The Cold Case of Mr. Harrington

That triggered me to remember something about Harry's original report.

Harry's theory was that Mrs. Harrington had killed her husband, but in reality, he didn't have any proof the man who died in the emergency room was Mr. Harrington. All he had was the woman who brought him in said he was Mr. Harrington. At the time, that probably seemed to be a logical conclusion given that she'd identified herself as Mr. Harrington's wife, had brought a prescription bottle of Atenolol with Mr. Harrington's name on it as the patient and Atenolol had caused his death. Now, since we had a second body in the same casket, I wasn't so sure.

"Ron, could you get prints and a DNA sample from Mr. Harrington too? It's just a long shot, but it will tie up some loose ends."

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It took two weeks to get the DNA results back from the TBI lab, and they told a lot different story than Rochelle and I had theorized.

The TBI had found a match to the DNA they got from the woman's hair and tissue samples. That DNA matched the DNA from the hair the Crime Scene techs had taken from the sink and shower drains at the Harrington house twenty years before. That was nearly conclusive proof that the second body was Mrs. Harrington and explained why Harry hadn't been able to find her. That fact also turned the whole case upside down. Mrs. Harrington still might have killed her husband, but somebody had strangled her after that.

The "who did what" got a lot more complicated by the prints and DNA from Mr. Harrington's body because it didn't match the DNA from the sink and shower drains or the prints from the house. That was nearly conclusive proof that the man in the casket wasn't Mr. Harrington. The TBI didn't have a match and had sent the DNA profile to CODIS.

After Rochelle and I talked that over that night, she said she had a different theory now.

"What if both the Harrington's were having affairs, and Mr. Harrington and his lover decided to kill Mrs. Harrington to get her out of the way, and killed her lover to keep him from talking to the police about what he and Mrs. Harrington had been doing? Maybe they were swingers and Mr. Harrington and whoever the other woman was decided they liked each other more than they liked their husband and wife."

I nodded.

"Well that makes some sense, except that Mrs. Harrington was the one who gave the hospital his name and address and who brought the bottle of Atenolol to the emergency room. She also sold her car."

Rochelle thought for a few seconds and then she grinned.

"Do we know for certain that it was Mrs. Harrington who did that? If it wasn't Mr. Harrington in the casket, why should we believe Mrs. Harrington took the man to the hospital? Her driver's license said she was five four, about a hundred and thirty pounds and had brown hair.

"Women lie about their weight and can change their hair color overnight. They didn't measure my height when I got my Tennessee driver's license. Probably half the women in Knoxville would fit that description pretty well and the picture on a driver's license usually doesn't look all that close to the real person. Besides, all the hospital would have probably done was ask her to verify her name and address. She could have covered the picture with her finger when she showed them the driver's license. I do that accidentally all the time when I go to the liquor store. All they look at is my birth date. They never ask me to move my finger so they can see my picture.

"What if it was Mr. Harrington's lover who did those things? If they'd already killed Mrs. Harrington, they'd have her purse and everything in it. It would be pretty easy for a woman to pass herself off as Mrs. Harrington if they were close in size and appearance."

In light of what we now knew, that made sense too. It still didn't explain how Mrs. Harrington's body ended up in the casket with a man everybody thought was Mr. Harrington.

"Rochelle, if what you say is what happened, how did they get Mrs. Harrington's body into the casket? From what the funeral home director told me, it would be nearly impossible for anyone to do that and especially so since the casket wouldn't close all the way."

She shook her head.

"I don't know, but maybe my fact board will tell us. I'll do that tomorrow. Right now, I'm hungry. How about if I treat you to dinner and then you treat me to something else?"

Well, I don't have to tell you what I treated Rochelle to that night. Let's just say she was happy when she kissed me good night and leave it at that.

When I went to work the next morning, Ron had left me a phone message.

"Rich, I got results back from CODIS this morning. The guy in the casket is Warren Langley and he has a record. Among his other accomplishments in life like minor assault and loitering, he was convicted of burglary, selling drugs, and beating the hell out of his wife. He'd been out of prison for about a month when someone jabbed him in his cock and shot him full of Atenolol."

I said I'd walk down and get the file.

After Ron handed it to me, he said, "That finished up both autopsies. What should I do with the bodies? I can't put the guy back into Mr. Harrington's grave because he's not Mr. Harrington. I can't put Mrs. Harrington in his grave because she's a woman."

I said to give me a while to find out if they had any living next of kin. If I couldn't he should have him cremated and the remains buried in the cemetery plot owned by the city for that purpose.

After that, I printed off the NCIC file on Warren Langley.

His record went back to the time he was sixteen and had been arrested for shoplifting a ball cap from a sporting goods store. Since the ball cap was only worth a couple bucks and it was his first offense, all Warren got was six months probation.

He'd served that without a hitch, but then went on to an ever-escalating life of crime. By the time he was twenty-five, he'd spent five of those years in prison, the last three for beating up his wife, Marion. He hadn't been in trouble since he'd gotten out on parole. Apparently he'd changed because he and Marion were still married.

I called the parole officer listed on the printout and found out he'd retired. The woman who answered the number said she'd picked up Warren's case file about ten years ago but hadn't had any contact with him. The last information she had about him was that he was working construction in Nashville in 1999. She gave me the name of the general contractor for the site Warren was working at the time.

So, now I had several pieces of information that by themselves didn't mean much, but taken together might.

I knew his wife's name and if she was still alive and I could find her, I'd have someone who might be able to tell me when he went missing. All I had to do was find her and ask her why she hadn't reported Warren missing all those years ago. My suspicions were that she'd killed Warren and maybe Mrs. Harrington.

I also had a possible connection between Mr. Harrington and Warren since they'd both worked construction in Nashville. I didn't know if they were working on the same construction site, but if they were, they might have met. Maybe that's how Warren met Mrs. Harrington and that meeting turned into something more serious. If the general contractor was still in business, he'd have records that showed who his sub-contractors were and his subs would have a list of workers they'd paid.

That afternoon, I called the number of the contractor on Warren's parole record. The girl who answered said, "Monteagle Construction. How may I help you?"

I gave her my name and the reason for my call and then asked to speak with the owner or general manager. She told me to hold while she connected me. I heard another two rings and then another woman said, "I'm Lisa Morgan, the owner of Monteagle Construction. Patty said you're a detective from Knoxville investigating a murder case. I don't know how I can help you. There's never been a death on one of our construction sites."

I explained the death hadn't been on a construction site but involved two men who worked construction in 1999, one of whom was on one of Monteagle's sites around that time.

"What I need to know is if you have a record of people employed by your company on a site in Nashville in 1999. If you don't, would you have a list of subcontractors who were working on that site?"

She said it would take a while and said she'd call me back. Two hours later, she did.

"Detective Owens, we had two sites going in Nashville between 1998 and 2000. Each site had to have the names of anyone on the site in case there was some sort of emergency and we had to account for everyone. Can I email them to you?"

Half an hour later, I got an email with two attachments. After printing the attachments, I started down through the names for the site of a warehouse built over the summer of 1999. On the second page I found Warren Langley and on the third, I found Kenneth Harrington. Warren was listed as an electrician's helper and Mr. Harrington was listed as a journeyman electrician.

That would be how they might have met, but still didn't tell me why Mr. Langley was buried as Mr. Harrington. I put that aside for the moment and checked the Tennessee DMV records for Marion Langley. If she was still in Tennessee, her latest address would be on her license. She could have moved, but at least it was a place to start.

What I found is that Marion Langley had changed her name from Marion Rodgers to Marion Langley in 1993 when she was twenty-six. I figured that was when she married Warren. Then, in 1999, she'd changed the name on her driver's license to Marion Weston. The address was listed as 2525 West Ash, Crossville, Tennessee.

I queried the DMV for Kenneth Harrington and found him, but his license had expired in 2000 and hadn't been renewed. On a hunch, I then queried Kenneth Weston. If Rochelle's theory was right, maybe Kenneth Harrington and Marion Langley were lovers and committed both murders.

Kenneth Weston's Tennessee driver's license was issued in 1999 after he presented an Illinois driver's license issued in 1994, and he'd renewed the Tennessee license in 2023. He was listed as living at the same address as Marion Weston.

I figured him to be Kenneth Harrington. He could have gotten an Illinois driver's under the name of Kenneth Weston license just by living in Illinois. All he'd have had to show was his Tennessee license and a power or water bill to prove he was a resident. The name change Harrington to Weston would have been easy to do as well. A hundred bucks or so dollars to the right person in either Chicago or Nashville will get you a driver's license that says what you want it to say, so that could have happened in either state.

There were too many similarities for Marion Weston and Kenneth Weston to not be the former Marion Langley and Kenneth Harrington. What I figured was that like Rochelle had theorized, Marion and Kenneth had gotten together somehow and had married once Mrs. Harrington and Mr. Langley were dead. I couldn't prove that and I still didn't know if either of them was guilty of murder or not, or how Mrs. Harrington's body got into that casket with Warren, so I didn't have a reason to get an arrest warrant for either.

When I got home that night, Rochelle was working on her fact board. She had the names of all the players on the right hand column. She'd relabeled the headers of the other columns to read "Killed Mr. H", "Killed unknown woman", and "Put unknown woman in casket". In the columns she'd put an "X" if she thought that combination was impossible, like the unknown man couldn't have killed the unknown man.

What she had left were possible scenarios. I told her the names I'd come up with for our "unknown" people and she change the names, then stood back and looked at her fact board.

"Barring some random killer, there are only two people who could have killed both Mrs. Harrington and Mr. Weston -- Mr. Harrington and Mrs. Weston, but neither could have put Mrs. Harrington in the casket. The funeral home director or his assistant could have put her in the casket, but I can't imagine either of them doing it. If anyone found out, they'd be arrested for defiling a corpse and the funeral home would lose its license. Besides, other than that they sold a casket and had the man buried, they had no interaction with either party that I can find. I'm out of ideas, because nobody else had access to the casket."

I was looking over Rochelle's fact board hoping to see something she'd missed when I remembered what I'd seen at the exhumation. What I saw there was probably exactly the same thing Harry saw at the burial. There was a backhoe that had dug the grave and was waiting to fill it until everybody left. In order to shield the grave site view by any visitors to the cemetery, the gravedigger had put canvas panels in steel frames on three sides.

"Rochelle, there's another person you forgot -- the gravedigger. When Harry went to the gravesite to see if Mrs. Harrington would be there all he saw was a gravedigger on the backhoe that had dug the grave, and there were canvas screens placed around where he'd dug. He still hadn't filled in the grave when Harry left. What would have kept him from getting Mrs. Harrington's body, opening the casket, putting her in there, and then finishing putting on the vault lid and filling the grave?"

Rochelle added "gravedigger" to the list of names and then looked at her board.

"Well, that only works if the gravedigger was either the Weston woman or Mr. Harrington. I suppose there are women who can operate a backhoe, but there can't be many. What did Mrs. Weston do for a living? If she couldn't use a backhoe, it had to be Mr. Harrington, but you said he was an electrician, not a heavy equipment operator."

"I don't know what she did for a living back then, but I don't think the backhoe operator was her. Harry would have seen that she was a woman and it would have seemed odd to him. If the backhoe operator was one of them, it had to be Mr. Harrington."

Rochelle put a question mark in the square for Mr. Harrington under "Killed Mr. L."

"OK, so how did he get her there without anybody seeing her body?"

"Well, Harry said there was a pickup and trailer for the backhoe parked by the gravesite. Maybe she was in the truck. Once everybody left, Mr. Harrington could have opened the casket, got her body from the truck, and put her in the casket. After he did that, he just put the vault lid on and then filled in the hole. That's still supposing an electrician would know how to operate a backhoe.

"There's another column missing on your fact board too. We know that Mr. Langley was killed by an overdose of Atenolol, but how would Mr. Harrington or Mrs. Langley get liquid Atenolol? Mrs. Harrington is the only one we know who worked in a place where she might have gotten some. I think somebody had to get it for them."

Rochelle walked to her laptop and started typing. A couple minutes later, she looked up.

"Maybe they didn't have to get liquid Atenolol. Maybe they made their own from Mr. Harrington's prescription. I just looked it up and Atenolol is soluble in water. They'd have had to grind up several pills, but Mr. Harrington could have gotten more pills because Atenolol isn't regulated like a narcotic or a medicine also used as a street drug would be. Most prescriptions are refillable for some period of time, but even if his wasn't, if he'd told the doctor something had happened to the pills he had and he needed to refill the prescription, the doctor would have approved that.

"Once they'd dissolved the ground up pills, they had injectable Atenolol. All they would have needed then was a syringe, and you could buy all the syringes and needles you want at any farm supply store even back in 1999."

"OK, that's possible, but how did they get it into Mr. Langley? Harry said he found a needle mark on Mr. Langley's penis, but I can't imagine he just laid there and let one of them stick a needle into him there. I sure as hell wouldn't."

Rochelle frowned.

"I'll have to think about that some more. Right now, I'm hungry. Let's eat."

Dinner was steaks I grilled while Rochelle made pasta salad. It was almost eight before we finished eating, and Rochelle said she was going to take a shower. She came out of the shower a half hour later wearing only a towel and crooked her finger at me.

"I'm all clean and I'm going to be your dessert. Let's go to bed."

As soon as we got in our bedroom, Rochelle dropped the towel.

"You lay on the bed. I have something special in mind."

Well, what she had in mind was sitting on my chest with her ass in my face and her hands on my cock. When I stroked her ass cheeks, Rochelle said, "Uh-uh, not yet. I have to get you ready first."

I had to grin because my cock was already standing up.

"Rochelle, I'm already ready."

She chuckled then.

"Not as ready as I'm gonna make you. Now, hold still."

Well, I managed to hold still until Rochelle wrapped her lips around my cock head. After that, I tried, but it was impossible. I was starting to thrust up into Rochelle's stroking hand and sucking mouth, when she pulled her lips off my cock.

"I said for you to hold still."

I stroked her left ass cheek.

"You should know by now that when you do this, I can't."

"I can fix that."

I felt Rochelle grip my shaft and then a sharp pain in my cock. I tried to pull my cock away but Rochelle only tightened her grip.

She laughed a few seconds later.

"How does it feel to have Atenolol shot into you when you're all hard?"

"It didn't hurt as much as it was a surprise. Why did you do that anyway?"

Rochelle turned around then.

"I was just trying to see how hard it would be if I wanted to. Turns out, it wasn't hard at all. That big vein swells up when you get hard. All I did was pinch it a little with my fingernails, but I could have injected you.

"I'll bet that's what happened. Mrs. Langley got him hard like I just did to you, and because he couldn't see what she was doing, she stuck the needle in him and pushed the plunger. It would have only taken seconds, and pretty soon after that, he'd have started feeling weak and not able to breathe very well.

"Now, I apologize for what I did. Can I make it up to you."

Rochelle did a very good job of making it up to me -- twice. After the second, she snuggled up to me, pushed her big breasts against my chest and whispered, "Did I make it all better?"

Over breakfast the next morning, we talked about Rochelle's new theory. I had some questions.

"Your theory makes some sense, but that means Mr. Langley and his wife were still sleeping together. Why would she even consider having sex with him after what he did to her?"

Rochelle smiled.

"It might be because he'd convinced her to get back together. That happens all the time. A couple divorces and then decides being married was better than being divorced. They weren't divorced, but separation is about the same thing especially since he was in prison.

"Maybe it was because she planned to kill him. She went to Mr. Langley when he got out of prison and said she'd made a mistake and wanted to get back together with him. It would have been a good plan because you men tend to get pretty vulnerable when a woman plays with you like I did. You just lay back and enjoy what we're doing and don't pay attention to anything else. She probably knew that's what he'd do. She just used it to her advantage.

"Since you found out both Mr. Harrington and Mrs. Langley are married now, or at least they both changed to the same last name and have the same address, what I think is Mr. Harrington and Mrs. Langley were having an affair. They decided the only way for them to be together was to kill Mr. Langley and pass him off as Mr. Harrington.