He also recognized that they were passing over Lake Allatoona.  Dakarai's fear that their abductors would kill him and Louis and throw them into the lake only lessened as they drove further north.  

Nearly 40 miles from the Dunwoody shopping center where the carjacking had taken place, the cars exited on Paga Mine Road in Bartow County, where two-lane country roads dotted the landscape.  The cars wound down a dirt road, seemingly at random but the Perkinson brothers were familiar with the area.  Cicero had taken Rico there a few weeks earlier.  

The BMW pulled to a stop and the Toyota followed suit, staying a car length or so behind.   Eric pulled Louis from the trunk and told him to take off his shirt and shoes.  Louis asked why and Eric put the pistol to his head and demanded he follow directions, which the teen did.  Dakarai, still sitting in the passenger seat of the BMW, watched as Eric, holding the pistol to Louis' head, began marching him off to a wooded area with trees and bushes.  Rico walked over to the Toyota and told Cicero, after Cicero rolled down his window, that Eric had freaked out.  After that very brief exchange, Rico returned to the BMW to resume his watch over Dakarai, who was still observing his best friend and praying that he would be let go or simply left.  

Eric, meanwhile, had stopped Louis and aimed the gun at him.  Louis turned his head away from the gun and Eric pulled the trigger twice.  Dakarai saw Louis fall, dead from a gunshot to his head.  

Dakarai was frozen with fear and in shock.  Eric returned to the BMW and through the open passenger-side window, put the gun to Dakarai's head.  "Get out of the car," he said.  "It's your turn."  "No," said the teenager.  "I thought you weren't going to kill us."  Eric told him that he noticed Dakarai had seen the license plate of the Toyota and he had seen all their faces, before impatiently telling him to hurry up.  Dakarai climbed out of the car and Eric, with one hand on his back and the other holding the gun against his head, began to walk him into the woods where Louis lay.   Looking at his friend's body and figuring he only had one option to attempt to save himself, Dakarai made a break for it and took off running.   Eric opened fire.  Dakarai heard the gunshots and felt a sharp pain in his left arm.  He squatted down by a tree, where he noticed that he had been shot in the arm.  His abductors, seeing him go down and assuming he had been fatally struck, climbed into both cars and left.  Only after both vehicles had left did Dakarai get up and run through the woods and grass and over a barbed-wire fence, all the while holding his injured arm (which would later reveal to be a bone completely bisected and shattered by a bullet).  He came to a road where he saw a Domino's Pizza delivery driver.  He flagged the driver down and the driver told Dakarai to wait where he was while the driver went to a nearby house to summon help.  

Sheriff's deputies, along with paramedics, arrived within minutes.  Dakarai was able to give descriptions of all four of his abductors, as well as the green Toyota, the white BMW and the license plates of both.  

Around 8 p.m., a man observed a car that appeared to be a green Toyota Corolla with three individuals in it and a small fire burning nearby.  He called the police and put the fire out.  In the ashes were papers for and from the Sloley BMW.  The Perkinsons and Rico Wilson, after leaving Bartow County, had returned to the Perkinson residence before traveling to Rome, Georgia for a party.  They drove both the Toyota and the BMW and the BMW was spotted at a motel in Rome where Cicero Perkinson was seen.  At some point, Cicero and Rico drove the BMW to the home of Eric's girlfriend, where it was recovered by the police.  Once recovered, Cicero's fingerprints were found on the car and the gun used to kill Louis and to shoot Dakarai was found on the floorboard.     

Back in Dunwoody, Louis' mother Laura had grown concerned over why Louis had not returned home.  She drove to the Sloley house and not knowing that the boys had left in the white BMW, saw Dakarai's car in the driveway and assumed Louis was safely inside, still visiting with his friend.  Her relief would last only until around 2 a.m., when police arrived to inform the family that Louis had been murdered. 

For Dunwoody residents, the carjacking was bad enough but the kidnapping of the high schoolers and the murder of Louis Nava left them feeling terrorized and grief-stricken.  The only consolation was that the perpetrators had been identified and taken into custody very quickly. 

In Custody

With Dakarai's identification of the Perkinson brothers and Rico Wilson, as well as the recovery of the BMW, on August 7, 1998, two months and one day after the crime, a Bartow County grand jury indicted Eric Perkinson, Cicero Perkinson, Jerome Perkinson and Rico Wilson for malice murder, three counts of felony murder, aggravated battery, two counts of aggravated assault, two counts of false imprisonment, theft by taking, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime.  

Initially, all four defendants were to be tried together.  It was during pretrial hearings that the cases were severed.  Before his trial, Eric Perkinson, the accused triggerman, attempted to get a change of venue (denied) due to the pretrial publicity.  Following the State's pretrial discovery of Perkinson's school records, his attorneys retained a psychologist  to test and evaluate Perkinson for a potential mental retardation claim.  On July 28, 1999, he filed notice of his intent to raise mental retardation.  The State retained its own psychologist, who concurred with Perkinson's psychologist that he was mildly mentally retarded.   A plea bargain was then put on the table in which Perkinson would plead guilty but mentally retarded but he rejected the deal.  

After an eight-day continuation, Perkinson went to trial on August 9, 1999.  The jury was not swayed by his defense of mental retardation and after Dakarai Sloley recounted the terrifying day of June 6, 1998 and identified Eric Perkinson from the witness stand, they found Perkinson guilty on all counts on August 27.  They deliberated for an hour and 40 minutes.  The following day, the jury recommended that Perkinson be sentenced to death for his crimes.  

During the penalty phase, Perkinson again presented evidence that he was mentally retarded, including reports that he had done very poorly in school and IQ tests that indicated he scored lower than 70, generally the benchmark of significantly subaverage intellectual functioning.  The State countered by presenting evidence that Perkinson had scored above 70 on two separate IQ tests and that his poor school performance was more related to disruptive behavior than an actual impairment.  (The argument was incredibly important as in the state of Georgia, a guilty but mentally retarded individual cannot be sentenced to death.)  

Given the options of the death penalty, life without parole or life, Perkinson was sentenced to death for the malice murder of Louis Nava.  For his remaining convictions, he received consecutive sentences totaling 60 years.   

Cicero Perkinson, Jerome Perkinson, and Rico Wilson all had their day in court and all were found guilty.  

Post-Convictions

Following his trial and sentencing in Bartow County, the DeKalb County (the county where Louis and Dakarai were robbed and abducted) grand jury indicted Eric Perkinson for two counts of kidnapping with bodily injury, two counts of armed robbery, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.  Perkinson filed a plea claiming double jeopardy as Bartow County had already convicted him on charges of kidnapping and false imprisonment.  The firearm possession charges were dismissed and the Georgia Supreme Court in 2001 ruled that the State could not prosecute Perkinson for the charges in DeKalb County.  

Cicero Perkinson, Inmate 0001040413
(photo source)

After his conviction, Cicero Perkinson filed a motion for new trial in February of 2000; that motion was denied in October of that same year.  He appealed in November, claiming that the State failed to show he intended to or even participated in the crimes he was convicted of and that he had merely been present and at worst, he was an accessory after the fact.  In May of 2001, the Supreme Court found that he had indeed been a willing participant in the carjacking of the BMW and the other felonies, resulting in the murder of Louis Nava and the shooting of Dakarai Sloley.  They further opined that Cicero had been part of the initial plan to steal a BMW, had been the individual to select Louis and Dakarai as victims, aided in stealing the BMW and abducting the teens, and enjoyed the fruits of the crimes.  His sentences of life imprisonment, twenty years for aggravated assault, ten years for each count of false imprisonment, ten years for theft by taking, and five years for possession of a firearm stand.   To date, he remains incarcerated at Hancock State Prison in Sparta, Georgia.

Jerome Perkinson, Inmate 0000685262
(photo source)

Walter Jerome Perkinson, who had two prior convictions in 1991 and 1995 for cocaine possession, was sentenced to a total of 30 years for his role in connection with the abduction, assault and murder.  He is scheduled to be released in 2028.  He is currently incarcerated at the Augusta State Medical Prison in Grovetown, Georgia.  

Riorechos Wilson, Inmate 0000944037
(photo source)

Riorechos (Rio) Wilson, the man whose idea it was to steal a BMW to pay off a debt, is serving his life sentence at the Coffee Correctional Facility in Nicholls, Georgia.  

Eric Perkinson, Inmate 0000919671
(photo source)

Eric Perkinson too filed a motion for new trial, on September 15, 1999.  That motion was amended in March of 2001, the same month of which it was denied.  The following month, April of 2001, Perkinson filed a notice of appeal.  In his appeal, he claimed that the trial court erred in refusing to change venue, in permitting the pretrial discovery of Perkinson's school records, in granting the continuance without Perkinson himself present, in allowing the State to introduce a videotape that depicted the church parking lot, the interior of the BMW's trunk and the area of Paga Mine Road where Louis Nava was murdered (all filmed from the perspective of Louis), and in its charge to the jury.  Perkinson also claimed ineffectiveness of counsel, although one of the attorneys continued to represent him during the appeal process. 

Perkinson's appeal was orally argued on October 12, 2004 and it was denied on March 14, 2005.  A rehearing was denied on April 14, 2005.  

On July 14, 2005, Perkinson filed a petition for writ of certiorari, which was denied on October 3.  On November 15, 2005, Perkinson filed a petition for rehearing, which was denied on December 12.

On June 10, 2015, Perkinson filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court.  In his petition, Perkinson again cited ineffectiveness of counsel, both trial and appellate.  Perkinson's appointed trial attorney, Christopher Paul, had no experience with death penalty cases at the time he was appointed.  More troubling was attorney Alan Medof, whom Perkinson's mother hired.  Medof was a Florida criminal lawyer who had practiced briefly in Georgia during the 1980s.  Like Paul, Medof had no death penalty experience and further, had never tried a murder case.  Two years before Perkinson's trial, during which he had admitted he had fallen asleep,  Medof had been suspended by the Florida State Bar for his crack cocaine addiction.  Although he was reinstated after completing a rehabilitation program, he lied when he filed his motion to appear pro hac vice and stated that he had never been reprimanded by a court.  Medof also missed a pretrial hearing, was not prepared by the start of trial and during the trial was arrested for soliciting a prostitute.  

Perkinson also brought up the issue of mental retardation, claiming that his counsel only had ten days before the start of trial to prepare his mental retardation defense, of which they had no experience.

In January of 2019, District Judge Amy Totenberg found in Perkinson's favor and concluded that his counsel was ineffective, that had the 1999 jury had all the evidence from social workers and former teachers, they would have found him intellectually disabled and that a death sentence was excessive due to his cognitive defects.  In so finding, Eric Perkinson's death sentence was overturned.  As of the time of this writing, a new trial date has yet to be set.

Perkinson remains incarcerated at Telfair State Prison in Helena, Georgia. 

Louis Nava's classmates, in the wake of his murder, created the Louis Nava Memorial Garden at Dunwoody High School.  It was officially dedicated in May of 1999.

In 2008, the Nava/Breffle Wrestling Club was established in Dunwoody.  Named for Louis and for Dunwoody High student Doug Breffle, who had died in 2002 following a car accident, the Club teaches wrestling to children aged 6 to 14.     

Louis' final resting place (photo source)

 Sources:

The Atlanta Journal Constitution (02/05/19),  Judge Throws Out Death Sentence Involving Dunwoody Teen.

CBS46 (2019).  Dunwoody Family Angry After Federal Judge Overthrows Death Sentence of Son's Murderer.

Find a Grave (2021).  Louis G. Nava.  

Georgia Department of Corrections (2021). 

Perkinson v. Chatman, USDC No. 4:15-CV-0101-AT (2019).  

Perkinson v. State, 542 S.E.2d 92 (2001).

Perkinson v. State,  610 S.E.2d 533 (2005)

Perkinson v. State, 279 Ga. 232.

The Saga of Audrey Marie Hilley: The Black Widow of Alabama

 

Marie Hilley at the Atlanta airport, January 20, 1983 (photo source)

The End at the Beginning

Thursday, February 26, 1987 had been a nasty weather day in Anniston, Alabama.  It had started raining on Saturday the 21st, raining solidly through Tuesday, leaving everything soggy and bitterly cold.  The rain had picked up again that Thursday, accompanied by gusty winds that blew as hard as 17 miles per hour and with temperatures that hovered in the forties.  

Sue Craft was driving home, hoping to be safely inside on this gloomy day, when she spotted . . . something on her neighbor's patio.  It was crawling across the patio deck and it alarmed Sue enough that she called another neighbor, Janice Hinds.  Janice was horrified to discover that the something Sue had seen was in fact a woman, wearing dirty clothing soaked through from the rain.  She told Janice that her car had quit running a few miles away and she had alternately walked and crawled to where she was.  .  When asked her name, she either couldn't or wouldn't say but was in agreement with both Janice and Sue, who had come over to offer assistance, calling for the police and an ambulance.  In an abundance of caution, Janice and Sue left the woman on the patio but covered her with a plastic sheet and stayed with her until authorities could arrive. 

Neither of them had any idea that the hottest news story in town had not only just been resolved but would very soon add yet another mysterious layer to an already incomprehensible tale.

Frank and Marie Hilley (photo source)

An Unexpected Death

Frank Hilley was 45 years old in the spring of 1975.  A native of Alabama, he had served his country in the Navy before returning to Anniston to work at the Standard Foundry.  He had married Audrey Marie Frazier during one of his Navy leaves in 1950, while Marie was still a junior in high school.  The couple had two children, Mike and Carol, and seemed to lead a secure, happy life that was the essence of the American dream.  Frank was a reliable employee and a steady, easygoing man, at least up until 1974, when his previously robust health began to take a turn for the worse.

What started with unexplained and intermittent fevers in the fall of 1974 became stomach cramps, vomiting, severe diarrhea, sweats, chills and disorientation by the spring of 1975.  One evening, after Marie found Frank wandering aimlessly in the family's yard looking for the car and seeming to not recognize her, she had him admitted to the local hospital.

Doctors there believed he was suffering from infectious hepatitis and began treatment.  Despite the treatment, Frank would go from hallucinating, not even recognizing his own sister at one point, to being lucid and telling her that if something wasn't done, he wouldn't be long for this world.    

On Sunday, May 25, 1975 Frank Hilley's premonition proved correct and he died early that morning.  The burial policy he had taken out on himself for five thousand dollars only months before his untimely death paid for his burial at Forestlawn Gardens in Anniston.  His son Mike, a pastor, presided over the service and funeral.  

By all appearances, Marie was a grief-stricken widow but Frank's mother Carrie and his sister Freeda had concerns.  Frank was one of several people who died in Anniston that day and his death was considered a tragedy but not an intentional one.  At least not then. 

Frank had always been considerate and modest with finances.  He made sure that bills were paid on time and he wasn't one to want or need the newest and nicest item.  He had no idea that Marie had not only run up department store bills all over Anniston but had taken out a loan against their car and she was behind all on those debts.  He had made sure Marie was provided for in the event of his death and she received $30,000 in life insurance benefits (over $150,000 in 2021 money).  She went on a spending spree with her financial windfall, buying herself a new car, expensive clothing and jewelry, as well as furniture and housewares.  Even the food she purchased  was now costly, specialty items.  She gifted her son Mike and his wife Teri with clothing and appliances, gestures that left them feeling more embarrassed than grateful.  Marie's teenaged daughter Carol, who had always been very close with Frank and who had endured a tempestuous relationship with Marie practically all her life, was not left out - she was given a car, a bicycle, a stereo and new furniture for her bedroom.  Marie even purchased her mother Lucille, who had been living with the Hilleys since Marie's father died, a diamond ring.  

Frank, Marie, Mike and Carol Hilley (photo source)

Mike and Teri had moved back to Anniston following Frank's death and in with Marie, Lucille and Carol.  Later, Teri would remember her illness starting the day after her father-in-law died.  At the time, she attributed her nausea and loss of appetite to her early stages of pregnancy.  Cramps and pains in her legs and stomach, combined with vomiting, sent her to the hospital.  The doctor attending her worried that she had contracted hepatitis from Frank and wanted to give her a shot of gamma globulin for protection but felt her obstetrician from East Point, Georgia should be consulted first.  Marie volunteered to make the call for Teri and returned to say that he had approved the injection. 

Teri seemed to recover after receiving the injection and she was released from the hospital.  She made a trip to her obstetrician in East Point, Georgia for a routine examination and she mentioned having the injection.  The doctor was horrified, saying that he had instructed Marie to tell Teri's doctors not to give her the injection.  Teri figured it was a basic misunderstanding, given Marie's grief and suffering over Frank.      

Within a few days of returning to Alabama and Marie's home, Teri got sick once again.  This time, she began hemorrhaging.  She was rushed to the hospital but suffered a miscarriage and lost the baby.

She had barely recovered from that when the intense nausea reared up again and now, Teri had difficulty breathing.  Severe vomiting and pains in her abdomen overnight left her delirious by morning.  She was so weak and dehydrated by the time she arrived once again at the hospital, she needed intravenous feeding.  

In all, Teri would be admitted to the hospital four different times while living with Marie throughout  the summer and fall of 1975 and into the winter of 1975/1976.

The Fires and Break-Ins

Less than a year after Frank's death, the unexplained fires started.  Perhaps coincidentally,  the first one happened the night before Mike and Teri were due to move out of Marie's home and into their own apartment.  A neighbor spotted smoke coming from the Hilley residence and called the fire department.  Mike and Teri were at church, where Mike was preaching a Sunday evening service, and Carol was out with friends.  Neighbors were frantic that Marie's mother Lucille, very often bedridden, was trapped in the house.  As the firefighters were preparing to rush into the house and search for Lucille, Marie drove up with her mother, stating they had gone for a ride.  

The fire itself had done almost no damage but the thick smoke was another story.  The extensive damage meant that Marie, Carol and Lucille could not stay there, forcing the trio to move with Mike and Teri into their new apartment.  

The origin of the fire was not determined.  Marie blamed it on a heating and air conditioning unit that had been installed by the gas company and filed a lawsuit against them.  The suit was eventually dismissed.

The repairs to the Hilley home took nearly a month.  As Marie, Carol and Lucille were preparing to move back, a fire broke out in the apartment next door to Mike and Teri's.  Although the flames were confined and never breached the Hilley apartment, the smoke that infiltrated the entire building caused damage to their apartment.  Mike and Teri were forced to move back into Marie's house until they found another apartment that was close to Mike's church.

The origin of that fire, like the one a month earlier, was never determined. 

In March of 1976,  Marie reported a burglary in which jewelry, a hair dryer and two guns were stolen.  

Several days later, she returned home after dark and found that her kitchen light was being turned on and off.  She contacted police, who found no one in the home.  

A few weeks later, Marie called the police to report receiving nuisance phone calls and threatening notes.  The responding officer found her to be genuinely fearful and convinced that someone was out to get her.  She had no idea who could be harassing her or would send her notes in an attempt to get her to move.  The note was sent out to be processed for fingerprints but nothing ever turned up.     

Only a short time later, Marie called the Anniston Police Department to complain of gas fumes, which she said had been present for weeks.  An investigation by an officer found no leaks.  Marie's next door neighbor, Doris Ford, stated around the same time that the gas on her outdoor grill had been turned all the way up and the fumes could be smelled outside.  

A month later, a fire broke out in Marie's hall closet just before four in the morning.  There was little damage and police found no signs of a break-in.  

Two days later, Marie's neighbor Doris Ford returned home to discover there had been a fire in her hall closet that had, fortunately, burned itself out.  As at Marie's house, there was no sign of forced entry and nothing was missing.  Marie admitted she had a key that Doris had given her for emergencies but she said she had not been in the house and had seen nothing out of the ordinary.

In early January of 1977, Marie's mother Lucille died after suffering with cancer for several years.  Marie sold Lucille's house, which her mother had continued to own even after moving in with Marie, and pocketed the proceeds from the sale.  

Marie's calls to the police department continued after her mother's death.  Her reports were mainly of nuisance phone calls in which someone was trying to scare her.  After the police requested that the phone company put a trace on her line, the flowerpots at the Hilley home were turned upside down and food disappeared off the kitchen counter - but the phone calls ceased.  Doris Ford, Marie's next door neighbor, however, began getting phone calls of her own; thirty-two over that same month, according to her.  The police department asked the phone company to put a trace on the Ford telephone line and found that one call she received came from the company that Marie Hilley worked for.  Marie denied knowing anything about the call and once again, began to report nuisance calls ringing at her home.  

In  addition to the continuing nuisance calls, Marie said she was being followed by a strange car and/or a strange man, that the windshield of her car was broken out and even Carol's car was stolen (Carol would later confess to her brother Mike that she and her mother had driven the car to a remote part of town, put a rag in the gas tank and burned it for the insurance money).   

In the summer of 1978, Marie claimed her boss propositioned her, leading her to lose her job.  The firm, however, said that she had difficulty getting along with other employees.  It had been a pattern in Marie's life from the time she began working:  despite her efficiency and reliability, Marie was a chronic job hopper.   She would reportedly make friends quickly at work, impress everyone with her skills and then something would happen that would cause her to believe that people were turning against her or she was being hurt in some way, isolating her, and then she would leave.  For example, after losing her job with the gas company, Marie told her family that a female co-worker had turned against her and caused the other women to turn on her as well, leaving Marie's boss no choice but to fire her.  

Marie also reportedly had a pattern of her professional relationships with her male bosses becoming very personal.  During Frank's illness in 1974 or 1975, when he had come home from work early after getting sick, he had found Marie in bed with her boss.  

Even the police were fair game.  Marie had found one of the responding officers to her calls so attentive - and attractive - that she began to ask for him directly.  During one call in response to a prowler looking in her bedroom window, he and Marie became lovers.  Her calls to the police station continued and he believed many of her complaints were nonsensical ones used as a pretext to get him to her house. 

In the latter part of 1978, Marie sold her house in Alabama and she and Carol moved to Florida to be with Mike and Teri, where they had settled.  Marie was a new grandmother but she was oddly distant from her grandchild and spent most of her time in her bedroom, reading books on mysteries and disappearances.  Despite being healthy since leaving Alabama several years earlier, Teri once again fell ill.  Her doctor thought it was her kidneys and advised rest and a better diet.  

If Marie had thought Florida would provide her with a fresh start, it did not work out that way.  She and Carol soon returned to  Anniston.  In January and February of 1979,  Marie took out life insurance policies on herself ($25,000) and on Carol ($14,000).   She soon added a family group policy, which would bring the combined total to $50,000 for Marie, nearly $40,000 for Carol and $25,000 for Mike.  

Caught

As Marie had sold her home, she and Carol moved in with Frank's mother, Carrie, who was getting on in years and needed additional looking after.  Shortly thereafter, a fire broke out in the laundry room, started by Marie's sleeping bag on top of the washing machine.  None of the smoke detectors went off; Marie had taken the batteries out of all of them, claiming they had been beeping and disturbing her.   The damage to the home from the fire was minimal.     

As had happened first to Frank and then to Teri Hilley, Carrie Hilley began to suffer with stomach pains, nausea and vomiting.  While Carrie was still ill, Carol too began to suffer with similar symptoms, as well as tonsillitis and fever.  Doctors couldn't seem to pinpoint exactly what was wrong with her. 

Marie was not only telling Mike that strange men were calling to harass her but he was getting phone calls about debts that she had run up, either with him as co-signer or debts in which she was to have taken over for him.  Mike discovered that while his mother was living with him and his family,  she had stolen one of their credit cards and charged it up to its limit, resulting in a large outstanding debt and threatened legal action against him and Teri.  He traveled to Alabama to attempt to settle the matter, where, one afternoon, he too had stomach cramps, dizziness and was generally unwell, much as sister and grandmother.  

For the next several months, Carol suffered repeated bouts of nausea, vomiting, leg pain, cramps, tonsillitis and delirium.  She started a routine of being admitted to the hospital, improving while there and be released, only to return within a day or two with the same recurring symptoms.  Doctors were at a loss as to what plagued her and Carol herself found it hard to believe she would ever again be healthy.  Marie began to tell the doctors that her daughter suffered with depression, rapid mood swings and violent outbursts.  Carol had always been tiny, barely over five feet and no more than a hundred pounds but now she appeared emaciated and bony.  She no longer had feeling in her feet and legs, making it impossible to walk, and her hands were quickly becoming as useless.  Carol Hilley was on borrowed time when a seemingly innocuous event saved her life - and changed Marie's forever.  

Arrested

Marie had been playing dangerous financial games for years, borrowing money all over Anniston on Frank Hilley's good name and defaulting on the loans.  She had come into money when Frank died, she had inherited (and sold) her mother's property upon Lucille's death and had sold the family home in Anniston before the abbreviated relocation to Florida - and yet somehow all that money was gone.  It finally caught up with her when she wrote nearly $5,000 (close to $17,000 in 2021) worth of checks on a closed account.   Charges were pressed against her and she was arrested.

At that same time, one of Carol's doctors, having recently read about arsenic poisoning and the symptoms, did the one test that none of her other doctors had done:  he checked her fingernails and toenails and found telltale white striations on each of them.  

Marie denied poisoning her daughter.  She admitted to giving Carol one shot of anti-nausea medication she said she got from a doctor and the jars of baby food she brought to the hospital were just that -- baby food to help Carol to eat something.  She also denied any wrongdoing with Frank, although she admitted giving him and her mother Lucille morphine injections.  At that same time, Carrie Hilley, Frank's mother, was dying.  Her declining health was officially from cancer but Frank's sister Freeda, as well as the police, wondered if Marie had done anything to help speed it along.    

Frank Hilley's body was exhumed, followed by Lucille Frazier's.  Various liquids and prescription bottles that had been in Marie's possession were sent off to the lab to be tested.  A press conference was called:  the chief toxicologist from Montgomery had driven to Jacksonville State University, just north of Anniston, to announce that "significant amounts" of arsenic had been detected in Frank's body but he demurred on stating absolutely that the poison had caused Frank's death.  Traces of arsenic were discovered in Lucille Frazier's tissue but more detailed tests would be required.  

Marie, meanwhile, remained in jail with her bail set at $10,000 on the charge of attempted murder and $2,000 on each charge related to the bad checks she wrote.  Asked by Marie's attorney to help to raise funds for bail, her son Mike couldn't do it.  He believed she needed to remain in jail, so that what remained of his family would be safe.  

Escape

Marie was overheard at the jail talking to a cellmate in which she was quoted as saying that if she got out on bail, she was going to run.  The information was passed along to the district attorney and to a bondsman, along with a request that her bond provisions be revoked, but she was released anyhow after five local residents, one of them a former employer of Marie's, posted bond.  

On Sunday, November 18, 1979 Carrie Hilley died.  Physicians at Stringfellow Hospital where she died said that preliminary tests done before her death had shown traces of arsenic.  An autopsy was ordered.

Law enforcement had bigger problems, however.  Marie's attorneys had checked her into a Rodeway Inn in Birmingham under an assumed name, hoping to get her away from the growing media publicity.  On that same Sunday that Carrie Hilley died, Marie Hilley fled.  

There had been a note left behind and the room made it appear as though a kidnapping had taken place but police believed that Marie Hilley herself had written the note before she took off.  A BOLO (be on the lookout) was issued for her.

(photo source)

Several weeks later, the tests on the Hilley family members came in.  Carrie Hilley did indeed have arsenic in her body but the amounts were small and investigators had no way of knowing whether the poison had been swallowed, injected or absorbed.  Her autopsy revealed her death was caused by cancer.  Lucille Frazier, Marie's mother, had died from natural causes.  

Frank Hilley, however, would be another matter entirely.  His death had absolutely been caused by arsenic poisoning, which had been given in small doses to him over a period of time until the last dose, which was a massive one. 

On January 11, 1980 Marie was indicted for first-degree murder by the Calhoun County grand jury.  When the car that authorities suspected Marie had stolen to get away was discovered across state lines in Marietta, Georgia, the FBI got involved.    After being told by many people that Marie was scrupulous about her appearance, the agency circulated flyers to beauty parlors and salons throughout the country.  Agents trolled fancy clothing stores and boutiques in Georgia, Florida and the Carolinas with Marie's picture, hoping to find her or locate someone who had seen her.  Even churches were contacted as Marie had always been a faithful churchgoer.  

Despite leads, the trail went cold and Marie Hilley was classified a long-term fugitive.  

John and Robbi (photo source)

John and Robbi

John Homan would later tell different stories of how he met his wife Robbi Hannon.  To authorities, he would say they met  in February of 1980 in Fort Lauderdale.  To his brother, he claimed they met at a cocktail party in Palm Beach.  To a co-worker in New Hampshire, he said that Robbi had been working as a prostitute when they met in a bar.  However and whenever they met, their relationship had progressed at warp speed,

John was living in Fort Lauderdale, where he had set up his own boat business called Crown Marine.  He was relatively comfortably off, having received inheritance from his mother's trust.  He didn't have many friends but those he did have he was very loyal to.  He was a quiet, introverted man who was uncomfortable with conflict and anger.  He and his wife Linda had divorced in 1979 and he wasn't single a year before he met Robbi.  

Robbi Hannon, like Marie Hilley, had an incredible knack for telling people what they wanted to hear.  John quickly fell in love with Robbi and became steadfastly devoted to her.  He had struggled all his life with not being the son his father had pushed him to be - ambitious, driven and strong - but Robbi loved him exactly as he was.  In no time, John and Robbi were living together.     

It was John's younger brother, who had used his inheritance to purchase land in New Hampshire, and who had come to Fort Lauderdale for a visit that lit the spark in John and Robbi to leave Fort Lauderdale, which was undergoing a construction boom, for the quiet and sleepy New Hampshire. 

In August of 1980, they made the move north to Marlow, New Hampshire, where his brother had bought property.  The small town seemed to suit them, especially its proximity to Keene, a city of less than 25,000 people with a state college, auto dealerships and fast food restaurants that was twenty minutes from Marlow and with more work opportunities for both of them.  Perhaps coincidentally, Keene bore a strong resemblance to Anniston, Alabama with its old downtown struggling to stay afloat with the newer commercial strip.  

John found work as a machinist at Findings, Inc., a company that made small parts from precious metals for use in jewelry.  Although he had claimed to not be a tool and die maker, he brought in a model locomotive with tiny parts that he had machined from raw stock and was hired.  His supervisors and co-workers found that John was a reliable, dependable worker who was always on time and worked without fuss.  One of his supervisors would later say that John was one of the best machinists to ever work at Findings, Inc.

Robbi, with her experience in shorthand and typing, confident, well-spoken and with her melodic southern accent, quickly found employment at Central Screw Corporation, a company that manufactured screws and other fasteners.  What started as a temporary position became a permanent one as a customer service clerk, where she dealt with General Motors, Ford and Chrysler and knew not only Central Screw's more than a hundred different types of sheet-metal screws and fasteners but what the customer's needs and requirements were versus what was in stock.  

At her new job, Robbi quickly stood out, thanks not only to her southern accent but her carefully cultivated and expensive wardrobe. especially compared to the other women who dressed casually as they had little to no contact with the public.  She seemed to make friends at work quickly but without ever "belonging" to one particular work group and she appeared to enjoy flirting with and teasing her male coworkers.  Robbi shared her life story with many of her coworkers:  she had only lived the first few years of her life with her parents before she and her younger sister went sent to Tyler, Texas to live with their wealthy grandparents.  She had married her husband, a man by the name of Joseph Hannon, right after high school and they had been blissfully happy, living the best life and wanting for nothing - until he and their two children had been killed in a car accident.  This, she explained, is why she did not have a driver's license and John drove her everywhere; she simply could not bear to drive a car.  

John Homan appeared to be the perfect, attentive husband, from driving Robbi to and from work (coordinating with his own work schedule) to bringing her the paperback romance novels she enjoyed so much to drawing a bath for her and rubbing her back.    The two lived modestly but told friends they were expecting an inheritance from the estate of Robbi's first husband. 

As had happened in the life of Marie Hilley, Robbi Hannon Homan's work friendships began to break down and erode.  When she told her bosses at Central Screw only nine months into her employment that she was going to Texas for a while to finish settling her late husband's estate, more than a few of her coworkers were relieved to see her go.

Robbi left New Hampshire in August and by September, she was working as a typist for a Houston company called Gulf Coast Investors.  Robbi told her new acquaintances in Texas the same story about how her first husband Joseph Hannon and their two children had died in a car accident and that she was happily married to John Homan, who was in New Hampshire.  She told them, however, that she was in Texas to settle the estate of her wealthy sister and brother-in-law who had died a year or so earlier and named Robbi as their primary beneficiary.  According to Robbi, she and John were thinking of leaving New Hampshire.  Once she received her inheritance, she would finance a boat building business for John and she herself would like to have her own dress shop.  

The truth was that John wasn't certain that Robbi would return to New Hampshire.  They hadn't been getting along and her trip to Texas was in actuality a trial separation.

Robbi only remained in Texas until October, when she returned to New Hampshire and to John.  She was hired back with Central Screw and although her bosses were impressed with her work performance, as they had been only months earlier, she did not win any new friends.  She continued to tell her story of being raised by wealthy grandparents and living in the lap of luxury with her first husband and children but she had something new to add:   she was suffering from a blood disease with no cure and she was dying.  That was why, during her last stint with Central Screw, she had been stricken down several times with migraines that required her to leave work.   

In 1982, Robbi had also added a new family member, a twin sister by the name of Teri Martin.  According to Robbi, Teri had lived all over the U.S. and was married to a military man, although she was having marital problems and unsure of what to do next.

By September of 1982, Robbi's health had deteriorated so badly that after suggestions that she might travel to Germany to see a specialist, she informed her coworkers that once again, after nine months of work, she was leaving and heading to Texas.  This time though, she was going to be seeing doctors and receiving treatment.  She would stay with Teri and John would remain behind in New Hampshire, where he could continue working.

 

Robbi left New Hampshire for Dallas, Texas but only remained in Dallas for three days, before arriving in Pompano Beach, Florida on September 23, 1982.  She stayed at a Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge that was, coincidentally, only three miles from where Mike and Teri Hilley had lived years earlier.   

That same day, a bleached blonde by the name of Teri Martin applied for work at a local employment agency.

For the next nearly two months, Teri worked as a secretary before telling her boss that her twin sister Robbi had died and she would be going to New Hampshire to take care of things.  On Wednesday, November 10, 1982, she made a phone call to John Homan at Findings, Inc. to tell him that Robbi Hannon Homan was dead.  The following day, Thursday, November 11, she boarded a flight to Boston, where John Homan picked her up.  

Teri (photo source)

Teri

According to Teri, it was Robbi's wish that Teri and John, being her own only living relatives, should console each other over the loss of Robbi.  Robbi had left a letter to Teri expressing her wish that Teri and John look after each other, as well as her desire for no type of funeral or memorial service.  Her body was to be donated to the Texas Medical Research Center.  Teri, saying she was divorced and with her twin sister dead, said she had nothing to hold her in Dallas any longer.  

On Friday morning, November 12, John Homan and Teri Martin arrived at the office of the Keene Sentinel with information for Robbi's obituary.  The handwritten notes that Teri provided mentioned a third sister, a Jean Ann Trevor of White Plains, New York (contradictory to Robbi's letter claiming that John and Teri were her only living relatives).  Robbi's obituary, John and Teri were told, would run in Saturday's edition.

Besides her very blonde hair, Teri Martin was different from Robbi Homan in other ways.  She was slimmer and smaller in appearance, wearing tighter and more revealing clothing than Robbi had worn.  A chain smoker, she had a more gregarious and outgoing personality than Robbi had displayed and while Robbi had been an excellent homemaker, Teri preferred watching television and reading books.   

Despite the differences, a group of employees from Central Screw who were introduced to Teri that Friday, after Teri wanted to meet Robbi's friends and see where she had worked, had no doubt that Teri Martin and Robbi Homan were one and the same.  They were puzzled as to why that would be - and disgusted.  John too confused them.  He seemed legitimately grief-stricken, with dark circles under his eyes and on the verge of tears. 

Like Robbi, Teri was well-spoken and possessed excellent secretarial skills.  She was quickly placed as a temporary executive secretary at Book Press in Brattleboro, Vermont, twenty minutes from Keene and within two weeks her position was made permanent.  Like he had with Robbi, John settled into a routine with Teri that included breakfast at a restaurant in Marlow and a stop to pick up books to read.  She had apparently stepped into her late sister's shoes without so much as a blink.  Although John had made it known to his friends that he had given Teri the master bedroom while he slept on the couch, within a few weeks of her arrival he confided that they were sharing the bedroom.  

The group of friends at Central Screw remained interested in why Robbi would be masquerading as Teri.  Using the obituary that had been published in the paper, they discovered that the institute Robbi had supposedly left her body to did not exist.  Neither did the church in Tyler, Texas that Robbi was said to be a member of.  Calls to a reporter in Tyler, Texas unearthed that there had been no record of a Robbi Homan dying on November 10, 1982 or anytime around then.  Furthermore, no record could be found of the husband and children Robbi had said died in a car accident years earlier.  The search was expanded to the greater Dallas area, with the same result.

With so many people in a small town questioning the alleged death of Robbi Homan and the presence of Teri Martin, it was only a matter of time before the story was repeated to local law enforcement.  Senior Detective Bob Hardy had made his own calls to Texas, including to the police departments there, and had come up with zero on Robbi Homan.  A search for Jean Ann Trevor of White Plains, New York, the supposed third sister, also came up empty.  Thinking some kind of tax fraud was involved, Hardy contacted the New Hampshire office of the IRS.   

A  Tangled Web 

In the end, it was a woman by the name of Terry Lynn Clifton that led to the undoing.  Clifton was a fugitive wanted on federal drug charges and had a lengthy list of aliases.  The Vermont State Police, who had been added to the law enforcement group checking into Robbi Homan/Teri Martin, believed that Teri Martin, working in their state at Book Press, might actually be Terry Lynn Clifton.   Teri Martin was stopped as she left work on January 12, 1983 and with a "We don't think you are who you say you are," she was taken to the Brattleboro Police Department.

She quickly confessed.  If the police were expecting to have found Terry Lynn Clifton, they were in for a much bigger surprise.  After having her rights read to her, she admitted that she was not Teri Martin or Robbi Hannon Homan but Audrey Marie Hilley, wanted in Alabama on some check charges.  The cops were stunned when they discovered that not only did she indeed have two outstanding bad check charges but she was also wanted on charges of murder and attempted murder.  

"The police accused me of poisoning my daughter," she said in a matter of fact manner. "That's so ridiculous.  Why would I do that to my own daughter?"

Marie Hilley was returned to Alabama to stand trial for murder and attempted murder.  John Homan, who had been told of his wife's deception at the Brattleboro, Vermont police station, and who had believed that both Robbi and Teri had been real and Teri had been Robbi's twin sister, chose to stand by her and made the journey to Alabama.  

Marie in custody, March 3, 1983 (photo source)

While in custody at the Calhoun County Jail and awaiting trial, Marie allegedly told a cellmate by the name of Priscilla Lane that she had killed her first husband by poisoning, an act she had accomplished by placing a little arsenic at a time in Frank's food.   Lane testified against Marie as a prosecution witness, recounting their conversation.  

Marie took the stand during her trial only once, to rebut a statement she had given four years earlier about giving Carol injections, but otherwise did not give testimony to the jury.  Carol Hilley, now 23 years old, and still not weighing 100 pounds, had regained use of her arms and legs following extensive physical therapy although she still had days where it was difficult for her to button her shirt and pants or put earrings in.  Although she had accepted that her mother had tried to kill her, she still ached for her mother's affection and acceptance.  That, however, didn't stop her from testifying against Marie.

A packed courtroom for the trial of Marie Hilley (photo source)

The motive, prosecutors believed, was mainly financial.  Marie wanted, she needed, money and the things money could get:  material items and security.  The easiest way for her to get that money was through life insurance payouts.  They also speculated that Frank Hilley, after finding Marie in bed with her boss, had been planning to divorce her, something she could not abide by.  

Although no charges were brought, prosecutors also believed that Marie had poisoned her son Mike and his wife, Teri.  

The jury found Marie guilty of Frank's murder and guilty of the attempted murder of Carol.  She was given 20 years on the attempted murder conviction and sentenced to life in prison on the murder conviction.   

Marie en route to court on June 6, 1983 (photo source)

On June 9, 1983, she became prisoner 135272 at the Julia S. Tutwiler State Women's Prison in Wetumpka, a town nearly 100 miles south of Anniston and less than 20 miles from the state's capital city of Montgomery.  Within a month of her sentencing, Marie's lawyers filed a request asking the trial judge to overturn the verdict and grant her a new trial.  That was denied.  The attorneys filed a request with the appeals court, which would be denied in the spring of 1985.

In the fall of 1983, only months after arriving at Tutwiler, guards there were tipped off that she was planning an escape, with the informant saying that Marie spoke of nothing but escape.  The warden spoke to Marie directly, who convincingly said that she had been the victim of lies from another inmate.  Only a few months later, it was Marie who was informing on a fellow prisoner she said was planning an escape.  

In the spring of 1984, less than a year into her prison sentence, Marie's security classification was adjusted to that of a medium security prisoner.  Only a year later, she was classified as minimum security status, meaning she was eligible to leave the prison.  

Not surprisingly, this did not sit well with Alabamans, who worried not only that Marie was using her charms to get into the good graces of the prison and legal system but could soon return to their community.  This was not helped by the fact that she would be eligible for parole in 1990. 

Marie's first outing from the prison was a short one of several hours with eight other inmates, all of whom were accompanied by the warden, to a restaurant in Montgomery.  She assured the warden and anyone who would listen that she was most interested in rehabilitating her image and would do nothing to destroy the trust the warden had placed in her.  Barraging the warden with letters, she was soon given an eight-hour, unaccompanied pass.  

By January of 1987, Marie had four successful eight-hour leaves under her belt.  She was therefore qualified for the next step:  a three-day furlough.  She walked out of Tutwiler on Thursday, February 19, 1987, where John Homan was picking her up.  She had no plans to return.  

John drove them to Anniston and that night, Marie called the local sheriff, as required, to inform him she was in his area.  For the next two days, they kept a low profile, staying in John's hotel room and only going out for walks after dark.

Marie was due back at Tutwiler on Sunday, February 22 by four o'clock.  That morning she told John that she wanted to visit her parents' graves alone.  They agreed to meet at a Waffle House at ten o'clock, leaving the hotel together around nine.  Shortly after that, John was observed sitting alone at the Waffle House.

Before noon, the local sheriff received a phone call from an agitated John Homan.  He asked the sheriff to come to his room at the hotel, where he presented him with a handwritten note from Marie.  The note stated that Marie was going to leave, asked for an hour's grace period, as well as forgiveness, and then requested that John destroy the note.  

Deputies were dispatched to bus terminals, taxi companies and the airport but they found no sign of Marie.  

The district attorney was outraged that Marie Hilley, with a known record of being a runner and a clear flight risk, had been given a three-day pass without supervision.  He hinted of opening a grand jury investigation into the decision made by prison officials to allow her furlough.  The Alabama Commissioner of Prisons launched an internal investigation.   

John took a lie detector test and although the results were not publicly disclosed, authorities announced he was cooperating with them and not considered an accomplice.  He remained tightlipped with the press, stating he could not speak for his wife.

No one believed that Mike Hilley or Carol Hilley had any idea where their mother might be.

(Photo source)

Marie had been missing for four days - fleeing on a Sunday as she had done back in 1979 - when Sue Croft and Janice Hinds discovered the barely-alive woman on the patio.  Both ladies noted that the woman's speech was slurred and when she attempted to put her shoe back on her bare foot, she was unable to.  The very effort, in fact, caused to her sink to the ground.  

The first police officer to arrive believed that the stranger underneath the plastic sheet was drunk or perhaps even suffering from some type of diabetic coma.  He propped her up, awaiting the ambulance.  When the ambulance arrived, only minutes later, she was unconscious.  En route to and very nearly at the hospital, she suffered a heart attack.    

The responding police officer had noted that her clothing matched that of clothing described in the fugitive poster for Marie Hilley and notified his superiors.  They arrived at the hospital and confirmed that the dirty, motionless woman was indeed Marie Hilley.

Amazingly, Sue Croft and Janice Hinds had known Marie.  Sue had been a senior at Anniston High School back in 1950, when Marie was a junior.  Janice's husband had grown up across the street from Marie.  /Although both had followed the story of the poisonings and her flight from justice for years, neither of them had recognized the figure on the patio as Marie Hilley.  

Doctors found that she was suffering from hypothermia and exposure to the cold and wet February weather, which had dropped to well below freezing in the evenings.  Despite the efforts of the medical personnel, Marie was pronounced dead at 5:06 p.m..  She was 53 years old.  

The coroner concluded that Marie had been in the woods for 24 to 36 hours before she found, leaving the question of where she had been from Sunday, February 22 until Tuesday, February 24 or Wednesday, February 25.  He also described the progression of hypothermia and what happened to her:  once body temperature drops below 98.6 degrees, the body speeds up breathing and initiates shivering to generate heat.  If temperature continues to fall, blood vessels in the arms and legs shut down, redirecting blood to vital organs and causing the extremities to become colder.  Metabolism speeds up in an effort to create heat.  Once the body temperature drops to 94 degrees, breathing slows and becomes shallow.  Mental capacity dims, causing an individual to become confused and irrational.  At 90 degrees, the shivering will stop, the body temperature drops more rapidly and mental capacity deteriorates.  The heart then becomes affected and begins rapid, irregular vibrations that can lead to a heart attack.

Large bruises and scratches on Marie's knees and legs evidenced her falling to her knees after the blood vessels in her legs shut down, forcing her to crawl some distance.  

The irony of Marie's death, that this very controlling woman so concerned over her appearance and so anxious to escape her humble upbringing should be found not far from her birthplace, dirty and unkempt, was not lost on some.  

Whatever Marie Hilley had planned, and wherever she had been in the days before she was found, was a mystery that would die with her.  So too would any type of confession or apology to Mike and Carol or any explanation of exactly what drove her to do what she did.    

It was raining on the day that Audrey Marie Hilley's body was committed to the earth.  Presided over by her son Mike and attended by a small group that included her daughter Carol and John Homan, Marie was buried at Forestlawn Gardens next to Frank, the man she had murdered. 

John Homan, who had left his brother and his friends in New Hampshire to follow Marie to Alabama, who had believed in first Robbi Hannon and then Teri Martin, had found work at an Anniston motel following Marie's trial.  He remained in Anniston after Marie died, keeping a very low profile and not speaking of her or their relationship.  In October of 1989, while attempting to break up a fight at the motel he worked at, he was shot and killed. 

Mike and Carol went on with their lives without either parent and away from the media.

The many faces of Marie Hilley (photo source)

Sources:

Anniston Star (2012).  A Quarter Century Later, the Audrey Marie Hilley Criminal Saga is Still Bizarre

Associated Press News (1987).  Last Chapter of Black Widow Saga. 

Ginsburg, Philip E.  Poisoned Blood: A True Story of Murder, Passion and an Astonishing Hoax, Open Road Media, 2018. 

Hilley v. State, 484 So. 2d 476 (1985).  

Murderpedia (2021).  Audrey Marie Hilley.  

New York Daily News, (2021).  A Black Widow's Tangled Web. 

Orlando Sentinel (1987).  Black Widow's Quest for Good Life Ends in a Lonely Death