A Favor for a Friend: A woman who wants to exit this world; a man who wants to know how it feels to kill someone. Perhaps an agreement can be reached.
Neighborhood Bully: He was a cantankerous old man, constantly at war with his neighbors. Whatever you do, don’t talk back. He’s dangerous.
The End of Summer: He was the one adult Debbie could talk to, the caring teacher who just got her. How was she to know that he was a pedophile?
The Ultimate Betrayal: A woman is found dead in the locked bathroom of a luxury hotel suite. It looks like a suicide. It isn’t.
Sudden Death: An unexplained death leaves the police baffled. It will take the brilliant mind of an unconventional P.I. to unravel the mystery.
Head in a Ditch: Shannon always did have rotten taste in men. Even among her gallery of losers, though, one stood out. He might just be the death of her.
The Outsider: Kyle is lonely, isolated, estranged from society. All he has is his guns and plenty of ammo. When the time arrives, blood will flow.
Murder Most Vile Volume 56
The Body in the Woods
On an overcast day in March 1999, a 12-year-old boy was playing in woodland near an undeveloped housing subdivision in Oskaloosa County, Florida. Possibly, he imagined that he was an adventurer, exploring an untamed wilderness. Perhaps his imagination conjured up cannibal tribes or zombie hordes stalking him through the trees. If that was the case, he’d soon have a manifestation of his imagining right in front of him. As he entered a clearing in the woods, his eyes fell on a truly horrific sight. It was a badly burned body, partially skeletonized, chained to a tree. The kid lit out of there like all of the demons of hell were on his tail.
To the officers who arrived on the scene, it was immediately clear that this individual was the victim of homicidal violence. This would be confirmed by medical examiner Dr Michael Berkland, who performed the autopsy. The man had suffered blunt force trauma to his skull, arm, wrist, shoulder blade, sternum, and ribs, delivered with enough force to shatter bone. Someone had sliced through his throat, and he’d also been set alight. It was unclear at this point whether the burning occurred while he was still alive. The question was, who was he?
That would be answered when the M.E. was able to roll a print off one of the corpse’s thumbs, the only one of his fingers left undamaged by the flames. The murder victim was 31-year-old Cordell Richards, an Air Force veteran of Asian American descent. Richards was a divorced father of one who’d recently fallen on hard times. Further inquiries revealed that a friend had reported him missing on February 13.
Responding to that missing person report, officers had gone to Cordell Richards’ apartment to check on him. They’d found two teens living at the premises, 16-year-old Kim Maestas and 17-year-old Ronald Bell. The pair had explained that Maestas was renting a room from Richards. They hadn’t seen him for several days, they said, but that wasn’t unusual. Richards came and went somewhat erratically and was often away for days at a time.
Back then, that had seemed like a totally legitimate explanation. Now, with the discovery of the body, detectives urgently needed to speak to the teenagers again. In the meantime, they had a number of clues to work, including a roll of duct tape and a Sprite bottle, found at the scene. The most promising lead was a report given by a couple who lived in one of the completed homes in the subdivision. On the afternoon of February 3, they had seen three teenagers – a male and two females – emerge from the woods. The teens had jumped a low fence, then gotten into a white sedan and driven away. The car had a missing rear passenger window, with a black garbage bag taped over the gap. The witnesses assumed that the teens might have been doing drugs in the woods. Now, with the discovery of the body, the sighting took on a far more ominous meaning.
Meanwhile, the search for Kim Maestas and Ronald Bell went on. The pair seemed to have dropped out of sight. Doing some background checks, police learned that Maestas was a problem child who had been kicked out of her parents’ home due to her frequent infractions of their rules. Bell had been a straight-A student until he started dating Maestas. Then both his grades and his behavior deteriorated. It was he who had paid Kim’s rent while she was living with Cordell Richards, working a part-time job to afford it. Investigators were certain that Maestas and Richard were two of the three teens the couple had seen. The descriptions certainly fit them. Then they got a lead on the third teenager.
Her name was Renee Lincks; she was 15 years old, and she was a friend of Kim Maestas. According to the tip-off, Lincks had told several people that she had seen a man beaten to death inside an apartment. She was brought in for questioning but denied that she’d ever said such a thing. Eventually, her mother called an end to the interview, and Lincks was free to go.
The detectives were sure that Renee Lincks was lying. For now, though, their focus remained on tracking down their two main suspects, Kim Maestas and Ronald Bell. They caught a lucky break when a patrolman spotted a white sedan with a black garbage bag taped over the missing rear passenger window. Maestas and Bell were taken into custody and brought to the station for questioning. There, they were split up and placed in separate interview rooms.
But if investigators thought that the teens would be intimidated by the situation, they were sorely mistaken. Maestas and Bell hung tough, sticking steadfastly to their story. They had last seen Cordell Richards on February 2 and had no idea how he’d ended up dead. As for the sighting near the crime scene, that wasn’t them. The witnesses were mistaken. They would maintain this stance until Kim Maestas’ parents urged her to tell the police everything she knew. She was already in a lot of trouble. Lying would only make it worse.
Given Kim’s fractured relationship with her parents, she might easily have ignored their pleas. But Kim must have known that the game was up. The hammer was about to fall, and someone was going to get crushed. Better to control the narrative, to make her excuses, while she still could.
And so, Kim started talking. She began by explaining how she’d met Cordell Richards. It was via an advertisement he’d placed for a roommate, she said. Having just been kicked out of her parents’ house, she was looking for a place to stay, and so she responded. The apartment had seemed presentable enough, although mostly devoid of furniture. She’d moved in soon after.
At first, the arrangement had worked well. Cordell was polite and didn’t infringe on her space. He was working several jobs and was often out of the apartment, anyway, giving her the run of the place. Ronald visited her often and sometimes stayed over.
But then, Cordell’s behavior changed. He started walking around the apartment in his underwear, making lewd comments, once even exposing himself to Kim. Another time, he tried to enter her room uninvited. According to Kim, she kept these incidents to herself. She specifically did not tell Ronald. She knew how he would react. She was afraid that she might get thrown out.
But then came the day when Cordell came right out and propositioned her for sex, Maestas said. When she refused, he allegedly pushed her up against the wall, resulting in a bruise. After that, she knew she had to tell Ronald. He was understandably angry but abided by her wish not to confront Cordell. Instead, he installed a deadbolt in her room and told her to retreat there if Cordell got “pushy.” If things went too far, if she ever felt that she was in danger, she was to call him.
On the afternoon of February 2, 1999. Kim was hanging out at the apartment with her friend Renee Lincks when Cordell started harassing them with indecent proposals. The girls retreated to Kim’s room and engaged the deadbolt. However, Cordell wasn’t giving up. He started kicking the door, shoulder-charging it, demanding to be let in. Kim then called her boyfriend and told him that she was under attack. Ronald told her to sit tight. He was on his way.
Ronald Bell may have been only a teenager, but he was tall and strongly built. He both outweighed and outreached Cordell, making it an uneven contest. Cordell was beaten down before Ronald got him in a chokehold, maintaining his grip until Cordell blacked out. Then, as the older man lay unconscious on the ground, Ronald fetched a baseball bat. He handed it to Kim and told her to beat Cordell with it. Kim did as she was told, landing several meaty blows. Then she gave the bat to Renee and encouraged her to continue the beating. Finally, the bat was in the hands of Ronald Bell, and the onslaught continued, delivered with enough venom to shatter bone.
Cordell Richards was unconscious when the trio wrapped him in a blanket and carried him down to Ronald Bell’s car. They drove him out to the woods near the subdivision and dragged him through the underbrush before chaining him to a tree. Cordell had now regained consciousness and was begging them not to hurt him. His attackers responded by passing the baseball bat between them, taking it in turns to beat the helpless man. It was left to Ronald Bell to deliver the killing blow. “I’m Babe Ruth,” he yelled as he gave the bat an almighty swing that collided with Cordell’s head and caved in his skull. Bell then dowsed Cordell’s body with lighter fluid and struck a match. The sickening stench of charred flesh accompanied the teenagers out of the trees.
The following day, according to Maestas, the trio returned to the site of their atrocity. They fully expected to find Cordell deceased. To their horror, he was still alive, groaning in agony and weakly begging for help. He was never likely to get that from this group of miscreants. Instead, Bell drove to a nearby department store and bought a meat cleaver. He returned to the dying man and ended his pleas by drawing the blade across his throat. He then used the contents of a Sprite bottle to wash the blood off the cleaver. Later, he returned it for a refund. Surveillance footage from the department store would confirm this part of Kim’s confession.
Finally, the story was out. Finally, police knew the truth behind the horrific death of Cordell Richards, a man described by friends and family as a gentle soul, who bore no malice towards anyone. With Kim Maestas’ confession on tape, she and Ronald Bell were charged with first-degree murder. Renee Lincks was also charged. She later struck a deal with prosecutors and was allowed to plead to manslaughter in exchange for her testimony against her co-accused.
That testimony would reveal the true motive for the murder. Cordell Richards had never made advances towards Kim Maestas. He was killed because Maestas and Bell wanted his apartment for themselves. It was also revealed that the pair had sold off their victim’s meager possessions after they murdered him.
The teen killers both faced trial as adults and received very little leniency from judge or jury. Maestas was sentenced to life without parole plus a consecutive term of 30 years for kidnapping. For Bell, it was the death penalty, although that would later be commuted to life without parole on account of his youth.
Bell had escaped the needle, but he and his girlfriend still faced the prospect of a lifetime of incarceration. They were given some hope in 2019, when they attended new sentencing hearings in line with the 2012 Supreme Court ruling on juvenile lifers. However, their life sentences were reaffirmed. They were going back to jail. Neither Maestas nor Bell should expect to get out of prison any time soon – if ever.
Renee Lincks was released in 2012, after serving 12 years of her 15-year term.
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