(2000 words 7/12/2005)
By Lary Crews
By and large, Americans a too trusting for their own good. Many singles looking for a lasting relationship spend less time investigating a future spouse than they do looking into a potential car dealer or a new doctor. Often, the desire to trust and the lack of investigation can lead to real tragedy.
On Nov. 7, 1997, a hit man shot and stabbed Sheila Bellush, a mother of six, in her Sarasota, Florida home while her then-toddler quadruplets from her second marriage played nearby. The babies walked through their own mother’s blood and sat on the floor crying until their teenaged half-sister came home from school and found her mother dead. Police found a multitude of clues at the scene, including fingerprints. Within weeks, three men had been arrested. But the crime was not a robbery and the three men had never met Bellush before.
Two years later, her ex-husband, wealthy San Antonio businessman Allen Blackthorne, was convicted of arranging the murder of his ex-wife at her Florida home and was sentenced to life in prison. A few weeks ago, his fourth wife finally divorced him.
Sheila might still be alive had she known about Allen’s bizarre past. She was actually Allen’s third wife, not his first. Also unknown to Sheila when she met Allen was the fact that his alcoholic mother had been married three times and that his father had never met him. When Allen did finally meet his father, he went into business with him and ended up cheating his dad
out of thousands of dollars and skipping town leaving him to hold the bag. Incredibly, he also bankrupted Sheila’s parents shortly after they met.
There were countless clues that Allen was a dangerous and secretive man and that his ability to kill began when he was a teenager. At one point, just months after he and Sheila married he ran down a motorcyclist on a lonely road because he was angry that the cyclist passed him on the highway and then demanded that Sheila back up his claim that a motorcycle gang had attacked them and it was self-defense.
Blackthorne was not even Allen Van Houte’s real name; he adopted it after seeing the television mini-series Shogun. Richard Chamberlain played Englishman John Blackthorne, an explorer whose fortunes left him and his crew stranded in Japan during the 15th Century. That fictional character rose from the ashes to a position of great power, which was also Allen Van Houte’s desire. Instead he landed in prison.
Had Sheila merely thought to check out his background, chances are good she would never have married him.
In Oregon, Liysa Ann Northon was a woman used to having her way, and when her third husband, Chris Northon, failed to meet her wild expectations, she killed him, claiming self-defense because of years of alleged abuse at his hands. However, Chris, an airline pilot for Hawaiian Airlines, was by all accounts a nice guy without an abusive bone in his body. He hadn’t even wanted to get married, but when Liysa had her mind made up, there was no denying her. The two married hurriedly and had a child, Liysa’s second, and Chris soon realized his relationship had become a nightmare. He failed to divorce her because he did not want to lose custody of their son together.
A successful surf photographer, Liysa was pretty and gifted, and she had devoted friends who believed her lies and tolerated her loud intrusions into their own lives. Inadvertently, they concealed evidence that would later prove Liysa Northon was a cold-blooded killer.
Chris Northon was willing to seek therapy for his family, and his own therapist noted that he was totally nonviolent. Liysa decided to rid herself of him in the way most beneficial to her, instead of working it out. Liysa not only murdered her husband but may have helped destroy the credibility of real abused women with her carefully concocted lies. Ultimately, she pled guilty to the murder and is currently serving ten years behind bars.
If Chris Northon had been less trusting and had investigated his bride-to-be, he’d have discovered a web of lies and deceit which hung over the girl who wanted everything no matter the cost to those around her.
In Las Vegas, Sandy Murphy was a 23-year-old California Girl bent on turning a $13,000 "wad of cash" into a fortune on the tables of Caesar's Palace and Rick Tabish was a married but faithless and totally reckless company president who hoped to build a trucking empire on the back of an ever-expanding Las Vegas. Rick Tabish could not follow through on contracts with business partners, letting million-dollar deals slip away.
After losing $13,000 at Caesar's Palace, Sandy Murphy was determined to return to California with the same amount of cash. She turned to the VIP rooms of famous strip club Cheetah's to make it back. Although she never worked there as a stripper or otherwise, Sandy did invite a wealthy Texan she knew and several of his friends to fly into Vegas and join Sandy
and a friend at Cheetah's, where the two women partied with them in VIP rooms. "I got my wad back from what I lost at Caesars,'" Murphy said in a deposition.
The stint at Cheetah's, where Murphy said she only danced on stage topless once, also led to her first encounter with Ted Binion. On one of their nights out, Binion brought her to the Horseshoe Casino and told her he owned it.
Prosecutors proved in one trial that Murphy was a money-hungry woman with a taste for wealthy older men, and that Tabish was an irresponsible businessman whose finances were in disarray. The confluence of the two in a romantic relationship, prosecutors say, led them to commit the ultimate crime: the murder of former casino boss Ted Binion.
Binion, 51, was found dead in his suburban mansion Sept. 17, 1998. He had a long history of heroin addiction, and police initially believed he died of an overdose. Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish were convicted of his murder in 2000, but the convictions were overturned in 2003 based on errors made by the trial judge, Joseph Bonaventure, who is also presiding over the retrial going on now.
Had Ted Binion hired a investigative firm to check into Murphy’s background, he’d have discovered a clever young woman who fell in love while still in high school with a man who lived forty miles away and who was “significantly older.” She moved in with him, borrowed money from her parents and started a company. With her work and relationship, she finished high school two courses shy of graduation.
Binion would have discovered that Sandy Murphy had a history of fancy cars and posh addresses as she moved up one older man at a time. Indeed, the defense in her current retrial is being paid for by another older man, smitten with her beauty. As Murphy says, “Every girl loves an older man. Someone… handsome…wise to the ways of the world.”
While not all bad relationships end in death, most do result in unhappiness, loss of money and often a broken family and disappointed children. All of that could be avoided by simply doing what you should do when going into a business partnership; check out the other person.
It may seem anything but romantic but the world has changed. In years past, you dated or married someone your family knew. Often your intended, even in a second-time-around situation was someone you and your friends actually knew.
However, today, people are working long hours, some with children, and they don't have the time or the opportunity to meet people. It is more difficult than ever to find that someone special with limited resources and a busy schedule. Many people are more likely to check out and research the buying of a new car than they are to look into the background of someone they plan to marry.
In these uncertain times, people want to share their lives with someone, more than ever before. However, another thing which has lead to recklessness in launching relationships is the fact that many of the nation’s singles are taking advantage of dating services to help them in their quest.
While, matchmakers and video-dating services were the greatest influence 25 years ago, the Internet is now the first choice for many singles. The Web has brought introduction services to the masses in a convenient style at affordable prices.
The quest to find modern love online is a prevailing trend 365 days a year. Today's singles want more than a date, and they are increasingly savvy about how to use technology to their advantage. Interestingly, many of the people using the Internet are not the ubiquitous 18 to 35 year olds. Thousands of singles age 60 and older are also turning to the Internet to find romance. Match.com vice president Trish McDermott said, "online dating is as popular for seniors as it is for other age groups."
In August, more than 16 percent of those active on the top five dating sites, including Yahoo! Personals and Match.com, were 55 and over, and more than 5 percent were 65 and over, according to NielsenNetRatings Inc., an Internet research firm. Overall, the number of people active on top dating sites grew to 22.53 million in August 2004.
You don't have to be a beauty queen or a young babe to find interesting people on the Net. However, that same freedom to be whom you want to be leads to mistakes when a person’s real personality and background are revealed, often when it is too late to do anything about it.
If someone is going to lie about the past, now-a-days it can have huge financial, personal and health ramifications. Histories of domestic abuse, non-payment of child support, and lies about being really divorced; criminal histories, and bringing huge financial debts to a marriage are common.
We frequently see people getting married and not knowing their new mate is responsible for years of back child support, which then falls on the new marriage. Lying about education, military honors and service are the next most common problem. Whether or not that is important to a potential mate, it does indicate a lack of integrity.
There is also now a health consideration. With the explosion of sexually transmitted diseases, health professionals consider it extremely important to check into past marriage files to see if the mate has an alleged history of extramarital affairs.
Divorced parents considering remarrying or dating seriously have another concern; does their new found love have a history of domestic violence, a history of child abuse or sexual assault.
Las Vegas is known as “the starting over capital” with an average 5,000 people moving here each month, which often means you’ll find yourself dating someone from another part of the country. Often, they take advantage of the move to “reinvent” themselves and that can spell trouble.
Due diligence has a lot to do with happy endings. We know everyone has their own idea of what a happy ending is, but for the con artist it is leaving with your money, and often the scam artist leaves with a things you may value more; your future, opportunity, hopes and sometimes your health. Or, as in the worst-case scenario cases of Sheila Bellush, Chris Northon and Ted Binion, failure to check out that person with whom you are in love could result in death.
- end -
