whom he described as his source of strength. rob andrew, salt of the earth. i mean, this was a christian man, attended church all the time, loving father. just a great guy, very successful businessman as well. two days before thanksgiving, rob andrew left work to pick up his children. they planned to spend the holiday weekend with his parents. on the way, rob called his best friend. rob had called my house around 5:30, telling me how hurried he had been all day and that he was looking forward to picking the kids up and spending a long weekend with them for thanksgiving. rob didn t plan to stay long, so he parked his car in the driveway. i heard the overhead garage door start up, and then rob paused and said, hey, i m going to have to let you go. as he walked into the garage, his wife, brenda, asked him to relight the furnace because it had gone out earlier in the day.
mail. fortunately, the man didn t go upstairs or he might have been killed, too. investigators never found the murder weapon, but they did find some important information. during our investigation, we also found that mr. pavatt had purchased a .22-caliber pistol at a local gun store with the use of a credit card about a month before the homicide. everything was a piece of a puzzle. all of those little things out there by themselves meant nothing, but when you started laying it all out, clicking the pieces together, making the matches, it just started pointing. there s no way this woman couldn t have been involved. brenda andrew and james pavatt were both charged with first-degree murder and were tried separately. pavatt s trial was first. we the jury having heretofore found the defendant james pavatt guilty of murder in the first degree fix his punishment at
and partially burned powder and soot and hot gases that exit the barrel right behind the projectile. using an identical gun, investigators ran tests to re-create the gunshot residue patterns. my observations of those patterns and of the sweater and of her wound allowed me to conclude that she was shot at somewhere between actual contact and approximately two inches away from her arm. this contradicted brenda s statement that she was shot by someone 15 to 20 feet away. police now knew that brenda andrew was involved in rob s murder. but was she the killer?
ready. pavatt fired the first shot from behind the van. then handed the rifle to brenda. the blood spatter on brenda s pants proved she was less than two feet away. pavatt used a .22-caliber pistol to shoot brenda s arm, but he fired it from a couple inches away, leaving the burn marks. i ve been shot! my husband s been shot! brenda called police with the fake story of the two masked men. pavatt hid in the empty house next door. the homeowners had given brenda the key for safekeeping. pavatt stayed there for at least a day until police were finished at the scene. he ejected the spent shotgun shell when he heard the homeowner s son walk into the house to pick up his parents
mr. andrew made the beneficiary, i think, his brother, for the benefit of the children. since the children were minors, he had to have an adult as the actual named beneficiary as the trustee of that money. after rob s death, police were surprised to learn that brenda was again the sole beneficiary. police were immediately suspicious, and they arranged for a handwriting expert, david parrett, to authenticate rob andrew s signature on the insurance policy. a signature is produced with style and speed. it s the thing that you probably write the most in your entire life. in my analysis, i looked at 13 years of rob andrew s handwriting and writing his signatures, 136 signatures. not surprisingly, it was clear that rob andrew s signatures changed over the years. over time, rob andrew s signature had become more