that film says they saw her when she fell off the cliff, and they kept taking pictures. investigators now suspected that b.j. mcginnis deliberately pushed donna over the cliff to her death. but what was the motive? investigators discover that the mcginnises had taken out a $35,000 life insurance policy on donna hartman just one day before her death. the insurance agent said that virginia mcginnis asked him a curious question. she turned to him on the way out of the door and said this is applicable to an accidental death, isn t it? it was. i don t deal with too many claims for life insurance, but that doesn t sound appropriate to me, almost as a matter of fact. the beneficiary was virginia mcginnis son, who was in prison. he was listed as donna s fiance even though he and donna were already married to other people.
she was dead. there was no way she could have survived the 500-foot drop. unfortunately, accidents here do happen. everybody wants to climb out and get that picture of the ocean behind them. so they re out on the edge, on the precipice, and things happen. one other fellow said people fall off the cliff like logs out here. the victim was 20-year-old donna hartman. it was absolutely horrible. when you know that one of the almost phobias that this young woman had was heights, and she dies in this manner, it s particularly a horrible event. she recently separated from her husband and had been living and traveling with her friends, virginia and b.j. mcginnis. donna was a wonderful young lady, but she was challenged. her iq was probably 85 or 90, somewhere in there. she was wonderful and friendly and thoughtful. her husband was in the navy.
but the injuries on her hands were more consistent with a struggle or that scenario than a simple fall off the cliff. this was a harrowing possibility. it meant that while donna was hanging on to the cliff s edge, one or both of the mcginnises sent her to a certain death. there was no what we call pattern injury to help determine as to what she was struck with. she could have been struck with a fist for all i know, or she could have been struck with an instrument. these were the wounds of someone who was fending off an attack and then died, as opposed to somebody who flopped down a cliff and had some things break along the way. but were the mcginnises capable of cold-blooded murder? and if they were, could it be proven? to find out, investigators did a background check and were shocked by what they found.
i don t know what california standards are, but you would think that california would be closer to the cutting edge. this was far behind the cutting edge. and those responsibilities made it very difficult to show with any certainty to the insurance company or to a court or anyone else exactly what the cause of death here was. what troubled keeney were the photographs taken of donna shortly before her death. they told a story that was much different from the mcginnises account.
the policies were so low, insurance companies didn t question the settlement. the insurance policy virginia purchased on donna hartman s life was also suspicious. every single piece of that policy was either forged or fake except for the name of the person who would die. donna hartman signed the policy and her signature was witnessed by alice kessain. alice lived next door to the mcginnises but she denied signing the insurance form. as proof she pointed out her name was misspelled on the document. people don t misspell their own names when they sign their names. that s a red flag to the document examiner, to the prosecutor, to anyone involved in the case. alice kessain s signature did not match her own signature samples and it had an unusual backward slant.