Hilma Marie Witte

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Speaker 12 A horrific accident rips a family of four apart.

Speaker 9 I couldn't believe it. He was my big brother, and he was gone.

Speaker 12 One family member dead.

Speaker 12 And three years later, another vanishes.

Speaker 5 No one had seen her. No one had talked to her.
No one knew where she was.

Speaker 12 What detectives uncover is beyond the pale.

Speaker 5 I began to realize that I had dealt with these people in the past.

Speaker 5 It went from a missing persons to something more serious.

Speaker 9 Anybody who would do that must have been a sociopath.

Speaker 12 And a sickening ultimatum is revealed.

Speaker 10 He was told he didn't have a choice. You have to do something about this.

Speaker 10 It has to happen now.

Speaker 5 I said, but where's she at? Where's the body? She says there is no body.

Speaker 9 My worst nightmares were coming true.

Speaker 12 In the quaint resort community of Beverly Shores, Indiana, the pace is easy and crime almost non-existent.

Speaker 12 But on the evening of September 1st, 1981, the local police department receives a panicked 911 call.

Speaker 5 It was Marie Witty that made the call and it went to Beverly Shores Police Department.

Speaker 10 Marie Witte, a 33-year-old mother of two in Beverly Shores, says she just got home and found her husband dead on the couch.

Speaker 10 that her husband has been shot and she needs help immediately.

Speaker 12 First responders raced to the residence to find Marie, her mother, Marcy O'Donnell, and Marie's two teenage sons, Eric and Butch, seemingly in shock.

Speaker 13 When the police came in, Marie told them there was a terrible accident, that her husband, Paul Whitty, had been shot.

Speaker 5 Paul had been apparently asleep on the couch when he was shot in the head.

Speaker 12 Paul is pronounced dead at the scene.

Speaker 10 It was a shocking revelation for the people who arrived because a lot of people in the community knew Paul Witty and knew the family.

Speaker 10 They were friendly and loving to outsiders.

Speaker 12 Paul Witte was born in Michigan City, Indiana in 1937.

Speaker 10 Paul's family was pretty rooted in the community. They had been in that county for a really long time.
His dad worked for the railroad.

Speaker 10 At some point, his parents split and his dad remarried a woman named Elaine.

Speaker 12 When Paul was 17 years old, he enlisted in the Navy.

Speaker 9 When he was in the Navy, I was little, saw him occasionally, and at Christmastime, he would always come visit.

Speaker 9 I remember him as being a go-getter, you know, always wanting to do something.

Speaker 12 After his discharge, Paul returned to Indiana and settled in Beverly Shores, a popular beach community just an hour south of Chicago.

Speaker 9 He was working with the steel company in Gary.

Speaker 9 He was also a volunteer fireman in Beverly Shores. And

Speaker 9 whenever he did anything, he went gung-ho for it.

Speaker 9 200%.

Speaker 13 He was very much an outdoor man, a real macho guy. Had the full beard and mustache.
He was a hunter and a fisherman.

Speaker 12 While in his late 20s, Paul took an eye-opening trip to sunny South Florida.

Speaker 9 For whatever bee he got in his bonnet, he went to Florida. And my brother Paul tells me, Oh, you get to tell mom where I spent my vacation.
I was at a nudist camp.

Speaker 9 And my aunt just about had a cow. My mom about had two cows.

Speaker 9 That's where he met

Speaker 9 infamous Marie.

Speaker 12 Born in 1948, Hilma Marie Christ had a free spirit that matched her unorthodox upbringing.

Speaker 14 My birth father ran a nudist camp in Delray Beach, Florida. We had lots of acreage.

Speaker 15 There was a pond or a lake and a big pool.

Speaker 5 We walked around nude all the time.

Speaker 14 But as a child, I never felt uncomfortable.

Speaker 15 I mean, people can't fathom that type of a lifestyle.

Speaker 12 Paul and Marie hit it off, so much so that he soon returned to the resort a second time.

Speaker 9 There was some secrecy about where Paul had spent his vacation.

Speaker 9 And here I was, I was maybe 14 years old, and that would make Marie 16.

Speaker 14 I think he was infatuated with her.

Speaker 10 They probably didn't look like a logical match to outsiders, but it wasn't very long after that Marie got married to Paul Witty.

Speaker 9 When I first met Marie, it was just before they got married. She's not what I imagined that my brother would marry.
She was loud and nobody, at least from our family, was impressed with her at all.

Speaker 12 27-year-old Paul and 16-year-old Marie married in 1964 and settled in a home in Beverly Shores, not far from Paul's father and stepmother, Len and Elaine Witty.

Speaker 9 Paul was happy to be married and he wanted a family.

Speaker 12 In 1966, 18-year-old Marie gave birth to their first son, Eric. His brother, John, also known as Butch, came along three years later.

Speaker 13 Paul was very much the boss in the house. And Marie, she was a palm maker.

Speaker 14 Of the children, Eric was more of a sportsman. He had dad's favor.

Speaker 12 He was sort of the golden child.

Speaker 14 Butch comes along, and he is mama's boy.

Speaker 12 Everyone knew Paul ran a tight ship.

Speaker 5 Butch and Eric described their father as being a very strict authoritarian.

Speaker 10 Paul seemed to have a pretty traditional view of marriage. So Paul worked for a living.
Marie stayed home, took care of the house.

Speaker 12 However, the young mother struggled to fill her role.

Speaker 9 She did not know how to keep house.

Speaker 9 You had to walk across the clothes on the floor in the kitchen and it was a disaster.

Speaker 12 In December of 1980, Marie's mother, Marcy O'Donnell, moved in with them.

Speaker 13 Marie's mother was widowed, so she spent a lot of time with Marie and Bush would be with him often.

Speaker 10 She loved being a grandma. She liked being close to her daughter and she would help out as needed.

Speaker 9 They seemed to share a happy-go-lucky type of coexistence.

Speaker 12 But this outwardly happy household crumbles on September 1st, 1981, when officers find Paul Witty dead on his living room couch.

Speaker 10 Strangely, it was a little serene for what they were walking into.

Speaker 10 The people in the house were pretty calm, but what police found was a man dead on his couch with a bullet hole in his head.

Speaker 12 Even more shocking to police is who fired the gun.

Speaker 5 Essentially, Marie had told our investigator that her son, Eric, had a gun at a 357 Magnum, and it had tripped and had gone off and shot her husband in the head.

Speaker 12 According to Marie, she wasn't home when her husband died, but her 15-year-old son, Eric, insists it was an accident.

Speaker 10 Marie was basically in the driveway pulling into the house when the gun went off. So, the only person believed to have been in the room when the gun fired was Eric.

Speaker 10 Eric Witty, the son, said I'd found this gun. I'd never seen it before.
I was interested in learning a little bit about it, so I brought it into my dad, tripped, and it discharged.

Speaker 9 When Paul was shot, it was on the television in South Bend.

Speaker 9 My mother called me and I was at work.

Speaker 8 I couldn't believe it. He was my big brother and he was gone.

Speaker 9 We were told or heard that it was an accident.

Speaker 9 I didn't know what to think

Speaker 9 and even to this day,

Speaker 9 I don't know what I did think.

Speaker 12 Coming up, 15-year-old Eric Witty tells his side of the story.

Speaker 5 There was skepticism that it didn't make a heck of a lot of sense.

Speaker 12 And later, heartache hits the Witty home again.

Speaker 1 The neighbor across the street from where Elaine lived indicated that she hadn't seen her for months.

Speaker 9 That's when I just knew something was wrong. My worst nightmares were coming true.

Speaker 12 September 1st, 1981. Officers in Beverly Shores, Indiana respond to a 911 call to find 44-year-old Paul Whitty dead in his home from a gunshot wound to the head.

Speaker 12 Indiana state investigators soon arrive at the scene to assist the police force.

Speaker 10 Marie says that she hadn't been home at the time. She was running some errands, and when she walked into the house, Eric was there.
Her husband was dead. And Eric said, you know, I tripped.

Speaker 10 The gun went off.

Speaker 5 It was not a well-kept house at all, by any stretch of the imagination. It wasn't impossible for what they said to have happened, someone tripping.
So you keep an open mind.

Speaker 12 Investigators collect the 357 handgun as evidence.

Speaker 12 Although Marie Witty's mother, Marcy O'Donnell, and Marie's youngest son, Butch, were in the house at the time of the shooting, neither saw it happen.

Speaker 10 Marcy, the grandmother, said she was in the dining room. She's in the back of the house, and Eric had been at the front of the house walking into this living room where his dad Paul was asleep.

Speaker 10 Butch tells police that he was in a bedroom when the gunshot fired.

Speaker 12 The family's whereabouts isn't all that strikes detectives as odd.

Speaker 5 It appeared he'd been shot in the top of the head and sort of a downward angle. And if he had tripped, the bullet would have come in more of a direct angle as opposed to a downward angle.

Speaker 5 I didn't think it was an accident. I didn't know what it was yet.

Speaker 12 Detectives want to question 15-year-old Eric, but Marie quickly intervenes.

Speaker 5 Marie didn't want me talking to Eric. She said, I think we need an attorney.
And I said, that's your prerogative. That's fine.

Speaker 5 People do that, but it's a little flag wave in there that says this is not normal.

Speaker 12 Six days later, investigators sit down with Eric and Marie at their attorney's office.

Speaker 12 Eric says the night of the accident, his dad wasn't feeling well and had laid down on the sofa for a nap.

Speaker 13 Eric found a gun upstairs. He brought the gun down from upstairs to show it to his dad.
He wanted to talk about it.

Speaker 9 Paul was familiar with guns. Guns were something that we all grew up with.
Paul had guns in the house, and it didn't seem odd to me at all.

Speaker 12 Eric tells detectives that this was the first time he saw this particular 357 revolver.

Speaker 5 His dad was asleep on the couch. He came in the room to talk to his dad about the gun, how it worked.
He said he had tripped on the rug and that he had fallen forward and this has happened.

Speaker 5 The gun accidentally went off and shot him in the head.

Speaker 5 There was skepticism that it didn't make a heck of a lot of sense. He just happened to his dad right in the head for the shot.

Speaker 5 My question to him was, why are you taking a gun, loaded gun, to your dad?

Speaker 5 And he said that he wanted to see about the safety mechanism or something.

Speaker 5 I said, did you have the gun cocked? And he said he didn't think so. And that was a big red flag to me.
Because it takes quite a bit of pull to be able to shoot at double action, 357.

Speaker 5 There is a trigger pull to it.

Speaker 5 But at that point in time, the attorney stopped me from questioning him.

Speaker 12 Unable to question Eric further, investigators turn to Marie. She corroborates her son's story, but refuses to give a formal statement.

Speaker 5 She would answer a question if I asked her something, but other than that, she didn't volunteer anything. She tried to be very quiet around me.

Speaker 5 I told Marie and told the attorney, you'll see me again someday because he's getting by with this and he'll do it again.

Speaker 5 So trust me, you're going to see me again.

Speaker 10 Had Marie been home, maybe there would have been more suspicion. But she wasn't, and that was backed up by her alibi.
There were people who had seen her car around.

Speaker 10 She pulled into the driveway as the gun was going off.

Speaker 12 The autopsy findings provide no further insight to the officers.

Speaker 12 With no evidence or eyewitness testimony to refute Eric's claims, Indiana authorities officially rule Paul's death an accident.

Speaker 5 That's what we had, but it was an accident, and that was really all.

Speaker 5 I was pulled away for different investigations.

Speaker 12 In the coming months, Marie turns her her attention to rebuilding her family's lives.

Speaker 5 There was a small life insurance policy, I say small, like $25,000 or something, but nothing of any real major importance.

Speaker 12 But shortly after Paul's death, the land the Witty's house sits on is earmarked to become part of a national park, and the family is forced to move out.

Speaker 1 Marie's mother, Marcy O'Donnell, goes to live with a friend. Marie and her kids get an offer to move in with Paul's stepmother, Elaine Woody, on Johnson Road in Trail Creek.

Speaker 12 Having been widowed 14 years earlier, Elaine is delighted to welcome family into her home.

Speaker 9 I don't think she probably ever had any question whatsoever about letting them go there or inviting them.

Speaker 12 Over the next three years, the fresh start lifts everyone's spirits.

Speaker 10 Elaine and Marie seemed to get along really well. They would sit on the porch together.
They would share stories. They really seemed kind of like two peas in a pod.

Speaker 12 After graduating high school, Eric follows in his father's footsteps and joins the Navy, ultimately relocating to San Diego.

Speaker 9 I thought it was great he was going into the Navy. Paul had been in the Navy.

Speaker 8 So it seemed like a a good thing for him

Speaker 12 15 year old butch stays home with marie and elaine to finish school

Speaker 12 three years after paul's death the witty family seems to have settled into a new normal

Speaker 12 until may of 1984 when a concerned citizen contacts the trail creek police department

Speaker 1 max trout was a neighbor across the street from where Elaine lived. Max indicated that he had seen Elaine out in the yard, usually tending to her flowers, but he hadn't seen her for months.

Speaker 12 Sergeant Skip Pierce is dispatched to Elaine's residence to conduct a welfare check.

Speaker 5 Marie said, as far as they were concerned, Elaine Widdie had gone on an extended vacation. She was traveling alone and was going to the West Coast and making various stops in between.

Speaker 5 She had no schedule or anything like that.

Speaker 5 Nobody could pinpoint where she was.

Speaker 12 Coming up, a disappearance raises an alarming red flag.

Speaker 9 My son didn't get a Valentine's Day card from Grandma Eileen and he didn't get a birthday card from her either.

Speaker 14 I just knew something had happened to her.

Speaker 12 And Marie confronts a ghost from her past.

Speaker 5 I said, hello, Marie, remember me? I'm back.

Speaker 5 And she almost fainted.

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Speaker 12 Three years after officials declared Paul Witty's shooting death an accident, Law enforcement are speaking with Marie Widdy again, trying to locate Paul's stepmother, Elaine.

Speaker 1 She said Elaine was traveling, that she also was visiting Marie's son, who was in the Navy, and that she didn't know when she would be coming back.

Speaker 12 Marie assures Sergeant Pierce that Elaine is fine.

Speaker 12 But as weeks go by with no sign of her, friends and family grow concerned.

Speaker 9 Elaine would either call me or I'd call her. I would say on an average of about once a month.

Speaker 9 My son didn't get a Valentine's Day card from Grandma Elaine and he didn't get a birthday card from her either.

Speaker 9 And then in August, I called, and Marie answered the phone. And she said that

Speaker 9 Elaine had gone on a trip.

Speaker 9 She'd be back and she'd have her call me.

Speaker 9 That didn't happen.

Speaker 9 And that's when I called the police in Aurora.

Speaker 1 Sergeant Pierce, he had been back again to Murray's house to get more information.

Speaker 1 Again, he was given the same story about her being on vacation.

Speaker 1 You have to understand, Trail Creek is a four-person department. So at that point, we got a hold of the Indiana State Police.

Speaker 5 Skip Pierce came to me and said, we've got this lady.

Speaker 5 Her name's Melane Witty. She's missing.
No one had seen her. No one had talked to her.
No one knew where she was.

Speaker 12 It doesn't take Detective Sergeant Boyd long to recognize the name.

Speaker 5 I began to realize that I had dealt with these people in the past and that these were the same people her son had tripped and shot her husband in the head. You know, I think we got a problem.

Speaker 12 Sergeant Boyd has long harbored reservations about Paul Whitty's untimely death.

Speaker 5 It could have well been just an accidental shooting. But again, when the gun went off, it was shot downward into the head, which made it really much more suspicious.

Speaker 5 If he had tripped, the bullet would have come in more of a direct angle.

Speaker 12 On August 14th, 1984, three months after Elaine's reported disappearance, state investigators pay Marie an unannounced visit.

Speaker 5 I said, hello, Marie, remember me? I'm back.

Speaker 5 And she almost fainted.

Speaker 5 I said, Marie, I'm here about Elaine Puddy. We're trying to find her and

Speaker 5 she's on a trip and she stammered and stuttered. And I said, can we come in and sit down?

Speaker 12 Marie sticks to her story.

Speaker 5 Her explanation was that Elaine took off for parts out west.

Speaker 1 Marie's statement is that Elaine took a bus on her travels. Didn't take her car.

Speaker 5 She just simply said, if I hear from her, I'll let you know. But my concern is Marie didn't have a clue where she was gone to.

Speaker 5 She's been gone two or three months here, and that's not normal.

Speaker 12 When investigators run Elaine's VIN number, they find something else disturbing.

Speaker 12 Marie had recently sold Elaine's car.

Speaker 5 Obviously, that didn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense that she would sell her car if she was planning on coming back.

Speaker 12 Investigators try to locate Elaine themselves, but make little headway.

Speaker 1 The other thing they looked at at the time were phone records, people who called in, phone numbers, those kind of things.

Speaker 5 There was no long-distance calls coming in from Elaine that would have substantiated that she was traveling anywhere.

Speaker 1 We tried to track her through the bus system, but there was no way to do it because you purchase a ticket, you don't have to register or sign for it or anything else.

Speaker 1 We were concerned, but you have to have probable cause to believe a crime's been committed. We didn't have that yet.

Speaker 12 Authorities return to the home to speak with Marie, only she's not there.

Speaker 12 So authorities contact her mother, Marcy O'Donnell.

Speaker 5 I asked her where Marie was. Where's Marie staying now? She said, well, she and Butch are going out to California in Sierra.

Speaker 12 With Marie and her family 2,000 miles away, detectives attack from a different angle.

Speaker 1 We had subpoenaed Elaine's bank accounts.

Speaker 5 That was probably the best way to try to find somebody if they're gone and see where they're at when they're taking the money out of the bank.

Speaker 5 Bank accounts showed large withdrawals in a period of time from the beginning of January up until the May or June of of 1984.

Speaker 5 She had Social Security checks that were coming in on a monthly basis, and they were still being cashed locally.

Speaker 12 But no one has seen Elaine Widdie in her hometown since January, nearly eight months earlier.

Speaker 1 Many of the withdrawal slips were signed in the name of Elaine Widdy.

Speaker 9 They asked me to look at a signature on a check, and whether I thought it was hers or or not, I did not believe that the signature was hers.

Speaker 5 Any kind of issues involving Social Security funds are investigated by the Treasury Department. So that's how the federal law enforcement gets involved.

Speaker 5 It went from a missing persons to something more serious.

Speaker 5 Federal authorities were notified that the family left unannounced in in the middle of an investigation of a missing person, and so that kind of put everybody on high alert.

Speaker 12 As more time passes with no sign of Elaine, her family begins to suspect the worst.

Speaker 9 My worst nightmares were coming true.

Speaker 5 From my standpoint as an investigator, there was no question in my mind that Elaine was not with us anymore, that she was gone.

Speaker 12 Investigators still lack sufficient evidence for for an arrest, but they keep in contact with Marie's mother, Marcy.

Speaker 5 Marcy appears to be a very nice,

Speaker 5 older lady. What I want to do is put pressure on Marcy.

Speaker 5 You can tell that she knew more. I kept contact with her, and the more I've talked to her, the more I could get from her.
And

Speaker 5 I finally said, what's going on? And I said, I'll go after anyone who was involved in this whole thing, and I'll lock them up.

Speaker 12 The tactic works, and Marcy finally buckles under the pressure.

Speaker 12 On October 26th, 1984, she reveals what really happened to Elaine.

Speaker 5 It was on a Friday I called and talked to her and she said, Boyd, Elaine's dead.

Speaker 5 And I said, okay, I'll be right over.

Speaker 1 Marie's mother said that she had been told that Butch had accidentally shot and killed Elaine with a crossbow.

Speaker 5 I said, well, where's she at?

Speaker 5 Where's the body? She says there is no body.

Speaker 5 She said, we've got rid of the body.

Speaker 12 Coming up, the hunt for Marie and her sons intensifies.

Speaker 5 They were very close to going across the border.

Speaker 12 And the details of Elaine's murder grow more horrifying.

Speaker 1 They were told this was an accident.

Speaker 5 We pulled out floorboards, wallboards to see if we could find any blood.

Speaker 12 For the second time in three years, an untimely death has claimed a member of the Widdy family. Marie's mother tells detectives that Elaine Widdie was killed months earlier in January of 1984.

Speaker 10 The story that was given to police was that Butch, Elaine's 15-year-old grandson, had a crossbow. He accidentally fired the crossbow and fatally struck Elaine.

Speaker 10 It had to have struck them as a little bit odd.

Speaker 5 Marie Woody's mother, Marcia O'Donnell, was saying Marie and Butch had got rid of the body, had cut it up and had dismembered it and got rid of the body.

Speaker 1 It was Marie's idea. She didn't want to supposedly involve Butch in another investigation like Eric had to go through with the father.

Speaker 12 For detectives, it seems too much of a coincidence, especially when there's money missing.

Speaker 1 Elaine Woody's social security checks were being deposited into her account in Trail Creek when Marie was there. Subsequently, they were transferred to a California location.

Speaker 5 Marcy O'Donnell told us that Marie was writing these checks and authoring the checks and copying Elaine's signature.

Speaker 12 Federal authorities begin monitoring banks in California, while Indiana authorities execute a search warrant at Elaine Witty's home on November 3rd, 1984.

Speaker 5 We pulled out floorboards, wallboards to see if we could find any blood, anything like that.

Speaker 5 We didn't find anything. We got some questionable hairs.
We'll send them into lab and see what we can find. Is that, but really, we got nothing else.

Speaker 12 With the search warrant yielding no results, Indiana detectives fly to California to track down Marie.

Speaker 12 First, they visit Eric at the naval base in San Diego. He agrees to talk to detectives.

Speaker 1 Sergeant Pierce and Sergeant Boyd went to California to talk to Eric, and he stuck to the same story about Elaine supposedly vacationing.

Speaker 12 Investigators believe Eric knows more than he's letting on. and they confront him with Marcy's confession.

Speaker 1 I have worked a number of murder cases with Sergeant Boyd, and I've learned they want to confess. They want to tell you what they did because they know it's wrong.

Speaker 12 Feeling the pressure, Eric finally breaks down and admits several months ago his mother called him about a family emergency.

Speaker 1 Eric told us when he was informed that Butch had accidentally killed Elaine with a crossbow back in Indiana. Marie told Eric it was an accident and she needed help.

Speaker 1 Eric said he told her to freeze the body until he could come home.

Speaker 12 Two months later, Eric says he returned home to Indiana.

Speaker 1 Eric said he went home with his Navy buddy Doug Menkel. Marie said this was an accident, but he never saw the body.

Speaker 12 When asked what happened to Elaine's remains, Eric is evasive, but investigators keep up the pressure.

Speaker 1 Eventually, he admits he and Doug Menkel, in fact, took the cooler with portions of the body, bags of flesh or bones, when he went to San Diego and got rid of it out there.

Speaker 1 It was deposited in the San Diego dome.

Speaker 5 It is a mammoth landfill for the entire city of San Diego. And that's where all the refuse comes in.

Speaker 1 It was huge. We'd never find it based on how big that place was.

Speaker 12 After investigators hear Eric's story, they ramp up efforts to locate Marie and Butch.

Speaker 12 The very next day, on November 7th, 1984, federal authorities spring into action when one of Elaine Witty's social security checks is used in Chula Vista, California, just north of Tijuana, Mexico.

Speaker 5 When they found them, they were very close to going across the border.

Speaker 1 Marie and Butch were arrested in Chula Vista by the feds for cashing Elaine's social security checks.

Speaker 12 All three are charged with forgery.

Speaker 12 But Marie has no interest in cooperating with authorities.

Speaker 12 Investigators confront 15-year-old Butch about his older brother's allegations.

Speaker 5 That's when Butch confessed everything to me.

Speaker 1 He was pretty forthcoming as far as what had happened, what he had done.

Speaker 1 Marie was telling him that she had taken money from Elaine, and Elaine knew about it, and she was going to, again, put him on the street. They wouldn't have anywhere to live.

Speaker 1 His mother told him he needed to kill his grandmother to keep that from happening.

Speaker 12 According to Butch, the events leading up to Elaine's death had been building for nearly six months.

Speaker 5 They had tried to kill her by first giving her drugs and keeping her in a room that was cold with the windows open, hoping that she would die naturally.

Speaker 12 When that didn't work, Butch says his mother demanded his cooperation.

Speaker 10 Marie says it has to happen now.

Speaker 10 She drugged Elaine with volume, and Elaine was asleep in her bed.

Speaker 10 And the time was now, and Butch was told he didn't have a choice beyond whether he strangled or shot her with a crossbow.

Speaker 10 Butch chose the crossbow method, went into Elaine's bedroom, and fired.

Speaker 10 And he killed his grandmother.

Speaker 5 After Butch killed her with the crossbow, they put her body in a freezer downstairs and then began the process of using an electric chainsaw to dismember her.

Speaker 5 It took months of her going in and out of the freezer and slowly being

Speaker 5 cut up and disposed of. It was horrific.

Speaker 1 That's where Marcio Donald also got involved in helping dispose of the body.

Speaker 5 They were able basically to get rid of most of the body except for, I believe, the skull, hip bones, some of the larger portions.

Speaker 5 So that's what they put in a cooler and took out with them to California. That went into Lionfield.

Speaker 1 Butch had a lot of guilt for what happened.

Speaker 1 He obviously, when he confessed, I think he felt relieved.

Speaker 5 butch was 15 at the time he was the one that had to

Speaker 5 cut her up

Speaker 5 i can't even imagine how badly that would have screwed somebody up like that

Speaker 12 based on butch's confession he and his mother are charged with elaine's murder and conspiracy to commit murder

Speaker 12 Eric Witty and Marcy O'Donnell are also charged with conspiracy to commit murder.

Speaker 12 Coming up, the witty's youngest son has one last horror story to share with investigators.

Speaker 1 He wanted to talk about the murder of his dad.

Speaker 12 And two impressionable teens finally come to grips with their mother's murderous manipulations.

Speaker 1 She did whatever she had to do to basically satisfy her greed.

Speaker 12 In November of 1984, 15-year-old John aka Butch Witte admitted to killing his 74-year-old grandmother, Elaine Widdy.

Speaker 12 Butch said that he committed the murder at the behest of his mother, Hilma Marie Witte.

Speaker 5 Elaine was on to the fact that Marie was forging her checks.

Speaker 12 Marie and her children are immediately extradited back to Indiana.

Speaker 12 But less than a week after Butch's shocking confession, he reaches out to investigators again.

Speaker 1 He wanted to talk about the murder of his dad. He gave us a story about Eric and that Marie had also manipulated Eric into killing Paul and that it wasn't an accident.

Speaker 12 Butch tells authorities that much like his grandmother's murder, Paul's murder was all Marie's idea.

Speaker 1 Marie said that he had to kill his dad because she was suffering abuse by him. Also, he was threatening divorce.
And if they went through a divorce, they'd be out in the street.

Speaker 1 They wouldn't have anywhere to go.

Speaker 5 First, they started out giving him rat poison. He gets sick and they go to hospital.
Of course, he goes to hospital. He gets better.
So then they went and got arsenic of lit.

Speaker 5 That just made him have an awful headache and he'd sleep on the couch.

Speaker 12 Finally, on September 1st, 1981, Marie said it was now or never.

Speaker 5 She said, you got to do it now.

Speaker 5 Eric was given a choice, either strangle him or to shoot him.

Speaker 10 Marie says, I'm going to leave. And when I come back to this house, he needs to be dead.
And if he's not, I'm going to drive away and you will be here with your brother. This will be your life.

Speaker 10 You were choosing your father over me.

Speaker 10 He's standing there over his sleeping father, trying to muster up the ability to pull the trigger. And then he sees headlights turning into the driveway.

Speaker 5 He had to do it now because mom's going to really be mad now when she comes home and he didn't do it.

Speaker 5 And that's when he he took the gun and shot his dad.

Speaker 1 When Marie walked inside, she told everyone to say it was an accident.

Speaker 1 Even Marcy, her mother, and aligned it so that they all were telling and looked like they were telling the truth.

Speaker 5 They interviewed Eric. And he was able to corroborate that statement by Butch.

Speaker 12 Eric's corroboration of Butch's confession gives investigators what they need to charge Eric and Marie Witty with Paul's murder.

Speaker 12 In time, Butch and Eric agree to testify against their mother in exchange for a plea deal.

Speaker 1 Eric and Butch received a sentence of 20 years of voluntary manslaughter.

Speaker 1 Nobody likes pleaogrammas, but it's part of the process. We didn't have a body, so we had to put everybody's story together and align align it.

Speaker 12 At Marie Witty's murder trials in 1985 and 1986, prosecutors argue money drove Marie's actions.

Speaker 14 She complained incessantly about Paul.

Speaker 14 Nothing made him happy,

Speaker 14 and he had a horrible temper.

Speaker 9 This conversation had gravitated to divorce. And 27th of August Paul said he was going to file for divorce

Speaker 9 and September he was dead.

Speaker 1 She got not only his Social Security but she got his pension. The only way she was going to get it is not through divorce but if he in fact was killed.

Speaker 1 The same with Elaine. She wanted her Social Security.
And she wanted all her savings.

Speaker 5 She was able to manipulate her two children to do some pretty horrific things

Speaker 5 but in the end marie's hold over her children has its limits butch's testimony was very compelling and very believable and then you had it corroborated by his brother eric they were both testifying against their mother

Speaker 5 So I think that established a pretty high degree of credibility for the jury.

Speaker 12 Marie is convicted of murder and and conspiracy to commit murder, receiving 90 years in prison for the deaths of Paul and Elaine Whitty.

Speaker 12 She receives an additional 10 years for forging and cashing Elaine's social security checks.

Speaker 5 What struck me the most, it was Marie Witty.

Speaker 5 And just through the process of having Both of her sons testify, Marcy O'Donnell testify against her,

Speaker 5 not one sign of emotion at any point in time. And then after the guilty verdict, not one shed of emotion, nothing.

Speaker 9 Anybody who would do that must have been a sociopath.

Speaker 9 That's a sociopath.

Speaker 11 Marie's mother, Marcy O'Donnell, pled guilty to assisting a criminal and was sentenced to six years in prison. She died after her release.

Speaker 11 Eric's friend, Doug Menkel, was sentenced for a Class A misdemeanor and was released to the U.S. Navy.
Eric and John David Witte were released from prison in 1996. John died in 2008.

Speaker 11 He was 39 years old. Eric died in 2022.
He was 56 years old. Hilma Marie Witty is serving her sentence at the Indiana Women's Prison.
Her earliest possible release date is October 2026.

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