Crime Stories

- Season 7

(2009)

A common-law couple were found guilty of the 1990 rape and murder near Portland of Taunja Bennett. But a letter signed with a happy face sent to a Portland newspaper claimed responsibility for Taunja's murder, and others. The Happy Face Letter remains a mystery until Keith Jesperson is arrested on an unrelated murder. Investigators unravel the truth, convict Jesperson of Taunja's murder and free the wrongly convicted couple.

Stephen Grant reported his wife, Tara Lynn Grant, missing five days after he said she left their house in an unidentified black car. Macomb County Sheriff in Michigan focused on the mystery sedan, but attention soon turned to Stephen Grant. A search of the family home revealed Tara Lynn's dismembered body parts. Police tracked Grant to a state park in Northern Michigan and arrested him before he froze himself to death.

In rural Ohio, Jamie Paxton was found dead. Investigators found no evidence at the crime scene, but Paxton's murder mirrored multiple deaths in the area. A psychological profile pointed to Thomas Lee Dillon as a suspect. Police arrested Dillon on firearms charges, giving authorities enough time to gather enough evidence to charge him with the murders that had plagued the community

When neurologist Richard Boggs called 911 early in the morning to report a patient's death, paramedics immediately had their doubts. However, it took a clever insurance agent and a private investigator to get to the bottom of this twisted case. In the end, three men, including the "dead" patient, were found guilty of murdering an innocent man for insurance money.

On a wintry morning in Sweden, Alexandra Fossmo, wife of pastor Helge Fossmo, was found shot to death in her bed. Soon after, their former nanny Sara Svensson confessed. However, investigators wisely suspected there was more to the story. Text messages revealed the pastor and his nanny had a relationship and proved that he incited her to murder his wife.

In November 1996, Raymond Collin went missing in his home town of Timmins, Ontario. The discovery days later of his body in a snow-covered truck in the downtown led Timmins police to uncover an assortment of possible suspects. However, police picked up the trail of the killers following another murder, this time in southern Ontario. The co-operation of the two Ontario police departments lead to the arrest and conviction of Robin Graves and Wayne Jones.

Having told neighbors and police that her house had been broken into and her mother and brother murdered by Albanian thugs, Erika De Nardo's story began to crumble upon a closer police investigation. Finding physical evidence that contradicted her story, police took her into custody, and discovered a disheartening plan that ended with Erika and her boyfriend murdering her family.