I’m not surprised the Jackson family claims Michael Jackson’s “real” will, the final will, is missing. Every major estate seems to suffer from the missing-final-will syndrome, especially in suspicious deaths.

Consider the missing final will of a Tennessee barber named David Leath, whose wife Raynella Dossett-Leath is awaiting her retrial for his murder. His estate isn’t particularly “major,” but it’s certainly substantial. The KnoxvilleNews.com has links to all the important documents in this case, including the decisions of the probate judge (called “chancery” in TN) and of the TN Appeals Court.

Probate court, like family court, involves no juries—more’s the pity. Why is it a pity? Because both courts hear cases involving average citizens whose lives are in turmoil. And because both types of judges are letter-of-the-law decision-makers like those in Dickens’ Bleak House.

Juries, IMHO, make compassionate decisions more often than judges do. But, I am not a lawyer.

Did You Know It’s Impossible for Your Personal Copy of Your Will to Be Lost?

The Dossett-Leath will dispute was decided on the basis of a law (which I presume is U.S. case law or even older British Common Law) that a missing will is presumed to be a revoked will, even if the deceased person did not notify his or her attorney of the revocation.

It appears that at the time of their marriage in 1993 Mr. Leath had a will that left his property to his descendent (a child by a former marriage, dissolved in the 1970s). Three years later Mr. and Mrs. Leath wrote new, separate wills that excluded this first child and instead made provisions for Mrs. Leath’s two children by a former marriage. A copy of Mr. Leath’s new will was left with the attorney who prepared it; another copy was attached to Mrs. Leath’s copy of her new will; and Mr. Leath put his personal copy in his sock drawer.

A month before he died, Mr. Leath returned to the attorney and discussed concerns about this second will. He was worried about his own mother’s health and whether she would be able to move into a retirement home if she outlived him (an odd thought, isn’t it, for a 56-year-old man?). However, he left the lawyer’s office without modifying his will.

After his death, a thorough search was made for the will that ought to have been found in the sock drawer, but it wasn’t found. So, even though there was no evidence Mr. Leath had revoked his will by destroying it without telling his lawyer, his decades’ old will was declared to be the final will. It left his estate to his adult daughter from his first marriage. It also meant that his joint tenancy rights in property from Mrs. Leath’s first marriage went to that daughter, too. (This is odd, isn’t it? I didn’t think joint tenancy worked that way.)

The Plot Thickens

This story fascinates me, for many reasons. If I were the sort of writer who was interested in writing about true crime, this would be the crime I would investigate.

Raynella Dossett-Leath is currently charged with murdering Mr. Leath, even though she called 911 and said he had shot himself. Her first murder trial ended in a hung jury. During that trial, reputable forensics experts testified that it was a suicide, not a homicide.

Mr. Leath’s adult daughter testified against Mrs. Leath about a pistol holder she found in Mrs. Leath’s lingerie drawer after the death and which she turned over to the prosecution. Apparently Mrs. Leath had asked her to enter the crime scene to obtain clothing for the body—a reasonable request. But she had gone further and rummaged through Mrs. Leath’s drawers as well as her father’s—including presumably the relevant sock drawer from which the will was later missing. (None of this is mentioned in the probate records, though.)

By the time of the probate hearing, police had declared Mr. Leath’s death a homicide. His daughter accused Mrs. Leath of the murder; Mrs. Leath foolishly accused the daughter of the murder. (This, IMHO, is why most of the jurors felt she was guilty of murder and Mr. Leath was not a suicide.) Had Mrs. Leath claimed her husband had committed suicide, rather than that the drawers-rummaging daughter murdered him, the court might not have found Mrs. Leath’s claims to have been “preposterous.”

Mrs. Leath was charged with the murder. The prosecutors assumed she killed him in order to claim his full estate because he destroyed the second will.

But here’s the kicker: The property that Mr. Leath’s daughter inherited as a result of his marriage to Mrs. Leath included part of an extensive farm owned by Mrs. Leath’s first husband, the “Mr. Dossett” in her hyphenated last name. As a consequence of the bizarre probate-court ruling,  Mr. Dossett’s daughters inherited a diminished estate through no fault of their own or of their father, who certainly would have wanted them to inherit it in full.

The county itself seems to have been interested in Mr. Dossett’s property. Some sort of imminent domain issue is involved, and Mr. Dossett himself was the former prosecutor in the county. Mr. Leath’s daughter’s attorney in probate court (as I understand it) was the current prosecutor. Hmm. And, Mrs. Leath has now been charged with murdering Mr. Dossett, too.

Is the Black Widow a Double-Murderess or Just a Hated Second Wife?

I don’t know whether Raynella Dossett-Leath is a murderess or just the unluckiest woman on Earth. But the odds of acquittal the second time around are stacked against her. The entire county—perhaps entire state—call her a “Black Widow.” The local bloggers are convinced she’s evil and killed two husbands. How they can find an objective jury in Knox County is beyond me.

Consider this: A nurse marries a wealthy lawyer who becomes county prosecutor. They have three children. They work a large, successful farm worth millions. The lawyer cheats on the nurse; he has a son by another woman, whom he does not acknowledge. Then he contracts cancer, has to take pain medication, and eventually is confined to a wheel chair. One day he’s sitting in the wheel chair watching cattle being driven through a chute. He falls out of the chair and is trampled to death. The coroner rules it an accidental death. After all, Mr. Dossett was heavily medicated and too weak to have saved himself.

Shortly after his death, one of the teenage daughters is driving a car in which the couple’s son is riding. They have an accident, and the son dies. Raynella is out of her mind with grief by that time. Then the husband of Mr. Dossett’s mistress tells Raynella that the son he has been raising as his own is actually her dead husband’s son. Raynella takes out a pistol and shoots at him, demanding that she should be allowed to raise the son herself (clearly to replace her own dead son—an emotional compensation). Of course, she’s convicted of gun charges, but they are later expunged from her record. Apparently, at least one judge understood that she was literally out of her mind with grief.

Several months later, she marries Mr. Leath and becomes Raynella Dossett-Leath. David Leath and her husband had been life-long friends. Nothing could have been more natural. Maybe her unlucky streak has ended.

Five or six years later, David Leath begins to have serious medical problems—prostate failure, colon cancer, and eventually an unexplained, cyclical dementia. At some point, he becomes hooked on barbiturates.

This cyclical dementia appears to recur annually in late winter/early spring. He’s hospitalized for it. He exhibits paranoia (typical of dementia) and tells the doctors he thinks his wife is trying to kill him. In private, he’s often verbally abusive of his wife. This dementia recurs at least three times in February or March. The last time, it drives him to his lawyer to discuss his worries about his mother’s financial welfare after his death—a rather typical behavior for someone contemplating suicide. A month later, he’s found dead with a bullet in his forehead and a pistol beside his body. The autopsy shows a near-fatal does of barbiturates in his blood, too.

But Raynella’s bad luck isn’t over yet. Two other bullets were also fired from the gun. One was found in the headboard of the bed in which he died. One was found in the mattress.  She’s charged with his murder. Then she’s charged with her first husband’s murder, too, even though she—and the whole county—knew he was dying of cancer.

A thought: Maybe a defendant’s prior history should sometimes go before the jury.