inside The Echoes of an empty house a woman picks through the pieces of her life her name is Jane Alexander she's 58 a recent Widow and lonely until one day when a family friend by the name of Tom O'Donnell comes calling and suddenly romance is in the air he was very charming and he was uh very comforting and uh really a great companion and we f fell in love and plan to spend the rest of our lives together odonnell casts himself as a world traveler regaling Jane with stories of gold carry out of rodesia and precious metals mined from South Africa according to odonnell his life abroad has netted him a small fortune none of which unfortunately is available to him right now he told me that he had uh put his assets into a trust fund in Switzerland was going to take about two or three years for the uh trust to mature and uh when it did he would get $1. 2 million in the meantime odonnell convinces Jane to mortgage her home for the couple's spending money for her part Jane Alexander is happy again believing she has found a lasting love the couple settles into the expensive house and everything seems fine until 3 years later when Jane Alexander's world is turned upside down at 11:30 a. m.
San Jose police detective Joe Brockman receives a report about an elderly woman who has not been seen in days he heads to the address 165 a Royo away where Gertrude mccab has lived for 15 years Brockman enters through the front door she was lying on the floor to one side was a good amount of blood to the uh the area and the carpet just below where head was San Jose police moved to notify the victim's next of kin at 2:15 p. m. Jane Alexander receives a phone call and he said well I'm terribly sorry to have to inform me your aunt's been the victim of a homicide the first question he asked which I'll never forget he said Mr Alexander what is your income and tomr was sitting there I said oh well Tom handles all the finances in the house so then I just threw the ball to Tom Tom O'Donnell explains to the detective what he has been telling Jane for the past three years the following month detectives in San Jose make another request of Jane and Tom he wanted to know if we come down and get our fingerprints taken and I was really insulted when he asked me that why hadn't they taken our fingerprints month 6 months eight months ago weren't they working the case I mean I was indignant the couple eventually agrees to be printed while at the police station detectives ask Jane if she can identify a sample of lipstick taken from this bloody tissue and I looked at the lipstick and said oh that's not an G's lipstick that's my lipstick that's a color of my lipstick the police collect a sample from Jane's lipstick and the couple is sent home 10 months after her aunt's murder Jane Alexander is awaiting her inheritance from Gertrude MC's estate believing that there is enough money coming to pay off their debts Alexander and Donnell decide to take a vacation overseas Alexander withdraws $10,000 on credit from her bank and hands it over to her boyfriend who's going to book the couple's trip the next day Jane returns home to find Tom and her money gone two days later the Widow receives a letter odonnell tells Jane that his life as well as hers are in Jeopardy he writes they have been watching us for some time they know our routines and habits well goes on to write that he must leave the US and go back to Europe with his former Associates the letter States even if by some miracle I escaped from them over there I could not come back to you as you would be the first one they would be watching I cried and of course his life was also in Jeopardy so he had to go with them that was the only way he could keep the wolf from my door although his letter asks her not to Jane immediately calls the police and as detectives run background checks on the missing man they learn that the only wolf after Jane Alexander is an astute confidence man named Tom odonnell he'd done this kind of thing before he basically would uh try to establish a relationship with a with a single woman or a widowed woman or something along those lines and use her to live on while living with Jane and without her knowledge odonnell had run through more than $200,000 borrowed against the second mortgage he convinced Alexander to take out on her house unable to make payments on the mortgage police the arise o Donnell decided to look around for another source of income and that is when he might have turned to murder Tom centers in on the estate of gerchard mccab and Begins the plot her murder so that Jane would benefit and who's controlling Jane and Jane's checkbook Tom odal they asked Alexander to file charges of fraud against her urle boyfriend Alexander however refuses unable to accept her boyfriend as a thief clinging to his farewell letter and waiting for the day he might return finally in December of 1985 detectives show her this tissue stained with blood and Jane's type of lipstick at the time of her aunt's death investigators had questioned Alexander about the lipstick but never told her where the tissue was actually found now they fell in the blanks he said said well I just thought maybe you'd think about it and you explained to me how that lipstick on that Kleenex could have gotten beside your aunt's body Jane Alexander had a habit of kissing her boyfriend Tom O'Donnell on the cheek he also had a habit of wiping the lipstick off with a Kleenex and then stuffing the tissue back into his pocket which meant that Tom was there that Tom did it how else could the lipstick get on the cleaning as it was found with the body Detective don't have enough evidence to support a charge of murder with Jane Alexander on board however they do have a splendid case for fraud and embezzlement now it's just a matter of waiting for their suspect to show himself on February 8th 1985 detectives find Tom odonnell in a City built for his particular Talent Las Vegas Nevada odonnell is pulled from Sin City and sent back to California to face charges of criminal fraud odonnell is charged with for counts of defrauding Jane Alexander the trial lasts 10 days the jury finds odonnell guilty and the con man is sentenced to 4 years in prison odonnell is released from prison after 18 months and Cold Case detectives decide to pay him a visit his story was that he had flown to Burbank to visit a friend of his named Harry Carmichael they were I guess lifelong friends and once he got to Burbank he said he rented a car and he drove to Las Vegas veg to gamble and then he drove the car back to Burbank and flew back home we basically drove the exact same route the quickest route to get from Burbank to ger McCabe's house in San Jose and back to Harry Carmichael's apartment went back to the Burbank Airport and the mileage was exact as the same mileage on the rental car 669 mil the exact distance round trip between Burbank and Gertrude mccab San Jose hum the exact distance Tom O'Donnell drove in Rental Car on the morning she was [Applause] killed in July of 1995 Deputy da Joyce algro picks through the pieces that are the mcab murder investigation there were loone documents bank records things like that that were in the records we had phone bills and there just all sorts of pieces of paper two of the pieces of paper are records of phone calls placed by odonnell in 1983 the first documented call is to Tom O'Donnell's nephew a man to whom odonnal owed $115,000 he talked to the nephew's wife and he told her that they would be getting money soon because um Jane's aunt had died and left her some money Allegro notes the time and date of the phone call 11:03 a.
m.
