And Raynella Leath has been convicted of killing her second husband.
So why do I care about a murder trial in Knoxville? Because it has some rather strange aspects; I was going to blog this NYT article on Sunday, but got distracted by shiny objects.
There was a fatal car crash, a love child, a missing will and, strangest of all, the 1992 death, officially by cattle stampede, of the Knox County prosecutor, Ed Dossett, who happened to be Ms. Dossett Leath’s first husband at the time.
Dossett’s death was ruled an “agricultural accident” by the medical examiner.
Mr. Dossett had been in the late stages of terminal cancer, and Ms. Dossett Leath told the authorities that she had helped him out to the barn to feed the cattle at his request.
The medical examiner who made that ruling
lost his medical license after being convicted of sedating and sexually molesting minors in 1995.
The current medical examiner found
Mr. Dossett’s morphine level was “so extraordinarily high it is unlikely that any human could function in an ambulatory manner or continue to live.”
Les Jones, as I recall, was covering this case for a while.
[…] Whipped Cream Difficulties reminds me that yesterday Raynella Leath Dossett was convicted of murdering her second husband, David Leath. A weekend NY Times piece mentions some of the bizarrely suspicious circumstances surrounding the deaths of both of Dossett’s husbands. Every quirk in her behavior has been parsed by Knoxville residents for motive, even the fact that she had Mr. Leath’s body cremated the day after he died. His body contained unprescribed sedatives and painkillers, according to an autopsy conducted hours earlier. Mr. Leath’s friends say he was opposed to cremation and owned a plot in the cemetery where his parents are buried. […]