Romantic rendezvous ends in murder of fifth husband

everyone knew the Scheck's were in love and for Stacey apparently in love with love itself richard was her fifth husband I don't know why she had so many husbands wouldn't Stacey would get bored it was on to the next five times the charm Stacey's cousin Connie recalls Richard was the best in her stable of husbands in fact he even adopted two of Stacey's three sons Richard was a great father to them he brought a lot to the table when it came to the marriage the 46 year old had a passion for hot-air ballooning but most of all he loves scouting and was a den leader for his boys Cub Scout troop Richard was this gregarious just outgoing guy he always looked to include everyone in the room into what we were doing Stacey the breadwinner for the family worked as a head administrator for a large medical and surgical practice in DeKalb County Georgia she would work her butt off to make sure that her kids had everything that they wanted and needed but there was always time for love on the last night of Richard's life he was cooking Valentine's Day dinner for Stacey and her grandparents an elderly couple who required round-the-clock medical attention at that point Stacey and Richard had Valentine's to exchange for each other gifts and cards she made the decision 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 and so she sent Richard ahead and told him to wait on her there they made their way in separate cars along the dark and winding road Richard arrived first but as it turns out he was not alone someone else was there lurking in the shadows it's a very secluded place there was no pavement there was no lights and so it'sit's a very eerie place especially at night and eerie was about to turn deadly thirty minutes later stacy pulls up and sees Richards body punctured with bullets lying in blood and dirt the 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 when we searched his truck we found there was $40 in the center console his watch was on his wedding ring was on his wallet was on him if it were a robbery then there was about a $40,000 truck sitting there idling that 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 basically red flags are the best way to put it the shooting appeared to be too over-the-top to be random Richard's just a regular guy who's unarmed and he gets there and he's comfortable enough to get out of his truck and approach the person who ultimately shot him today and in the darkened night the mystery killer is already gone by the time Stacey says she arrived at the secluded 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 the soil at the scene was soft it was muddy and it was very conducive to preserving tire impressions they're imprinted in the wet soil were three sets of tire tracks we determined we saw Richards impressions we saw the impressions that Stacie's his Ford Explorer made but there was a third set of impressions that came in from the park he could fallen from 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 Stacy makes a shocking admission before we left the scene she started telling us about an affair that she'd been having with a guy named Juan Reyes you heard right Stacy was two-timing Richard with her own Don Juan which she tearfully brings up again during an interview with authorities in deep is an understatement investigators quickly learned stacy had been carrying on an affair with her latin lover for a long time and that affair had been going on for several years immediately that sparked our attention and got us looking at one 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 at the 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 jealous boyfriend wants Stacy's husband out of the picture when we asked her if she thought Juan was responsible she'd say she didn't want to think that he was responsible but she didn't know Richard Schoeck was excited about a Valentine's Day rendezvous with his wife Stacy the meeting spot a remote park in the deep south but on this night love would turn tragic with a bullet to the heart cops are about to bring Stacy down to the station hoping to learn more about who would want her husband dead when she makes a shocking admission before we left the scene she started telling us about an affair that she'd been having with a guy named Juan Reyes in the interrogation room stacy comes clean about her latin lover Stacy who ran a large medical facility openly admits she was not only one boss but also his lover Juan Reyes was hired as the surgeon's assistant although he had no medical experience Stacy 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 soon learned Juan is a divorced father with a bunch of kids and hard up for cash I was very disgusted when I heard she was in a relationship with this guy Juan Stacy's cousin Connie Hearn claims the family soon heard all the lurid details Stacy showering Juan with goodies paying for his truck and cell phone taking him on romantic getaways Juan even lived in one of Stacy's homes and then of course there was the secret love nest Stacy 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 appearance he had had a beard for like two weeks leading up to the murder and then the morning after the murder when we first made contact with him he was clean-shaven but the change doesn't seem to rattle one at the sheriff's station he even agrees to talk to detectives without a lawyer present did you have anything to do with what's happened to Richard do you know who did detectives hammer one with questions he agrees to a polygraph the results are inconclusive and one seems straight up to telling cops that despite his divorce he was actually trying to reconcile with his unemployed ex-wife he viewed Stacey as the means to an end she gives you if she knows I'm low on cash you know it's from getting some money from you no cash for guys or whatever did Richard know was he possibly trying to prevent this high-priced affair detectives keep digging deeper and the hottest burning question remains where was one the night of Valentine's Day where he's been yesterday and last night Sunday me the girlfriend and my seven-year-old son Anthony we took him to movies about 5 o'clock meeting my son Anthony went up to Blockbuster what time did you guys eat there 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 relationship with Stacey was close to close I didn't care for her much but she was at my house for Thanksgiving some Christmases she would take my daughter to get her hair done her nails done she bought Christmas presents for my kids but then lieutenant Franklin reveals the devastating news that Juan's ex-wife only suspected I just confirmed her worst fears and told her that he'd been having an affair with Stacey for several years she had had suspicions because again Stacey had a lot of control over them but even with that painful revelation the woman scorned had the perfect opportunity to throw one under the bus instead she confirmed his alibi while I was cooking so between 6:00 and 7:00 a big part of his alibi hinged on a statement from his ex-wife she wanted 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 triggerman who is so that's when our first break came because we started looking at this as a murder-for-hire richard schoeck's body was lying cold and riddled with bullets at the very same moment Georgia cops have Stacey Schoeck in a quiet room with serious questions about her husband's murder in order to find out what happened out there [Music] Oh Stacey says 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 the time Preston's didn't match her car Richards so we knew there was a third person there 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 searching obsessively trying to match the brand of tire to the tread marks and to kill her we began to look on the internet we went to tire shops we went to the local Sam's to Walmart anywhere this old tires then a stroke of good luck as lieutenant Franklin was checking out a local tire store my partner said take a look at this one and we determined that was the brand tire that left the impression it was a Goodyear integrity and so at that point everybody we talked to you their tires got looked at but with countless cars using Goodyear tires in the area searching could be an overwhelming task and justice cops were about to lose hope an unexpected tip that quickly leads cops to wonder if Stacy wanted to rub out her fifth husband IT technician at the spine clinic where Stacy work called us his job to clear out junk email from employees accounts he said when I went through Stacey's computer I went to go ahead and empty her spam out of her inbox but her inbox was completely empty for Friday Saturday and Sunday the day of the murder another lucky break an electronic trail with markings of a different kind he said that's very unusual and he said but I have backups of all of those if you guys would like to happen and we said absolutely detectives immediately obtained a warrant for all of Stacey's emails after scouring 4002 raised eyebrows one of them written a few weeks before the murder - a bank request to transfer eight thousand nine hundred and two dollars from a real estate account that the doctor's office had into the personal account of a lady named lenitra ross lenitra ross a medical assistant at the practice where stacy worked and then curiously another money transfer to ross just days before that bloody Valentine's Day the Friday before the murder there's another request through SunTrust for another transfer for $1,100 and that went through offset tool in each Ross's personal account cops soon learned lenitra was renting a home from Stacey they immediately pay lenitra a visit recording the interview so how much money did you get overall when you're looking at a murder for how you're looking for a transfer of money and $10,000 is a nice even amount but we needed to figure out who the other parties work but lenitra seems to have a reasonable explanation Stacey transferred money for repairs on the rental house new Troy Ross said that she could provide receipts for the house repairs and for the waterline repair so they pay for half of that lieutenant Franklin was frustrated at this point the emails and the transfers lead nowhere but then another clue surfaces this time from Stacey's own cousin Connie Hearn that was my grandparents his 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 Stacie's driveway then suddenly popped back up what didn't appear was the money Stacey it 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 investigators find the Impala parked at lenitra Ross's house stunningly with Goodyear integrity tires on it I jumped up I became extremely excited now the only question who was driving the Impala the night Richard was murdered there was evidence at the scene based on the layering tire impressions that the fender lay in wait for Richard on a hunch lieutenant Franklin turns his radar to cellphone records my thought process is is is he gonna sit there and twiddle his thumbs or what's he gonna do or is he gonna make a phone call a lot of people with text constantly Franklin subpoenaed phone records made around the time of the murder from something called a tower dump you make a phone call your number the number you dialed the date and the time and the duration of the call are all captured at the tower and that information is saved at the tower the tower serviced for major carriers thousands of pages of records but the dogged investigator had an idea compare the numbers from the tower dump to the numbers in Stacie's contact list and see if a match comes up I had to find a way to teach myself how to do this about an hour into that search I found a number that was in Stacie's phone that had made a call from belton bridge park or 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 compelling the phone number attached to that call was listed in Stacey's contacts as a guy named Reggie aka mr. results even more compelling was the number that Reggie called 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 p.m. on February 14th of 2010 whoever Reggie is who is known to Stacy because he's in her cell phone contact list called lenitra Ross from the park but who is mr. results lieutenant Franklin googled him the next day and found Reggie is a personal trainer and former semi-professional boxer who held bootcamp sessions at Stacy's office at that point things started coming together because we were already looking at a murder fryer and this really kind of solidified that this was the third part of the triangle because we have Stacy was the linchpin we need to Ross received money in the weeks leading up and now this was our third person that we felt was involved an Impala with tires matching a bloody murder scene money transfers and a man named mr. results by now cops believe Stacey Schoeck is in deep and possibly the 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 of incriminating evidence Reggie makes the phone call from the park the night of the murder at 8:40 p.m. and we felt that call was to let lenitra know that it was done and then lieutenant dan franklin uncovers a series of bone-chilling texts three minutes after that phone call and lenitra texted Stacy and said I forgot to tell you I'm coming in late for work tomorrow by the way happy Valentine's Day and it turns out that the happy Valentine's Day was the signal from lenitra to Stacey that Richard was deadness you could go find all that's needed now to make their case proving the money trail lieutenant Franklin soon scoured the banking records of Stacy lenitra and Reggie revealing thousands of dollars intermingling among different accounts Reggie's payment for the for the murder was $10,000 in cash lenitra payment for being the person that distributed money was that Stacy was going too deep a house to live in rent-free forever finally the last pieces of this sordid puzzle are coming together we're looking at a murder for hire we had to bring in the money element and so once we had that with the financial 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 the operation was called operation tangled web and so that was a huge coordinated 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 we realized that when we moved on these people we needed to 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 the whole thing would fall apart and we could lose evidence first to go down is Reggie then lenitra is nabbed at a traffic stop and police now confidently swoop in on Stacy 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 somebody in that office told Stacy the police were there and to run and so Stacy retreated into 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 that room she eventually surrenders finally three months after the bloody Valentine's Day murder of Richard Schoeck lenitra Reggie and Stacy faced some harsh questions you have the right to talk to a lawyer and have him present with you while you're being questioned you understand three yes in the interrogation room lenitra plays the innocent bystander card if you already talked to me about I hear that opportunity and Reggie has his own tactics denial [Music] cops say lenitra and Reggie fell for the murder plot all for the money but the burning question why did Stacy want her husband dead in a stunner she tells cops that Richard was molesting her kids I was convinced that my kids were being harmed Stacy's claim is based on something she says one of the kids told her you don't know to me when you're not here Stacey tells investigators she was molested as a kid so to protect her boys she wanted Richard killed she confided in her work buddy lynitra ross and i told her then I I didn't want police I didn't want a divorce I just wanted to in debt if somebody was molesting my kids according to Stacey Ross tells her she knows the guy for the job her sometime boyfriend and baby daddy Reggie aka mr. results and I was like Reggie really she was like yeah that's what he did that's what he does that's how he supplements his income you know he does jobs Stacy tells cops lenitra arranged a meeting where they cooked up a plan to murder Richard in cold blood then he said so I hear you need you need some help get to getting something done and I was like a psycho maybe I told him I said well I have a strong suspicion and all that it's coming to me that I I think that he's messing with my kids and then I was like well how much cash and he was like well you know I was thinking around $10,000 hey to sweeten the deal Stacy agreed to give Reggie her grandparent's Impala yes that Impala lenitra scut she'd get the house she was renting from Stacy a week later all three went to scout out the crime scene belton bridge park yeah this would be this is the perfect place and then even made a comment that you know I might have to use this place more often but the night of the murder Reggie botched things up 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 he 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 described the shooting three to Richard's chest two to his face it was supposed to be one shot to the head I said if you're gonna get beat I don't want him to suffer I don't want him to see anything cut you know as for the molestation story in the end police discovered Stacey's son admitted Richard never laid a finger on him her son she said later told her that the comment that he had made didn't have anything to do with anything like that but rather he was a little bit more restrictive than she was on what they could do as children Stacy later revealed a different and real reason she ordered the hit on her husband now she claimed she feared losing custody of the kids if she and Richard divorced 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 that what that though the life that she was living was would not be good for her in a divorce case and so divorce was not an option for her but Stacey Schoeck was controlling and conniving and native she used people to the extent that she needed them and beyond that they just didn't matter the district attorney says the trio thought they committed the perfect murder and that they could easily outsmart small-town cops but they were wrong they just thought that this was not metro Atlanta and you know they'd just a bunch of you know rednecks who simply weren't gonna be able to find out what happened but they did with so much evidence against them Stacy and Reggie pleaded guilty and were convicted of malice murder lenitra 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 Stacey Schoeck received eventually a sentence of life without parole she will never be released in prison except in a box

Channel: True Crime Daily

Views: 2,561,290

Rating: 4.74822 out of 5

Keywords: Richard Schoeck, Juan Reyes, Lynitra Ross, Belton Bridge Park, Reginald Coleman, Stacey Schoeck, Valentine's Day murder, DeKalb County

Id: nPPpi8YHmm4

Length: 26min 44sec (1604 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 22 2020