Green Widow – Mary Ellen Samuels

Were yall able to the Knoxville Trio Case? If not, go back and listen to episodes #43 and #44. We told this case in two parts so that we could tell it from the standpoint of each person’s perspective – the first part was Erin McLean and the second half was Eric McLean’s side of the story. If you haven’t listened to it, you missed out on a crazy case with an unexpected ending. After you listen to this episode. Go on back and listen to those.

Coming up next week is the February Missing Persons. If you have anyone you want us to include in our broadcast, please email us at [email protected] or just go to our website, www.murderandlove.com, and go to the contact us section. Use that box to send us your missing persons. And I hope everyone has been sharing our January missing person’s episode to get the word out. All you have to do is hit share and share it to your social media at least one time. Matter of fact, while I’m talking right now, go back to the main menu of your listening platform and hit the share icon on episode #42 and share it to Facebook or Twitter right now.

OK now on to our show.

Tonight we are talking about the case of Mary Ellen Samuels and Robert Samuels.

Mary Ellen Gurnick was born on: 9/3/1947 in Southern California. She had a very good childhood growing into a “very pretty” teenager. As a teen she loved going to drive in movies, Disneyland, and was boy crazy. She’d often be seen “chasing boys at local dances.” As one of her teenage friends said, “When we would go out and meet guys it was always Mary Ellen they would focus on.”

One boy in particular, who was also one of her neighbors, had a crush on her but was always too shy to say anything. His name was Robert Samuels.

Robert Samuels was born on Sep. 20, 1948 in Craven County North Carolina. His family moved to Santa Ana, CA where he grew up and he graduated from Santa Ana Valley High School, two years after Mary Ellen did. During his youth, he loved photography, and this continued as he grew up. This, and the fact that he was a diligent, hard worker.

This diligence and hard work would pay off for him as he landed his dream job as an assistant camera man in Hollywood. He worked from being an assistant camera man to being a successful cameraman in no time. He worked on many well known films, such as Lethal Weapon 2, Simon and Simon, Mash, the Color Purple, Beverly Hills Cop II, and so much more. You can check out his IMDB if you want to find out more about his work. Now, working as a camera man and on these famous movies, the hours were long but Bob loved his work. 

So Bob is living his life making movies and in the meantime, Mary Ellen had gotten married, had a daughter, and gotten divorced.

Then, in 1980, Mary Ellen and Bob saw each other again. This time though, Bob wasn’t going to let her get away. They started dating and six months later, when he was 32 and she was 34, they got married. He meant he wasn’t making the same mistake when he was a teenager. He locked that down fast!

After they were married, they purchased a house in Northridge, in the San Fernando Valley. Now, Bob loved Mary Ellen’s daughter, Nicole, and adopted her. So now they are a happy family, he got the girl of his dreams, the house, the job of his dreams, and now even a daughter!

As time passed by, differences in their personalities started coming out. Bob was hard-working, goal oriented, and down-to-earth, but Mary Ellen was the opposite. She liked playing, the fast life, sexy clothes, partying, etc… She also loved spending money like it was water and it made them constantly fight about it. After some time, Bob bought a Subway Sandwich franchise and made Mary Ellen the manager. I think he thought if he did this she would feel like she had her own money coming AND it might give her a sense of responsibility.

Well, he was wrong.

In October 1986, Bob came home from work to find a note from Mary Ellen on the kitchen counter. He opened the note and read a “Dear John” letter. Wow! I don’t understand people like this. So, for our younger listeners, a Dear John letter is similar to breaking up with your husband over text. This is why I’m saying I don’t understand this. Why don’t you just TELL the person you’re not interested in being with them any more and going about your business. Why say it in a letter or text? To me that’s cowardice. Unless there’s a REASON. Like you think if you were to tell this person this to their face, they would hit you in the back with a folding chair. THEN I could see not wanting to be in the room while breaking up with them. In the letter, it had statements like “our marriage had gotten stale, things just didn’t work out” and “I hope we can be friends, but I can’t live with you.” As usual, I searched for this letter, but couldn’t find it online. I’m sure it’s in court documents, but they didn’t make it available online.

On October 31, 1986 Mary Ellen filed for divorce and, although she wanted a divorce, Bob wasn’t ready to give up on their marriage so he helped her to get an apartment (or a condo I’m not sure which) and continued to offer her support. He paid for Nicole’s private school, he supported Mary Ellen emotionally, and was also her sole form of financial support. He paid $1,500 a month in total, which, today covers only the rent, but back then covered everything I mentioned. Keep in mind, Mary Ellen was still running the Subway. I don’t understand why he had to give her money then. 

Now, this wasn’t actually their first time separating, but this was the longest they’d been apart. How long you ask? This stint was 2 years long.

During this separation, Mary Ellen and Nicole started going out to clubs and partying and acting like they were rich. Fronting the club bills for their friends and stuff. And guess who paid for all of this. That’s right – Bob.

One of her friends is quoted as saying, “One of the things she liked to do was go bar hopping. She would dress up in her sort of Sunday best”.

During this separation, Bob tried everything to get his family back together, but by November of 1988 Bob was depressed and his relationship with Mary Ellen and her daughter had soured.

Then, on the afternoon of December 9, 1988, police received a 911 call. They were dispatched to Bob’s house and was met by Mary Ellen at the door. She wasn’t crying, she wasn’t hysterical; she was just there. She let them inside and they saw that Bob lay on the floor, dead, from a shotgun blast to the head. Wow a SHOTGUN blast to the HEAD?! She told police that she had stopped by to drop off the dog for the weekend and they’d walked in on this scene.

Upon further investigation, police realize the body wasn’t fresh; it had been there for a couple days. They looked around the house and, although it did look ransacked, they deduced that this wasn’t a break in. To them it looked like and inside job, but they had no real evidence to go off of. Because of their suspicion, they took Mary Ellen down to the station for questioning. 

Mary Ellen came to the station in a really flirty dress and began flirting with officers. There was a point when she even put her hand on one of the detective’s head, who was bald, and talked about how she liked bald guys. Wow. What do we call that? The audacity!

After the questioning, there was no evidence that Mary Ellen had anything to do with the death of her husband so they let her go.

Days after Bob’s death, Mary Ellen and Nicole moved back into the house. Then, she put the Subway Restaurant up for sale and also filed a claim for the life insurance money. Because they were not divorced as of yet, she inherited everything Bob had worked for in his 20 years of working; about $500,000 in the insurance and assets. She didn’t even spend money to put a headstone on Bob’s grave; it was his friends and sister who put their money together to get one.

While all this is going on, police are still investigating Bob’s death. They went and questioned his friends and that’s when they learned that he was planning to finalize his divorce from Mary Ellen. He’d realized him and Mary Ellen were never getting back together so, on October 31, 1989, he met with his lawyer and was working on cutting off her financial support. Bob wanted to be the one who ran the Subway because at the time he was unemployed and he felt that he was the better person to run the restaurant. With the financial support, he wanted to reduce the spousal support payments to well below the $1,200 a month because he couldn’t afford it. Now, he’d filed this paperwork, but it didn’t get completed because he was still waiting on his lawyer to complete some of the paperwork. 

Police also continued observing Mary Ellen’s actions. Some of these actions included her buying her and her daughter fur coats, high end clothes, and buying her new boyfriend a $50,000 Porsche. She was also making plans to move to Cancun Mexico by buying a $180,000 condo down there. She also continuously took vacations – from what though?! – went club hopping in rented limos and wearing custom outfit from a West Hollywood store called Trashy Lingerie. (which is still open by the way) Basically, she was blowing through the money she’d inherited. 

Now, even though they kept investigating, and they had their suspicions, there still was no evidence to move forward with an arrest.  

However, on May 1 1989, police received an anonymous tip. Or anomynous as Char says.  The tipster told them to speak with one of Nicole boyfriends. This guy’s name was James Bernstein, who is descried as a cocaine dealer and a wannabe wise guy. Jim was 27 and had asked Nicole to marry him. 

Police also found out, from Mary Ellen’s bar friends, that she had been actively trying to hire a hit man to kill Bob. 

Officer John Birrer is the officer who received the anonymous call and he took action. On May 16th they obtained a search warrant for Jim’s apartment and Bob’s house. They also scooped up Jim AND Mary Ellen and brought them down to the station for questioning. At first they had them in separate rooms and Mary Ellen had the same calm and flirty demeaner like she did before and denied having any involvement with Bob’s murder. Jim, however, was rattled. After some time, they put them in the room together and left them for a bit. Now, what some people don’t understand is that police are still recording you and watching you while you think you are alone. So police were able to record Jim telling Mary Ellen, “He’s gonna arrest one of us or both of us right here, right now, tonight for the murder. He says he knows 100 percent that you and I did this.”

Police left them alone for a bit longer, then went in to speak with them, but they never got a confession, so they were let go. 

In June of 1989 a couple was walking along a remote mountain road in Ventura County and came across a badly decomposed body. Police were dispatched and the realized the body was too badly decomposed to identify it on the spot.

Coroner’s reports later revealed, through fingerprints, that the body belonged to Jim Bernstien. 

Police questioned those close to Jim to find out what happened. Jim’s boss, Matt Raue, said that he had been planning on coming to the police and confessing his role in the murder of Robert Samuel. According to Matt, “He called me up and said ‘I’m just going to tell the police what I know. And that’s the last time I talked to him.”

So now cops have a second murder investigation going on. During this investigation, they found a check for $1500 that led them to two people, Paul Gaul and Darrell Ray Edwards. 

Police brought them down to the station with a quickness. I mean this is the first real lead they’d gotten. The last time they thought they were gonna have something, Jim turned up dead. This time though, when they questioned the two men, Paul SANG LIKE A BIRD. Paul told police EVERYTHING. He even admitted that him and Darrell were hired to kill Jim to keep him quiet. On June 27, 1989 they’d murdered Jim by strangeling him and then dumped his body on a remote road.

So police asked them to name this don who put a hit out on someone to keep them quiet. Oh, it’s not a don; just a regular suburban housewife – Mary Ellen. She’d actually paid them $5000 for the hit.

This was the break detectives needed.

Detectives arrested Mary Ellen. When they searched her home, they found a picture of Mary Ellen that was taken by her new boyfriend in Cancun. It was a picture of her, naked, with her private parts covered in $20,000 in $100 bills and she had a big smile on her face. I’ll put this picture up in our Fan Group for yall to see. Now this is what police call – evidence of motive.

Like I said they arrested her and charged her with two counts of murder, soliciting murder, conspiracy, and a single count of attempted murder. 

During the investigation, this is when the whole story comes out:

It all started in 1987 when Mary Ellen goes up to every and anyone she can find, asking them to help her kill her husband. Her former friend, Anne Hambly, said that, “After several attempts to find someone to kill Robert Samuels had failed, Mary Ellen was able to get James Bernstein to agree to commit the murder.” Nicole had told Jim that Bob had abused her, that he had molested her has a child, and this angered him.  A month before the murder, Jim had said that he wanted Bob “taken care of permanently.” So he, like everyone else we report on, went and asked people for help to commit murder. Again I ask, what is wrong with people?! Jim went and asked his boss, Charles Mandel, if he knew anyone who could “take care of it.” I mean, I know if I were going to do anything illegal, the first person I’m going to ask is my boss. What the what the?! Anyway, Charles actually gave Jim a number to a guy named Mike Silva and said he could help. Like, honestly, if I asked my boss and he gave me a number, the trust stops there. I 100% automatically think that he’s just given me a cop’s number and now I’m gonna be like (fake laugh) “I was just playing man. Ha Ha. I’m not about to murder anyone. You were just playing to..right? RIGHT?!” 

Anyway, in November and December of 1988, Jim asked ANOTHER friend – this one owned a gun shop – if he could get some guns. Like, “yea man, I know you own a gun shop and need to keep your credentials legit, BUT – and hear me out here – I need to kill someone. Can I borrow a gun? I’ll have it back in two weeks, I pinky promise. What, you’re worried about the condition of it coming back to you?! No! I’m not an idiot! I’ll wipe my fingerprints off before I bring it back” 

Mary Ellen’s trial started in April of 1994. Both Paul and Darrell testified against her because of a plea deal they too. Under the plea agreements, they were spared the death penalty and both received 15 years to live in state prison.. In court, she was portrayed as a cold, money hungry, calculating woman. 

Mary Ellen’s former friend, Anne, testified against her. She said that she went to the house on the night that Bob was found dead and that she thought to herself that, “I couldn’t believe that it had finally happened.” She also said that Mary Ellen had given Jim money to arrange the hit, 6 months before the murder and that after it was done, Mary Ellen was scared of getting caught. She was very paranoid and was afraid to speak because she thought that police had her bugged – bugs in her purse, in her car, and in her house. Anne also told them that when she asked Mary Ellen who Mike Silva was, she told her that Mike was hired by Jim to kill Bob. 

The prosecution showed evidence that Mary Ellen collected on SEVERAL insurance policies totaling approximately $240,000. They also showed that the Subway Restaurant had been sold in early 1989 and Mary Ellen had profited about $70,000. They also showed that she received about $6000 in uncashed payroll checked, and she refinanced the house and received $160,000, she kept his car. As we know, she then started living like a rock star. This is why police were documenting everything she was doing! Wow.

Anyway, she also made incriminating statements to certain people. For someone who was paranoid, she sure was loose lipped. Anyway, remember what she told Anne? Well, she also told another friend, Marsha Hutchinson, that if she wasn’t careful in her divorce then Marsha’s husband might put out a hit on her. 

Jim also told his boss that Bob had been taken care of and that he’d gotten money from Mary Ellen to pay Mike. 

She also told Anne that she wanted Jim killed because she felt he was cracking and he might go and confess to the police. Anne told the court that in March or April of 1989, she introduced Mary Ellen to Paul Gaul who was her boyfriend at the time. Anne introduced him because she thought he could help Mary Ellen with Jim. After this, Mary Ellen and Paul had several conversations about Bob’s death. In their first conversation, Mary Ellen told him that she’d gotten insurance money due to Bob’s death and that Jim was blackmailing her. In another conversation, Mary Ellen again told Paul what she’d told him before and added that she wanted Bob killed because he’d abused Nicole AND that she wanted insurance money. In a THIRD conversation – Good Lord this girl is just taaaaaalllking her ass off!! Like, why not just go to the cops and turn yourself in! How many people are you gonna talk to? She doesn’t even know this guy and she’s just signing like a bird all over the place. Why was she even worried about a bug? She has walking bugs all over the place! Ugh. ANYWAY, in the THIRD conversation, she told Paul about a failed attempt to kill Bob. But then when the murder was handled, it was done terribly and she was surprised that it happened in their house. She was also annoyed that it got blood everywhere. Listen to this cold ass such and such. She also reiterated to Paul that she wanted Jim taken care of because of the blackmail and she added that Jim was selling drugs to children. I like how I’m hearing just nuggets added in about Jim and Bob to get people riled up. If yall didn’t notice that before, I’ll get to it again later and you’ll see what I’m talking about. So Mary Ellen told Mike that she would pay someone to take Jim out. 

In testimony, it was shown that she spoke with Paul about 5 to 10 times and discussed payment for killing Jim about 2 to 4 times. 

Before the murder, Mary Ellen called Paul and told him that she was going to Cancun. While she was gone, she wanted Jim taken care of. Damn that’s cold af. Usually I just ask people to watch my pets while I’m on vacation. 

She agreed to pay him $5000 OR she would forgive a loan that she’d given to Anne. Like, you can choose which one. 

So Paul accepted because he said his brother had been killed by drug dealers and he won’t have another kid losing his life to drugs. Very noble guy. So anyway, he accepted and what do you think he did? Well, true to the theme of this case, he called someone else and asked them to help him kill Jim. The person he called was Darryl Edwards. Darryl said he’d take the 5g’s and help him. Man, one day I might just call my best friend to see his reaction. “Hey dude, I want to kill someone but I need your help. You in?” I think cops would be at my door before I even hung up the phone. 

In June of 1989, Jim moved in with Anne and Paul because Mary Ellen asked him to. 

Now, let’s go back a bit to talk about another testimony leading up to Jim’s death:

David Navarro testified that met Jim in February of 1989 through Nicole Samuels, who was a friend of David’s girlfriend. I just have a question here. How many people are involved in this case?! I’m surprised Mary Ellen was free for this long! Anyway, David and Jim became friends and started selling drugs together. 

One day when Jim and David were hanging out, Jim got a page. Now kids, Char is gonna explain to you what a page is.

When he got the page he called the number and then left to meet Mike, who he referred to as “the hit man.”

On May 1, 1989 – remember that date? That’s when police received an anonymous call from a tipster. Now we know that that tipster was David. He gave them the names of Mary Ellen Samuel and Jim Bernstien. He also gave them the number of the page that came in on that day. 

The trial also included testimony about intense and very vivid love letters, male strippers, cocaine use, botched murder schemes, mother-daughter cheesecake photos (wtf is that about??), and a talking parrot that cursed the police. Shit I mean, why stop. Let’s keep going. A bear, a tiger, a guy who had 3 syringes full of drugs in his butt hole that when cops found it he was it wasn’t his. (True story that has left me with so many questions). For those who aren’t multi-lingual and don’t speak my native tongue of sarcasm, those last one were not actually in the trial. 

Now, remember that picture of Mary Ellen with the $20,000 in money on her naked body? This was also shown in evidence and was described as the most eye-catching piece of evidence.

As if not enough was already going on, Nicole’s daughter decided to testify, to the objection of her lawyer. He only went to law school, and as we can see, everyone involved in this case has made all the right moves so far so what could be wrong with Nicole taking the stand right?

So her testimony was the same thing she told Jim. 

Before we continue I want to say 2 things:

Number 1 trigger alert – sexual assault allegations ahead

And Number 2, if you are in the league of Extraordinary Stupids with an S on your chest and a cape on your back, now’s the time either stfu and continue listening before running to leave a review OR just turn our show off please.

OK now, with that being said, let’s move on.

So the last time she used this, it convinced someone to kill a person so it should convince a jury that her mother is telling the truth and they are the victims.

She testified that Bob sexually abused her. She said that he had beaten and raped her starting when she was 12. She stated that she didn’t tell anyone for years because she delft embarrassed and ashamed and she was also afraid that if she did, Bob and her mom would get a divorce. She testified that when she was 12 he began fondling her. According to her recollection, it all started with slapping. As she said, “I didn’t feed the dogs correctly and he slapped me on my face and said, ‘Does this look good to you? Does this look like something you’d like to eat?’ ”

She said that a week later he pushed her. In her own words: “I believe this time it was because I wasn’t picking up the dogs’ bowel movements correctly. He pushed me down and he said, ‘If you’re not going to pick it up the right way, you can eat it.’ ”

She also testified that, on the weekends when he’d been drinking, Bob would usually come into her room while she slept. She said that one time, she was awoken by him pouring ice over her head and then lifting her up by her nightgown.

Nicole stated that Bob raped her 8 times between when she was 12 to 16. At 16 she left home. She said she told her school counselor when she was in 10th grade, but she couldn’t remember the counselors name. She also said she only told her friends about the beatings but not the molestation.

Finally, she testified that Bob also beat her mother when he drank.

In further testimony, she said that a year after her mom left Bob, in October of 1988, she’d told Mary Ellen about the alleged sexual abuse.

Nicole also disputed testimony by a lot of her former high school friends who said she’d asked them to find a gun and often talked about killing Bob. She also denied that she had been involved in a scheme to steal Bob’s car to try to make the murder look like a carjacking. AND she denied that she told her friends that she had messed with the scene of the crime to make it look like a break in and an altercation had happened. So basically, everyone was lying except her and her mother.

The only problem with this testimony is that no one had any testimony that Bob drank or was a drunk. According to his sister, Susan Conroy,  “I don’t believe her. Bob wasn’t that type of person. Like mother, like daughter. After all, she is fighting for her mother’s life.”

The trial lasted 2 months and in the end, and like everyone else, the jury didn’t believe Nicole, either. On July 1, 1994, the jury found Mary Ellen guilty on two counts of first-degree murder. Due to the circumstances of the trial, they suggested the death penalty.

Another two months later, on September 16, 1994, the Superior Court Judge Michael R. Hoff followed their recommendation and sentenced her to death. Judge Hoff stated that the jury’s guilty and death verdicts were “clearly supported by the evidence,” which he described as “overwhelming . . . extensive, vivid, graphic and most compelling. It clearly demonstrated that the defendant planned the murders for a long time, and had the ability to convince others to do her dirty work. The defendant involved many people, even her own teen-age daughter and her daughter’s friends.”

Mary Ellen was one of only 20 women on death row in the state of California. All of these death row women were  held at the Central California Women’s Facility. 

But wait, there’s more

On December 3, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California reversed the death sentence on the grounds that her trial lawyer had provided ineffective representation because he didn’t object to the prosecution’s admission of irrelevant evidence of her using drugs, selling drugs, and that she posed for “cheesecake photos.” (I still want to know what that means.) According to the court, it said the evidence probably wouldn’t have affected the jury’s determination of  guilty verdict, but it had a significant probability of affecting the vote for life or death.

Mary Ellen is currently 75, and still in prison, but no longer on death row.

Paul was paroled in 2009, but he was returned to custody in 2011 due to drug and alcohol abuse. 

Currently, Paul or Darrell is currently listed as prisoner – so I guess they are both out now. 

Before you ask, no charges were ever brought up against Nicole and she was never implicated in Bob’s murder. 

And that is the story of Mary Ellen Samuels and Bob Samuels. Because of how fast she went through her husband’s money – which she spent $500,000 in under a year – she was labeled as the “green widow”.

Mary Ellen is still in prison, Bob is dead, Jim is dead, Paul and Darrell are out, and nothing happened to Nicole or any one else who helped in this crazy case.

So what do yall think about this? Did you believe Nicole? 

Let us know in the comments below, or better yet, come on over to our Facebook Fan Page and join the discussion.

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