Location

Defendant(s)

Date of Alleged Crime

Orenthal James “O.J.” Simpson was found civilly liable for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, 35, and Ronald Lyle Goldman, 25.  He had earlier been acquitted of the murders in criminal court, but he is perceived by many as guilty despite his acquittal.  The victims, who were white, were found outside Nicole's home at 875 S. Bundy Drive in Brentwood, CA.  O.J., who was black, was a Heisman trophy winner, a Hollywood movie actor, a network TV football commentator, and was known for the TV commercials he made for the Hertz Rental Car Agency.  He was the most famous American ever charged with murder.  O.J.'s criminal trial was dubbed the “Trial of the Century,” although that designation had previously been used to describe the 1935 trial of the alleged Lindbergh baby killer.

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Tim Masters was convicted in 1999 of the 1987 murder of Peggy Hettrick.  Hettrick's body had been found in a south Fort Collins field just hours after she was last seen leaving a nearby restaurant.  This location was 100 feet north of the mobile home of Tim Masters.  Masters' father told police that his 15-year-old son had walked through the field as he did every day to take a bus to school.

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George Allen Lewis was convicted of the rape and murder of a 36-year-old neighbor, Karen Gregory.  Gregory lived at the corner of 27 Ave. and Upton St. in Gulfport, FL.  Around 1 a.m. on May 23, 1984, more than a dozen of Gregory's neighbors heard a loud piercing scream.  Most paid little attention, but on the morning of the 24th, Gregory was found raped and brutally murdered.  When interviewed later, Lewis said that upon hearing the scream he walked towards Gregory's house to investigate, but turned around after he failed to see anything suspicious.  Lewis was a firefighter and a neighborhood crime watch volunteer.  He had a crime watch sign in his yard.  Lewis had a sterling reputation and was friends with the case investigator, Detective Larry Tosi.

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Donald Manuel Paradis was sentenced to death for the murder of 19-year-old Kimberly Anne Palmer.  Paradis was a leader of the Gypsy Jokers motorcycle gang.  Prior to the murder he allowed a number of people to use his home in Spokane, WA.  On June 21, 1980, Palmer was strangled to death in his home and her boyfriend, Scott Currier, was beaten to death.  Paradis was not home at the time of the crime.  The victims' killers have since been established, and both the killers and other witnesses made it clear that Paradis had nothing to do with the killings.

When Paradis came home and found the bodies, he feared he would be accused of the murders.  So he and two other men wrapped the bodies in sleeping bags and put them in a car.  He then drove the bodies across the state line and dumped them in Post Falls, Idaho.

Paradis was tried in Washington for the murder of Currier, but was acquitted.  William Brady, the pathologist who performed an autopsy on Palmer, fostered the impression that Palmer had been killed in Idaho.  Brady's improbable theory became the basis for Idaho authorities to prosecute Paradis for the murder of Palmer.  Brady was later fired from his job as a medical examiner in nearby Oregon. An investigation showed that he had used state facilities to perform private autopsies, had sold human tissue for profit, and had saved human blood collected during autopsies for use in his garden.

At trial, Paradis's court-appointed lawyer was William Brown.  Brown had never studied criminal law, never tried a felony case, and never tried a case before a jury.  He was also working as a police officer in Coeur D'Alene at the same time he was representing Paradis at his Coeur D'Alene trial.  Some of the prosecution witnesses were Brown's fellow police officers.  Brown's defense of Paradis lasted three hours.

In 1996, Idaho Governor Batt commuted Paradis's death sentence to life without parole.  In April 2001, a federal judge vacated Paradis's conviction because prosecutors withheld potentially exculpatory evidence.  Prosecutors then dropped charges against Paradis after he pled guilty to moving a corpse.  He was sentenced to five years in prison and released for time served as he had already served 21 years.  (NY Times)  [9/08]

Robert K. Domer was sentenced to death for the murder of a corpse that he used to stage his own suicide.  Domer owned a Canton, OH mortgage company which was going through hard times due to an economic downturn and because an employee had made loans that went bad because he did not follow proper procedures.  This employee then ran off with some of the company's funds.  Domer himself had illegally manipulated the company funds to keep the company afloat.  After auditors came to look at his books, Domer faced disgrace and possible criminal charges.

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Gerald C. Wentzel was convicted in 1947 of the strangulation murder of Mrs. Miriam Green, a 29-year-old divorcee. Green was last seen entering her apartment at 358 Chestnut St. in Pottstown on the early evening of Friday, Dec. 6, 1946.  Green's mother said her daughter had planned to visit her that Friday, but she did not visit, nor did she call to say why.  Green did not report for work Saturday morning, nor did she call in sick.  The thermostat for her apartment building was located in her apartment.  She had diligently taken care of resetting the thermostat after the furnace went off, but had not that weekend.  Because of the cold, neighbors had knocked on her door several times during the weekend, but had gotten no response.  Finally, on Monday afternoon, Dec. 9, neighbors entered her apartment and found her dead.

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