Insured for Murder - Hardcover

Yocum, Robin; Candinsky, Catherine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0879758422 ISBN 13: 9780879758424

Publisher: Prometheus, 1993

Synopsis

All the ingredients of a first-rate thriller stand out in this investigative report by Robin Yocum and Catherine Candisky, who reveal a sinister and deadly con game that was three years in the making: a murder, an insurance scam with a multi-million dollar payoff, a playboy businessman, a sinister stun-gun-toting neurologist, false identities, and an international manhunt.On the morning of April 16, 1988, the emergency squad was called to the office of Dr. Richard P. Boggs, a respected neurologist in Glendale, California. On the floor of the examining room was the body of Melvin E. Hanson, the vice president of the Just Sweats athletic clothing store chain, based in Columbus, Ohio. Apparently, he had collapsed and died of heart failure during a routine examination. Early next morning, Hanson's business partner and the company president, John B. Hawkins, arrived from Columbus and had the body unceremoniously cremated. The coroner ruled that Hanson died of natural causes, so there was nothing to be investigated, and the Glendale police did not pursue the case further.But this wasn't just another unfortunate death. There was something very, very wrong here. The body lying on the floor was not Hanson's. The corpse was an anonymous double who had been murdered in a scheme to fraudulently collect on Hanson's life insurance policy.

About this title

About the Author

Robin Yocum is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Favorite Sons and The Essay. Favorite Sons was named the 2011 USA Book News’ Book of the Year for Mystery/Suspense. It was selected for the Choose to Read Ohio program for 2013-14 and was a featured book of the 2012 Ohioana Book Festival. Yocum is also the author of Dead Before Deadline . . . and Other Tales from the Police Beat and Insured for Murder (with Catherine Candisky). He is the president of Yocum Communications, a public relations and marketing firm in Westerville, Ohio. He is well known for his work as a crime and investigative reporter with the Columbus Dispatch from 1980-1991. He was the recipient of more than thirty local, state, and national journalism awards in categories ranging from investigative reporting to feature writing.

Catherine Candinsky is the senior public affairs reporter and the statehouse reporter for the Columbus Dispatch. She has received dozens of regional and state reporting awards from the Associated Press, Society of Professional Journalists, Cleveland Press Club, and others.

From the Back Cover

Insured for Murder has all the ingredients of a first-rate thriller: a murder, an insurance scam with a multimillion-dollar payoff, a playboy businessman, a sinister neurologist wielding a stun gun, false identities, and an international manhunt. Robin Yocum and Catherine Candisky, two reporters with The Columbus Dispatch, describe how they unravelled a con game that was three years in the making. On the morning of April 16, 1988, the emergency squad was called to the office of Dr. Richard P. Boggs, a respected neurologist in Glendale, California. On the floor of the examining room was the alleged body of Melvin E. Hanson, the vice president of the Just Sweats athletic clothing store chain, based in Columbus, Ohio. Apparently, he had collapsed and died of heart failure during a routine examination. Early next morning, Hanson's business partner and the company president, John B. Hawkins, arrived from Columbus and had the body unceremoniously cremated. The coroner ruled that Hanson had died of natural causes, so there was nothing to be investigated, and the Glendale police did not pursue the case further. Behind the facade of just another mortality statistic, however, was the yet-undiscovered fact that the body lying on the floor was not Hanson's. The corpse was an anonymous double who had been murdered in a scheme to fraudulently collect on Hanson's life insurance policy. The deception was eventually uncovered by an insurance investigator, but only after one million dollars had been paid to John Hawkins, the sole beneficiary of Hanson's life insurance policy. But the full extent of the scam might never have been discovered except for the hard-nosed efforts of Yocum and Candisky, whodoggedly pursued the story and published the results of their investigation in a series of articles in The Columbus Dispatch. Piece by piece they revealed what was intended to be a five-million-dollar scheme of fraud and murder, and unmasked Hanson and Hawkins as con men with a history of perpetrating insurance scams. Their reports finally moved the Los Angeles County District Attorney to launch an investigation that resulted in Boggs being convicted of murder and Hanson and Hawkins awaiting trials that are scheduled to start before the end of 1993. Insured for Murder takes the reader beyond the facts of the investigation and explores the characters of three thoroughly corrupt individuals: Dr. Richard P. Boggs, who committed murder for a share of the insurance money; Melvin E. Hanson, the enigmatic schemer, who faked his own death and engineered the death of an unwitting imposter; and John B. Hawkins, the young stud willing to gamble his business and his life on a conspiracy for easy money.

Reviews

Yocum, a former reporter for the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch , and Candisky, who is still a reporter on that paper, together laid the groundwork for a case that the police had ignored. On April 16, 1988, Columbus businessman Melvin Hanson died in the office of Glendale, Calif., neurologist Richard Boggs, who had been treating him for seven years; the next day Hanson's business partner, John Hawkins, arrived in California and had the body cremated immediately. Hanson's life had been insured for more than a million dollars and some of the insurance was paid. Returning to Ohio, Hawkins cleaned out the clothing firm's bank accounts and disappeared. Thanks to the investigations of Yocum and Candisky, it was determined that the body of "Hanson" had been deliberately misidentified by Boggs, and was that of a murder victim (who was later found to be a drifter). Eventually Hanson, Boggs and Hawkins were apprehended. Boggs was found guilty and drew a life sentence; the other two are awaiting trial. A remarkable story. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A routine tip about an ``interesting lawsuit'' leads two Ohio reporters to a multimillion-dollar insurance scam: a pulsing tale of murder, false identities, drugs, and sex. When Melvin Hanson, 46, allegedly collapsed and died at his doctor's office in Glendale, California, in April 1988, it entitled John Hawkins, his partner in the Just Sweats clothing stores, to a $1-million payoff. The Farmers Insurance Co. paid the young Columbus, Ohio, businessman but later filed suit, claiming that it wasn't Hanson who'd died in Richard Boggs's office. Columbus Dispatch reporters Yocum and Candisky tenaciously followed their leads from Las Vegas to New York to California despite a lack of interest by the Glendale police, who considered the death from ``natural causes'' a closed case. The high-rolling Hawkins--a former ``male prostitute,'' according to his mother--disappeared after getting the insurance check, leaving a company awash in rumors of embezzlement by both partners. As the reporters learned, Hanson had variously claimed to be dying of AIDS or a heart condition when he left for California. He allegedly took $2 million from the 22-store chain when he departed in January--but he also changed his will to make Hawkins his beneficiary. When the coroner's report suggested that Boggs ``may have sexually assaulted...the decedent,'' Yocum and Candisky knew the story would go beyond simple embezzlement and insurance fraud. It also helped spur official interest, leading to the discovery that the dead man was actually an alcoholic drifter whom Boggs had met at a nightclub. Boggs was convicted of murder and is now serving life, while Hanson, who turned up alive, and Hawkins, who was extradited from Italy, are awaiting trail on murder charges. The third-person narration is a little self-conscious at times, but it lends this wild story an urgency that serves it well: a good prospect for true-crime fans. (Photo insert--not seen) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Prometheus
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0879758422
• ISBN 13: 9780879758424
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 286