If You Know The Right People You Can Get Away With Murder

There are dozens and dozens of extremely suspicious—and sometimes frankly outrageous—death cases from around here dating back for years. Take for example the teenaged “accident victim” whom authorities say was brought to the hospital alive and died a few hours later of head injuries that hospital workers who were present all say was actually nearly decapitated and brought to the E.R. tossed into the bed of a pickup like a hunter’s dead deer. (This victim was my ex-husband's younger sister.)

Then there’s the local man whom authorities claimed drowned when he went fishing during a flash flood. How about the local woman who supposedly blew her own head off with a high caliber handgun—but stopped to tie a bandanna around her head first? What about the teen who supposedly committed suicide by shooting himself in the abdomen with a long-barreled shotgun? Or the woman stopped and ticketed by local police (apparently the last persons to see her alive) who was found dead under an overpass near two crosses placed there for previous victims found at the same spot in 1998? What about the case of Col. Phillip Shue, found duct-taped (no fingerprints) and surgically mutilated (no cutting instrument found)--whose death was ruled a suicide by the M.E., J.P., D.A., and even the Air Force? (This case, which involved the same D.A. as our case, was the subject of a recent episode of 48 Hours Mystery on CBS.)

Then there’s the frail, elderly cancer survivor who could barely get around with a walker who was supposed to be driving on an icy freeway in the middle of the night and was found dead under an overpass. (She had been an outspoken environmentalist. After her death, her property was developed.) How about the case of the man on his way here for an important meeting concerning a controversial real estate project who was found dead on the side of the road, the woman who died shortly before she was to testify to a grand jury about my former father-in-law, and the woman who suddenly quit as office manager for my former in-laws’ law office and turned up dead on the side of the road in a relatively undamaged USPS delivery vehicle a few months later?

Then there’s the mystery of the missing defibrillators. One was stolen from a neighboring county fire department in 2002 and never recovered. Another, purchased more recently with Homeland Security grant money, was discovered sitting out in the open in the corner of the local police chief’s office (the one who’s my ex-‘s close friend)—and he wasn’t authorized to use it. Some of the injectable hospital drugs I found among my ex-husband’s things could also be used to stop hearts.

I repeat: there are dozens and dozens of death cases like these here.