Cindy McKay

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A couple who thought they'd never find love again finally found it in each other.

He told me, Ruthie, I finally got me a good woman.

You seemed like you really liked her.

She was the love of his life.

But when their life together goes up in flames, Dirty secrets rise from the ashes.

Once the fire was extinguished, they determined it was a human body.

We knew we had a dead body and we had obviously very suspicious circumstances.

Investigators follow the gruesome evidence to the discovery of an unholy alliance.

I opened the door and all these flames came out.

There were numerous calls in reference to the ex-girlfriend.

I covered a lot of crimes and none like this.

I don't think the court system has seen someone as pure evil.

It was just a matter of where's her next destination going to be.

She's going to do it again because she's got the devil in her.

She was a witch.

It's a cool February night in Millersville, Maryland.

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006, at around 3.05 in the morning, patrol officers were in the area of Old Mill Road and observed what they thought was a brush fire.

So one officer went to investigate it.

Then when the officer first came upon the fire, he got out of his car and was able to see and thought that it was a mannequin that was on fire.

And they used their fire extinguishers to extinguish the fire and then they determined once the fire was extinguished that it was a human body.

At that point, we didn't know who it was.

We knew we had a dead body, and we had obviously very suspicious circumstances.

When I first got there, I'm basically handling the crime scene of where the body is.

There was some clothing that had been burnt off.

There were some trash bags that were partially burned, and some bedding.

It was like maybe something that was used to help carry the body.

I then direct several detectives to go knock on all the doors in the area.

One resident reports something odd.

One of the neighbors, he had put his trash out the night before, and as he came out this morning, he saw the helicopters and the police activity and realized there was a bag of trash with his other bags of trash that he had not placed there.

They opened the bag and see it has belongings in it, like a work coat belonging to a UPS employee and some identification.

We were very fortunate, and it was a lucky break in this case.

That trash bag could have been taken away, and we would have never had that evidence.

In that trash bag was identification that belonged to Anthony Fertida.

Anthony Fertida was born on October 18th, 1955.

We grew up in Baltimore, Maryland.

Tony and me,

we grew up mainly together.

Me and Tony were pretty close.

As a young boy, Tony Fertita did well academically.

Socially, he had a harder time.

Tony grew up to be a very smart boy, but he was more of a mama's boy.

He got beat up a lot because he wouldn't fight back.

Tony did quit school because of that.

As Tony got older, you know, and got his own car and all, he wasn't hard at home at all.

Tony worked a lot.

He would never miss a day at work at all.

Either jobs.

He liked the money.

And he liked to have nice things too.

Yet Tony continued to struggle socially.

Tony was unlucky at love.

I used to feel sorry for him because he was always alone.

The girls that Tony dated, a lot of them used him.

He'd be kind-hearted to them and give them anything, you know, they wanted.

They always took advantage of Tony.

Tony was the type that falls for you easy.

Once he found somebody, he stuck to them and he gave them anything they wanted.

When he was heartbroken, when it break up, my brother would call me, and but he would be so sad, you know.

That's all really my brother wanted: was somebody to love him

in October 2005.

When Tony was 50 years old, he found what he was looking for when a neighbor introduced him to Cynthia Jean McKay.

Cindy grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

She was popular.

She was a cheerleader.

She was the kind of kid who sort of rallied her friends to hang out on the weekends.

After high school, Cindy enrolled in elementary education classes at the University of Maryland and worked hard to pay her way through school.

She worked a series of menial jobs, waitress, secretary, office manager, kind of things, where she impressed people.

People said that she was very bright, she was very good at her job, very charismatic.

They said that she could charm a rattlesnake.

Cindy's personal life was not as simple.

Cindy had a series of relationships, ends up having a total of six children.

I was born on March 17th, 1988.

I was the second

to last born out of six children.

Cindy relished her role as a mother, but her relationships never seemed to last.

When you go to a car dealership, you're looking at a car and everything on the outside looks great, but you don't know what internally is wrong.

Yeah.

That's how my mother carried all of her relationships.

Everything was great on the outside, but there was something always going on behind the scenes.

In 1999, Cindy was struggling to make a new beginning for herself and her two youngest sons, Christopher and Matthew.

That's when she met Clarence Buddy Downs.

He worked for the forestry department.

He used to take me to work and

showed me what he did on emergency calls, like trees falling down in Baltimore City.

He taught me a lot about growing up being a man.

Looked at him as more of a father than my real father was.

Cindy and Buddy married in 1999.

They moved to the Baltimore Highlands community, just south of Baltimore, and they opened a deli down the street called On the Go Deli.

Her two children, Matt and Chris, would pitch in, help out with the customers.

Things were going pretty well.

During that time, I felt untouchable.

It was just a great feeling of freedom, like I've never experienced it before.

And

I didn't want it to end.

Sadly, on Christmas Day 2002, the family's picture-perfect life was scorched when fire swept through their home.

The only thing that I thought about doing was throwing my mom out the side door to get out.

I didn't think I just reacted.

And I ran across the street to a friend's house for them to call 911, but we couldn't get into the house to get the buddy.

cindy's husband buddy downs perished in the fire

we ran down the steps and we went to the living room and i opened the door all these flames came out and pushed us back i call him for buddy because i thought even if he couldn't see me he could hear my voice to find his way out

investigators determined that buddy's fiery death was a tragic accident that began when buddy fell asleep smoking apparently he dropped a cigarette on a flammable couch and it went up in flames.

I don't know how to describe it.

It was just.

I had everything two hours before and now I had nothing at all and it was just a lot to take in.

He was gone, the house was gone.

We had to start over again.

As Cindy tried to pick up the pieces, secret sins from her past came back to haunt her.

I didn't know there was underlying issues with

the police, with my mother, and she was being investigated.

A call came in about an embezzlement at the St.

Mary Seminary and they said it was about $170,000 that was stolen.

Prior to the fire, Cindy worked as a bookkeeper at St.

Mary's Seminary.

Within one year, she's laid off from her job at the seminary.

Her house burns down Christmas Day.

Early part 2003, they found out that the person that they had laid off, Cindy McKay, stole $170,000.

Cindy was arrested and charged with embezzlement.

Cindy's sentenced to 10 years for the embezzlement case.

She did a remarkably short stint.

She did like two years for it.

After her release in 2005, Cindy was determined to make the best of her second chance in life.

She got out of jail because of good behavior.

And as soon as she got out of jail, that's when she met my brother.

Tony seemed real happy.

He said, I met this girl, and she's really nice.

And he called me up and he told me, Ruthie, I finally got me a good woman.

He seemed like he really liked her.

She was really the love of his life.

They were spending time together.

Everything was great.

Just four months into Cindy and Tony's relationship, tragedy strikes again when police discover the burned body of a man they believe could be Tony Fertida.

Baltimore is one of the most murderous cities in the entire country, and the crimes in the suburbs tend to be domestic in nature and don't get a lot of attention.

But there was a lot more to this one.

I've covered a lot of crimes and none like this.

Coming up, investigators find evidence of a particularly intimate crime.

The injuries included two stab wounds.

They will go to great lengths to try and hide their tracks.

February 22nd, 2006, Ann Rundle County, Maryland police have discovered a burning body, and an ID found nearby suggests the victim could be 50-year-old Anthony Fertita.

After completing their initial canvas of the neighborhood where the body was found, investigators begin a close examination of the crime scene.

There were some drag marks in that area, so it appeared that he wasn't just killed instead of blazed there.

It appeared that he may have been killed elsewhere and then brought to that location.

We were able to observe some shoe impressions near and around the body and casts were made of those.

The Interonda County Fire Marshal's Office responded and they had a canine named Iris that actually helped us at that scene of that fire to determine if any accelerants were used to ignite the body on fire.

The canine accelerant dog actually alerted on multiple areas of combustible material placed onto the body.

Just since an accelerant was used,

we've started sending detectives out to area gas stations to determine if anyone had recently purchased a small amount of gas around the time of the fire.

We retrieved a bunch of video from those time frames.

And what we needed to do is take and view it for possible suspects.

Before detectives have a chance to review the footage, the medical examiner's office releases the results of the autopsy.

One of the main things they collect are fingerprints and we run them through the Maryland Automated Fingerprint Identification System and what we were able to do is compare those to Anthony Fertida and we got a match.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner determines that the deceased individual died of sharp force trauma, which is typically a knife type of wound.

The injuries included two stab wounds, center mass on his body, that the medical examiner said would in and of themselves each have been fatal.

He also had a stab wound to his neck, and he had defensive wounds on his hands.

Anthony Fertida had been stabbed and then set on fire.

And they were able to prove that because there was no soot in the airway or lungs.

So that means he was not burned alive.

For investigators, the cause of death is key when trying to identify suspects.

A stabbing murder is very close and personal.

And burning of the body displays someone that's involved in criminal activity.

and will show you that they will go to great lengths to try and hide their tracks.

Once we learn that Anthony Fertilla is the victim of a homicide, we want to learn everything there is to know about him and his life so that then we can piece together as to who would have wanted to have murdered him.

They say it's the longest walk any detective takes is to the front door of a house where you're going to do this death notification, and it really is.

It's always heartbreaking when you have to notify a loved one that a brother has been murdered.

It was a detective, but he came to the house and he said, it is your brother that died.

Yeah, I almost died.

And I got a phone call and Rose said, Ruthie, Tony's dead.

I said, what?

I said, oh my gosh, please don't tell me this.

Once family members have a chance to process the shock, detectives question them.

We began trying to establish a timeline and figure out who and what Anthony Fertida is about.

Tony led a typical lifestyle.

He wasn't involved in drugs or anything.

He played the quino machines and stuff.

He liked that.

You know, he liked to gamble.

The detective said, did he have anybody that wanted to hurt him?

Did he owe any money?

I said, no, my brother wasn't that kind of gambler.

Nothing was found out that he was involved in any illegal activity that could be associated with his murder.

He was just a decent guy,

but the sister of the victim provided information where Tony had some prior issues with the past girlfriend, Karen.

They was together for a long time.

She had children that moved in with Tony, too.

There were numerous calls for service for Tony's residence in reference to the ex-girlfriend.

Law enforcement responded to his residence about a dozen times in the past couple years.

They include domestic violence, they include theft, and also a burglary.

Probably 30 to 40 days before his murder, the place had been broken into and some of his baseball cards that he collected had been taken.

And it was, Tony believed that it was possibly the teenage son or Karen herself.

Police wonder if rising tensions with Karen could have led to Tony's murder.

But thus far, they haven't found any evidence to support their suspicions.

The sister also provided information that he had a new girlfriend named Cynthia.

The family members say that things were a little rocky between Cindy and Tony, and Cindy has had trouble with the law before, but over financial crimes, nothing violent.

Before looking into Tony's relationships, detectives head over to Tony's neighborhood, approximately 10 miles from the crime scene.

We go to his address, where he lived, and began knocking on doors.

Neighbors report that they haven't seen Tony Fertita for several days, nor the truck he recently purchased.

They also tell detectives about the ex-girlfriend, Karen.

They described a lot of issues between the two, but she had not been living there for some time now, and that now Tony had a new girlfriend named Cindy.

Detectives also speak with Christopher Harhoff, Tony's neighbor, and Cindy's son.

I did not tell Chris that Tony was deceased or anything at that point.

We learned that Cynthia McKay now resided in an address over in Millersville.

Chris did provide information as to how he can get in contact with his mother.

In an effort to unearth any possible clues, detectives turned to Tony's home.

We also had obtained a search warrant for his residence.

So we went ahead and entered the residence.

Coming up, authorities find haunting proof of a gruesome crime.

When the police picked the carpet up and looked underneath, they were able to find bloodstains.

And they learned that Tony's lifestyle could have made him a target.

He had just won $1,200 and had been showing it to everybody at work.

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less than 24 hours after the body of tony fertida was found burning on a roadside annarundel county investigators searched his home

and we made our entry into the residence we searched the house from top to bottom looking for signs of a struggle or ransacking anything of if the crime maybe originated at this location or anything that could help aid us in identifying the suspects in this investigation.

We went through room by room and we paid particular attention to the kitchen area where knives would be stored and located to see if any of these could be related to his murder.

The team finds no obvious murder weapon or other indications Tony was killed there.

There was nothing significant in the house of evidentiary value other than we did notice messages left by his now current girlfriend, Cindy McKay.

Answering machine timestamps indicate Cindy left some of the messages the previous night.

The messages that Cindy left were basically, hey, Tony, where are you?

How are you doing?

Hey, it's me.

The 534 legal work.

Hi.

And then another message would be like, hey, how come you're not calling me?

What's going on?

Hey, it's me.

I haven't heard from you, and so I don't know what's going on just call me all right it was an investigative strategy not to reach out to Cindy at this point in the investigation it was more important for us to follow our leads as they were developing one of the messages on Tony's answering machine was from a nearby auto dealership

so we took that information contacted the dealership and learned that he had purchased a Dodge Durango and that the Dodge Durango was in the shop getting worked on.

Anthony had put his car in the shop and was given a loaner car.

Armed with that new information, I gave it to detectives who then went back out to the area of the initial crime scene and they searched the area.

Just 33 hours into the investigation, authorities spot the truck.

Tony's loner vehicle was found about a block away from where his burning body was discovered.

The location of that vehicle was indicative that it was possibly used in the crime.

We went ahead and secured it, had it towed to our evidence collection unit, at which time later a search would be done of it.

Continuing to run down their leads, investigators talk with people at the shipping business where Tony worked.

Coworkers tell detectives they think Tony was a prime target for robbery.

Tony loved playing Kino, and he would just go around flaunting the money.

He had just won $1,200 and had been showing it to everybody at work.

He won the $1,200 playing Keno the day before he actually died and was murdered.

We had to look at this as being a possible street robbery going way bad.

But co-workers also suggest another more personal possibility.

He had told a coworker that he had discovered that Cindy had made purchases on a credit card.

He believes Cindy had used his credit cards to buy over $7,000 worth of furniture.

He was going to confront her and that if she didn't pay him back, he was going to go to the police.

Tony gave her a deadline of February 22nd to rectify the situation.

And then on the morning of February 22nd at 3.05 in the morning, his body is found.

So the day before he was going to confront her, deadline was up.

He's found murdered.

Detectives now believe Cindy has a motive to want Tony out of the picture.

As this investigation rolled quickly, we can eliminate Karen as a possible suspect.

Then we were able to develop enough probable cause to get a search warrant for Cynthia McKay's residence.

Less than 48 hours after Tony's body was found, police execute the warrant.

I knock on the door, get no response.

I wait a minute, still no response.

I then use my flashlight to break out a window to enter the residence.

No one's home.

So, as soon as we entered the residence, an overwhelming smell of bleach hits you like

a baseball to the face and just smacks you right in the face.

Inside the residence was new furniture, which is consistent with the information we had developed from co-workers that she had bought $7,000 worth of furniture using Tony's credit cards.

We began looking around the residence and we determined that there is discolored carpet.

And as you put your finger to it, it was wet to the touch and it reeked of bleach.

So at that point, we were wondering, well, what is here?

When the police picked the carpet up and looked underneath, they were able to find bloodstains.

As the processing continues, a vehicle pulls up in front of the house.

I got out of the car that evening and was starting to walk to the house.

And when I got within like 20 feet of the front door, they were like, you can't go in there.

It's a crime scene.

The Matthew Harhoff, who's Cindy McKay's son, arrives on scene.

At which time I stopped doing my search inside the residence.

I go out and speak to him personally.

Detective Alban asked me if I knew who lived there, and I told them, yeah, my mom lives here.

Why, what's going on?

Alban is worried about us doing a search warrant at the residence and other lives we're conducting an investigation and I asked where his mother was and he called her and found out that she was on her way home.

Around 9 p.m., Cindy McKay arrives home.

When I first meet Cindy out in the parking lot of her residence, she said, what is this about?

And I basically told her, I said, it's about Tony, and we need to talk to you about him.

When we informed her that it was Tony's body that was found, she got a little weepy.

I asked her if she'd be willing to come down to our criminal investigation division to talk to us, at which time she agrees.

Detective Albin asks Cindy's son, Matthew, to come to the station, too.

Investigators do not tell them about the apparent blood found in the home.

Cindy and Matthew are brought to the Criminal Investigation Division.

They're both separated and put in separate interview rooms where detectives go in and are talking to each of them separately.

It was the first time I was ever in an interrogation room, and the first time that I've ever been in an interrogation room, it just happens to be a murder charge.

My only thought about it was, how the hell am I going to get out of this situation?

Coming up, a sudden admission surprises everyone.

He initially said that he didn't know what had happened.

He then later told the police a story.

And investigators uncover stunning secrets.

Wherever she goes, fire goes, and it's horrible and then stuff that you can't even come back from.

After detectives find the body of Tony Fertida, Anirundle County Police interview Matthew Harhoff, the son of Tony's girlfriend, Cindy McKay.

They came basically at me like,

do you know Tony Fertida?

Do you know who killed him?

And I was like, I don't know anything.

I wasn't there.

You're looking in the wrong place.

Why don't you go talk to my mother?

That's her boyfriend.

I've been with my girlfriend the whole time.

Another detective conducts a simultaneous interview with Cindy, asking her about Tuesday, February 21st, the day before Tony's body was found.

She said basically that Tony had come over to her residence that night on Tuesday and they had watched a movie together and then kind of went to bed.

Cindy reported that the alarm was set for 2.50 a.m.

so that Tony could get up for work.

She said he got up and heard him leave and that was the last time she had seen him.

Tony's burning body was found just 15 minutes later at 3.05 a.m.

She starts talking about leaving Tony phone messages because she hadn't seen or heard from him and she was worried about him and was wondering why he wasn't returning her phone calls.

In the other room, the interview with Matthew continues.

As detectives are interviewing Matthew, something just doesn't seem right.

So they start talking to him more and informing him that there's an apparent crime scene.

He initially said that he didn't know what had happened.

He then later told the police a story about how he had been at the house.

Matthew begins to lay out the fact that Tony was at the residence and he was also there on Tuesday, February 21st.

He witnessed his mother and Tony get into a violent fight and that she called for his older brother, Christopher.

I said that my brother came in and beat Tony up and shot him with a gun.

Of course, that doesn't even match up with the cause of death.

He was stabbed, not shot.

We know that he's lying to investigators.

But he's telling us some truth.

He's telling us that Tony was killed inside their residence.

Authorities choose to release Matthew until they can gather more information about the case.

I was never under arrest.

I was always free to go.

But they said I couldn't go back to the house because it was a crime scene.

Investigators decide to press Cindy with what they know.

The detectives that are interviewing Cindy confront her with the fact that there's a crime scene in her residence.

Cindy McKay says she doesn't know what happened in her house and doesn't know how this occurred.

And basically, she puts her hands right up to her face and begins to weep.

When Cindy raised her hands, detectives immediately notice some small cuts.

and Nicks to her hands.

Her story was that she had been lifting some boxes while she was at work and had cut her hand.

When detectives press her about the injuries, Cindy McKay decides she has had enough.

She doesn't want to be talked to anymore.

And shortly thereafter, the interview is ended.

Like Matthew, Cindy is allowed to go, although neither can return to Cindy's home, which is still secured as a potential crime scene.

After the interviews, detectives dig further into Cindy's background.

We wanted to gather as much information as we could in the investigation.

Of course, we're looking at the crimes she committed in Annarola County, but we're also looking at her history.

And that's when things start to really evolve.

Detectives learn that their counterparts in nearby Baltimore are already quite familiar with Cindy McKay.

The first time I heard about Cindy was early January 2003.

I was the intake detective that day, and a call came in about an embezzlement at the St.

Mary Seminary.

She was the bookkeeper and had access to the accounts and she actually had a stamp with her account number on it and not the seminary's account.

And that's how they figured it out.

Despite her transgressions, the seminary felt sympathetic towards Cindy.

They said, but detective, we're just asking you to take it easy on her a little bit because her husband died on Christmas Day in a fire.

Ann Arundel County detectives learn that in 2003, three years before Tony Fertita's murder, Detective Gibson contacted Cindy about the embezzlement case.

She was extremely cooperative.

She was willing to schedule an interview, and I just waited for her to come in.

After a few hours, Cindy's lawyer called me.

and said that Cindy committed suicide.

Police in Ocean City, Maryland respond to a parking lot near the beach, and there's Hyundai Santa Fe with its lights running.

And then there's this note.

Cindy left a suicide note, and that Cindy had went out into the surf and allegedly had killed herself.

Obviously, this whole suicide thing was a sham.

The whole thing was staged.

At that time, Detective Gibson put out a warrant for Cindy's arrest.

Three months after her fake suicide, Cindy's name popped up again when she tried to get public assistance in Virginia.

She actually turns up at a battered woman's shelter in Norfolk, Virginia.

At this point, myself and a couple other police officers in Baltimore, we drove down to Norfolk, Virginia.

We had the arrest warrants with us for her.

We went to her room and we place her under arrest and she ultimately gets convicted for the embezzlement at the cemetery.

Three months after being released on parole, she met Tony Fertita.

Four months after that, Tony was dead, his body burned.

Just like Cindy's husband, Clarence Buddy Downs.

Her first husband was killed in a fire.

And now her boyfriend, years later, is also doused and set leaves.

It definitely adds to my suspicions that maybe Clarence Downs was murdered.

We did speak with some of the investigators from Baltimore County about Clarence Downs.

We were told that they had reopened that case and that they were taking another look at that.

Detectives are convinced Cindy McKay was involved in Tony's death.

They just have to uncover the evidence to prove it.

Three days after Tony's murder, the crime lab presents their findings.

The laboratory analysis that the Maryland State Police did for us in regards to the accelerant used to ignite Tony's body was determined to be gasoline.

Investigators turned their focus to the previously collected security video obtained from nearby gas stations on the morning of Tony's murder.

Cindy McKay was on videotape getting about $5 worth of gas at a gas station right around the corner from where Tony's body was found burning about 15 minutes after she purchased the gas.

These videos prove Cindy wasn't home asleep as she claimed.

This new revelation blows Cindy's story wide open.

At this point, we have enough to charge Cindy with accessory after the fact.

for the murder of Tony.

We didn't know her full involvement at the time.

We know that she's involved.

We don't know who did the stabbing yet.

Was it her or one of her two sons?

Coming up, authorities close in on a desperate criminal.

She's really a one-woman crime wave.

She said, I'm not going back to jail.

I don't care what I have to do.

On the night of February 25th, 2006, detectives go to arrest Cindy McKay as an accessory to the brutal murder of her boyfriend, Tony Fertida.

I informed her that we had a warrant for her arrest.

She looked at me and said that she had been expecting us.

I handcuffed her, and then we took her to the Criminal Investigation Division.

Once we got there, she basically said she had nothing further to say to us.

She doesn't want to be talked to anymore.

With Cindy refusing to talk, authorities turn next to her 19-year-old son, Christopher Harhoff.

We spoke to him about his mother and about

being involved in Tony's death.

He became very emotional and said, no, I don't think she did it, but if she did, then she also killed Clarence Buddy Downs.

In talking to Christopher, he maintained that he was not involved in this incident at all.

With no hard evidence against him, authorities release Christopher.

By this time, investigators obtained consent to search Tony Fertida's loner vehicle, which was found near the crime scene.

There was a knife found in Anthony Fertida's truck.

And that knife was a certain brand.

It was called a Rogers knife.

Investigators returned to Cindy's home, looking for a connection between Cindy and the knife.

I executed a second search warrant on Cindy McKay's residence.

And in her residence, I found knives that were also Rogers brands.

So that linked the murder weapon coming out of Cindy's residence.

While executing the search at Cindy's home, detectives get an unexpected visitor yet again.

Just like in the first search warrant, Matthew comes to the residence.

So we asked if he would come back down to CID for another interview, and which he did.

He now is denying any involvement and not having any information in regards to the murder of Tony.

I

gave different accounts of what happened because I was scared.

I implicated my brother because my mother told me to.

Like she said, I'm not going back to jail.

Authorities question several of Matthew's friends who say 17-year-old Matthew had confessed to them that he was involved in covering up Tony's murder.

The friends agree to testify.

We go ahead and based on all that information we obtain an arrest warrant for him, we charge him.

I woke up to the police

wanting to arrest me for first-degree murder.

I was shocked.

Everything was like, I guess, seriously, is this really happening?

Shortly thereafter, Christopher Harhoff is also indicted for the murder of Tony Fertida.

We had some cell phone movement the night of the murder that linked him going from his address down to the area of where Tony Wood's bodies was located and burned.

And we had some shoe impressions which were consistent with shoes that we took out of Christopher's residence that link him to within feet of Tony's burned body.

Christopher confesses to his part in the crime.

Chris told the authorities, I was called to help my mom.

When I showed up, he was already dead and she needed help getting rid of the body.

Christopher Harhoff pleads guilty to the reduced charges of accessory after the fact to second-degree murder.

He got sentenced to five years.

Matthew Harhoff also pleads guilty to the charge of accessory after the fact.

And I think due to his age, ended up receiving a suspended sentence in regards to his involvement.

Preparing for trial, prosecutors add a murder charge against Cindy McKay.

The state's theory was that she had been stealing from Anthony Fertida from the start of their relationship.

So it's the state's belief that

An ultimatum was issued to Cindy McKay.

If she didn't pay him back, he was going to go to the police.

She knew the gig was up, and her way of getting out of this was taking his life.

Prosecutors believe that in the early morning hours of February 22nd, 2006, Cindy used a kitchen knife to stab Tony in her apartment, his blood seeping into her carpet.

She did contact her sons and have them come and help dispose of the body.

Prosecutors believe Cindy then went home and used bleach to try to get rid of the blood evidence.

On April 17th, 2008, to avoid a trial, Cindy McKay enters an Alford plea to charges of felony theft and second-degree murder.

An Alford plea is basically when a person says they're not going to plead guilty, but they will accept the finding of guilty by saying that there's enough evidence to convict them.

She ended up being sentenced to 30 years for her role in the murder of Tony.

This was a mother who brought her sons into her crime.

So the devious nature of a woman who would do that to her children is something that was beyond anything I ever saw as a prosecutor.

Cynthia McKay is a career criminal, and she's basically like a tornado.

When she comes into a town, she leaves a path of destruction and death.

Wherever she goes, fire goes, and it's horrible and stuff that you can't even come back from.

She was a witch.

She's going to do it again.

It's because she's got the devil in her.

For the family of Tony Fertita, putting the past behind them remains difficult.

My brother told me, Ruthie, one day I'm going to retire and move down here with you.

I said, Come on,

you know, I don't ever get to see that dream now because he ain't here.

It's just hard.

I want to know that my brother was a good person,

and that

all he ever wanted was love

and a family

and to be happy.

That's all.

She's where she belongs.

And if she never out,

it'll be too soon.

Matthew Harhoff served three years of probation.

Christopher Harhoff was released on parole in 2012.

Cynthia McKay will be eligible for parole in 2023.

As of May 2019, the investigation into the death of Clarence Buddy Downs is ongoing.

For more information on Snapped, go to oxygen.com.

How hard is it to kill a planet?

Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere.

When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene.

Are we really safe?

Is our water safe?

You destroyed our town.

And crimes like that, they don't just happen.

We call things accidents.

There is no accident.

This was 100%

preventable.

They're the result of choices by people.

Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime.

These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet.

Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it.

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

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