In 1997, 32-year-old Celeste Beard hit the jackpot. That year, the thrice-divorced Austin housekeeper married her 75-year-old millionaire employer, Steven Beard. Suddenly, Celeste had it all: a Texas mansion, plenty of money, and a stable life for her two daughters. But on October 2, 1999, Celeste's picture-perfect life came crashing down with one blast from a 20-guage shotgun. That night, an armed intruder slipped into Steven's bedroom and fired a point-blank shot directly into his chest. Steven survived the initial shot, but five months later, died from ...

Virginia Larzelere was well off, even by coastal Florida's relatively high standards. Her husband Norman was a successful Daytona Beach dentist, and Virginia enjoyed a beautiful home, expensive cars, a yacht and an airplane. But the good times came to an abrupt end on March 8, 1991, when a masked gunman broke into Norman's office and killed him with a shotgun blast to the chest. In the murder investigation that ensued, police quickly discovered that the Larzelere family was anything but ordinary. It appeared that the couple financed their lavish lifestyle by funneling...

Few smiles were brighter than those of Clara and David Harris. Both dentists, they shared a thriving practice and a seemingly perfect marriage. But that changed in July of 2003, when Clara began to suspect her husband was having an affair with his secretary. Intent on catching them in the act, Clara hired a private detective to tail the couple around town. A few days later, the detective called Clara to tell her that he had followed David and his secretary to a hotel rendezvous - the same hotel that Clara and David had been married in. Enraged over the news, Clara ...

Russian émigré Elena Kiejliches was living the American dream. At 36, she had two beautiful children, a millionaire husband, and a sprawling mansion in Staten Island's upscale Toldt Hill neighborhood. But Elena's fairytale life came crashing down in March of 2000, when her husband, Borys, went missing. A month later, Borys turned back up - dead and dismembered in a cardboard barrel found floating in a marsh in Queens. Police first suspected the Russian mob in Borys' death. But the focus of their investigation soon shifted to Elena after they learned she had been ...

A bright and bubbly surgical technician, Kim Hricko led a comfortable middle-class existence with her husband, Steven. But the Hricko's sunny, suburban image vanished in smoke and flame on Valentine's weekend of 1998 when Steve and Kim went on a romantic getaway at a golf resort on Maryland's Eastern Shore. As part of the special Valentine's package, the resort staged a murder mystery play where guests watched the staged whodunit and then attempted to solve the puzzle. But after the play, the plot thickened when the couple's room caught fire and Stephen's charred body...

Lee Ann Reidel always had a thing for hunky men. So when she married Long Island gym owner Paul Reidel in 1998, everyone thought it was the perfect match. Lee Ann just had one small problem with her new husband - his crack cocaine addiction. In July of 2000, Lee Ann took the couple's infant son and moved in with her mom in Florida. After being separated for six months, the couple reconciled when Paul agreed to go into rehab. But just when things were starting to look up for the Reidel family, tragedy struck. On January 17, 2001, a gunman shot someone fitting Paul's ...

Ruthann Aron was an overachiever. The wife of a respected urologist in the upscale D.C. suburb of Potomac, Maryland, Ruthann was a successful real estate developer and aspiring politician. In 1994, she made a run to be the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, but lost, partly due to a local attorney who dogged the campaign with allegations of shady business deals. Ruthann, however, was undeterred. In 1997, she was gearing up to run for a Montgomery County commission seat. But her political ambitions were thwarted yet again when a local landfill operator went to the...

24-year-old Joyce Cohen went from rags to riches when she met and married Miami construction millionaire Stan Cohen in 1981. Together, the couple lived lavishly in an exclusive Coconut Grove mansion, went skiing at their Steamboat Springs ranch, and partied all night long at Stan's Miami nightclub. But Joyce's party came to an abrupt end on March 7, 1986, when she frantically called 911 claiming that Stan had been murdered by three intruders that had broken into their mansion. To cops, the story seemed plausible. At the time, Miami was plagued with home invasion ...

To everyone who knew her, Susan Wright seemed like she had everything. Married to successful salesman Jeff Wright, she was a stay-at-home mom raising two adorable young children in their suburban Houston home. But, then, in January of 2003, Jeff mysteriously disappeared. Susan told others that Jeff had walked out after striking their five-year-old son. But, one of Jeff's co-workers became suspicious and called the cops. With police closing in, Susan eventually told local authorities that she had killed Jeff - in self-defense - and buried his body in the backyard. At ...

Diane Zamora and her fiancé, David Graham, had a bright future ahead of them. High school sweethearts, the couple had met in 1991 as volunteers in the Texas Civil Air Patrol. She was an honor roll student bound for Annapolis, and he was a track star with an appointment to the Air Force Academy. But their ambitions to serve their country were derailed on December 4th, 1995, when a farmer discovered the battered body of Adrianne Jones, a sophomore member of David's high school track team, laying in a field. Brutally beaten, she had been shot in the head. After nine ...

Blond, spunky, and ambitious, Kristin Rossum seemed to be going places. A summa cum laude graduate of San Diego State University, she worked as a toxicologist at the San Diego medical examiner's office. Her husband, Greg, worked for an up-and-coming biotech firm. Well-educated, highly intelligent, and good-looking, their future seemed limitless. But Kristin's picture-perfect life came to an end on November 6, 2000, when she returned home from work and found Greg dead of an apparent suicide, his body covered in rose petals. At autopsy, police discovered Greg had died ...

By most accounts, Debra Baker had the perfect job. She was the bookkeeper and business manager of Jerry Sternadel, a millionaire Texan entrepreneur. She was also a close confidant of Sternadel's wife, Lou Ann. They were so close that many, including Lou Ann's husband, began to suspect that the pair were more than just friends. In 1990, Jerry fell deathly ill. As he lay in his hospital bed, he told anyone who would listen that he thought Debra and Lou Ann had poisoned him. He died shortly afterward. A follow-up autopsy revealed that Jerry had ingested a lethal dose of ...

The daughter of a wealthy Michigan businessman, Carolyn Warmus enjoyed a life of privilege that included a swanky apartment on New York's Upper East Side and an all-expenses-paid education at exclusive Columbia University. After earning a Masters degree in elementary education, Carolyn landed a job teaching computer science at Greenville Elementary in Scarsdale, New York. There, she met and began dating a popular sixth grade teacher named Paul Solomon. Paul, however, just happened to be a married man. Their torrid affair continued until Paul made a gruesome discovery ...