One Descendant From Murder

One Descendent From Murder` APRIL 21, 1992 It was the Tuesday after Easter at 9 am when a housekeeper named Juanita Avitia arrived at a home near Fresno, California for her regular cleaning day. Upon walking into the kitchen, she discovered a woman’s body and called police. When the authorities arrived and searched the home, 2 additional bodies were found. The home belonged to the Ewell Family and the victims were 57 year old Glee Ewell, her 59 year old husband Dale, and their daughter Tiffany, who was 24. At first it appeared the home had been burglarized. The home's alarm system was not armed and had not been triggered. There were no signs of a break-in or struggle. Tiffany was lying face down on the kitchen floor. She had been shot once in the back of the head. Dale was lying face down in the hallway by the entrance from the garage. He had been shot in the back of the neck. Glee was lying partially on her back and partially on her left side in the office with her arm shielding her eyes. She had been shot four times, including once just below her eye. Neither of the women had been sexually assaulted. After further investigation, Lead Detective John Sousa determined the burglary was staged. He had worked Burglary for years before moving to Homicide. Typically, a burglar will open drawers from the bottom up, dig thru and open the next. They don’t bother with trying to close them. Police theorized that the women had returned home first and entered the house together. Tiffany was shot first, having been taken by surprise when she passed the killer's location; then killer then emerged and shot and wounded Glee, who ran into the office, where she was killed. Dale was killed last, as it was estimated he died approximately an hour after his wife and daughter. Detectives suspected that the murder weapon was a 9-millimeter firearm and although shell casings should have been ejected none were found at the scene. A box of 9-millimeter Winchester cartridges, containing 18 rounds of ammunition, was found in the master bedroom, and 1 unexpended round was located on the floor of that room. It appeared that it was the ammunition used by the killer. Dale Ewell was born in Ohio in 1932. After serving in the Air Force, he moved to California and started his own business selling small airplanes called Wester Piper Sales, Inc. He married Glee Mitchell in 1961 and they had 2 children, a daughter, Tiffany in 1967 and a son, Dana in 1971. Dale’s company had been very successful, and the family had a beautiful home in an upper-middle class neighborhood as well as a beach house in Watsonville, California off Monterey Bay. Tiffany was a graduate student and lived at home with her parents. Dana, who was 21, was attending the University of Santa Clara. The Sunday before the bodies were discovered was Easter. All 4 members of the Ewell Family had been at their beach house for the weekend. On Saturday the Ewells had dinner with Dana’s girlfriend Monica Zent and her family. Afterward, the Zent family returned to their home in San Francisco and Dana went with them. On Sunday afternoon, Glee and Tiffany drove the 2 and a half hours back to Fresno, and Dale flew his private plan back to its hangar and then drove home. Tiffany walked into the house first and was shot as soon as she reached the kitchen. Glee attempted to run but only got as far as the office. Then killer than sat and waited at least 30 minutes for Dale to arrive. He was shot as he walked into the house from the door to the garage. Detectives discovered that that Dale Ewell had purchased the box of ammunition found in the master bedroom along with a 9-millimeter pistol, back in 1971. That pistol was missing. The bullets recovered from the victims' bodies showed signs of the gun having been fitted with a homemade silencer. Since the murders were not a result of an interrupted burglary, and since there was little struggle and the alarm system wasn’t triggered, it was likely that the family was targeted by someone who was in the house waiting for them. So the next step was to determine who would benefit from their deaths. The Ewell estate was worth about $8 million back in 1992 - equivalent to about $16 million in 2022. Police investigated 2 possible incidents with Dale’s company that could have been a motive, but both were ruled out. Glee had once worked for the CIA as a translator before becoming a teacher and then serving on the State Bar of California’s governing board, but there were no leads there. Tiffany was known by all to be quiet, shy and have a heart of gold. Dana, the sole beneficiary of their estate, had a solid alibi, having spent Sunday with his girlfriend’s family 200 miles away. Plus, Monica’s father was an FBI agent. Dana even produced a credit card receipt for candy he bought Sunday night near their home. But none of that stopped investigators from getting a bad feeling about him. At first Dana appeared upset about the death of his family, and even offered a 50-thousand dollar reward to anyone with information on the murders. But 2 days later at a memorial service for them, detectives noted he was unemotional and seemed more concerned about when the reading of his parents’ wills would take place. Just a month later Dana was back living in the family home and he invited a friend to “tour” the home where bullet holes, bloodstains and spatter were still visible. He told the friend that detectives would never solve the case, they were a bunch of dummies. Then Dana’s uncles – Dale’s brothers – called detectives asking them to look into Dana. Shortly after their bodies were discovered, Dana’s uncle looked over the will and stated that there were no burial instructions, to which Dana responded, “Okay, but what about the money?” Then a few days later at the reading of the wills, Dana was furious to find out that just a month earlier, Dale and Glee had added trust provisions would keep him from having full access of their $8 million dollar estate until he was in his thirties. His uncles claimed Dana had pounded on the table and shouted, “How could he have done this to me?” But, Dana was going to be able collect $3 hundred thousand from an insurance policy and his uncles told police they were making attempts to block him. Detectives started looking into 21 year old Dana Ewell. He was about to graduate from the University of Santa Clara with a degree in finance. While his parents didn’t flaunt their money, Dana drove a gold BMW, wore Italian suits and carried a briefcase to his classes. Dana had a habit of fabricating stories. He told classmates that he had been a stockbroker by the time he turned 18 and owned a company that grossed almost $3 million dollars a year. Dana was fascinated with people famous for breaking the law in pursuit of wealth, such as Michael Milken – known as the “junk bond king” who went to prison for fraud, and Joe Hunt - a Ponzi schemer and murderer. Dale and Glee, who were both raised during the depression, were really disappointed with Dana’s obsession with luxury items and sense of entitlement. Then in 1990, a Santa Clara newspaper and the university yearbook printed stories on Dana portraying him as "a self-made millionaire” attributing his Dale’s accomplishments as Dana’s. That was the last straw for Dale and Glee. They told Dana they were going to stop financially supporting him once he graduated. This also when they revised their wills – which they did not tell him. Investigators started keeping a close eye on Dana. With the $300 thousand dollar insurance payout that his uncles were not successful in keeps from him, he bought himself a $130 thousand dollar plane. He posted an ad in the paper to sell his mother’s fur coat, describing it as belonging to Murder Victim Glee Ewell. Investigators discovered a Dana had a college friend named Joel Radovcich, who was totally opposite from Dana. Dana was slim, clean cut, preppy type. Joel was a skateboarder, muscular. He was an avid video gamer with an obsession with guns and explosives as well as a drug addiction. Joel and Dana each told police they barely knew each other. But Joel dropped out of school shortly after the murders and secretly moved in with Dana in the Ewell house. When police contacted Joel for an interview, his response was “what are you going to arrest me?” Dana briefly quit college and started working at his father’s company, Western Piper Sales, where was named vice president with a salary of $2,000 a month, although it was reported that he did very little actual “work” for the company. Joel was unemployed but he and Dana both paid cash for helicopter flight lessons. Detectives discovered that Dana and Joel had a complex communication system between them where they used pagers and payphones. So investigators got a search warrant to get a cloned pager with Joel’s number. At one point an undercover detective stood next to Joel on a payphone and overheard him say to Dana: "they don't have evidence. They will try to catch you in a lie." Police continued gathering evidence on Dana and Joel for the next few years. After his mother was killed, Dana Ewell became the executor of his maternal grandmother's $400 thousand dollar trust account. Her name was Glee Mitchell, she was 93, had Alzheimer’s and lived in a nursing home in Ohio. Dana had her switch nursing homes and moved into a room with a door that opened the outside. When that was discovered, police asked the nursing home staff to stop Dana from taking his grandmother on any trips outside of the facility. It’s suspected Dana misappropriated $100 thousand for his own use. And by the time Glee Mitchell died of natural causes in 1999, less than $2 thousand dollars was left due to Dana and nursing home costs. Dana also bought his girlfriend, Monica, a new car and paid her law school tuition. While keeping tabs on Dana and Joe, police were also looking into other evidence. Firearms expert Allen Boudreau determined that all six bullets were fired by the same weapon and that a homemade silencer was used. This finally explained strange forensic evidence that had been collected from the murder scene. One of the homemade silencers in Joel’s books used PVC pipe, tennis balls and steel wool. Small metallic particles, particles of a dark, rubbery-type substance, and fluorescing yellow fibers had been collected from Glee’s clothing and under her body, consistent with bullets fired from a that type of silencer. Allen Boudreau also concluded that the weapon was not Dale Ewell’s missing gun. It was an AT-9 manufactured by Feather Industries out of Trinidad, Colorado. Police used the Company’s records to locate that model rifle sold in California to a man named Jack Ponce – who turned out to be a friend of Joel’s older brother. Jack admitted to police that he purchased the rifle for Joel but denied knowing it would be used for a crime. Police also discovered that Jack had concealed evidence after the murders, which made him an accessory. Prosecutors offered him if he agreed to testify against Dana and Joel, which he accepted. After 3 years the state finally had enough evidence to arrest Dana and Joel and charge each with 3 counts of first degree murder and special circumstances, making them eligible for the death penalty. It took 2 more years before the trial to begin and it lasted 8 months. So now it’s 1997. Dana and Joel were tried together but had separate attorneys. Prosecutors believed Dana’s motive was greed and that he had promised Joel a share of his inheritance in exchange for being the trigger man. Dana’s attorney argued that Dana was innocent and that it was Joel and Jack Ponce who had planned and carried out the murders. Joel’s attorney, however, felt the evidence was overwhelming and just focused on keeping Joel from the death penalty by saying Dana was the mastermind. Here is some of the evidence that came out at the trial: The summer before the murders, Joel had books sent to the home of college friend. Some of those books included instructions on building gun silencers. Joel also asked his friend if he knew anyone who had a gun for sale, saying he wanted an AK-47 but didn’t want to go to a gun shop. During the fall before the murders, Dana began dating Monica Zent, who lived in the same school dorm. It was common knowledge among the dorm residents that Monica's father was an FBI agent. Then Jack Ponce testified how Joel told him about committing the murders. Joel had described how he had shaved himself from head to toe - everything but his eyebrows - and waited on a plastic sheet in order to keep from leaving any DNA at the scene and how he was careful to collect all shell casings. He told the jury that he purchased the gun Joel used and helped him dispose of the gun, fired shells, silencer and some tennis shoes. And he said that according to Joel, Dana wanted his sister out of the way as well so he didn’t have to split the inheritance with her. Junior Prosecutor Jeff Hammerschmidt was able to show the jury how Dana had used more than 25 accounts at 14 different banks to funnel money to Joel as payment for executing his family. Some of the accounts were in Dana Ewell's name, some were joint accounts with his grandmother or his girlfriend, Monica. 6 years after the murders, after deliberating for 11 days, a jury convicted both Dana and Joel of first-degree murder with the special circumstances of murder for financial gain, lying in wait, and multiple murders. But they were deadlocked on whether to impose the death penalty, so the judge gave them each 3 life sentences without parole. Years later a juror named Mike Elder said this about his experience serving on the jury: “Dana actually scared people. They would look over at him and he had this look on his face. You just thought any minute the horns were going to come up” Homicide investigator Chris Curtice believes only Glee Ewell caught a glimpse of the killer before she died and probably recognized him as a friend of her son since Dana had brought Joel to their home just a month before. And he said that "The shooter actually went and straddled her and shot her at close range." Former prosecutor, Jeff Hammerschmidt said, "I'm sure when she saw who it was, she knew her son was murdering her." Dana’s paternal grandfather, Austin Ewell, died in 1994 in an explosion in his basement. Although they couldn’t prove it wasn’t an accident, investigators did have evidence that Joel was in Ohio at the time. The grandfather was also very vocal about his suspicions of Dana’s involvement in the murders and pushed hard to keep him away from the inheritance money. In fact, he wrote Dana out of his own will. Ironically, both Jack Ponce and Monica Zent went on to become attorneys and both practice in California. Sources: Murderpedia .com Wikipedia .com Forensic files now .com An article by Lori A. Johnston on medium.com Called The Ewell Family Murders from June 2020 Court files from gov info .gov And the show Murdered for Millions on Hulu produced by ABC30