Samantha S

A Killer’s Luck Runs Out Since 1791, the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution has protected the rights of the criminally accused. Often referred to as the double jeopardy clause, one part of the amendment ensures that citizens cannot be put on trial more than once for the same crime, even if new evidence presents itself. But what happens when the law allows a killer to go free, flying in the face of everything the justice system seeks to represent? This is the story of Brenda Sue Schaefer’s tragic crossing of paths with Melvin Henry Ignatow, and the devastation that followed. Brenda Sue Schaefer was born in 1952 and grew up in Louisville, KY. She was, by all accounts, kind and trusting to all. Her best friend, Joyce Smallwood, told CBS News, “She had no faults.” When Shaefer was set up on a date with Melvin “Mel” Henry Ignatow, 14 years her senior, in 1986, she was optimistic about making a new relationship work, albeit vulnerable following a divorce from her first husband, and a painful end to an eight-year relationship with her last partner. Ignatow knew how to love bomb. “He lavished her with gifts and stories” in the beginning, according to Smallwood. Slowly, over the next two years, Ignatow transitioned from affectionate and loving to possessive and controlling. Shaefer’s family and close friends began to beg her to stay away from Ignatow. At first, Shaefer’s desire to make a relationship last outweighed her concern for her safety. After she awoke one night to Ignatow holding a chloroform-soaked cloth over her face, telling her he wanted to help her sleep, Shaefer decided enough was enough. She told her friends that she was done with Ignatow. But it was already too late. Ignatow knew that Shaefer planned to end things, which for him was not an option. He contacted another ex-girlfriend, Mary Ann Shore, with a horrifying plan for the torture and murder of Shaefer. Shore, having been desperately jealous of Ignatow’s relationship with Shaefer over the last two years, agreed to participate. Conveniently for Ignatow, his plan involved doing everything he could to incriminate Shore, while leaving reasonable doubt for himself along the way. Lead detective Jim Wesley would later recount with disgust being, “outsmarted by a psychopath”. Ignatow somehow lured Shaefer to Shore’s home, almost two years to the day from the night they first met, under the guise of selling some of her jewelry, meeting a friend, or attending a sex therapy session, according to different sources. Once there, Shaefer was bound and tortured for hours by Ignatow, while Shore took photos of the gore and joined in when told. At one point Shaefer was tied to a glass coffee table as the assault and torture continued. Shore claims she left the room and Ignatow told her, “It’s done, she’s dead”. The two then packaged and carried Shaefer’s body to a wooded area not far from Shore’s home, and buried her in a grave they had dug during the weeks of planning leading up to that day. Ignatow pretended to pray and cry with Shaefer’s family in the hours after she was reported missing. But once her car was found abandoned, and all of her family and friends told police that Ignatow had to have had something to do with her disappearance, it wasn’t long before he and Shore were arrested. Shore would go on to lead police to Shaefer’s remains and testify against Ignatow at trial in exchange for a deal. Ignatow was caught on tape discussing Shaefer’s burial with Shore, but he had a great attorney who twisted minuscule, outlandish bits of doubt into “reasonable doubt” in the eyes of the jury. Reminiscent of Casey Anthony’s trial, everyone in the world BUT the jury knew Ignatow was guilty, and he smirked as they read their verdict, “Not guilty”. In the months that followed, Ignatow proudly gave interviews to multiple media outlets, continuing to smirk and claim his innocence. However, six months after the not-guilty verdict, contractors at Ignatow’s former home in Douglas Hills pulled up the living room carpet to uncover evidence that an entire team of investigators had missed: an envelope of jewelry and photos. The jewelry belonged to Brenda Sue Shaefer, and the photos were taken by Mary Ann Shore, proving that Ignatow had indeed carried out every horror upon Shaefer of which he had been accused. Ignatow had won, it seemed. He had gotten away with murder. Having already been found not guilty, he could not be tried again for the murder of Brenda Sue Shaefer, despite photographic evidence that he had committed the crime. The most police could do was try him for perjury, as he had insisted on his innocence many times under oath. Ignatow spent about 10 years in prison overall. Shore served three years for evidence tampering. According to witnesses, Ignatow was miserable in the last years of his life after leaving prison in 2006. A neighbor heard him crying out nightly in pain, asking Jesus to end his suffering. That same neighbor would discover Ignatow in 2008, dead in his apartment, having bled to death after falling onto his glass coffee table. Sometimes it seems justice comes no matter what, even for those who believe they’ve been able to escape it.