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Nancy Howard had no idea someone was following her that twenty-four hour period. In the morning, she headed to the Start Baptist church in Carrollton, not far from her home. At that place was a women'south tea, and Nancy was hosting two tables. Her husband Frank had helped her pack the decorations into her car earlier he'd left on a concern trip a few nights earlier. Afterward tea, she went abode earlier returning to church for a baptism service of a family friend. By the time she left Outset Baptist once more, just before 7:30 in the evening, it was raining. A argent Nissan trailed her.
On her way dwelling, Nancy stopped at Taco Bueno and picked up a steak fajita dinner in the drive-through. So the 53-twelvemonth-old female parent of three grown children drove to the family's immaculate two-story brick house on Bluebonnet Way, where she expected to relax in forepart of the TV. She pulled into the garage and got out of her motorcar, carrying her purse and her Taco Bueno purse. That'southward when she felt someone grab her effectually the neck and put a gun to her head.
She heard the boyfriend demand her handbag, but the words didn't register. She wrestled away, turning to face him, and the seriousness of the moment caught upwardly with her. A man she'd never seen before stood in front of her. He was in his 20s, with facial hair, wearing a blackness baseball cap, and holding a silver gun. He repeated himself, louder this time: "Give me your bag!"
In a moment of panic, Nancy tried to give him her pocketbook only handed him the Taco Bueno bag instead. She could see him getting angry, and she shoved her purse at him with both hands, pushing him back a step. So he lifted the gun and pointed it at her confront. Earlier he pulled the trigger, she cried out: "Jesus, salvage me!"
A .380 caliber bullet entered her left temple, traveled through her sinus crenel, down her pharynx, and stopped in her right lung. The man ran away with her purse, leaving the handbag of nutrient on the pelting-soaked driveway and Nancy bleeding on the garage floor.
•••
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They met at church in San Marcos. Frank Howard had a deep, gentle vocalisation and piercing optics. He had been married briefly in higher—Nancy attended the ceremony—only it didn't work out. Nancy had a peachy voice, too, and violet eyes that drew comparisons to Elizabeth Taylor's. Frank's father, a Baptist preacher, married them in 1983. Their starting time daughter, Ashley, came 2 years afterwards. The family unit moved to the suburbs of Dallas, eventually settling in Carrollton, where they institute a good schoolhouse district and a church they liked. They had two more kids, Jay and Brianna, and established a comfortable life together.
Frank was an accountant who shared his pocket-sized business firm with a business partner. They had offices in Addison—busy past Nancy—and more than 500 clients. Nancy chosen herself a "domestic engineer." In addition to cooking and cleaning and keeping a schedule for her husband, for more 20 years she made certain their three beautiful children fabricated it to school on time and to their various activities. She besides served in the PTA and volunteered on most of the schoolhouse field trips. Together, Frank and Nancy hosted one of the church'south youth groups, and they sang in the choir on Sundays. Their son Jay would later tell people, "If the doors to First Baptist were open, my parents were probably inside."
The wedlock wasn't perfect. Nancy struggled with depression and the chronic pain of fibromyalgia, and at ane point Frank battled prostate cancer. While the health bug were stressful, the couple seemed to come up through them with a stronger bail. They had healthy discussions before any major business moves or big purchases. (They worried Frank's new Lexus might be too flashy.) They worked together to present a united forepart to their children. Nancy told people that she'd raised her kids to "love, honor, and respect their dad." When their youngest, Brianna, graduated from high school a few years back, Nancy looked forward to their "empty nester years" and hoped she and Frank could rekindle the spark they'd had early in their relationship.
In May 2009, Frank told Nancy that he'd be taking on a new client and that he'd probably demand to travel more. She was surprised that he hadn't consulted her first. Frank told her that he hoped he'd even so be able to brand her happy.
The new client was Richard Raley, a Colleyville man of affairs who'd fabricated millions on Defense Department contracts, supplying ice to troops in Iraq. His longtime accountant had recently died, and Raley needed help bringing more $30 million from Kuwait into the United States. He offered Frank office space in Grapevine and the employ of his individual jet, and he somewhen made the accountant his chief fiscal officer.
That summertime, Nancy went on a mission trip to Africa with Brianna. It was a hazard to spend some time together earlier her girl headed out of state for college. Only when they got dorsum and Frank picked them upward from the drome, Nancy noticed that something about her married man had changed—though she couldn't put her finger on it. Frank was rarely emotional, but on the mode home, he broke downward in tears. At the time, he chalked information technology up to the death of a shut family unit friend.
Soon Frank was traveling all the fourth dimension. He was in Florida, then California, then Europe or Kuwait. He'd call or email, simply Nancy was lonely for long stretches, and she wasn't happy. She'd never met Richard Raley, simply she thought Frank's new client was tearing their marriage autonomously.
•••
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Suzanne Leontieff is a dental hygienist in her early 50s from Santa Cruz, California. She has blond hair, a youthful face, and a perky, high-pitched voice. Her two daughters played competitive softball, and she traveled with them to tournaments all over California.
On the weekend of July 25, 2009—while Nancy was in Africa—Suzanne was at a tournament in Lake Tahoe. Killing time between games, she decided to hitting the tables at a casino called Harveys. At 1 table, she met a man named Frank. He said he was in town for business, and he seemed nice, with a deep, gentle voice, and a head total of thick, black hair. Afterward drinking and talking for half an hour or and so, she had to become, but she saw him after dinner at a different table. They gambled together for a few hours that night, and when she walked through the same expanse the next mean solar day, she found him over again. By that Sunday, they had exchanged phone numbers, and he was asking if she had any plans for the side by side weekend. Suzanne was married but separated, working on her divorce. She knew Frank was married, likewise, but he told her it wasn't going well.
"He said he just hadn't been happy," she says, "just not miserable either."
They talked on the phone and texted throughout the week, and the next weekend he invited her to meet him in Reno. They went to another casino and drank and talked as they walked around. She had her own room that weekend, but she spent a lot of fourth dimension in his. They talked nearly the man she was leaving, and they talked about Frank's wife, Nancy. A week after they met, Suzanne says, Frank was talking about a divorce "constantly." A few weeks later, as Frank was creating belongings corporations to move Richard Raley'south money, he named 3 of the companies after Suzanne. 1 was called SLH, equally in Suzanne Leontieff-Howard, her proper name if they were married.
They kept talking, seeing each other every few weeks, simply it went beyond that. He paid for softball tournaments. He helped pay for Suzanne'due south oldest girl'due south college. He rented—and then bought—a boat for $thirty,000. In January 2010, he bought Suzanne a house in Santa Cruz worth $900,000, paying greenbacks. He bought a condo in Tahoe worth nearly $380,000.
At that place were trips, too. He brought Suzanne to a suite at a Mavs game in 2010 and to a Steelers game in Pittsburgh. He brought her to the Super Bowl the next year. He took Suzanne and her daughters to a Giants game in San Francisco and to the Bahama islands for vii days. (She told her kids he was already separated.) When he could, he flew her on the private jet. When he couldn't, he paid for her commercial flights, and for their food and hotel rooms. And he always stayed with her, even when she came to Dallas.
Frank as well started an IRA for Suzanne. He sent her a cheque for $500,000 and a wire transfer for $200,000. When her divorce finally went through and she lost her health insurance, he put her on the payroll of Raley'southward company. He even kept a framed photograph in his office from a helicopter trip they took.
Suzanne says they were in beloved. They rarely fought. And when they did, it was about Frank getting a divorce. She wanted it done and dreamed of a fourth dimension when she could movement to Texas to live with him. He told her that he and Nancy slept in separate rooms, that he'd file for divorce soon. Just there was ever something that got in the way: a graduation, a marriage, an illness, what he said was Nancy'south fragile mental health. He always had an excuse.
•••
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Billie Earl Johnson is in his early 50s. He's thin and wiry, with a goatee and tattoos on his arms, breast, and neck. He has an affinity for methamphetamine and motorcycles, and he has spent more than a quarter of his life behind bars. When he got out in February 2009, his younger brother Chris was waiting for him, ready to bring him habitation to Eastward Texas, an area total of tall pines and rusty truck-terminate towns.
Chris and his wife ready Billie up with a woman who worked with them at Van Tone, a season manufacturing company in Terrell. When the woman bankrupt up with Billie in July 2009, he didn't respond well. He phoned her at all hours, harassing her, threatening her in the centre of the dark. She worried that Billie might prove up at her work, as he had in the by, and she told the people at Van Tone to exist on alert. Within a few weeks, though, he'd found a new lady friend and new troubles.
Billie says he was at dwelling in the town of Ben Wheeler, lying on the couch, when his phone rang. His new girlfriend, a convenience-store clerk named Stacey Serenko, was in the kitchen. The human on the phone introduced himself as John. He told Billie that he'd heard of him and that he was hoping he might help with a job. The human said he needed someone to kill his married woman.
"I raised directly upwards off the burrow," Billie says.
Looking back years later, wearing talocrural joint cuffs and a canton-issued jumpsuit, Billie says he never intended to kill anyone. He just wanted to string this guy forth for money. Billie agreed to meet John outside a Sheplers Western Wearable shop in Mesquite.
When Billie showed up, in that location was only ane other car there, a grey Lexus. Billie got out of his truck and into the passenger seat of the human being's auto. John handed Billie a brown envelope containing $60,000 cash, forth with a photo of Nancy Howard. John told him to go far look like an blow.
Back in East Texas, Billie was generous with his windfall. Everywhere he went, he paid for drinks or bought dinner or handed out $100 bills. A lot of the money went toward drugs. He and Stacey partied for several days straight, a period now fixed in their memories as a blur of shopping and meth-fueled sexual activity. Soon he was arrested and charged with possession. What was left of the greenbacks, the police confiscated. When Billie bonded out two days afterwards, he called John and told him that he needed more money. Stacey noticed how soft-spoken and well-mannered John seemed. "A very squeamish man," she says. "Very kind." Still, the first chance she got, she sent a picture show of the man in the Lexus to her dislocated mother. "If something happened to me," Stacey says, "I wanted that photo to live on."
Their second meeting took place at a Texaco off of Interstate 635, where Billie says John gave him an additional $35,000. Billie spent this money the manner he'd spent the beginning payment, and before long he was in jail and broke again. He'due south got a colorful manner of describing how he burned through the cash.
"I would wipe—" he pauses. "I went through information technology the manner a kid goes through diapers," he says.
•••
Charlie Louderman is a tall, intimidating man, with broad shoulders and thick artillery. He'due south the kind of guy who will tell you with authority, "I know what claret looks similar," and he can depict what it feels like to get striking in the head with brass knuckles. He lives at the end of a expressionless-end road in Mineola, where he can meet who's coming from a long mode abroad.
Charlie grew upward with a friend of Billie Earl Johnson'due south, only the first time he met Billie was a few years ago in his driveway. Billie rode up on a purple chopper, wearing black chaps and a bandanna tied around his cervix. He asked Charlie if he could help him get some guns. Billie also offered him $700 a week to be a bodyguard and runner of sorts. So for months he was an up-close witness to the anarchy and misadventures of Billie and his band of Due east Texas misfits.
Charlie says he oft went with Billie to pick up large sums of greenbacks, all from this mysterious John. They met outside a Walmart and in a corporate parking garage and at a Grandy's. Charlie recalls counting out $83,000 on his bedroom flooring one time. He watched as Billie traded stacks of the money for bags of meth. He says that Billie told him early on that he was a hit human being but says that Billie claimed to be targeting a gang member who'd raped someone'south daughter. "When I found out it was a woman, I said, 'I'm not doing that,' " Charlie says.
When Billie eventually introduced Charlie and John over speakerphone, Charlie accused the distributor—the human being Billie chosen his client—of being an undercover officeholder, then of beingness a drug dealer, then of being a "chickenshit."
He also heard John plot ways to kill Nancy. He and Billie both call back John telling them to make it look like a home break-in. John told them there would exist $40,000 worth of jewelry, and they could set the house on fire after to comprehend their tracks. John worried, though, about the fire possibly spreading to a neighbor's house. John as well said Nancy regularly met her friends for lunch at a favorite spot. He suggested firing an automatic weapon at the group, shooting the showtime few rounds at Nancy, then "spraying around" to confuse the outcome. Or perchance they could do it during her book club or her scrapbooking retreat.
Every time they got a plan in identify, though, something went wrong. Stacey slowed them down. Or they got too wasted to leave the hotel room. Or they were in jail. Each time, Billie had a new excuse for John, who seemed to grow increasingly frustrated.
At i point, Stacey remembers, someone asked John why he wanted his wife killed. He was asked: is information technology something legal, or is it something personal?
"A little bit of both," he said.
•••
Past late 2010, John was using a hard-to– trace burner phone and delivering money to Billie via wire transfers. Billie and Stacey didn't have bank accounts, though, so he recruited family members—Billie'due south children, Stacey's mother—offer to allow them keep between 10 and 20 percent of everything that went through their accounts. Information technology was $75,000 to one of Billie'southward sons, then $20,000 to Stacey's mom, over and over for ii years. More than $750,000 full. That's in addition to what Billie estimates to be about $1 million in cash and some other $one one thousand thousand in bail bonds.
Billie bought himself a decked-out Chevy Avalanche and his daughter a Firebird. He bought each of his three kids motorcycles and bought go-karts for his grandkids. He talked about saving upward plenty to open up a shop. He bought a gunkhole and a camper and countless motel rooms where they'd party. He bought Charlie a riding lawn mower and "numerous assail weapons."
Billie could also be as destructive every bit he was generous. During ane meth- and coke-fueled fight with Stacey, Billie videotaped himself firing an AK-47 at a motorcycle until information technology caught fire. And so he sent the video to Stacey's son, Dustin. Then he smashed his daughter's windshield and dragged his own $lxxx,000 chopper in circles behind his truck. Stacey says he also beat her on multiple occasions. When he got arrested—which was frequently—he had John wire the bond companies directly.
At 1 point, Billie and Stacey were arrested in a Best Western in Wood County with more than $10,000 in greenbacks and plenty meth to get felony trafficking charges. While she was in jail, Stacey told an FBI agent about the elaborate plot to kill Nancy. "It was such an outlandish story," she says, "people didn't really believe information technology."
Charlie Louderman told regime nigh the plot, too. During a stint in the Wood County jail, he described how Billie was milking John and how eager this rich guy was to have his wife murdered. Nobody believed him either.
By the end of 2011, Billie was dorsum out of jail and offering to pay cash for his older brother's funeral. When his sis and his nephews came in from California, they were impressed with how much money Billie had, despite his lack of employment. Past early on 2012, his sis'south son, Michael Speck, had moved to Texas to get in on whatever was happening.
After more than than two years of mishaps and delays and payments, John was getting harder to put off. And by at present Billie had nearly a dozen people in his conduce of miscreants, about related through blood or marriage. "It started with just me and Stacey," Billie says. "It ended up a whole nest of people."
In late May 2012, Billie arranged a meeting with John at the Bass Pro Shops in Grapevine. Much to Billie's chagrin, Stacey invited Michael and her son, Dustin. John concocted a plan with Michael that involved tracking Nancy on a trip to San Marcos. He said he'd pay them the $100,000 life insurance policy and $5,000 a calendar week for the rest of their lives. Billie was placidity for most of the meeting, seething because other people were getting access to his money tree.
Only earlier anyone could become to San Marcos, Billie and Stacey were arrested again. This time, when Stacey called John from jail, he couldn't come up up with the money to go them out.
"I know I'grand not going to last long in here," she told him, crying on the recorded jail line. "We tin still make it happen if I'yard out tomorrow. Everything is still set up. Information technology will nevertheless get forward."
•••
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After Billie and Stacey were arrested, her son, Dustin, moved in with Billie's nephew Michael, the one who'd moved from California to go far on the action. That's when Dustin, and so eighteen, tried meth for the beginning fourth dimension. He's a lanky kid, with a Southern drawl and a ninth-grade education. Billie says, "He'southward then stupid, he doesn't know how to put antifreeze in a pickup truck."
With his mom and her boyfriend in jail, Dustin began contacting John directly, initially nigh bail coin, just presently John was asking him to exercise the deed himself. On the 4th of July, Dustin met with John and was given $24,000. John said that Nancy would be staying at the Gaylord Texan hotel shortly for a Mothers of Preschoolers convention. John told Dustin he should use a baseball bat.
Dustin returned to East Texas and promptly spent the money the mode Billie would have. He bought a big purse of meth and spent the night sharing information technology with strangers. He also wished every person he saw a happy Independence Twenty-four hour period with a handful of Ben Franklins and filled his Facebook contour with photos of himself holding stacks of coin. At one signal, he says, several thou dollars blew off the hood of his car in a church building parking lot.
Within 2 weeks, all of the money was gone, and Dustin asked John for more. John said he'd leave some cash by a h2o meter behind a house he endemic. Dustin brought a friend named Jason Rendine with him on the ride from East Texas to Carrollton, but they were both high and got hopelessly lost. They spent hours driving through Nancy'due south neighborhood, stopping at several houses. Soon they were pulled over and asked to pace out of the car.
She slipped in her own blood merely managed to walk into the firm. In the laundry room, she stopped in front of a mirror and saw a horrific prototype staring back at her.
Dustin was nervous and stammered on nearly looking for his uncle's house. So he said information technology was his stepdad's business firm. Then he said information technology was but a family unit friend that they all called John. Then he blurted out that he was a hit man who had been hired to impale a man'south wife.
Dustin and Jason were taken to the Carrollton police station. In that location was a study filed, simply officers figured the hit homo stuff was just the crazy ramblings of a meth head. Dustin was let out a day afterward.
His friend Jason believed him, though. When he got out of jail and back to his very aroused married woman, Stephanie, he told her what he'd heard and showed her a telephone number he'd copied off a slice of newspaper. "Yous'll never believe where Dustin is getting his money," he said.
Before long Stephanie had a plan. They came upwards with aliases—Wes and Tiffany—and chosen the number. They told John that they knew all about his scheme and that if he didn't pay them, they would go to the cops. John agreed to meet them at a Whataburger in Garland. He showed up in a dark Lexus and gave Jason (or Wes) an envelope with 30 $100 bills. Within a day or two, they met once more, and John gave them $12,000. A few days later, information technology was a wire transfer for $twenty,000.
But so something happened that Jason and his wife hadn't anticipated. John started calling them. He was persistent. He wanted to talk to Wes (Jason). He wanted to know if they knew anyone who could get this chore washed. Stephanie says John offered them a $l,000 finder's fee and $100,000 to whomever did the deed. Then she dyed her pilus black and told John that she was Tiffany's sister, Stephanie (using her real name). She got another $10,000 in cash. After, an attorney would inquire Stephanie almost this interaction with skepticism.
"Exercise you lot actually think he's that stupid?" the lawyer asked.
She replied emphatically: "He is!"
•••
Misti Ford is 32 years onetime and lives in Hemet, California. Her hair is dyed a dark shade of red, and she has piercings in her nose and lips. In 2012, she was engaged to a man named Michael Lorence. They'd met a few years earlier, before he'd gone to jail. When he got out, they moved in together. He told her about a cellmate he'd had, a man named Michael Speck—two Michaels in jail together, 1 of them Billie's nephew.
Phone records indicate that while John was in affect with Dustin, Jason, and Stephanie, he was also communicating with Michael Speck. When Billie called John from jail at the terminate of July looking for bond money, John told him that he had given the concluding of his money to Michael.
In the recording, Billie is quick to the point. "I need some money," he says.
"That's part of my trouble," John says. "I'one thousand still cut off from everything I've got going on. What happened to Michael? I gave him a agglomeration of money."
You lot can hear Billie getting upset equally they get.
"How much you lot give him?"
"I don't fifty-fifty know anymore. Information technology's been so long."
"I ain't heard nothing from him on zero!"
"I told him—I said, 'This is the last I got.' And he said he'd go have care of everything."
On August fourteen, Michael Speck sent $i,000 to his sometime cellmate, Michael Lorence, and told him and Misti to come up to East Texas. Misti thought the point of the trip was for her fiancé to ask Michael to be the best human being at their wedding. They drove Misti's Honda and made it in near 24 hours. Because the Honda had a janky tire, they rented a car when they arrived. It was a silver Nissan.
Misti says she and Lorence spent most of the trip at Michael'due south house, hanging out with his extended family. On August 18, she says, Michael and Lorence left the house early. They told her they were taking the car to Dallas to do some "sightseeing and side jobs"—but ii Michaels headed into the big city together.
She spent the solar day little around on Facebook and passing time talking to the strangers she felt stuck with. She remembers that it was most midnight when the boys got back. They had alcohol and started drinking. She says she noticed something dissimilar about her fiancé. Lorence wasn't normally a big drinker, just that night he drank a lot. He was also serenity. "Usually he doesn't shut up," she says.
When they were alone in a bedchamber later on, she says, he told her that he'd murdered somebody. He said he'd shot a woman in the face. She left the firm and went for a walk lonely. He stayed and kept drinking.
It was well-nigh 2 months earlier she broke off their engagement, and she didn't talk to the Carrollton law until January 2013. A friend whom she'd told had tipped them off. Misti says she was agape. "I was scared of the same thing happening to me."
John wanted his wife dead, so he called Billie. Billie had a nephew named Michael who did time with another Michael, final name Lorence. It appears information technology was the second Michael who at long last did John'due south bidding.
•••
Nancy isn't sure how long she lay un conscious in her garage. She says she heard God's phonation calling to her. "Become upwardly!" she heard. "Get up!"
She pulled herself upward using a metal table but fell dorsum down. And then she decided to crawl.
"Kind of like you might see Army men crawling," she says.
Her phone was in her purse, which was gone, so she crawled toward her automobile, hoping to use her OnStar button. She opened the door and hoisted herself up, putting bloody handprints on everything she touched. She finally got close enough to push the push, just without the keys—also in her bag—information technology didn't work.
She slipped in her own blood only managed to walk into the business firm. In the laundry room, she stopped in front of a mirror and saw a horrific image staring back at her. Her face was covered in blood and bits of torn flesh. Her sparkly regal blouse was first to turn brown. And where she expected to run into her left eye, she instead saw a gaping, gushing wound.
She managed to dial 911 and howled into the telephone: "Lord Jesus, help me! Oh my God, aid me!"
She said she'd been shot. She gave her address and begged the operator to stay on the line with her. She was still witting, waiting at the door, when the constabulary and ambulance arrived.
A police officer who knew the family unit through church building called Nancy'due south children. Ashley called her father, who was at a Reno casino with Suzanne. She was gambling and he was at the bar, watching a Cowboys preseason game. When Ashley told him that Nancy had been shot, Frank began to cry. He collapsed past the casino door and needed Suzanne's assistance to walk. She collection him to the airport, but there were no more flights to Dallas that night. He called Richard Raley, explained the state of affairs, and asked if he could use the private jet. But Raley'southward pilots were already back in Texas.
Somewhen, Suzanne drove him four hours to the San Jose aerodrome, where he defenseless the starting time flight out in the forenoon. When he landed, he rushed to his married woman's bedside.
He didn't tell police about his paramour, but when they looked at his telephone, they knew. Over the side by side week, he had a series of painful talks with his children and with Nancy, who was still in the hospital. He told them that he'd been having an matter and that it had been going on for more than iii years. But he maintained that he had zero to do with the shooting.
Nancy, still heartbroken by the news of the affair, believed him. When police showed up at the firm and arrested her husband, she insisted that there had been a terrible mistake.
•••
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None of Nancy's neighbors had seen or heard anything that night, so it took fourth dimension to unravel the Coen brothers-esque tale of greed and ineptitude. With surveillance footage from the church, police could see the silver Nissan follow Nancy out of the parking lot.
Carrollton detectives were eventually given the law report from the night that Dustin was pulled over in Nancy's neighborhood and claimed to exist a hit man. They brought him down to the station, and, over three days of interrogation, he shared everything he knew about the twisted murder-for-rent plot. Police also got word from the jail that an inmate named Billie Earl Johnson was claiming to accept data virtually the shooting.
Detectives were shown the moving-picture show of the money homo everyone knew only as John, the photo Stacey had sent to her female parent as insurance. Of course, detectives recognized the man in the gray Lexus as Frank—full name John Franklin Howard.
Turns out, the flavor company, Van Tone, was ane of Frank'southward longtime clients. He'd drive out every few weeks to do the books, ofttimes working direct with the woman Billie had been scaring. At some betoken that twelvemonth, Frank had asked around for Billie's number, promising that he'd exist able to stop the harassment.
Finally, when Misti Ford told detectives what she knew, police could connect the silvery Nissan to Michael Speck and Michael Lorence, who are both in the Denton County jail. The duo were originally charged with aggravated robbery and conspiracy to commit capital letter murder, merely Lorence has since been re-indicted for aggravated assault just.
The accusations shocked people who knew Frank. He'd always seemed so trustworthy. "Nosotros thought he was the epitome of a good Christian human being," is the manner Nancy'due south aunt puts it. During his bond hearing, the courtroom was packed with supporters.
While Frank was out on bail, his daughter Brianna got married. Because she wanted her daughter to accept the wedding of her dreams, Nancy wrote to the courtroom, asking if they could relax the conditions of Frank'south bail for i weekend, then he could attend.
"It was hard," Nancy says. "But it was a joyous fourth dimension."
•••
Frank's trial took identify in Baronial 2014. Information technology was a family affair. Frank'due south kin packed one side of the courtroom, and Nancy'southward packed the other side. In that location were at least 10 attorneys involved and dozens of witnesses: investigators, phone experts, motel managers, the 911 operator who took Nancy'southward call the night she was shot. Nancy took the stand to talk most how their marriage had soured. Suzanne Leontieff testified about her three-year affair with Frank. Information technology was their first fourth dimension in the same room since she'd driven him to the airdrome two years earlier. Every bit she perched in the witness chair and giggled nervously, Nancy'south family shook their heads.
Billie Johnson and Stacey Serenko—both brought over from the jail—talked near getting that get-go call and stringing the accused along for more than than two years and millions of dollars. Charlie Louderman, the man Billie had hired every bit a babysitter, told the jury about listening to a human being repeatedly plot his own wife's murder. Dustin, Stephanie, and Jason all testified near their baroque interactions earlier the shooting, their protracted cons and double cons, and the misery that money eventually brought them. And Misti Ford talked about driving from California to Texas with her fiancé and hearing the confession that changed the trajectory of her life.
The defence attorneys claimed Frank had been blackmailed and that the credibility of the prosecution's witnesses left something to be desired. Ashley, Jay, and Brianna each testified for their father, telling the jury what a kind and compassionate human they'd always known him to be. They weren't in the room for the presentation of most of the show, just when they were, they saturday backside Frank.
The trial lasted nearly three weeks, but the jury needed only 2 hours to convict. During Frank's sentencing, Richard Raley took the stand. Wearing bondage and orange scrubs—he's in jail on a prescription pill-related charge—Raley told the jury that over a three-yr period, Frank had systematically embezzled more than $xxx million from him. There was a representative from Van Tone in the courtroom, too, telling anyone who would listen about how Frank had stolen money from them besides. Prosecutors concluded that in addition to a building disdain for his wife of nearly xxx years, Frank must accept known that a divorce would take exposed his financial misdeeds.
The jury sentenced Frank to life in prison. All three children were angry, leaving the courtroom without saying good day to their female parent.
•••
Nancy at present has a prosthesis painted to match her cute, violet right centre. It still gets dry and sticks—and that hurts. Every morning, she has to become up and launder her eye to ease the pain. And the prosthesis all the same falls out occasionally, considering her eyelid doesn't accept whatever muscle to hold it in identify. She used to be very touchy-feely, but nerve harm in her arm makes hugging painful. Because the bullet went through her sinuses, she has lost her sense of smell and nearly of her sense of gustation. She was in the hospital for more two weeks. She has had multiple reconstructive procedures, and she can't aid only feel insecure nigh her appearance. Her family was worried she might lose her singing vocalization—she had a complanate lung and was coughing up bits of tissue from her throat when the police arrived. But she has returned to sing in the church building choir.
At 53, she'due south living alone for the outset time. She does some part-fourth dimension nanny work, but she's looking for a full-fourth dimension job. It'due south not what she expected to be doing at this point in her life.
Nancy could exist bitter. Only she's non. She tin can separate Frank, the man she knew and loved for all those years—the man she knows loved her at one point—from John, "the alter ego" who cared only about himself. A lot of days withal feel like a surreal dream she might wake up from. Her faith is strong, though, and information technology helps her to forgive. Information technology besides helps her to stay patient.
"I'm trying to notice my way," she says. "I was a homemaker for over twenty years. That's what I did. That's who I am. Now my kids are all over the country. It's a struggle."
Her relationship with the kids is strained these days. They've been in close contact with their father the whole way through, and they believe him when he maintains his innocence. She understands why her kids experience the manner they do. Frank is still their dad.
Nancy hopes that the kids volition come dwelling house for Christmas this year. She misses the warmth of a full house. She misses having so many grin faces around her. She isn't certain if that will happen, though. They had to give up a lot of time to attend the trial.
"It'due south very complicated," she says. "I raised them to beloved, honor, and respect their dad. And they practice."
Author
Michael J. Mooney
Source: https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2014/december/how-not-to-get-away-with-murder/
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