Ken Otto attempts to exterminate his victims.
('Best Foot Forward', forensic files)
Disappointing aspects of the update forensic files The case involves finding out that between the time the episode was produced and the present day, a man who committed a horrific murder has been released from prison.
Pick Richard Crafts (please). In a case that made headlines around the world in 1986, he murdered his wife, Helle Crafts, put her in a freezer and then disposed of her body using a wood chipper.
He went out.
Next is Fred Grabbe. In 1981, he murdered his wife, Charlotte Grabbe, by repeatedly suffocating her until she passed out, waiting for her to regain consciousness, and then starting the process again. He disposed of her body in unimaginable ways.
That person also left.
young housewife. So it seems appropriate to check in on the incarceration of another sadistic criminal, Ken Otto. He enjoyed harming living creatures, starting with animals and ending with humans. So, let’s get started with our recap of “Best Foot Forward.” Hartford Courant Other internet research:
The episode, which opens with a particularly lengthy stripper montage, introduces Shamaia Smith, a 22-year-old dancer from the Kahoots club in East Hartford, Connecticut.
Despite his dangerous job, Shamaia lived at home with his parents, Gloria Frink and Barry Smith Sr., on Indian Hill Road in East Hartford. According to her obituary, Shamaia attended Goodwin College, where she hoped to one day open her own beauty salon. Hartford Courant. In the meantime, she was making her living under the stage name Unique.
A rich bar fly. When Shamaia did not return home from work on March 14, 2007, her mother reported her missing to East Hartford police. Her boyfriend, Jamel McDonald, of Shamaia, said he had not seen her since she left for work in her car with a stranger at 3pm. He looked suspicious, but investigators quickly cleared him out.
They then turned their attention to Ken Otto, 56, a wealthy local man who frequented Kahoots. Ken said he drove Shamaia to her club and then went back to her house and slept with her the night she disappeared.
However, security footage showed that Shamaiah did not enter the club that day.
There is no free lunch. Kahoots employees told police they knew Ken Otto as a regular customer who paid a lot of attention to Shamaia. He later told her investigators that he suffered from impotence, which prevented him from having sex with her. Ken admitted that he gave her $500 “to continue her education.”
Shamaia's sister, Monique Frink, said Ken told Shamaia to be careful because he expected $500 in return (Rachel Siani). On her intuition, after Shamaia disappeared, Monique called Ken on her phone, where she identified herself as Shamaia and she left a message asking Ken to call her back.
He never did.
Colleagues like him. So who was this wealthy strip club resident? Kenneth John Otto Sr. was born on January 4, 1951. He and his wife, Kathleen, were married in 1974 and had a son and daughter. The family lived in a four-bedroom house at 21 Windmill Road in Ellington, Connecticut. Kathleen worked as a pharmacy technician. According to Hartford Courant, Ken was a manager at Bodycote Thermal Process, a metallurgical services company in South Windsor. all Boston Herald The story portrayed Ken as an engineer. In any case, court documents show Ken earned about $230,000 in the three years leading up to Shamaiah's disappearance.
His colleagues had no inkling of his cruelty. “He was outgoing, cheerful and a very friendly person,” said Alan Madden, the company’s HR director. Hartford Courant.
Ken had no criminal record.
A creepy hobby. Accounts of his relationship with Shamaia vary depending on the source. Either she was dating or he was paying her for sex or they were just friends.
Cellphone signals from the days before Shamaia went missing showed she was near a 75-acre wooded property owned by Ken Otto and his son in the town of Stafford. When Ken allowed lawmen to search the property, they discovered a burn pit that smelled like gasoline. After cadaver dogs arrived on the scene, they smelled the remains of corpses in the burn pit.
Ken explained that he had recently killed a beaver, chopped it up and burned it. He said he loved cutting dead animals into pieces.
Destroying your own property. He then revoked the search permission and sent a police team to the house.
When the police got a search warrant to examine the land again, Ken set fire to some of the land and used a backhoe to bury the newly damaged trailer.
Investigators found pieces of carpet that appeared to have once had marks on a human body. A mop recovered from the trailer had Shamaiah's blood on it, police said. Connecticut Law Tribune.
Gun evidence. From the burn pits, they recovered small pieces of human bone that did not have enough DNA to test, and discovered burned human feet with flesh still attached. The DNA matched that of a relative of Shamaia. A burnt key found at the crime scene opened the door to Shamaiah's house.
Ballistics testing linked three cartridges found in the building to a semi-automatic handgun in Ken's safe.
While detectives continued their investigation, the Otto family took on a clever move of their own. After East Hartford police interviewed Kathleen in April 2007 and told her that Ken had paid Shamaia Smith for her sex acts and that she was being investigated in the Shamaia murder case, Kathleen and Ken headed to Tewksbury, Massachusetts. There, Ken transferred ownership of his condominium to his wife. Upon his return to Connecticut, he relinquished his GMC envoy to her in 2004, and with his support, Kathleen consulted with her divorce attorney, according to court documents filed by Shamaia's representatives for her family.
Big bail. Meanwhile, Monique Frink complained that her sister's disappearance was barely reported in the media. But she soon found some satisfaction when authorities arrested Ken Otto at Bradley International Airport in May 2007. Hartford Courant. He also had Cialis and condoms.
According to information available at CrimeLibrary.org, Ken said he was on his way to a business meeting and needed cash to pay legal fees.
The judge set bail at $5 million cash, but prosecutors requested $10 million because they believed Ken was a high risk of flight.
Trailer terror. Bodycote Thermal Process suspended Ken and offered its condolences to Shamaia's family. (The company also hired Kathleen and Ken's son, Kenneth Otto Jr., who continued to work there.)
According to the trial, Ken received three disciplinary tickets while awaiting trial, including one charge of possession of handcuff keys. Hartford Courant.
In court proceedings, prosecutor Kenneth Zagaja argued that Ken hired Shamaia, as he admitted. But he claimed that instead of dropping her off in her Kahoots, he drove her 30 miles away to her own property in Stafford. At Ken's trailer, they had an exchange of sorts, including him shooting her twice, rolling her on her carpet, and burning her body in her pit for days.
another friend. At trial, police said Ken Sr. Although he admitted to dating Shamaiah, he did not admit to murdering her.
His attorney offered a SODDI defense. A friend of the Otto family testified that many people used the Stafford property for recreational purposes, including dirt biking, camping, and target shooting, and that people other than the Ottos also occasionally used the burn pit.
The defense attorney also described the abused trailer. Kenneth Jr. said he partially buried it because he and his father planned to use it as the foundation for a log cabin.
Tapped out. The 12-member jury, unimpressed by the defense's arguments, found Ken Sr. guilty of murder and tampering with evidence. Superior Court Judge Thomas O'Keefe Jr. called him a cold-blooded murderer and sentenced him to 60 years in prison.
“That’s life,” said Gloria Frink. Hartford Courant. “That’s exactly what we were looking for.” Monique Frink said it still haunts her that no one knows the reason for her murder or what Shamaia's last words were.
In 2012, the Connecticut Supreme Court unanimously rejected Ken Otto's claim that there was not enough evidence to prove the state attempted to kill Shamaiah. At this time, Ken was not represented by a private attorney but by public defender Adele Patterson. He reportedly already used $264,000 from his retirement account to pay for legal representation. Hartford Courant.
Million dollar verdict. The following year, Ken tried the popular “incompetent defense” argument, but the Connecticut Superior Court rejected it.
Meanwhile, Stephen McEleney, the victim's family's attorney, argued that the Otto couple transferred property to Kathleen before their divorce and conspired to deprive Shamiah of compensation for his property, thereby violating the Uniform Fraudulent Conveyance Act. succeeded in claiming that it had violated It was ruled that the family should receive $670,000 in relief.
Shamaia's family also won a $9 million lawsuit against Otto.
Trapped behind the razor blade. It is unclear whether Shamaiah's survivors actually received any money.
“The man has been locked up for a significant period of time and clearly has had no income,” said Richard Brown, one of Ken’s lawyers. Connecticut Law Tribune. “It’s not always about the economy. I assume the plaintiff did so for reasons other than money. “They were extremely upset that my client had been found guilty and felt the need to seek civil damages.”
But Shamaia's family has so far seen justice served to the killer. Ken, now 72, lives with 1,329 other inmates at the high-security, high-security MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield, Connecticut. The state Department of Corrections lists his release date as May 15, 2067 (when he was 116 years old) and makes no mention of his parole eligibility.
Your business will be transformed. Gloria Frink died in 2014 at age 53, according to an update to the victim's family. Her obituary noted that, in addition to Shamaia, her son Barry Smith Jr. preceded her in death. Shamaiah's younger sister, Monique Frink. forensic files Observers will remember her on-camera interviews. Since then she got married and was known as Monique Cooper. She has a background working with people with autism.
The club where Shamaia and her killer met has changed over the years. Kahoots adopted a no-touch policy in 2010, meaning no lap dances or tips on dancers' clothes. The restaurant closed in 2013 due to legal issues, but has since reopened with attractive waitresses rather than exotic dancers. Let's hope the business doesn't have obsessive customers that lead to tragedies like Shamaia Smith's death.
That's all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — R.R.
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