FINALLY I updated today, after more than a week. I plan to update tomorrow too. Not sure how much I can find the time to update while I’m in I-Match. It will be 9 to 5, but I may be pretty tired when I’m done for the day. There are weekends, however; I’m going home there. And for the first week I get infusions all day and might possibly bring my laptop to entertain myself while I sit tethered to an IV.
Anyway, Alice Hummel is off my murder without a body convictions list because her husband’s conviction has been overturned on a technicality. More pain and anguish and uncertainty for her children, then. I moved her back to the not concluded cases list.
But a new case I added tonight, Carolyn Killaby, makes the convictions list; a guy was convicted of her murder two and a half years after she disappeared. At the time he killed her he was on parole for killing his sister; he’d strangled her, stripped her body naked and dumped it by a creek to make it look like a rape-homicide. He served a whopping ten years for this crime and his parole supervision was a joke. They locked him up for good after Carolyn Killaby’s murder but it was too little, too late. Fortunately he took the final exit, hanging himself in his prison cell in 2004. Good riddance.
Although I’ve been forcibly prevented from offing myself and I’m glad of it, sometimes I wonder why we try so hard to keep prisoners, particularly convicted rapists and murderers, from killing themselves. Okay, I know why we do it, but it still seems silly to me. I even heard of a case where a woman killed herself in jail, and left a note for her lawyer instructing him to sue the jail for permitting her to take her own life!
The Charley Project Blog 
Get well soon and the best of luck to you, Meaghan. As someone who was plagued with painful migraines throughout childhood, I can feel your pain (although your case is so much worse than mine ever was and mine was caused by stress, which I had in spades back in those days.) 😦
Also, I’m not sure if you knew this, but the person who tipped the cops off about the original whereabouts of that scumbag Smith was his nephew, his murdered sister’s then-teenaged son. As well as Carolyn’s family, I really feel bad for that boy. He not only lost his mother to murder, had to live with knowing his poor excuse of an uncle did it, but upon his release, had to see him everyday since his grandparents (whom he lived with) allowed him to move into their home! I second your notion of good riddance to him. I can’t help but wonder how Carolyn’s family and the boy are doing now. I know her daughter is now married with a daughter of her own, but still. A very sad case indeed.
Yes, the woman in question who hanged herself and left a note to her lawyer to sue the jail was Elisa McNabney from California who killed her husband, Larry, with the help of their stablegirl, Sarah Dutra, in 2001. She drugged him with horse tranquillizers, the poor guy. The woman was quite a piece of work. Numerous crimes she did throughout the years (including embezzling millions from her husband, who was a lawyer, not even a year after they were married!) On top of that, when she went on the run before and after Larry was in her life, she took her daughter with her! Oy. I know you don’t have cable, Meaghan, but Lifetime occasionally airs a movie they made on her story called “Lies My Mother Told Me” from 2005. It has Joely Richardson as her, Colin Feore as Larry (or as he’s known in the movie, Lucas) and Hayden Panetierre (sp?) as her daughter, Haylei.
Ah- I actually watched this about 2 weeks ago. She was a REAL piece of work. I even googled it afterwards as I didn’t believe it was a true story.
Thankfully the prequiste to keep prisoners from killing themselves applies to the innocent not just the guilty. If the justice system anywhere in the world was infallible I might I agree with you, but alas it is not.
And get well soon.
Oh, I know it has to be done. I would hardly vote for a law that, for example, places nooses in prisoners’ cells to encourage them to commit suicide. (Think of the tax money we’d save!) It’s just that some cases leave you shaking your head. Like how you don’t want to legalize torture, but when you hear about some particularly vicious killer you wish they could do it to him.