Cold Case Files - REOPENED: The Merry Widow

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

A man is shot point blank. And with no suspect, the only thing police know is that this murder was committed with intent. When the weapon is found years later, the case reopens and takes a closer look at a suspect who knew the victim best: His wife. Progressive: Progressive.com  

Mervyn Groton, known as Sonny, worked at the Naval Education Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island. He was a machinist main instructor, responsible for teaching future sailors how to operate the steam turbines that propelled and powered ships. Sonny spent the weekdays at the base in Newport. Every Friday, he drove to his home in Belfast, Maine to spend the weekend with his family. On Friday, December 16th, Sonny drove home like he did every weekend. But this was not like other weekends.

He pulled into the driveway, got out of his truck, and was shot three times. He didn't make it into his house ever again. He died that night on the way to the hospital. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files. Detective Richard Riechel from the Maine State Police began his investigation by talking with the victim's family, including studies window Norma and their children. This is Detective Riechel. Nobody saw anything. I wish they had.

It would have certainly helped the investigation if we could have got some type of physical description of the perpetrator. A K-9 officer was brought in to aid the human officers in their search for evidence. An area search dog is able to pick up the scent of a human in an open area. Depending on the weather, they can detect a scent anywhere from 100 to 300 feet away. I found two casings on the ground near a couple of wood piles out back where a canine handler had picked up the scent. The casings were from a common hunting rifle, the.30-30. The wood pile where the casings were found were close to the tree line at the edge of the property, so the police dog was sent to investigate.

They found and tracked the scent of the killer a quarter of a mile through the woods until they came to a road. The canine handler said that the dog lost the scent of the killer a quarter of a mile through the woods until they came to a road. The canine handler said that the dog lost the scent, which would indicate that the perpetrator, in all likelihood, got into a vehicle and drove off. Sonny's body was autopsied by the coroner. The detective had been correct about the shots being fired from a hunting rifle. The first two shots had hit Sonny in the back and hip. Then the killer walked up to Sonny, who was lying on the ground, and fired the last shot from close range. He could probably

see it coming. He put his hand up, and all indications are that the bullet struck his hand, went through his hand, and then into his neck and head area. The way Sonny had been killed made the detective believe that the murder wasn't random. Someone had wanted Sonny dead. Detective Riechel called the Navy and learned that Sonny didn't have any enemies or other habits that would have been motive for murder.

The investigation then focused in on Sonny's hometown. Belfast, Maine, had a population of around 6,600 during the 2010 census and was originally founded because of its seaport. In more recent times, Belfast has put its energy into attracting tourists. Those of us who have lived in a small town know that there are very few secrets. Detective Riechel knew as well.

He talked to some friends and acquaintances of Norma, Sonny's widow, and heard some disturbing rumors. People were saying that Norma had been seeing other people while Sonny was away. Norma kind of liked it the way it was. And I think from talking to some friends, that she was not really too pleased about the fact that Sonny was going to be retiring and moving home full-time. Sonny and Norma had been married for 27 years, but the same small-town crowd claimed that Norma

was more in love with Sonny's life insurance policy than Sonny himself. The detective started to form a theory of the case. He thought that Norma hired someone to kill her husband for the insurance money. Detective Rachel asked her to take a polygraph. She was very upset about that. She was throwing up. She didn't want to take that polygraph. Knowing that polygraphs are as accurate as flipping a coin, I wouldn't take one either.

It seemed like a woman who was mourning her husband and then accused of having murdered him would have a right to be upset. However, refusing to take a polygraph is often seen as a sign of guilt. Detective Riechel continued to visit the rumor mill and discovered the name of a potential triggerman, Joel Fuller. He had a reputation as a local criminal with violent tendencies. He was convicted of two unrelated murders in the months following Sonny's death. One of Joel Fuller's cousins reported to the detective that she had asked Fuller if he killed Sonny. She said that his response was,

Don't ask me questions I can't answer. The problem with the theory and suspects surrounding Sonny's murder was that there was no hard evidence connecting Norma Small or Joel Fuller to the crime. So the case went cold. Two years after Sonny's murder investigation went cold, in a town 10 miles away from the crime scene, a piece of evidence surfaced. Two boys were having fun swimming in the local river. One of them felt something metal beneath his foot and pulled it up to investigate. He had discovered a.30-30 hunting rifle, the same type of gun that was used to kill Sonny. Detective Riechel sent the gun into the crime lab. He requested that the ballistics

department compare a test fire from the weapon found in the river and the shell casings found in Sonny's driveway. When comparing bullets or casings to a test fire, a forensic scientist uses a microscope that lets them see very small marks left on the surfaces from being fired. They look for matching marks on bullets and cartridges to determine if they were fired from the same gun. I certainly was hoping something would come out of that particular weapon as far as a match to the casings that were found at the scene. That was Detective Riechel. His hopes were dashed when the crime lab told him that the gun was too rusty for them to make the comparison.

The case, once again, went cold. Fifteen years after the gun was found, and 17 years after Sonny was murdered, his case was reopened by the next generation of detectives. At the time of Sonny's murder, Detective Dean Jackson had been 20 years old and was serving in a different branch of the military. This is Detective Jackson. I remember coming home on leave shortly after the homicide and talking to friends about this homicide that happened. It was kind of a shock in a small community. Knowing the rumors, Detective Jackson pushed them aside

and began the search for facts and evidence. You've got to read the case file. You've got to become familiar with all the statements. And as you can imagine, these files are thick, and it takes a lot of reading. Detective Jackson also used Sonny Groton's naval career to seek out additional help. He contacted the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, better known as NCIS. Special Agent Jeff Morrow was assigned to work the case with Detective Jackson.

This is Special Agent Morrow. There wasn't any forensic in the case to speak of. There were no fingerprints. There was no DNA typically used to sometimes break cold cases. We didn't have that benefit. In the case file, they found a list of potential witnesses, including a man named Larry Phillips, a friend of the suspected gunman, Joe Fuller.

Phillips told the investigators that Fuller had shared some information with him that they might be interested in. Larry Phillips told the investigators that one night they'd been driving around some back roads when Joel Fuller started to talk. This is Larry Phillips. Joel asked me if I wanted a 30-30. And I said, sure. And he said, well, there's one up the brook. So I stopped the car, and I started to get out. And he said, don't bother. It's not any good anyway. It's bent.

The only thing it's good for is shooting around corners. The brook that Joel had been referring to was the same one where the two boys had discovered the rifle. It also had another similarity to the gun in Larry's story. Here's NCIS agent Morrow again. The barrel was bent, the stock was broken, there was other damage to the gun, very much like the gun that Joel Fuller said that he threw there. Larry Phillips said they started drinking, and as the night progressed, Joel Fuller began to share more information with his friend about a woman who hired him to kill

her husband. Phillips said Fuller didn't give him any names, but referred to the victim as some military guy. Here's Larry Phillips again. And then he started telling me about how he waited for him behind the woodpile. He waited for him to get home, and when the guy reached the house and reached for the door, he shot him in the back. And as he was laying on the ground, he was pleading with him, shot him again through the hand and into the head. Sonny's injuries had never been made public. Neither had the discovery of the rifle. Neither had the shell casings by the woodpile. It seemed that all this information corroborated Larry Phillips' story.

Here's Agent Morrow again. We knew that Larry could have obtained that information only two ways. That was he was the shooter or he received that information from the shooter. Larry Phillips claimed he'd been working at the time of the murder and the investigators were able to verify his alibi through his work punch card. Having eliminated Phillips, Joel Fuller became the primary suspect in the shooting. They paid Fuller a visit in the federal prison where he was serving life for another murder, but he refused to talk with them. And guess what? Now you can call the shots on your auto insurance too. Enter the Name Your Price tool from Progressive.

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as a way to get information from Norma. Here's Detective Jackson. What we wanted to do is release that at a strategic time and approach Norma with an undercover agent that would be posing as Joel Fuller's friend, wondering why information got out to get him indicted. An NCIS agent posed as a friend of Joel Fuller's from prison. He called himself Tony.

Tony was a convict from the penitentiary where Joel was serving time. Joel was serving time in a federal penitentiary. So I assumed the role of a prison friend. In the undercover world, we call this a cold walk-up. I had nobody, no informant to introduce me, so basically I had to walk up, introduce myself, present her with enough bona fides to let her know that I was really an inmate named Tony, and then proceed to go into my spiel. And she took to me right away.

Here's some of the conversation that was recorded by the undercover agent. You normal? Yeah. You normal? Yeah. Hey, how you doing? Good. What's up?

My name's Tony. I'm a friend of Joel Fuller's. He sent me out here to talk with you. Listen, the police have come back talking to Joel and he's Tony. I'm a friend of Joel Fuller. He sent me out here to talk with you. Listen, the police have come back talking to Joel, and he's scared. And he wanted me to come out here. I owe Joel some favors from the penitentiary. He did some things for me. And he's heard that somebody's cooperating in the case. Sure ain't me, honey. No, sir. No. Okay. Well, Joe really didn't think it was you. No, no way. Okay. Well, but I don't know who it could be. But get word back to him. There's no

leak here. No leak whatsoever. And I expect the same on that end. I don't know where the leak is. Norma gives them the confession that they needed, but the undercover agent keeps going. He tries to find out if there's anyone else that could be useful in the trial. Who else did you tell? Oh, s***. You would ask me real quick. Big tall fella. Oh, s***. What is his name?

Boyd. Boyd Smith. What did you tell him? I was going to hire him. Okay. That's what I thought the plan was. Okay. But it went astray.

The name Boyd Smith was new to the investigators, so they went back to the case file to see if there was something they had missed. This is Agent Morrow. Turned out Boyd Smith was a former boyfriend of one of the Groton girls, and for a year or so before the murder, had lived at the Groton residence. Boyd Smith had been questioned along with the rest of the family. He said he didn't have any information, and he'd never been considered a suspect. Tony tells Norma he'll take care of Smith as a possible leak.

If he's a leak, then we're going to deal with him in a different way. And the curious thing is Boyd never got a call from Norma. I don't think she cared much about the guy. I think if Boyd Smith would have turned up dead, I think she would have gone on her merry way and been just as happy, if not happier. That was Detective Jackson, who, along with the other investigators, decided to plan another undercover operation to talk to Boyd Smith. The agent undercover is Tony, working with another undercover agent, going by the name Bubba, set up a meeting with Boyd Smith.

They met him in their truck parked at the local cemetery. Here's some of the audio from that conversation. What was the actual agreement with you and Norma? How did that all come about? Norma wanted her husband gone. I mean, that was the bottom line. She was always bitching and ranting about it

and this and that. And she asked me if I would do it. I said, no way. Can't do it. And then she said, well, can you put me in contact with her? Arrange something. And then you put her in contact with Joe? I didn't make any agreement with Joe.

I put him in contact with her. The detectives believe that they finally had all the pieces to the puzzle. Here's Agent Morrow. Boyd Smith's admissions to the undercover agents seemed to be the last major piece of the puzzle that drew connections in this plot both to Norma Small and Joel Fuller. On May 9, 2001, Boyd Smith was booked for murder in Belfast, Maine.

Joel Fuller, already serving a life sentence, sat in his cell thinking about the new charges. And in Iola, Kansas, Norma Small was arrested and questioned about the death of her husband. Here's some audio from her interrogation. Obviously, you know that we're talking to Boyd up on the other end, and he's sticking very firm, Norma, to the idea that he didn't do anything other than set Joel up with you and that you guys worked it out.

He's also saying that, okay. He's going to ask back with him, but that's all right. I can understand his reason. Help me understand it because I don't get it. Why are you saying that if it's not true? I don't know. Norma denies knowing Joel Fuller, but does start to admit that she put things into motion

by speaking with Boyd Smith. And what did you speaking with Boyd Smith. Boyd Smith tells the story differently during his interrogation with Agent Morrow. We were persistent with him because it was obvious that his statements contradicted with other pieces of evidence that we had, including his own statements to the undercover agents. Here's some of the audio from Boyd Smith's interrogation. Why would she drag you into this if you weren't a part of it? She wasn't. There's no reason to. There's no reason to say Boyd made the arrangements.

She's already given up. She's already said, I had the guy killed. I hired somebody to do it. It doesn't serve her interest one bit to drag you into it. Nothing. It doesn't do her any good. They continued to push Smith for five and a half hours, and he finally started to give them the information they were looking for. We took a walk. I asked him if he was interested. I told him that I knew somebody that was looking for somebody. He did.

I said, Joel, I don't want to know anything about it. I said, this is the address. This is who you need to talk to. He gave me Norma's address and Norma's name. Boyd and Norma's stories start to merge, except for in one aspect. Boyd Smith says Joel Fuller was the gunman, and Norma says she doesn't know who did the shooting. The interrogators ask Norma about her motives for having her husband murdered. I just got tired of the bulls**t. What kind of bulls**t, though, I guess, is what we're looking at? Oh, just picky, aggravating things.

I'd be mad one minute, and next, wouldn't be. Norma, having collected over $200,000 from her late husband's pension, is asked if she feels any guilt about the situation. Because if I didn't, I wouldn't have nothing to live on. Well, yeah, but, well, okay. That's what you're saying you were thinking. Do you think that now? I tried working.

That took too much out of me. In a world where we have every reason to give up, I'm here to show you that there is beauty and life on the other side of trauma. I'm Jessalyn Biederstadt, host of Invisible Scars, a podcast where we dig deep into stories of resilience and transformative breakthroughs. Each week, I sit down with incredible guests, trauma specialists, alternative healers, and real people who have faced unimaginable challenges and come out stronger. We'll explore how they found healing and hope and how you can too. So listen to and follow Invisible Scars available wherever

you get your podcasts. Joel Fuller, Boyd Smith, and Norma Small were all tried separately for the murder of Sonny Groton. Joel Fuller was acquitted of the charges. Because Norma Small were all tried separately for the murder of Sonny Groton. Joel Fuller was acquitted of the charges. Because Norma never implicated Fuller, there wasn't enough evidence to convict him. The statements she made to the undercover agent were ruled inadmissible as hearsay. Here's Detective Jackson. Unfortunately, there's just a lot of the evidence that we couldn't get in, and the jury had to go by what they heard.

And they just didn't have enough to convict him. The evidence against Boyd Smith clearly showed that he conspired to commit murder. Unfortunately, the statute of limitations had run out on that conspiracy charge, so the jury was required to choose between a murder charge or an acquittal. I think the jury had a hard time convicting him of murder in that his role in the case doesn't really seem to be the role of a murderer. It's more of a conspiracy to commit murder or a solicitation or a charge along that line. Norma Small was convicted of murder and sentenced to 70 years. Though the investigators were only able to secure one conviction,

they did find satisfaction in the fact that Joel Fuller was already spending the rest of his life in prison. They were also comforted that the instigator of the murder, who never displayed any type of remorse, Norma Small, was convicted. Here's Agent Morrow. This is the person who instigated the plan, who put it in motion, and this is the person who ultimately was responsible for her husband's death. So we are pleased with her conviction. At this point, we usually empathize

with the family of the victim. But in this case, it was the victim's own wife that had planned his murder, making their children the true surviving victims of this case. I wasn't able to find any statements made by Norma and Sunny's children. I can't help but wonder what kind of impact this crime had on them. Losing a parent to murder would be difficult for anyone to cope with. The added trauma of knowing that parent was lost at the hands of the surviving Thank you. This podcast is distributed by Podcast One. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and is hosted by Bill Curtis. Check out more Cold Case Files at AETV.com or learn more about cases like this one by visiting the A&E Real Crime blog at AETV.com slash real crime. Pluto TV is a place for movie fans like me and TV fans like me. crime. Forrest Gump, come on. Criminal Minds, solving crime after bedtime. Whatever you love to watch, Pluto TV makes it easy with thousands of free movies and shows. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never.