Woman Sets Up Hubby's Murder, Marries Hit Man
Maggie
MURDER PROBE
Vanessa Richardson, above, was married to Kevin Foote, below, in 1996 when
Foote was fatally shot; Wednesday, police charged Richardson and her new
husband, Jeff, in the killing.
Set Up for Murder
Police: Wife helped boyfriend shoot husband, then married him
by Sean Gardiner
Staff Writer
Four days before Christmas 1996, Kevin Foote, his arms loaded with presents and
his wife at his side, approached a friend's Brooklyn home, when a masked man
appeared out of nowhere, held a gun to his head and demanded their money.
Foote's wife told police she watched helplessly as the gunman fatally shot her
husband at point-blank range because, she said, he squirmed after the robber
ordered him to "stop moving” as he patted him down for his wallet.
It was a brutal slaughter investigators at the time called a "brazen,
cold-blooded act.”
Wednesday, more than four years after the slaying, detectives arrested the
former Vanessa Foote and her new husband, Jeff Richardson, at their suburban
Atlanta home, where the couple was living off Foote's life-insurance policy
proceeds, police officials and law-enforcement sources said. Vanessa
Richardson, police charge, set up the execution-style hit that night, and the
executioner was Richardson.
The couple was charged with second-degree murder Friday in a sealed indictment
and is scheduled to appear in a Georgia state court today for an extradition
hearing. The couple is expected to waive extradition and be returned to New
York, said Capt. Vincent Ferrara of the NYPD Cold Case Squad.
On Dec. 21, 1996, Kevin Foote, 26, an accountant for Smith Barney and a devout
Jehovah's Witness from Massapequa, spent the last day of his life with his
wife, Vanessa, and their son, Kevan, then 4, visiting her parents in the East
New York section of Brooklyn.
At Vanessa Foote's suggestion, they had brought along Christmas presents for
her cousins who lived in the Fairfield Towers on Van Siclen Avenue, police
said. They left their son with her parents.
Vanessa Foote told police that when they got out of the car at 8:25 p.m. on
that clear, cold night, a man wearing a ski mask and holding a gun approached
them outside the entrance of the building. He demanded their money, she said,
but as he patted Kevin Foote down, the husband squirmed and the gunman blasted
him with a shot to the right side of his head. She told detectives that as
Foote slumped to the ground, she grabbed him and screamed for help as the
killer ran.
At the time, a police supervisor called the killing "senseless” and a "brazen
execution.”
However, detectives following up on the case say the killing no longer seems so
senseless. In fact, they believe what actually happened was that Vanessa Foote
walked her husband straight into a death trap.
"She led him to the slaughter, then sat there and watched him get murdered,”
said a police source.
The source said Vanessa, now 30, had previously dated Richardson, 31, who
police described as a "career criminal.” When he was sent to prison for
attempted robbery in 1991, she started dating and eventually married Foote.
For a while, the Footes seemed to be living out the suburban dream of the
upwardly mobile. Kevin held down a well-paying job while working toward his
college degree. Vanessa worked as a teacher's aide.
They had their son, Kevan, now 8, and moved from a home they were renting in
Jamaica to their own house in a more upscale neighborhood in Massapequa. They
both were regular worshipers at the Jehovah's Witnesses congregation on Bayview
Avenue in Amityville.
"There are plenty of women out there who would give their left arm for that,”
Kevin Foote's father, Dave Foote, said. "They weren't rich or nothing like
that, but they had everything anyone could want out of life.”
Allegedly, that was not enough for Vanessa, whom Kevin Foote's mother,
Constance Foote, described as "just a wolf in sheep's clothing.”
Vanessa Foote started an affair with her ex-con former boyfriend shortly after
he was paroled in September 1996 after spending nearly five years in prison, a
police source said.
She bragged openly about the affair to her friends, and before the slaying, she
put up photographs of Richardson at her work and said they "were going to live
together forever,” the source said.
Soon after the killing, detectives became suspicious of Foote. They learned of
her affair with Richardson and found out her's cousins had told her they'd be
out of town the night they went visiting. The investigators, sources said, also
discovered that Vanessa Foote had made a telephone call to Richardson shortly
before the slaying. She also refused to talk to police without a lawyer.
Suspicion mounted when Vanessa Foote and Richardson were married within two
months of Kevin Foote's death and moved to Georgia with Foote's son.
When Kevin Foote's insurance company got wind of the police investigation, they
stopped payments on his $150,000 policy after paying out about half, police
sources said.
Dave Foote said they didn't want to believe their daughter-in-law had killed
their son, but "in our hearts, we knew it. There were too many things pointing
to it.”
The detectives shared their suspicions with Foote's parents within a couple
weeks of his death.
"They had so many circumstantial things, but they had no hard evidence,” Dave
Foote said.
The case stagnated until Det. Patrick Lanigan and Lt. John Dove of the Cold
Case Squad took a crack at it beginning in June 1999. Those detectives were
able to find a new eyewitness. That witness identified Jeff Richardson, who he
said wasn't masked, as the killer, Ferrara said.
Wednesday, Dove and Lanigan traveled to Conyers, Ga. to arrest the couple. The
detectives searched the couple's home and recovered two handguns, which are
being tested to see if either was the murder weapon, Ferrara said.
Constance Foote said that as a devout Jehovah's Witness, she knew that that
justice would be served at some point, perhaps in the afterlife, but "I didn't
know if we would see it in this lifetime.”
When detectives called to tell her about the arrests, she said her reaction was
one of sadness–sadness that her son died such a senseless death, sadness that
her former daughter-in-lawa was "so greedy and out for the money” and sadness
for her grandson.
"I'm glad for justice, but it's not cause for any happy feelings,” she said.
"I have a grandson now who doesn't have any parents.”
Foote's father said the news of the arrests brought "tears to my eyes” and he
hopes that "finally, maybe we can get some closure now.”
"It was supposed to be almost like a marriage made in heaven,” he said.
"There's no reason for this, just no reason. The reason I guess lies in her.
She's the only one who knows deep down inside what made her do it”.
Maggie
"When we got into office, the thing that surprised me the most was that things
were as bad as we'd been saying they were."--John F. Kennedy
George Byrd
on "Woman Sets Up Hubby's Murder, Marries Hit Man"
maggi...@aol.comSPAMBLOC (Maggie) wrote:
>From Newsday:
>
>MURDER PROBE
>
>Vanessa Richardson, above, was married to Kevin Foote, below, in 1996 when
>Foote was fatally shot; Wednesday, police charged Richardson and her new
>husband, Jeff, in the killing.
> Set Up for Murder
>
>Police: Wife helped boyfriend shoot husband, then married him
>
>by Sean Gardiner
>Staff Writer
[snip]
>The couple was charged with second-degree murder Friday in a sealed indictment
>and is scheduled to appear in a Georgia state court today for an extradition
>hearing. The couple is expected to waive extradition and be returned to New
>York, said Capt. Vincent Ferrara of the NYPD Cold Case Squad.
Second degree? Weird.
GB
calwellness...@gmail.com
cheryl scott
> I knew Kevin Foote, he was a fine gentleman and a true gentleman. My daughter knew them both and said they fought a lot. When my daughter went to his funeral she said the wife didn’t seem sad and emotional. My gut feeling told me for some reason “she was behind the murder” . I was right .
Greg Carr
https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/117069/Remember-the-JW-murder-of-Kevin-Foote-NYC
Don't know what happened to Jeff Richardson there are lots of ppl named Richardson doing time for the big M.