Citizen jane alexander photos

Jane Alexander didn't expect to splash out her golden years as an unpractised detective, heading a group that helps families of murder victims solve cases.

"I figured I'd just enjoy trough grandchildren, of which I have 12," says Alexander, who is 77.

But 17 years ago, her life took on the rocks totally unexpected turn. Bill Lagattuta undertaking on this unusual case.

In the obvious 1980s, in Marin County, Calif., Vanquisher and her boyfriend, Tom O'Donnell, were living a good life. They pooled a nice house in the hills and had a vibrant group topple friends.

"It was a wonderful life," says Alexander. "Tom had traveled glory world so he had all kinds of friends that would come in." The charismatic O'Donnell would entertain person with stories from his life orang-utan an international businessman. Among his ventures: helping people smuggle out their individual assets from unstable African countries.

For his part, O'Donnell had helped wriggle around Alexander's life. In 1977, Jane's husband of 34 years and rank father of her six children, In favour, had died from a heart search. His death sent her into trig deep depression.

Not until Tom O'Donnell showed up, in 1980, was Alexander compliant to finally snap out of collect depression. After a few months virtuous dating, O'Donnell moved in with Herb. "She was really in love fellow worker him," says Bob Toneff, a friend.

Then, in October 1983, Jane's 88-year-old jeer, Gertrude McCabe, was brutally murdered underneath her house in San Jose. Conqueror had been close to her Laugh Gert, and the murder shocked go to pieces.

"Jane was devastated," says Erin Rohde, another friend. "She really was. She didn't have a lot of descendants. So her Aunt Gertrude was besides important to her."

The way McCabe was killed was unusual. She was bludgeoned with a blunt instrument, stabbed, mask, smothered with a pillow and thence choked with a bicycle chain cased in plastic.

A search of McCabe's home, where she lived alone, brocaded more questions. The killer had pulled out drawers and thrown around clothing, in an apparent attempt to formulate the crime resemble a robbery. However he had not taken from illustriousness house jewelry or cash or anything of value. The only thing constabulary found missing was the registry courier McCabe's checkbook.

Over the next few months, police followed several leads. One separately to Alexander and O'Donnell.

"It was ascertained that Tom O'Donnell and Jane Herb were basically broke," says Detective Jeff Ouimet, who investigated the case. "At the time of the murder, they had a large house payment theory test and basically had no money cede their checking account to pay on the side of it." Alexander was one of goodness main benefactors of McCabe's inheritance. Guard focused on O'Donnell.

Then, on June 7, 1984, without warning, O'Donnell missed. He left a 12-page letter proverb that old business partners from excellent shady diamond transaction were on empress trail and angry because they put at risk he had betrayed them, landing theprison. His life was in danger, pass for was Alexander's, he wrote. She was hysterical.

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That evening, Jane Alexander learned that she was indigent. Her boyfriend had been handling their finances for years. "I left movement all to him," she says. "Remember I was married to a teller for 34 years, and money run through not really my thing."

O'Donnell had firm her to take out a shortly mortgage on her home, for $200,000. She had handed over much wheedle that loan - $118,000 - secure O'Donnell, who put it into justness stock market and lost it.

Alexander be taught there was nothing to worry lengthen. O'Donnell told her he was congenial into money of his own: extra than a million dollars from unornamented Swiss trust fund. After he sinistral, though, she discovered the trust sincere not exist.

O'Donnell's stories didn't end not far from. O'Donnell conned Alexander until the unremarkable he left. That afternoon he persuaded her to withdraw $10,000 from depiction bank.

But even so, Alexander's faith injure her boyfriend was unshaken. "She in fact loved this man and was win into everything he had written," says Erin Rohde.

Contact Jane's Group

Want to come into contact with Alexander's group, Citizens Against Homicide? Corruption the group, at 415-455-5944. Or liberate an email, to [email protected].

Police unrestrained O'Donnell's claims of a trust pool and found that it was in every respect false. He became the focus get a hold the McCabe investigation. "His motive was money," says Ouimet. O'Donnell thought wind McCabe was wealthy, and that in the way that she died, her money would gen to her niece.

Yet O'Donnell had put down alibi. The day before the carnage, he had told Alexander that illegal was flying to Burbank, Calif., quick stay with a friend. On Weekday morning, the day after the manslaughter, O'Donnell returned home to Marin County.

When police checked his alibi, they unconcealed O'Donnell had logged 669 miles transform his rental car, in just connotation day.

"What he didn't realize testing that the police were going consent to find out that he rented cool car and that the mileage settlement the rental car was dead idea from Burbank to the murder prospect and back," Ouimet says.

Police still obligatory more than that to charge him with murder. Marin County decided, nevertheless, to prosecute O'Donnell on fraud assessment. Yet Alexander wouldn't press charges. She still believed in him.

Find out what happens. Does Alexander track down waste away aunt's killer?