48 Hours - Love, Hate & Obsession

Episode Date: August 23, 2015

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Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to this podcast ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app today. Even if you love the thrill of true crime stories as much as I do, there are times when you want to mix it up. And that's where Audible comes in, with all the genres you love and new ones to discover. Explore thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. Listening to Audible can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits,

and even your overall well-being. And you can enjoy Audible anytime, while doing household chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert

to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. It was 7 a.m. I don't know whether it was the house alarm that woke me up or the gunfire. I had no idea what was going on, what had happened, until I heard my mother screaming.

And then more shots, and they were pretty rapid. I heard a real lot of dry firing. I knew that the gun was empty, and I went far enough to be able to see into the bathroom and I saw my father laying on the floor with blood. I can still see my father every time I close my eyes. There's no question that this is a tragic, horrible, horrible caseope Security. I'm calling in because we have a dead person at 408 Mariner. There's no question that this is a tragic, horrible, horrible case. Mr. Horowitz was a 66-year-old gentleman who was found deceased in his home on September 30th of 2011.

Did he shoot himself? That's what it sounds like to me. Okay, so he committed suicide. Correct. He has a gun in his right hand. Impossible. Never believed the suicide for 10 seconds. Everybody loved Lanny.

My brother had a lot to live for. Nobody lived like Lanny. He lived like royalty. There's only two people in the house, Radley and his mother, Donna. Donna and Lanny had been married, divorced, and remarried, and divorced again.

Well, I don't know who killed Lanny Horowitz, but I know it wasn't Donna. My father did some really, really awful stuff to me and to my mother. Rad did not like his father one bit. He hated him. Absolutely hated him. He was an absolute just evil bastard. I didn't realize how angry he was at Lanny. Did you shoot dad? No, absolutely not. There were a lot of guns in the house. I've never seen that many guns in someone's house. All three of them were gun aficionados, including Donna.

This family puts the fun in dysfunctional. Not only was he murdered, he was murdered with such indifference. He died like Caesar, surrounded by enemies. It boils down to a motive as old as time, and that's love, hate, and obsession. I'm Peter Van Sant. Tonight on 48 Hours, love, hate, and obsession. As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. The scary cult classic was set in the Chicago housing project. It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror.

Candyman. Candyman? Now, we all know chanting a name won't make a killer magically appear. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was. We're going to talk to the people who were there, and we're also going to uncover the larger story. My architect was shocked when he saw how this

was created. Literally shocked. And we'll look at what the story tells us about injustice in America. If you really believed in tough on crime, then you wouldn't make it easy to crawl into medicine cabinets and kill our women. Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts.

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So follow The Best Idea Yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to The Best Idea Yet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. It's just the best idea yet. I still want to know exactly what happened that morning. happened that morning. Radley Horwitz was asleep at his parents' Jupiter, Florida home on September 30, 2011, when he woke up to a nightmare. I jumped out of bed and heard, I don't know how many shots. Disoriented and defenseless, with the house alarm blaring,

Radley stayed in his room, not knowing if the shooter would make him the next target. I was basically pacing back and forth in my room like a trapped rat, and I was afraid to go out that door there. You don't know who's been shot? You don't know who's got the gun in their hands? Well, I could hear my mom screaming my name. When the shooting stopped, Radley rushed down the hall into his parents' bedroom. He looked into the master bathroom and saw his father, 66-year-old Lanny Horwitz. I was scared and I ran out of there.

He looked like he was certainly beyond any help. When you came out, what was your mother's state? Was she sobbing? Was she panicked? She was hysterical. Radley says he then left his mother Donna so he could turn off that house alarm. A security officer in this gated community rushed to the house. He was at the door in a flash. Security made that 911 call. We had an alarm go off over there and our medic responded. I received a call to respond to Admirals Cove for a death investigation, possible suicide.

Detective Eric Frank of the Jupiter Police Department responded and found three family members that lived at the home. There was Lanny's ex-wife, Donna. They actually were divorced, but they were still living together. Their son, Bradley, lived with them. There's a guest house to your right, which is where the grandmother, Anita, was staying. You were in the guest house. What did you hear? Nothing. Nothing. Frank spoke to Luis Garcia, the Admiralals Cove security guard who found Lanny with the gun in his hand, and was one of the few to speak to Donna that morning.

I said, was anything going on on the site? She said he said he was going to do this. I said, what, kill himself? She said yes. There was blood everywhere. It was very hard to determine what were gunshot wounds at that point. Once I stepped into the bathroom and looked back towards the shower door, you can plainly see the bullet hole through the glass and through the towel that was hanging over the door. And that made me stop everyone where we were

and say that something's wrong here. It wasn't until the coroner moved Lanny's body 10 hours later that it became clear this was no suicide. Lanny had been shot nine times. Based on our investigation, Lanny was shot while he was in the shower first. And as he's getting out of the shower, he was shot multiple additional times to where he fell and was basically executed on that floor. Violent crimes are almost unheard of in this wealthy development called Admiral's Cove. Admiral's Cove is a beautiful development.

Lanny had a beautiful home on the water, and it was a prestigious place to live. Lanny's older brother, Barry. They call me Captain Barry. And Captain Barry is never seen without his signature captain's hat. He says at one time, Lanny and Donna lived a life most people would envy. They had homes all over the country. They were able to travel all over the world. He had sailboats. He had airplanes.

Anything life could offer was there for them. Your brother was a business whirlwind, wasn't he? I mean, incredibly gifted businessman. Absolutely. I won't argue with that. Lanny was a millionaire at a very early age. Growing up in Buffalo, New York, Barry says his brother was focused on being a success from an early age. At 16, he was a real estate salesman for my father who did commercial real estate.

Within a short time, he became a real estate broker, and he took to it like nothing I've ever seen. The only thing Lanny seemed to make time for was his high school sweetheart, Donna. Donna was a knockout. I think Lanny was obsessed. He loved her. He didn't want to date anybody else. And they were always together. My father told me that when he saw my mother coming down the stairs, that he knew right then that that was the woman that he wanted to marry.

And at the time, she was 14 and he was 15. The Lovebirds married in 1967. It was a great home life. My parents were the greatest people in the world. Donna was a stay-at-home mom, and Radley was their only child. But after 30 years of marriage, his parents' relationship became a soap opera. Your parents were first married in Buffalo in 1967. Correct, yes.

Divorced in May of 2001, remarried in September 2001, and then divorced again in June 2002. That sounds about right. It was a roller coaster, yes. What led to the first divorce? My mother felt that she was being ignored and wound up getting picked up by a fellow that worked there that was a security guard. My father was so incensed and disgusted. But after nine years of seeing each other sporadically, the on-again, off-again couple reconciled in 2011, as described in Donna's day planner-turned-journal.

She called Lanny by her pet name, Lanbo. So happy Lanbo and I are getting back together. By April 2011, Donna had moved back into the Admiral's Cove house with Lanny and Radley, a single dad who did odd jobs for his father. My mom moved back home. My grandmother moved into the guest house. And my father's line was, you know, we're all going to be a family again. It did not work out that way. And my father's behavior towards her very, very much changed. He had never forgiven her for leaving him. That was very obvious. And personality-wise, he could be a difficult person to get along with.

But Radley could never imagine his parents' relationship coming to such a violent end, he says, if it wasn't for this woman. My parents had their ups and downs and their problems, but this never would have happened if it was not for Francine Tice. Hotshot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty. Her specialty? Representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals. However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets, the most dangerous secret was her own.

She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld, and she's informing on them all. I'm Marcia Clark, host of the new podcast, Informants Lawyer X. In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I've seen some crazy cases, and this one belongs right at the top of the list. She was addicted to the game she had created. She just didn't know how to stop. Now, through dramatic interviews and access, I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informants Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery Plus. Thank you. and New Zealand lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn,

and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reached the age of 10 that would still have heard it. It just happens to all of us. I'm journalist Luke Jones, and for almost two years, I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn.

When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn Trials, I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. There's no question that this is a tragic, horrible, horrible case.

Assistant State Attorney Aletha McRoberts was at the crime scene that day, and Lanny's bullet-ridden body told her this was no ordinary homicide case. It was clear that this was a statement that was being made by the shooter. Radley Horowitz was described as stoic, while his mother Donna appeared visibly upset. Assistant State Attorney Lauren Godden. At the scene, she shuts down. She does not talk to police and she does not talk to anyone. She puts her fingers over her ears and mouths, I can't hear you. There was no forced entry into the home. There was nothing.

CSI investigator Tracy McClendon began processing the crime scene, shooting video and pictures. This is the bathroom in which the incident took place. You can hear the hiss of the shower and the television that Lanny left on. And inside the shower, we have the bullet hole here. As investigators look for clues, they discovered an arsenal of weapons. This is a photograph of firearms that were found in the home. That looks pretty serious. This is a photograph of firearms that were found in the home.

That looks pretty serious. This is another gun we found in the house. And this is another one. These are more firearms found in the house. From handguns to assault rifles, 26 in all, and thousands of rounds of ammunition in military-style ammo boxes.

This is all in the same house? Correct. Most of them were registered to Lanny and his son Radley, a former licensed gun dealer and enthusiast. Unusual, based on your experience? I've never seen that many guns in someone's house. But it was these two revolvers that were found in the master bedroom area that were of immediate interest. One gun was Donna's and the other was registered to Lanny. There was

the firearm that had been in his hand. It's a five-shot Smith & Wesson revolver and there's another gun sitting right on top of the dresser. Both of those guns were matched to projectiles in and around Lanning. Incredibly, even though Radley and his mother were obvious persons of interest, cops let them leave. We let them leave the scene because we wanted to have that time to build that case as best we can. In virtually every murder case I've ever been involved with, if you have a body in a house and you have two people and you believe that one of those two

people is the killer, you take them to the police house, you separate them, and you question them. That was not done here. You can't arrest somebody just for suspicion of murder. The initial focus is clearly it's just Donna and Radley, but we didn't take that at face value alone. Police spent days collecting evidence and going through the family's personal belongings. What are you learning? We're learning that this is a very dysfunctional house. One very telling item that was recovered

was that journal Donna kept. In the beginning of the journal, she talks about all the positive things. He couldn't stop hugging me, Donna wrote, and telling me how much he misses me. She was spending time with her granddaughter. Radley has a daughter. Her name is Gianna. It's a situation where she is very hopeful. She was excited when Lanny asked her to move back in with him. Lanny loves me,

and I love him, and I want to help him. Even though it seemed to come with a catch to loan him $200,000, his once lavish lifestyle had been left in shreds after their divorces, the recession, and bad business dealings. Very special day when Lanny asked about $200,000 to keep both houses afloat and move back in. And reconcile. Great day. But just five months later... We see from the entries, her mental state was becoming more and more fragile. My heart is broken, and he is working on my mind, playing games with me. It was during that time that Donna became obsessed with Francine Tice.

Francine Tice lived down the street from our house. Lanny told his family that he and Francine were business partners, selling a health food product for a company called LifeMax. Did they have a business relationship, a personal relationship? They claimed that it was business, but I saw that it was more than that. How did you know this was more than a business relationship? I saw it. I saw pictures. They were always out together. Even Lanny's family noticed a change in him after meeting Francine.

They were holding hands, you know, kid stuff. That's the first time I saw Lanny happy in 40 years. Francine spoke at length to 48 Hours about Lanny, but would not do an on-camera interview. She vehemently denies having ever had a sexual relationship with him.

But Donna pictured something else and began documenting Francine's comings and goings. Fran texted Lambeau at midnight, woke us up. Lanny left at 1.15 to go on an errand with Fran, didn't return until 4.15 p.m. It was a daily contact with Francine and Lanny via in-person and in text and in phone calls. Now, Francine Tice has said that there was not a physical relationship between her and Lanny, that this was a business partnership. What was important for our purposes was that Donna believed that they were intimate. Lambeau home, 7 30 p.m.,

trying to act like he isn't with Fran all the time. I think she's heartbroken and angry and probably angry with herself for being so foolish. Foolish, Radley now says, for believing Lanny still loved her and giving him that $200,000. It became obvious to my mother that she had been duped. By September 2011, it was clear their on-again, off-again relationship was over because, Radley believes, of Francine. She is the most phony, vicious, backstabbing,

vile, quintessential Disney villain monster that I think I've ever encountered. McRoberts says Lanny told Donna he wanted her out of the house before he came back from a business trip, one he was taking with Francine. This is a woman who has reached the end of her rope. This was Donna who was not about to let him go on that trip with Francine. Police believed they now had their killer.

Just six days after Lanny was brutally shot nine times, Donna was arrested for his murder. Donna is a very meek, timid, soft-spoken individual. Gray Tesh is Donna's attorney. Who had the motive, who had the opportunity, who may have had the grudge to commit this murder. Both Donna and Radley. But see, here's the difference, though. Donna left him twice before. You know, why now? Most of my life, my father was a good person. But towards the end, he was an absolute, just evil bastard. It's just that attitude that makes Tesh say cops got it all wrong, and that Radley is the real killer. So all the motivation that is raised by investigators in this case

for Donna wanting to shoot her husband, you're telling me Radley had that in spades. He had more motivation to off his father. My life, up until everything exploded, was great. In less than one week, Radley had lost both his parents. His father, murdered. His mother, in jail, accused of killing him. Did you ask your mother what happened?

No, never. What do you say other than, I mean, I wanted to know what happened, but I was afraid to ask. Donna's attorney, Gray Tesh, says there are a lot of holes in the case. If she was the shooter, she would have blood all over her body, everywhere. The shooter, I think, was someone taller than Donna because of the angle. If you look at the autopsy report, if you look at the angle, they consistently say that they go downwards. Tess starts building a shocking defense, pointing the finger directly at Donna's own son, Radley Horowitz. For some people, this is the ultimate betrayal. A mother, through you, accusing her own son of a murder to save her own skin.

That's what the evidence showed. Why do you believe Radley killed his father? He had half a million reasons to kill him. Radley alone stood to inherit $500,000 in life insurance money, two homes, and Lanny's other prized assets. Donna, as Lanny's ex-wife, wouldn't have received a penny. So today, are you a multimillionaire as a result of all this? No, no. He left me two houses that were pretty much upside down and some very nice cars,

most of which I got rid of. But I kept the Aston Martin. But back in 2011, when his father was murdered, Radley's finances were a mess. That's why he was living with his parents. You were struggling, correct? Oh, yeah, yeah. To get a job as a convicted felon. That's right.

This son of a one-time millionaire served time in prison. Before his arrest, Radley was a licensed gun dealer in a business his father helped him set up, Jupiter Arms. It was my passion. I took to it like a fish to water. I was just absolutely lethal, but disciplined and responsible. Years earlier, Radley says, at his father's urging, he bought an illegal gun part online for his personal collection, which could convert a Glock pistol into a fully automatic weapon. My father said his exact words were just order it. That attracted the attention of federal law enforcement, and Radley says his father took great delight in his misfortune. He got a real kick out of the fact that those ATF guys

were there and loved, you know, saying I told you so and stuff like that. Then in 2006, Radley was arrested by the ATF after selling a handgun to a felon. That's serious, right? Oh hell yes. I wound up with five months in federal prison. Do you blame your father for the fact that you ended up in prison? Ultimately, yes. Is there enough resentment for you to shoot him? You know, that's, you know, what the hell does that solve? What better way, it's alleged, to get your financial house in order than to off your father, who'd been tormenting your mother?

And it wasn't always very nice to me either. Radley said his father was never physically abusive, but that years of verbal taunting was in some ways far worse. My dad, you know, could be extremely nasty. The psychological death of a thousand cuts never, never lets up. Just a snide, sarcastic, aloof. Still, as prosecutors compile their case, they feel strongly that all the signs point to Radley's mother. Is this shooting ten times? Is this a son that's angry?

Or is this an angry wife that has snapped? Donna was so angry, investigators believe, she used the last of the 10 bullets to make a brutal statement by shooting Lanny in the mouth. Why shoot him in the mouth? I think she was tired of his mouth. I think she was tired of him being cruel and biting and condescending. Things are not good here, she confided in her journal. His comments are insulting. she confided in her journal, his comments are insulting. A week after the murder,

Radley goes to the police station with his attorney to give a full statement. She was saying, he was so awful, he was so awful. She said that twice. Donna says to Radley, he was so awful. Are those words a confession to you? Absolutely. Her immediate response, her gut reaction when she sees someone is to start justifying what she did.

The quote, too, by the way, he was so awful, right? Police never heard that. He doesn't say that on scene. He says that a week later after he lawyers up. Tesh believes that Radley made up both that quote and the story about the dry fires. You're hearing, as you call it, the dry fire. Click, click, click. Yeah, I mean, when I heard the clicking in my mind, at least, I knew that I was safe. Well, he's full of crap. Tell me, how can you hear dry fires when you've got a DEFCON alarm going off?

And by the way, his bedroom's on one side of the house. The master bedroom's completely on the other side of the house. But unlike Donna, Detective Frank says Radley cooperated fully on scene. He gives us a DNA standard. He allows my CSI to conduct a gunshot residue test on him. What was the result of that test? And it did come back as negative for gunshot residue. Donna wasn't given a gunshot residue test after she asked to speak with an attorney. She didn't want to answer any of your questions? Nothing. Tesh says police botched the investigation by never collecting and examining Donna's pajamas

or Radley's clothes the morning of the murder. Nobody says she had blood on her pajamas. The police were right next to her. They're right next to her. They would have noticed that. And Tesh says the state has little to support their claim that Donna was the shooter. They ain't got squat. Here's what they got.

They got no fingerprints on either one of the weapons, right? Or the shell casings. No DNA specifically linking her. Nothing. Nada. Zip. This is a circumstantial case. It is. You have a journal in which she complains about her husband,

but she never in the journal says, I'm going to kill him. Correct. It isn't just the journal. It's how the journal explains the crime scene, why it would have been done in such a cruel and hateful manner. As the case goes to trial, prosecutors insist they have the right person. There's absolutely no question that Donna Horowitz shot and murdered her husband, Lanny. But the defense says Radley's own words speak volumes about his motive. This sounds awful, but I am glad that he was up and alive long enough to know that what

comes around goes around, and that this was the payback for everything that he had done to not only my mother, but to me. Almost a year and a half after Lanny Horwitz was murdered, prosecutors are ready to present their case in court. I think the essence of the case from the very beginning was this was about a woman scorned. And the accused scorned woman looked nearly unrecognizable to Lanny's sisters, Marsha Van Creevel and Sheila Goldberg. She looked like a witch. She had this beautiful, gorgeous black hair, gorgeous eyelashes, and here's this little skinny thing with this gray hair and glasses. Attorney Gray Tesh has settled on what could be called

the ultimate betrayal defense, accusing Donna's son to save her own skin. He's a spoiled child... who thinks he's entitled to everything. He's got to fund his lifestyle somehow, and God knows he ain't working for it. Great Tesh basically paints you as a liar, a murderer, somebody who would benefit from your father's murder. What do you say to all that? Scrum.

He's referring to the testimony about the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It's shocking to people that your mother would agree to a defense that accuses her own son. I don't know if it was so much agreeing to a defense as it was a case of him saying, hey, this is your only shot. I'm going to show you what's been marked for identification. It states that it was one and two.

Do you recognize those guns? Mick Roberts brought the guns up to me, or at least one of them, in court and showed it to me. And there was just, there was blood all over it. And Tesh believes there is evidence that some of that blood ended up in Radley's own sink. This right here, this is when I did the luminol testing. CSI officer Tracy McClendon analyzed every sink in the Horwitz house. This is Radley's bathroom. He's very clean.

You can see the entire sink is full. The faucet is covered. Everything is covered and glowing. Could this not be blood? The glow was really, really bright, and it faded quick, which tells me that it's more of a cleaning solution than blood. Blood will glow a little lighter and it will last a little longer. McClendon testified that all the sinks in the house had a similar reaction,

which may poke a hole in Tesh's theory. We do it to show blood, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that is blood. Could be bleach, right? Or household products or things like that. Yes. Right. It's possible.

Yes. It's also possible that it's blood, though, right? Yes. But Tesh claims it's proof that Radley, a known neat freak, washed his father's blood

off his hands. You clean yourself. I mean, you're obsessive about cleaning. I will bet you that you even have a hundred dollars says you've got a bottle in your pocket right now. Guilty of guilty of having Purell. Right. Thanks for the clarification. I don't want to get you too excited, sorry. Give me a sense of what you need to convey to this jury. Somebody else did it. That somebody else, Tesh claims, may include a hitman hired by Radley. Tesh says this smear of Lanny Horwitz's blood on a gate at its home contains DNA from an unidentified person.

Someone else's DNA is on that bloody smudge on the gate. Someone else was involved with this. It wasn't Donna. It wasn't Radley. It wasn't any of the security guards. Is that the gate that everyone has to come in and out of to go through the front door? Yes, it is. The state says the mystery DNA is meaningless. Yes, it is. The state says the mystery DNA is meaningless.

The smudge on the post has Lanny's blood on it and the DNA of someone else who did not match anyone in that house. Isn't that your killer? No. When they swab the gate to get the blood off of it, it picks up the underlying DNA of anyone that ever touched that gate since the last time it was ever cleaned, which could be countless numbers of people. In terms of the blood on the gate, is it consistent potentially with somebody going and doing a life-saving check,

leaving with their gloves and pushing the gate open? It is. And to prove that no intruder was responsible, prosecutors point to the alarm system in the house. The very first alarm was, in fact, the glass shatter alarm from the sound of the gun being fired in the bathroom, which meant and corroborated that no other person had come into the home prior to the first shot being fired. Tesh tries to back up his new theory by introducing Hitman, a technical manual for independent contractors. You bought the Hitman book at a gun show, yes? Yes, that is correct. And the essence of this Hitman book is it teaches you how to kill somebody and get away with it, yes?

As opposed to killing somebody and getting caught, yes. You know the allegation. You bought this book to lay the groundwork to kill your father. Honestly, pretty ridiculous because the physical evidence speaks for itself. McRoberts says the hitman theory is bogus because Lanny Horowitz was killed with his own gun. What hitman would go to do a hit and hope to God that people had a gun that they could find

to complete the killing? Your hitman theory. The problem I see with that is that Donna's in the house. She would have seen this hitman, wouldn't she? If you're in your house and you hear shots, do you just go out and run out to see what's going on, especially if you don't have a gun on you? Or do you stay somewhere safe? He portrays me as a complete screw-up, a nitwit, and unemployed. so where am I going to come up with the money to hire some hitman? There's someone in this case who can answer so many questions

about what happened that morning, the morning of September 30th, and that's Donna herself. Everyone wonders if Donna will finally break her silence. Ms. Horowitz, ultimately, the decision to testify or not to testify is your call. I woke up to shooting and screaming. In this Shakespearean drama where an alleged murderous mother has accused her own son of killing his own father. I didn't, you know, I didn't do this. Long hours of questioning takes its toll.

I just don't want to get through this, but I'm just, you know, a little burned out. Prosecutor Aletha McRoberts knew she had to save her star witness's reputation. On the morning of the homicide of your father, did you ever go to any bathroom, any faucet, anywhere in that house and clean yourself off? Absolutely not. Mr. Horowitz, finally, did you hire anyone to kill your father? Absolutely not. And did you, yourself, kill your father? Absolutely not. And did you, yourself, kill your dad?

Absolutely not. There were only three of us in that house, in the main house that morning, and only two walked out alive. So who else is he going to blame? All right, so everybody have a seat. When it came time for Donna to take the stand and openly accuse her son of murder, she declined. Ms. Horowitz, it is your decision right now that you do not want to testify in this matter.

Am I correct? That is correct. All right. Has anybody forced you to make that decision? No, sir. It is completely your call. Is that correct? That is correct.

Radley wasn't in the courtroom to hear his mother speak. So I, you know, did my day of testimony and I left. Why the hell would I want to be around those people? The woman Radley blames for pushing his mother over the edge, Francine Tice, was never called to testify. She made her first appearance in court to hear closing arguments. Bam, bam, bam, bam. Ten times on a naked man when he's in the shower, the last one in the mouth is the shot of an angry, angry woman. Love, hate, and obsession can bring a person to kill, and it can bring a person to

frame their own son. Thank you. This is a case about jumping to conclusions. Great Tash hammers back. There's no fingerprints. There's no DNA matching her. A third party. We know beyond every doubt. Left his DNA and that bloody smudge on the gate. Not only is she not guilty, she's actually innocent. And with that, the jury goes out to deliberate. But not for long. In less than two hours...

Jurors, I understand you reached a verdict. Is that correct? Yes. I'm thinking I won the case. We find the defendant guilty of first-degree murder with... Shock. Disappointment. I put my hand on her to try to console her,

but, you know, what do you say? I think our lawyer was a schmuck. Though betrayed by his own mother, Radley doesn't want her behind bars. You were hoping for not guilty. Yes. But if they said not guilty, then your name is mud in this community because they've convinced your fellow citizens that you're the killer. Yeah, but my mom would have been out and free.

Sentencing was immediate and unforgiving. Defense, I have no discretion in the matter, so I adjudicate her guilty. I impose a life sentence. Life in prison with no chance for parole. Life in prison with no chance for parole. It's such a huge, immense feeling of relief and to have the family there, to be able to see justice for the murder of their beloved brother. You couldn't have done it without you and couldn't have done it without you.

My brother was very special. Almost two years after the murder, on what would have been Lanny's 68th birthday, his family and friends take to the sea to pay tribute. I miss his true and honest friendship. And Francine Tice spoke about the man she knew. Today, in celebration of my friend Lanny's life on earth, let us all never forget this most amazing and incredible human being who was always there for all of us, no matter what. Lanny, you will never be forgotten, and you will always be missed forever. My dear friend, may you now please rest in peace.

And together with Marsha, they set Lanny's ashes free in the Florida waters. I've still got some pretty mixed feelings. I mean, there's not a day that I don't think of my mother and where she is right now. Though betrayed by his mother, Radley forgives her. He has visited Donna in prison many times. Has your mother ever just looked you in the eye and said, I am so sorry? Just that she loves me very much and she's so sorry for everything. Donna now wishes the best for her son. I love you and I am very proud of you and I pray daily

that you will stay strong, healthy, and happy. Love always and forever, Mom. healthy and happy. Love always and forever, Mom. She was great. She was always there for me. She was a huge, huge part of my daughter's life. See any lizards? Anything good? Jealousy, murder, betrayal. A once picture-perfect family destroyed. You know, he died with his eyes open. And I mean, my father did some really, really awful stuff to me and to my mother. But still seeing that just shook me up, you know. Nobody deserved to die the way that he did.

Last February, two years after her conviction, Donna Horwitz got the news most lifers could only dream of. She won her appeal for a new trial. The appellate judges said the prosecutor, Aletha McRoberts, had made a mistake in her closing arguments when she described Donna's response to police officers at the scene. From all the officers, they thought this was a suicide call. They're over there trying to console Donna, and she says nothing to them. There is no right to remain silent at that time. You can take that as evidence of consciousness of guilt. But according to the appeals court, Donna did have a right to remain silent then, and her silence could not be used as evidence of guilt. However, the final decision

whether or not Donna gets a new trial now rests with the Florida Supreme Court. She remains behind bars, awaiting the answer. Lanny Horwitz had a $500,000 life insurance policy. He left $200,000 to Francine Tice. Radley sued Francine for her share of the insurance payout. Francine settled for $90,000. Francine for her share of the insurance payout. Francine settled for $90,000. As part of the settlement, Francine Tice and Radley Horowitz have agreed never to speak badly about each other in public. If you like this podcast, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a quick survey at wondery.com slash survey.