Citizen Jane
Jane Alexander didn't expect to spend her golden years as an amateur detective, heading a group that helps families of murder victims solve cases.
"I figured I'd just enjoy my grandchildren, of which I have 12," says Alexander, who is 77.
But 17 years ago, her life took a totally unexpected turn. Bill Lagattuta reports on this unusual case.
In the early 1980s, in Marin County, Calif., Alexander and her boyfriend, Tom O'Donnell, were living a good life. They shared a nice house in the hills and had a vibrant group of friends.
"It was a wonderful life," says Alexander. "Tom had traveled the world so he had all kinds of friends that would come in." The charismatic O'Donnell would entertain everyone with stories from his life as an international businessman. Among his ventures: helping people smuggle out their personal assets from unstable African countries.
For his part, O'Donnell had helped turn around Alexander's life. In 1977, Jane's husband of 34 years and the father of her six children, Al, had died from a heart attack. His death sent her into a deep depression.
Not until Tom O'Donnell showed up, in 1980, was Alexander able to finally snap out of her depression. After a few months of dating, O'Donnell moved in with Alexander. "She was really in love with him," says Bob Toneff, a friend.
Then, in October 1983, Jane's 88-year-old aunt, Gertrude McCabe, was brutally murdered in her house in San Jose. Alexander had been close to her Aunt Gert, and the murder shocked her.
"Jane was devastated," says Erin Rohde, another friend. "She really was. She didn't have a lot of family. So her Aunt Gertrude was very important to her."
The way McCabe was killed was unusual. She was bludgeoned with a blunt instrument, stabbed, strangled, smothered with a pillow and then choked with a bicycle chain encased in plastic.
A search of McCabe's home, where she lived alone, raised more questions. The killer had pulled out drawers and thrown around clothes, in an apparent attempt to make the crime resemble a robbery. But he had not taken from the house jewelry or cash or anything of value. The only thing police found missing was the registry for McCabe's checkbook.
Over the next few months, police followed several leads. One led to Alexander and O'Donnell.
"It was discovered that Tom O'Donnell and Jane Alexander were basically broke," says Detective Jeff Ouimet, who investigated the case. "At the time of the murder, they had a large house payment due and basically had no money in their checking account to pay for it." Alexander was one of the main benefactors of McCabe's inheritance. Police focused on O'Donnell.
Then, on June 7, 1984, without warning, O'Donnell vanished. He left a 12-page letter saying that old business partners from a shady diamond transaction were on his trail and angry because they thought he had betrayed them, landing theprison. His life was in danger, as was Alexander's, he wrote. She was hysterical.
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That evening, Jane Alexander learned that she was broke. Her boyfriend had been handling their finances for years. "I left it all to him," she says. "Remember I was married to a banker for 34 years, and money is not really my thing."
O'Donnell had persuaded her to take out a second mortgage on her home, for $200,000. She had handed over much of that loan - $118,000 - to O'Donnell, who put it into the stock market and lost it.
Alexander thought there was nothing to worry about. O'Donnell told her he was coming into money of his own: more than a million dollars from a Swiss trust fund. After he left, though, she discovered the trust did not exist.
O'Donnell's stories didn't end there. O'Donnell conned Alexander until the day he left. That afternoon he convinced her to withdraw $10,000 from the bank.
But even so, Alexander's faith in her boyfriend was unshaken. "She truly loved this man and was buying into everything he had written," says Erin Rohde.
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Yet O'Donnell had an alibi. The day before the murder, he had told Alexander that he was flying to Burbank, Calif., to stay with a friend. On Saturday morning, the day after the murder, O'Donnell returned home to Marin County.
When police checked his alibi, they discovered O'Donnell had logged 669 miles on his rental car, in just one day.
"What he didn't realize is that the police were going to find out that he rented a car and that the mileage on the rental car was dead on from Burbank to the murder scene and back," Ouimet says.
Police still needed more than that to charge him with murder. Marin County decided, however, to prosecute O'Donnell on fraud charges. Yet Alexander wouldn't press charges. She still believed in him.
Find out what happens. Does Alexander track down her aunt's killer?
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