Prison City Murders — Case 4 Too Smart for Murder



Friday, November 14th, 2003.  Near Lawrence, Kansas.

Two Douglas County Sheriff’s Deputies conduct a welfare check at an isolated farmhouse. They find the scene of a bloody struggle in the living room. A women’s body lies face up on the floor. She is brutally beaten and stabbed multiple times. She appears to have been dead about a day. As the deputies search the house, they find a little girl’s room filled with toys and books. The little girl cannot be found.

I posted the links to the sources used for this episode in the show notes. Author and Attorney Robert Beattie wrote the definitive book on this case Language of Evil. I highly recommend it. It’s available on Amazon. You can also find Dr. Thomas Murray’s scholarly works online, like The Language of Sadomasochism (available on Amazon for only $38.00 plus free shipping)  For newspaper reports, I used the Lawrence Journal World, and the Manhattan Mercury.  48 Hours and a couple of other true crime tv series covered the case. I remember watching the 48 Hours episode when it came out not too long after the trial. It was very good. The family and police cooperated, and they even got to put cameras in the courtroom for the trial.

https://www.amazon.com/Language-Evil-Robert-Beattie/dp/0451225309

https://www2.ljworld.comhttps://themercury.com

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-mind-for-murder/

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ks-supreme-court/1131588.html

http://skepdic.com/consegrity.html

https://www.newspapers.com/

https://newspaperarchive.com/

https://www.ancestry.com/

https://www.genealogybank.com/