One Dysfunctional Family From Murder

Dysfunctional Family This is the story of the Fuss Family from Decatur, Georgia – a suburb of Atlanta It begins in the late 1950s with Bill and Jackie Fuss a well to-do couple who dreamed of having a big family. They had a daughter named Margaret, but they had trouble conceiving after that. This was the age before fertility treatments when adoption was the only solution. So after several years, they decided they were ready to adopt to grow their family. In 1965 the couple adopted 2 boys, brothers Charles, 5, and David, 3. By this time Margaret was 15 and had grown accustomed to being an only child who was doted up on by her parents. She was not as thrilled with the adoption as her parents and was not kind to her new siblings. It was Bill and Jackie’s initial intention to also adopt a baby girl to “round out their family” but Bill worked many hours as a building contractor and Jackie was the one at home with the 3 kids. It was more than she had expected, and she lost her temper with them often. In 1970, Bill heard about a baby girl whose mother was going to have an abortion but kept the baby to put up for adoption. Bill was a pro-life Baptist and super excited about rescuing this little baby, Jackie on the other hand was no longer wanted to add to their family, but ultimately Jackie gave in. They named the new baby, Melissa. Although Bill and Jackie treated all 4 children the same, Margaret made a point to remind her adopted siblings that their real parents didn’t want them. She was special because she was their parent’s biological child. And as much as Bill and Jackie tried to compensate for Margaret’s comments, the negative comments are the ones that stuck. This is turn caused the 3 adopted siblings to act out. Bill avoided it by spending more time at work. Which left Jackie to deal with it alone. But the more Jackie tried to keep the peace in the house, the more the 3 adopted kids would act out and tell Jackie “you’re not my real mother.” Jackie went from being a loving, doting mother, to an angry, overwhelmed, and verbally abusive one. Even neighbors reported they would hear her screaming at the kids. There was a lot of anger in the Fuss home. On top of that, as Charles got older he started showing signs of having both mental and emotional issues. They noticed signs of paranoia and having dilutions. The siblings though of Charles as crazy, Jackie would refer to him as slow. Eventually he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. The dysfunction in the home led to the children to move out as quickly as they could. Margaret moved got married. David did the same shortly after. Melissa got married at 16 just to move out and get away from the situation. Charles was the only one not to move out. He needed to be watched because he wouldn’t take his medication regularly. When he wasn’t medicated, he was unpredictable and angry. He couldn’t hold down a job. Jackie struggled to manage and control him, but once he got into his 20s it became almost impossible. And the 3 other kids didn’t try to stay connected to their parents or their brother. But in 1993, Bill died from a long, hard battle with lung cancer. Suddenly, Margaret, David and Melissa are back, but their only concern is their father’s estate, especially his rental properties worth several hundred thousand dollars. Margaret insisted as the only biological daughter their father loved her more and so his entire estate belonged to her. David and Melissa disagreed and wanted their share. So the siblings are once again at each other’s throats until Jackie steps in and says none of them are getting anything because she’s keeping it all in order to support herself and Charles. So now it’s just Jackie in the house with Charles. He wants more freedom and Jackie is overbearing. They don’t agree on how to treat his mental illness. Their relationship is toxic and Charles becomes more and more volatile. Bill had guns that he kept unlocked in the house. And Jackie began to grow fearful of Charles’ temper tantrums. There is a report of Charles attempting to rob a convenience store with one of Bill’s guns, but when the owner pulled out his own gun, Charles passed out. He apparently served some time for that, and Jackie never let him forget. Around this same time, Melissa’s was having issues of her own. After only a year, her marriage was a mess but she didn’t know what to do about it. One night she meets a guy at a bar, named Joel Domingues. He’s a few years older and also unhappily married. They 2 clicked and started having a very passionate affair. Melissa showered Joel with love and affection and Joel fell hard. They both thought they had found the love of their lives. After the affair had been going on for a year, Melissa decided she wanted to find her birth mother. After searching for her birth records and getting her biological mother’s name and info, Melissa reaches out. She’s thrilled to find out her birth mother, Sandra, is happy to hear from her and wants to meet. They make a plan to meet, but Sandra shows up with a surprise… her adult son, Melissa’s biological brother. And it’s Joel Domingues. It’s obvious to Sandra that Melissa and Joel know each other but she’s horrified when they admit they’ve been having a sexual relationship. Melissa doesn’t care, she loves Joel and thinks it’s fine because she grew up separate from her mother and brother. But Sandra is adamant that they need to end it. Joel, who is upset and confused, listens to his mother and ends things with Melissa. Melissa is heartbroken. And to top it off, her marriage comes to an end as well. In the meantime, Jackie has met a retired mechanic named Edzel Bruce. They hit it off and start having a relationship. And after less than a year, they get married on Valentine’s day 1995. Jackie moves out of the Fuss family home and into Edzel’s house and leaves Charles who is now 30, to live alone. And although that’s what Charles had said he wanted for years, it turned out he needed Jackie. He didn’t have any friends, he didn’t have a relationship with his siblings. He was ALONE alone. Jackie would still come by the house and check on him, and make sure he was keeping up the house, which he wasn’t, and they’d fight. So Charles goes from hating having this overbearing mom and wanted to be on his own, to hating that she abandoned him but then comes by and nags him. So in June of 1996, Jackie stops by the house to check on Charles. She immediately starts on him about the house not being kept up. But she offers to give him money to go cut the lawn and he does. While he’d doing that, she notices the phone bill. Charles had racked up $1800 in phone sex charges. Jackie was livid. They get into a huge argument. Several hours later, around 6pm, Jackie’s husband Edzel gets a weird call from Charles saying he locked himself out of the house and he needs Jackie and Edzel to come over and let him in. Edzel is confused and says “I thought your mom was at the house with you.” Charles quickly says “I’ll call you back” and hangs up. Concerned, he calls back but the phone just rings. That’s when Edzel notices there’s a message on the answering machine he hadn’t noticed. He plays it and it’s from Jackie from several hours earlier. Jackie’s message just says she’s checking in, that she’s still at the house… but then her tone suddenly changes and there is distinct concern in her voice and she ends the call. Now Edzel is freaked out and drives over to the Fuss home. When he arrives, the house is dark and locked up and no one answers. Now he’s really freaked out and calls 911 for help. Police force open the door. After searching the upstairs and finding nothing, they head to the basement, which is where Charles’ bedroom is located. There they find Jackie on the floor of Charles’ bedroom with a gaping wound to her head, surrounded in a pool of blood. Charles is nowhere to be found. Jackie Fuss was 72 years old at the time of her death. The medical examiner determines Jackie died from a blow to the back of the head by a sharp object. At the home, crime scene investigators found an axe – which appeared to have been cleaned off – with small traces of blood on it. Analysis determined the blood was Jackie’s. An arrest warrant is issued and a statewide APB is put out on Charles. But there is no sign of him. Then 9 days later, 450 miles away, police in Arkansas get a 911 call saying a naked man is walking down the street. Officers arrive and find a man sitting not naked, but shirtless, very unkept and dirty, homeless looking. When they approach him and and ask if he’s ok, he tells them he is Charles Fuss and he’s wanted in Georgia for murder and wants to turn himself in. After taking him into custody, Charles tells police that several days earlier he got into a fight with his mother about a phone bill. She was livid and said was having the phone shut off. That’s when he snapped. He went down to the basement, grabbed an axe and then waited for her in his bedroom. Jackie had been leaving a message for her husband when Charles yelled for her to come downstairs immediately. When Jackie got to the bedroom, Charles told her there was rat under his bed. When Jackie got down on the floor to look under the bed, Charles pulled out the axe and hit her in the back of the head with it. He then wiped the blood off the axe, put it back where he found it. Later he called Jackie’s husband Edzel in an attempt to get him to come to the house as well. When Edzel questioned him, he hung up. Charles then emptied all the money out of his mother’s purse and left. He took a taxi to a local bar and the next morning he planned on fleeing to California by hitchiking, but only managed to get as far as Arkansas. Charles was extradited back to Georgia. Once again, Margaret, David and Melissa came home but it was apparent their only concern was their inheritance. They didn’t seem at all concerned that their mother was murdered or that their mentally ill brother was accused of the crime and facing life in prison. According to an article in The Atlanta Constitution, within hours of Jackie’s body being discovered, Melissa petitioned the court to have her mother’s 3 safe deposit boxes opened. In the same article it says that before the funeral flowers were bought, the remaining 3 siblings met at a restaurant to discuss how to split up the estate. The Fuss home and their rental properties were worth about $450 thousand dollars. Jackie had about $100 thousand dollars worth of jewelry including more than 50 diamond rings, plus 9 cars and an additional $134 thousand is cash and CDs. Jackie did not have a will and Margaret was named as the administrator of her mother’s estate. Margaret felt that as the only biological daughter, she was the sole heir to the family money and refused to split it 3 ways. None of the siblings were willing to compromise. There are rumors that Charles was framed for Jackie’s murder by one or more of his siblings. Jackie had kept all of the family money once Bill had died to support herself and Charles. When Jackie died, the family estate was again theirs AND Charles couldn’t claim a portion of it. In December 1997, Charles went on trial for murder and claimed an insanity defense. He was found guilty of his mother’s murder but also deemed clinically insane at the time of the murder and was sentenced to 10 years to life in the Augustus State Medical Prison. The fight over the Fuss family estate stretched on for 3 years. The siblings met more than 60 times to argue over their inheritance. David’s wife Kelly often found herself in the middle of the arguments trying to keep the peace, but the sisters felt it was none of her business. This put added strain on David’s marriage which was already rocky due to David’s drinking problem. Finally in the summer of 1999 it looks as though the siblings were close to reaching an agreement on the estate, but Kelly had also reached her limit. She was making plans to leave David. Margaret and Melissa were worried that once the estate was divided, Kelly was going to divorce David and take ½ of what he got of the estate, and they didn’t think she should have any of it. About this time Margaret moved back in the Fuss home and believes that some of her mother’s possessions are missing. And she immediately thinks it was David who took them. So she goes to David’s house to confront him. He denies taking anything and claims to have no idea what Margaret is talking about. They get in a huge fight. Kelly attempts to intervene and fines herself a target of Margaret’s anger as well. The next day, June 15, 1999, David calls 911 for an ambulance. He says he just got home and found his wife on the floor dead. Police rush to the scene and find David outside the house, smoking a cigarette. He was oddly calm, very detached. The scene inside is gruesome. 31 year old Kelly Fuss is dead on the floor of the kitchen, covered in stab wounds and blood. She was stabbed over 30 times, 2 of them fatal. Blood was in multiple rooms of the house. It appeared that the struggle began in the back of the house in the bathroom where a crossword puzzle was found on the floor covered in blood. So it was determined that Kelly was assaulted while in the bathroom. The murder appeared violent, drawn out and personal. There were no signs of forced entry and Kelly’s car was missing. David told police Kelly had taken the day off work. He had left the house that morning for a meeting and returned about 45 minutes later to find Kelly dead. Police were immediately suspicious of his story and behavior and brought him in for questioning. There were no prints found in the house and the murder weapon is missing. David was adamant that he had nothing to do with his wife’s murder. Instead, he points the finger at his sisters. David tells them that the appointment he had was to meet his sisters. Margaret asked him to come to the Fuss home to meet with her and Melissa to discuss dividing up some of their mother’s things which they have been fighting over for several years. But when he arrives his sisters aren’t there. When he returns home, he finds Kelly dead in the kitchen. The idea that there was more than 1 murdered fit with the crime scene – the amount of damage in the home and overkill could suggest more than 1 intruder. While David is being interrogated, Kelly’s car is found, parked on a street several blocks from their home. And they have a witness who tells them they saw a white heavy-set male with a beard get out of Kelly’s car, and then a white pickup pulled up, with 2 white females in the cab, and the male hopped into the back of the pick up and they drove off. So an APB is put out on the white pickup and the 3 suspects. One of the detectives in the area who hears the APB in connection to the murder of Kelly Fuss recognizes the last name. He worked the murder of Jackie Fuss. So on a hunch, he drives to the Fuss family home. And in the driveway is a white pickup. He approaches and in the pickup is a white female and a white male with a beard. He orders them out and finds Melissa and Joel Dominguez – who it turns out rekindled their romance. They are both arrested. Soon after, Margaret is located and arrested at a local motel. Police interrogate all 3 separately. They each give different stories and point the finger at each other, but none admit to being involved in Kelly’s murder. So all 3 are charged with Kelly’s murder. When Joel was arrested there was a tiny spot of blood on one of his socks. Forensic testing came back and the blood was Kelly’s. That put Joel at the crime scene, but not the sisters. There were no prints found at the scene and they still didn’t have a murder weapon. Margaret’s lawyer said she would plea to the lesser charge of manslaughter with a 10-year sentence and the prosecutor agreed. Melissa is then offered a deal to drop the murder charge if she agrees to testify against Joel, her lover and biological brother. Melissa takes the deal and pleads guilty to burglary and gets a 10-year sentence. According to Melissa, Margaret came to her saying David stole some of their mother Jackie’s things she wanted to get them back. So the sisters devised a plan to lure David away from his home so they could break in and take the items back. Melissa asks Joel to help them, they’d need help if David came back to the house before they were done. Joel will do anything for Melissa and agrees to help. So on the morning of June 15th, Margaret calls David to meet at the Fuss home. Then Joel, Melissa and Margaret drive in Melissa’s white pickup to David’s home. Margaret and Joel go into the house and Melissa drives down the street and parks the truck to wait for Joel to call. After some time, Joel calls for her to pick them up. Margaret and Joel are waiting for her in front of the house. Joel was wearing gloves and carrying a garbage bag. Joel gets in Kelly’s car and drives off. Margaret gets in the truck, says Kelly is dead we have to go. They follow Joel in Kelly’s car for a few blocks, then he ditches the car and hops into the back of her truck with the bag and they leave. They didn’t know that Kelly had taken the day off work and were surprised to see her. At some point Joel separates from them for a few hours. This is probably when he ditched the gloves and garbage bag which presumably had his bloody clothes and the murder weapon. He later rejoins Melissa at the Fuss home where they were arrested. In May of 2000, Joel is tried and convicted of murder and sentenced to 20 years to life. He maintained that he wasn’t the one who murdered Kelly, but I don’t believe he ever turned on Melissa. Kelly’s murder appeared to be more of an act of rage than of someone who caught burglars off guard by unexpectedly being home. Also, none of the items Margaret believed David took were found in his home. It’s not likely he took anything. That’s the story of the Fuss Family. 3 of 4 siblings were involved in the murder of 2 other family members. Charles is still in prison. Margaret and Melissa were both released in 2009. And David Fuss died in 2011 from health issues. And on Feb 18, 2018, Joel was found dead by apparent suicide in his prison cell. Sources: Main source was the show Evil Kin, Season 4 Episode 7 “Don’t turn on me” Excerpt from the book “Blood Relatives: A true story of family secrets and murders” by Lori Carangelo Lawskills .com Casemine .com Article titled “Estate dispute led to slaying, police say” from The Atlanta Constitution published June 17, 1999 AP News .com