Mel Ignatow

Mel Ignatow
Born	March 26, 1938(1938-03-26)
Died	September 1, 2008(2008-09-01) (aged 70) Louisville, Kentucky, USA
Conviction(s)	Perjury
Penalty	9 Years
Status	Deceased

Mel Ignatow (March 26, 1938 – September 1, 2008)^[1] was a resident of Louisville, Kentucky, U.S., who was accused of murdering his former girlfriend, Brenda Sue Schaefer, in 1988. The case was controversial because Ignatow was acquitted of the charge, but photographs proving his guilt were uncovered after the trial. Under the legal principle of double jeopardy, however, Ignatow could not be tried a second time for the murder. He was, instead, convicted and jailed for perjury in his grand jury testimony for the case on several occasions.

Background

Ignatow and Brenda Schaefer had been in a relationship for two years at the time of the murder. Schaefer, who had complained that Ignatow was abusive, was planning to break off the involvement, an intention of which Ignatow was aware. Intending to murder Schaefer, he worked with a former girlfriend, Mary Ann Shore, to lay out plans for the murder. They spent several weeks making extensive preparations. Shore testified they had "scream tested" her house and dug a grave in the woods behind it. Shore took pictures while Ignatow raped and tortured Shaefer and assisted Ignatow in covering up the murder.

Murder

On September 23, 1988, Schaefer met Ignatow to return some jewelry of his that she had in her possession. Instead, Ignatow took Schaefer to Shore's house, where he pulled a gun on Schaefer and locked her in the house. Schaefer was blindfolded, gagged and bound hand and foot.

Ignatow forced Schaefer to strip, photographed her in suggestive positions, raped, sodomized and beat her before killing her with chloroform. Ignatow and Shore buried her behind Shore's house. He took Schaefer's jewelry and the exposed film.

Investigation and trial

After Schaefer's disappearance, police quickly suspected Ignatow, but were unable to locate any witnesses or physical evidence linking him to Schaefer's disappearance, or even to locate Schaefer's body. In search for any lead that could let them move forward with the case, police invited Ignatow to clear his name by testifying before a grand jury. There, he mentioned Shore's name, bringing her into the investigation for the first time. The police interviewed Shore, who eventually confessed to helping plan the murder, and to taking pictures of Ignatow as he tortured and abused Schaefer. Shore also led the investigators to the grave site, where Schaefer's badly decomposed body had been buried for over a year. The autopsy showed she had been abused, but any DNA evidence, from blood and semen, had decomposed.

The investigators convinced Shore to wear a wire, by promising only to charge her with tampering with evidence. In the surveillance, Shore told Ignatow that the FBI was hounding her and she was afraid the property behind her house was being sold and developed. He was on tape berating her for letting the FBI "rattle" her and told her he didn't care if they dug up the whole property because "that place we dug is not shallow."

With this apparently damning piece of evidence in their hands, prosecutors brought Ignatow to trial for the murder in 1991. The trial was moved far outside the Louisville/Jefferson county area, to Kenton county where far less publicity had been generated and in the opinion of some eventually, there was far less concern for the murder of a young woman. One section of the recorded conversation between Ignatow and Shore contained the following dialogue by Ignatow: "That place we dug is not shallow. Beside that one area right by where that safe is does not have any trees by it." In court, the jury decided that one word on the tape was "safe", not "site", as the police believed. This led the jurors to conclude that the discussion involved a buried safe. Furthermore, Shore, the prosecution's star witness, wore a tiny miniskirt to court and laughed during her testimony, undermining her credibility in the eyes of the jury. The defense argued that Shore, not Ignatow, had killed Schaefer.

In light of these considerations and their own desire to get the trial over with before the coming Christmas holiday, the jury acquitted Ignatow. Before giving their decision to the courtroom, laughter and loud talk was heard coming from the deliberation room. The judge was so embarrassed by this verdict given, that he took the unusual step of writing a letter of apology to the Schaefer family. Schaefer's parents died before the trial began. According to some family and friends, their deaths were premature due to the heartbreak and stress of Schaefer's murder.^[2]

New evidence

Six months after Ignatow's acquittal, however, a carpetlayer working in Ignatow's old house, which had been sold to fund his defense, pulled up a length of carpet in a hallway. Under it he found a floor vent had been carpeted over. Inside the vent, the carpet layer found a plastic bag, taped to hold it inside the vent. He handed it over to the new owners who knew that the previous owner was Ignatow. Inside the bag was the jewelry Schaefer had taken with her to return on the night of her disappearance and three rolls of undeveloped film. When developed, the film showed Ignatow torturing and raping Schaefer, just as Shore had described. Ignatow's face was not in the pictures, but body hair patterns and moles matched him perfectly.

Aftermath

Ignatow was brought to trial for perjury in his grand jury testimony. Knowing that he could not be retried for the murder because of double jeopardy, Ignatow confessed in court at his perjury trial. He turned to Schaefer's brothers in court and said that he had killed her, but that she had died peacefully.

Ignatow served five years of an eight year sentence for perjury. The state later prosecuted him on perjury charges for testimony he gave in a case against Schaefer's employer for threatening to kill Ignatow if he didn't tell where Schaefer was. He was sentenced to nine years for that perjury charge.

Author Bob Hill wrote a book on the case called Double Jeopardy, which became a bestseller and provoked widespread interest in the case. Television documentaries on the case are occasionally aired on MSNBC and CourtTV.

Mel Ignatow was released from prison for the second time in December 2006. He returned yet again to Louisville, living in a home four miles from the house where he murdered Brenda Sue Schaefer.

Brenda Sue Schaefer is buried in her family's plot in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville.

Death

On September 1, 2008, Ignatow was found dead in his home. At the time of his death, Ignatow was 70 years old.^[3] An official cause of death has yet to be determined;^[4][5] however, based on initial remarks made by his upstairs neighbor who found Ignatow's body, and follow-up remarks given to the media by Ignatow's son, it is believed that Ignatow's death was due to an accidental fall that caused a laceration to either his head or his arm and that he had eventually bled to death. "Apparently, he fell and hit a glass coffee table and, from what I can tell, he cut his arm" Ignatow's son stated. The upstairs neighbor on the other hand stated that it appeared Ignatow had cut his head and not his arm; "It just looked like he had fell and hit his head on the table," And he tried to go to the kitchen, and there was a blood trail that way, and then it looked like he tried to make it to his room, before he made it to his room, that's where they found his body at."^[6]

Ignatow's upstairs neighbor also described him as a "a sick and elderly man, alone and struggling for help when he apparently stumbled to his death. I used to hear him all night, asking for Jesus to come get him, because he was in a lot of pain."^[6] Ignatow's son admits that his father's sins may never be forgiven. "He will probably go down as one of the most hated men in Louisville". He went on to say that now he hopes his father's death will help people forget some of his transgressions. "Maybe it'll just put it to rest, that we all don't have to keep dealing with this over and over. That's what I hope."^[6]

Notes

1. ^ Record of Melvin H. Ignatow. Ancestry.com. Social Security Death Index [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2009.
2. ^ Weathers, William (1997-09-30). "A miscarriage of justice will be complete on Halloween". The Kentucky Post (E. W. Scripps Company). Archived from the original on 2005-05-15. http://web.archive.org/web/20050515031028/http://www.kypost.com/opinion/weath093097.html. Retrieved 2006-05-28. 
3. ^ "An autopsy will be performed today to determine cause of death of Mel Ignatow". whas11.com. 2008-09-02. http://www.whas11.com/topstories/stories/whas11_topstory_080901_mel_ignatow.33c03ef9.html. Retrieved 2008-09-02. ^{[dead link]}
4. ^ "Mel Ignatow found dead inside his home". wave3.com. 2008-09-01. http://www.wave3.com/Global/story.asp?S=8932145&nav=menu31_2. Retrieved 2008-09-01. 
5. ^ "Mel Ignatow is dead". courier-journal.com. 2008-09-01. http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080901/NEWS01/80901009. Retrieved 2008-09-01. ^{[dead link]}
6. ^ ^{a b c} "Ignatow's son reacts to his father's death". wave3.com. 2008-09-01. http://www.wave3.com/Global/story.asp?S=8932145&nav=menu31_3. Retrieved 2008-09-02. 

References

• Hill, Bob. Double Jeopardy: Obsession, Murder, and Justice Denied. William Morrow & Co, 1995. ISBN 0-688-12910-2
• "48 Hours: Double Jeopardy". CBS News. 2002-01-25. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/25/48hours/murder/main325643.shtml. Retrieved 2006-05-28. 
• Photo of Brenda Sue Schaefer's grave smugmug.com

Persondata
Name	Ignatow, Mel
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1938-03-26
Place of birth
Date of death	2008-09-01
Place of death	Louisville, Kentucky, USA