The police entered the information into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) and started patrolling the last area Marie had been seen. Another caller told the police she had known Marie since August 1980 and occasionally had lunch with Marie. She said that Dr. Azevedo seemed to upset Marie very much and there appeared to be problems with child abuse on the part of the father. She said Dr. Azevedo came over to the United States before the rest of the family. Later, when Marie and the boy came over from India to join him, his son did not remember him. Dr. Azevedo beat him, trying to get him to remember. Marie told her that when they lived in Chicago, she turned him into the Department of Children and Family Services after he placed the boy in a trash can and said, I don’t want you if your not going to love me. According to the Logansport Pharos-Tribune, a Logansport, Indiana newspaper, Shawneetown resident Ellis was arrested and charged with three counts of murder in December 1986. He was “suspected of spiking his father’s iced tea with antifreeze.” Ellis was living with 61-year-old Charles T. Ellis at the time. Murder in the Heartland is a television miniseries that aired on ABC in 1993. It was based on the 1957–58 murder spree carried out by 19-year-old Charles Starkweather throughout Nebraska and Wyoming. Starkweather is played by Tim Roth. The first half of the miniseries covers the murders. The second half covers the trials of Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, his 14-year-old grooming victim. Their increasingly disparate versions of events are contrasted as the trials unfold.

Murder in the Heartland: Book Two - by Harry Spiller - Target

I sent a deputy to the home and he found the husband in bed where the woman said he would be. He had been shot with a shotgun and there was blood and brains all over the wall. The deputy roped off the crime scene and the detectives begin to process the scene. Yeah, I know. Alice is a precinct judge in my precinct. She lives just north of me and the cemetery is just south of where we live. Right after her daughter was buried, she was in the office one day and told me that Sharon’s husband had murdered her daughter. I just thought she was upset at him. Continuing the investigation, police begin interviewing neighbors and friends of Marie and the family. Most of the neighbors did not see anything unusual on the morning of Marie’s disappearance, but they did say that she was a wonderful mother and a very nice person. No one believed that she would go anywhere and leave her children alone. Marie said Dr. Azevedo did not want the youngest child to go to a babysitter or to play with other children. He preferred the child stay in his office by herself. Dentist Allen Azevedo, the husband of the victim, immediately became a suspect as police probed into the homicide case. Although, they learned that the dentist had an airtight alibi. Police investigated the case for three years without any success.Police rushed to the scene. The officers approached the vehicle. A female fully clothed was slumped over the steering wheel of the car. She appeared to have been dead for several days. Police detected that there were several bullet holes in the clothing of her upper torso. The front doors of the vehicle were standing open, and it appeared that she had been shot from both sides of the station wagon execution style.

Murder in the Heartland - Season 2 - IMDb Murder in the Heartland - Season 2 - IMDb

At the hospital, Ellis’ condition became worse. He was transferred to St. Mary’s Hospital on Nov. 7 in Evansville, Indiana, where he died on Nov. 20. Tammy Slaton gets approval for weight loss surgery in the same episode He said that Dr. Azevedo continued on saying his wife Marie had accused him of beating their children with chains, the result of which was he was compelled to psychiatric counseling by the courts. He also said that Dr. Azevedo told him that he was very fond of his children and would do anything to get custody of them.

Amy Slaton’s grandfather’s death report from the Logansport Pharos-Tribune

Through other information that the sheriff’s investigators had obtained, the sheriff had reason to believe that the missing husband had been dumped in a cesspool behind a home belonging to Jim Williams, Sr. The problem was he had no probable cause to get a search warrant. When Chris Combs arrives “looking like their grandfather” to help Amy plant a vegetable garden, she tells cameras how the family patriarch was murdered by his son. Spiller’s 2003 book has a chapter titled “The Antifreeze Murder (Shawneetown, IL),” which details how Charles H. Ellis murdered his father in 1986. In this book, Murder in the Heartland Book 2, there are ten case files. They are cases from the heartland that I as Sheriff participated in the investigation or cases that I have researched as a writer. It is my hope that in reading these murder cases people will become more aware of our vulnerability as citizens. Rural America isn’t immune to murder. As much as we like to think of ourselves as safe, murder can happen here. Too often it does. Case 1 The Azevedo Murders

Murder in the Heartland: Book Two by Harry Spiller | Goodreads Murder in the Heartland: Book Two by Harry Spiller | Goodreads

Marie told her that she found out that the six-year-old daughter was sleeping with Dr. Azevedo. Marie sent the child to a psychologist to see if anything unusual had occurred and found out that the child had not been sexually abused in any way.The tragedy of this case didn’t end here. During the trial one of the sons, who was now fifteen years old, listened to the evidence and realized that his father had killed his mother and got away with it. He obtained a gun and while his dad was taking a nap in his dentist office, he shot and killed him. The young man loaded the body into a car, but was caught when his car broke down before he could dispose of the body. One morning I went to the office early to catch up on some paperwork. It was about 6:30 a.m. I was reading and, although I didn’t hear anyone, I had the feeling there was someone in the room. I looked up to find a woman standing in front of my desk. Her small frame of about ninety pounds was still as she looked at me with eyes that looked like glass marbles. The police gathered the evidence, dusted for fingerprints and then the body was removed from the vehicle and taken to a local hospital for an autopsy. Soon afterward the car was impounded for further processing by the Illinois State Crime Lab.

Murder in the Heartland - Wikipedia Murder in the Heartland - Wikipedia

During the course of the investigation we learned that her husband had battered her and her children for years. On several occasions she tried to leave him, but he would always find her and bring her and the children home. Then after a while the battering would start all over again.Another caller said she was in Dr. Azevedo’s office at 4:30 p.m. on April 1, 1981, waiting for her appointment. While she was waiting, Dr. Azevedo told her that he heard something on the radio that had him upset. He did not mention what it was he heard. The lady changed her appointment and left. Brian Dennehy was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie. Ronald Victor Garcia was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Cinematography for a Limited Series or Movie. [1]