Prove It: A woman is missing, presumed dead. Her husband knows more than he’s saying. He’s toying with the cops, treating this like a game.
Just Married: The bride spent her wedding night in the arms of a former lover. Her new husband won't stand for that. There will be blood.
In Harm’s Way: Single mom Tarah had no choice. She had to work to support her kids. The babysitter had always been trustworthy. Until now.
Plenty of Murder: A pretty, young teacher decides to try out the online dating scene. Her first hookup turns out to be a psycho.
Murder At The Prom: Melissa had spent the day of her prom complaining of stomach pains. Only, this is no ordinary belly ache. She’s keeping secrets.
The Island: Desperate for a new start, a young woman moves to a remote tropical island, population: 2,000. But even in paradise, danger lurks.
Murder Most Vile Volume 52
Love Kills
The source of Randy’s despondency had to do with the state of his marriage. He and Teresa Greenwalt had been childhood sweethearts who had separated when he joined the military, but reconnected and married after his tour of duty was completed. He considered Teresa to be the love of his life. Lately, however, there were problems in the union. Teresa seemed distracted, uninterested, as though she didn’t care. He suspected that she might be having an affair, and those suspicions gained leverage in 2005, when Teresa announced that she was pregnant. Randy had undergone a vasectomy years earlier.
Teresa insisted that the child was his. Afraid of losing her, Randy did not argue the point too hard. Perhaps his operation had been botched. Such things are not without precedent. His mind in turmoil, Randy turned to the one place where he’d always found solace... his church. Pastor David Love was a friend of his, perhaps even his best friend. The pastor’s assurances convinced Randy that Teresa was a good woman, a godly woman. She loved him and would never cheat, Pastor Love said. He should put his trust in her and his faith in the Lord. Randy walked away, chastising himself for his lack of belief. A short while later, the crisis was resolved. Teresa suffered a miscarriage.
But the real crisis, the crisis in Randy Stone’s heart, remained unresolved. Everyone in Randy’s life knew how devoted he was to his wife. “He worshipped the ground she walked on” was an oft-repeated cliché. Now, after 19 years of marriage, he felt like he was losing her. Something just wasn’t right. His suspicions of an extra-marital affair resurfaced. Sooner or later, he was going to have to confront her on the issue. The only thing holding him back was the fear that she might confirm what he dreaded. He didn’t think he could bear that. These were the thoughts going through Randy Stone’s mind as he sat in his office in downtown Independence on the afternoon of March 31, 2010.
Usually, Teresa would be there in the office with him. They ran their small insurance brokerage together and had done so for many years. But today, Teresa had some errands to run, leaving Randy on his own. She returned around mid-afternoon and was surprised to find the blinds drawn when she arrived. Randy never drew them while he was in the office. Had he gone out? No, there was his car, standing in its usual space in the parking lot.
Teresa entered the office, calling out a greeting. No reply came. She poked her head into Randy’s office. He wasn’t at his desk. Perplexed, Teresa went looking for her husband, passing her own office and then entering a small room to the rear of the suite. This was where she found Randy, lying motionless on the floor with blood oozing from his ear and a puddle of it on the ground. Blood was spattered on the wall too, along with a gelatinous gray substance that looked ominously like brain matter. Teresa turned and ran down the hall to her office. She snatched up the phone and started dialing immediately. However, it wasn’t 911 that she called. It was her mother. “Come quickly!” she screamed down the line. “Randy’s been shot!”
The investigation into Randy Stone’s murder was led by Detective Keith Rosewaren, a military veteran who felt an immediate kinship with the victim. His initial examination of the Noland Road insurance office told him a clear story. Randy Stone had known and trusted his killer. Why else would he bring him into a back office? Why else would he turn his back, allowing the killer to draw a gun and shoot him in the back of the head? This wasn’t a robbery either. Randy’s wallet was still in his pocket, and there was $151 in cash sitting on a desk. No, whoever had done this had harbored a personal motive. But who?
One clue, found in a wastebasket under Teresa Stone’s desk, offered a possible answer. It was a sheet of notepaper, ripped into nine pieces. Detectives assembled the pieces on a desk. “Happy Birthday, Love!” it read. “You are so very precious to my heart. I care for you more than anyone on Earth. I’m not in control of things yet, but when we are fully together, your birthday will always be exciting, full of surprises, romantic, and all about loving you! You are the center of my world. I praise you. I adore you. I’m blessed by you. I need you. I love you.”
The letter was clearly written to Teresa, but the handwriting was not her husband’s. Who then had written it? Teresa said she didn’t know. She had a “secret admirer,” she said, someone who had left the note under the windshield wiper of her car almost a year earlier. There was no one else in her life, she insisted. She and Randy had been happy together and very much in love.
The explanation was delivered persuasively, even if Det. Rosewaren wasn’t entirely convinced. He’d soon receive validation for his suspicions. Left alone in an interrogation room, Teresa was caught on camera chastising herself over the letter. “Oh, great. I forgot about that,” she was heard to say. That was Rosewaren’s first indication that she might be involved in her husband’s murder.
One other important clue would emerge from the crime scene, a .40-caliber shell casing. Randy had been a firearms enthusiast and had owned a .40 semi-automatic. However, when the police did an inventory of his collection, there was no such weapon. Teresa suggested that he might have sold it. To investigators, that seemed too much of a coincidence.
Randy Stone was laid to rest at a funeral service just days after he was killed, with his friend and pastor, David Love, delivering a moving eulogy. Several detectives were among the mourners, scanning the congregation for anything unusual. By now, they’d developed the theory that Teresa Stone was having an affair and that her lover was someone her husband knew and trusted. Since the Stones were both very involved in church activities, this seemed the right place to start.
Something else to come out of the early investigation was that Randy Stone was insured to the tune of nearly $800,000. His wife had called the insurance company to find out about her payout the day after his death. She was in for a shock. Randy had amended the policy, removing her as a beneficiary and splitting the money between his two children. This suggested that Randy’s suspicions about his wife cheating on him had been confirmed. In fact, Randy had confided in a friend that he was thinking of resigning his position on the church board. His reason? He believed that Teresa was sleeping with Pastor David Love.
Here’s what the police had so far. A man is gunned down in his office in a seemingly motiveless crime. A .40-caliber shell casing is retrieved from the scene. The victim had owned just such a weapon. Now it is missing, with his wife claiming that he sold it. Meanwhile, there is evidence that the wife had been cheating, possibly with her husband’s friend and pastor. Rosewaren had read this script before – a cheating wife, a large insurance policy, a solution that comes from the barrel of a gun. Is that what had happened here? Had Teresa Stone and David Love plotted to murder Randy so that they could be together, with an $800,000 payday into the bargain? It was time to find out.
Teresa Stone was brought in for questioning on April 20, 2010, three weeks after her husband’s death. Insisting that she had nothing to hide, she signed a Miranda waiver and agreed to be interviewed without an attorney present. But that did not mean that Teresa was going to give herself up. She stuck steadfastly to her story, insisting that she’d had nothing to do with her husband’s murder and did not know who had killed him. It would take all of Detective Rosewaren’s expertise as an interrogator to break her down.
He did this by stages, first getting Teresa to admit that it was David Love who had written the letter the police found in her wastebasket. Then she admitted that she and the pastor had been involved in an extramarital affair lasting 10 years and that they had recently been talking about leaving their respective spouses so that they could be together. She denied, however, that she was involved in any plan to murder Randy. If Love had done that, it was all on him. She wasn’t involved. Finally, Rosewaren convinced her to meet with Love and try to get him to admit to murder.
But that meeting would never happen. Kim Love, the pastor’s wife, got wind of it and refused to let him meet with Teresa unless she was present. The police had no option but to move on Love, who they arrested on April 22. Love, however, was hanging tough, refusing to admit to any involvement in the murder and denying even the affair that Teresa had already disclosed. Jackson County prosecutors had a call to make. To charge David Love or let him walk. In the end, they decided that they did not have a winnable case.
Twenty-four hours after being taken into custody, David Love walked free. He immediately called a meeting of the church board and resigned his position as pastor of New Hope Baptist Church. Then he left the town and the state, moving to South Carolina, where he found a new line of work as a truck driver. He was still working at that trade seven months later, when the Missouri authorities filed a petition to extradite him.
By then, Rosewaren and his team had strengthened their case considerably. They had shell casings from the missing .40-caliber, which confirmed that Randy Stone had been shot with his own gun. They had Teresa Stone admitting that she had given Love the key to her husband’s gun safe, so that he could retrieve the murder weapon. They had extensive records of phone and e-mail messages that had passed between Teresa Stone and David Love. They had the testimony of Love’s estranged wife, Kim. They even had some X-rated pictures that the pastor had sent to his lover.
Any fool could see that the game was up, and David Love was no fool. When the D.A. offered a deal, allowing him to plead to second-degree murder, he accepted immediately. It meant the difference between 25 years to life and a life sentence without parole.
Teresa Stone subsequently struck her own deal with prosecutors, pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit murder, in exchange for an eight-year sentence. As part of that plea bargain, she was required to give a full account of how the murder plot had unfolded. Some of the details were shocking.
According to Teresa, David Love had first started talking about murder in 2009. He’d told her that God would forgive them just as he had forgiven King David, when he orchestrated the death of Uriah, so he could marry his wife, Bathsheba. Teresa claimed that she’d tried to dissuade Love, but he was adamant that murder was the best solution to their problem. God wanted them to be together, he said, and God had provided the way. Eventually, she was persuaded to give him the key to her husband’s gun safe, where he retrieved the .40-caliber that ended Randy Stone’s life.
But Randy was not the only one on Pastor Love’s hit list. According to Teresa, his wife, Kim, would have been the next to die. His plan was to break her neck, then load her into her car and push it down an embankment to simulate an accident. Thankfully, that plan never came to fruition.
David Love was 51 years old when he entered the Missouri penal system. He will be in his late 70s by the time he is eligible for release. Many convicted killers find God behind bars. Perhaps David Love will do the same.
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