On a quiet November evening in 1977, the peaceful life of 55-year-old Vernita L. Gusewelle, a female resident of Edwardsville, Illinois, came to a brutal and tragic end. On November 3rd, she and her husband, Arthur, were attacked in their rural farmhouse. Vernita was found deceased on the kitchen floor, having been shot three times in the back of the head. Her husband, though gravely wounded with two gunshots to the back of his head, managed to call for help before succumbing to his injuries.
The scene was initially made to look like a robbery, with the house in disarray. However, investigators noted that valuables, including cash in Vernita's purse and her jewelry, were left untouched, casting doubt on the initial theory and suggesting a more sinister motive. The shocking crime sent ripples of fear and disbelief through their close-knit community, leaving friends and family to grapple with the senseless violence that had shattered their lives.
The investigation into the Gusewelles' deaths eventually unraveled a chilling plot orchestrated by their own daughter-in-law, Barbara Boyle. Boyle, who was married to the Gusewelles' son, Ronald, was having an affair with a St. Louis dentist named Glennon Engleman. Together, they devised a scheme to murder Ronald's parents to inherit their substantial estate, which was valued at over half a million dollars. The plan was for Ronald to inherit his parents' wealth, after which he too would be killed, leaving Barbara to collect on both the inheritance and numerous life insurance policies she had taken out on him. Engleman, a sociopathic contract killer, carried out the murders of Arthur and Vernita with the assistance of an accomplice named Robert Handy. Seventeen months after his parents' murders, Ronald Gusewelle was also killed by Engleman, beaten and shot to death.
The complex investigation eventually led to the arrests of all three conspirators. Robert Handy, an acquaintance of Engleman, implicated both Engleman and Boyle in the murder plot in 1984. In 1985, Barbara Boyle went on trial for the murders of her husband and in-laws. A jury acquitted her of the murders of Arthur and Vernita Gusewelle but found her guilty of the murder of her husband, Ronald. She was sentenced to fifty years in prison and was released on parole in 2009. Glennon Engleman, already facing life sentences for other murders, pleaded guilty in 1985 to the three Gusewelle killings and received three concurrent life sentences. Robert Handy pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit the three murders and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. The case, a tale of greed, betrayal, and cold-blooded murder, saw a dentist trade his professional instruments for the tools of a killer, manipulating his lover to conspire in the annihilation of her own family for financial gain.
