A Lovely couple was having dinner at their favorite restaurant to reconnect after going through rough patches. A few months earlier, when they returned from their honeymoon, during an argument, the wife asked the husband to leave the house as they tried to work on their differences. After a brief separation, both agreed to work on their marriage and decided to reclaim the romance at the restaurant they had their first date. Everything about the young and affectionate couple was picture-perfect with a promising future for their marriage. The truth is that only one of them would make it home alive.
Nick and Linda first met at a flea market less than a year earlier. Nick, a very shy geeky-looking man was flattered when an attractive and bubbly Linda approached him and started a conversation. Only minutes into their conversation, he was smitten. He couldn’t resist the plans to meet that evening in a quieter place to get to know her better. From then on, the couple were in a serious relationship. Almost 30 years old, this would be Nick’s first girlfriend and he couldn’t believe his luck for being with a beautiful and vivacious woman. Nick was head over heels.
Nick, the only child of a well-to-do parents has two masters from a prestigious university. He grew up in an affluent neighborhood and was very close to his parents. His laid-back, quiet, and gentle nature made him a likable person. Nick landed a well-paid job right after school and made six figures. He managed to have at least 2 million dollars in investment due to his frugal nature.
Linda on the other hand grew up with three brothers and two sisters in a poor and rough neighborhood. Beautiful and ambitious, she was determined to become somebody. With that in mind, she focused on her looks and how to charm men. Unfortunately, years of charming men only resulted in being a single mother of a 6-year-old by the time she met Nick. After learning how much Nick was worth, she was hooked.
Three months after they first met, Nick proposed to Linda with an expensive ring and bought her and her son a beautiful house. With no previous relationships to compare it to, he took any rules Linda brought into their relationship. One of them was, she made it clear that she wouldn’t engage in pre-marital sex with him. Nick was ordered to call her for permission before each visit to the house. Lovesick, Nick willingly complied with all Linda’s orders.
Eventually, after giving Linda the lavish wedding of her dreams, Nick moved into the house. The only thing was that, in just after two weeks he was sleeping in a different room. This led to him sharing it with his parents which opened the door to sharing other strange rules in his relationship with his wife. After learning how a so-called male relative of Linda was a regular guest in the home while Nick was away, the parents’ concern grew but didn’t know what to do. Subsequently, Linda asked for a divorce and kicked Nick out of the house only a few months after the wedding. However, she changed her mind two weeks later and informed Nick that she wanted to work on the marriage. So, she gave Nick the date, time and the name of restaurant to meet. Nick was extremely happy for the opportunity to rekindle his relationship with the woman of his dreams.
But on their way home, only a short distance from the restaurant in a quiet community, neighbors heard what appeared to be two gunshots and called the police. Unfortunately, by the time the police showed up at the location, they found Linda sitting on the side of the road, and Nick on the ground soaked in his own blood. He was already dead. His wife who claimed to have been attacked by the same assailant who shot and killed her husband showed no signs of distress with her clothes and shoes perfectly in place and her hair and makeup intact. Upon questioning, Linda said she couldn’t give any detailed account of the crime because she was hit in the head by an object which rendered her unconscious until the police came. However, after a thorough examination of her entire body, there wasn’t any significant injury anywhere to back that claim. This got the investigators scratching their heads. The case appeared to be a robbery gone bad, but the dead man still had his wallet in his pocket with the wife’s handbag in the car in plain view. With their suspicion heightened, investigators focused on Linda but without any hard evidence, there were no grounds to arrest her.
The morning after the murder, while the investigators were still gathering evidence and her husband’s body was still warm, Linda was busy on the phone with the life insurance company and his work trying to see how much she was going to inherit as his widow. By the time of her husband’s funeral, Linda was bragging to her friends and anyone who would listen about being over two million rich from her husband’s estate.
Two months later, with the killer still at large, Nick’s grieve-stricken family went to the media for help from the public. Luckily, only hours after it aired in the News, somebody very close to Linda contacted the police with a tip about who murdered Nick. The story she told blew the case wide open and exposed the diabolical mind of Nick’s widow.
After meeting and questioning the caller, investigators focused on the alleged assailants. With the caller’s cooperation, the detectives uncovered the murder weapons which led to the arrests of two ex-convict relatives of Linda who later confessed to the crime. In the end, detectives discovered, after Linda realized she would only get a little bit of money from the divorce given the short marriage, she resolved to do anything to keep all her husband’s money. With that in mind, Linda reached out to the two notorious people she knew and devised a plan to have Nick killed.
All three were charged with first-degree premeditated murder and found guilty of the charges. In the victim impact statement by Nick’s mother, she revealed how excited Nick was when Linda, a woman he considered the love of his life, called, and suggested a reconciliation after first asking for divorce. For the love of money, Linda used the love his husband had for her to lure him to his death.
