MEL IGNATOW, 70 ~ Admitted Murderer of Brenda Sue Schaefer who got off because of the 'Double Jeopardy' law - Found dead in his home
The Kentucky Wizard
Photo of Brenda Sue Schaefer:
http://images.ibsys.com/2001/0827/935007_200X150.jpg
Photo of the SOB that killed her:
http://images.ibsys.com/2001/0827/935015_200X150.jpg
Hell's gonna love you, Melvin.
Wiz.....
http://www.wave3.com/Global/story.asp?S=8932145&nav=menu31_3
LOUISVILLE, KY (WAVE) - Mel Ignatow, the man who was acquitted of killing
his girlfriend, Brenda Sue Schaefer on September 24, 1988, was found dead in
his home on Carrier Court Monday morning.
At this point, family members are saying Ignatow's death may have been an
accident, and that he has been in poor health in recent years.
Although Ignatow was acquitted of murder, pictures showing her being
tortured and killed surfaced six months later, and Ignatow served time in
state and federal prison for perjury.
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080901/NEWS01/80901009
Admitted murderer Mel Ignatow dead
Nearly two decades after he killed his girlfriend, Brenda Schaefer, but got
away with her murder, Mel Ignatow, arguably Louisville’s most infamous
killer, has died.
Ignatow, 70, was found dead in his apartment this afternoon, though Deputy
Coroner Rita Taylor said she could not give the “cause or manner” of his
death until after the autopsy is complete.
Ignatow’s son, Michael, said his father apparently fell into a glass table
and bled to death in his apartment on Terrier Road sometime this weekend.
Mel Ignatow’s health had been deteriorating and he had fallen several times
in recent months, Michael Ignatow said.
After not hearing from his father since Friday, despite repeated calls,
Michael Ignatow went to his father’s apartment, finding him on the floor in
the doorway of his bedroom, having apparently walked around his apartment
after the fall — but never calling for help.
“It didn’t appear he even tried to get to his phone,” Michael Ignatow said.
“That was a little bizarre.”
Michael Ignatow speculated that maybe his father didn’t know how serious the
injuries were — particularly an arm laceration — or, given his father’s
declining health and the constant pain he was in, maybe he was just ready to
die.
“He had made his peace with God,” Michael Ignatow said. “…Maybe he didn’t
want to call for help this time.”
Ignatow’s death ends a 20-year murder saga, from his 1991 acquittal on
murder charges to his subsequent confession after undeveloped film was found
showing him torturing Schaefer the night she was killed.
In a December 2006 interview, shortly after he was released from prison, Mel
Ignatow said he was a flawed man addicted to drugs and alcohol in 1988 when
he killed Schaefer but that he is not the evil person he has been made out
to be.
“I know I’m probably portrayed as some cold-hearted monster, but that’s not
the case,” Ignatow, said then. “I was messed up really bad on alcohol and
drugs.”
During that interview, Ignatow, would not say why he killed Schaefer, but he
acknowledged being surprised when a Kenton County jury acquitted him of
murder in 1991.
“I fully expected, when I was arrested and went to trial on this case, that
I was going to be convicted, and I expected the worst,” he said.
But God intervened, he said, and he was acquitted of the gruesome killing
that has captivated Kentuckians for nearly two decades.
“He forgave me and saved me. For what purpose, I don’t know,” said Ignatow,
who indicated that he became a born-again Christian in 1989.
While Ignatow initially denied involvement in Schafer’s death, he eventually
admitted that he had killed her with chloroform on Sept. 24, 1988, after
torturing and sexually abusing her in the home of his former girlfriend,
Mary Ann Shore-Inlow.
With her grave dug in advance, Ignatow forced Schaefer to strip naked, tied
her to the top of a glass coffee table and sexually tortured her, while
Shore-Inlow took pictures. Then he took a bottle of chloroform and killed
Schaefer, whom he was once engaged to marry.
In 1991, a Kenton County jury acquitted him of Schaefer’s murder. The trial
had been moved there because of publicity.
The next year, undeveloped film was found in a heating duct of a home
Ignatow had owned. It showed Ignatow sexually abusing Schaefer on the night
of her murder.
After the film was found, Ignatow was convicted of perjury for lying to a
federal grand jury about his involvement in Schaefer’s death.
He served five years, then was convicted in state court in December 2001 of
being a persistent felon and of perjury.