Debra Hartmann

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She was an ambitious young dancer.

She was very alluring, you know, the whole bit.

And he was just smitten by her.

He was more than happy to bankroll the lavish lifestyle she'd always dreamed of.

He wanted to do anything that would please her.

She was downtown Chicago throwing champagne bottles out of the Rolls Royce.

But the couple's high life comes crashing down in a hail of gunfire.

Spent casings all over, a body full of holes.

It looks like a war zone.

It did look like somebody went

right up his midline.

The ensuing investigation will expose a hidden secret.

He started having an affair.

It was money that had to be repaid.

She thought it was a mob hit.

After a lengthy investigation, authorities are left wondering if the truth will ever be revealed.

My immediate reaction was: we're not getting the whole truth here.

Someone conspired with one of his professionals to change his insurance policy.

Was justice served?

Not yet.

Listen, the three things for murder, basic.

Money, sex, revenge.

That's it.

Follow the money, as they say.

June 9th, 1982, Northbrook, Illinois.

It's just after 4 a.m., and while most residents are sleeping soundly, 14-year-old Eva Hartman is just closing out a night on the town with her mother, Vi Cruz, and her stepmother, Deborah Hartman.

My mom and I once had dinner with Deborah.

After dinner,

Deborah was still with us and wanted to go to a couple nightclubs to go dancing.

So we tried to get into a couple clubs.

I was only 14, of course, I didn't have ID.

So we went to a couple of places until she finally knew someone and let us in and we stayed out

dancing till the morning.

After closing down the club, Eva's mother drops her and Deborah off at their home for the night.

As we walked into the house, the music was playing so loud.

My dad's music.

That was not normal, it was a very eerie feeling walking up those stairs.

As Eva makes her way up to her father's bedroom, she's stopped in her tracks.

I found my dad's body

laying on the floor with bullet holes all in his body.

Eva quickly rushes to her 38-year-old father, Warner Hartman.

I'm like, you know, we got to call 911, we got to call 911.

All I remember is her grabbing my arm, us running down the stairs.

They left at Deborah's suggestion to come to Eva.

Let's go talk to the police.

Where my dad lived is a very small town, and they've never had a murder in this town.

My father was very well liked.

I was so shocked and the first thing in my mind is who shot him.

Born in 1944 in Mannheim, Germany, Warner Hartman arrived in America in the early 1960s when he was just 19 years old.

With just a few dollars in his pocket, Warner set up a secondhand stall at a Florida flea market.

Everyone loved him.

His laugh, his smile, beautiful blue eyes that just lit up the room.

Very sociable, very friendly.

There at the flea market, Warner fell for 18-year-old Vasliki Vai Cruz.

She seemed to be a very, very sweet lady.

Very nice, very warm.

Warner always spoke very highly of Vai.

The couple married in 1964 and soon had a daughter, Stephanie, in 1965.

It got tougher to earn a living and you know support them in the way they want.

To support his family, Warner traded his second-hand stall for a position as a door-to-door electronics salesman.

In 1966, the Hartman family moved to Chicago, where Warner could finally realize his dream of owning his own store.

He opened up his first store and got huge.

He put stereo equipment in private schools and police stations and boats.

Back when he was in business, you couldn't go to Best Buy and have an incredible car stereo installed.

He was before his time, and I think that's why he was so successful.

In 1967, Warner and Vi added a new member to the family, their second daughter, Eva.

As his family and his business grew, Vi began helping with bookkeeping.

My friend told me this guy was making money hand over fist.

It was just, he was making big money.

He got the money and wherewithal to start living a different kind of life, which he did.

He liked to go to nice restaurants.

We would travel.

Warner moved his family to Chicago's most exclusive suburb, Northbrook, and bought a Ritzy home in one of the best neighborhoods.

You might call it ostentatious.

It was big and fairly impressive.

He was very successful.

He would take us to downtown Chicago and enjoy the food and his friends.

While Warner embraced the nouveau riche lifestyle, his humble wife Vi felt out of place.

One day they just told us that they were getting a divorce, and the next thing you know, my mother and my sister and I moved out of the house and

got an apartment.

After an amicable split, Vi and the girls moved to Florida, leaving Warner alone in his palatial Chicago home.

Now single and wealthy, Warner spent most of his nights out on the town.

Warner would oftentimes go down to the Stone Park area.

Stone Park is a, or was, a community that the bar stayed open 23 hours a day.

They'd only close for one hour.

And it was well known for

exotic dancers and the clubs.

In 1978, at one of the strip clubs, Warner was dazzled by a 24-year-old dancer named Deborah Stover.

Deborah, as I understand it,

grew up in an abusive home and the father would beat her.

She quit high school at 15 to be a quote model

and she would teach dancing.

She looked a lot younger.

She had that smile.

Deborah could charm men.

She had a thing.

She was good at it.

She knew how to do it.

For Deborah, Warner was different from the seedy men she usually met at the strip club.

I would think that most women would love to meet a successful, warm, nice, kind human being that would love them and provide a great lifestyle.

The couple married just two months after meeting, and Deborah's life changed forever.

She, you know, grew up with nothing and now money and drove the Mercedes and the fur coats and the jewelry.

After a year away, Vi, Eva, and Stephanie returned to the Chicago area, allowing for Warner to hopefully see more of his teenage daughters.

My dad worked seven days a week.

on all the holidays, Christmas, every single day, so we didn't get to spend a lot of time with him unless we went to the store to see him.

One would presume that, you know, everything was great from the outside.

What a perfect life.

How could things be any better?

Hey, this guy's got it made.

He hit the American dream.

But that dream was short-lived.

On June 9th, 1982, Warner's wife and daughter rush into the Northbrook police station and tell officers that the 38-year-old local businessman has killed himself.

I don't know how you got killing yourself with bullet holes.

Laying in a pile of blood.

I was in so shock.

We were together for a little bit, and then they separated us.

Moments later, officers arrive at Warner's home.

Don't know what you're walking into.

So we went into the home and we're on alert, obviously.

Had our our guns drawn and we're looking around.

We'd cleared the first floor, we went up to the second floor and then we found Werner Hartman laying on his back, obviously shot up, full of bullet holes.

It was very apparent that it was not a suicide.

I would characterize it as

resembling an assassination.

Coming up, was this wealthy businessman really what he seemed?

Oh my god, he owed everybody money.

And an unlikely suspect is revealed.

They started having an affair.

He couldn't help himself.

He loved her.

When officers arrive at the home of successful businessman Warner Hartman on June 9th, 1982, they are taken aback by the brutality of his death.

You could see all the bullets.

Some missed, some didn't, that went into the room, spent casings all over, a body full of holes.

Looks like a war zone.

It would seem to me that he was totally caught by surprise.

He came out of the bath and

bang.

Based on the pattern and number of shots, police suspect that Warner was killed with an automatic weapon.

I knew it was a gun with a clip of at least 20 or 30.

It was a a semi-automatic weapon that could, you know, obviously hold a lot of rounds.

We figured it was a MAC-10.

Judging by the nature of the line of bullet holes up the skies, it would be consistent with his mechanism of death.

It did look like somebody went

right up his midline.

Whoever did it wanted to make sure he was dead.

Detectives arrive on the scene and quickly get up to speed.

He was outside of the bathroom and and heading for the bedroom.

It was sort of like a hallway-ish sort of area.

He was shot repeatedly from the front and fell onto his back and was basically looking up at the ceiling.

It's been very obvious that there was not a burglary that had gone bad.

There was no forced entry.

The house was not ransacked.

I've never read about a robbery going bad where someone's shot 14 times.

This had to be personal.

While investigators examining the crime scene find no fingerprints, they do uncover clues that suggest the glitz and glamour the Hartmans outwardly displayed was a facade.

In their house, I mean, it was a nice area, but the house was really a dump inside.

There was piles and piles of late bills.

Bills on the desk all over.

I mean, the unpaid bills, gas, electric, mortgage, car payments.

After wrapping up at the crime scene, detectives head back to the station to get more intel from Warner's wife, Deborah, and his daughter, Eva.

I'm in tears freaking out.

I'm besides myself.

I am a total mess.

While Eva collects herself, detectives sit down with Deborah for a formal interview.

She did not seem defensive at all.

She did seem upset.

Her Her statements to us were that she was in love with Mr.

Hartman, with Warner,

and that she was truly saddened by his death.

According to Deborah, she didn't have much to do with her husband's business, but even she knew that Warner was struggling.

He wasn't focusing on that business.

It was starting to go down the tubes.

You know, he had built this great thing.

And he wasn't being receptive, apparently, to customers.

Mr.

Hartman and Deborah Hartman spent more than the business was bringing in.

Deborah fears her husband may have turned to one of his customers with ties to organized crime for help.

Her whole thing was they were in so much debt that he must have got money from the mob, and he wasn't paying it back.

She thought it was a mob hit.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were some links here.

That it was juice loans and maybe they were trying to get back at Werner.

With Werner's failing business, an easy loan from the mob would have seemed like the solution to all his problems.

But based on the crime scene, investigators immediately doubt that theory.

First of all, if there was a mob hit, it wouldn't be that messy.

A mob hit would be a stomach, heart, head, three shots.

That's how they make sure you die.

Secondly,

mob guys are in business, right?

So let's say Werner did borrow money from the mob, right?

If they kill Werner, they're never going to get any money.

None of that makes any sense.

14 shots?

That's pretty personal.

You don't need that many shots to kill someone.

Convinced the murder is personal, police give Eva and Deborah a gunshot residue test before releasing them.

While the results will take a few weeks to come back, in the meantime, detectives call Vi Cruz, Werner's ex-wife, to tell her the news.

She was hysterical and she just got in the car and rushed to the police station and just couldn't believe it.

When they calmed her down and she verified the story that she had been with Deborah and her daughter dancing around having a good old time out clubbing.

Vi says that after the divorce, she made peace with Warner and his new wife before moving to Florida.

Then, a few months before Warner's death, Vi says he called her up and begged her for help with the business.

She came in and she was astounded to see the books showing all this debt.

Oh my god, he owed everybody money.

Jewelry, furs, Rolls-Royces, luxury car, luxury home, prestigious suburb.

That's not a cheap lifestyle.

He was down to like nothing for money.

I mean, from a guy who had, we all thought, millions.

And there was basically no money left.

Vi says that she told Warner that he needed to get his spending under control.

But the problem was Deborah.

Deborah, you know, would show up, come get money out of the cash register, and then leave.

She went to New York with her girlfriend, spent thousands of dollars, started going out to nightclubs.

She was spending his money.

She downtown Chicago throwing champagne bottles out of the Rolls-Royce.

According to Vi, Warner confided that Deborah's spending wasn't the only problem in the relationship.

She had a boyfriend, and his name was John Corbett.

Vi says that 30-year-old John was an out-of-work pro-tennis player who had come into Warner's shop looking for a stereo when he locked eyes with Deborah about six months prior to the murder.

He was a lot younger than Warner, a lot younger.

He was sort of tall, seemed like a fairly good-looking guy.

Let's put it this way: he seemed more like her type than Warner would have.

He was a hunk, and Werner was Werner.

You know, he was a nice man who loved her passionately.

But she was young, and they took a liking to one another, shall we say, and they started having an affair.

According to Vi, Deborah lavished John like Warner had lavished her.

They were both driving convertibles, you know, it was just

like a scene from Magnum PI or something.

Allegedly, Warner put up with the affair, even allowing John to move into his home with Deborah.

John was staying there, and my dad was sleeping on the couch.

That was like the most bizarre thing to me.

There were various allegations of infidelity and arguments regarding property.

So

it was a conflicted relationship.

Warner felt, though, that eventually, Deborah would get tired of John, you know, and she'd come back to him.

She had her hook in him deep.

He couldn't help himself.

He loved her.

However, according to Vi, Warner's hope to reconcile his marriage began to waver.

It seemed Deborah had her sights set on John, leaving Warner to make a difficult decision.

Werner did file for divorce against Deborah and tried to recover some of the property, you know, he'd given her, the minks, the cars.

That created a lot of tension, fights, big ones.

There had been some incidents at the house

where the police were called.

While investigators begin to look into Deborah's alleged relationship with John Corbeck, on July 4th, 1982, investigators get the results from the gunshot residue analysis that was performed on Deborah and her stepdaughter, Eva Hartmann.

Deborah's hands did not show any gunshot residue.

Ava's showed gunshot residue.

Mine came out positive from the gunpowders.

It was the most horrifying experience.

I just lost my dad, and on top of all that, they they thought I was involved.

Detectives are faced with the disturbing theory that Eva might be the killer, which makes her mother and stepmother potential accessories.

Somebody would have had to cover for her if she did it because she was with Deborah and/or Vi all the time.

So she had an alibi, unless that alibi was also false, was

providing a cover-up for her.

detectives call eva to the station for an interview when confronted with the results of the test eva becomes hysterical and swears that she is innocent she was very confused and delirious she was very traumatized she

hadn't had sleep

because she was upset We felt that perhaps she was unable to give us as much information as we thought she might have.

Coming up, investigators pull out all the stops to get to the truth.

Sometimes people suppress things subconsciously that they don't know about until they get hypnotized.

We went into an office and they turned off the lights, and I just sat down, kind of like you see in the movies.

Some cases fade from from headlines.

Some never made it there to begin with.

I'm Ashley Flowers, and on my podcast, The Deck, I tell you the stories of cold cases featured on playing cards distributed in prisons, designed to spark new leads and bring long overdue justice.

Because these stories deserve to be heard, and the loved ones of these victims still deserve answers.

Are you ready to be dealt in?

Listen to the deck now, wherever you get your podcasts.

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It's been nearly a month since Warner Hartman was murdered in his home, and detectives are desperate to know if his daughter, Eva Hartman, may be involved in his death.

Anytime you fire a weapon, certain certain powders and elements are given off.

One of the reasons to test is to determine if that person had or had the opportunity to have a gun in their hand.

In Ava's case, gunshot residue got on her hand.

Though Eva is adamant she is innocent, detectives decide to take an unusual approach to find the truth.

If you lost all your other avenues, sometimes people suppress things subconsciously.

I've seen it, and sometimes it works.

Sometimes they see things or hear things that they, you know, that they don't know about until they get hypnotized.

At this point, I was willing to do anything.

So I was very cooperative.

I did everything that they asked me to.

We went into an office and they turned off the lights where it was, you know,

darkened.

And then the

person who was hypnotizing me

and I just sat down kind of like you see in the movies and he kind of just had you relax

when the psychologist questions Eva about Warner's murder it becomes obvious that they have hit a wall in spite of its abilities to relax people and get people to remember things they might not otherwise remember in this case wasn't really generating the memories that we wanted to know about.

I mean, they had nothing.

There was basically nothing more to it.

She didn't seem like she was involved.

I did everything.

The hypnosis,

everything they wanted me to do, go over.

And at that point, they said they finally have confirmed I've been telling the truth.

That 14-year-old girl didn't gun her father down, okay?

Detectives have to find another explanation for the gunshot residue on Eva's hands.

If she saw him laying there, she might have stepped over and grabbed them.

You can get a transference.

And there was enough residue in that body, trust me.

I had touched all the walls walking up.

And my dad, so that's how I had gunpowder on me.

Back at Square One, detectives asked John Corbeck, the boyfriend of Warner's wife, Deborah Hartman, to come to the station for an interview.

He had no criminal record

that I knew of at the time.

He had never been arrested for anything.

He had an alibi.

He said he was having dinner with his boss.

The boss and his wife corroborated that.

When John's alibi checks out, police have no choice but to release him.

It's a perfect alibi.

I mean, you just don't know what you're looking for, but you cover all your bases.

Detectives begin reaching out to those connected to Warner, including his friend and attorney, Richard Columbeck.

Richard details a disturbing conversation he shared with Warner just days before his murder.

He called up, he goes, Mr.

Columbic, I'm scared.

And I'm like, what?

What are you scared of?

He said, I overheard my wife and her boyfriend talking.

They didn't know I was there, and they were talking about how to kill me.

And I said, if you're at the house, leave the house.

Immediately go to the police or call the police.

And he said, I'll I'll do it and I'm really scared.

Police have no record of Warner filing a report with them, but the story finally gives them what they need, a suspect.

When someone calls you and says, my wife and boyfriend are plotting to kill me, and they subsequently get killed within a day or two,

It never occurred to me that anyone else could have done it.

Looking for a solid motive, detectives contact Warner's insurance company for details about his life insurance.

Listen, the three things for murder, basic.

Money, sex, revenge.

That's it.

Those are the three motives.

It's not rocket science.

You just follow the money, as they say.

There were two insurance policies.

It was also discovered that there was a third insurance policy that apparently was issued on Mr.

Hartman's life.

I think it'd be almost a million if you totaled up the policies.

And one of them, I believe, was

double indemnity.

If you died not from natural causes, you get twice the proceeds.

If Warner was drowning in debt and considering divorce, detectives believe Deborah and John had only one option to keep up their lavish lifestyle.

There's your motor right there.

You know, it's huge.

We think now that she's involved, and it's time to start focusing on her more

than in the past.

Detectives contact Deborah for a second interview, but they are directed to her newly hired lawyer instead.

She wouldn't make any statement.

And at that point, nobody was making a statement against her.

Police couldn't find enough evidence that could stand up in court.

There were no eyewitnesses to the murder.

They really didn't have enough to go on.

After months of running down evidence, leads begin to fizzle and the case grows cold.

Deborah collects her insurance and she and John part ways.

Deborah stayed in the house for a while, but she couldn't afford it, you know, and so she moved to a much more modest place in an adjoining suburb, Deerfield.

Nobody had been charged and everybody assumed that they were just two who did it.

And I think it was was just so outrageous that nothing had happened.

However, after two long years, in 1984, authorities finally catch a break.

In a seemingly unrelated case, ATF agents arrest gunrunner 58-year-old Ken Cannell, who was trying to sell undercover agents illegal guns.

It was this career criminal.

The guy lived in jail, in an auto jail.

It was no big thing to him.

In one of the many undercover recorded conversations with Ken, he mentions firing a unique gun in his basement, a MAC-10.

The same kind of gun used to kill Warner Hartman.

A friend of his started working in a gun store, the gun shop, and he was very knowledgeable about guns.

So they gave him this MAC-10, I believe.

Ken, in his basement, tried it out, and it just kept firing.

It was very rare and you didn't see them very often.

Another state policeman, but wow, that's the same kind of gun that was used in Werner's murder.

As detectives work to connect Ken to Werner Hartman's murder, they make a shocking discovery that changes the course of the investigation.

Ken Kennell was John's former roommate.

Coming up, detectives get an unlikely ally.

He was very crafty and a seasoned criminal.

What am I going to get out of this?

But can he be trusted to deliver?

He was supposed to incriminate the others.

She left him a little gift of $3,000.

Three years after businessman Warner Hartman was gunned down in his home, Investigators suspect that convicted gun runner Ken Cannell may be tied tied to Werner's unsolved murder.

On May 9th, 1986, detectives arrange for an interview with Ken.

They said to him, oh, so what do you know about Werner Hartman?

And he was a little startled.

And he was like, whoa, do you know about that?

Ken's reaction convinces police that they are on the right track.

But Ken isn't the type to talk.

He was very crafty and a seasoned criminal.

What am I going to get out of this?

So he was was willing to help as he saw it.

Officers say that nothing Ken says will be used against him if he tells them what he knows about Warner.

Ken agrees.

He said John and Deborah contacted him and they asked him if he'd kill Werner for them.

It was a 380 caliber automatic pistol and a promise of a large sum of money if he would shoot the husband.

And he said yes at first so they gave him this mach 10 i believe and ken in his basement tried it out

he crawled into a crawl space under his house test fired the gun which according to him was rigged that when you pulled the trigger it went full auto and the entire magazine emptied at once

one stopped spewing bullets and he thought, I don't want to work with this something like that.

He said, forget it.

He got cold feet, gave him the gun back and and said, nah, it's not a job for me.

Before the interview with Ken is over, investigators ask him to pay Deborah a visit while wearing a wire.

We say, if you wear the wire and do what we ask,

then your sentence will be lighter.

So he agreed to wear a wire and go talk to Deborah.

In May of 1986, Ken Ken visits his old friend Deborah at her home in Deerfield, Illinois.

They were hoping they'd incriminate her and that would be really good for any case.

But somehow they didn't trust Ken.

I mean, you know, he was kind of a slippery type.

And they went to the house, Deborah's house, and they saw him go in.

He was supposed to be getting her to incriminate the others, but instead, he said to her,

so that was the end of that they never got her to incriminate herself and then they knew he was not the best witness to have because he was willing to try to help his friends

without ken's testimony the investigation stalls yet again

That is until 1988, when detectives decide to take a second look at the paperwork for Warner's life insurance policies.

They had an expert look at it, and the technician could say that wasn't Werner Hartmann's signature.

If the documents had been forged without Warner's knowledge, detectives suspect that Deborah must have had help.

We believe Deborah conspired with one of his professionals to change his insurance policy, and we didn't know which one it was.

I looked at phone records and they found evidence that she had been making a series of calls just prior to the murder to

John, of course, and then the insurance agent Harvey Luton.

Detectives confront 52-year-old Harvey Lupton at his office.

Harvey collapsed immediately and dissolved and agreed he'd been part of this scheme.

Harvey tells police that Warner had contacted him in March of 1982 to tell him that he was divorcing Deborah and wanted to take her off his life insurance.

He said, I'm changing them to my daughters.

They will be the sole beneficiaries.

Not long after, Harvey says he received a visit from Deborah, who was dressed to the nines.

She sidled up to him and said very, you know, very sexily, I'd like you to change this one policy and just have me as the sole beneficiary.

She left him a little gift of $3,000.

And she'd also kind of, you know, had been very suggestive and sexy.

And he was getting all kinds of illusions about the time he could spend with Deborah.

Harvey says that everything went smoothly until he received a phone call from Warner in early June.

Warner got some notice that his policy was changed.

And then he called, you know, and said, hey, you got to change this.

He said, I want my daughters, Eva and Stephanie, to be the sole beneficiaries.

And Lukten promised he'd change it.

Instead, Harvey says he called Deborah to warn her that her husband was catching on.

If you look at the totality of the situation, it appears that she was instrumental in trying to plan his murder.

I think if he never would have changed the policy, my dad never would have been murdered.

Coming up, detectives call in the big guns to close the case.

When the federal government comes after you, they don't lose.

And a long-awaited trial makes front page news.

It was headlines.

It was big.

She dressed up like she's some little schoolgirl.

You know, I didn't do anything.

You can't prove anything.

In January 1989, nearly seven years after the murder of Warner Hartman, police have zeroed in on his wife, Deborah Hartman, as the crime's mastermind.

There was just not enough proof because they cleaned up so well.

And obviously, this was a planned murder, and they did a really good job at covering it up.

It just went stagnant.

It took a long time.

It took

seven years for them to finally pull it together.

They're trying to pull together enough threads to have a case that'll stand up in court, but they really didn't have enough to go on.

Though state prosecutors don't have enough evidence to bring murder charges, federal prosecutors, on the other hand, do find a reason to become involved.

FBI only get involved if a federal law has been violated.

Illinois State Police stepped in when it appeared that it was an insurance fraud, which if the mails are used can become a federal crime.

That's when the feds got involved.

They got down for mail fraud because they mailed the fraudulent document in the mail.

They forged the life insurance policy.

When the federal government comes after you or puts you under their microscope or investigates you, they don't lose.

They got the money, the time, and the resources.

The federal case had to do with the actual insurance policies.

That's really what it's centered on, okay?

And the fraud that took place in both obtaining the insurance policy and paying on the insurance policy becomes a federal crime because of the fact it's cross-stink lines.

I understood the fact that law enforcement and the prosecutors, of course, wanted to prove everything,

but you have to go with your strongest case because you're not going to get a second shot at it.

The reality is they didn't have the evidence necessary to prove who committed the murder.

On January 20th, 1989, Deborah Hartman, her ex-boyfriend John Corbeck, John's former roommate Ken Connell, and Warner's insurance agent Harvey Lupton are arrested and charged with wire and mail fraud.

I got a phone call and it was like, it was the happiest news ever because I just thought that they were gonna, you know, that they got away with murder and nothing's gonna happen.

And there was just nothing we could really do.

They did not have a murder charge, yes, but at the same time, you have to look at the good.

In November 1989, John and Deborah are tried together.

Though they aren't on trial for murder, evidence from that night is allowed to be presented as the motive for the fraud.

Prosecutors start by saying that Deborah was a gold digger who risked losing her meal ticket in a divorce.

Deborah did not want to go back to the life that she was once doing.

Now she's different.

She has everything.

She wasn't willing to give all that up.

It was enough motive to murder my father.

She was in it for the money.

And when the money was gone, she had to come up with something.

His insurance policies were there, and that was her payday.

Prosecutors believe that after John's former roommate, Ken, backed out of being the trigger man, John agreed to do the shooting himself.

She knew how to track men and ensnare them and use her powers in that way.

I think John was smitten with her just like Warner was, and he went along with the program just to make sure that, you know, she got her money and they could be together.

Prosecutors allege that on June 8th, 1982, Deborah went out with Warner's daughter and ex-wife while John snuck into Warner's home with a MAC-10 machine gun.

He was shot 14 times in his head and throughout his body.

And then while the body is lying there, he then drilled him again.

Prosecutors say that John then fled the scene to solidify his alibi, allowing Deborah to return home and play the shocked widow.

You stuck a 14-year-old child.

You had her walk up the stairs when you knew that body was around the corner.

You knew I was going to find

my dad dead body.

That is a cruel, sick person.

After the prosecutor's powerful argument, defense attorneys remind jurors that although there is evidence that John and Deborah benefited from Warner's death, there is no evidence that they actually killed him.

They were sitting there and she's dressed up like, you know, like she's some little schoolgirl.

You know, I didn't do anything.

You can't prove anything.

Deborah was still like, you know, playing, oh, I didn't do it.

She had on her long lean coat, her hair done up, her face, her makeup.

Can't prove who the murderer was, who shot whom.

Where's the gun?

They could never find the gun.

After a a three-week trial, the jury returns with a verdict on December 15th, 1989.

I think she was very astounded when they found them guilty.

The jury only took like three hours to come up with the verdict.

So those 10 women and the two gentlemen, I think,

saw through things very quickly.

John is sentenced to 16 years in prison.

And on March 12th, 1990, Deborah receives her sentence.

Deborah was sentenced to 22 years in prison.

I really think that Deborah was more shocked than anybody

because she just thought I'm going to get away with this.

Although Deborah isn't found guilty of murder, there is hope that one day she will be held accountable for the crimes that many believe she orchestrated.

Was justice served?

Not yet.

And maybe one day they'll get the break they need to bring the rest of the case.

She should be in prison for life for the murder of her husband.

She was the author, the producer.

It was all done because of her.

He married the devil.

He just didn't know it, poor guy.

Deborah was a user, and this guy was, you know, just wanted affection, and it led him to his death.

I'm sorry that you went so soon, Dad.

You were so young, and I love you and I miss you, and

I wish you were still here with us, and I wish that you could have met your grandchildren.

You have five of them.

We love you, Dad.

In 1990, Ken Canal was sentenced to 20 years in prison for mail and wire fraud.

Harvey Lukton was sentenced to two years in prison for his role in the crime.

In 2002, after serving 12 years, Deborah Hartman was released.

Her current location is unknown.

The murder of Werner Hartman remains an open case.

It's all a light-hearted nightmare on our podcast, Morbid.

We're your hosts, I'm Alina Urquhart, and I'm Ash Kelly.

And our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy.

The stories we cover are well researched.

Of the 880 men who survived the attack, around 400 would eventually find find their way to one another and merge into one larger group.

With a touch of humor.

Shout out to her.

Shout out to all my therapists out the years.

There's been like eight of them.

A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing.

That motherfuck is not real.

And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal, or you love to hop in the Way Back Machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes, you should tune in to our podcast, Morbid.

Follow Morbid on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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