John Heath

In the last few months there has been a lot of talk about authorities solving cold cases with the help of genealogy websites. There is a group out there that has been able to take the DNA results of people who have entered them into genealogy sites in hopes of finding relatives and either matching them, or doing what they call “reverse” trees and comparing them to unknown DNA tests in cold cases. One just recently happened here in Indiana where I live and when they went to the man's home he readily confessed to the crime. One day I will be blogging about that case, but today it is about John Heath, who was convicted twenty-eight years after his wife disappeared, not by one of these methods, but simply by chance. If the new owners of property once owned by Heath had not been renovating AND decided to open a hatch in the floor of an old dairy barn the body of Elizabeth Heath would have likely never been found. DNA was not even tested in this case as experts claimed that the body was too degraded and had been left in too damp of an area to ensure accuracy. And yet still, in 2013 the prosecutors were able to obtain a conviction, using old fashioned deductive reasoning. Well, that and the words of John Heath himself, despite the fact he maintained his innocence.

John Heath reported his wife, Elizabeth, missing on April 6, 1984 from their Newtown Connecticut home. It is unclear exactly when John stated he had last seen his wife but there is evidence that she may have been gone before April 2^nd when she was due to work on a project for school and had failed to show up. Elizabeth was taking classes to become a mental health counselor. It seems as if John may have been or felt “forced” to report her missing, possibly by her friends or classmates. He would tell authorities that Elizabeth had “left” sometime in the middle of the night. Investigators thought it was odd because Elizabeth had seemingly left their four year old daughter Meghann, but even her purse, jewelry and many other personal items. It is unclear if at that point investigators were told by John that his father, Linwood “Chet” Heath was staying at the property in the “dairy barn.” While many others would claim that he was, including John's defense attorney, there seemed to be evidence that at some point, whether it was in 1984 or sometime after 2010, John told investigators that the only people living at the home were he, Elizabeth and their daughter. Defense attorney's would use the alleged presence of Linwood Heath in their arguments at trial. Linwood had a criminal history and while it was said that he served time in prison for child molestation in the late 1940's, there was also talk of him having been violent to women also. Prosecutors would later say that they did not believe the Linwood Heath story and admittedly did not look into that theory. Whether they were speaking of the investigation in 1984 or post-2010 matters on whether I agree with them or not, or on what information they knew. If they did not hear this theory or been made aware of the Linwood Heath story until after Elizabeth's body was discovered then I completely agree with the fact that they did not look into him. It is not that I agree with him because while I could not find an actual date of death for Linwood, but the odds of him being alive in 2012 were slim. No, I agreed with them based on the items found with the body when it was discovered in 2010. If the issue of Linwood Heath living in the home was made available to investigators in 1984 is unclear however. They claim that this was never brought to their attention and that John did not mention this in any of his interviews with investigators. The strange thing involving Linwood is that prosecution witnesses were the ones who mentioned this in court which of course I am sure was prompted by the defense counsel. Allegedly at least a few of them claimed that he was living there, it made Elizabeth uncomfortable and that soon after she went missing he had left and was allegedly living in Puerto Rico.

Investigators learned that John had served Elizabeth with divorce papers just three days prior to her alleged disappearance. He would obtain a divorce, on grounds of desertion in August of 1984. Of course without her being present John obviously received all assets, including the home, as well as custody of their daughter. In June of 1985 he would remarry. His new wife, Raquel, had been friends with Elizabeth and had been Meghann's babysitter. To be fair, while this all sounds a bit shady, I found nothing that stated that the relationship began before Elizabeth had disappeared, or that Raquel was involved, or even a motive behind her disappearance.

John and Raquel would go on to have two children of their own. In events that seem odd to me in 2005 John and Raquel would be required to leave their Newtown home when it went into foreclosure. Foreclosure was the only reason given for the loss of the home but the reason I say that it seems odd is the fact that according to prosecutors John had “owned” this home since 1973. In my opinion there is only two reasons that the home would go into foreclosure, one reason would be unpaid taxes and the other obviously would be unpaid mortgage but that would indicate that the home had been remortgaged again and again over the years indicating financial instability and yet beyond the foreclosure that was never mentioned. There was apparently quite a bit of land and buildings on the property as it was indicated that besides the home and the “dairy barn” there were also “apartments” on the property and there was indication that those said apartments were there while John lived on the property. This fact, makes me lean towards the unpaid taxes theory, considering John was said to be a fairly successful man who owned his own painting business and the fact that it had been thirty-two years since he had bought the property. I can say that my parents bought a three bedroom home in 1975 in an inner city for $25,000. This can give you some idea how cheap homes at that time costs. That same home that cost $25,000 in 1975 would have cost 85,000 in 2005 and $112,000 today. Then again in those years, to get that value there would have had to have been much upkeep and likely renovating but that is what people do. I mentioned the 2005 date because that was the year the Heath's home went into foreclosure. And, to be fair, by most accounts I found the home was not likely kept up as far as maintenance and landscaping.

It appears that the new owners of the home in Newtown had planned to renovate the home and re-sell it, leaving any other new owners the decision on what to do with other buildings on the property, including the old “dairy barn.” But then the housing market crashed and the son of the owners decided to renovate the barn in April 2010. While it was called a barn, it had obviously been set up for some sort of living quarters at some point because there was linoleum flooring and there had been a kitchen and bathroom area also. When father and son removed the flooring they came across a hatch door. Some have described this as a cistern well of some sort that was there to basically prevent flooding while other reports indicate that it was some sort of storage area. The inside was described as being about three foot deep and eighteen inches square. However, father and son did not find rainwater under the hatch door, or if they did there was not much. What they found were trash bags. Inside those bags were bed sheets, a mattress pad and bones that they believed to be human. They immediately called the police.

While I did say that experts had stated that DNA testing was not done because there would be questions of inaccuracies for evidence, I admit that I was left to wonder then how the body had been positively identified as that of Elizabeth Heath. The bones were examined and it was determined that the cause of death had been from blunt force trauma to the head. The medical examiner stated that Elizabeth had suffered at least four blows with a “narrow, heavy, club-like weapon. One of her arms had been broken and it was thought that this had happened as she fought off her attacker.

It is not completely clear what exactly investigators discovered in the two years between the discovery of the body and when they arrested John Heath. He had been interviewed several times it seems both in 1984 and again after the body was discovered. Both local and state police had been involved in the investigation and in one of those interviews, at John's “new” home in Bridgewater, a tape recorder had been in the pocket of one of the investigators. In this interview he had made several degrading comments about Elizabeth and her fitness as a mother, as well as many other either odd comments or statements that would later be proven to be a lie. But, he was finally arrested in April of 2012 when investigators say they got a tip that a moving truck was in front of his rented home. Authorities decided they needed to arrest him or risk losing him.

His trial would begin in September of 2013. The prosecution would call more than thirty witnesses to the stand. The defense would call one, Meghann Heath, who was grown and now married. Prosecutors would allege that John Heath had murdered Elizabeth because with the pending divorce he stood to lose his home, his daughter and be required to pay alimony and/or child support. They believed that it was an argument that about these things that led to her death. They argued that he then took her body and wrapped it in the bed sheets and mattress cover from their bed, placed it in trash bags and placed her head first into the cistern, where she laid for the next twenty-six years until she was found completely by chance. The prosecution argued that by all accounts by those who knew Elizabeth said the comments John had made about her fitness as a mother and statements that she did not want to or like being a mother were false. Witnesses testified that she adored her daughter and they were “attached at the hip.” John would claim that he had no knowledge of the cistern... ever, or at least until investigators informed him this is where Elizabeth had been found. A cousin to Raquel Heath testified that in 1996 she was helping John in the barn and asked him about the “hatchway.” She claimed that John became defensive when she asked what was in it telling her to stay away from it. Prosecutors argued that there was no way John had lived on the property for over twenty years and did not know about the hatch. Regardless Raquel's cousin proved he knew before investigators told him, which equaled to being a lie to them. A woman named Debbie Lewis also testified. Debbie had previously been married to John's half brother, Harold Lewis Jr. Debbie would testify that Elizabeth had allegedly told her “If anything happens to me, you know that John did it.” She also testified that John's mother, Grace, who died in 2007 had stated to her that she believed “something wasn't right. I know John did something to her.” I believe it was her testimony to show that even his relatives believed that he was involved in her disappearance and death.

The defense would only present one witness, Meghann Heath who had been four years old at the time of her mother's disappearance. It is not clear as to what she had offered to the jury for many reasons. First, it is unlikely that she recalled much about her mother, let alone the time period of her death to give much information. Secondly, by John's account she had “disappeared” in the middle of the night, something he was still sticking to. This is where the presence of Linwood Heath came into play. The defense argued that Linwood was a more likely suspect. They, and apparently prosecution witness testified that he was an alcoholic who had served time for child molestation but was living on the property at the time. In fact, it was argued that Linwood was sleeping in the dairy barn where Elizabeth's body would be found decades later. Using this theory the defense argued that it was likely that Elizabeth had woken up in the middle of the night, gone outside and had a confrontation with Linwood who then killed her and hid her body.

While it appeared that the jury took a very long time to come to a verdict in reality it was less than two days. They had not only a holiday but a weekend during their time of deliberations and it seems they were not required to continue discussions at that time. The jurors would later say they took their task seriously and while it did not necessarily take long for them to decide that John Heath was guilty they still took the time to look over the evidence once again, even asking for some evidence to be read back to them and listening to the recorded interview with investigators again. John, who by now was seventy years old, and in poor health had attended the trial in a wheelchair and required oxygen full time. It was said he, nor his family showed any kind of expression when the verdict was read.

When he had been arrested in April of 2012 he had been held on a one million dollar bond and it appears that he remained in prison until his trial. His attorney attempted to have the bond lowered citing his health and lack of any other criminal history but failed. I found it interesting that after the conviction the judge did not revoke the bond he simply raised it by another million dollars until sentencing in December. At his sentencing hearing the prosecution argued that he be sentenced between fifty-three and sixty years. Sixty years was the maximum allowed by law. In contrast the defense argued for the minimum sentence of twenty-five years. The prosecution argued that not only had John Heath lied to investigators and his family, most importantly his own daughter, he had been free for twenty-eight years before he was arrested. The defense argued that due to his failing health any sentence the judge imposed would be a “death sentence.” At this point Meghann had either spoken or written a letter that was read into the court. She too asked for the minimum sentence for her father and stated that although she had “problems processing” the fact that her mother had not abandoned her as she had been told, she was not convinced that her father had in fact killed her mother. Raquel also argued for a minimum sentence. They both talked of him being a wonderful husband and father and seemingly did not have anything bad to say about him or his character. Prosecutors would counter this by pointing out that in September of 2012 he had been charged (and was still facing court) after he assaulted a nurse at the jail. He had pleaded not guilty but as of that time the results were pending in that case. They also pointed out that during his trial he had what they called an “angry outburst” against a state police witness. The prosecution argued that this showed that John was not the mild mannered and even tempered man his family was portraying. The judge sentenced John Heath to fifty years in prison.

Now, the strange thing about this case is that while the defense stated at the end of the trial they planned to appeal I found nothing to indicate that they had. In addition to this I could not find him in the Connecticut Department of Corrections website. I also tried county websites both in Newtown where the crime was committed and in Danbury where the trial was conducted. There is always a chance that he had been moved to a county jail to await a court date but I was unsuccessful in those attempts. Considering that he was said to be suffering from COPD and several other ailments at the time of his sentencing I even attempted to see if I could find an obituary for him but again I failed in those efforts.

As I said in the beginning this case did not come down to DNA evidence. It really came down to old fashioned detective work and deductive reasoning. I found nothing in which the defense allegedly attempted to explain if John was innocent, as they maintained, how Elizabeth's body was found wrapped in bedding allegedly from the master bedroom. Linwood was an easy target for the defense to use. He was likely long dead and if he was not dead it does not appear anyone knew where he was so he could dispute the allegations that were being made. It also seems unlikely that even if Linwood had been responsible that John would not have made the allegations much earlier. By all accounts it was not until after his arrest that the possibility of Linwood being responsible came to light and by his own account he alleged that only he, Elizabeth and Meghann lived in the home. No, the more likely explanation scenario of what happened at that home in Newtown is closer to the theory given by the prosecution. In my opinion they got the right man and as the jury said it was mainly his own words that convicted. I agree with that but I believe even more damning was the evidence found with the body.