The Woman Who Killed Three Husbands (1)

Glad to see our lovely subscribers again with this anecdotal evidence feed after a hiatus. Hearsay evidence is a complex topic in the law of evidence, with common law focusing on verbal evidence (compared to civil law systems, which focus more on physical evidence). In addition to some general rules, the United States federal law of evidence is mainly divided into three parts: (1) character evidence; (2) hearsay evidence; and (3) the right to confrontation under the Sixth Amendment.

Before we get to the point, I want to clarify that the defendant was charged in federal court with five counts of mail fraud and three counts of wire fraud. The defendant was not charged in federal court with murder. As for whether the defendant was charged with murder in the state court, I did not investigate this part. This case was mentioned when studying the hearsay evidence (United States v. Gray 405 F.3d. 227). To be precise, the defendant Gray was suspected of murdering two husbands and one lover, and the title was set up for publicity; and this series of tweets did not discuss whether the defendant was convicted of murder.

Due to space limitations, today's post mainly focuses on the murder of the first two husbands. We will discuss the focus of controversy and other technical issues in future posts. The defendant and the witness Wilson became friends in the summer of 2000. Wilson and the defendant often talked on the phone and visited the defendant from time to time. One time Gray was cleaning at home and Wilson came to help. When Gray left for a while and returned to the cleaning room, the defendant took out a stack of newspapers that reported the defendant's past arrest experience. These newspapers claimed that the defendant had killed her ex-husbands. Wilson asked the accused whether the reports were true?

The defendant replied to Wilson that she was going to tell Wilson something she had never mentioned to anyone, and that she did not want Wilson to say anything about it. The defendant then calmly told Wilson that "she killed her two ex-husbands and another man." According to Wilson, "The defendant told me that she went for a drive with her first husband, Stribbling, and then she shot her husband, left the body on River Road and faked the scene to look like a robbery." Then the defendant confessed to Wilson that "she also killed her second husband, Robert. Although she was alone when she killed Stribbling, she had the help of her cousin Goode to kill her second husband Robert." The defendant later explained to Wilson that "Goode had blackmailed her." Her." Hoping to get a sum of money from her in exchange for Goode's silence.

The defendant's first husband, Stribbling, maintained a life insurance policy and the defendant was the beneficiary of the policy. Stribbling was found dead in his car parked on River Road near his home on March 3, 1974. The forensic cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head. Shortly after Stribbling's death, the defendant filed a claim with the insurance company and received a check for USD16,000.

The defendant had an affair with her second husband, Robert, while she was still married to Stribbling. In August 1975, the couple purchased a property in Gaithersburg, Maryland, with most of the down payment coming from Stribbling's insurance. Robert also maintains two insurances. The first insurance will pay off the remaining mortgage loan of the property in the event of an insured accident and pay the excess to his spouse, the defendant; the second insurance is life insurance, and the beneficiary is the defendant. Robert left the Gaithersburg home in August 1990 and told the family his wife was trying to kill him and that the defendant was having an affair with Goode. In late August 1990, Robert filed criminal charges against the defendant, alleging that the defendant attempted to attack him with a baseball bat and knife in his office (arrangements for individual criminal charges, as opposed to a model in which the power to prosecute can only be exercised by the prosecutor, we leave for a future opportunity to discuss). Robert also laid criminal charges against Goode, claiming Goode threatened him with a 9mm pistol.

Robert appeared in court on October 5, 1990, but the case against the defendant and Goode continued. On the same day, Robert reported to the police that on his way home, the defendant had flashed his lights at the rear to ask him to pull over, but Robert did not do so; afterward, the defendant and Robert drove in parallel, and Goode sat up from the front passenger seat and pointed a gun at him; the police therefore issued an arrest warrant for the defendant and Goode. On trial day, November 16, 1990, Robert was found dead in his new apartment with .45-inch bullets in the chest and neck.

After Robert's death, the insurance company of the first insurance paid USD51,625 insurance money to the defendant to pay the mortgage loan of the property. Subsequently, the defendant disposed of the property and obtained considerable profits. Because the insurance premium of Robert's first insurance exceeded the balance of the mortgage loan, the insurance company planned to pay the additional part to the defendant, but because the defendant's whereabouts were not known, this part of the insurance payment had not been processed for more than 10 years. In 2001, when the federal law enforcement agencies informed the insurance company of the residence of the defendant, the insurance company notified the defendant of the excess insurance premium by mail. After receiving the email, the defendant asked the insurance company whether the insurance money under the policy could be doubled if Robert's death was an accident. After the insurance company informed that there was no double payment, the defendant sent an application for compensation. The insurance company eventually paid the defendant a check of USD2,400. The defendant also applied for compensation from the life insurance company in 1991, but the insurance company knew that the defendant was involved in Robert's murder, so it asked the defendant to declare that she had the benefits under the policy, and the defendant refused. The insurance company then filed a lawsuit to identify beneficiaries, the defendant filed a counterclaim and demanded the insurance company to pay attorney fees, the lawsuit almost spent all the insurance money under the policy, other possible beneficiaries also gave up their claims, and finally the insurance company paid USD2,000 to the defendant.