True Crime Stories

I am pretty sure this is one of the cases that I discovered while watching “Forensic Files,” which is in my opinion one of the best true crime shows. Unlike other shows this one is only thirty minutes long so there is little time to be bias and it fully sticks to the facts. They have portions where they interview people of course but again, it is full of facts. You can generally find the episodes fairly easy through different streaming apps, including YouTube so if you have not seen this show and you like true crime, which if you are here I suspect you do, it is worth checking out. Helen “Marlene” Oakes had been married to Bill Major for about nine years in 1980. They had married when she was sixteen and he was about twenty-seven. By 1980 they had two children, eight year old Donald and four year old LaLana and were living in Verona Kentucky. It was said that both Marlene and Bill were known to see other people through their marriage. In fact, it was well known that Marlene w...

I heard about this case many years ago. It has been featured on shows like Forensic Files and The Detectives. It was also one of those stories that was made into a Lifetime television movie. One of the things that I find most interesting about some cases are some of the locations. For instance I have done several cases from the city and area in which I currently live and when I put the cases together I can picture the area as to the way it looks now. In fact, I live around the corner from where one of the cases I have blogged about occurred and I think of it every time I drive down that road. In this case I would become at least semi-familiar with one of the areas many years after I heard of John David Smith. I also learned the area had a history. Although John David Smith did not likely know it, his marriage to Betty “Fran” Gladden would be his eventual undoing. That is not to say that I necessarily believe that when he met and later married Fran that he knew ho...