One Delegation From Murder

Delegation Mary Ellen Samuels – The Green Widow Los Angeles, California December 9, 1988, the LAPD were called to the home in the Northridge neighborhood of Los Angeles. They were met by Mary Ellen Samuels and her 18 yr old daughter, Nicole. She told the officers that this was the home of her estranged husband and she had come to drop of the family’s pet schnauzer for the weekend. But upon entering the home, she found him dead, with trauma and a gunshot wound to the head. Bob Samuels, just 40 year old, was found in a hallway, almost naked. It appeared he was attacked as he was walking to a room with a tanning bed. It appeared Bob had been dead for some time. At first it like looked the house had been ransacked, and Bob had been attacked by an intruder. But the scene was not consistent with a break-in and there were no signs of forced entry & nothing appeared stolen. Mary Ellen and Nicole agreed to be tested for gun shot residue and both were negative. Mary Ellen went to the police station that night for a formal interview. She wore a revealing dress and seemed to flirt with the officers. “At one point, she put her hand on one of the detective’s bald head and talked about how she liked bald guys.” She told them she and Bob had been separated for 2 years but were on good terms. She named a few people she thought might have been holding a grudge against Bob, but otherwise they didn’t have much to go on. They found no fingerprints, no fibers or hair evidence at the scene and there were no witnesses in the neighborhood who saw anything. Bob’s autopsy showed he suffered from blunt force trauma to the head which would have immediately disabled him, and then he was shot by a 16 gauge shotgun fired thru a pillow, from only inches away. He had been dead 12-24 hours before he was found. Detective George Daley was assigned to the case. He interviewed Bob Samuels’ sister, Susan Conroy, who gave him the real dirt on Bob’s relationship with Mary Ellen. They had grown up in the same neighborhood in Santa Ana, California just a block away from each other. Bob was 2 years older and had a crush on Mary Ellen that started in Elementary school. He’d always been too shy to ask her out. Mary Ellen was very pretty, flirtatious and popular. After they both graduated HS and went their separate ways, Mary Ellen got married, had her daughter Nicole, and then she and her 1st husband divorced. Bob and Mary Ellen crossed paths again in 1980 and this time, Bob didn’t hesitate. By this point he was a successful assistant cameraman in Hollywood. He was known for his work on a number of movies – many of them favorites of mine – like The Color Purple, Some Kind of Wonderful, Short Circuit, Beverly Hills Cop II, Lethal Weapon II, & Real Genius. They got married and moved to the suburb of Northridge in the San Fernando Valley. Bob even adopted her daughter, Nicole. But they were opposites. Bob was hard-working, down-to-earth. Mary Ellen liked to party and spend Bob’s money, something they fought about often. But then Bob got an idea, he invested in a Subway sandwich shop and made Mary Ellen the manager, thinking it would give her something to do as well as bring in some money. But then in October of 1986, Bob came home to a note from Mary Ellen that said “our marriage has gotten stale. Sorry things didn’t work out. I’ll always care for you. I hope we can remain friends, but I can’t live with you.” She and Nicole had already moved out. Bob was absolutely devastated. Mary Ellen filed for divorce, but Bob begged her to change her mind. They agreed to a trial separation. Mary Ellen and Nicole moved into a condo nearby. Mary Ellen continued to work at the Subway and Bob paid her $15 hundred dollars a month for living expenses. Which Mary Ellen and Nicole used to go to bars and clubs together. Bob’s sister Susan told Det. Daley, weeks before his murder, Bob finally realized he and Mary Ellen were over and she was taking advantage of him and his money. He met with a lawyer to finalize the divorce and drastically cut his financial support. Within days of Bob’s death, Mary Ellen and Nicole moved back into Bob’s house. She filed a claim to collect the money from Bob’s life insurance policy and put the sandwich shop up for sale. Detective Daley paid Mary Ellen a visit at the Subway – which she was now the sole owner of. He asked for a list of the employees to do some routine interviews and asked if she’d take a polygraph test just to exclude her as a suspect. She agreed to both. She passed the polygraph. A month after the murder, Det Daley got a call from an insurance company asking if Mary Ellen Samuels was a suspect. If not, she stood to receive more than half a million dollars from Bob’s death as his sole beneficiary. She would also receive money to pay off both his home and the sandwich shop and then she would inherit both properties. Since there was no evidence against her, he had to say she wasn’t a suspect and the insurance company processed the claims. The total value was over $6 hundred thousand dollars. Mary Ellen started spending the money immediately. She bought herself and Nicole fur coats and designer clothes. She paid $180 thousand dollars for a condo in Cancun. She bought custom items from a trendy West Hollywood store called Trashy Lingerie. She threw catered parties and rented limousines for their nights of clubbing. She met a new man, a concert promoter named Dean Groover, and bought him a $50 thousand dollar white Porsche. A few months went by with no new evidence until Det Daley was contacted by a woman who had met Mary Ellen at a bar a few months before Bob’s murder. They became friends, bonding over drinks while comparing divorce horror stories. Typical stuff, until Mary Ellen asked to borrow $10 thousand dollars to pay for a hit man to get Bob out of her life permanently. The woman thought it was a joke at the time, just the alcohol talking. But now that Bob was dead…. The woman also mentioned a man named James Berstein, who worked for Mary Ellen at the Subway and dated Nicole – despite the fact that he was 27 and Nicole was still in high school. But when Det Daley checked, his name was not in the list of employees Mary Ellen had given him. Det. Daley brought Mary Ellen and James in for questioning on the same night. Mary Ellen was calm, but James was rattled. They were put in a room together and police recorded James saying, “He’s gonna arrest one of us or both of us right here, right now, tonight for the murder. He says he knows 100 percent that you and I did this.” But neither suspect said anything else incriminating and were allowed to leave. Det. Daley went to Nicole’s high school and interviewed classmates and found out there were rumors all thru the school that Nicole’s mom had hired a hitman to kill her stepdad. Several friends said Nicole herself had asked around as to where she could get a gun to kill her stepdad. When Mary Ellen found out she was being investigated, she filed a harassment complaint with the captain of the LA homicide division. But nothing came of it. In May 1989, 5 months after the murder, Det Daley got a call from a man who wouldn’t give his name, but said he was a friend of Nicole Samuels’. He said Nicole’s mom had asked him to kill her husband, but he said no. And that knew this guy, James Bernstein who said he’d do it, but then he outsourced the job to another guy named Mike Silva, who killed Bob. Turned out there was a Mike Silva who lived near LA and had a small criminal record. Search warrants were served on Mary Ellen’s condo, James Berstein’s apartment and Mike Silva’s home as well as phone records for all 3. But no evidence was found to tie them together or to the murder. James wasn’t home at the time of the search and according to his apartment manager; he hadn’t been seen in weeks and it was rumored he was hiding from police. So they left a copy of the search warrant for him inside the apartment. On July 27, 1989, 7 months after the murder, James Bernstein was found dead in Ventura County, 100 miles North of Los Angeles. Hikers had found his body in Lakewood Canyon. Weather conditions has caused him to decompose quickly, and it was difficult to identify him, as he was mummified. The autopsy showed his larynx had been crushed and the cause of death was determined to be strangulation. They had to remove his hand and rehydrate one of his fingers to get a fingerprint. Since he had been arrested before, they were able to get his name. When police went to his apartment, they found the search warrant and called Det. Daley. When the Ventura County police searched James’ apartment, they found something LAPD had missed. A phone card hidden in between the pages of a book. The earlier phone records showed calls from Mary Ellen to James, and calls from Mike Silva to James. But nothing from James to either of them. But with the calling card they had records to show that 30 minutes before Mary Ellen called 911 to say she found Bob murdered, there was a call connecting James, Mike and the Subway restaurant. And in the days before he was murdered, James had made calls from the home of Anne Marie Hambly, who was Mary Ellen’s best friend, who had arrived at the scene of the murder to console her. LAPD and Ventura County police joined together to solve both murders. They performed a search of Anne Marie’s home and found a bag of James’ clothes in a shed. She was taken in for questioning. She was offered immunity and took it. She told them that Mary Ellen hired 2 men, her live in boyfriend, Paul Gaul and his friend, Daryl Edwards, to murder James because she was afraid he would crack and talk to police about hiring him to kill Bob. Which James had agreed to do because Mary Ellen told him that Bob had been abusive to her and had molested Nicole, who James was dating. In fact, at the time of his murder, James thought he and Nicole were engaged. Mary Ellen convinced James to move in with Anne Marie and Paul in order to hide out from police, which he gladly did. Mary Ellen was finally arrested on January 26th, 1990 and charged with 2 counts of murder with special circumstances of multiple murders and murder for financial gain. The same day, Paul Gaul was arrested for 1st degree murder and 5 days later Daryl Edwards turned himself in. They could not arrest Mike Sliva because shortly after searching his home, he killed his girlfriend and then shot himself. Nicole could not be arrested because there was no direct evidence to implicate her in either murder. Paul and Daryl were offered plea deals of second-degree murder for their cooperation. They agreed and told police Mary Ellen had paid them $5 thousand dollars to kill James. She said James was a drug dealer (which apparently he was) who sold drugs to children, and Paul had a hatred for drug dealers so he agreed to do the hit. On the day of his murder, Paul and Daryl came up with a story about going on a roadtrip to rob this drug dealer they knew and James to come with them. They took Mary Ellen’s black convertible with the license plate that read NAST VXN, for "nasty vixen." They strangled James and tossed his body into a canyon. District Attorny Janice Maurizi (mor-ree -zee) was worried that she would have a hard time convincing a jury that Mary Ellen Samuels, convinced multiple people to murder for her, so she offered her a plea deal. But Mary Ellen refused it. The man who shot her husband - Mike Silva - was dead, and so was the man who linked her to him – James Bernstein. The trial started in March of 1994. The media named her The Green Widow for blowing thru almost all the money she received from Bob’s death - nearly half a million dollars - in 1 year. The DA started the trial by presenting a giant photo of Mary Ellen laying on a naked on bed, covered partially covered $20 thousand dollars’ worth of $100 dollar bills. Her boyfriend had taken the photo while on a trip to Cancun. She argued that Mary Ellen realized her husband was worth more to her dead than alive, so she solicited for someone to kill her husband for two years. Once word got out that Mary Ellen was accused of killing both her husband and the hitman she hired, multiple witnesses came out of the woodwork to testify that Mary Ellen hadn’t been shy when asking around for a hitman. The Jury heard about the lavish lifestyle Mary Ellen and Nicole lived starting as soon as they moved out. There was testimony about mother-daughter cheesecake photos (which are sexy photos with minimal clothing). About Mary Ellen hiring strippers for Nicole’s 18th birthday party. The extravagant birthday party Mary Ellen thru herself at a country club just 4 months after Bob’s murder. Several witnesses testified that Mary Ellen taught a pet parrot to make profane remarks about Det Daley and to swear at the police. Anne Marie Hadley, Paul Gaul and Daryl Edwards all testified against Mary Ellen. The defense argued that Mary Ellen had been framed by former friends who owed her money and Det. Daley who was jaded and had kept photos of her wearing lingerie. Not only was she not guilty, but she was a victim herself, having suffered 6 years of domestic abuse at the hands of Bob whenever he drank. He reminded the jury that the star witnesses for the prosecution had all been given immunity or plea deals. Nicole, who was now 27 years old, and married with a son, testified on her mother's behalf. Nicole told the jury she also been physically abused by her stepfather and that turned into sexual abuse when she turned 12. Mary Ellen testified in her own defense. And retold horror stories of her years with Bob. But there was no evidence to support any abuse. She claimed she left Bob to save herself and her daughter. But her Dear John letter didn’t mention any abuse among complaints about their marriage. Just that it had gone stale. On July 1, 1994, after 18 days of deliberation, the jury found Mary Ellen Samuels guilty on both counts of first-degree murder, conspiracy and solicitation, and sentenced her to death. At the age of 47 and a grandmother, she joined only 4 other women on California’s death row. She is now 76 years old. Sources: Murderpedia Oxygen .com LA times .com An episode of The Prosecutors called “The Green Widow”