Speaker 1: School of Humans. It was May tenth, two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: when police in the tiny town of Ballymouth, Massachusetts, a sleepy,
Speaker 1: picturesque little place on Cape Cod got this nine one
Speaker 1: one calls record. Yeah, I think somebody down at six
Speaker 1: fifty seventh Highways.
Speaker 2: I think somebody shot Shirley.
Speaker 1: Oh my God, Girland, God man, let me tell you it. Cotnia,
Speaker 1: here we are. A man named Michael Dominguez had been
Speaker 1: doing some work for a woman who lived in the
Speaker 1: house at six fifty seven East Falmouth Highway, fifty one
Speaker 1: year old Shirley Rainey. Michael showed up a little after
Speaker 1: five am. He had two cups of dunkin Donuts coffee
Speaker 1: with him, one for himself and one for Shirley, but
Speaker 1: Shirley didn't answer the door, so Michael started looking around
Speaker 1: the house outside. He peeked through one of the glass
Speaker 1: panels in the garage and that's when he saw Shirley
Speaker 1: slumped on the garage floor, half hanging out of her
Speaker 1: Nissan Maxima in a.
Speaker 3: Pool of blood.
Speaker 2: Michael kicked the door down and he's the one who
Speaker 2: made the nine one one call.
Speaker 1: Police rushed to the scene, and they later said that
Speaker 1: Shirley had been dead for a while, around eight hours.
Speaker 1: She had been shot twice, once in the chest, and
Speaker 1: then when she fell out of the car. Police believed
Speaker 1: the killer stepped closer to her and shot her a
Speaker 1: second time in the head. Then they picked up the
Speaker 1: shell casings and left the scene. There was no sign
Speaker 1: of forced entry, so it seemed that the killer had
Speaker 1: been lying in wait for Shirley in that dark garage.
Speaker 1: Shirley was a pretty wealthy woman, but nothing was stolen
Speaker 1: from the house. So who would stalk and kill a
Speaker 1: fifty something woman execution style in her garage and why?
Speaker 1: It turned out that there were actually a lot of suspects.
Speaker 1: Shirley had been married to Melvin Rainey, a convicted arsonist
Speaker 1: who was nicknamed the Falm of Fox. He was given
Speaker 1: that nickname back in the day by a judge who
Speaker 1: described him as being sly like a fox. Melvin Rainey
Speaker 1: had a lot of local enemies, and so did Shirley.
Speaker 1: They included alleged mob connections, people who owed her money,
Speaker 1: former lovers who she allegedly made sex tapes with, and
Speaker 1: who may have been being blackmailed, family members of Melvin's
Speaker 1: first wife, and even Shirley's own step sons, Todd and
Speaker 1: Melvin Junior. They were fighting Shirley for control of their
Speaker 1: family business, and they were due to go back to
Speaker 1: court in just ten days. Shirley Rainey was a mysterious woman,
Speaker 1: and this small town shooting was about to lead to
Speaker 1: a trail of dead bodies and a lot more dark secrets.
Speaker 1: I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. If
Speaker 1: you have a case you'd like me and my team
Speaker 1: to look into, you can reach out to us at
Speaker 1: our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven
Speaker 1: four four six one four five. I first heard about
Speaker 1: this case when I took a trip to Cape Cod
Speaker 1: last spring. I was talking to a friend who has
Speaker 1: a house, and they said, you know, why don't you
Speaker 1: ever take a break from trying to cover cold cases
Speaker 1: and maybe hang out somewhere like this, this quiet little
Speaker 1: town for a couple of weeks. And I distinctly remember
Speaker 1: what I said. I said, if I didn't travel around
Speaker 1: the country and cover cold cases, I would probably find
Speaker 1: one near me, because every town has at least one
Speaker 1: cold case. I was kind of kidding, but later that day,
Speaker 1: of course, I did, in fact start talking to someone
Speaker 1: at a local coffee shop, and they told me about
Speaker 1: the case of the Famath Fox and his wife.
Speaker 3: As I said.
Speaker 1: Before, the Famath Fox was a local nickname for Shirley
Speaker 1: Rainey's husband, Melvin Rainey. And that's when I found out
Speaker 1: that I was sitting there in this sweet little town
Speaker 1: that basically looked like the backdrop for murder, she wrote,
Speaker 1: And yet I was on top of one of the
Speaker 1: most notorious unsolved killings in New England. Shirley Rainey and
Speaker 1: Melvin Rainey had been married for around twenty years, and
Speaker 1: Shirley's home that she was living in at the time
Speaker 1: of the shooting was in the middle of kind of
Speaker 1: a compound owned by the Rainy family. Shirley and Melvin's
Speaker 1: property was on hundreds of acres of land. Her brother
Speaker 1: in law, John Rainey lived in the house next door.
Speaker 1: Shirley's step son, Todd Rainey lived on a nearby property,
Speaker 1: and so did his girlfriend, Joanne, who was the mother
Speaker 1: of his two children. Melvin Senior ran a trash hauling business.
Speaker 1: It was called Five Star Enterprises, and many of you
Speaker 1: who have read anything about mob history and the history
Speaker 1: of New England may know that especially during that era,
Speaker 1: the phrase trash hauling was often shorthand for a business
Speaker 1: that relied on mob connections and a lot of shady dealings,
Speaker 1: and that was definitely the case with Five Star. For
Speaker 1: a long time, Shirley's two step sons, Todd and Melvin Junior,
Speaker 1: were in the family business, but Melvin Senior and his
Speaker 1: sons had a falling out. Now why this started exactly
Speaker 1: is a little bit of a mystery. It started sometime
Speaker 1: in the mid nineties. Shirley told her lawyers that Melvin
Speaker 1: got frustrated because his two sons just weren't working hard enough.
Speaker 1: Now they would later allege that Shirley manipulated Melvin Senor,
Speaker 1: but either way, the end result was that Melvin and
Speaker 1: his two sons, Melvin Junior and Todd, were estranged. Melvin
Speaker 1: Junior and Todd ended up going to work for another company,
Speaker 1: a competitor. Over the years, Melvin was known as a
Speaker 1: notorious criminal.
Speaker 3: There's just no other way to put it.
Speaker 1: He was also an arsonist, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: who've commented on the case say that Melvin was a
Speaker 1: psychopath and that he truly enjoyed and maybe even got
Speaker 1: sexual pleasure out of setting fires. His family's trash hauling
Speaker 1: business definitely had a monopoly on the area. But in
Speaker 1: the late nineties, Melvin Senior's mental health started to decline.
Speaker 1: He seemed to be developing dementia and eventually he went
Speaker 1: to stay long term at a psychiatric hospital.
Speaker 3: So by the.
Speaker 1: Time of Shirley's shooting, Shirley was running the family business
Speaker 1: by herself. There is so much going on with this
Speaker 1: case and so much history, and good investigative reporting really
Speaker 1: can change the game in these cases because it's all
Speaker 1: about reading between the lines. In this case, reporter Michelle
Speaker 1: McPhee did a great story for Boston Magazine, and that
Speaker 1: story had a lot of details that many shows like
Speaker 1: the CNN Special left out, like the fact that Michael,
Speaker 1: the guy who found Shirley, wasn't just a coworker of Shirley's.
Speaker 1: He was married, but allegedly he was Shirley's lover, which
Speaker 1: is why he showed up so early at that hour
Speaker 1: of the morning, and how he knew how Shirley took
Speaker 1: her coffee. This was something that Michael never admitted, by
Speaker 1: the way, so at first it's hard to know if
Speaker 1: it's just local rumor or something more. But it was
Speaker 1: an early indication that in this case, nothing is what
Speaker 1: it appears to be on the surface. It reminds me
Speaker 1: a lot of some of the cases I've covered in
Speaker 1: Arkansas and other places, small towns, where each person is
Speaker 1: connected to multiple people in the case in various different ways.
Speaker 1: For example, you'll have someone who is a witness and
Speaker 1: also rented someone a house, and they're the cousin of
Speaker 1: the prosecutor.
Speaker 3: This is just the way it is in small towns.
Speaker 1: But I have to say the entanglements in the Rainy
Speaker 1: case are some of the most complicated I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: Shirley was very close to one family member, her sister, Loretta.
Speaker 1: Loretta told CNN that from the beginning she suspected that
Speaker 1: someone in Shirley's husband's family had something to do with
Speaker 1: the shooting. Now, remember, at this time, Shirley was running
Speaker 1: her husband, Melvin Senior's business. Loretta did work for the
Speaker 1: family business as well. Not only did Shirley and Loretta
Speaker 1: work together, but they were together almost every night after
Speaker 1: work too, including on May ninth. After work on May night,
Speaker 1: Shirley drove to Loretta's house and had dinner with her.
Speaker 1: Loretta told investigators that was at around six pm. Loretta
Speaker 1: said Shirley left for her home sometime between eight thirty
Speaker 1: and eight forty five pm. Police theorized that, based on
Speaker 1: the crime scene, Shirley pulled into her garage, her killer
Speaker 1: stepped out of the darkness with a nine millimeter handgun,
Speaker 1: which was found to be the weapon used, shot Shirley twice,
Speaker 1: and left the scene. Police suspected that this could have
Speaker 1: been a professional hit, or at least it was done
Speaker 1: by someone with insider knowledge, someone who was intimately familiar
Speaker 1: with Shirley's schedule. Plus, there was no sign of forced entry,
Speaker 1: so it might have been someone who had a key
Speaker 1: or knew about another way to get inside that house,
Speaker 1: someone who made a plan and targeted Shirley. So who
Speaker 1: could that have been? Who would have wanted Shirley dead?
Speaker 1: Police talked to Michael Dominguez, who remember was not only
Speaker 1: Shirley's employee, but also potentially her alleged lover, and then
Speaker 1: later it came out in the Cape Cod Times that
Speaker 1: Michael Dominguez was also rumored to be mel Child, a
Speaker 1: child that Melvin Senior had had out of wedlock from
Speaker 1: another relationship. So technically he would be Shirley's illegitimate step
Speaker 1: son as well. But Michael had an alibi for the
Speaker 1: night before he was with his wife, Plus he and
Speaker 1: Shirley were getting along, so there was really no reason
Speaker 1: to suspect that he would have heard her. And then
Speaker 1: there were Shirley's stepsons. Because it turned out not only
Speaker 1: were Shirley's stepsons angry about the family business, they believed
Speaker 1: that she had their dad locked away and that she
Speaker 1: had been responsible for them being cut out of his will,
Speaker 1: but they also believed that Shirley may have been partially
Speaker 1: responsible for killing their mother. Cape Cod is known as
Speaker 1: being a safe, sleepy, little area, but there were a
Speaker 1: couple of very high profile murders in the years before
Speaker 1: Shirley was shot. Both of them were women, but both
Speaker 1: of these women could kind of be described as out
Speaker 1: of ten people who were renting in the area for locals.
Speaker 1: This case was different. Shirley Rainey was a local girl.
Speaker 1: She grew up in the area and it seemed like
Speaker 1: everyone knew her, or at least knew of her and
Speaker 1: her husband's family.
Speaker 2: Police asked Michael Dominguez who he thought did it.
Speaker 1: He immediately said Todd and Melvin Junior, Shirley step son's.
Speaker 1: Shirley's lawyer, William Enright told Boston Magazine quote she was
Speaker 1: afraid of her step son's end quote. There was also
Speaker 1: the question of where Todd was on the night of
Speaker 1: the shooting. His girlfriend, Joanne, said that he had been
Speaker 1: at their house, which was right down from Shirley's house.
Speaker 2: She later testified that Todd had been at her house
Speaker 2: on the night when Shirley was killed, but the timeline
Speaker 2: seemed pretty vague. Joanne said that she went out to
Speaker 2: run an errand and that when she came back, Todd
Speaker 2: was gone. Shirley's sister, Loretta also so asked police why
Speaker 2: no one heard anything, because remember, several family members lived nearby,
Speaker 2: and yet no one had heard any gunshots. Police also
Speaker 2: wondered why Todd and his girlfriend Joanne would not let
Speaker 2: their two children talk to investigators. Jo Anne later told police,
Speaker 2: according to the Cape Cod Times, that it was a
Speaker 2: joint decision. So now that we know how Shirley's life
Speaker 2: ended violently, we need to take a step back and
Speaker 2: find out how her relationship with Melvin started, how she
Speaker 2: got sucked into all this. Melvin Senior was born in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty nine, and he grew up in the area.
Speaker 2: Very early on he started to get into the family
Speaker 2: trashouling business. He started being involved in criminal activity at
Speaker 2: a young age as well. Melvin's first wife, the mom
Speaker 2: of Todd and Melvin Junior, was a local girl named
Speaker 2: Wanda Maderos. Apparently, Wanda was a very serious, kind of
Speaker 2: studious and shy young woman, and her family did not
Speaker 2: like Melvin when they started going out.
Speaker 3: He was this kind of.
Speaker 1: Squirrely older guy who was hanging around their teenage daughter.
Speaker 1: And at this point Melvin was already in his mid twenties.
Speaker 1: But Wanda was in love with him, even though he
Speaker 1: had a reputation as a gangster, and so right after
Speaker 1: she turned eighteen, they got married on October twenty sixth,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four. They had two children, Melvin Junior and Todd.
Speaker 1: As we said before, Melvin was already involved in the
Speaker 1: family trash hauling business, he was also involved in a
Speaker 1: lot of arson. Melvin was arrested for arson a few
Speaker 1: years later. In nineteen sixty eight. He and a younger
Speaker 1: guy he was working with, who was actually a teenager
Speaker 1: at the time, set fire to a bunch of houses
Speaker 1: and a hotel in Cape cod From reading through descriptions
Speaker 1: of what happened, it looks like the police were able
Speaker 1: to talk to Melvin's younger accomplice and kind of get
Speaker 1: him to flip on Melvin. As a result, Melvin was
Speaker 1: convicted of seven counts of arson. That same year, Melvin
Speaker 1: was sentenced to five to eight years in state prison.
Speaker 1: And while Melvin was in prison, he seemed to learn
Speaker 1: a lesson from this. Unfortunately, the lesson wasn't that he
Speaker 1: shouldn't commit crime and burn down houses. The lesson he
Speaker 1: learned was that in future he was going to make
Speaker 1: sure nobody ever flipped on him again. Melvin was released
Speaker 1: after eighteen months. When he got back to town, everyone
Speaker 1: said he was not rehabilitated. In fact, just the opposite.
Speaker 1: He seemed to have no fear. He was bold both
Speaker 1: in his criminal activities and in his private life because,
Speaker 1: according to pretty much everyone who knew him, Melvin was
Speaker 1: not an attractive man. He was five feet eight inches tall,
Speaker 1: he weighed around one hundred and sixty pounds, so was
Speaker 1: pretty skinny, and he had this kind of unkempt pompadour
Speaker 1: slick back hairstyle. But The main thing that people found
Speaker 1: disturbing about Melvin's appearance was his eyes. A lot of
Speaker 1: people talked about how he had this weird, distant stare,
Speaker 1: this really weird, unsettling smile that was kind of a
Speaker 1: creepy leer, but that didn't stop him from being a
Speaker 1: local player. According to rumors, he dated lots of young women,
Speaker 1: and I do mean young women, as we've seen in
Speaker 1: so many cases with narcissistic, controlling, sort of predatory type men,
Speaker 1: they get older, but they continue to date teenage girls.
Speaker 1: I find it really sad reading about Wanda, Melvin's first wife,
Speaker 1: because it seems like after she married Melvin, she realized
Speaker 1: pretty quickly she made a big mistake.
Speaker 3: She really loved him, but his.
Speaker 1: Job, combined with him staying out all hours, and her
Speaker 1: hearing rumors about him pursuing other women, really seemed to
Speaker 1: cause her to lose all of her confidence. Her mom, Mary,
Speaker 1: who Wanda was very close to, made a comment to
Speaker 1: a reporter years later. She said Wanda seemed depressed. She
Speaker 1: was only twenty five years old, but she seemed older
Speaker 1: than her years. Mary said Wanda's expected that her husband
Speaker 1: was cheating on her, and Wanda was right, because Melvin
Speaker 1: did have a wandering eye, and he already had that
Speaker 1: wandering eyes set on someone else, a sixteen year old
Speaker 1: named Shirley Susa who lived across the street, who would
Speaker 1: later become his second wife. Melvin and Wanda actually hired
Speaker 1: Shirley as a living babysitter, which is a little weird
Speaker 1: because Wanda was a stay at home mom and she
Speaker 1: didn't go out that much, so it's not clear why
Speaker 1: they would need full time childcare help, especially a living
Speaker 1: babysitter who was gorgeous. Back then, Shirley was tall, she
Speaker 1: had long black hair, and this very bucksome figure. It
Speaker 1: was obvious that Melvin was interested in her. So now
Speaker 1: this brings us up to the early seventies. Wanda is
Speaker 1: twenty five years old, She's depressed, she's sure that her
Speaker 1: husband is cheating, and Melvin has his eye on the
Speaker 1: babysitter from across the street. On March thirteenth, nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: Wanda's mother, Mary called the house looking for her daughter.
Speaker 1: She talked to one of her grandsons and they told
Speaker 1: her that Wanda had gone to visit her grandma Mary.
Speaker 3: Well, Mary knew.
Speaker 1: This wasn't true. Finally she talked to Melvin. He said
Speaker 1: that the kids had it wrong. What really happened was
Speaker 1: that Wanda had gone to visit a cousin who lived
Speaker 1: in a town called Whaream, which was nearby. He mentioned
Speaker 1: that he and Wanda got into an argument before she
Speaker 1: left the house, he said, over a small amount of money.
Speaker 1: Melvin waited five days to report his wife and the
Speaker 1: mother of his two children officially missing, and when people
Speaker 1: asked Melvin what happened, apparently he told them Wanda might
Speaker 1: have been having an affair and left him for a lover.
Speaker 1: Her mother, Mary, said this was absolutely ridiculous. First of all,
Speaker 1: she said, Wanda would never have had an affair. This
Speaker 1: was a woman who was still devoted to her husband,
Speaker 1: her confidence had been shattered, and also she loved her children.
Speaker 1: She did everything for them. She would never leave her sons. Secondly,
Speaker 1: the cousin whom Melvin had referred to no longer even
Speaker 1: lived wear them, and once Melvin talked to police, it
Speaker 1: turned out that the bus depot that he had supposedly
Speaker 1: taken one to two to put her on a bus
Speaker 1: to visit that cousin didn't even go to war them,
Speaker 1: so none of the story made any sense. Mary and
Speaker 1: a lot of other people who knew Wanda believed that
Speaker 1: Melvin had done something to her, that he'd killed her
Speaker 1: and gotten rid of her body. They pointed out that
Speaker 1: it certainly would have been within his area of expertise.
Speaker 1: Not only was he in the business of trash removal,
Speaker 1: but apparently Melvin had a brother in law who was
Speaker 1: a grave digger.
Speaker 2: Police did search his home. They looked in a few areas,
Speaker 2: including a garage where fresh cement had been poured, and
Speaker 2: a septic tank, but you have to remember this is
Speaker 2: a massive compound with a lot of potential hiding places.
Speaker 2: In the end, police left without finding anything.
Speaker 1: Over the years, Mary has had to hear a lot
Speaker 1: of local rumors about how Melvin supposedly got rid of Wandah.
Speaker 1: Some people believe that since part of his business involved
Speaker 1: picking up animal fats from local butcher shops and then
Speaker 1: taking them to a factory so they could be processed
Speaker 1: into soap, that maybe that's what he did with Wanda.
Speaker 1: Maybe he turned Wanda into hand soap. I cannot imagine
Speaker 1: how painful it must have been for Mary to hear
Speaker 1: all of these rumors and consider all of these horrific
Speaker 1: possibilities and to never find her daughter. Wanda's family was
Speaker 1: very suspicious, but the bottom line is with no body
Speaker 1: and with Melvin not talking, they couldn't really do anything,
Speaker 1: so the case went cold. After Wanda disappeared, Shirley, the
Speaker 1: teenage babysitter, moved in permanently. But there was another problem
Speaker 1: because Shirley already had a boyfriend, or at least a
Speaker 1: local guy who liked her, a seventeen year old named
Speaker 1: Charles Jeffrey Flanagan. In October of nineteen seventy two, Shirley
Speaker 1: was one of the last last people seen hanging out
Speaker 1: with Jeff and then he disappeared. He was last seen
Speaker 1: going out to a movie with some friends, and then
Speaker 1: those friends told police that Shirley and Melvin pulled up
Speaker 1: in Melvin's Cadillac and offered Jeff a ride home, then
Speaker 1: he disappeared. Later, the authorities found Jeff's body. He had
Speaker 1: been shot in the face with a twenty gage shotgun.
Speaker 1: The bullet went out his upper back, severing his spinal cord.
Speaker 1: He was found in a Cranberry bog right across from
Speaker 1: Melvin's house on East Falmouth Highway, the same house where
Speaker 1: Shirley's body would be found years later. There were a
Speaker 1: lot of suspicions, but again Melvin was never charged in
Speaker 1: connection with his crime. John Busby, a police officer who
Speaker 1: was shot in the face after he offended Melvin, said
Speaker 1: in a book that he wrote about the case that
Speaker 1: on the day that Jeff's body was found, Shirley was
Speaker 1: seen scrubbing down Melvin's Cadillac, but Shirley always dined any
Speaker 1: wrongdoing in connection with any crime. Over the years, Melvin
Speaker 1: Senior was also linked to the disappearance and murder of
Speaker 1: several more people. In nineteen seventy seven, Paul Alwert was
Speaker 1: seventeen years old and he worked for Five Star Enterprises,
Speaker 1: Melvin's trash business. He was the suspect in an arson
Speaker 1: that supposedly was arranged and masterminded by Melvin. In a way,
Speaker 1: it was a replay of the charges that Melvin had
Speaker 1: faced a few years earlier when he committed arson with
Speaker 1: a teenage accomplice. Police convinced Paul to testify against Melvin.
Speaker 1: Paul said he was terrified. Police convinced him they could
Speaker 1: protect him. They put him on a ferry to Martha's vineyard.
Speaker 1: He was supposed to testify the next day. The police
Speaker 1: watched him board the fairy, and then the fairy pulled
Speaker 1: away and vanished. When it docked on the other side,
Speaker 1: Paul was gone. No one has seen any trace of
Speaker 1: him since. There is very little information about Paul online.
Speaker 1: Just an old pixelated photo of a little boy with
Speaker 1: shiny brown hair and two front teeth with a really
Speaker 1: cute smile looking up at the camera. It's absolutely heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: Some news reports have said that Paul had a troubled childhood,
Speaker 1: that he was a ward of the Massachusetts Department of
Speaker 1: Youth Services. So I don't know if he had any
Speaker 1: family or friends to even report him missing or to
Speaker 1: do public appeals. He was just gone. Police never identified
Speaker 1: a suspect in that case. It is still unsolved. Just
Speaker 1: another disappearance that Melvin Senior was suspected of being involved
Speaker 1: in that was never proven. Over the years, Melvin Senior's
Speaker 1: trash hauling company got more and more powerful. They developed
Speaker 1: kind of a local monopoly, and Melvin continued to openly
Speaker 1: threaten people, even police. In August of nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: John Busby, the Foulmouth Police officer we mentioned earlier found
Speaker 1: out the hard way what happened when you cross Melvin Senior.
Speaker 1: John Busby was on patrol when he gave a guy
Speaker 1: a traffic ticket. The guy was with Melvin, and Melvin
Speaker 1: said something like, don't you know who I am? John
Speaker 1: Busby basically refused to be intimidated and just told Melvin
Speaker 1: and his accomplice to pay the ticket. Well, apparently this
Speaker 1: enraged Melvin. He said, I smell smoke, which was something
Speaker 1: that he said to a lot of people to intimidate
Speaker 1: them and threaten them, make them feel like he was
Speaker 1: going to start a fire. John Busby said that Melvin
Speaker 1: kind of puffed his chest out, but he just tried
Speaker 1: to ignore him. On August thirty first of that year,
Speaker 1: John Busby was on patrol. A car pulled up next
Speaker 1: to him. Someone put a shotgun out of one of
Speaker 1: the windows and shot him at point blank range in
Speaker 1: the face. The bullets shattered his jaw and severed part
Speaker 1: of his tongue, and somehow, with half of his face
Speaker 1: hanging off, John Busby managed to get to a nearby
Speaker 1: house to get help. He was very close to death,
Speaker 1: but he survived. However, he did suffer permanent injuries. His
Speaker 1: speech continues to be affected. He had to have eighteen
Speaker 1: years of reconstructive surgeries. His life and his career as
Speaker 1: he had known it were over. In his book, which
Speaker 1: was actually written by John Busby and his daughter, called
Speaker 1: The Year We Disappeared, they talked about how after he
Speaker 1: got shot, the family had to go into hiding, they
Speaker 1: had to lead their entire lives behind all because they
Speaker 1: were terrorized by Melvin. No charges were ever filed in
Speaker 1: connection with that shooting either, and John Busby was described
Speaker 1: by everyone who knew him as a good, honest cop,
Speaker 1: someone who did the right thing. And look what happened
Speaker 1: to the guy who tried to do the right thing.
Speaker 1: He ended up permanently disfigured, while the guy who masterminded
Speaker 1: his shooting was allowed to go on unchallenged. Melvin's company
Speaker 1: did get into some trouble over the years. In nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five, Five Star Enterprises actually had their contract terminated
Speaker 1: by the town. Melvin was accused of fraud. He was
Speaker 1: accused of collaborating with other companies so that the bid
Speaker 1: for the trash hauling services would always go to him. Basically,
Speaker 1: he was accused of rigging the system. But Melvin, like
Speaker 1: a lot of underworld figures in small towns, had a
Speaker 1: lot of friends in powerful positions. He was even friends
Speaker 1: with several police officers. Melvin was acquitted of those charges,
Speaker 1: which shocked a lot of people, but after that he
Speaker 1: seemed to become more and more bold. He probably thought
Speaker 1: he was untouchable, and at that point, the sad thing
Speaker 1: is he was probably right. Meanwhile, on the home front,
Speaker 1: Melvin's personal life had always been rather complicated. After Wanda disappeared,
Speaker 1: Shirley moved in and they were together after that. Later
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety seven, Melvin filed for divorce from Wanda
Speaker 1: on the grounds that she deserted him, which again must
Speaker 1: have been so painful for her family and her children
Speaker 1: to consider that possibility and to know it wasn't true.
Speaker 1: Melvin and Shirley finally got married in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1: They never had children of their own, but according to
Speaker 1: a lot of people, including people from the family, Shirley
Speaker 1: and Melvin's sons got along really well in the beginning.
Speaker 1: She treated them like they were her own. She was
Speaker 1: living with them in the home from the time they
Speaker 1: were very young. In the seventies, they grew up together
Speaker 1: as this sort of strange, blended family. Of course, at first,
Speaker 1: because the boys were young, they probably had no idea
Speaker 1: what was going on. They probably believed whatever Melvin and
Speaker 1: Shirley told them about their mother leaving and not coming back.
Speaker 1: But over the years, it seems like the boys began
Speaker 1: to get suspicious about what had really happened to their mother,
Speaker 1: and that must have been a really strange household to
Speaker 1: live in. To love your stepmother and your father, but
Speaker 1: also to kind of suspect they might have had something
Speaker 1: to do with killing your mother. Over the years, Melvin
Speaker 1: Antics became more and more notorious, but law enforcement just
Speaker 1: seemed to look the other way, even when Melvin once
Speaker 1: set fire to a car that was sitting in the
Speaker 1: police chief's driveway according to CNN, and all those years
Speaker 1: Shirley worked for Melvin. Her sister Loretta did the bookkeeping,
Speaker 1: and Shirley was the financial controller. Finally, in the mid nineties,
Speaker 1: there was the rift between Melvin and his sons. Again,
Speaker 1: what exactly went down really depends on who you ask.
Speaker 1: Shirley's family and her lawyer blame the boys for their
Speaker 1: bad work ethic. The boys have not really talked about
Speaker 1: their reasons for disliking Shirley, but I'm sure they must
Speaker 1: have been suspicious about what happened to their mother. After
Speaker 1: Todd and Melvin Junior became estrange from their father and
Speaker 1: started working for the rival company, Melvin started telling people
Speaker 1: he missed his sons. Loretta, Shirley's sister, later described Melvin
Speaker 1: as being like two different people. He was a psychopath
Speaker 1: who loved to start fires and who terrorized a lot
Speaker 1: of people in town. But on the other hand, he
Speaker 1: could be a great neighbor. He loaned people money, and
Speaker 1: he could be really sweet at home. Melvin's behavior started
Speaker 1: to become more and more erratic, his mental health was declining.
Speaker 1: In October of two thousand and one, things came to
Speaker 1: a head when Melvin attacked a woman in public in
Speaker 1: East Balmouth in a parking lot. He threatened to shoot her.
Speaker 1: He was charged with attempted murder this time, and it
Speaker 1: was something he couldn't talk his way out of.
Speaker 3: The court put.
Speaker 1: Melvin in a psychiatric hospital after that happened, Shirley was
Speaker 1: in charge of the money and the business. And there's
Speaker 1: something else that her stepson's thought was weird, they said.
Speaker 1: Just before Melvin went away to that hospital, when presumably
Speaker 1: his mental state was in question, Melvin made a new
Speaker 1: will again.
Speaker 3: This was just two.
Speaker 1: Weeks before Melvin went into the mental hospital, and in
Speaker 1: that will it specified that neither son would receive anything.
Speaker 1: Todd and Melvin Junior were enraged. They believed that their
Speaker 1: father was not in his right mind. They believed Shirley
Speaker 1: had masterminded this turn of events and gotten their father
Speaker 1: to change that will. Also, on a side note, when
Speaker 1: Melvin Senior got admitted to the mental hospital right after
Speaker 1: he got charged with a violent crime, I imagine it
Speaker 1: could have been one of those things where people were thinking,
Speaker 1: is he really mentally incapacitated, or is this like the
Speaker 1: scene in Goodfellas and Casino and New Jack City and
Speaker 1: every other mob movie where the mobsters pretend to be
Speaker 1: super feeble, they're all in oxygen in wheelchairs, and then
Speaker 1: they roll outside, get up and start walking around and
Speaker 1: are actually fine. But time passed and Melvin did seem
Speaker 1: to be having a break with reality. He was committed
Speaker 1: to Taunton State Hospital. Later it was revealed he had
Speaker 1: something called Pick's disease, which is kind of similar to
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's but less common with Picks disease, the front and
Speaker 1: temporal lobes of the are damaged, and those are the
Speaker 1: parts of the brain that control behavior, personality, and speech.
Speaker 1: So it's a form of dementia and it was not
Speaker 1: going to get any better.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Around this time, Melvin Junior and Todd's relationship with Shirley
Speaker 1: completely broke down. They seemed to blame everything, including the estrangement,
Speaker 1: on Shirley. In two thousand and two, Todd and Melvin
Speaker 1: Junior seemed to hatch a plan. They went to the
Speaker 1: police and they said Shirley had stolen some things from them.
Speaker 1: They said Shirley had one of their guns at three
Speaker 1: fifty seven magnum and a truck they had taken from her.
Speaker 1: So the police went in and executed a search warrant
Speaker 1: on Shirley's property. They found the truck and the gun,
Speaker 1: and they arrested Shirley, but no charges were ever pressed
Speaker 1: against her. Now, this is where the story gets a
Speaker 1: little bit complicated because later it was alleged that Todd
Speaker 1: had friends who were high up in the police department.
Speaker 1: We know he had a relative who was a detective
Speaker 1: and he was an informant for the foulm of police
Speaker 1: at one point, and in court what came out was
Speaker 1: that while the police were at Shirley's residence, they opened
Speaker 1: up her safe. Inside were financial documents that were related
Speaker 1: to Melvin Senior's will.
Speaker 3: Todd allegedly taught.
Speaker 1: To his buddies in the police department about what they
Speaker 1: found in Shirley's safe. Now they completely denied that, But
Speaker 1: according to a guy named John Rams, who was one
Speaker 1: of Todd's associates who had worked with him in the past,
Speaker 1: Todd approached him and asked him to break into Shirley's house.
Speaker 1: John Rams had a criminal background, and some of it
Speaker 1: was violent. In nineteen ninety two, when he was nineteen
Speaker 1: years old, he got into a fight with a guy
Speaker 1: and stabbed him. He ended up being convicted of manslaughter
Speaker 1: and was sent to prison for seven years. Now his
Speaker 1: dad told a newspaper that John was just defending himself
Speaker 1: and that a group of guys were attacking him. But
Speaker 1: John Rams had also been arrested for other crimes, at
Speaker 1: one point for allegedly assaulting an ex girlfriend. Much later,
Speaker 1: John Rams told CNN that he owed Todd Rainey a favor.
Speaker 1: Todd told him he wanted Shirley and Melvin's will and
Speaker 1: trust documents, the ones that were in that safe that
Speaker 1: the police had seen. He also wanted some VHS tapes,
Speaker 1: which he said were sex tapes. Todd believed some of
Speaker 1: those videotapes showed Shirley having sexual encounters with prominent men
Speaker 1: in town and believed he could use them to blackmail her.
Speaker 1: John Rams said Todd also told him there was ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in cash in a safe inside Shirley's house
Speaker 1: that he could grab while he was there. So John
Speaker 1: Rams told police he did what Todd wanted. He broke
Speaker 1: into Shirley's house, he stole those documents, and he stole
Speaker 1: the sex tapes. By the way, John Rams said there
Speaker 1: was no cash in there, but it's pretty much impossible
Speaker 1: to verify that. The next year, in two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: Todd Rainey filed a lawsuit against Shirley in Barnstable Superior Court.
Speaker 1: The lawsuit alleged that Melvin was not in his right
Speaker 1: mind when he wrote that will, and that Shirley had
Speaker 1: influenced him. And this is when Todd and his brother
Speaker 1: did something that, in my opinion, was really brazen. And
Speaker 1: just kind of shows how much confidence they had that
Speaker 1: they were going to get away with anything they had.
Speaker 1: The financial documents that had been stolen from Shirley's house
Speaker 1: entered into evidence. So later police questioned Todd about this,
Speaker 1: and it's a long and weird story, but Todd told
Speaker 1: police that a random black man had given him those documents,
Speaker 1: which of course was a lie because he had arranged
Speaker 1: that break in at Shirley's house. So now police knew
Speaker 1: Todd had been responsible for the break in at Shirley's place,
Speaker 1: and they arrested him for it. Now, as a result
Speaker 1: of this, Melvin Junior and Todd ended up talking to police.
Speaker 1: They admitted that their dad, Melvin Sr. Had shot John Busby,
Speaker 1: the police officer. He had been the one who disfigured him.
Speaker 1: They also said their uncle, John Rainey, who lived next
Speaker 1: door to their dad, Anne Shirley, were in the car
Speaker 1: at the time when the policeman was shot. So the
Speaker 1: police talked to John Rainey. He also confessed. He told police, yes,
Speaker 1: he was driving the car the night John Busby was shot,
Speaker 1: but he said Melvin Senior, his brother, was the one
Speaker 1: who pulled the trigger. He also claimed that Shirley was
Speaker 1: in the car with them, and just to show how
Speaker 1: potentially corrupt this system was, it later came out that
Speaker 1: Melvin Senior was friends with a local police officer and
Speaker 1: he actually bought the getaway car from him. So now
Speaker 1: the police had a confession. They knew who had shot
Speaker 1: John Busby and permanently disfigured him. I really can't believe
Speaker 1: what happened. Next, the statute of limitations had run out,
Speaker 1: so no one was charged in the attempt on John
Speaker 1: Busby's life. It became just one more crime that Melvin
Speaker 1: Senior had masterminded and then walked away from totally unscathed.
Speaker 1: So now a lot of people were wondering what did
Speaker 1: Shirley know and when did she know it.
Speaker 3: One thing to.
Speaker 1: Point out here is that by all accounts, it really
Speaker 1: does seem like Shirley loved Melvin, but not much as
Speaker 1: known about her inner life. She did not have many
Speaker 1: people to confide in except her sister, Loretta. Loretta, when
Speaker 1: she talked to CNN, insisted that Shirley loved her husband,
Speaker 1: but she said Shirley had zero knowledge of how bad
Speaker 1: Melvin's criminal dealings were. But honestly, it's hard to believe
Speaker 1: that Shirley could have lived there all those years and
Speaker 1: not at least suspect that something was going on. A
Speaker 1: lot of people think she was in deep on several
Speaker 1: of the crimes. I don't want to sound like I'm
Speaker 1: blaming the victim here. I'm just trying to understand the
Speaker 1: dynamics of what was going on inside that house. We
Speaker 1: know that Shirley was very young when she got involved
Speaker 1: with Melvin. He was extremely manipulative and cruel, But at
Speaker 1: the same time, she was involved in pretty much every
Speaker 1: aspect of his business for years. It's very hard to
Speaker 1: believe that she lived with him all those years, worked
Speaker 1: with him, and knew nothing. Remember, Shirley was supposedly in
Speaker 1: the car when Melvin Senior shot John Busby. Then of
Speaker 1: course there's the fact she was one of the last
Speaker 1: people seen with Jeff, her former boyfriend, who disappeared, and
Speaker 1: then she was supposedly seen washing Melvin Senior's Cadillac on
Speaker 1: the day Jeff's body was found in a field right
Speaker 1: across from their home. Shirley's family said that she didn't
Speaker 1: know anything. They said that Melvin's family and people connected
Speaker 1: to them are just trying to blame the victim, to
Speaker 1: blame Shirley because she can't defend herself.
Speaker 3: They say that Shirley was a.
Speaker 2: Victim of Melvin and not an accomplice, but it's clear
Speaker 2: that over the years, not only did Shirley witness a
Speaker 2: lot of Melvin shady dealings, but that she also developed
Speaker 2: some enemies of her own, including potentially Todd's girlfriend, Joanne.
Speaker 2: Jo Anne had been living rent free on the family compound,
Speaker 2: but according to the Cape Cod Times, after Melvin Senior
Speaker 2: was sent to the hospital, Shirley had started asking joe
Speaker 2: Anne to sign a rental agree, which apparently did not
Speaker 2: go down well. Also, a lot of people wondered who
Speaker 2: were the people allegedly on those sex tapes with Shirley.
Speaker 1: In twenty fourteen, police finally charged someone with Shirley Rainey's murder,
Speaker 1: but to everyone in town's shock, it wasn't Todd or
Speaker 1: anyone in Melvin's family. It was John Rams. When John
Speaker 1: was arrested for Shirley's murder, he was given a polygraph.
Speaker 1: And this really is one of those little side notes
Speaker 1: just to show you how often there are like zero
Speaker 1: degrees of separations between people in small towns. Because The
Speaker 1: officer who gave John Rams a polygraph task was Lieutenant Dominguez,
Speaker 1: the father of Michael Dominguez, Shirley's alleged lover, and the
Speaker 1: guy who found her body.
Speaker 3: Everyone was related to everyone.
Speaker 1: Everyone was tied to multiple people in multiple ways, and
Speaker 1: just understanding the relationships in this small town got really good, complicated,
Speaker 1: really fast. John Rams completely denied having anything to do
Speaker 1: with Shirley's murder. He said Todd told him after the
Speaker 1: break in that he wanted to kill Shirley, that Todd
Speaker 1: tried to get John Rams to do it, and that
Speaker 1: Todd told him that he wanted it to look like
Speaker 1: a mob hit. But John Rams insisted that he always
Speaker 1: refused to do that. Not only that, John Rams later
Speaker 1: told CNN that he warned federal and local authorities that
Speaker 1: Shirley's life was in danger when they questioned him about
Speaker 1: the break in years before she was killed.
Speaker 3: He said that he tried to.
Speaker 1: Warn them and they just ignored him. Now, the authorities
Speaker 1: deny this, but when CNN was doing the story, they
Speaker 1: also talked to John Ram's lawyer. He confirmed what John said.
Speaker 1: The lawyer also said he told the authorities about the
Speaker 1: alleged threats to Shirley's life, but at the time police
Speaker 1: denied that John tipped off the authorities. They said that
Speaker 1: any information he allegedly gave about danger to show Barley's
Speaker 1: life is not included in any official report. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, Todd Rainey was arrested for the break
Speaker 1: in at Shirley's house. He was convicted and given five
Speaker 1: years in prison. It seems like authorities were trying to
Speaker 1: build the case against Todd while he was in jail,
Speaker 1: but apparently they didn't have enough to charge Todd in
Speaker 1: connection with Shirley's murder. So Todd served his sentence and
Speaker 1: was released, and in twenty ten, the lawsuit that Todd
Speaker 1: and his brother Melvin had filed against Shirley was settled.
Speaker 1: The business, Five Star Enterprises, was later sold, and that
Speaker 1: was it. That was pretty much the end of the
Speaker 1: Rainy Empire. In November of twenty thirteen, Melvin Rainey Senior
Speaker 1: died at a hospital in Taunton. He was seventy four
Speaker 1: years old. The Cape Cod Times called John Busby the
Speaker 1: officer who was shot in the face by Melvin Senior
Speaker 1: and then been forced along with his family to flee town.
Speaker 1: He had this to say, quote I outlived the bastard.
Speaker 1: Thank goodness. The devil has a playmate or maybe even
Speaker 1: a boss or co conspirator. He was hell on earth
Speaker 1: end quote. John Rams murder trial finally started in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people really surprised that Todd Rainey
Speaker 1: wasn't charged. The whole trial was actually really much more
Speaker 1: about Todd Rainey than John Rams. The prosecutors were saying
Speaker 1: that Todd had hired John Rams to kill Shirley. They
Speaker 1: had no evidence, They had no physical evidence, None of
Speaker 1: John rams DNA was inside the house. They'd only found
Speaker 1: one fingerprint at the scene, and it wasn't a match
Speaker 1: to John Rams or anyone else they had in the database.
Speaker 1: In fact, they never successfully matched that fingerprint. Todd and
Speaker 1: Melvin Junior were called to testify, but they took the
Speaker 1: fifth and the defense pointed out Shirley Rainey had had
Speaker 1: other enemies, like the people who allegedly appeared in those
Speaker 1: sex tapes, people who may have been blackmailed. But that
Speaker 1: didn't seem to make a lot of sense because the
Speaker 1: sex tapes had already been stolen, and if that was true,
Speaker 1: why would someone come back and kill Shirley. Afterwards, in court,
Speaker 1: John Ram's attorney said Todd was the mastermind behind Shirley's murder,
Speaker 1: and it seemed like everyone focused on Todd as the
Speaker 1: alternative suspect. They tried to keep the focus on Todd,
Speaker 1: and in the end that seemed to work, because in
Speaker 1: April of twenty fourteen, John Rams was found not guilty.
Speaker 3: He walked out of court a freeman.
Speaker 1: Shirley's family was devastated and some of them have said
Speaker 1: they still have suspicions about John Rams. There's no way
Speaker 1: of knowing for sure if he's guilty or innocent. Obviously
Speaker 1: he now can't be tried again because of double jeopardy.
Speaker 1: But I will say over the years he has not
Speaker 1: been shy about talking to the media. He did an
Speaker 1: interview with CNN and he insists he's innocent. He says
Speaker 1: he did not kill Shirley Rainey. Shirley's family have no answers,
Speaker 1: no justice, and when the jury failed to convict John Rams,
Speaker 1: they probably felt like they lost any hope of getting
Speaker 1: any information on anyone else in the Rainy family. Since
Speaker 1: he walked out of court, John Rams has had more
Speaker 1: brushes with law in twenty fifteen, he allegedly struck a
Speaker 1: woman in the face with his hand and pulled a
Speaker 1: knife on her. He was back in jail for a
Speaker 1: few months, then released again. A lot of people continue
Speaker 1: to wonder why Todd Rainey was never charged. Even if
Speaker 1: the prosecutors believed John Rams was the trigger man, it
Speaker 1: seems like they would have filed charges against the person
Speaker 1: they believed was the mastermind, but they never did so officially.
Speaker 1: Shirley Rainey's murder is still unsolved. Wanda's body has never
Speaker 1: been found. It was reported in local news stories that
Speaker 1: over the years, Melvin Senior would make comments comments that
Speaker 1: were kind of tawning. He would allegedly say things like, quote,
Speaker 1: the police drive by Wanda every day, you just don't
Speaker 1: see her.
Speaker 3: End quote.
Speaker 1: Maybe hiding in plain sight, buried somewhere on that family compound,
Speaker 1: right across from where Jeff's body another victim connected to
Speaker 1: Melvin Senior was found. So in the end, Melvin Junior
Speaker 1: and Todd did get control of their family property. They
Speaker 1: were able to move back into the house where their
Speaker 1: dad lived and where they grew up. But Loretta, Shirley's sister,
Speaker 1: told Boston Magazine back in two thousand and six that
Speaker 1: she has zero interest in that house. She said, Basically,
Speaker 1: she feels like it's cursed ground. She said, quote my
Speaker 1: sister died for that property. It's evil land. My sister's
Speaker 1: murder is showing people that Foulmouth is not the sweet
Speaker 1: little town everyone thinks it is.
Speaker 3: End quote. I'm Catherine Townsend.
Speaker 1: This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line
Speaker 1: is a production of School of Humans and I Heartpop.
Speaker 1: It's written and hosted by me Catherine Townsend and produced
Speaker 1: by Gabby Watts. Music contributed by Ben Sale and this
Speaker 1: episode was scored and mixed by Miranda Hawkins. Executive producers
Speaker 1: of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley.
Speaker 3: If you have a case.
Speaker 1: You'd like me and my team to look into, you
Speaker 1: can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line.
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