Murder in the Suburbs

True Crime Brewery contains disturbing content related to real-life crimes. Medical information is opinion based on facts of a crime and should not be interpreted as medical advice or treatment. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome to True Crime Brewery. I'm Jill. And I'm Dick. On a cool October morning in Richmond, Virginia, gunshots shattered the silence of a quiet suburban street where Fred Jablin lived with his three children. Fred, a respected professor and devoted father, had just stepped outside to grab his morning newspaper, something he did every day. But this day would be his last.

oblivious to the danger he was ambushed in his own front yard as his children slept in their beds upstairs so join us for murder in the suburbs as investigators searched for suspects and motivations for fred's murder the name piper roundtree came up repeatedly piper was fred's ex-wife their bitter divorce and custody battle had ended years earlier but her resentment and hatred endured did piper a mother of three and a former attorney travel across state lines to execute her ex-husband it just sounds too crazy to be true but today we're unraveling this story of love turned lethal the murder of Fred Jebelin. And here is Dick with a beer review.

So we're looking at a Virginia beer, of which I've not had that many, but I found Brothers Brewing Company in Harrisonburg, and it actually turns out that I reviewed another beer from the same brewery. So at least I've got the right place to do this. The name of the beer is Commodore. That's a cool name. So it's a New England IPA, 10% ABV, a little bit sneaky at 10%. I'd be careful of it. Yeah, sounds kind of strong. It's a hazy gold color, big white head, very pretty, nice fruity aroma. I get tropical fruit and citrus. So pineapple, orange, grapefruit. It's on the sweeter side, certainly not bitter. Nice beer. Sounds great. So that just makes me think of the Commodores.

So that song, once, twice, three times a lady. Was that the Commodores or was that just Lionel Richie? Oh, you're asking me? Yes. But he was in the Commodores, right? Yes, he was. Yeah. Okay. Well, I think one of these days we should do a retrospective on the Commodores. Okay. Yeah. Okay. You lead the way. All right. Let's open it up.

Okay, Dickie, let's head down to the quiet end of the bar on this cool almost winter day, right? Oh, we're just barely in the autumn. Oh, okay. Well, it's getting chilly out. Which means it was like 40 degrees this morning. Yeah, that's very cold. But okay, let's do that. Maybe we can light a fire if I get too cold. Yeah, we could always do that. All right, well, let's start our story.

so fred jablin came from a tight-knit family he was born in nineteen fifty two and that's the year when eisenhower was voted into the white house so this was a kind of simple time when tv was new in america's living rooms fred was the second and the youngest child a few years behind his big brother michael and while they were young their mother mildred stayed home to take care of her boys fred's dad irving lived through the depression and the jablins were very frugal people mildred and irving were proud of both of their sons too After high school, Fred left for Buffalo and Sunny, the State University of New York, where he majored in political science and speech. And to help pay his expenses, he worked as a janitor and in the school cafeteria. But Fred was really a brilliant student, and after earning his bachelor's degree, he entered the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he worked on a master's degree in communication. While there, he met his first wife, Marie, and they were married in 1974, when Fred was 22 years old, and she went with him to Purdue University, where she took graduate courses in audiology and speech pathology.

So Fred worked on a doctorate, studying hard and coaching other graduate students. In almost every situation, he had a really strong sense of right and wrong. At times, friends would say he had such a strong sense of living by the rules that he could be kind of rigid to the point of his own detriment even. So later, many would describe Fred's focus on how things should be done as close to obsessive. He believed in justice and he believed that reason should prevail. So at Purdue, Fred wasn't one for socializing a lot. He instead spent almost every available moment away from the university with Marie. Fred channeled all of his attention on his work and his marriage.

So not really hanging out with the guys at all. No, it sounds like he was kind of lonesome. Well, he was serious. So while other graduate students partied on Friday nights, Fred and Maurice stayed home in their campus apartment. But then the marriage ended just three years after it had begun. Later, Fred would call this a no-fault divorce, saying it was amicable and a mutual parting, so very different from his next divorce. He would say that they both knew the marriage wasn't working and that they wanted different things in life, and they made the decision together to end it before they had any children or property. So it sounds very sensible.

And I think that's one description that I would give Fred from everything I've read about him is a sensible man. So would you take that as a compliment? A sensible man? If someone called you a sensible man, or do you want to be more of a wild card? No, I think sensible is okay. But take it out of context. It might not be okay. To the extreme. Yeah. Yeah. Which it may have been a little bit to the extreme. Well, yeah. From what we know about Fred, it was probably a little bit on the extreme side.

But you know, when you're going to a good college like that and trying to get a doctorate, you probably do have to be pretty serious. Well, yeah. Yeah. I can relate to that, actually. Sure. I bet you can. Because I had gotten married as a sophomore in college, and we had a child, and I went through college and medical school with a family. I ended up having two children, and yeah, I would say I was sensible. Well, yeah, you kind of had to be, right? Yeah, the way I looked at it. That's a lot of responsibility at a young age. Although I really feel like people used to be adults earlier than they are now.

Well, yeah, I do too. But I think that's part of me being an old crabby guy. Sometimes I think, am I just being an old crabby lady saying people these days, when are you going to grow up? But I don't know, just looking at our kids and grandkids and they just don't seem to have the same responsibilities that I did at a certain age. And it might just be because they have an easier life than I did. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I don't think there's any question about that. Right. So that's a big part of it, I think. But the same year of Fred's divorce in 1977, he earned his PhD in organizational communication and he moved to the Midwest to take his first teaching position as an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.

So it was there that he wrote his breakthrough work, and that was an article on supervisor and subordinate communication that was accepted for publication. So with that paper, Fred jumped to the head of his class and really built quite a reputation for himself. Shortly after that, Fred received an offer from the University of Texas at Austin. So he packed everything up and drove from Milwaukee to Texas. And by the time he reached UT, Fred Jablin had realized his youthful dream. He was officially a scientist. But instead of chemicals in a test tube, he dissected the ways that people interacted and how they affected success in the workplace.

Now that sounds extremely boring to me. Not the interaction of people, but success in the workplace. Boy, you just took my attention away right there. Yeah, lost me there. But anyway, he was clearly quite bright. And I would imagine just that kind of knowledge could help you succeed in life. Oh, definitely. Yeah. So at UT, he videotaped job interviews, then scrutinized the communication between recruiters and would-be employees. And in the end, Fred diagnosed how and why things happened between people in business, explaining how corporations could interview more skillfully and increase the odds of hiring the best candidate.

So during the first five years of his UT career, he published an impressive 13 articles in scholarly journals. So that is impressive. That's major impressive. I mean, obviously, if you're on a faculty like this, it's Publisher Parish. Yes. And he certainly published. He did. Well, remember, he wasn't married, so he probably had more time. He had all the time in the world. Yeah. I don't recall hearing about any other things that Fred enjoyed doing. No, but, you know, friends and family gave interviews and said he could be quite funny.

I'm sure he could joke around with his coworkers and have a good time. But yes, he was clearly serious about his career and his topic of interest. Yeah. I read somewhere and maybe you're going to talk about it later, but he very quickly had published enough. He got tenure. Yes. Yep. The school. And that's the goal. That's what everybody needs. Yeah. Then you're in. That's it. Right. Then you're safe. Oh yeah. You got tenure. You're employed for as long as you want to be. Right. Right. But you know, the closest thing to fucking up that he did is he met and married Piper Roundtree.

Yeah, but that's in retrospect. It's in retrospect, because she seemed great in the beginning. She had actually been in Fred's communications class one year before she was introduced to him socially. And I guess the class had been in a large lecture hall filled with more than 100 students. So later, Fred would say he didn't remember her. But Piper, a senior with an inquisitive mind, was frequenting the faculty offices in the communications building. She was kind of hanging around, talking to the professors between and after classes. And later, many would remember Piper Roundtree as the kind of young woman who really did make an impression. So I think much more gregarious and outgoing than Fred.

more of a social butterfly. And she had a very quick mind and she was really pretty. She had a petite athletic body because she really liked to exercise and, you know, she was active. She had cute shoulder length brown hair and big dark eyes. So clearly Fred liked her right away. He was eight years older than her and they had grown up in very different worlds, but there was that immediate attraction between the two. They were kind of a strange match and many would question why Fred Jablin and Piper Roundtree had bonded. Fred was so precise and exact and such a calm presence. But Piper, on the other hand, was a real free spirit.

She could be volatile and had a quick temper. She was kind of a quirky hippie, too. And Fred was more of a plain man. And Piper was very attractive, wearing jeans and boots and big boho blouses. But at first, they did seem really good together. They seemed to complement each other. Good for Fred. Yeah, everybody was happy. It seemed fine. Really, no problems. A little unusual, maybe a little bit of the opposites attract type of thing. But they seemed to complement each other, like I said. So it seemed fine. So a little bit about Piper. She was the youngest of five children of Betty and Dr. William Coleman Roundtree Jr.

So Betty had studied to be a nurse, and Bill was an Air Force surgeon, a heart specialist, so that's pretty impressive. Yeah, it's a big deal. Up there in the realm of the big shots. Yes. He'd earned his MD at Tulane University Medical School in New Orleans after World War II, and the children were born all over the world. So since they moved a lot, Piper and her sister Tina were very close. And the closeness may have developed partly because of the family troubles, because years later, Piper would describe their father, William, as an abusive alcoholic. So that's really not what you want in a surgeon, but you never know what people are like at home. No, you don't. Nope.

So William Roundtree retired from the military in the mid-60s while the family was stationed in Harlingen, Texas. And most of Piper's growing up years would be there. Looking back, though, Piper's childhood was kind of plagued by trauma. In September of 67, when she was seven years old, her father took her to the beach at nearby Padre Island following Hurricane Beulah. And while there, she stood under a damaged house that was on stilts. And the foundation gave way and collapsed on her. So that could have been fatal. But she got lucky. She suffered broken ribs and a ruptured spleen that had to be removed. So still really traumatic and painful.

Yeah, I mean, she could have died from that. Absolutely. So fortunately, she must have had pretty quick medical care and recognition that her spleen had ruptured. Well, maybe it helped that her dad was a surgeon. I was wondering that. Because he would kind of know what to look for, right? He should. Yeah, I would hope so. But afterwards, she had nightmares. I imagine. Yeah, I mean, really traumatized. She was only seven, so I could see that. So then when Piper was nine, her father had a stroke. He did recover, but he continued to smoke and drink. And afterward, Piper would say he was meaner than before the stroke.

and her mom Betty would say that her husband really had a personality change, and not a good one, that forced him to move into a mobile home that the family owned near the beach. So Betty wouldn't keep him at home, so he must have been pretty bad. So his wife made him move out. Yeah, I guess he was dangerous is the way that I read it, because he'd already been an abusive alcoholic, and now there was a personality change that made him worse. Not a good situation. No, it really wasn't. So many of Piper's friends would grow up believing that Piper's mother was divorced from her husband.

since piper's dad was absent for much of her school years but after her husband's stroke betty had to work and she got a job in real estate so despite what she called a good childhood piper would describe her relationship with her mother as pretty distant her sister tina eight years older than her was always more of a mother to her than her mother so piper's friends would remember that when they were in high school tina who'd already graduated from college went out with them at night to a park where the teenagers would smoke and drink and talk So that was kind of the thing to do around there, I guess. Yeah, what else? But while in school, Piper ran with the rich crowd, and she was one of those girls who seemed to really have everything going for her. She was a top student, and in 1978, the year she graduated, the Harlingen High School yearbook listed Piper's many accomplishments. National Honor Society, Student Council, Speech, Drama, Tennis Team, Editor of the school's Literary Publication, Homecoming Court, Choir, Yearbook Committee, and third place at the Science Fair. So in 1978, Piper attended the University of Texas in Austin.

Tina and their brother William had both gone to UT before her. So by then, all the Roundtree children had spread out and started their own lives. Tina was a registered nurse who had married an attorney, and she had settled in Houston. Piper sounds like one of those girls that all the other girls hated in high school because she was pretty and popular and smart. Yeah, it could have been. I could see that. I don't think that she was much of a girl's girl, but, you know, hard saying since we never really knew her. But just from what you pick up about her, I can see why you say that. You're just looking at her high school accomplishments. Yes.

And then she went to UT, pretty good school, and graduated. She got a degree. Yes. And in her senior year of college, she moved in with Fred. That's not exactly a student-teacher relationship, is it? Well, she had been his student for one semester, but she wasn't his student when they got together. At least that's what they said. It wasn't a huge age difference. It was eight years. And if she wasn't currently his student, I don't see a big problem with that. I wasn't saying it was a problem. I was just pointing out that it sounds like she's quite the person. Very outgoing, pretty. Yeah. Yeah, sure.

So then she moved in with him and she lived there throughout the spring semester, jogging in the neighborhood and playing with animals that she would move into Fred's house and yard. Then in 1982, Piper had her bachelor's degree in communication. And afterwards, she left for Germany on a one-year scholarship studying at the University of Mannheim. So after she was gone, Fred seemed lost, according to his friends and colleagues. When he heard that Piper had met a man overseas, he kind of freaked out.

Fred flew over and tried to win her back. And I guess it worked. When he returned to UT, he seemed sure that at the end of all of her classes in Germany, Piper would return to him in Texas. And in 1983, Piper moved back into Fred's home. That's when she entered St. Mary's University Law School in San Antonio. And that October, Fred and Piper got married in Austin, right in the living room of his home. So this was a small quiet wedding with just family and a few friends. Afterward, they threw a small reception at Austin's Hyatt. Fred was 31 and Piper was 23.

So she was still quite young. Yeah. And difference in age, her being 23 and him 31, that can be kind of problematic, I think. You think so? Yeah. But again, you know, we've already talked about the difference in their social activities. Right. And I just think she was kind of a serious 23-year-old and she was going to college and going to law school. So I don't think she was a big party girl.

but she really did struggle right from the beginning at law school. And Fred paid her $10,000 tuition, telling friends he saw it as a good investment in their future. So when her grades slipped to the point where she was on academic probation, he put their house up for rent and actually moved 80 miles away to San Antonio. So that was really quite a move. He really cared about her, obviously. For more than two years, Fred drove three hours a day to and from work, just so Piper would have more time to study.

and his friends never heard fred complain about this instead in what they called a typical fred fashion he used the time in the car to work so despite the hours in the car fred never lost his focus that year fred began work on a comprehensive test the first handbook of organizational communication So he's still really gung-ho and doing well himself. He's advancing his career very well. Yeah. And in 1987, Fred's book was released, getting positive reviews and even winning some awards. UT rewarded him for that by making him a full professor and granting him tenure. And at St. Mary's, all didn't go so well for Piper, but she did make it through. She graduated in the spring of 1986, and she did pass the bar, and she worked for one year as a prosecutor. Then she took a job with a school administration office.

which is, I've never really heard of attorneys working there, but I guess they need some. Yeah, it sounds kind of low-key. It does sound a little low-key, doesn't it? Yes. So in 1988, four years into their marriage, Piper and Fred began planning to have a family. Although most faculty wives kept their private lives out of the office, Piper was actually very open. And when she announced her pregnancy, I guess kind of publicly at the school, Fred seemed happy. Then in 1989, their daughter Jocelyn was born, followed by a son they named Paxton in 1992, and a girl Kaylin two years after that. After Kaylin's birth, Piper sank into a really deep depression.

this time motherhood just didn't seem to come as naturally for her as it had the other two times callie was kind of a different kind of child than jocelyn and paxton had been jocelyn was a happy and easy-going girl by then six years old and three-year-old paxton loved sports and never really seemed to push his mother for anything but neighbors would describe callie as a child with a really mischievous glint in her eyes and while the two older children even from young ages tended to take care of themselves callie just demanded a lot of attention So by the time Callie had turned three, Piper found herself escaping to the neighbor's house. And this really wasn't cool. This was child neglect. So Piper, who appeared to base her entire self-image on being this exceptional mother, because she did come across that way, could be very careless with her children. At times, Piper seemed like the ideal mom, but when she found herself in a funk, she sometimes locked the children out of the house and went to bed. So, wow, that is really bad. These are little kids. These aren't teenagers. And there's three of them. Yeah. And she'd just say, that's it. I've had it.

Stay out here. Hopefully it wasn't too cold out. But yeah, that's crazy. So in the summer of 94, the Javelins moved to Virginia for Fred's new position at the University of Richmond. Piper decided to devote herself to her children. The neighbors really thought she was great with her children and all of their friends, all the kids. But Piper was unhappy in Virginia, and she was starting to become unhappy with Fred. Then she decided she wanted a divorce. But Fred filed to get custody of the children. And I don't know if that was based on her being a little bit negligent, wild, because we do see signs of that.

But that's what he did. And that's very unusual. It's even more unusual for the judge to award custody of the children. Yeah. So there were clearly some problems with her stability. But Piper and her sister, Tina, were very shocked by this. Piper's sister already didn't like Fred. She thought he was very controlling of Piper. So when I think about how this divorce came up, it kind of seems like Piper had gotten bored with the life, maybe even having a bit of a midlife issue, even though she was on the younger side.

but it really seems like they grew apart and she was the one that was done so in two thousand one piper moved out of the house and that's when she filed for divorce officially at first they did have joint custody of the children Piper lived down the road from Fred so they could still co-parent. So that seemed okay. But something happened that made Fred want full custody. And in the court, he painted Piper as an unstable mother who was unpredictable, had used illegal drugs, and had incurred a lot of debt in the marriage without telling him. Fred also accused her of being unfaithful. So I don't know, the unpredictable, the drugs, sure. The debt, I don't know if that's a reason to take someone's children away. That seems a bit of a stretch. But the judge reviewed the facts and did decide that Fred would have full custody. Piper could have visitation, but the judge thought that Fred was the more stable parent.

which was probably true, but still moms more often get custody unless there's really something wrong with their parenting. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. So yeah, I'm thinking she wasn't great. She was ordered to pay Fred about $900 a month in child support, which really bugged her because he made more money than she did. So part of this was to pay back the $50,000 in debt that she had incurred during the marriage. She'd gotten into this debt, hadn't told Fred about it, so she owed him the money. So in Virginia, Piper had failed the bar exam and she was really struggling to get a job. So she ended up moving back to Texas where she could work as an attorney, but she'd been onto the field for about 10 years being a mom.

By then. So it was hard for her to get a job. Things had passed her by a little bit. A little bit. And her three children were staying with Fred in Virginia. So she left the state, which you can understand if you have to get a job, you might do that. But at the same time, to leave the state where your children are doesn't look good. No. Plus, you'll see them even less than you did previously when you lived in the same state. Exactly. Yeah.

So Piper had to ask Fred for permission whenever she wanted to see her children. And she was only seeing them maybe six days a month. She was unhappy to have to pay alimony while she wasn't making much money. And she did hide her bitterness toward Fred well, but her sister Tina made no effort to hide how she felt. She wasn't allowed at all to visit her nieces and nephew. And although she would not name names, Piper suggested that she knew someone who would want to kill her ex-husband. So how do we jump to that? I don't know. It seems like a big leap. We've gone from just being pissed off at him for having full custody to let's kill him. Yep.

I'm sure there were other steps involved in that process. Yeah, we don't know if she actually said to her sister, let's kill them. But they seem to be co-conspirators type of thing. Very close sisters. Yeah. Like when they visit each other, they'd sleep in the same bed. Tina kind of raised her because she was eight years older. So, yeah. So it was early on the morning of October 30th, 2004, in the Richmond, Virginia suburb of Kingsley. Throughout Kingsley, large oak and maple trees shaded these large brick homes that were set back from the street. So really a gorgeous neighborhood. The entrance to the subdivision had a green and white sign. And it was the day before Halloween.

And the landscape yards were decorated a lot. People had those leaf bags that looked like pumpkins stuffed with leaves. They had stuffed scarecrows with straw. You know, they had a lot of decorations. They even had some bed sheet ghosts swinging from some trees. So they took it seriously. Yeah, and it's kind of those old school decorations, not those blow up things, which I'm not that fond of. Although the kids like them. I mean, no one's putting them on their yards so the 50 something neighbor can look at them. Exactly. Pardon my crabby old lady thing. But anyway.

That's how it was, a really pretty neighborhood, a really nice day. Daylight savings hadn't happened, it would happen the next day, so it was getting light at just past 6.30. Gunshots echoed through the quiet neighborhood, dogs barked in yards, and frightened neighbors got out of bed to look out their windows. At 6.37 a.m., Bob and Doreen McArdle lay in bed awake on the second floor of their house, directly next door to the Joblin house. The windows were open to air out their newly painted bedroom. Then suddenly, three shots rang out. So Bob, a gray-haired salesman for a consulting company, jumped from bed and ran to the open window.

And that's when he caught a glimpse of a mysterious person running through the neighborhood, passing by his house. He couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, but he wondered if that was the shooter. So the dispatcher, when he called 911, said, are you sure it's not just a car backfiring? And he said, no, he was a former Marine. So Bob insisted that this had been gunfire. So within minutes of the 911 call, a Henrico County squad car entered the neighborhood, shining high beam lights across lawns, onto homes, and even into the windows of some of the houses. It was a Saturday, and many families were sleeping late or just having a leisurely breakfast.

in the darkness three uniformed officers searched but found nothing unusual so they were convinced that the gunshots must have come from further away if they were gunshots they did comb the neighborhood knowing that violence was a really uncommon thing in richmond's affluent west end and at first look the brick home at fifteen fifteen hearthlow lane appeared normal inside the house upstairs in their bedrooms the three javelin children slept peacefully unaware of how much their lives were about to change outside on their long driveway their father fred jablin lay bleeding to death on his stomach with his head turned to the side fred's eyes were open and appeared to be staring out at the street when he had fallen he landed on some brown leaves with his head hitting a row of bricks that lined the driveway right under his children's basketball hoop bob and doreen a petite woman with short brown hair grabbed their robes and walked downstairs to talk to the police bob waited watching until ten minutes after his call the squad car pulled up in front of his house find anything bob asked when he opened the door no henrico county police officer philip maggie answered and shrugged tell me what happened again as he had said to the dispatcher mccardle said he had been in bed when he heard three gunshots it sounded like it came from somewhere down there he said pointing down the street in the direction of the javelin house maggie left and the mccardles went back inside watching the officers search in the darkness the police flashlight skimmed the street the grass the houses throwing out slivers of light

It was still black outside when, at 7 a.m., half an hour after the shots, Bob answered the door a second time. We didn't find anything, Officer Maggie said. Okay, Bob said, don't worry about it. My wife and I are going for a walk with the dog. We'll take a look around once it gets light. If we find anything, we'll call you back. That's kind of brave. No kidding. I was a Marine, I guess, so. You hear gunshots in your neighborhood? Yeah, let's go for a walk. Yeah, I think if I was Doreen, I'd say, yeah, I'll make the coffee. Yeah. Let me know what you see. So Bob and Doreen returned to their second floor bedroom to get dressed for their morning dog walk. At 7.15, as it got light out,

They exited the house out their back door with their dog on a leash. They walked out towards the street. It had rained the night before, and the breeze was cool and smelled of fall. Yeah, so Doreen looked over toward the javelin house. She looked up the driveway's incline toward the level area near the house, and she saw something crumpled up on the driveway, below the family's basketball hoop and next to Fred's Ford Explorer. So Bob wondered if what they saw could be some kind of Halloween decoration, like a scarecrow or something.

Holding the leash with his dog beside him, Bob walked up toward the garage and Fred's explorer along the right side of the Javlin driveway. As he got closer, he did see a figure with a bleached white face and white ankles protruding from under navy blue sweatpants. So what had been obscured by the darkness was now very easily seen. Bob walked closer cautiously. There was no mistaking what he'd found or who was lying there. So he turned back toward Doreen, who stood on the street holding her cell phone, and he told her to call the police back. The figure there was Fred Javlin.

So at 7.25 a.m., less than an hour after they awoke to the sound of gunshots, Doreen called 911. We found Fred Jablin, our neighbor, in his driveway, she told the operator, and it looks like he's dead. So within minutes, Officer Maggie and his partner sped back up Hearthlow Lane in their squad car. They parked and ran from the car. Doreen pointed toward where Bob was standing. The officer ran up the driveway and crouched beside Fred's body, feeling for a pulse and finding none. Bob looked around and noticed Fred's eyeglasses lying on the ground. Quickly, the call went out. Police and an ambulance were needed at 1515 Hearthlow Lane.

Squad cars and an ambulance filled the street and officers strung crime scene tape across the front of the javelin house. Bob saw an officer in his yard pointing at footprints in the wet grass, leading from the body in the driveway past his house. So Bob said to the officers, that's where I saw someone running, right after I heard the gunshots. By then, paramedics had lifted Fred's lifeless body onto a blue plastic backboard. They cut his blue sweatshirt up the front and peeled it back from his chest. When they rolled him over, they found a bloody hole in the back of his sweatshirt that lined up with a bullet wound in his lower back. So his body was cool and still, but they still checked for a pulse, and they found none.

As they worked, police congregated outside the house, looking through the yard and searching the neighborhood. One paramedic injected meds into Fred as the other continued to try CPR. But, you know, it was way too late. Fred Jablin was dead. So a SWAT team arrived after Bob and Doreen and other neighbors told the police that three children lived in the Jablin house. No one knew if the shooter could be inside the house with the children. So that was a scary thing.

Entering through the unlocked back door and into the kitchen, the SWAT team smelled the coffee that Fred had set to brew that morning, still in the pot. They cleared each room walking past the dining room table that was covered with family photos that Fred had been organizing. Finally, they went up the stairs to the bedrooms. The first bedroom the officers came to was Jocelyn's, but the door was locked. Seconds later, they heard the door being unlocked and the teenager came out of her bedroom. An officer walked her down the steps to the door. So she's asking, what's going on? They said, we can't tell you right now, but you need to get out of the house. At the back door.

jocelyn was handed off to officer maggie make sure my brother sister and dad get out she said back upstairs the second team had moved into collie's room to wake her they nudged her several times she didn't respond for a moment they feared the eight-year-old child was hurt or dead then her eyes opened officers took the two youngest children downstairs Once there, all three kids were taken onto the deck their father had built years earlier. Then they were directed to turn left away from the driveway and away from their father's dead body. Officers lifted them over the fence on the side of the house that led to the McArdle's front yard and rushed them toward a rescue vehicle waiting in the street. When Enrico County investigator Colby Kelly arrived on the scene, Fred Japlin's body still lay on the backboard, covered by a white sheet, and Jocelyn, Paxton, and Callie had been put in an ambulance and driven down the street out of eyeshot of the house and the driveway.

well the first forty-eight hours in a murder investigation as we all know are the most crucial the henrico pd had a policy that they'd initiated in nineteen ninety seven and this is one that had really served them very well they'd cleared all but eight of the seventy-three homicides in the county since two thousand one so for the first two days they flooded a murder case with resources to make sure no leads were left unexamined By eight-thirty, the Jablin children were at the Boyd family house, spending time with people they knew, as a victim's advocate was on the way. Hearthglow Lane was crawling with uniformed and plainclothes officers. Some were searching sewers, looking for the murder weapon. In the driveway, crime scene specialists began collecting samples from all around where the body was. They swabbed the blood on the driveway, hoping they might get some DNA from the killer. In plastic bags, they put Fred's eyeglasses and a to-do list they found that was on the driveway near his explorer. On it, Fred had written a list of instructions, including to take the car to the shop and to pick up the laundry.

so officers fanned out to canvass the area and talked to neighbors they had already contacted wade kaiser the commonwealth's attorney in charge of the county staff of criminal prosecutors so bob and doreen were still standing nearby stunned by their early morning discovery not wanting to be there but really unable to turn away from the scene Bob explained to the police what had happened that morning, then talked about Fred's divorce. You need to talk to Melody Foster, he said. She lives directly behind Fred. She was close to Fred, and she can tell you a lot more about Piper than we can. So right away, people are already turning to think about Piper. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So they did talk to Mel, and Mel told the detectives that it had been a horrible divorce. Mel and her husband had both slept through the shooting, and they had learned about it from a neighbor who'd seen the children being escorted by a SWAT team out the back door.

wanting to help mel shared everything she could think of including the name of the woman that fred was now dating charlene throughout the conversation mel explained the turbulence of the round tree javelin divorce including piper making false domestic violence charges against fred piper she believed was capable of doing anything to get what she wanted she said for a long time fred was afraid of piper but lately things had seemed better he was really hoping that the worst was over so by the time prosecutor wade kaiser arrived at the scene the coroner's office was already getting ready to remove fred's body pictures had been taken and the lead crime scene investigator on the case had inspected and documented the area he found one copper jacketed bullet on the right side of the body in the grass but no shell casings word had already reached the campus where fred was a professor that someone had been killed on the west end and that the victim could be fred jablin

An employee who lived nearby had driven by and seen what appeared to be Fred's body in the driveway. So imagine how shocking that would be. This nice little suburban neighborhood. Yeah. And it's Halloween morning, so you kind of would wonder, is this some kind of hoax? But once you see the SWAT team, you would know it was real. You would get that idea. Yeah. So calls did go out to faculty and a group gathered to contact Fred Jablin's students. The dean didn't want students hearing on the radio or the TV that their professor had been killed. Back at the Boyd's house, the Jablin children were being questioned by an investigator from the special victims unit.

before officers could begin their rabbi had been called to come to the house just the night before fred had been at the synagogue with the children for friday night services when he told them of their father's death the three children sobbed it was a horrible thing to have to tell them this but of the three children jocelyn was the only one who had heard the shots not knowing what they were though she had rolled over and gone back to sleep of course never guessing that her father could be dying outside all the children insisted their relationships with their father were great there were no problems nothing out of the ordinary had happened the night before either fred had made them dinner and then taken them to the synagogue they returned home about ten and got dressed for bed when they were ready fred tucked each of the children in and kissed them good-night as he did every night so saturday was going to be a busy day callie and paxton each had soccer games and then they had the neighborhood pumpkin festival the children knew of no one who was angry with their dad at first they weren't sure when their mother had last called them she calls a lot they said then paxton remembered friday afternoon after school when he'd been in a friend's garage with a group of his friends playing poker his mom had called

He remembered talking to her, and Callie, too, had talked with her mother on that Friday at about 6.30 that evening when Piper called her at the house. When asked what their parents' relationship was like, she said she thought they got along. The last time they'd seen their mother, they said, was a couple of weeks earlier when they'd gone camping. They'd borrowed camping gear from one of their mother's friends. And yes, they said their father did have a woman he was dating, a woman named Charlene.

One officer found a photo in the children's room of a woman in a red dress. A woman neighbors would identify as Piper Roundtree, Fred Javelin's ex-wife. The officer took the photo. They had gotten a warrant and went through the recent calls on the home phone and the two cell phones there. On both phones, they found a number that displayed as Mom's cell. Then inside the pantry, they found a phone number list and there it was again, Mom's cell, with the same number. So they discovered that Piper had called her children from her cell phone. Maybe Javelin's ex-wife had nothing to do with his murder. But tracing her phone calls could lead to an important piece of evidence.

So when I got the first results back on Piper Roundtree's cell phone, they learned that the day before, someone made calls on their cell phone that pinged off towers in Richmond. Aha. So that was a pretty big piece of evidence right there. Yeah. At about that same time in Houston, the phone rang at Doug McCann's townhouse, just west of the city. Do you know who I am, a woman asked. No, he admitted. Well, it's Piper, and I'm looking for my sister Tina. So this had been an unusual weekend for McCann, the head of a Houston oil and gas manufacturing company. He and Tina had met about a year earlier on Match.com, dated briefly, but then broke it off. Yet just the day before, Tina had called McCann, suggesting they get together for dinner. He'd agreed, and Tina ended up staying overnight at his townhouse. Then the next day, Piper called and asked if he and Tina would like to have dinner.

She'd also asked him if he thought she sounded like Tina. Some people say we sound alike, she said before she hung up. So he just had a weird feeling about these sisters and what was going on. Oh, I can see that. Piper's phone was in Virginia, but that didn't necessarily mean that she was. Investigators contacted Houston Police Department Lieutenant Rick Maxey in charge of the homicide department that Saturday. They explained the situation, that Piper was someone they were interested in, and he asked Maxey to try and locate her.

assuming she didn't know they needed to tell her that they had her kids in houston they pulled up piper's information on the computer they found a driver's license with her photo blew it up and printed it in black and white along with information on her state car registration for her black jeep and her address in kingwood after getting her phone number they left the houston pd's downtown headquarters and drove toward kingwood and once they arrived they rang the bell and knocked but no one answered then they called the home phone and heard it ringing inside but no one picked it up they looked in the garage window and the garage was empty So at 1249, before they left Piper's house, investigators called Piper's cell phone. No one answered, but they left a message asking her to call Kobe Kelly with the Enrico PD. Then meanwhile, back in Virginia, investigators got more information from Sprint. The cell phone was used there that morning, just after 4.30 a.m., and it had pinged off a tower just about five miles from Fred Jeblin's house. So it was looking like Piper was there, and they needed to find out where she had stayed the night, how she was traveling, and even more importantly, if she had a gun.

So at 2.30 that afternoon, Henrico police had tracked down a number for Fred's brother Michael Javelin in Northern Virginia. When they put a call through and told him what had happened, he was at first quiet, you know, maybe in shock. And then he said, have you considered my brother's ex-wife as a suspect? Then when he hung up the phone, Michael just couldn't believe his brother was dead. He was hoping it was all somehow a mistake. And he even called Fred's cell phone and listened to it ring. But of course, no one answered. At the mall where his son was doing karate.

Fred's girlfriend, Charlene, talked with another investigator. The news had shaken her up badly. She and Fred had met on Match.com. You had mentioned that. The last time she saw him was for lunch the previous Wednesday, and they talked on the phone a little after 10 the evening before, as they usually did before going to bed.

She told the detective that there'd been some back and forth between Piper and Fred recently about whether he was willing to let the children go to Texas to attend Piper's sister Jean's wedding over Thanksgiving. He decided to let them go, Charlene said, but he'd been emailing Piper about money again lately, asking for the child support she owed him. Well, more sprint records were coming in, and these were really intriguing. Calls had been made from Piper's cell phone early that morning and showed it had traveled southeast on Interstate 64, leaving Henrico and cutting through Richmond. At one point, it crossed the James River.

a favorite place for local criminals to dispose of weapons and evidence but there was more around noon the phone was used in norfolk and an hour and a half later it was in baltimore so the person on the cell phone hadn't driven the two hundred and forty miles from norfolk to baltimore in such a short time she had to be flying investigators called headquarters and asked for an investigator to drive to the norfolk airport to try and find out if anyone there remembered seeing piper with homeland security in real force after nine eleven they figured she must have been traveling with her own identification How else? How else? So at 3.30 p.m., the officer who'd gone to the airport called with an update. He didn't find a record for a Piper Roundtree, but a Tina Roundtree flew out of Norfolk on Southwest Airlines at 12.30 p.m., changed planes in Baltimore, and was now on a Southwest flight that left at 210 on her way to Houston, scheduled to arrive at 4.30 Central Time. So someone, a woman, was traveling back to Houston. Virginia police wanted the Houston PD to get a warrant for her arrest and hold her, confiscate her bags, and search them for evidence.

But Houston thought they needed more evidence before they could get a warrant to arrest her. Still, they would send someone to the Houston airport to see if they could verify who was getting off that plane. That was pretty important. Was it Tina Roundtree or Piper Roundtree? Then they could seize her bags and hold them until they could get a warrant. So carrying driver's license photos of Piper and Tina, Houston detectives left for the airport. They called ahead and arranged to have three uniformed officers waiting for them at security. So if it was Piper flying under Tina's name, it was a federal crime to fly under an assumed name. And maybe they'd have a reason, one that would hold up in court, to take her into custody.

That afternoon in Houston, Tina called Doug McCann, the man she'd spent the previous night with, and she asked if she could come back to his house to take a nap. So this seemed odd, but I guess he kind of liked her because he agreed. Well, she spent the night with him. Yeah. She arrived a short time later, and she went upstairs to lay down. Then after Tina left his house, McCann noticed a message on his cell phone, and when he checked it, he saw it was Piper. She sounded upset, and she said she was at Tina's house, locked out, and that she'd left her cell phone inside there.

So at the airport, the police watched for people coming off of the flight, but they didn't see anyone who matched the photos of Tina or Piper. She checked baggage, but they didn't even see her in baggage claim either. So they decided she must have been wearing a disguise. So this I can't get over, that she must have walked past them. Yeah. And they didn't notice her? Three policemen?

With pictures. With pictures. I mean, when you look at any woman between the ages of 25 and 50, basically, I'd spread a wide net. But somehow, no. I mean, how much of a disguise could she have been wearing? Good question. Yeah. So in Houston that evening at 6 p.m., police arrived at Tina's house, and they found Piper's Jeep Liberty in the driveway. Fifteen minutes later, Piper walked out the door wearing a tank top and jeans, and she got into her black Jeep. Unmarked police followed as she drove from the house the few blocks to Tina's clinic, where Tina worked as a nurse practitioner. Then she got out of the car.

So the clinic was closed and the lot was empty, except for Piper's Jeep parked next to the trash bin with the car doors open and country music blaring. But they never saw her leave the car or enter the clinic. Inside the clinic, the lights never went on. At seven, she left. Police stayed on her until she drove through a yellow light and they were cut off by another car and they lost her. But by now, the police had left several messages on Piper's cell phone. She's proving to be hard to track down. Which is suspicious, right?

We would think that she's deliberately trying to do that. Absolutely. Yeah. So after 7 p.m., Kobe Kelly received a voicemail on his office phone from Piper. Hi, I didn't catch your name. I'm looking for my kids. I met my sisters. Then she repeated her cell number, the same one that had been traced to Richmond just that morning.

Throughout that night, Detective Kelly and Piper exchanged voicemails each time she asked about her children. Then finally, at around 9 p.m., they had Piper's house staked out. She wasn't home, and that was when Kelly reached Piper on her cell phone. A friend, Piper said, had told her that Fred was dead and the kids were being held somewhere by the police. But much of what had happened that day just didn't make sense. There were Piper's phone calls and Tina going to Doug McCann's house for a nap. He hadn't asked, but he'd wondered how Tina had finished work and driven to Clear Lake to a baby shower as she said she was going to in the rain and then returned so quickly.

So from 4.30 to 6.30 or so, she was asleep in his upstairs bedroom. She didn't seem upset, but just tired. So this was weird. He expected that he, Tina, Piper, and Jerry would be going out to dinner. That was what Piper had mentioned in the morning. But that evening, his phone never rang. By 8.30, he was getting hungry and he called Tina. But she sounded busy and said she'd have to call him back. When she finally did call him back, she said something serious has come up that I can't talk about now. Okay. So Tina acts very strange too, right? Certainly is. Yeah.

so the police had an officer parked outside of piper's house after no one there was answering the door then finally piper came out and got into her car the unmarked car followed her and she led them to attorney martin mcveigh inside tina was there with mcveigh and according to mcveigh tina had just arrived a few minutes before piper and she had told him about fred's death so four detectives entered the office behind piper the detectives talked to piper at the attorney's office but her only interest was in where her children were they were with fred's brother michael so they were safe the meeting there was cut short though when mcveigh had to leave to pick up his son so that day piper went to this bar called the volcano bar in houston and she asked two employees if they remembered her being there the night before they said they did and piper passed on their names and numbers to the detectives piper also had the name of someone who had seen her in houston at that same time that the plane was boarding for the flight to virginia tina also said there was no way that she had been the one to fly to virginia because she had been working that day at her women's health clinic so the police really didn't know what to think but they did see the sisters as suspects in fred's murder as they learned more about the contentious divorce they got a better idea of who piper really was

a year and a half before the divorce piper had gotten a warrant charging fred with domestic abuse tina said she did not witness any physical abuse but piper told her that fred had hit her and tina said he had lost his temper with the kids frequently as well a couple of days after fred's murder detectives learned more about the roundtrip airline ticket bought under the name tina roundtree the person who paid for the ticket was a man named jerry walters a new character It didn't take them long to figure out that Jerry Walters knew Piper. He had been Piper's boyfriend. Well, last from the past, Piper started dating him in 2003, right after she moved to Houston. He described her as sweet, funny, and pretty much a normal person. Pretty much. So even though Jerry was living four hours away in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, they did have a relationship. He'd spent a significant amount of time in Houston on business, and their romantic relationship lasted for about a year and a half.

after that for about a year and a half and after that they were close friends so they were still so close that he was the first person piper called after fred's murder she seemed very upset to jerry and she asked him to come to houston he couldn't go to houston but he did talk to her and tried to support her over the phone so it was four days after fred's murder when detectives tracked down jerry walters to find out why his bank card seemed to be connected to fred's murder jerry said he'd never even met fred and he had no idea who could have used his bank card on the week-end of the murder in fact he said his car had been stolen before then well yeah so jerry said he first found out something was wrong with the card when he tried to withdraw cash from the account and it was overdrawn he'd called the bank and learned that he had pending atm transactions in virginia So he didn't know what the hell this was. He called Piper immediately. So the account and bank card had been opened by Jerry at Piper's request, actually, under his own name. She told him it was so that she could hide assets from her ex-husband. But Piper could not explain why the card had turned up in Virginia. She claimed she hadn't noticed it was missing because she hadn't used it. Okay. But what was especially concerning were the purchases that had been made on the card in addition to that plane ticket.

Two wigs were purchased from Wigs.com, one blonde and one Auburn. The wigs were sent to an address in Kingwood, Texas. There was a P.O. box rented there in the name of Piper Roundtree and Jerry Walters. Jerry just couldn't believe, though, that Piper could have been responsible for killing her ex-husband. There's a lot of circumstantial stuff coming out. There is, and I just don't understand why the Auburn wig. I could see if she wanted to look like her sister, she'd wear the blonde wig because Tina was blonde, Piper was brunette.

Okay. So she bought a blonde wig and an auburn wig. So not sure about what the auburn one was used for, unless it was just a way to change her appearance again. Well, it might have been what she got off plane with when the cops were watching people. Could have been, but I just don't think she'd look that different just because she had a wig on. She was still a young woman that could have been her.

I just think that I can't get over how they didn't catch her coming off there. No, you would think they could have figured out how many people are going to fly. Virginia to Baltimore to Houston. Baltimore to Houston. And they probably could have a full plane. Well, they could, but you could stand there and see everyone that gets off. You could. You would think you wouldn't miss anyone. Still talking about that. But detectives were convinced that Piper had flown to Virginia using her sister's name and killed Fred. Piper had been on a camping trip with her children just a few weeks before the murder. And detectives were beginning to think that she may have realized then how much she was really missing being with her children and that she really wanted custody of them.

And maybe that was when she began to make a plan to murder Fred. Yeah, that's what I do. I mean, I've done everything I could to get custody of the kids. She's out of legal recourse. Only way out. The only thing now is murder, yeah. So with Fred now dead, though, Piper was focused on getting custody of her children by going back to the court. She asked for a custody hearing in Virginia Family Court, and she asked Detective Kelly if he would testify for her in family court, which is really weird. But she wanted him to tell the judge that she had been eliminated as a suspect.

Yeah, but she hadn't been. Of course she hadn't. So I don't know why she was even thinking. If she did this, which I think she did, she must have really thought she was going to get away with it. Sure. I think she was really shocked that they even saw her as a suspect. She probably thought, I'm this upstanding woman. I'm an attorney. I'm a mom. They're not even going to look at me. But that's really dumb because she is the ex-wife. She is.

So nine days after the murder, Piper had her hearing, and the judge, knowing that Piper was a suspect in Fred's murder, gave custody of Paxton, Jocelyn, and Callie to Fred's brother Michael, who already had them. But to make that day worse for her, like minutes after she left the courthouse, she was arrested for first-degree murder. So she must have thought, what the fuck? Yeah, I thought I was going to get my kids. Didn't get my kids, and now I'm going to jail.

probably for life. She was a prosecutor. She knows the odds that once you get charged, you're probably going to get convicted. But Piper claimed to be innocent and said she was looking forward to defending herself in court. Sure, you gotta say that. Yeah. Four months later, so pretty quickly, her trial started. In opening arguments, the prosecutor explained that Piper's motive for the murder was money. She'd been ordered to pay child support every month and she was in arrears, so she was $9,700 behind in her payments. So that makes it seem even worse. She was blaming Fred for her financial problems and for keeping the children away from her.

The defense said that there was no one who could put Piper at the crime scene and insisted that the wrong Roundtree sister was on trial and all of the evidence pointed to her. What did Tina have as a motive? She would do it for her sister. She hated Fred. Well, yeah, definitely. Well, I mean, it's interesting because Tina could have been in on it, right? She might have thought, well, I can get away with it because I'm not the wife, maybe. Maybe. Maybe something like that. But Piper was going to point the finger at her at trial, which wouldn't really matter because they're not going to be able to use that unless they, you know, later on arrest Tina and take her to trial.

But at the point when Piper's on trial, she really is just going to say whatever she can to get herself off the hook. Oh, yeah. So prosecutors called Jerry Walters to the stand, the bank card guy. And he testified that he had not bought the wigs or the plane ticket. Then, to make things even worse for Piper, the airline agent remembered selling the ticket to a woman named Roundtree. And in the courtroom, she identified Piper as that woman. But she said the woman who bought the ticket had blonde hair. So, of course, this suggested that Piper had worn the blonde wig and used her sister's name and ID when she flew to Virginia to commit the murder.

The agent also told the jury that Piper had checked in her luggage and had told her she had a gun. So she'd taken a gun with her. So it still blows me away that you can check a gun. I mean, I guess it's good you can't take it as a carry-on, but still. Unless you're a policeman or something, I don't see why that's allowed. Anyway, that's not the point here. Using the phone records, detectives determined that someone had ordered a pizza in Richmond and had it delivered to room 171 at the Homestead Suites Hotel. So a lot of these little things can really add up to condemn her. The hotel clerk who checked her in also identified Piper as the person who had checked into room 171 under the name Tina Roundtree.

The hotel was just a few miles from the crime scene, too. Another witness at a car rental agency testified that he saw Piper on the morning of the murder, just hours after the murder. He remembered her returning a car to the car rental agency at the airport and remembered that she was in a hurry. So if that wasn't enough, the prosecutor said that they had her on video at a gas station. And on the video, a blonde who looks like Piper enters the gas station on the day of the murder. The next witness, Mac McClanahan, knew both sisters. He had dated Tina and he had worked with Piper. On one of the rides home from work together, just days before Fred's murder,

Mack told Piper that he was going to stop at a shooting range. Piper told him that she wanted to go with him. She'd never gone with him before. So Piper shot a few rounds. Then she rented another type of gun. It was a .38 caliber revolver. It was the same type of gun used to kill Fred. So there's a lot of things adding up here that don't look good. They don't, do they? Mack said when he ran into Piper a few days after the murder, he found out just how nervous she was about their trip to the gun range because she hugged him and she asked him to please not tell the police about the gun range because it would just complicate things. That's for her. Yes, for sure.

then the prosecution called a witness who really destroyed piper's alibi for the night before the murder kevin o'keefe who thought he had seen piper at the volcano bar now told jurors that he had made a mistake he had confused which night he had been at the bar so now he was retracting his story After the prosecution had dozens of witnesses testifying against her, 49 people to be exact, Piper knew she was in deep trouble. Remember, she was a former prosecutor, so she knew that things were against her here. So took some thinking, took a little time, but she finally decided she had to take the stand in her own defense. It was really her last hope. You just got to do something to win the jury over. Yeah, it usually doesn't work. But yeah, I'm sure she knew that. It's really just kind of a sign of desperation, in my opinion. Yeah. Yeah. Piper testified about not learning Fred had been shot and killed until the evening of the murder. Then she said she was worried about her children and did not know where they were.

but her main defense was that it was impossible for her to have shot and killed fred that saturday morning because she'd been all the way in texas but the strategy also included showing the jury that piper was a good person who loved her kids more than anything so she would never take away their father from them Now, Piper insisted that she was at the Volcano Bar on Friday night, the night before the murder, even though O'Keefe now said that he had seen her at the bar on Saturday night. Piper claimed that she had hung out and had drinks with a strange guy on Friday night at the Volcano. Supposedly, a guy who told her his name was Steve, but then later asked her to call him Jerry. So that sounds a little made up to me. She's testifying this way, but you have to laugh at it. Oh yeah, she's grasping here. I think she's getting desperate because she was smart enough to know that she was in deep shit.

But Piper also could not explain why her Jeep was parked at the Houston airport on the weekend Fred was killed. Then prosecutors questioned her about her visit to the gun range and how she'd shot a gun just like the one that had killed Fred Chaplin. She claimed she had no idea what kind of gun it was. She didn't know guns, she said. So it was just a gun to her. A gun was a gun. That's it. Yep. When questioned about the wig, she claimed that Tina had the wig. So she was basically throwing Tina under the bus. The evidence placed Piper in Richmond, and then there were the cell phone records. The records showed calls from Richmond to Houston on Piper's cell phone just after the murder.

But what did Piper say? Piper claimed that she didn't have the phone because she lost it on Tuesday, and it miraculously showed up on Saturday at her sister Tina's house. I mean, what are the odds? A coincidence. Yeah, a lot of coincidences. She's really asking people to believe a lot of things that are very far-fetched or way too coincidental to be true. That's for sure. Yes. So Marty McVeigh testified for the defense. He said that he saw Piper in his office at 4.30 Friday afternoon, so this was probably her best defense witness. Oh, absolutely he was. It would be impossible for Piper to be in his office at that time if she was Fred's killer.

because she would have been on the plane back to Houston at that time. A local Richmond newspaper journalist testified about her interviews with McVeigh. She swore that McVeigh had told her Piper came to his office the day after the murder, not the day of the murder. He said he saw Piper on Sunday, the afternoon after the murder, she said, and told her that before that he had not seen Piper for about a year. McVeigh was brought back to the stand after that and he stuck to the story. He did. So you have to wonder, I mean, did you have the feeling he was lying for her? Yeah. Yeah. So did she do him some kind of favors? I don't know. But it really seemed like she had got him to lie for her because he's really the only one that's taking her side in any of this.

Yes. But it wasn't enough because Piper was found guilty after less than one hour of deliberations. That's a record for me. That's pretty amazing. No one, not even Piper, seemed surprised, though. And then she was sentenced on the same day to life in prison. Piper continued to insist that she was an innocent victim of prejudicial media reports and of a corrupt judicial system. At the time of Fred's death, she wrote to the newspaper, our relationship was better than it had been before we started on the divorce proceedings. We were essentially sharing our roles as joint parents of our children the way we should have been doing all along.

then she added that plans had already been made for the children to spend the following summer with her in houston so she said it didn't make sense that she would have done this she did appeal her conviction and that was denied then she was eligible for parole in twenty twenty three but that was denied also the parole board concluded that releasing her at that time would really diminish the seriousness of her crime and that she needs further participation in institutional work and educational programs to show positive progression before she re-enters society So let me just say Piper Roundtree is not happy in prison. I guess most people aren't. No, it'd be tough to enjoy prison. But she's filed suits against the Department of Corrections for mistreatment, but has been told there's no merit to her claims. So her claims were that her legal mail was rejected without her permission in January of 2011, that her religious books were confiscated improperly in early 2011, and she was denied access to legal publications in January 2011.

Also, the Virginia Department of Corrections refused to allow her to stand on her prayer rug, which she alleged was in violation of her First Amendment rights. So since her incarceration, she's said that she fills her days with meditation, yoga, and tutoring other inmates. She's also become very religious and reads the Bible. So you go, Piper. She's a changed woman. You think? No. Oh, okay. No. You got denied parole? She did, yeah. When's her next parole date? Do you know? I think not until late, the late 20s, like 28 or something like that. So she has a ways to go. She does. Yep.

So that's the story of Piper and of Fred Japlin, whose poor children lost him and then their mother as well. Murderers don't think of that stuff, do they? I think most of them think they're going to get away with it, clearly, or they wouldn't do it. Okay. Don't you think so? Absolutely. Someone like her who thought she was smarter than everyone, absolutely she thought she was getting away with this. Yeah, but she didn't think it out carefully, did she? Doesn't seem like it, though. You do have to wonder, did her sister Tina have some participation in this? Could be. I think she might have, but probably not anything chargeable. Yeah, I don't know. I was just thinking, if Piper wore the blonde wig to look like her sister and flew to Richmond...

with her sister's identification, that maybe Tina wore that auburn wig to try and look like Piper and stay in the Houston area and get seen. Yeah, so they could sort of swap identities for a few days. That's possible, although there weren't enough witnesses in Houston that said they saw her, so I'm not sure. It is possible that the attorney only saw Tina at his office. I'm not sure, but any way you look at it, it just was not believable. No, well, I think the jury coming back in that record amount of time testifies to that. Yeah, Piper just was not a credible witness. So before we move on to feedback...

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It's time for listener feedback. So what do we have for feedback? Well, we just have a couple this time around. I've got a voicemail from Judy and an email from Rhonda. I have case suggestions.

My name is Judy Fragway. I recommend this case of Bonnie Harkey from San Seba, Texas. She owns a big pecan archer, and she was well-known in town as the Pecan Queen of San Seba. She had dementia, and a caretaker lived with her. There was some discussion about who was in her will. Her body was finally found in a small grave. Between her death and finding her body there, there was much, much going on. Thanks, Judy. There were a couple broken up parts there, but I think we got the gist of it.

Yeah, well, like she said, this Aniharki was the pecan queen. She married into this family of pecan growers, and I guess it's quite profitable. So they had groves and groves of pecan trees. And then when her husband died, she was thinking that the whole production would be turned over to one of the sons, but she inherited everything. Well, sure, but wouldn't she have handed it down to the sons eventually? Probably. Well, who else would take over when she died? She wasn't young. No. Well, that's kind of the irony of all this. Yeah. Her son, or stepson, did the killing without knowing that this 85-year-old woman who was in poor health, becoming more and more demented, he would have gotten everything from her. Right. The way her will was written. Yeah, so that seems pretty senseless, unless it was a crime of anger. But it sounds like it was something that was plotted out for the inheritance. Yes. So clearly, he could have gotten an attorney, and if he could prove that she was not mentally capable of running the business, he would have gotten it.

which seems like a much kinder, gentler way to do things than murder. Well, that usually is the case, isn't it? Yeah, I just think, you know. Alternatives to murdering. Yes, there always are. And at 85 years old, that's just really sad because someone like that in poor health, becoming demented, just really is helpless. So that's a sad one. But yeah, we'll look into it, Judy. Sounds like it could be interesting for sure. Yeah, I started reading an article in Texas Monthly. Oh, they have good crime articles. Yeah, it's interesting. All right, and then we have an email from Rhonda with a case suggestion. So Rhonda writes, the Snowtown murders, also known as the Bodies and Barrels murders,

were a series of murders committed by john justin bunting robert joe wagner and james spyriden vlasakis between august ninety two and may ninety nine in and around adelaide south australia a fourth person mark hayden was convicted of helping to move the bodies so the trial was one of the longest and most publicized in australian legal history So this has been suggested probably a handful of times in the past, although it's been a while. So let's go over it. And I think it will be something we will do. We haven't done much for Australia lately. And for a while there, Australia was a pretty big segment of our cases. It was very fertile. Yeah. Well, we've got this and we've got the Azaria Chamberlain case, the bingo. All right. All right. So most of these bodies were found in barrels in an abandoned bank vault in the small town of Snowtown, South Australia. Hence the names given in the press for the murders. Only one of the victims was killed in Snowtown itself, which is approximately 140 kilometers, 87 miles.

north of adelaide and neither the twelve victims nor the three perpetrators were from that town so although the motivation for the murders is unclear the killers were led by bunting to believe that the victims were pedophiles homosexuals or weak in the case of some victims the murders were preceded by torture that's awful and efforts were made to appropriate victims identities social security payments and bank accounts although initially the notoriety of the murders led to a short-term economic boost from tourists in visiting snowtown it did create a stigma with authorities considering a change of the town's name and identity So that's pretty crazy that there's a murder that is so notorious that you might change the name of your town. Remarkable. Plus no one would ever know, right? Right. So the case has been chronicled in numerous books, as well as a film adaptation released in 2011 to critical acclaim. Have we watched that film? I don't think we have. No. It's been recommended several times. I know that. Well, I think we should watch the film and then decide if we want to read up and do some more research on it. Apparently, a lot of people are interested in it. We like to cover cases that our listeners recommend because why wouldn't you? That's right. Yeah. Okay.

Well, I think we're going to wrap it up for today. What do you think? It's a wrap. Okay. So thank you so much for listening and we'll see you again at the quiet end. Bye-bye. Bye guys.