On The Trail Of A Killer

Five months after vanishing, Tom O'Donnell sent his girlfriend Jane Alexander a second letter, in which he said he was working for the people who previously had been chasing him. Alexander didn't believe it and completely changed her mind about her boyfriend.

"I was so angry," she says. "He planned it down to the last detail and obviously been planning it for weeks, maybe months. And all the time I'm living with him I'm sleeping with this man. And he's so comforting and so kind and so solicitious. How could I be so dumb?"

Within weeks, she filed charges against him.

But where was he? Alexander decided to find him. She remembered he had a good friend in Las Vegas. She called the friend, who seemed evasive.

Then she called police, who arrested him in San Jose. He was watching TV.

Some 18 months after his disappearance, O'Donnell was put on trial. He was found guilty of four counts of fraud and sentenced to four years in prison.

But Alexander was bankrupt. She had lost her house and had to move into an unheated room in someone's home. "It was a lifestyle change," she says.

For the first time in her life, she had to get a job - something she never had expected at this point in her life. She ended up a receptionist at a retirement home.

At this point Alexander wanted to put O'Donnell in prison for murder. She and the detectives had to come up with the evidence before he finished his sentence, after which he could disappear again.

She went to work, gathering all the police reports and financial information and began combing through it. After months of digging, she found two important clues, both mistakes made by O'Donnell. "He was great at con, but not at murder," she says.

His first mistake: a phone call made the day after the murder. He called his relatives in Montana and told them he finally would be able to repay a $10,000 debt. The reason: Alexander's aunt had died, and she was going to inherit a lot of money. But according to Detective Jeff Ouimet, McCabe's body wasn't found until the next day.

After reporting her find to detectives, Alexander kept digging. Her next break came from her daughter-in-law, Rocky Alexander. O'Donnell had called Rocky Alexander the day after McCabe's body was found. He told her that McCabe had been "garrotted." Rocky Alexander didn't know what that meant, so she wrote it down.

In fact, McCabe had been garrotted, with the bicycle chain. But the information had not yet been released.

"That was withheld specifically because we did not want anybody to know the means of strangulation," says Ouimet, who worked closely with Alexander on the case. "And in fact, nobody did know but the killer."

Ouimet found O'Donnell's third mistake. The first day that police searched McCabe's house, the only thing they couldn't find was her check register. The killer had taken it, police believed, to find out how much money McCabe had

A few weeks after the murder, O'Donnell told Alexander that he had found the check register in McCabe's house. He showed her exactly where he had found it: in a bedroom drawer. Ouimet reviewed crime scene photos, which included a picture of the drawer without the checkbook register inside. O'Donnell put it there after the photos were taken, Ouimet says.

"He knew they were looking for it; he was an inexperienced murderer, so he made a few mistakes," Alexander says. "He would've been better off burning it." With that piece of evidence, police decided they had enough to prosecute O'Donnell.

By this time O'Donnell was free again, after serving 18 months in prison. He was living with a wealthy widow in Los Angeles. On March 17, 1992, police arrested him on charges of first-degree murder.

At the trial, O'Donnell never took the stand. Alexander was the prosecution's lead witness. A jury found him guilty. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. He will be eligible for parole in 2007, when he is 72.

"I still feel wonderful every time I think about him rotting in jail," Alexander says.

Today Alexander helps families struggling with unsolved murders. She founded Citizens Against Homicide with her friend Jan Miller, whose daughter was murdered and the killer unknown.

Says Alexander: "The purpose of (the group) is to help families get through the quagmire of this criminal justice system when they get involved in a homicide like I did." She advises people to take matters into their own hands.

The group is currently working on about 40 homicide cases. It appeals to the public by posting rewards in the hope that someone will come forward with new information. Just last week, police made an arrest in a case that is four years old.

Besides putting murderers behind bars, the group works to keep them from getting out on parole. The citizen's group has never failed to persuade authorities to deny parole. Alexander says. She plans to continue that track record with O'Donnell.

Alexander's children say their mother has found a new purpose in life.

"Let's put it this way," Alexander says. "No one intimidates me anymore. You just have to stand up for what you believe in."

Or go back to part one of the story, Citizen Jane.

© MMI Viacom Internet Services Inc. All Rights Reserved