This week Murder in the Heartland spotlights the wishing-well murder of Alyce Seff, a case that took nine years to solve.
The body of the 81-year-old landlady was found stuffed into a decorative well in the garden of a house she owned in German Village, Ohio, on July 9, 2008.
She had been strangled, her hands bound with duct tape, and her body then dropped head first into the well. Police suspected robbery was the motive as Seff was well known for collecting her various rents in cash and carrying large amount of it about with her.
The case — which features on this week’s episode of Murder in the Heartland on Investigation Discovery — shocked the local community, but it soon went cold and it would be nine years before her killer was brought to justice.
It turned out that her murderer was Charles J. Greene, the same man she hired as a handyman, and although there was no physical evidence linking him to the murder scene, the circumstantial evidence was enough to see him convicted.
Greene protested his innocence to the end, but he was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 15 years.
Murder in the Heartland airs on Wednesdays at 10/9c on Investigation Discovery.