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10 Women Who ‘Snapped’ And Committed Heinous Crimes Against Their Husbands
In one case, Kelly Cochran murdered her husband after he forced her to kill her lover as part of a bizarre marriage pact.
Anger and resentment are common emotions most married people have felt at one time or another. Thankfully, these passions are usually passing — but for some spouses, cold-blooded murder is the only way to satiate their desire and fury.
While we may never understand why these people snap and turn to violence, most of us are all too familiar with its wreckage. Pulled straight from the most shocking episodes in “Snapped” history, here are 10 female killers and the deadly crimes they committed against their husbands.
Be sure to check out an all-new season, airing Sundays at 6/5c, only on Oxygen.
Kelly and Jason Cochran
On their wedding night, the Cochrans made a pact that if one of them ever had an affair, they would kill the person with whom they cheated. When Kelly began sleeping with co-worker Christopher Regan, Jason shot him in the head while he and Kelly were having sex. Calling Regan "the only good thing” in her life, Kelly later asphyxiated her husband.
She was found guilty of Regan’s murder in 2017 and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. She pleaded guilty to her husband’s murder the following year, according to the Chicago Tribune. Rumors persist that Kelly killed others and served Regan’s remains to their neighbors in the form of hamburgers, according to Detroit’s WJBK. These are unsubstantiated claims, however, and no further charges have been filed.
Rita Gluzman
Growing up in the Soviet Union, Rita Gluzman and her husband, Yakov Gluzman, dreamed of a better life. They later immigrated to the United States, where he made a career as a scientist. But when their marriage fell apart and he took a young lover, she roped her cousin into helping her kill him, chopping him into more than 60 pieces with an axe when she was done with him.
She was sentenced to life in prison in 1997, according to The New York Times. Now 71, she remains in a Texas federal penitentiary to this day.
Doretta Scheffield
By all accounts, Randy and Doretta Scheffield had a great marriage and ran a successful landscaping business together in northeastern Ohio. Doretta handled the books or, rather, mishandled them, running up a $100,000 tax bill, resulting in a lien against the company. Rather than tell her husband, Doretta decided to kill him, shooting him in the back of the head as he slept. Doretta was 64 at the time of her 2015 conviction, and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison, plus another 30 months for tampering with evidence, according to local newspaper the Geauga County Maple Leaf.
Elisa McNabney
When police pulled Larry McNabney’s dead body out of its shallow grave in California’s wine country on Feb. 5, 2002, they worried they might also find the body of Elisa McNabney, his wife of six years. He hadn’t been seen since falling ill at a horse show the previous September, and she had been missing since early January.
Once authorities learned that she had sold off all Larry's assets and was last seen fleeing town in a brand-new luxury automobile, however, Elisa became the prime suspect in her husband’s murder. The only problem with catching her? Elisa McNabney didn’t exist. The name was an alias used by a con artist with a rap sheet 113 pages long, reported AP News.
By the time police caught up to Elisa, who was born Laren Renee Sims, she was living a new life in Florida. She was arrested without incident and told officers, “I’m the one you are looking for.”
While in custody, Elisa penned a three-page statement confessing to the murder of Lary, according to The Los Angeles Times. Before she could be extradited to California, however, Elisa hanged herself in a Florida jail cell, reported the Times.
Jessica and Jeff McCord
When Jessica McCord divorced her first husband, Alan Bates, she became engaged in a nasty custody battle, regularly violating his visitation rights, according to the The Washington Post. By 2002, both were remarried, and when Alan McCord sought fought custody, Jessica enlisted her husband, Birmingham Alabama Sheriff’s Deputy Jeff McCord, to help murder Bates and his wife, Terra Klugh.
The day after Bates and Klugh were supposed to pick up Alan’s daughters, the couple’s dead bodies were found in a burning car near Atlanta. Jessica was found guilty of capital murder, according to The Gadsen Times, and sentenced to life in prison. In exchange for pleading guilty and cooperating with police, Jeff McCord was sentenced to life in prison, but he is eligible for parole in 2022, according to the Alabama news site AL.com.
Phyllis Nelson
High school sweethearts Richard and Phyllis Nelson were happily married for more than 30 years, but when the university dean began sleeping with his secretary, Mary Jo Young, their lives unraveled, and Richard moved out of the family home.
To punish him, Phyllis disclosed the affair to the university administration, which docked $30,000 from his yearly paycheck and moved Mary Jo to another department within the school, according to NBC's Dateline.
Still, Phyllis and Richard attempted to patch things up, and she ultimately gave Richard an ultimatum — it was either her or Mary Jo. Richard begged her not divorce him and said he would end the affair.
But later that evening, Phyllis drove by Richard’s apartment and saw Mary Joe’s car parked outside. Phyllis was furious and demanded to speak to Richard, who went downstairs to let her inside the building while Mary Jo hid in the complex’s laundry room.
In Phyllis’ court testimony, quoted on NBC’s "Dateline," she claimed she said, “Dick, are you planning a future together, don't you think I have a right to know?”
When he protested that he and Mary Jo hadn’t had sex that night, she said she responded, “Dick, this is not about where you put your penis, this is about our future!”
At that point, the argument became even more heated, and Phyllis claims she picked up a paring knife that Richard then accidentally walked into.
In 2003, an Iowa jury found her guilty of voluntary manslaughter, as reported by the The Edwardsville Intelligencer, and she was sentenced to 10 years in prison. She was released in 2006.
Ann Brier
Ann Brier and her husband, Eric Miller, were described as “Ken and Barbie” by their friends. Wealthy and good-looking, the couple seemed to have it all — until Brier wanted more. After starting up an affair with her co-worker, research scientist Derril Willard, Brier poisoned Miller with arsenic.
Brier initially slipped the chemical into her husband’s beer during a night of bowling with friends in Raleigh, North Carolina, reported The News & Observer. Later that night, Miller became violently ill, and Brier drove him to the hospital. He recovered and was released, but ended up back in the emergency room two weeks later after having dinner with his wife.
It was there Brier delivered the fatal dose to Miller. Willard later told his lawyer that when Brier was visiting Miller at the hospital, she “took a syringe from her purse and injected the contents” into Miller’s intravenous line, according to The News & Observer.
In November 2005, Brier pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. She was sentenced to 25 to 31 years in prison, reported WRAL.
Jane Dorotik
From the outside, Robert and Jane Dorotik had the perfect home life. Married for the 30 years, the couple had three children and lived on a ranch outside San Diego, California. Behind closed doors, however, their marriage was in tatters.
When Bob threatened divorce, Jane killed him, rather than be forced to pay him alimony, and then she tried to pin it on her daughter. In February 2000, Jane beat and strangled Robert inside their home. When police searched the premises, they found a bloodstained mattress and specks of his blood all over the master bedroom, reported The San Diego Tribune.
Jane was arrested and charged with first-degree murder, according to the outlet. During her trial, Jane did not deny she tried to clean up the crime scene, but she said she only did it to protect her 34-year-old daughter, Claire, who was the real killer.
A jury found Jane guilty of her husband’s slaying and sentenced her to 25 years to life, reported the Hartford Courant.
Tune in to the season 26 of "Snapped," airing Sundays at 6/5c on Oxygen.
