Killer Cases

An heir to the Halliburton oil dynasty fortune, Jill Halliburton Su was found by her son Justin dead in the bathtub at her upscale home in a Florida gated community in 2014. The security cameras weren’t working, a glass door had been shattered, and at least one room of the house had been ransacked. Police quickly focused on Justin as the prime suspect, grilling him intensely for hours. But despite the dramatic interrogation room sessions, the son never admitted guilt. A few days later, when crime scene DNA forensic tests were finally processed, Justin was cleared; and investigators were after a new suspect.

Makeva Jenkins seemed to have it all. A successful businesswoman and mother of three, she boasted on Facebook that she had grown her business to six figures. But just hours later, she was shot dead with a bullet to the head. Her husband, Euri Jenkins, told police a masked intruder had shot and killed his wife. Her close-knit family held a press conference, pleading for information about her killer. But the tale of the happy family fell apart when police arrested her husband in a murder-for-hire plot. Detectives also arrested 19-year-old Joevan Joseph, who told investigators Jenkins had hired him to kill his wife for the life insurance money.

In the spring of 1993, two newspaper carriers driving down a rural road spotted what they thought was a doll but which turned out to be, in fact, a newborn baby’s body. The coroner would determine that the baby had been born alive; but his origin was a mystery. The community called the baby Geauga’s Child, after the name of the county; they made clothes for his funeral and paid for his burial. Despite dozens of leads and even a hidden camera placed at the cemetery in hopes that the child’s mother would show up, no arrests were made for 25 years. Then, with modern DNA and familial genealogy techniques, the cold case was solved, identifying the boy’s mother as the now middle-aged Gail Eastwood-Ritchey. Years before, as a young unmarried woman, she had delivered the baby, stillborn, and placed his body in a trash bag in a wooded area. After a four-day trial, Eastwood-Richey was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 15 years.

Todd Kendhammer called 911 in a panic, describing a freak accident that occurred while he was driving with his wife, Barbara, in the passenger seat. He said a metal pipe had fallen from a passing truck, piercing the windshield and fatally injuring his wife. But police were suspicious of Todd’s responses in the interrogation room, when his story continued to change, and his alibi didn’t check out. Forensic details from the autopsy report cast further doubt on his story. Detectives came to believe Kendhammer strangled Barbara and staged the accident to cover his crime. He was convicted of first-degree murder. The couple’s two children, Jordan and Jessica, continue to believe their father is innocent. Jessica speaks in his defense in this episode.

In Florida in 2015, Amanda Colley was starting her life over after a contentious divorce and an ongoing custody battle with her ex-husband, James. The 36-year-old mother of two was excited about a new love interest, Lamar Douberly. Then, one summer night, she returned to a ransacked house. Lamar and two girlfriends arrived to join her as police were called. Then, gunshots rang out; glass shattered. After more shots, Amanda and her friend Lindy, a mother of three, were both dead and Rachel was injured. The gunman took off. James Colley was arrested 600 miles away and brought back to Florida to stand trial for double murder, with both Lamar and Rachel giving dramatic firsthand testimony.

Jazz trumpet player Scott Sessions failed to show up for a gig. A well-known local musician, he played with groups including the Elvis Experience band. His body was found a few days later, wrapped in plastic, partially burned and hidden in a forest. Investigators opened a murder case and traced his last known whereabouts to the residence of his new love interest, Heather Frank. Frank was nowhere to be seen, but investigators followed up on a tip about her former boyfriend, Kevin Eastman. Dogged detectives placed a tracking device on Eastman’s car. When they went to investigate, they discovered Frank’s body on the property of Eastman’s employer.

When Ohio State senior Reagan Tokes failed to respond to messages from her parents, they feared the worst. Their nightmare became a reality when a 911 caller reported the discovery of a female body in the local park. She had been shot execution style. Knowing a brutal killer was on the loose, detectives raced to solve the crime, gathering surveillance video and photos that tracked Reagan’s last moments. Brian Golsby, a previously convicted sex offender, was arrested. Golsby confessed to abducting Tokes, admitting he forced her to withdraw money from ATM accounts, but he adamantly denied killing her, insisting an accomplice he called “TJ” committed the murder. At trial Golsby continued to maintain his innocence; but even his highly regarded defense team couldn’t produce TJ.