He Slaughtered the Mother of His Children: This Narcissist’s Alibi Blew Up in His Face

“What happened to Barbara? A lot of defensive wounds. This is somebody that really hated her guts. She had fought.”

“We were hopeful that we would find something there DNA wise. Act of a narcissist and a sociopath.”

“What stood out about him over others? He had scratches on his face. Definitely raised eyebrows with those injuries.”

“Hi, I’m Nancy Odell. Today’s Crime Expose takes us to South Bend, Indiana, where a young mother of two went off to work and never came home. Hours later, she was found by her boyfriend horribly murdered and mutilated. As police began to investigate the crime, the boyfriend’s bizarre behavior made him a suspect. It was a classic whodunit, and police explored every lead in their search for the killer.”

“One night, a man called police to report that his living girlfriend, 33-year-old Barbara Shepard, had not returned from work. St. Joseph County Sheriff’s responded to Low Bob’s tobacco store to investigate.”

“Police were called and they did go to the Lob’s Tobacco Shop. The boyfriend reported her as missing and police found her vehicle still parked there and the business closed, but she was nowhere around.”

“Barbara’s boyfriend wasn’t satisfied with the outcome and decided to go look for her himself. Something just told him to go by her work and he did and he went to the side of the building and he found her body.”

“He dropped to his knees and she was face down. He rolled her over. She was heavily concentrated in blood, but he believed that he heard her gasp or gurgle. She was face down. He rolled her over, tried feeling for a pulse and rolled her back face down so she would not choke, and started screaming for help and called 911.”

“Homicide investigators arrived shortly after. They discovered a horrific crime scene and Barbara’s boyfriend in shock.”

“What was Brian’s demeanor like when police arrived?”

“When the police arrived, they found him cradling her in his arms, completely covered in blood and very distraught. She was obviously deceased and had suffered multiple stab wounds defensively and in the abdomen, arms, face, neck area.”

“When we saw the body, this did not look like this was a robbery. Very graphic. Basically her head was held on with just a little bit of skin. A lot of defensive wounds. It was very up close and personal. My initial thought was: ‘This is somebody that really hated her guts.'”

“Police looked for anything that might suggest a robbery or that the victim knew her attacker. Barbara was fully clothed and the contents of her purse were strewn about. In a scene like that, the technicians preserve hands by taping sacks over them, and she had a lot of blood and crud in her fingernails. It was apparent she had fought, so we were hopeful that we would find something there DNA wise.”

“Police took Barbara’s boyfriend Jason Lea aside to interview him about what he knew. Lea was distraught, but they needed to document his statement.”

“What state of mind was Barbara’s boyfriend in?”

“Very distraught, obviously covered head to toe with blood, just in a state of disbelief, I guess. But the thing we as police look at is how much blood was on him and the fact that he found her was a lot of things to key on. He said several things during the interview that raised a flag. Something just told him to walk over there and said that Barbara had willed him to find her. That definitely raised some eyebrows. He was obviously a witness in a very stunned state. You just found somebody that you love not just dead, but graphically destroyed. First instinct is: ‘Was this guy involved?’ It was a matter of digging in, finding out what happened and going after the person that did it.”

“Investigators canvassed the area for security cameras or someone who may have heard the attack. They discovered the tobacco store had a surveillance camera that had been recording.”

“What did you find if anything?”

“We actually witnessed her clocking out and leaving the store right at 8:00 or shortly after, and then you could not see anything outside.”

“Nearby, a man reported that he heard noise about the time that Barbara exited the back door.”

“What did the man hear?”

“There’s a gas station directly across the street. The gentleman that was buying gas heard like a muffled woman’s scream several times, and he had looked but did not see anything, and it would have came from the area of where her body was found. Now, we can’t tell you that that was her screaming, but common sense is that the scream came from that location. She fought for her life. That guy may have very well been hearing her about to be killed.”

“Police tried to make sense of the shocking murder and what might have gone down. It was a bloodbath, and Barbara Shepard had fought hard against her attacker. The medical examiner carefully gloved the victim’s hands to preserve evidence. With any luck, the attacker’s DNA was left behind, but it wasn’t much to go on. There were some items left around her body that looked like would have been out of a lady’s purse or something that were scattered to make it look like this was a robbery, and this was part of his plan.”

“The one key piece of evidence was the hair in her hand. That was pretty much the extent of what we had that was going to be of any real kind of value.”

“Police continued processing the crime scene throughout the night. They looked for anything that could be a clue to who did this to Barbara Shepard. The next morning, her boyfriend curiously returned to the scene of the crime. Something compelled him to come back, as if searching for something.”

“St. Joseph County homicide detectives investigating the murder of Barbara Shepard looked for a direction forward to find her killer. Someone had brutally slain the mother of two, nearly decapitating her. The next morning, Barbara’s boyfriend eerily returned, looking over the blood-stained ground where he found her.”

“When he came back to the crime scene, my feeling was that he wanted to be near the action, and you have to take that a couple different ways. Was he out there because he wanted to be a representative of Barbara, or because he wanted to listen to what cops had to say, see what was going on, try and gather information?”

“Inexplicably, Jason Lea found a ring he had given Barbara on the ground where cops had searched.”

“What did you think about this man finding evidence at the crime scene?”

“He finds the body, he has blood on him, he finds the ring—this is a hell of a lot of coincidences. There could be more to this than what meets the eye.”

“He was just walking in the alley back near where her body was found, which kind of struck us as odd, and questioned what he was doing. He just said he had to be near.”

“If I recall what he said, officers talked to him and it didn’t seem right, and he was found to have some type of a narcotic without a prescription, and he was ultimately arrested for that and taken from that scene.”

“Detectives began to look closer at the man who discovered Barbara’s body, her living boyfriend Jason Lea. Now jailed on a drug charge, investigators considered an angle that could tie him to the murder.”

“The boyfriend, he did have a criminal history, but nothing major, just petty stuff, nothing that would show any violent tendencies. His alibi for that night was that he had her two young children at the apartment and was not able to leave them. Pretty much everybody’s a suspect until you figure out who did it, and we certainly had to look at him as a suspect. Until we can eliminate you, we’re going to be looking at you. But he wasn’t the only person that we had those feelings about.”

“Police also learned from Barbara’s co-workers that a customer had an obsessive interest in her. Whenever he entered the shop, she tried to avoid him.”

“She just had women’s intuition. Something didn’t feel right. Some of his actions, the way he kind of hung around, made her not feel comfortable with him. He was somebody that had to be checked out and eliminated.”

“So did you interview the odd customer?”

“When he showed up to be interviewed, he had scratches on his face. He had scratches up and down his arms. Definitely raised eyebrows with those injuries. And he had told me that his cat had scratched him. It just didn’t seem right, but there was nothing to go on.”

“Police discovered that Barbara had been granted a divorce from her ex-husband only 10 days earlier. She had been awarded full custody of their two children and he was not happy. According to her family, her ex had made online threats against her. When detectives met with Joseph Wayer, he didn’t appear to be mourning Barbara’s passing.”

“That was you or I, you’d want to know: ‘How was she killed? Did she suffer? Where was she found?’ You’d have a hundred questions because that’s your wife. But he didn’t care. I got the impression that he thought he was extremely smart, he’s going to be able to get over on us. He was very rehearsed in things he said, but just his lack of emotion didn’t set well with investigators.”

“There was not enough probable cause to arrest him, and there was something even more unsettling about Joseph Wayer. He did have an injury on his hand. He said he hurt his hand loading up the compressor. He went to one of the big box stores and he smashed his finger.”

“We was found to have an outstanding warrant for failure to appear and police arrested him. They also took a sample of his DNA. It would be several weeks before the DNA analysis was completed on the victim and potential suspects. Police didn’t yet know who the killer was, but they knew they would get him.”

“Investigators had interviewed several potential suspects in the murder of Barbara Shepard. A DNA analysis of hair found in the victim’s hands could point to her killer, but the test took nearly 2 months to complete. The wait was frustrating because a killer was still walking the streets.”

“We sent that hair off with the DNA and I want the response tomorrow, but it doesn’t work like that. This guy gets to go on with his life, and quicker we get him off the street, the quicker he’s in jail and he’s not a threat to anybody on the outside.”

“In the meantime, police continued to investigate Barbara’s ex-husband Joseph Wayer, and the more they learned about him, the less they looked at anybody else.”

“What did you learn about Joseph Weer and Barbara’s marriage?”

“She had been married for over 10 years, had two young sons and she and her recent ex-husband had never lived together. He lived with his mother and didn’t take care of his kids, behind on child support, lived with his mommy, and he spent all his time down in a basement playing video games. Apparently, couldn’t hold a job for any particular length of time. Barbara kept the children and provided for the children. She had filed for divorce. We learned that 10 days prior to her death, their divorce was final.”

“When questioned about his whereabouts the night that his ex-wife was murdered, Wayer told police he was alone in the house doing what he always did.”

“He said that he was at his mother’s house in the basement and he had been gaming. We did serve a search warrant and we did recover a gaming system that did show that it was online during that time frame, but there was no way to know if he would had been playing or not.”

“And as investigators spoke with Wayer for another interview, the more he dug himself into a hole. There was no love lost for his deceased ex-wife Barbara Shepard.”

“He didn’t really speak of the relationship much other than she had done him wrong and kind of played him. ‘He’s a good father to his kids, and I can’t believe she’s doing this to me.’ And I believe he had the thought that he was always going to win her back. Although he never moved in with her or took care of the boys as a family. There was not enough probable cause to arrest him and he was very rehearsed in things he said, but just his lack of emotion didn’t set well with investigators.”

“2 months after Barbara Shepard’s brutal murder, the DNA results were completed. None of the samples from the crime scene matched Barbara’s new boyfriend and he was eliminated. Police now knew without a doubt who had stabbed and mutilated the mother of two.”

“What did the autopsy reveal?”

“She had a small clump of hair in her hand. The hair was Joseph Wayer’s. My initial thought was: ‘Good for her. She fought and she caught him by fighting.’ Tragic that she’s gone, but a sense of pride that she was able to reveal her killer.”

“Joseph Wayer was charged with the murder of his ex-wife Barbara Shepard. He proclaimed his innocence and never expressed any remorse for her death.”

“What do you think happened the night Barbara died?”

“He had planned on going to kill her. I believe he started this video game to make it look like he had been gaming. He went over and then he killed her, and I think he went home and probably slept like a baby that night. Here’s a girl who’s had a rough life, providing the best she can for the people that she loves, and it was just heartbreaking.”

“Joseph Wayer is a narcissistic sociopath that only cares about himself. He was going to do anything that he could to win, and the win was going to be: kill her, get custody of their children and collect social security, and he would no longer be responsible for having child support.”

“For Barbara’s family and the homicide investigators who worked tirelessly to find her killer, Wayer’s arrest was bittersweet. The murderer was found but it couldn’t bring Barbara back.”

“He thought he was extremely smart, he’s going to be able to get over on us, and it didn’t work out too well for him.”

“Joseph Wayer was tried and convicted for the murder of his ex-wife Barbara Shepard and received a 65-year sentence. Barbara, the mother of two boys, had been working to support her children who were now left without a parent to raise them. Barbara fought to the death as Wayer stabbed her, and Barbara’s dying act is the very thing that convicted her killer.”

“And now it’s time for today’s safety spotlight. Barbara Shepard was a revered mother who seemed to have moved on from her abusive ex and even found love again. And just when everything seemed to be looking up, her ex-husband savagely killed her. This heartbreaking event underscores that domestic abuse can escalate over time and that leaving an abusive relationship does not always ensure the end of violence. Custody disputes can further exacerbate tension and hostility.”

“When dealing with a divorce from an individual with a history of domestic violence, vigilance is crucial. And while no advice can assure that you will be safe 100% of the time, here are a few tips that could help: keep records of any threats or dangerous behavior and take them very seriously. Consider consulting law enforcement and inform friends, family or neighbors about the situation so they can help monitor your safety and provide support. Handle all communications through lawyers whenever possible. This minimizes direct contact and reduces the risk of confrontation. And for your safety, never agree to meet an ex-partner alone if there are any concerns about their behavior. Always involve a third party or arrange to meet in a secure, monitored environment. If you are experiencing abuse or you fear for your safety, call police or the domestic violence hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE.”

“This case is heartbreaking in that a selfish ex, motivated by revenge, thought he could kill with impunity. He’ll likely spend the rest of his life in prison. I’m Nancy Odell for all of us here at Crime Expose. Please join us next time and stay safe.”

“How did this murder case begin?”

“He disappeared late evening, the next morning when she got up he wasn’t in the trailer.”

“It was frustrating because we had no evidence of any type of crime. We had nothing, just a missing person.”

“They called 911 to report the body that they had found.”

“Just the initial observation of his body, I did not see any apparent cause of death. He had two gunshot wounds to him, 45 caliber. One round was still in his body and one had severed his spine when it entered his body. Why would somebody do this?”

“They had a long history with my father’s family.”

“Hi, I’m Nancy Odell. Today’s Crime Expose takes us to the rural town of Rainier, Washington, where a man was reported missing by his girlfriend. His disappearance baffled investigators and all who knew him. There was no evidence of an altercation or even that a crime had been committed. But as police looked closer into the enigma of Clark Calhoun, a killer’s bravado changed the investigation. When informants dropped a dime on the suspect, police fought an uphill battle to get to the truth.”

“On New Year’s Eve, a woman reported her living boyfriend, 53-year-old Clark Calhoun, hadn’t come home from work. After several days, the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office responded and met Clark’s girlfriend on the ranch property where he worked.”

“Tina reported her boyfriend missing. He disappeared late evening and never returned that night, and the next morning when she got up, she found he wasn’t in the trailer.”

“Clark Calhoun lived a gypsy life and had struggled with drugs in the past. His girlfriend told police it was unusual for him to have not returned by now. Detective Elkins inspected the couple’s trailer looking for a clue to where Clark had gone.”

“What did you observe in their trailer?”

“He was the kind of person that had prized possessions: a pot pipe and his glasses, he never left without. And those were still in the trailer. Without Mr. Clark being there, it was not normal for him to go anywhere without those two prized possessions.”

“Clark’s girlfriend Tina told Detective Elkins that she and Clark were about to head home at the end of the day when they were approached by a man named Jeremy Lininger. She said Clark had been installing fence posts on a property owned by Lininger’s uncle.”

“What did Mr. Lininger say to Clark?”

“He had asked Mr. Calhoun if he would help him. They were all working on some fencing. Clark had stayed back to help Jeremy and the others left in the vehicle, and that was the last time Tina had seen him was that evening.”

“The Lininger family, they had a long history with my father’s family, friendships that went decades back, and they had some ranching needs and a place for him to put his trailer and live on the property, and had him there helping with the cows and other fence mending and things that happen on a farm.”

“Days later, with no sign of Clark, police got a warrant and began to search the vast property. They suspected that he may have been the victim of a medical crisis and froze to death.”

“The property itself was vastly pasture, meadows, little patches of forest, but it equaled close to about 320 acres, and it had a beautiful view of Mount Rainier. We use actually K9 dogs, they’re cadaver dogs. In most cases, they would look for a body. Maybe he was deceased on the property somewhere. Unfortunately, we didn’t find Mr. Calhoun.”

“Detective Elkins spoke to anyone who had been in contact with the missing man, looking for information on his whereabouts. He met with Jeremy Lininger, the last person to have seen Clark.”

“Jeremy said that he saw Clark on the tractor working with him with some fence posts, and the last time he saw him, he was walking down the road towards the front gate. It’s about a mile down the road. He was going to go meet someone down at the gate.”

“You got this by yourself?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Then he left, did he?”

“No, he told you that he was going to walk down to the front gate and meet somebody. Yeah, he ain’t driving my tractor down there.”

“However, others working on the ranch had different recollections of the last time they saw Clark.”

“What did the others observe that day?”

“When I talked to Tina, the couple friends that were there, they said the same thing, you know. When they got in the car and Clark stayed behind to help Jeremy, that actually Jeremy was on the tractor, so there was some inconsistency there.”

“Tina and others told the detective that Jeremy Lininger had made an allegation about Clark. She said Lininger claimed that Clark was a thief and had stolen drugs.”

“Three people told me, and his aunt told me, that Mr. Calhoun had stolen some money from him, stolen some marijuana from him, and when I brought those subjects up, it changed the story. He downplayed it.”

“Detective Elkins noted some inconsistencies in what Lininger said and moved on. Besides an account of some stolen pot, there were few leads in the investigation.”

“How tough is it when an investigation stalls like this?”

“It was frustrating because you’re pretty much at a stalemate. You don’t have anywhere to go. We had no evidence of any type of crime, didn’t have any proof of foul play, we had nothing, just a missing person.”

“Nearly a month passed since Clark had gone missing and no one had any idea what happened to him. Meanwhile, a missing person report was sent to neighboring police agencies with the description of Clark Calhoun. Then two fishermen in a remote area of Washington made a grizzly discovery on the Cowlitz River. They called 911 to report the body that they had found.”

“When I got there, I saw a subject wearing no shirt. He was wearing blue jeans, and just the initial observation of his body, I did not see any apparent cause of death.”

“Looking closer, Detective Gladson noticed a turquoise ring on the left finger of the deceased male. And once back at the office, he checked the missing person flyer that had been received. It was a match. A turquoise ring on the left ring finger for a missing person and a dead body was just not a coincidence. The person removed from the river was one of the same and that was confirmed the next day through fingerprint analysis. Clark Calhoun had been found 70 miles from where he went missing. Police wanted to know how he ended up in the river and who was responsible. An autopsy would reveal how Clark died, but it led to more questions about who killed him and why.”

“Thurston County police investigating the disappearance of Clark Calhoun now had an even greater mystery to solve. His body was discovered in a river 70 miles south of where he disappeared. Detective Elkins knew the autopsy would provide answers as to the manner of death.”

“What did you learn from Clark’s autopsy?”

“So I attended the autopsy with the medical examiner, and he had two gunshot wounds, 45 caliber. One round was still in his body and one had severed his spine when it entered his body.”

“So what did this mean to your investigation?”

“Now we had a body, now we had evidence, now we could show that it was a homicide. And my suspicions that Jeremy was involved were at a more higher level because of the situation. We didn’t have any suspects even up until we found a victim and a crime. You’re kind of back to square one, because now you got to kind of start all over with the homicide aspect.”

“As I received news that my dad had been murdered, I was devastated. Why my dad? What had he possibly done that would even be deserving of this?”

“Police believed Clark was killed in Thurston County and his body was dumped in the river in Cowlitz County. This meant two agencies were investigating the murder. They informed Clark’s girlfriend Tina of his death.”

“When you tell somebody that a significant other has been murdered, they should have a pretty obvious reaction. Well, she did, you know? Well, she didn’t do it, so you almost can eliminate her.”

“With Clark’s girlfriend ruled out, the detectives re-interviewed everyone who was with Clark the day he went missing. Investigators spoke again with co-workers who overheard Jeremy Lininger’s allegations of theft against Clark.”

“I later talked to several of Jeremy Lininger’s friends, and I asked them: ‘What would Jeremy be like if you found out you stole $5 from him?'”

“Oh, he’d come unglued, yeah, he would be livid. He would be angry, he’d be upset, he’s explosive, he’s got a short fuse.”

“I’m hearing all these things about Jeremy from the people that are closest to him.”

“The information painted Jeremy Lininger as volatile and dangerous.”

“I think he’s letting people know that: ‘I am a dangerous individual.’ That he’s not fearful, that he’s willing to kill if you cross him.”

“Because of Lininger’s reputation, people around him were reluctant to speak to police. It took time, but a few began to share what they knew.”

“What did the witness tell police that Mr. Lininger had said?”

“Supposedly, Jeremy and another were in a trailer talking about, you know, ‘It’d be easy to dispose a body on the property.’ Well, when confronted about that, you know, Jeremy said: ‘No, we were talking about cows, you know, my uncle burying cows.'”

“Did you believe that’s what they were talking about?”

“When I had that interview with Jeremy, there were tell indicators that he wasn’t being truthful. He wasn’t a suspect at this time, he was a witness, but it just didn’t make sense for him to be nervous and indicated there was something more to it.”

“Then investigators got an anonymous call detailing violent boasts Lininger had made.”

“This particular caller gave me the name of two people who knew about this murder, and I spoke with those two individuals. The male initially denied any knowledge, but he eventually admitted that Jeremy did tell him about the murder that he committed in Rainier, Washington, and that he dumped the body.”

“He told me what he did, and he had the dude come with him and then he took him up wherever they went out in the woods. He shot him.”

“Detectives were now laser-focused on Jeremy Lininger, but they still lacked evidence of murder. All they had was hearsay, but that soon changed.”

“How did it change the scope of the investigation?”

“There was a breakthrough where we had a girlfriend that came forth, and she had provided information that her boyfriend was with Jeremy when all this went down, and basically we had to talk to him, and he wasn’t cooperative.”

“So when you’re talking to people like that, how do you get them to open up?”

“You have to figure out ways to get these people to cooperate in regards to finding evidence. Cuz if you got evidence against one party that’s involved, you kind of use them against them to find out what happened or what the motive was, and it took a while to finally get there.”

“The man’s name was John Perry Clark. Police learned that he was a drug dealer and friend of Jeremy Lininger, and if the story could be corroborated, he was a co-conspirator in the murder of Clark Calhoun.”

“Investigators from two agencies identified Jeremy Lininger as a suspect in the murder of Clark Calhoun. His loose lips alerted police that he killed Clark over a marijuana theft.”

“In my attempt to interview Jeremy, he chose not to talk to me, but he did choose to talk to numerous other people, and those people chose to talk to me. So it’s not as great as directly hearing it from Jeremy himself, but it’s great nonetheless.”

“There were strong allegations against Lininger, but the case needed more.”

“It wasn’t 150, it wasn’t 250, it was 80. But you are out 80 bucks, someone took it, someone took it. They got lost, for all I know it went and flew through the freaking glove box.”

“So at this point, did you believe that Mr. Lininger was your primary suspect?”

“There’s a lot of reasons why Jeremy was a suspect in this case. With there being a beef between him and Clark, him being the last person to see him alive, but at this point in time, we didn’t have any strong evidence that he murdered him.”

“Police received a tip that local drug dealer John Perry Clark had witnessed the murder and helped dispose of the victim’s body, so they subpoenaed phone records of both John Perry Clark and Jeremy Lininger.”

“The cell phone records show Jeremy Lininger was up at the 320-acre Rainier property at the time of the homicide. In the late hours of the night, Jeremy drives down to Cowlitz County, he picks up his friend John Clark, and the phone records show them both travel all the way to the city of Kelso, which is where Clark Calhoun’s body was found.”

“Detectives confronted John Perry Clark with the phone GPS evidence. It was enough to get him to roll over on Lininger.”

“A reasonable person, and we’re all reasonable in this truck, would believe that Jeremy’s involved with this murder. Is that a safe assumption?”

“Okay, so what did he say what did John Perry Clark say happened?”

“Jeremy had asked John Clark to go into the cab of the truck to get some marijuana, and Jeremy shot Clark in the back two times. And John said he freaked out and Jeremy asked him to help him, and he felt he didn’t have a choice, because if he did help him, he’d probably shoot him.”

“Police finally had the evidence they needed. With the statements from John, we were able to go arrest Jeremy and book him for murder.”

“When I received word that Jeremy was arrested for the murder of my father, I felt relief to be honest. There were days where I looked over my shoulder a little bit wondering: ‘Where is this young man? He knows our family and so where is he going to show up?'”

“Jeremy Lininger’s wealthy parents paid his bail of $2.5 million while he awaited trial for murder. Police say his own bravado was strong evidence against him.”

“Jeremy Lininger was convicted of the murder of Clark Calhoun.”

“Although Lininger had told people he killed Clark for stealing marijuana, prosecutors doubted that allegation. They believe Lininger was simply evil and that was little consolation to Clark’s family and loved ones.”

“This case revolved around drugs and intimidation of witnesses. And so often people know about a crime, but are afraid to speak out, and breaking through that wall can be the key to holding a killer accountable.”

“And now it’s time for today’s safety spotlight. Clark Calhoun, known for his good-natured demeanor, was tragically murdered following a heated argument with a coworker. This devastating incident highlights that many violent crimes, from simple assaults to murder, often stem from disputes or disagreements.”

“The key to preventing workplace violence is to recognize the warning signs and involve the appropriate resources as soon as possible. Timely notification and documentation of potential problems is essential. In confrontational situations, it is important to prioritize your safety over the need to win an argument. While standing your ground might seem tempting, it can lead to severe harm, especially when dealing with individuals prone to violence.”

“De-escalate. If you sense that a confrontation is escalating towards violence, remove yourself from the situation. Allow emotions to cool down to prevent things from spiraling out of control. Pay attention to your intuition about people and environments. If a situation feels unsafe, it is best to withdraw and seek a safer environment.”

“The Workplace Violent Prevention Helpline can be reached at 1-877-987-3747.”

“I’m Nancy Odell for all of us here at Crime Expose. Please join us next time and stay safe.”

“We’re now looking not only at a murder, we’re looking at conspiracy to commit murder.”

“Amen.”

“Hi, I’m Nancy Odell. Today’s Crime Expose takes us to Bonita Springs, Florida, where a woman was found dead in her home, the victim of a vicious slaughter. Police wondered if an intruder planning to rob the home had killed the woman, but when police looked closer at the horrific crime, there were signs that her high-profile career may have led to the murder. The trail was long and winding before police finally discovered who the real killer was.”

“One evening, a man called police to report that his next door neighbor, 46-year-old Teresa Sievers, was dead on her kitchen floor.”

“911, what is your emergency?”

“Uh, I’m at a friend’s house. He’s out of town and I came here to check on his wife and she’s dead on the floor.”

“The Lee County Sheriff’s Office responded and found a horrific scene that shocked even the veteran homicide detectives.”

“It was very evident just from first glance that she had sustained significant head trauma. There was blood all over the floor. Even though it was significant trauma, a lot of the blood was contained mostly to Dr. Sievers’ body and in her hair. Based on the damage that was done to Dr. Sievers, we could tell that she did see who was coming at her.”

“The neighbor had been asked to check on Teresa by the woman’s husband, Mark Sievers, who was out of town. Police examined the bloody crime scene trying to understand what had occurred.”

“My initial assessment of the scene was that of a heinous crime. It was very evident that this was a violent altercation that took place with one or more assailants. You could kind of build your own idea of what may have occurred or how bad it was while it was occurring. And it was—this was very evident that this was very bad and and it went on for some time.”

“What did you observe around Dr. Sievers’ body?”

“Aside from Dr. Sievers’ body and aside from the blood transfers, smears, etc., there was a bloody hammer laying on the floor. Her wallet was also on the floor. The credit cards and her license appeared to be thumbed through as if somebody were looking through it.”

“Police look for clues as to how an intruder might have gotten into the home.”

“What did you think had happened?”

“As we studied the crime scene further, we noticed that there appeared to have been forced entry through the garage door. Did somebody break in or is this a part of staging the crime scene? Looking around the house, it wasn’t in a state of disarray, but it wasn’t really indicative of somebody who had rushed into the house and started ripping drawers apart and things of that nature.”

“Looking through the entire house, it didn’t make sense. If it was some kind of home invasion robbery that went sideways, it didn’t really seem like anything was missing. There was a side door and it looked like it was pried, but it never looked like the locking mechanism was defeated. So it made me wonder if somebody staged that to look like: ‘Oh, they broke in, and this is what happened.'”

“While looking through the home, police made a startling discovery. It was hard to fathom that a robber would have overlooked valuables and cash.”

“None of Dr. Sievers’ valuables were missing that we knew of. Normally, in a robbery or burglary-type situation, somebody’s breaking in to take things. Her wallet’s left, none of the credit cards are missing. Later on, in conducting the search warrant, we would find large amounts of currency, $40,000, which also leads us to believe that somebody is there for another reason.”

“There was little about the crime scene that pointed to what had occurred or who was involved. It was a mystery that would only grow deeper.”

“Did police have any gut reactions or suspicions from the beginning?”

“This could be a home invasion gone bad, a burglary that you walked into that went bad, a love triangle situation—there’s infinite possibilities from the inception of any investigation. My personal opinion at the time, looking at the wallet, I did consider what we would call staging, where an assailant will stage a crime scene to make it appear as if it’s something that it’s not.”

“Investigators immediately contacted Mark Sievers to deliver the news of his wife’s death. Mark and the children were in Connecticut when they got the dreaded call from police.”

“What did Mark Sievers tell you?”

“He was at his mother-in-law’s that past weekend with his wife and his two daughters celebrating her birthday. He was in shock of what occurred because it didn’t make sense, and: ‘I wish I came back,’ that kind of thing.”

“Teresa, a medical doctor, had flown home early so she could meet with patients the next day. Mark’s absence at the time of his wife’s murder immediately raised questions.”

“So why did his absence raise flags?”

“They’re out of state, and this is a family, usually family units travel together. But in the world of homicide, you have to ask yourself: when a husband sends his wife home on a flight and then she’s bludgeoned to death, it gives rise for concern. And that is something that you need to consider from the get-go. When you have somebody that’s killed in a relationship, we always look at the partner first, so that’s where we start. Mark Sievers had the best alibi you could have. He was physically in another state on whatever transpired, which also seemed fairly suspicious when you started looking at all the details.”

“At first glance, Mark Sievers’ explanation for asking the neighbor to check on his wife seemed plausible.”

“Teresa Sievers returned earlier from a business trip allegedly so that she could go to work while the family was still on vacation. Mark Sievers, he had been trying to get a hold of his wife Teresa, he was growing concerned for her safety, so he asked Mr. Petritus to respond to the residence.”

“Police finished processing the crime scene and awaited the results of an autopsy. They hoped that the medical examiner might be able to shed some light on the murder. A killer was walking free while the grieving Sievers family buried Teresa. Police would go all out to find the person or persons responsible.”

“I knew that this was going to rock the community. I also knew when this poor woman was brutally murdered—when you can’t press a button and bring somebody back, you have to do everything in your power to make certain that you bring that killer to justice.”

“Lee County Sheriff’s detectives investigating the grizzly murder of Teresa Sievers had a baffling mystery on their hands. So far, there was little to go on. Someone had slaughtered the wife and mother of two at her own home, and it suggested the work of a homicidal maniac.”

“The community was shocked. There was a woman that was brutally murdered, just a violent, violent homicide. We have a killer on the loose, everybody responds, it’s all hands on deck, leaving no stone unturned.”

“Police hoped that her autopsy might reveal clues as to who did this, but it was hard to see beyond the carnage.”

“Did the autopsy shed any light?”

“It was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. There was so much damage done. I’ve been to many autopsies before that, but looking at what was done to her was upsetting. You disassociate, ’cause that’s your job. You need to maintain your focus so you don’t miss any details. You have that flash through your brain and you refocus and you compartmentalize and say: ‘Whoever did this, we have to find them.’ Somebody obviously wanted her dead, and that’s one of the things we consider: ‘Is this somebody close to her? Is this somebody who has a bone to pick with her that is holding a grudge for one reason or another?'”

“As police hypothesized what had led to Teresa Sievers’ death, a study of the victim helped focus the investigation. Teresa Sievers was a high-profile doctor of alternative medicine with a thriving practice. She had attained somewhat of a celebrity status, but not everyone was a fan of Dr. Sievers’ methods.”

“Based on Dr. Sievers’ profile, she was very active in the community. She challenged traditional medicine by also involving a holistic approach. And around that time, there were other holistic/internal medicine doctors that were allegedly killed, which we had to research. So the suspect pool dramatically increased. And she was a force to be reckoned with at work and she told people exactly how she felt and sometimes she offended people ’cause she was a straight shooter.”

“While some detectives looked for a possible vendetta against Teresa, others dug deeper into the Sievers’ marriage, and they discovered it wasn’t a happy home.”

“In looking into the Sievers’ marriage and the history, it was evident that they were experiencing issues. Everybody that you spoke to said that they would fight consistently. They appeared to be heated more than not.”

“When you talk about Dr. Sievers, you know, she came off as—for lack of better terminology—kind of like a firecracker. So now you throw the marital conflict into the mix, and you’re just going to have butting heads, and that’s consistently what we saw throughout the investigation.”

“Just talking to Mark Sievers himself, I said: ‘Listen, we need to know everything,’ and he began to express more about maybe having an alternative lifestyle, having extra partners in their relationship. While our suspect pool just got even bigger because it could be a scorned person that they were intimate with. As the investigation unfolds, we quickly learned that her marriage is very rocky.”

“Phones give us a lot of intelligence as to their marriage might not just be a closed type of marriage, and we were just looking for just something, some type of information, a clue, something that could bring us over the edge.”

“Various angles and suspects were looked at, but they all came up empty. Then, 10 days after the murder of Teresa Sievers, Lee County detectives got the break of all breaks. A witness had overheard a conversation about a husband who recently returned from the Sunshine State where a doctor had been murdered.”

“So what was it that the witness told police about her friend’s husband?”

“Somebody called us and said: ‘I have a friend who wants to remain anonymous right now.’ She told us Curtis Wright took this last-minute trip to Bonita Springs, Florida.”

“How far in advance did you know that he was going to Florida? Did he tell you like last-minute, or did he tell you ahead of time?”

“It was a last-minute thing. I think it was Friday whenever he got home, [he] told you that he was leaving.”

“Yeah, he said that Wayne had asked him to go with him to Florida to make money.”

“The wife of one of our later suspects, complaining that her husband had left unexpectedly and on short notice to go on a trip to Florida. As we looked into this further, this person who would be Curtis Wright wound up being the best friend to Mark Sievers. We have a husband out of state, we have marital issues, we have a wife that returns alone and is brutally murdered that night. And now we find out that the husband’s best friend took an unexpected trip to Florida. Now we have something.”

“Detectives directed all their efforts towards Curtis Wright and his communications with Mark Sievers, Teresa’s husband. They quickly learned that Mark was a career criminal who had done time, and their next discovery would be the vehicle that transported the potential hitman on an assignment to the Sievers’ home.”

“Investigators had identified a relationship between Teresa Sievers’ husband and an ex-con named Curtis Wright. Police intercepted Wright and told him that he was a suspect in the murder, which he denied, but a digital footprint had left a trail of breadcrumbs for police.”

“So what was it that you learned about Curtis Wright?”

“We did a search warrant on Curtis Wright’s home. We seized a vehicle and a GPS that was in the car. Analyzing that GPS, our digital forensics unit, they were able to go through, find [a] little breadcrumb trail from Missouri all the way down to Florida during the time frame that we were looking about. And we did find different places where it literally showed them together. You couldn’t hope for a stronger case.”

“Police learned that Wright was joined on the trip by Jimmy Ray Rogers, who also had done time. Using the GPS data from Wright’s car, police tracked the two men to the Bonita Springs area near the Sievers home the day before the murder.”

“And we just followed [them] in Florida, we find out that they stopped at a Walmart. So our next step is to get the video and, clear as day, walking into the Walmart together, just before Dr. Sievers is murdered, is Jimmy Ray Rogers and Curtis Wayne Wright.”

“There’s definitely more to this.”

“So at this point in the investigation, there has to be some kind of monetary reward for this. Essentially, you’re being paid to commit this offense.”

“Meanwhile, detectives subpoenaed the phone records of Wright, his shady friend Rogers, and Mark Sievers. They discovered a web of contact between Mark and Mr. Wright that abruptly ended after the murder.”

“So you have the GPS from the car, the phone records and the video. What do they all mean to the investigation?”

“We’re now looking not only at a murder, we’re looking at conspiracy to commit murder. We’re now looking at the potential of Mark Sievers as a puppet master in this whole thing. We know he’s involved at this point, but we need to prove it.”

“Police also learned that Teresa had over $4 million in life insurance that her husband would inherit upon her death. As police’s interest in Mark intensified, he stopped cooperating and ‘lawed up,’ but the final piece of the puzzle came when police charged Curtis Wright and Jimmy Ray Rogers with second-degree murder.”

“Wright made a deal and agreed to testify against Mark Sievers in the murder-for-hire plot.”

“I think he felt let down by Mark Sievers. Now, they’re supposed to be best friends, they describe each other as brothers, and then he left his buddy out to dry and he’s out living his life. So I think the combination of those three things really drove Curtis Wright to come forward and become a witness for the state.”

“Mark’s personal phone showed us his call log history, his text history, and then suddenly there’s an absence of how you daily contact your friend. But during the time frame of when the crime occurred, you stop talking to them. That was very telling also, which further solidified in my mind that you made this happen.”

“Months later, Mark Sievers was charged with the first-degree murder of his wife Teresa. Police had a mountain of evidence against all three men and the oldest motive in the world: money.”

“Curtis Wayne Wright, Jeremy Rogers, with Mark Sievers. So we have all three of them.”

“Curtis Wright took a plea deal and testified against Jimmy Ray Rogers, who struck Teresa 17 times and killed her. Wright also testified against her husband Mark, who directed the murder-for-hire plot. Wright received a 25-year sentence while Rogers was sentenced to life in prison. And Mark Sievers, who arranged the horrific murder of his wife and the mother of their two children, received a death sentence. Today, he sits on Florida’s death row.”

“And now it’s time for today’s safety spotlight. In the tragic case of Dr. Teresa Sievers, it was evident that she was caught off guard by her attacker. And while no advice can assure you will be safe 100% of the time, here are a few tips that could help prioritize your safety: an alarm system in your home or apartment can act as a deterrent and provide an additional layer of security. If possible, consider enhancing the lighting in and around your home for greater awareness and visibility. Consider smart locks for added security and consider reinforcing your doors and window frames to prevent entry by an intruder.”

“And if you are violently confronted, your priority should be to escape, not to engage in a physical altercation. Put as much distance between yourself and the attacker as possible. And if you can, consider carrying a personal alarm that can emit a loud sound to attract attention and deter an attacker. And since every case is unique, you can learn more about avoiding these risks by reading the book ‘The Gift of Fear’ by Gavin de Becker, the nation’s leading expert on personal safety.”

“I’m Nancy Odell for all of us here at Crime Expose. Please join us next time and stay safe.”

“We’re now looking not only at at a murder, we’re looking at conspiracy to commit murder.”

“Amen.”