Hitmen (13 page)

Detectives noticed that Noeleen hadn’t been to her doctor
to complain about the backache which she claimed had forced her to sleep in the lounge on the night of Tony’s murder. Meanwhile another team of detectives, assigned the task of interviewing Derby’s lowlife to try and find out the identity of the killer burglar, was having little luck. It was only when police attention turned to a number of slimming clubs run by Noleen that detectives had a lucky break; one woman remembered Noeleen being sent a bunch of red roses at the club. That was all. There was no name attached to the flowers. Maybe it was Tony, but then his friends informed detectives that it just wasn’t Tony’s style. Eventually the florist who sent the flowers was traced, but she couldn’t remember the name of the sender. She was certain, though, that it wasn’t Hendley.

Then detectives interviewed one of Noeleen’s club members and came away convinced she was lying. The woman was seen four more times by police. But it was only after speaking to her husband that officers discovered the woman had been lying because of her own indiscretions with other men. Now her husband had said he’d forgive his wife so she admitted to officers that Noeleen had been on a date with a man called Terry McIntosh, the father of Noeleen’s daughter-in-law.

Noeleen and Terry were immediately hauled into the Cotton Lane police station in Derby and interviewed separately. After six hours of interrogation, Noeleen confessed. When Terry was brought into her interview room, she burst into tears and sobbed, ‘I’ve told them about our affair.’

Terry McIntosh – with his narrow face and balding hairstyle – was a widower whose wife had committed suicide three years earlier. Noeleen later admitted that she saw in him
a vulnerable man whom she could manipulate. She tempted him into bed and she was the one who always phoned him to suggest they meet up for sex. They ended up making love in fields, their homes, camper vans, you name it.

Even Noeleen’s son Shane wasn’t that surprised when the affair was finally made public. He’d even discovered a photo in a drawer at home which he’d only just recognised as his mother. It had been taken on a river boat cruise in London. Noeleen had dropped her trousers and was showing off a rose and butterfly tattoo on her thigh. With the photo was card which read: ‘On our anniversary.’ The butterfly had been for Terry; the rose signified her allegiance to the rock group Guns N’ Roses. Shane handed the photo over to police.

Then investigators stumbled upon the name of ‘Bucko’ – a supposed hard-man friend of Terry who was reputed to be capable of sorting out any problem. A search of the phone records for the suspects soon revealed that Terry had spent 15 minutes talking to a man called Paul Buxton. When officers called on 40-year-old unemployed electrician Buxton he denied all knowledge of the call but police knew he was holding something back.

Then, the following day, Buxton contacted detectives to say he’d decided to make a full confession after speaking to his family and friends. He’d been haunted by the sight of Tony Hendley dying in front of his eyes. Buxton recalled: ‘His eyes were open. I can see his eyes now. Every time I shut my eyes I see his bloody eyes.’

On the afternoon of Tuesday, 28 January, 1992, Paul Buxton was arrested. Noeleen was charged a few hours later and Terry was taken into custody while on a business trip in
Surrey. After an hour of denials about knowing Buxton, Noeleen broke down and admitted her role in the murder and she even told officers about all those earlier failed attempts on her husband’s life.

A few months later – in the summer of 1992 – Noeleen admitted to Nottingham Crown Court that her romance with Terry was primarily driven by her insatiable love of sex. She said: ‘We had sex as often as possible. I had never experienced such sexual practices before. I couldn’t get enough of him. The days never seemed long enough. Terry was like a sex drug. He took me over completely. I just couldn’t think for myself any more.’ She claimed she thought the plan to kill her husband was all a joke, ‘like something out of a film. Things like that don’t happen in real life.’

Paul Buxton painted a completely different picture of Noeleen. ‘She hated the bloke. I have never seen anybody be married to someone for so long and hate them so much.’

It took the jury less than two-and-a-half hours to convict Noeleen and Paul of murder. Terry had earlier pleaded guilty. All three were given life sentences and Noeleen collapsed in the dock.

C
ancun, Mexico, is one of those beachside paradises most people can only dream about. Miles and miles of pure golden sand, overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. It is a picturesque, whitewashed town with a handful of luxurious hotels for wealthy American tourists, plus a scattering of bars and restaurants attractively designed to guarantee many thousands of visitors each year.

Mary Ellen Samuels, from Los Angeles, California, had always wanted to travel south of the border. It seemed so exotic on the television – and it appeared to be the perfect place to escape from her worries back in California. So it was, that attractive brunette Mary Ellen found herself on a
get-away
-from-it-all holiday. The perfect picture was completed by the presence of her young lover, who’d provide the sex and cocaine that had been a staple diet for Mary Ellen throughout her adult life.

Most evenings, she and her handsome lover enjoyed at least two bottles of wine between them in the hotel restaurant before slipping up to their suite where Mary Ellen knew that some athletic lovemaking was sure to occur. One night they’d have sex up against the bedroom door, the next it would be out in the open air on the balcony overlooking the Pacific. And once they were both satisfied, Mary Ellen would unravel herself from him, open a wrap of cocaine and chop out four fat, two-inch lines of white powder. Then she’d pull out a handful of $20 bills, find the crispest note, expertly roll it into a makeshift straw and snort her lines hungrily.

‘I got an idea,’ her lover said one night, as he snorted the second of his lines. ‘Gimme all the cash you got.’

Mary Ellen hesitated for a moment. She’d worked and schemed very hard for her money.

‘Come on. I ain’t gonna take it. I just wanna show you how to have some fun.’

Mary Ellen threw a holdall on the bed and watched as her boyfriend started spreading $20 bills on top of the bed. Mary Ellen smiled and took a deep, excited breath. Earlier that holiday they’d talked about making love in a sea of the cash; now was the moment to really do it.

Mary Ellen slipped out of her bra and panties and lay on top of the first layer of notes, then her boyfriend carefully covered her body with the crispest of the new $20 bills. Their sharp corners spiked into her flesh, enhancing the sensation of literally swimming in money. Some of the notes dug slightly into her nipples every time she wriggled, while he continued fluttering them all over her.

Eventually, Mary Ellen was totally immersed in the money,
except for a small gap at the top of her thighs. He looked down at her face lying there: she had a smug, satisfied expressed. Then she slowly licked her lips with the tip of her tongue. Her young lover had a broad grin on his face.

‘Come on, baby. It’s time to show me how much you love me,’ exclaimed the sultry former housewife. Her thighs edged apart a few inches. ‘Come here.’

The woman dubbed by police as the Green Widow was living up to her name.

Mary Ellen even posed for a photograph, lying naked on that cash. But then that sex romp in a sea of money was just part of her celebration, following a half-a-million dollar insurance payout after the apparently tragic murder of her Hollywood cameraman husband by a cold-blooded stranger.

A few months earlier, the slaying had struck fear into the suburban communities of the San Fernando Valley area of California, just 20 miles from the sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles. Inside the Hollywood movie community, many had mourned the loss of respected technician Bob Samuels, who’d been closely associated with stars like Warren Beatty and Mel Gibson.

Sinking deeper into the mass of green paper, Mary Ellen pulled her young lover on to the bed and proceeded to make hot, passionate love. A luxurious life was, it seemed, hers for the taking. With her neat hairstyle and fondness for sleek, well-fitting power suits, Mary Ellen Samuels looked more like something out of a Dallas soap-opera than a grieving,
middle-aged
widow. But throughout her marriage she’d nursed a secret addiction to sex, drugs, drink and risk-taking.

For this 45-year-old mother had ordered a hitman to kill
her Hollywood cameraman husband and then murdered that same hired assassin in case he went to the police. ‘It was a classic story of greed and manipulation combined with a callous disregard for human life,’ prosecuting attorney Jan Maurizi later said. ‘This was a very attractive woman with short, dark hair who had an uncanny ability to manipulate people and used her talents to get rich. Just about anybody whose life she touched became a victim. Basically, her husband was worth more to Mary Ellen dead than alive.’

This extraordinary story began on 8 December 1988, when Samuels’ husband, 40-year-old Robert B. Samuels – who’d worked on Hollywood films like
Lethal Weapon
and
Heaven Can Wait
– was ambushed by an intruder inside the house the couple had shared until their separation a year earlier. The ‘burglar’ shot Samuels in the head with a 16-gauge shotgun. Police were alerted by Mary Ellen and her 18-
year-old
daughter Nicole after they arrived at the house a few hours later to find her husband’s bloodstained corpse. As Mary Ellen later boasted to friends: ‘I should have won an Academy Award for my acting performance. I was the perfect, grieving widow.’

But detectives were suspicious about the killing because there was no apparent sign of a struggle. And it was clear that Mary Ellen was a very spoiled wife. Within weeks she’d collected that life insurance payout of $500,000 and went on a wild spending spree, buying clothes, drugs, cars and holding parties where couples got naked by the pool.

Mary Ellen splashed out $60,000 on a Porsche, rented stretch limos most weekends and even took her toyboy to
Mexico on that trip to buy a villa in the sun. As prosecutor Maurizi later explained: ‘Mary Ellen was really pretty pampered by her husband. Her child was in private school. I think she had what the average American would consider the good life. But that wasn’t good enough for her.’ When detectives interviewed Mary Ellen’s former husband Ronnie Lee Jamison he told investigators she was a compulsive liar who gambled and used drugs during their marriage.

More than four months after Bob Samuels’ murder, detectives established that a hitman had previously failed
three times
to kill Bob Samuels. The hired killer initially plotted with Mary Ellen to push her husband’s car off a cliff and twice they’d planned to shoot him after getting him drunk. But each scheme failed at the final hurdle. Eventually, that hitman hired another hitman to finally murder Bob Samuels.

Then, six months after Samuels’ slaying, a botany professor on a nature hike found the body of suspected hitman James Bernstein – a 27-year-old reputed cocaine dealer – which had been dumped in a remote canyon in nearby Ventura County. Only later did it emerge that Mary Ellen had hired two more hitmen to do away with Bernstein because he’d started demanding more money and threatened to go to the police if she did not pay. She paid her replacement hitmen just $5,000 and a packet of cocaine to kill Bernstein.

But Mary Ellen Samuels made one stupid mistake. She’d kept original hitman Bernstein’s wallet as a souvenir. Police later found it in her Porsche. They also discovered her diary which stated: ‘People are saying I did it. Nailed me for Bob, want me for Jim.’

In court, Mary Ellen’s defence team tried to claim that Bernstein – who carried a business card calling himself ‘James R. Bernstein, specialist’ – was smitten with the Samuels’ pretty teenage daughter, Nicole. They insisted he acted on his own when he killed Robert Samuels after Nicole told him that Robert Samuels had molested her and raped her when she was just 12 years old. Other friends and relatives of the couple then told the court Mary Ellen had arranged the killing of her husband in revenge for his sex attacks on her daughter. No one was ever able to establish if these claims were true.

Prosecutors dismissed the sexual molestation charges as pure fabrication. And Robert Samuels’ sister, Susan Conroy, said, ‘It’s the ultimate betrayal. He isn’t here to defend himself. Bob was a hardworking guy and he loved them very much. He would never have done anything to them.’

Paul Edwin Gaul and Darell Ray Edwards – the men who killed original hitman James Bernstein – testified against Mary Ellen Samuels after striking a deal with prosecutors, who agreed to commute any death sentence against them. They were sentenced before her trial to 15 years to life for the murder of Bernstein.

The court heard that after the Samuels’ marriage originally broke up in 1987, Mary Ellen moved out, taking the refrigerator and leaving a five-page ‘Dear John’ letter. She moved to a condominium in nearby Reseda, California. For more than a year, Mr Samuels hoped they might reconcile. But reconciliation was the furthest thing from Mary Ellen’s mind. One old family friend, Heidi Dougall, recalled, ‘She hated him and she wanted him done.’

Mary Ellen even told friends that she’d calculated she would only receive $30,000 in a divorce settlement as opposed to the $500,000 she knew her husband was worth dead. Mary Ellen’s biggest bone of contention with her husband was over their shared ownership of a sandwich shop in nearby Sherman Oaks. She also didn’t want to lose the $1,600 a month in maintenance she was receiving following the separation.

Then, in 1988, Mary Ellen began openly telling friends she was considering having her husband ‘done away with’. She even approached some of her daughter’s high school friends. Mary Ellen insisted she wanted revenge on her husband because of his alleged attempts to molest her daughter. In one incident at her school, daughter Nicole asked a friend for help as they sat eating in the cafeteria. The stunned classmate later gave courtroom evidence against Mary Ellen.

Mary Ellen Samuels was found guilty of two counts of murder, two counts of conspiracy to murder and two counts of solicitation for murder. ‘I’ve never asked for the death penalty for a woman before,’ said prosecutor Maurizi, who was still considering filing charges against her daughter Nicole. ‘But these murders were pre-meditated, 6 months apart and motivated purely through greed. Mary Ellen Samuels was a housewife who went shopping for something other suburban housewives don’t need. She went shopping for killers!’ Prosecutor Maurizi also told the jury: ‘I ask you for a verdict of death for all the selfish and inhumane decisions she made in her life. I ask you ladies and gentlemen, how many bodies does it take? We’re talking about murder for the sake of the almighty dollar.’

On 16 September 1994, Samuels became only the fifth woman in history to be sentenced to death in California since the state re-imposed capital punishment in the late Seventies. She remains scheduled to die in the gas chamber or through a lethal injection. As juror Karen Hudson explained outside the court following sentencing, ‘We wanted to let people know we were sure.’