The Execution of Lisa Montgomery

      On December 16, 2004 36-year-old Lisa M. Montgomery strangled 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett to death in her Skidmore, Missouri home. Following the murder Montgomery cut open the eight month pregnant victim and removed her unborn child, a baby she intended to pass off as her own. The two women met on an Internet chatroom called "Ratter Chatter."

     On December 17, the day after the murder, FBI agents arrested Montgomery at her farmhouse in Melvern, Kansas. The baby, rushed to a hospital, survived the traumatic event. A federal prosecutor charged Montgomery with the crime of kidnapping resulting in death, a capital offense.  

     Tried in October 2007 the jury found the defendant guilty as charged and recommended the death penalty. On April 4, 2008 the federal judge sentenced Lisa Montgomery to death. Incarcerated at the federal prison complex at Terre Haute, Indiana, she was the only women in the federal system on death row. If executed she would be the fourth woman his U.S. history to be executed by the federal government. 

     Montgomery's execution by lethal injection was scheduled for December 8, 2020. Her appeals attorneys alleged that their client's trial attorneys were incompetent in that they had failed to reveal to jurors the extent of the defendant's mental illness. On this and other procedural issues appeals courts have often ruled in favor of the government.

     Lisa Montgomery was executed on January 13, 2021.

No Place is Safe From Domestic Abuse

     Patrol officers spend much of their time responding to late night and early morning domestic violence calls involving alcohol, drugs, abusive men and battered women. Constant exposure to this underbelly of American culture is one of the drawbacks of police work.

     On January 15, 2012 at 7:40 in the evening police officers in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, a suburban community outside of Philadelphia, were summoned to a domestic disturbance at an unusual place. The 911 call originated from the maternity ward in Lower Merion's Lankenau Hospital. The victim of the assault (her name was not made public) gave birth two days earlier.

     Richard Lavon Davis Jr. while visiting his girlfriend and the mother of his child became agitated when he and the new mother couldn't agree on the baby's name. Davis, who had been holding the infant, laid it in its crib when the argument heated up. After screaming and cursing he lost complete control of himself. The enraged father kicked a rolling table toward the chair where the mother sat. When she rose to her feet Davis punched her twice in the face knocking her onto the hospital bed. 

     The day after the maternity ward attack Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney Wallis Brooks charged the 23-year-old father with simple assault, a crime that carried a maximum sentence of five years.

     A year later Mr. Davis pleaded guilty to punching the new mother in the maternity ward. On February 15, 2013 Montgomery County Judge Joseph Smyth sentenced him to eight to twenty-three months in the county jail. The sentence included 96 hours of community service and mandatory domestic violence counseling.

     In speaking to the press following the sentencing hearing prosecutor Brooks said, "He assaulted a new mother and his conduct was outrageous. It's absurd that an argument over the name of the child would lead to this kind of physical violence against a defenseless woman who is just recovering from one of nature's most beautiful experiences, the birthing of a child."

     The convicted man's attorney, Gregory Nestor, told reporters that his client was "Quite remorseful about what he did." The lawyer, in speaking highly of his client, said, "That by coming into court and pleading guilty and accepting the sentence...indicates his acceptance of responsibility for his actions."

    The sentence in this case was an insult to criminal justice. If Davis was capable of hitting the mother of his 2-day-old baby what else was he capable of? 

Murdering Jocelyn Earnest: A Circumstantial Case

     On December 19, 2007 a friend discovered the body of 38-year-old Jocelyn Earnest just inside the front door of her house in Pine Bluff, Virginia. The victim had been shot in the back of the head. Next to her body lay a .357 magnum revolver and a typewritten suicide note that in part read:

     To Mom
          I'm sorry for what I've done. Please forgive me. Wes [the victim's estranged husband] has put us in such a financial bind--can't recover. My new love will not leave the family.
     Love,
     Jocelyn

     The heat inside Earnest's house had been jacked up to 90 degrees and there were no signs of forced entry. The dead woman's dog, a black Lab, was locked in a crate without food or water in a back bedroom.

     Investigators immediately suspected that Jocelyn Earnest was murdered and the scene had been staged to look like a suicide. Detectives knew that people who kill themselves and leave notes rarely type them. In searching Jocelyn's two home computers investigators did not find drafts of this document. And the word choice and syntax of the note were inconsistent with the writing style found in the victim's handwritten journals. The police suspected that the furnace had been turned up to alter the body's decomposition rate to throw off the biological time of death determination. Apparently the killer wanted the police to believe Jocelyn had been killed earlier in the day, perhaps to support an alibi.

     Suspicion immediately fell on the victim's estranged husband Wesley Earnest who moved out of the house a year earlier. As an assistant high school principal he lived and worked 200 miles away in Chesapeake, Virginia. Jocelyn had been employed as a financial services manager in Lynchburg, Virginia. Although together they had been earning $200,000 a year they were deeply in debt. Wesley, over Jocelyn's objection, built a three million dollar, seven thousand square foot mansion on nearby lake property. The $6,000 a month mortgage on this second home they couldn't sell because it was financially under water put them $1 million in debt. On top of this Wesley Earnest found himself faced with the disastrous financial consequences of divorce.

     Wesley Earnest claimed he hadn't been to the Pine Bluff house for at least a year. After he moved out Jocelyn changed the locks. Investigators, however, could connect him to the crime scene in two ways: he purchased the .357 magnum and two of his latent fingerprints were on the typewritten note next to the body. Two days before his estranged wife's death the suspect borrowed a pickup truck from a friend. When he returned the vehicle two weeks later it had new tires. Detectives believed Wesley changed out the tires to avoid a crime scene tire track match-up.

     Investigators also read the victim's journal, handwritten in seventeen notebooks. Several of the entries, however, written from Jocelyn's point of view were in Wesley Earnest's hand. These forged additions portrayed the suspect in a favorable light. However, in one of the notebooks the victim had written: "If I die, Wesley killed me and he probably shot me."

     Wesley admitted to detectives that he had girlfriends but claimed that his wife knew about these affairs and approved of them. At his place of employment in Chesapeake, however, he told co-workers he was single.

     In May 2009 the $3 million house on the lake burned to the ground. Cause and origin fire investigators ruled the cause "undetermined." Because the place was heavily insured the fire accrued to Wesley's financial benefit.

     Wesley Earnest went on trial in March 2010 for the murder of his wife. His attorney, in an effort to uncouple the defendant from the typewritten crime scene note, contested the forensic reliability of latent fingerprint identification. (Perhaps the defendant would have better been served by offering an innocent explanation for the presence of his prints.) The defense attorney also put his client on the stand to testify on his own behalf. The defendant told the jurors that he purchased the .357 revolver as a gift for his wife so she could protect herself. He portrayed Jocelyn as having been distraught over their financial problems. He also said she was having trouble with the woman who was her new lover.

     The jury, a few days after listening to the defendant, after deliberating less than four hours, found him guilty of murdering his wife.

     A month following the conviction, before Mr. Earnest was sentenced, a posting on a newspaper web site revealed that the jurors had read Jocelyn's journal. The trial judge did not want the jury to see this evidence. The notebooks were inadvertently placed into a box that found its way into the jury room. In July 2010 the judge declared a mistrial.

     In November 2010, in Amherst, Virginia, Wesley Earnest went on trial again for the murder of his wife. His attorney, once again, put him on the stand to claim his innocence. On cross-examination the prosecutor got him to admit that in 2006 he forged entries into his wife's journal. When asked how he got into the Pine Bluff house he had been locked out of, he said he climbed through an unlocked window. In so doing the defendant revealed to the jury how he may have entered the house to murder his wife. The second jury found the defendant guilty of first-degree murder. He was subsequently sentenced to life in prison.

     In December 2012 a three-judge panel of the Virginia Court of Appeals upheld the murder conviction and life sentence for Wesley Earnest.

     No one saw Wesley Earnest enter the Pine Bluff house and shoot his wife. No one claimed he confided to them he committed the crime. And he never confessed to the police. All the prosecutor had was what looked like a staged suicide, a motive and a pair of latent prints on a suspect suicide note. But, with these two juries the prosecution had enough evidence to convict.     

The Dr. Bing Liu Murder-Suicide Case

     In May 2020 37-year-old Dr. Bing Liu resided with his wife in a townhouse on the 200 block of Elm Court in Ross Township, Pennsylvania, a suburban community just north of Pittsburgh. A University of Pittsburgh research assistant professor in the Computational and Systems Biology Department, Dr. Bing worked under Ivet Bahar, founder of the University Bahar Laboratory. The computer scientist, using computational models to study the biological process of the coronavirus, was on the verge of making significant findings regarding the cellular mechanisms of the virus.

     A native of China, Dr. Bing earned his Ph.D. in computer science at the National University of Singapore. He had been a postdoctoral fellow at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University before joining the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh.

     Dr. Bing, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was working at home. Sometime during the morning of Saturday, May 2, 2020 Dr. Bing's acquaintance, 46-year-old Hau Gu, a software architect who lived in the suburban Pittsburgh metropolitan community of Franklin Park, entered Dr. Bing's townhouse through an unlocked door. Once inside the dwelling Hau Gu shot Dr. Bing in the torso, neck and head. After killing Dr. Bing Hau Gu walked to his car parked nearby. Once inside the vehicle, instead of driving away, Hau Gu committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.

     Dr. Bing's wife, upon her return to the townhouse at noon that day discovered her husband's body. An hour later Hau Gu's body was found in his car.

     Hau Gu earned a bachelor and a master's degree in computer science from Tongji University in Shanghai, China. In the late 1990's, after arriving in the United States he earned a master's degree in software engineering at East Tennessee State University.

     A naturalized U.S. citizen Hau Gu had worked since 2004 at the Eason Corporation, a company based in Ireland with an office in Pittsburgh.

     On May 5, 2020 Ross Township detective Brian Kohlhepp informed reporters that Dr. Bing's murder had nothing to do with his coronavirus research. As for motive, the detective, being intentionally vague, said the murder involved a "lengthy dispute regarding an intimate partner."

Dr.Thomas Woodrow Price: A Headmaster's Double Life

     In 2007 Dr. Thomas Woodrow Price, known to his friends as "Woody," became the headmaster of the Branson School, a private college preparatory institution in California's upscale Marin County in the San Francisco bay area. Students of the school--320 of them--paid an annual tuition of $39,475.

     The 54-year-old headmaster and his wife resided in the suburban community of Ross. Price's wife was the principal of the Prospect Sierra School, a private preparatory institution in El Cerrito, California. Dr. Price and his wife exemplified the upper middle class rewards of higher education and ambition. They were highly respected members of their affluent community.

     Thomas Price earned a master's degree in education administration from Columbia University in New York City. He went on to acquire a doctorate in education leadership from the University of Pennsylvania, another Ivy League school. Before moving to Marin County he held administrative positions at the Newman School in New Orleans and the Abington Friends School in Philadelphia.

     On the evening of Friday October 3, 2014 deputies with the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office responded to a 911 call from a young man who said his 21-year-old girlfriend was holed up in a hotel room doing drugs with an older man. The 911 caller identified his girlfriend as Brittany Hall and said she and the man were staying at the Hyatt Place off Highway 50 in Rancho Cordova, a suburban community 15 miles east of Sacramento. The hotel was located about 100 miles from Dr. Price's home in Ross, California.

     When Dr. Price answered his hotel room door he came face-to-face with two sheriff's deputies who asked about Brittany Hall. From the hallway outside of the single room the officers saw a young blond woman lying on the bed. They shouted her name but she didn't respond. The deputies pushed past the headmaster into the room where they revived the young woman who was obviously under the influence of narcotics.

      One of the officers described the hotel room as a "den of drug activity." Deputies seized, among drug paraphernalia, quantities of methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine and prescription pills. The man who rented the hotel room identified himself to the deputies as Dr. Thomas Price, the head of a prestigious prep school in Marin County.

     Officers booked Brittany Hall, a resident of Elk Grove, California, into the Sacramento County Jail on charges of drug possession with the intent to distribute. Dr. Price was booked on the same charges. The next day the headmaster posted his $75,000 bond and was released. Brittany Hall spent the weekend behind bars before being bailed out.

     Shortly after his arrest Dr. Price resigned from the Branson School. Although he told investigators that Brittany Hall was a casual hookup, evidence surfaced that he had been involved with her for up to two years. At any rate it became obvious that Dr. Thomas Price had been living a double life.

     On April 2, 2015 Dr. Price pleaded no contest to a pair of misdemeanor drug possession charges in return for three years probation. Brittney Hall received probation as well.

A Prenuptial Murder

     Billy Brewster and Na Cola Franklin lived in an apartment complex in Whitehall Township outside of Allentown, Pennsylvania with their three children. The couple was scheduled to be married at ten in the morning of Saturday, August 11, 2012. Brewster's cousin, Nakia Kali and his wife Monique had traveled to eastern Pennsylvania from Illinois to attend the wedding. They were staying in the apartment with the 36-year-old and his wife-to-be.

     Just after midnight on the morning of the wedding day Billy Brewster and his visitors returned to the apartment after being out for the evening. Two hours later, when Billy, Na Cola and Nakia were in the living room, Na Cola and Billy started arguing. Monique Kali, from one of the bedrooms, heard the shouting. When she cracked the door open and looked into the living room she saw a large blood stain on the front of Billy Brewster's shirt and Na Cola Franklin swinging a kitchen knife. Afraid that Na Cola Franklin would attack Nakia Kali with the weapon, Monique Kali charged into the room and tackled her. Nakia Kali knocked the knife out of Na Cola's hand, and one of Franklin's children carried the bloody weapon into the kitchen.

     Billy Brewster staggered out of the apartment onto the second-story landing and collapsed. Nakia Kali called 911.

     Police officers arrived at the scene at 2:19 in the morning. Less than an hour later Billy Brewster was pronounced dead at the Lehigh Valley Hospital. Na Cola Franklin, in custody at the Lehigh County Jail, had stabbed him twice in the heart.

     At her arraignment on the morning she was supposed to be standing at the alter Na Cola Franklin wept and said, "I did not kill him on purpose. I want my family back." The judge denied her bond.

     In May 2013 a jury in Allentown, Pennsylvania found Na Cola Franklin guilty of first-degree murder. Six weeks later the judge sentenced her to life in prison.

     Because Na Cola Franklin had killed the man she was within hours of marrying this homicide attracted more attention than it would have otherwise. Aside from the wedding element this was not an unusual case. Every year there are hundreds of homicides involving people who kill spontaneously for trivial reasons. In other words, not all murders come with a motive equal to the crime. Cases like this usually involve alcohol, drugs or mental illness. 

The Ralph Wald Murder Case

     In March 2013 Ralph Wald, a 69-year-old retired Army Lieutenant Colonel who fought in Vietnam, lived with his wife Johnna Flores in Brandon, Florida. The couple had been married since October 2012. She was 41.

     On Sunday, March 10, 2013 just before midnight Mr. Wald got out of bed for a drink of water. En route to the kitchen he saw Johnna on the living room floor having sex with a man he didn't recognize. He immediately returned to his bedroom where he picked up his .38-caliber revolver. Back in the living room a few moments later he shot his wife's sex partner in the stomach and head. The man died on the spot.

     After shooting 32-year-old Walter Lee Copley who turned out to be one of Johnna's old flames from Riverview, Florida, Mr. Wald called the police. To the dispatcher he said that he had just shot a man he caught "fornicating" with his wife in their home. After the call Mr. Wald laid down his gun and waited for the authorities to arrive at the death scene.

     Deputies with the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office took Mr. Wald into custody that night. The next day Hillsborough County Assistant State Attorney Chris Moody charged Ralph Wald with second-degree murder. A judge denied the murder suspect bail.

      The Wald case went to trial in Tampa, Florida just eleven weeks after Mr. Copley's death. Prosecutor Moody, in his opening remarks, told the jury that the defendant, who suffered from erectile dysfunction, killed the victim in a jealous rage.

     Defense attorney Joe Episcopo argued that his client thought Mr. Copley was an intruder raping his wife. Under Florida's stand your ground self-defense doctrine the defendant had no duty to retreat from his own home.

     On the second day of the three-day trial Johnna Flores took the stand for the defense. She testified that when her husband shot Mr. Copley she was "black-out" drunk from too much cognac. As a result she had virtually no memory of the shooting.

     The defendant followed his wife to the stand. According to him he and Johnna had planned to see a therapist regarding their sexual problem. "In fact," he said, "she would joke a lot with me that we were a perfect couple. She didn't want to do it and I couldn't do it." The witness said he hoped to salvage his marriage. "I love my wife," he said.

     Prosecutor Moody in his closing argument to the jury said this about Mr. Copley: "It's a personal insult to conduct that kind of activity in a man's home, his castle. It cuts to the quick. It's brazen. That kind of deep and personal insult when you find another man having sex in your living room and you can't have sex yourself. This would make you want to lash out--and the defendant did."

     Defense attorney Episcopo, in addressing the jurors, said, "This was a military man trained to know what to do with the enemy. You take your gun and you kill the enemy."

     On May 30, 2013 the jury, after just two hours of deliberation found the defendant not guilty. Ralph Wald embraced his two lawyers as his wife Johnna cried tears of joy.

     Members of Walter Copley's family who were in the courtroom when the verdict was read were obviously not happy with the outcome of the case.

     Following the acquittal the Wald/Flores marriage showed signs of strain. In October 2014 he filed for divorce but a few months later withdrew the case. Police arrested Flores for assault after she hit her husband with a picture frame. That case was dismissed.

     On Monday at ten-thirty in the morning, September 16, 2018, Mr. Wald called 911 to report his wife was unresponsive. Police officers arrived at the couple's house to find 48-year-old Johnna Flores dead on the living room couch. She had been shot with her husband's .38 caliber revolver, the gun he had used to kill Walter Conley. Police officers, at that time, did not take Mr. Wald into custody.

     In January 2020, Ralph Wald was charged with shooting his wife to death. Officers booked the 77-year-old into the Hillsborough County Jail on the charge of manslaughter with a firearm. 

     Mr. Wald's manslaughter trial was delayed several months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On January 19, 2023 before he could be tried for the killing, Ralph Wald died at his home. He had been suffering from dementia.  

The Heath Kellogg Counterfeiting Ring

     In the old days counterfeiters made funny-money the hard way: they laboriously, and with great skill and craftsmanship engraved metal facsimile plates. The quality of their fake twenties and hundred-dollar bills depended upon the engraving detail, the color of the ink and the softness, strength and feel of the paper used to approximate the government's secret blend. In those days only a handful of forgers possessed the skill and equipment needed to counterfeit money. This made them easy to identify and to catch. But with ink in their blood these men, the minute they got out of prison, returned to their illicit trades. The most skillful counterfeiters were driven by the challenge to produce fake money indistinguishable from the real thing.

     In the late Twentieth Century with advances in computer, photocopy and graphic arts technology counterfeiters produced half-decent fake bills by simply copying real money. At that time American paper currency was the easiest money in the world to counterfeit. In an effort to render bills more difficult to replicate, the U. S. Treasury Department redesigned the larger denominations. (At one time the government printed $500 and $1,000-dollar bills. The largest denomination today is $100.)

     The U.S. government's anti-counterfeiting measures included adding holograms, using inks whose colors change depending on the angle of light, and more color and larger presidential portraits. The first bills to be redesigned were the tens, twenties and fifties. The government didn't issue the new 100s until February 2011.

     The redesigned currency drove the amateurs out of the counterfeiting business but it didn't discourage counterfeiters like Heath J. Kellogg. In 2011 the 36-year-old counterfeiter owned and operated a graphic and web design shop in Marietta, Georgia. In February of that year, Kellogg, who has a history of forged check convictions, began producing fake $50-dollar bills. (Fifties are rarely counterfeited.)

     Kellogg approximated the security threads in government bills by using pens with colored ink that showed up under ultraviolet lamps. He printed out the facsimile fronts and backs separately then glued the sheets together.

     In May 2011 a bank in Atlanta sent the Secret Service seven fake 50-dollar bills. Three months later agents arrested a man in Conyers, Georgia who passed $50-dollar bills that matched the seven fakes that passed through the bank in Atlanta.

     The counterfeit bill passer had purchased his fake bills with a face value of $2,000 for $900 in genuine money. The arrestee identified Mr. Kellogg as the manufacturer of the fake fifties and agreed to cooperate with the Secret Service.

     Agents arrested a second member of the counterfeit distribution ring who also became an undercover Secret Service operative. On November 15, 2012, following the execution of two search warrants and two controlled undercover buys of counterfeit currency from the suspect, agents arrested Heath Kellogg.

     The Assistant United States attorney in the Northern District of Georgia charged Mr. Kellogg with conspiracy to manufacture and distribute counterfeit U.S. currency. Five other men were charged in connection with the passing of Mr. Kellogg's contraband product. The federal prosecutor believed that Kellogg and his accomplices injected $1.1 million worth of fake $50-dollar bills into the local economy.

     In November 2013 a jury found Mr. Kellogg guilty as charged. On March 24, 2014 the federal judge sentenced him to 12 years in prison.

     Two days after the counterfeiter's sentencing the judge sent accomplice Stacy P. Smith to prison for three years. Following his prison stretch he faced three years of supervised release. The judge sentenced four other members of the Kellogg counterfeiting ring in March 2014. Those sentences ranged from 18-months behind bars to five years probation.

Removing Judge John F. Russo

     John F. Russo at age 34 was admitted to the New Jersey Bar Association in 1997. In 2009 he became an administrative law judge, a position he held until 2015 when he was sworn in as an Ocean County Superior Court Judge.

     In 2017, after Judge Russo asked a testifying rape victim if she knew how to prevent sexual intercourse by closing her legs, Assignment Judge Marlene Lynch suspended him from the bench. Once re-instated Judge Russo's professional behavior continued to draw criticism.

     In August 2018, based on several complaints, the Supreme Court of New Jersey Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct charged Judge Russo with four counts of misconduct. He stood accused of asking court staff members to do him personal favors; asking preferential scheduling treatment for his son's child custody case; and refusing to recuse himself from a high school classmate's child support case.

     The most serious misconduct allegation against Judge Russo pertained to his asking an alleged rape victim, during cross-examination, if she had tried to close her legs to prevent the assault. The fact he had asked this question to another rape victim a year earlier made this complaint all the more disturbing.

     At his November 2018 disciplinary hearing in Trenton, New Jersey regarding the question he had asked the rape victim, Judge Russo claimed he was simply trying to help a "demoralized witness get re-engaged in the hearing."

     On May 26, 2020 justices on the New Jersey Supreme Court voted unanimously to permanently remove the 57-year-old judge from the bench. Chief Justice Stuart Rabner in his rationale for the decision wrote that Russo's rape case question was "neither appropriate nor tasteful. No witness, alleged victim or litigant should be treated that way in a court of law. The question also shamed the alleged victim by intolerably suggesting she was to blame."

     Chief Justice Rabner, regarding Russo's judicial behavior in general, wrote: "His conduct breached the public trust. His pattern of misconduct and unethical behavior not only undermined several court proceedings but also impaired his integrity and the judiciary's. His overall behavior reflects a lack of probity [trustworthiness] and fitness to serve as a judge."

Assisted Suicide: The Willard Skellie Case

     In America suicide is not a crime, but in all states but one, helping someone take their life is a form of criminal  homicide. In New York state the act of assisted suicide is prosecuted as second-degree manslaughter which carries a sentence of five to fifteen years.

     Willard F. Skellie and his wife Kathy lived in a two-story house in Glens Falls, New York 45 miles north of Albany. In 2012 Kathy Skellie suffered from mental illness and clinical depression. The 59-year-old woman also struggled with the side-effects of her anti-psychotic medication and experienced panic attacks whenever she left the house. As a result she spent days at a time locked into her bedroom. Early in 2012 she tried to kill herself with a knife.

     At the end of her rope, Kathy asked her 69-year-old husband to buy a gun and teach her how to use it. Knowing that she intended to use the weapon to commit suicide, Willard purchased a 12-gauge shotgun and showed his wife how to operate it. As he demonstrated how the shotgun worked Kathy made notes on a sheet of paper. When Willard loaded the gun he altered the first two rounds so they wouldn't fire, hoping that two misfires would discourage Kathy from killing herself. Kathy took the loaded weapon to her room.

     On Friday, December 14, 2012 Willard Skellie went deer hunting in the morning and didn't return until evening. He went to bed that night without checking on Kathy. Early the next morning he went hunting again and when he returned to the house a few hours later forced his way into his wife's bedroom. He found that Kathy had used the shotgun to shoot herself in the head. He called 911.

     Officers with the Glens Falls Police Department asked Mr. Skellie if he had helped his wife take her own life. After he denied helping her in any way a detective asked if he'd be willing to take a polygraph test at the state police headquarters in Greenwich, New York. Mr. Skellie agreed to take the lie detection exam.

     On Sunday, December 16, 2012 when detectives informed Mr. Skellie that the polygraph examiner believed he had lied when he denied helping his wife kill herself, he confessed to his role in her death. Mr. Skellie also admitted destroying the notes Kathy had taken regarding how to operate the shotgun. In his confession, Mr. Skellie said, "She was in mental pain from everything. She just couldn't take it anymore."

     On the day of Mr. Skellie's confession, Warren County District Attorney Kate Hogan charged him with tampering with physical evidence and second-degree manslaughter. Unable to post his $100,000 cash bail Mr. Skellies was incarcerated in the Warren County Jail.

     In May 2013, Willard Skellie pleaded guilty to helping his wife kill herself. Judge John Hall sentenced Mr. Skellie to five years probation and 1,000 hours of community service.