The FBI is the most sophisticated law enforcement agency in the world, pursuing the most dangerous criminals.
“When a beautiful young woman is murdered in front of her children, there really was not much at the crime scene that gave us the aha moment of ‘we think we know who did this’.”
The bureau mobilizes.
“Law enforcement officials did not rule out anybody in Sheila’s murder.”
“All he wanted to do was to destroy Sheila both emotionally and physically.”
It’s November 7th, 1997, and 13-year-old Stevie Bellish is on her way home from school. She can’t wait to share some big news with her mother.
“She was excited. She was going to go in and tell her mother about a boy that was supposed to ask her out. She was going to wait all weekend, waiting for him to call, that kind of thing.”
But as she steps through the front door, Stevie senses something is wrong. Stevie’s four young siblings, 23-month-old quadruplets, are standing in the hallway alone, crying.
“There was blood in their hair, and on a couple of them had it on their body.”
The toddlers aren’t hurt, but Stevie is alarmed. Their mother, 35-year-old Sheila Bellish, would never have left the babies home alone.
“Where’s mommy? Where’s mommy?”
Stevie races through the house, shouting for her mother.
“Mama?”
She runs around the corner into the kitchen and finds her sprawled on the floor in a large pool of drying blood.
“There was so much blood, and everything mixed in with Sheila’s hair. It didn’t register to Stevie that her mother was laying in the floor right next to her feet.”
In shock, Stevie calls 911.
“911 center, what’s the matter?”
“Okay, what makes you think that?”
The 911 operator immediately dispatches paramedics and the sheriff’s department to the Bellish home, then she tries to get more information from Stevie.
“Do you see anything else around the house?”
“Going from the laundry room all the way to the kitchen.”
“Oh my god, and my little brother in there… No, I think that she went all the way outside. You think that she was outside? Oh my god!”
Paramedics and investigators arrive and quickly confirm Sheila has been dead for hours. Stevie and the children are led out of the house to an ambulance while authorities try to locate Sheila’s husband, Jamie Bellish, a pharmaceutical salesman. Lisa Lam is one of the first officers to go inside the house. A crime scene investigator for just three years, she’s shocked by what she sees.
“From what I saw at the crime scene, it’s really not fit for any human to witness, let alone children.”
It is apparent by the small, bloody footprints around Sheila’s body that the four toddlers witnessed their mother’s murder, but at 23 months old, they don’t have the ability to tell investigators what they saw. Lam follows a trail of blood that leads from Sheila’s body into the utility room where it appears the gruesome attack started.
“There was the knife that was located on the floor. There was a bullet hole in the wall of the utility room, and eventually, when latent processing was completed, a fingerprint was developed on the dryer inside the utility room. The print is not in blood, and there is no way of knowing if it is related to the crime.”
Detective Chris Iorio, an 11-year veteran of the Sarasota Sheriff’s Department, carefully searches the rest of the house and finds a shell casing. The round is from a .45 caliber pistol which was shot directly at Sheila’s face.
“It went through her face, her cheekbone, it exited through the base of her neck and went through the dining room wall into a bedroom, struck a mirror, and then it was recovered from a wall in the bedroom.”
The attacker then grabbed a knife from a rack in Sheila’s kitchen a few feet away. Blood spatter analysis and defensive wounds, bruises, and cuts on Sheila’s hands and arms show that Sheila got up to fight back. As a parent himself, Detective Iorio believes Sheila was fighting for more than her own life.
“Part of her motivation was to protect her children. I think her motherly instinct kicked in, and she got strength from somewhere, because typically, if you get shot in the face with a .45, that’s usually enough to put anybody down and leave them down.”
Sheila’s attacker then slit her throat twice, missing her arteries but slicing through two veins. Then the attacker fled, leaving her to die. But Sheila was still conscious and fighting to survive. Sheila dragged herself 15 feet to the kitchen counter, reaching for the phone. She managed to lift the receiver, then collapsed and bled to death.
“All victims are of equal importance to us, but it certainly does affect you for the rest of your life when you see crime scenes where you know that there was a struggle and somebody fought for their life. I can only hope that the toddlers were young enough that they have no memory of what they witnessed inside that house.”
Investigators know how Sheila was killed, but they still don’t know why. A stay-at-home mom to her four toddlers and two older daughters from a previous marriage, Sheila has only lived in this middle-class Sarasota neighborhood for six weeks. Police have to ask whether she’s been the victim of a home invasion.
“We’ve examined the exterior of the residence and did not find any obvious signs of forced entry, such as a broken window, pry marks on windows or doors, or door locks, or any of that.”
It seems unlikely that Sheila would allow a stranger into her home. Did she know her killer? Someone with an insider’s knowledge of the house? To find answers to these questions, the police will call in the FBI. For Special Agent Michael Applebee, finding Sheila’s killer will become a personal mission.
“I’ve been an FBI agent for over 30 years. In the course of my career, I’ve never been mad at anybody I investigated because it’s a business, it’s your job. But for the first time in my life, I met someone that I really, really—no, really, really—was mad at.”
But capturing the killer, a powerful and deceptive mastermind, will prove to be almost impossible.
In November 1997, 35-year-old Sheila Bellish is found murdered in her home. Evidence shows the brutal attack took place right in front of her 23-month-old quadruplets.
“Very gruesome crime. Sheila at the time she was murdered weighed a little over 100 pounds. She obviously put up a strong fight.”
Because there is no sign of forced entry, the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department wonders if Sheila knew her attacker. Statistics compiled by the FBI show that two out of three violent crimes against women are committed by someone they know.
“Law enforcement officials in Sarasota did not rule out anybody in Sheila’s murder. They had to look at the case as objectively as possible, which means usually you work your way inside out.”
Detectives begin looking into Sheila’s background. They speak to her close friend, Carl Glenn.
“Sheila was the type of person you would remember, of course, her beauty, her intelligence, and she was religious. I think Sheila had a pretty strict upbringing.”
The daughter of an Air Force pilot, Sheila Lee Walsh lost her father when she was young.
“He was killed over North Vietnam during a flight. He was kind of her hero.”
Sheila was determined to go to college and become a success. After graduating high school, she began working as a secretary at a Salem, Oregon, law firm to save money. There, she met one of the firm’s clients and the man of her dreams, Alan Blackthorne.
“He was a good-looking guy, athletic looking. Generally always in all the pictures I saw him, he always had a tan. I think she wanted a man that presented a strong father figure. Alan was older than her. He was a very successful businessman, he had a great personality.”
It was a whirlwind romance. The couple got engaged on her third date. Three months later, in 1983, within a few years, they had two daughters, Stevie and Daryl. Alan started a successful medical device business and quickly became a multi-millionaire.
“I’m sick of it! Why are you following me?”
“You’re not.”
But Sheila and Alan fought constantly, and in 1987, they divorced.
“She was under tremendous stress. Alan had money, attorneys. She was fighting to hold a full-time job with lots of responsibility. She was trying to raise her children on limited income. I know it was tough.”
In 1992, Sheila’s luck seemed to change. On a cross-country airline flight, she met pharmaceutical salesman Jamie Bellish. They married the next year. A former Marine, Jamie could be tough on Sheila’s girls, which made her uncomfortable.
“He was very strict. I could tell that he was a disciplinarian. I think Sheila—she seemed a little bit nervous. Jamie was basically a tough guy. Marines are supposed to be tough.”
Jamie and Sheila wanted more children but were surprised when, through in vitro fertilization, she became pregnant with quadruplets. Local media covered the birth of three sons and one daughter.
“She got a lot of attention in San Antonio about it, probably more than they wanted, you know, ’cause she couldn’t get any quiet.”
She and Jamie really loved those babies. Sheila became a stay-at-home mom, caring for four infants. Not long after, Jamie took a work promotion, and he and Sheila moved with all six kids to Sarasota, Florida. Only two months later, Sheila was murdered. Investigators look into Jamie’s financial affairs and discover that he had life insurance policies on Sheila. They wonder whether he had a motive to kill her.
“Jamie Bellish was the first person we looked at. We did a thorough background of where he was that day. It does happen that people do kill their spouses for insurance.”
Detectives question Jamie, who has a partial alibi for the time of the murder. He made several appointments on his sales route that day and has receipts and witnesses that verify where he was during his lunch hour. During an interrogation, Jamie points investigators toward another potential suspect, a former pool maintenance man who worked at the house.
“He was able to give us at least one person of interest. The person of interest had said something to Sheila or sent something to Jamie, or both, that made them feel a little uneasy when he was around, and Jamie told us that we might want to talk to him.”
Although they have no physical evidence from the crime scene for comparison, investigators ask the pool man for hair, blood, and DNA samples. He complies and is soon ruled out. There is one more person detectives want to question: Sheila’s first husband, Alan Blackthorne.
“Get help.”
Sheila had gone through years of a contentious divorce with Blackthorne. Could he have a reason to kill her?
“We verified that he was in San Antonio when this occurred, so we could eliminate him as actually being the trigger man.”
With their three potential suspects ruled out, detectives are back at square one. They begin knocking on doors, asking if any neighbors witnessed anything unusual on the day Sheila was killed. As it turns out, someone did, and it could be the lead that cracks the case wide open.
“There was a murder down the street, and I said, ‘Oh my goodness, I got the guy’s license plate number.'”
Sheila Bellish made local news in San Antonio when she gave birth to quadruplets in 1995, but now, less than two years later, she is in the headlines again for being murdered in front of her small children.
“It was hard to fathom why someone could kill a woman, an obvious, loving mother in front of her children.”
Detectives begin questioning neighbors and local workers, hoping someone saw something out of place. They get the lead they’re looking for when Jake Mast, a gardener, remembers seeing a suspicious vehicle.
“I was mowing a yard in the front there, and I always waved to people because there might be a customer later on. And I remember when he came down through there, he didn’t do anything.”
A short time later, Mast spots the same car, a Mitsubishi Eclipse, parked nearby. He notices the driver is wearing camouflage pants.
“All of a sudden it kind of hit me that the guy is out of—it’s just out of place here, you know? There’s something wrong. It was so vivid. I was scared to look at the car. I memorized the guy’s license plate number; I remembered it. I made a sentence out of it: Yes, Bob and 62 girls.”
Mast can’t remember the name of the state on the plate but tells authorities that it was a white background. Detectives run plate number YBR62G through the Florida DMV system.
“We did run Florida at first and got nothing back.”
Knowing the Bellish family had just moved from Texas six weeks before the murder, Florida detectives submit the plate number to the Texas Rangers Law Enforcement Agency. This time, Rangers run the plate and hit the jackpot. It’s registered to a white Mitsubishi Eclipse, the same make and model as the car spotted at the crime scene. The driver is 23-year-old Joey Del Toro, a small-time criminal with a minor drug conviction.
“Del Toro was a playboy, but he seemed like, you know, he wasn’t a bad guy. Everybody we talked to said he was a little bit of a cokehead or whatever, but was a good athlete, and he just was a little bit lazy.”
Texas authorities send the prints from his prior conviction to the Florida Crime Lab for a comparison, but despite a thorough background check, investigators are puzzled. There is no link between Del Toro and Sheila Bellish. Police scour San Antonio for Del Toro. They can’t locate him, but they do find his white Mitsubishi parked outside a friend’s apartment complex. They get a warrant to search it and are shocked by what they find.
“Inside the car was a treasure trove of evidence implicating Joey Del Toro as the assailant in the murder of Sheila Bellish. A pair of camouflage pants.”
“Those items included a map to Sheila Bellish’s house, camouflage clothing, and, most importantly, the suspected murder weapon, a .45 caliber pistol.”
The evidence is sent to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for analysis. Ballistics prove the gun is a match for the bullet from the crime scene. Tiny blood spatter on the camouflage pants matches Sheila’s DNA, and a fingerprint lifted from the trigger matches the prints from Del Toro’s prior criminal record and the print lifted off the dryer at Sheila’s house. Detectives believe Joey Del Toro is Sheila’s killer, but they have no idea what motivated the murder.
“He traveled from the state of Texas over a period of a couple of days for the sole purpose of killing Sheila Bellish, someone he had never met in his life. There was no obvious connection to Sheila. That was the key question: Why?”
Before investigators can answer that question, they get a tip that he’s fled the country.
“Joey had become aware of the fact that he was a suspect in the murder, and he thereafter fled into Mexico.”
Sheila Bellish’s killer has slipped through detectives’ hands. Hoping Mexican authorities will catch Del Toro and extradite him back to the U.S., investigators continue building their case. The plot thickens when they uncover another key suspect.
“We were trying to find Del Toro, and it turned out that everybody said, ‘If you want to find him, look for his cousin, Sammy Gonzalez.'”
Sammy Gonzalez is 27 years old and works part-time in the pro shop at a San Antonio, Texas, golf course. Authorities confront him with the evidence from his cousin’s car.
“Sam Gonzalez initially started lying like everybody does, but it wasn’t too long into the interview that he crumbled and he started giving us information, little by little.”
Gonzalez eventually reveals that a hit was put on Sheila Bellish and that she was killed for cold, hard cash. According to Gonzalez, the conspiracy was initiated not by him, but by a third suspect.
“Sammy Gonzalez laid out a set of circumstances where he was approached by an individual by the name of Danny Rocha.”
Danny Rocha, a bookie on the golf course, showed Gonzalez a picture of Sheila Bellish taken at a birthday party for one of her daughters. He claimed that Sheila was a bad mother who needed to be punished. Unnerved by the idea of attacking a woman, Gonzalez instead recruited his cousin, Joey Del Toro, to rough her up. Ultimately, as the conspiracy rolled on, word came from Danny Rocha that he didn’t care if she was beaten up or killed. This is when the conspiracy turned from a mere beating into a potential murder. Rocha gave Del Toro the picture of Sheila, a map to her home, and promised to pay him $10,000. Detectives now know some of the circumstances surrounding Sheila’s death, but they still need the trigger man, Joey Del Toro.
“Without getting Joey Del Toro back from Mexico, the likelihood of convicting those responsible for Sheila Bellish’s murder was doubtful. You have to connect the dots.”
Mexican authorities quickly capture Del Toro, but they are reluctant to extradite him because he’ll be eligible for the death penalty. Local authorities need someone with more leverage and turn to the FBI for help.
“It was at this point that it was decided that the best avenue to prosecute the guys that conspired to kill Sheila Bellish would be through the federal system.”
The FBI pressures Mexican police, who finally extradite Del Toro back to the United States. Del Toro confesses to authorities that he killed Sheila Bellish, and he reveals something shocking: there is someone else involved in the plot, someone above Danny Rocha, a mastermind that Del Toro is afraid of.
“I was debating whether or not to do it, you know? My in my mind was, this man who ordered this obviously is a means. And if this does not get done, and if I don’t do it, then something might happen to me, or maybe even to my family because of this guy. Get the kids.”
Now, the question is: Who is the mysterious man behind the murderous plot?
“Who ordered the killing of Sheila Bellish? I’m not afraid to take this, I will touch you.”
Ten days after the murder of Sheila Bellish, Florida and Texas investigators have learned that there is a mysterious mastermind behind the murder of Sheila Bellish. They figure out the man’s identity when they uncover what motivated Danny Rocha to orchestrate the bloody plot.
“We need to help this guy out.”
It was determined that perhaps Danny Rocha had agreed to participate in the conspiracy because he was attempting at that time to get funding for a sports bar he wanted to operate. That funding was to come from Alan Blackthorne.
“Nobody snatched you!”
Alan Blackthorne, Sheila’s ex-husband. On the surface, Blackthorne seems to be beyond reproach, a successful San Antonio businessman worth $40 million. He’s a member of the local country club and married with two young sons. But as investigators interview family and friends, they discover that Blackthorne has a secret life that few know about.
“See right on your—His personality, he could disarm you with that, but it makes you wonder, ‘Wow, this guy is into some strange things.'”
Born Allan William Van Hoot, Allan claims his childhood was difficult.
“Allan has on numerous occasions said he was abused as a young person, as a youngster—instances where his mother set him on fire. I’ve never seen any concrete evidence that he was abused.”
In 1973, 17-year-old Allan married his first wife and joined the army. Both commitments were short-lived.
“She announced to him that she had become pregnant, and he kicked her.”
“The woman felt that the fetus may have been damaged, and she thereafter had an abortion, frightened for her life.”
His wife divorced him in 1978 and went into hiding. A second marriage also ended after three years with more allegations of abuse. Allan was at his divorce lawyer’s office when he met Sheila.
“His glibness, his personality, his looks, his apparent success in business—it left Sheila in awe, and I think she was taken in by him. But it didn’t take her long to figure out that she had made a big, big mistake, and that she didn’t know the man she had married.”
Soon after, Allan changed his last name from Van Hoot to Blackthorne.
“This name was taken from a novel, the novel ‘Shogun’, and the main character in that novel was a guy named John Blackthorne.”
Business began booming, and Allan and Sheila seemed to be living the dream.
“You know, Allan loved the high life and the good life, but there was a price with some of the bad times that she went through with him.”
Those bad times included Alan’s fondness for prostitutes.
“Numerous sources had said that Allan had a penchant for prostitutes, and that oftentimes he would bring prostitutes home and Sheila would be told to sit there and watch.”
“She told me he had brought men home at times and made her have sex with them while he watched, things like that.”
Blackthorne also enjoyed cross-dressing games.
“He would dress up in a little Peep dress and be taken away from his home and somehow wander back home in various straits of disarray, dirty and everything, and then he would have to be bathed, and this was part of some type of sexual ritual.”
Sheila was living in a private hell where Allan controlled her every move.
“There was a lot of emotional abuse. He would actually deny food, because if she gained weight, he would get angry because she was supposed to be this perfect person.”
Sheila could no longer tolerate the marriage. In 1987, she filed for divorce and began fighting for custody of their two daughters. The battle would stretch over 10 years.
“Once they did file for divorce and he knew he couldn’t control her any other way than to try and control her through the girls, it seemed more like all he wanted to do was to destroy Sheila both emotionally and physically.”
Allan retired at age 44 and became obsessed with golf. Through bookies like Danny Rocha, he gambled away a small fortune on the sport.
“Allan was thought of as a sucker on the golf course. There were several local area golfers here in San Antonio that were routinely fleecing Allan on the golf course for thousands and thousands of dollars.”
“It’s only money, boys. It’s only money.”
Alan Blackthorne believed he had everything except control of his ex-wife. After Sheila married Jamie Bellish and had the quadruplets, he coerced his daughters to turn against her, claiming in court that she was physically abusing them. If they stubbed their toe or anything at her house, he would claim she was hitting them. In classic sociopathic behavior:
“Alan Blackthorne was manipulative. He manipulated his children with Sheila on numerous occasions. He manipulated Sheila. He manipulated the law enforcement community into thinking that Sheila had been abusive to the girls on occasion, which was all fictitious.”
Allan continued to fight Sheila for custody of their daughters, but in the summer of 1997, he suddenly dropped the battle, claiming it was hurting the children. But as friends revealed to investigators, Sheila was worried her ex was up to no good. The Bellish family fled in the middle of the night to Sarasota, Florida.
“She just says, ‘We have to leave, and I can’t tell you where we’re going.’ I had a feeling she knew something was about to happen.”
Blackthorne had no intention of letting Sheila get away. He approached Danny Rocha on the golf course, who in turn went to Sammy Gonzalez.
“Danny Rocha indicated he knew someone that wanted to have his wife beaten up. Sammy indicated he might be interested.”
“Danny Rocha said that this particular person had a lot of money, he had a wife that was in custody of his children, and the wife was being abusive to the two children, and that he wanted her beaten up.”
“Sammy indicated immediately that, ‘I’m not the type of guy that can hurt a woman, but I might know someone that would.'”
“Sammy then brought out the name of Joey Del Toro, and Joey Del Toro was offered money to beat up Sheila Bellish.”
“Alan Blackthorne would not let it go. He basically was not used to losing anything, and this was just one more thing he was not going to lose.”
Her days were numbered then.
January 2000. It’s been more than two years since Sheila Bellish was brutally slaughtered in front of her four toddlers. Authorities have thoroughly investigated Sheila’s ex-husband, Alan Blackthorne, and are convinced that he paid bookie Danny Rocha to orchestrate her death. One by one, the men involved in the plot face the courts. Sammy Gonzalez pleads guilty to his role in coordinating the killing and receives a 17-year sentence. Then a Sarasota jury sentences Danny Rocha to life. Joey Del Toro, the trigger man, waits for his day in court. Everyone in the bloody conspiracy is behind bars, except for its mastermind, Alan Blackthorne. He appears to be getting away with murder.
“It had been in the local newspapers here in San Antonio and elsewhere, and was readily discussed throughout the city.”
Despite this, Blackthorne maintained this demeanor of calmness, a matter-of-fact attitude that he hadn’t done anything. He even flaunted his notoriety over the murder of Sheila Bellish.
“When you see a guy like this, you really want to convict this guy and get him put in a place where he really needs to be.”
Blackthorne seems untouchable until a new law enables prosecutors to pursue a federal case against him. Because the murder plot was hatched in Texas and carried out in Florida, it is an interstate crime. Suddenly, the FBI has the ammunition it needs.
“There are two statutes that they were looking to use. One was the use of interstate communication facilities in the furtherance of a crime, and secondly, interstate travel to commit domestic violence.”
On January 5th, 2000, FBI agents arrest Blackthorne on a golf course.
“It’s ironic that Alan Blackthorne was arrested while playing golf, because that is how he met Danny Rocha and that is how the conspiracy was hatched.”
“You got that?”
But the FBI still needs hard evidence to back the charges. They get a search warrant to go through Alan Blackthorne’s mansion. They hit pay dirt.
“Evidence included a map finder guide, a computer-driven map finder guide, and also a printed-out page showing the address in Sarasota, Florida.”
The evidence team also finds a set of photos of Sheila and her daughters. One print of Sheila at a birthday party is missing—the same image Danny Rocha showed Gonzalez when he first proposed the deadly plot. This photograph was to be used by Rocha, Gonzalez, and Del Toro to locate and identify Sheila Bellish.
Two and a half years after Sheila Bellish’s death, Alan Blackthorne goes on trial in a federal courtroom for arranging Sheila’s murder.
“He maintained his innocence throughout. Cocky, almost.”
His defense claims he knew nothing of the plot. They say Rocha took it upon himself to kill Sheila to win Blackthorne’s favor and parlay it into a business loan to build a sports bar. The jury doesn’t buy it. On July 6th, 2000, they give Blackthorne the surprise of his life.
“It was a sweet day for me when he got prosecuted and convicted.”
That same afternoon in a Florida courtroom, Joey Del Toro pleads guilty to first-degree murder. He then agrees to tell detectives about the moments leading up to Sheila’s murder. On the morning of November 7th, 1997, Del Toro arrived at the Bellish home after an all-night drive from Texas.
“I parked and just waited. I saw Sheila leave, and that’s when I went inside the house.”
Sheila took her two older daughters to school, then returned to the house.
“I was looking at her for a while to see if she mistreated her kids in any way.”
“I’m going to say something, and that’s probably the only thing that I’ll say concerning what happened in the house. I was about to leave when she noticed that the door was open, ’cause I had left the door open to the laundry room that goes into the garage. Like I said, she noticed it, and she stood right in front of me.”
“He had watched Sheila Bellish for approximately an hour, and their eyes met, and then he said at that point in time there was no going back.”
Seven months after his conviction, Alan Blackthorne is sentenced to two concurrent life sentences without parole in a federal prison. It’s a just sentence in the eyes of those who worked tirelessly to catch him.
“Alan Blackthorne has shown no remorse, no sorrow whatsoever. He truly thought that he would get away with this, and finally, it caught up to him.”
But even with all four conspirators convicted, it brings little peace over the loss of Sheila Bellish.
“He took away a beautiful woman that loved her kids more than her own life. A person that does that to somebody, especially in front of their own children, that person’s not human. And I think prison’s too easy.”
