Charles Abanese

This is one of those cases that when I was done researching all I could do was shake my head. I did not shake my head because I was disgusted in some way in the process in the justice system, or even at the heinousness of the crime. No, I was left shaking my head at the not just the stupidity of the perpetrator, but at the idea that he believed everyone around him was stupid and believed him. Now, that is not to say that sometimes a completely innocent person has a story that just seems too odd to be true and yet it is. That is not the case here, at least not in my opinion and I would gander to guess that you the reader will feel the same when you are finished here. Charles Abanese attempted to convince everyone around him, including the courts, that he was set up and that everyone who testified at his trial lied against him.

The defense attorneys would argue, and I cannot disagree that this was a huge circumstantial case. But, most cases are. The only real time there is “direct” evidence is when someone witnesses the crime with a positive identification. Today that could also come from a video tape. In the modern world we depend a lot on DNA evidence but in 1982, when this case went to trial there was no such thing. The prosecutor in this case described things very well pertaining to not just this case but all circumstantial cases. He stated it was a puzzle case. A piece was found here; a piece was found there. Putting all the pieces together you see the puzzle as a whole.

On August 3, 1980 eighty-nine year Mary Lambert and her sixty-nine year old daughter, Marion Mueller went to have dinner at Marion's daughter's home in Spring Grove Illinois. Marion's daughter, Virginia, was married to Charles Abanese and on the surface not only did the family appear to be well financially but everyone seemed to be very close. Mary and Marion lived in a condominium in a retirement community but they spent a lot of time with Virginia and Charles in either their own home or at the Abanese home. Dinner was said to have been polish sausage and sauerkraut. Soon after returning home that Sunday afternoon Mary began to be ill. She started vomiting and having diarrhea. On August 5^th Mary went to the emergency room expressing she had been having issues for 36-48 hours. She would die the following day. It does not appear that any sort of extra testing was done due to her age and her death was thought to be from natural causes. Marion had also been ill since dinner at the Abanese home with the same symptoms. On the 16^th she too went into the hospital. She would die two days later and just like her mother it seemed her age played a role in how deeply things were looked into.

It would be another nearly nine months before anyone would be suspicious about their deaths and year after their deaths before their bodies would be exhumed and more testing was done. In the meantime, Virginia and Charles had benefited quite well from their deaths, but again, no one would really notice or look more deeply into the situation for quite some time.

After what seems to be a few starts and stops in the area of careers over the years, as well as two previous marriages under his belt by 1980 Charles was working, and part owner of a company with his father and brother. It is unclear just exactly when Charles had gone to go to work there or exactly what happened to sour the relationship between the three men. It was said that around late 1980 Charles was making about $110,000 a year. On September 4, 1980 there was a board meeting with the company, Allied Die Casting Corporation, a trophy making business. It would be disputed as to what the initial purpose of the meeting happened to be, but there seems to be no dispute that Charles was demoted in the company. At the time Charles was the President of the company while his brother Michael Jr. was the Vice President. Father, Michael Sr., aka M.J. (which I will continue here as was in appeal papers to avoid confusion) was listed as the secretary/treasurer although he held more power than either of his sons with the ability to veto any decision made. By the time the meeting was over M.J. was now the President, Michael Jr. was still the Vice President but also the secretary and Charles was listed as the treasurer. Also at this meeting M.J.'s wife (and mother to the boys), Clara, became an equal shareholder of the company.

On September 8^th about an hour after eating his lunch Michael Jr. became very ill. He be began vomiting and experiencing diarrhea. It got so bad he went to the emergency room and was admitted into the hospital, where he stayed about five days. On November 14^th much of the same symptoms returned, again, just shortly after eating his lunch. At this point his doctor thought that Michael Jr. had developed an ulcer and ordered him to have a bland diet. Michael's wife began preparing his lunch and things seemed to be better. On February 21, 1981 Michael Jr. had a doctor appointment just before lunch. He left the thermos of pea soup his wife had made him in his office while he went to the doctor. The doctor told him it seemed that his diet was working and should continue with it for a while. When he returned to the office he began eating the soup but only ate about half because he said it “tasted funny.” Soon after he began vomiting to the point that he had to leave work. As the night went on he started feeling worse but he waited until the morning to call his doctor. The doctor ordered some tests and then immediately admitted him into the hospital. As time went on Michael was still getting worse and the doctors were not sure what was going on. He was have massive gastrointestinal issues and had begun to experience numbness in his hands and feet. It became so bad that Michael was unable to walk or even dress himself. Even still he was discharged to home on March 13^th.

Right around the time Michael Jr. was headed home his father, M.J. Began having the same symptoms his son had started with. In fact, at first the doctor thought they so closely resembled Michael Jr. that they were psychological. By April 21^st he was hospitalized. He stayed a few days under care without any improvement. He entered the hospital again on May 9^th and by now was also experiencing the numbness like his son. In the early morning hours of May 16^th M.J. Abanese would pass away.

It is unclear at what point doctors and authorities began to suspect that both M.J and Michael Jr. had been poisoned with arsenic but it may have been as early the end of February or the beginning of March when the thermos that Michael Jr. had eaten his soup out of was tested and traces of arsenic were found. But, at an autopsy performed on M.J it seemed to be certain. According to the medical examiner M.J had been given “sub-lethal” doses of arsenic over about a four month period but had been given a large lethal dose almost immediately before his death.

It seems that at this point investigators began looking closely at Charles. It seems he first became a suspect when M.J's doctor told them that Charles was almost a constant visitor with his father, or at least the one person at the hospital the most. Investigators became a bit more suspicious when they would discover that the day before M.J died Charles had called A. Donald Fishbein, the attorney for Allied. According to Fishbein, Charles told him that M.J's death was imminent and he should prepare an amendment to the company agreement and bring it as soon as possible to the hospital. Later that day the new agreement was signed but it seems of the three men Charles was the only one able to do so without assistance. M.J was apparently strapped to the bed and while Michael Jr. was present, he was wheelchair bound and his wife had to help him hold the pen to sign. The new agreement promoted Charles to Vice President and Michael Jr. to President but his health was in such a case that he was unable to perform duties.

By August investigators also knew about Marion Mueller and Mary Lambert's deaths. They obtained permission from Virginia Abanese to exhume their bodies. They too were found to have high levels of arsenic in their bodies. In the meantime it appears that every other employee of Allied as well as all the other residents in the retirement home the elderly ladies lived in had been tested. It was said that no one else had traces of arsenic in their hair or their fingernails. To investigators this told them that there was nothing environmental that had caused the arsenic in the victims.

In November of 1981 Charles was arrested and charged with three counts of murder, one count of attempted murder and also at least one count of theft. The theft charge came about when it was discovered that since Charles had all but taken over the family company he had also taken to selling scrap metal and zinc. He would take the material to sell it an insist that he be paid in either cash or a check written to him personally, not the company. It was thought that Charles had netted over $40,000 doing this. Prosecutors and investigators would later say they believed that they had arrested Charles just in time. He was planning a trip with his wife, and mother, who still owned part of the company. It was believed that he may have planned to start poisoning his mother on that trip.

Charles would ultimately face two trials. The first was in May of 1982. In this trial Charles faced charges related to the deaths of his father and Mary Lambert. He also faced the charges relating to the attempted murder of his brother and the theft of his company. He would go on trial again in November of 1982 to face the charges in the death of Marion Mueller. It appears that this was because while the bulk of the crimes he was accused of were committed in one county, Marion's death occurred in another. Then again, I could be wrong on that assessment. Regardless Charles was convicted on all counts at both trials and in both trials he was later sentenced to death. While I found little information about the second trial other than the verdict and sentence I was able to find an appeal that was filed, and upheld from his first trial. I can assume that much of the trial in November 1982 mirrored the first trial with possibly a little less information, considering there were less charges. So I will base what I learned in the appeal to describe the evidence that was presented against Charles.

An investigation into Charles discovered that just prior to Mary Lambert and Marion Mueller in August of 1980 several things were going on in Charles' life, and none of them were good. First, despite his substantial income, especially for the time, Charles was several months behind in his mortgage. He was also six months behind in his child support to his first wife who lived in Wisconsin with his three daughters (he also had two daughters with Virginia). In July he had been ordered to court to address his child support but not only did he remain in arrears, apparently he failed to show up to court. Then there was the issue that he owed a bank note, due on August 14^th for $15,000.

On August 4^th, two days before Mary Lambert would die, and the day after Mary and Marion had been at the Abanese home for dinner, Charles sent two post dated checks to his ex wife's lawyer. Both were dated for August 15^th. One was for $3,648, the amount of his arrears and the other was for $500. Charles had included a note with the checks stating that he expected a deposit to cover these checks in his account on about August 13^th. On August 8^th, on the way to Mary's funeral, Charles was arrested on the child support charges. He was quickly released when he explained it would be taken care of soon. Within a few days Virginia would close out her grandmothers bank account and deposited $3,600 into the account she shared with Charles.

Investigators would believe that not long before the dinner that Mary and Marion had shared with Charles and Virginia, Charles had convinced Marion to change her will, giving everything to her mother and removing any reference to her son, Virginia's brother. It mattered little that Mary died before Marion because in the end Virginia got it all. Two days after her death Virginia once again was transferring money from one account to another. When she received $6,000 from life insurance and other funds Virginia and Charles would pay up on their mortgage. In the meantime they had gotten two extensions on the loan owed to the bank. Charles had informed them that he and his wife had obtained the condominium that the elderly women had owned and they were in the process of selling it. In October they would do just that for the sum of $50,000.

So in essence the deaths of the two women had not only gotten Charles and Virginia out of debt, but they had about $30,000 to spare. It would not last them long though because if you could not tell the couple was already living above their means, something they would not stop doing.

A. Donald Fishbein, the attorney for Allied, would testify that the initial purpose of the corporate meeting on September 4, 1980 was to discuss terminating Charles from the company. Charles would dispute this but he could not dispute that he was in the end demoted and given less say in the company by the time the meeting ended. It would be four days after this meeting that Michael Jr would start getting sick. Fishbein would also testify about receiving a call from Charles on May 15, 1981 and being told to make a new company agreement and bring it to the hospital. Fishbein, among others, testified who was present at the signing and the condition of those involved.

All of this evidence was obviously not enough if they could not prove that Charles had access to arsenic to begin with. But, the prosecution had proof of that also. A man by the name of Joe Reichel testified that he used arsenic in his business and that sometime in 1979 Charles had approached him. Charles told Reichel that he had a pest problem at his home and asked for some arsenic to get rid of them. Reichel testified that Charles returned, asking for more, for the same reason. It was estimated that Reichel had given Charles about two pounds worth of arsenic. A neighbor, as well as his wife, Virginia, both testified that there had been a pest problem in the neighborhood but not until at least late Spring of 1980, long after Reichel claimed to have given the arsenic to Charles. Charles would claim that he put the arsenic around his garbage cans at night due to the fact that the pests would get into the cans and spread trash in his yard. It appears that someone along the way asked Charles why if it was such a problem he had not bought containers with lids instead of the containers without lids that he used. To be fair, although the neighbor testified about the trash in the yard it was not clear as to whether she too had a pest problem or she just witnessed Charles' yard and believed what he had said. Apparently this was not severely looked into because from the prosecution position it did not matter. They had already proven that Charles obtained the arsenic long before the supposed issue with pests.

Another prosecution witness was a man named Marty Nathan. He had apparently been in the county jail with Charles but had later been released. According to Nathan, Charles asked if he knew someone to “take care of people.” He would testify that from his assessment Charles wanted both Michael Jr and Joe Reichel dead and was willing to pay. Nathan would not agree apparently to find someone for him but he did agree to mail some letters for Charles when he was released. The letters went to Charles' mother, wife, uncle and the plant supervisor at Allied. It was all the same letter supposedly written by a man who would claim to be a co-conspirator with Michael Jr, admitting to the poisonings. The letter writer would claim that while Michael Jr had done the poisonings as to make it appear that Charles was the perpetrator. The writer went on to say that Michael had “double-crossed” him so he was ratting him out.

At his trial Charles would testify on his own behalf. You know the saying that anyone who represents himself has a fool for a client? Well, Charles' attorney had a huge fool for a client. I am not sure I even know where to begin with the story that Charles attempted to spin at not just his trial but apparently right up to his execution in 1995. First and foremost he attempted to convince the jury that it was his brother, Michael Jr who had committed all the poisonings. He did admit, surprisingly, to being the writer of the letter that Marty Nathan had testified to. Well, one would think that he had little choice but to do so considering Nathan was able to tell how many letters he sent out, and to who. Not to mention the prosecution had a handwriting expert who testified that while it looked as if Charles had attempted to disguise his handwriting, he had written the letters. The prosecution had a copy of the letter and entered it into evidence. And yet, admitting his attempt to lie through the letter, he still insisted that his brother was responsible. When Charles was cross examined his plan fell apart. First, prosecutors asked Charles how Michael Jr would have had access to his wife's grandmother and mother. Charles had no answer. Next prosecutors asked Charles, as if everyone did not already know, who benefited by the deaths of Mary and Marion. Charles obviously had to admit that it was he and his wife who had received, not just the bulk of the women's estates, but all of it. Michael Jr had not benefited in any way. Next the prosecutors asked Charles why Michael Jr would poison himself, let alone to the point in which he had left himself crippled. By the time of the trial Michael Jr had recovered some but he still had to use braces to walk. Charles' answer was that Michael Jr had done so in order to take suspicion off himself and onto Charles. The biggest thing that Charles could not answer was yet to come. He was asked how, if his wife had to assist him in even holding a pen to sign the new company agreement when his father was in the hospital how it was that Michael Jr. could have given his father the lethal dose of arsenic that the medical examiner insisted was administered just before his death. I suspect that you could have likely heard a pin drop in the courtroom at that point.

It is not hard to understand how it was that the jury, or juries, came to the decisions that they did in his trials. Nor is it hard to understand how the courts upheld his convictions and sentences. The hardest part to understand is how Charles Abanese expected people to believe that the prosecution had fabricated evidence and all of the witnesses had lied (this was his claim prior to his execution). Days prior to his execution on September 20, 1995 he released a statement that said the justice system “covered up facts of who really killed the people I loved and who really gained from their deaths and my conviction.” He had also written a letter that was supposed to be read after his execution but was released a few hours before his execution. In the letter Charles maintained his innocence and said that experts and other witnesses at his trial committed perjury and fabricated evidence was admitted in his trial. It appears that he stood by his supposed belief that the actual perpetrator was Michael Jr but as the prosecutor pointed out, not only did it not make any sense that he would poison himself but he was so ill to the point he could not have poisoned his father. Not to mention there was no motive or apparently opportunity for Michael Jr to poison his sister-in-laws mother and grandmother. The odds of someone knowing one person who died of arsenic poisoning is rare to have four surely points to something sinister.