Leroy Fowler: Death by Antifreeze

May 7th, 2017 was an ordinary Sunday in the town of Bellaire, Ohio. For the Kinney family, it was a day to run errands. David Kinney, along with his wife Cheri and her 13-year-old daughter, had to make a quick stop at his best friend, Brad McGarry’s house to drop off an electric weed trimmer for him to borrow. But the ordinary task turned into something far more sinister when they arrived and noticed Brad’s door was suspiciously open. David stuck his head in and yelled out for Brad, but all that greeted him was a haunting silence. Struck with the fear that something could be seriously wrong in the home, the three members of the Kinney family walked in. And their concerns grew into panic as they realized that the house had been ransacked. They kept calling for Brad, but he was seemingly nowhere to be found. David made his way through the house, and when he got to the basement, he frantically shouted to Cheri to call 911. Brad McGarry was lying face down on the floor of his basement, with a pool of blood around him.When police arrived on the scene, officers found David and Cheri outside the house, hysterical over the loss of their beloved friend, who their kids lovingly called “Uncle Brad”. Brad was not only a dear friend to the Kinney family, but someone who was adored by a huge network of family and friends. As the investigation began, what looked like a possible fatal home invasion soon shaped into something far more personal. Someone who claimed to love Brad, and who may have been among the people closest to him, would ultimately be arrested for his murder.

In the early hours of Monday 9 May 2022, in Ballymun, on the northside of Dublin, Ireland, a woman looked out of her window and saw a man in her neighbour's back garden. It was around 2am. She watched him load three bags into the back of a dark jeep, which then drove away. The house belonged to 52-year-old Lisa Thompson. For the next day and a half, no one heard from her. On the Tuesday afternoon, a friend went to the house. The back door was unlocked. Inside, Lisa was lying on the living room floor. She had been stabbed in the chest, and wrapped around her neck was the cord from a window blind. Who had killed Lisa Thompson in her own home? Was it a random act of violence, or something else?

On the evening of May 8, 2008, in the northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada, 57-year-old Sharon Randolph and her husband, 53-year-old Thomas Randolph, went out together. It was the Thursday before Mother’s Day. They had dinner at a steakhouse, spent some time in the casino, stopped for fuel, and drove home to their house on Rancho Santa Fe Drive. Sharon went into the house first. A short time later, Thomas called 911. His wife had been shot. And there was a man inside their home, a man Thomas said he had just shot. When police arrived, Sharon was dead in the hallway. In the garage lay the body of the man Thomas had shot. He had been wearing a mask, Thomas said. But he wasn’t a stranger. He was 38-year-old Michael James Miller, a man who had been doing odd jobs around the Randolphs’ home. At first, there appeared to be an explanation. A burglary had gone wrong. An intruder had killed a woman in her own home, and her husband had killed the intruder. But as detectives began looking more closely at Thomas Randolph, they discovered something extraordinary. Sharon was not his first wife. She was his sixth. And she was not the first of his wives to die…

On Sunday the thirty first of May 2009, nineteen year old Noelle Washington walked into a police station in Cincinnati and made a statement against her boyfriend. That afternoon she was examined at hospital. By the following night, she was dead. So was her nine month old son, Anthony. So was three year old Sha'railyn Wright, who was only staying over. All three had been shot in the head. Why had Mark Pickens killed Noelle Washington so violently? Was it as simple as keeping her quiet?And if it was, why did two small children have to die with her?

On the morning of August 20, 2016, a family in a small Minnesota town woke up to find their five-year-old daughter gone. She had been put to bed a few hours earlier, carried from the couch to her own room, still asleep. Her blanket was also missing. So was her father’s truck. So was his phone. And so was the man who had spent the night in their house. By lunchtime, an Amber Alert had gone out across the entire state of Minnesota. By late afternoon, police were eighty miles north of Watkins, standing at the edge of a swamp in Cass County. And by six o’clock that evening, the search for Alayna Ertl was over…