Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
Everyone knew the Schoeck were in love and for stacey apparently in love with love itself richard was her fifth husband.
five times the charm, stacey´s cousin connie recalls richards was the best in ther stable of husbands
in fact he even adopted two of stacey´s three sons .richard was a great father he brought a lot to the table when it came to the marriage.
the 46 years old had a passion for hot-air balloning. but most of all he loved scouting and was a leader for his boys cubs scout. richard was a this gregarious just outgoing guy,he always looked to include everyone in the room .
stacy worked as a head administrator for a large medical and surgical practice in DeKalb County Georgia .but there was always time for love. on the last night of richard´s life he was coocking valentine´s day dinner for stacey and her grandparents an elderly couple who required round-the .ckock medical attention.
Lt D. Franklin: at that point stacey and richard had valentine´ to exchange for each other , gifts and cards ,she made that desicion that they would exchange them in the park . she told him to go ahead and meet her there because the nurse that was relieving her was late.
They made their way in separate cars along the dark winding road ,richard arrived first. but as it turns out he was not alone , someone else was there lurking in the shadows.
Lt D. Franklin:it´s a very secluded place, there was no pavement, there was no lights.it´s a very eerie place especially at night.
and eerie was about to turn deadly,thirty minutes later,stacy pulls up and sees richard body punctured with bullets lying in blood and dirt.
Lt D. Franklin: two to the abdomen and one to the chest and then two to the face. which is overkill .
when cops arrive on scene they quickly rule out robbery as a motive
Lt D. Franklin: when we searched his truck we found 40 dollars in the center conosole,his watch was on ,his wedding ring was on.his wallet was on him.if this were a robbery then there was about a 40 , 000 dollar truck they could have jumped in and taken .
one of the first to the scene lieutenant dan franklin says from the get-go something just didn´t smell right.
Lt D. Franklin:basically red flags are the best way to put it.
the shooting appeared to be too over -the -top to be random.
Lt D. Franklin:richard´s just a regular guy whos unarmed and he gets there and he´s comfortable enough to get out of his truck and approach the the person who ultimately shot him.
and in the darkened night the mystery killer is already gone by the time stacey says she arrived at the seckluded spot.detectives scour the crime scene for evidence.
but there isn´t much to go on suddenly with police spotlights trained on the crime scene.
soft dirt that absorbed richards blood seems to speak volumes to investigators telling a chilling story .
Lt D. Franklin: the soil at the scene was soft ,it was muddy and it was very conducive to preserving tire tire inmpressions.
imprinted in the wet soil were three sets of tire tracks .
Lt D. Franklin:we determined we saw richards impressions ,we saw the impressions that staceys ford explore made but there was a third set of impressions that came in from the park .you could fallow them from the road so that told us that the vehicle that left those impressions was there before richard got there and then left presumably after he was dead.
cops believe the tire tracks had to be those of the killer . but matching them to a getaway car would be like finding a needle in a haystack or would it? before cops can worry about how to make a match a frantic stacey make a shocking admission.
Lt D. Franklin:before we left the seen she started telling us about an affair she´d been having witha guy named juan reyes .
stacey was two -timing richard with her own Don juan which she tearfully brings up again during an interview with authorities.
stacey: i´m in deep with juan.
In deep is an understatement ,investigators quickly learned stacey had been carrying on an affair with her latin lover for a long time.
Lt D. Franklin:that affair had been going on for several years,immediately that sparked our attention and got us looking at juan as a prime suspect.
and it turns out their suspect was close,working directly in stacey´s own office.
despite the fact he had no medical experience, she hired juan as a surgical assistant atthe clinic she ran.
she tells cops juan had previously worked as a security guard at a swanky hotel . It all appears to be a classic crime of passion a jealouse boyfriend want stacey´s husband out of the of the picture.
Lt D. Franklin:when we asked her if she thought juan was responsible she say she didn´t want to think that he was responsible but she didn´t know.
richard schoeck was exited about a valentine´s day rendezwouz with his wife stacey ,the meeting spot a remote park.
but on this night love would turn tragic
with a bullet to the heart.
911 call.
operator: he´s been what?
stacey: he´s been shot !he is dead!
cops are about to bring stacey down to the station hoping to learne more about who would want her husband dead. when she makes a schoking admission. in the interrogation room stacey comes clean about her latin lover . stacey who ran a large medical facility openly admits she was not only juans boss but also his lover
Lt D. Franklin:juan reyes was hired sas the surgeon´s assistant allthough he had no medical experience.stacey had a lot of control over her life and people in her life.
and cops were about to discover she exercised that control with money . they aoon learn juan is a divorced father with a bunch of kids and hard up for cash.
stacey´s cousin connie hearn claims the family soon heard alll the lurid details . stacey showering juan with goodies , paying for his truck and cellphone, taking him on romantic getaways.
juan even lived in one of staceys homes and then of course there was the secret love nest.
stacey also had a apartment for her and juan to go do their not so good deed.juan became suspect number one in richards murder .cops nabbed him the next day at his office and noticed there´s a suspicious change in his appaerance.
Lt D. Franklin: he had a beard for like two weeks leading up to the muirder and then in the morning after the murder when we first made contact with him he was clean -shaven.
but the change dosen´t seem to rattle juan at the sheriff´s station he even agrees to to talk with detectives without a lawyer present.
detective: did you have anything to do with what´s happened to richard?
juan: no.
detective: do you know who did ?
juan: no.
detectives hammer juan with questions,he agrees to a polygraph
the results are inconclusive.
detective: she got you a job, she gives you money ,the home that you living in.. she and richard own it.you romantic involved with her.you can see,this doesn´t look good for you. i mean , i´m just been straight up with you.
and juan seems straight up too. telling cops that despite his divorce he was acctually trying to reconcile with his uinemployed ex-wife.he viewed stacey as the means to and end.
detective: does she give you any kind of money or is there anything else going on?
juan:she knows i´m low on cash , you know.she give me money for gaz or whatever.
did richard know was he possibly trying to prevent this high-priced affair? detective keep digging deeper and the hottest burning question remains where was juan on the night of valentine´s day?
juan: sunday me and the girlfriend and my seven -year old anthony,we took him to the movies about 5 0´clock meeting my son anthony and went to blockbuster .
detective: did you guys eat there .?
juan: we ate dinner about …i want to say about 7:00. by 10 :30 i was in bed.
To check his alibi , detectives soon chat with juan´s ex-wife. who tells them his relationsship with stacey was close . to close.
ex-wife: i didn´t care for her much. but was at my house for thanksgiving ,christmases , she would take my daughter to get her hair done,her nails done. she bought christmas present for my kids.
but then lieutenant franklin reveals the devastating news that juan´s ex-wife only suspected.
Lt D. Franklin:i just confirmed her worse fears and told her that he´d been having an affair with stacey for several years.she had suspicious because again stacey had a lot of control over them.
but even with that painful revelation the women scorned had the perfect opportunity to throw juan under the bus,instead she confirmed his alibi.
ex-wife: he was at blockbuster while i was coocking 6 :00 and 7:00.
Lt D. Franklin: a big part of his alibi hinged on a statement from his ex-wife she had an opportunity to tell me anything bad that he was doing that was it . but she didn´t do it she said no,he was home with me that night .
with his whereabouts confirmed juan was cleared now the question remains. if juan is not the trigger man who is?
Lt D. Franklin:so that´s when our first break came ,because we started looking at this as a murder-for -hire.
richard body was lying cold and riddled with bullets at the very same moment Georgia cops have stacey in a quiet room with serious questions about her husbands murder . stacey said she has no clue but cops know there´s at least one clue found at the bloody scene.
a mystery set of tire tracks discovered in the wet soil .
Lt D. Franklin: the tire tracks didn´t match her car or richards so we knew there were a third person.
could that third person be the hitman ,detectives learned stacey had been having an affair with a man named juan.but her lover has a rock-solid alibi and he´s cleared so cops are back to surching.obsessively trying to match the brand of tire to the tread marks and to a killer.
Lt D. Franklin: we began to look on the internet,we went to tire shops,we went to the local sam´s ,to wallmart , anywhere where they sold tires.
then a stroke of good luck as Lt franklin was checking out a local tires store.
Lt D. Franklin:my partner said ,” take a look at this one , and we determined that was the brand tire that left impression ,it was a goodyear integrity
but with countless cars using Goodyear tires in the area,searching could an overwhelming task and just as cops were about to lose hope ….
an unexpected tip that quickly leads cops to wonder if stacey wanted to rub out her fifth husband.
Lt D. Franklin:IT techician at the spine clinic where stacey work called us .
his job ,to clear out junk email from employees accounts.
Lt D. Franklin: he said ,” when i went through stacey´s computer ,i went to go ahead and empty her spam out of the inbox but her inbox was completely empty.” from friday , saturday and sunday , the day of the murder .
another lucky break. an electronic trail with markings of different kind.
Lt D. Franklin: he said tht´s very unusual and he said but i have backups of all of those if you guys would like to have them and we said ” absolutely”.
detectives immediately obstained a warrant for all of stacey´s emails , after scouring 4000 emails two raised eyebrows. on of them written a few weeks before the murder to a bank.
Lt D. Franklin:request to transfer eight thousand nine and two dollars from a real estate account that the docto´s office had into the personal account of a lady named lenitra ross.
lynitra ross a medical assistant at the practice stacey worked and then curiously another transpefer to ross. just days before that bloddy valentine´s day.
Lt D. Franklin:the friday before the murder there´s aother request through Sun Tuist for for another transfor for 1,1000 and that went through offfice ro lynitra ross´personal acount.
cops soon learn, lynitra was renting a home from stacey ,they imemediately pay lenitra a visit. recording the intervju.
police interview
Lt franklin:so how much money did you get overall?
lynitra:um , it´s been about .. it was 89 and then…
lt franklin: 89 thousand?
lynitra :hundred
lt franklin:hundred oh.
lynitra: 89 hundred.
Lt D. Franklin:when you´re looking at a murde for hire ,your looking for a transfer of money and 10 ,000 is an nice even amount but we needed to figure out hwo the other parties were
but lynitra seems to have a reasonable explanation stsacey tranferred money for repairs on the rental house.
Lt D. Franklin: lynitra ross said she could provide receipts for the house repairs and for the waterline. repair.
police interview
Lynitra:. …and then qe got another leak . a main water valv leak. so ,they paid , she paid for half of that . so, it´s been about ,10. 000.
Lt franklin was frustrated at this point ,the emails and the transfers lead nowhere but then another clue surfaces ,this time from staceys own cousin connie hearn.
connie: that was my grandparents car ,the Impala.
turns out the Impala was a car given to stacey to sell, the money to be used for her grandparents medical expenses. but strangely enough the Impala would go missing for a few weeks out of stacey´s driveway then suddenly popped back up what didn´t appear was the money
connie: stacey claimed that she´d gotten …i believe 14. 000 out of it, but my grandparents never saw the money.i thought that was weird
and even more suspicious , investigtors find the Impala parked at lynitra ross´s house . stunningly with goodyear integrity tires on it.
Lt D. Franklin:i jumped up i became extremely excited .
now the only question hwo was driving the Impala the night richard was murdered
Lt D. Franklin: there was evidence at the scene based on the layering tire impressions that the killer lay and wait for richard.
On a hunch lieutenant f ranklin turns his radar to cellphone records.
Lt D. Franklin: is he gonna sit there and twiddle his thumbs or what´s he gonna do or is he gonna make a phone call.lot of people will text constantly.
franklin subpoenead phone records made around the time of the murder from something called a tower dump.
Lt D. Franklin:you make a phone call,your number,the number your dialed date and time and the duration of the call are all captured at the tower and that information is saved at the tower.
The tower service for major carries thousands of pages of records but the investigator had an idea,compares the numbers from the tower dump to the numbers in stacie´s contact list. sand see if a match comes up
Lt D. Franklin: i had to find a way to teach myself how to dothis,about an hour into that search i found a number that was in stacey´s , phone that had made a call from belton bridge parkor the tower that services belton bridge park on the night of the murder at about 8:40 p. m. this phone call at 8:40 was very compeling .
The phone number attached to that call was listed in stavey´s contacts as a guy named reggie . aka mr sresult .even more compelling was the number thar reggie called.
Lt D. Franklin:so i went back and looked and i should have recognized the number because it was already on my notes because it was lynitra ross . so at 8:40 pm.on on february 14th of 2010 whoever reggie is who is known to stacey because he´s in her cell phone contact list called lynitra ross from the park.
But hwo is mr .results.? lt franklin googled him the next day and found reggie is a personal trainer and former semi- profesisional boxer who held bootcamp sessions at stacey´s office.
Lt D. Franklin: at that point things started coming together,because we were already looking at a murder- for -hire. and this really kind of solidified that this was the third part of the triangle ,because we had suspected stsacey was the linchpin.lynitrsa ross received money in the the weeks leading up and now this was our third person that we felt was involved.
an Impala with…
tires matches …..
…a bloody murder scene.
money transfers
and a man named mr results.
by now. cops believe stacey is in deep and possible the t he mastermind orchestrating the murder for hire of her fifth husband richard. but do they have enough to make a charge
remember those cellphone records turns out they are a honeypot for of incriminating evidence.
Lt D. Franklin:reggie makes the phone call from the park the night omf the murder at 8:40 pm.and we felt that call was to let lynitra knwo that it was done.
and then lieutenant dan frankling uncovers a series of bone-chilling texts .
Lt D. Franklin: three minutes after that phone, lynitra texted stacey and said
” i forgott to tell you i´m coming late for work tomorrow by the way ,happy valentine´s day.”and it turns out that the happy valentine´s day was the the signal from lynitra to stacey that richard was dead.
all that´s needed now to maket their case proving the money trail. Lt franklin soon scoured the banking records of stacey,lynitra and reggie.reveling thousands of dollars intermingling amongs different accounts .
Lt D. Franklin: reggie´s payment for the the murder was 10. 000 in cash and lynitra ´s payment for being the person that distributed money ,was that stacey was going to give the house to lynitra to live rent- free forever.
Finally the last pieces of this sordid puzzle are coming together .
Lt D. Franklin: we´re looking at a murder for hire. we had to bring in the money element and so once we had that with the financiall records then we´re ready to move forward with the arrests
The day is long and coming ,but cops can now make their move and capture the black widow.
Lt D. Franklin: the operation was called operation tangled web and so that was huge cooodinated effort a huge team effort ,took a lot of planning,we served seven search warrants in four different counties , three arrest warrants all in one day and one operation.
Their biggest challenge ,synchronizing the arrests so the murderous players don´t tip each other off .
Lt D. Franklin:we realized that when we moved on these people we needed toi move on them all at once ,if we didn´t get what we needed from that one person then they could communicate with the others and tthe whole thing would fall apart and we could lose evidence.
first to go down is reggie then …
lynitra is nabbed at a traffic stop
and police now confidently swoop in on stsacey at the location where so much of her planning took place ..
the office. but in a crazy turn of events she gives cops the slip
Lt D. Franklin:somebody in that office told stacey the police were there and to run and so stacey retreated in the hospital and basically got herself to a place where she was inside a room that only had card access, so we couldn´t get to her.
It didn´t take long for police to find her . barricaded in thatroom she eventually surrenders.finally .
three months after the bloody valentine´s day murder of richard Schoeck.
lynitra ,stacey and reggie faced some harsh questions
In the interrogation room lynitra plays the innocent bystander card.
and reggie has his own tactics- denial.
cops say lynitra and reggie fell for the murder plot all for the money.but the burning question.
why di stsacey want her husband dead?in a stunner , she tells cops that richard was molesting her kids stacey´s claim is based on something she says one of the kids told her .stacey tells investigators she was molested as a kid.
so to protect her boys ,she wanted richard killed.she confided in her workbuddy lynitra ross.
according to stacey , ross tells her ,she knows the guy for the job.her sometime boyfriend and baby daddy Reggie aka mr results.stacey tells cops lynitra arranged a meeting where they cooked up a plan to murder richard in cold blood
casey: then i was like,well how much cash and he was like well , you know i was thinking around 10.000 dollars. i´m like ok.
to sweeten the deal ,stacey agreed to give reggie her grandparents Impala.
yeas ,that Impala.
lynitra ´s cut she´d get the house she was renting from stacey.
a week later all three went to scout out the crime scene belton bridge park.
but the night of the murder reggie botched things up .
L.Darragh .D.A : stacey schoeck wanted to set it up to make it look like a robbery in fact, she was very angry because the victims watch wasn´t taken,his money wasn´t taken, the truck that richard schoeck drove to the scene were not taken to make it look like a robbery .
and that´s not all stacey says reggie screwed up . remember how over the top cops describesd the shoting.
three to richards´s chest ,two to his face .
stacey:it was supposed to be one shot to the head . i don´t know want him to suffer i don´t wont him to see anything you know…
as for the molestation story in the end police discovered stacey´s son admitted richard never laid a finger on him.
L.Darragh .D.A :her son she said later told her that the comment that he made didn´t have anything to do with anything like that, but rather he was a little more restrictive then she was on what they could do as children.
stacey later revealed a different and real reason she ordered the hit on her husband now she claimed she feared losing of the kids if she and richard divorced
Lt D. Franklin:ultimately i think her motive was to just live a life free of richard and that this was in her eyes the only way to make that happen. she knew what that the life that she was living ,would not be good for her in a divorce case and divorce was not an option for her .
L.Darragh .D.A : stacey schoeck was controlling and conniving and manipulativ she used people to the extent that she needed them and beyond that that just dsidn´t matter .
the district attorney says the trio thought they commited the perfect murder and they could easily outsmart small-town cops.but they were wrong.
L.Darragh .D.A :they just thought that tihs was not metro Atlanta they ´d just a bunch of rednecks who simply weren´t gonna be able to find out what happened but they did .
with so much evidence against them ,stacey and reggie pleaded guilty and was convicted of malice murder.
lynitra stood trial but was convicted of the same charge.
all three will spend the rest of their lives behind bars and as for stacey schoeck it´s unlikely she will ever tie the knot with husband number six.
L.Darragh .D.A :stacey schoeck received eventually a sentence of life without parole. she will never be released from prison expect in a box.