The OOPS! Defense
rude...@my-dejanews.com
Block," "Dennis Toksvig," 'Jonathan Dennis," "Dennis Bender," "David
Johnson," 'John Masterson")
Born November 29,1953, in Hollywood, California. Senior management
consultant at Price Waterhouse. Ballwin, Missouri; 1 murder;
strangulation;
In mid-1985 Julia (Julie) Alice Miller, a 31-year-old manager in the
St. Louis office of Southwestern Bell, took her first step into the
oftentimes murky singles world by calling in to a late-night radio
dating show. Unimpressed by the men she met, Miller placed an ad in
the "Eligible" column of a weekly newspaper asking for a "Really Nice
Guy" to respond to a "Nice Girl." When a concerned friend questioned
the potential danger in placing such an ad, Miller offered assurances
that she intended to check out each guy before dating them. Among
those responding to Miller's ad was Dennis Neal Bulloch, a
good-looking, 32-year-old senior management consultant at the
prestigious accounting firm of Price Waterhouse. Miller told her
friend that Bulloch "look[ed] good on paper." Their first date on
August 14,1985, ultimately led to Miller's grisly death and marked her
with the dubious distinction of being the first woman in America to
die during partner sexual bondage. The subsequent legalities of the
Bulloch case introduced the controversial "sex-death defense," often
mockingly referred to as the "oops! defense," and represented what
many in the law enforcement community consider to be among the most
serious miscarriages of justice in the annals of twentieth century
American jurisprudence.
"On paper" Dennis Bulloch looked like ideal husband material. Born
into a working class family, he applied himself in school, became a
member of the national honor society won a full scholarship to
college, and earned an M.B.A. Ironically, Bulloch married a young
woman in the early 1980s who, like Miller, also worked for
Southwestern Bell. Initially the marriage thrived, but the woman
resisted Bulloch's attempt to totally control the relationship. She
refused to indulge his unusual tastes for sexual bondage and golden
showers and divorced him on December 20,1985, after he had earlier
beat her in a jealous fit. Obsessed with success and eager to make a
good appearance, Bulloch applied himself with equal intensity in an
effort to fit in with the creme de la creme of St. Louis society. He
became a Young Republican and a member of the Classical Guitar Society
and Friends of the Art Museum. Bulloch's lucrative salary, however,
was not enough to finance his dating of the daughters of old money"
St. Louis and he was soon in debt.
In September 1985 Julie Miller suffered an emotional breakdown and was
admitted to the psychiatric ward of a local hospital for acute
depression. During her seven-and-a-half week stay, she manifested what
doctors termed "bizarre preoccupations with religious, sexual,
lesbian, and grandiose thoughts." At one point, she believed sublime
messages were being transmitted to her in the static from cable
television. Diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, Miller was
placed on anti-psychotic medicine and discharged almost two months
later. Bulloch, solicitous throughout her hospital stay but still
sleeping with other women, began proposing marriage to Miller around
the time his divorce from his first wife was being finalized.
Slavishly devoted to Bulloch from their first meeting, Miller was
initially reluctant to accept his offer especially after finding the
"little black book" in which he had listed her name along with the
numbers of her investment accounts and credit cards. Nevertheless,
Miller became Mrs. Bulloch in a private ceremony on February 22,1986.
Days later, she added his name to all her assets although he never
reciprocated. Her last vestige of independence disappeared on March
12, 1986, when she signed over her power of attorney to her new
husband.
Bulloch failed to live up to his "on paper" image. Refusing to wear a
wedding band out of fear that it might get caught and hurt his hand,
Bulloch moved into his own room in Julia's lavish home at 251 White
Tree Lane in Ballwin, an upscale suburb in St. Louis County. He kept
his house in nearby University City and often slept there, he told
her, to guard it against break-ins. When traveling, Bulloch refused to
give her a number where he could be reached and continued a long-term
sadomasochistic bondage relationship with another woman. Bulloch used
his wife's money to date socialites and even accompanied one to a ski
resort in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Though he never informed Price
Waterhouse of his marriage, he told one of the women he was seeing
that he did not love Julia and married her only after she threatened
suicide. He planned to have the marriage annulled. Julia chronicled
her frustration in copiously detailed diaries and six weeks after the
wedding presented Bulloch with a 55-minute audiotape in which she
tearfully begged him to love and pay attention to her. In mid-April
1986 Julia confided to a friend that she was considering a divorce. On
April 22, 1986, their two month anniversary, Bulloch sold his house
and permanently moved into their home on White Tree Lane. Days later
he informed Julia that he would be leaving May 3 on a business trip to
St. Paul, Minnesota.
Acting on a police dispatcher's call, firefighters sped to 251 White
Tree Lane at 5:45 a.m. on May 6,1986. Inside the blazing garage,
horrified firemen discovered a bizarre tableau between two burned out
cars. Julia Bulloch's nude and badly charred body had been bound to an
oak rocker with more than 70 feet of duct tape and left to incinerate
in what was obviously a case of arson. The excessive amount of tape
and its placement around her face, hair, and crisscrossing her breasts
strongly suggested a sexual bondage ritual. Death resulted from
asphyxiation caused by two terrycloth gags found jammed in her mouth.
With her airway obstructed, she could not have survived for more than
eight minutes. Hand swelling indicated that Julia was bound between
5-10 minutes before she died and no attempt had been made pre-mortem
to remove her bindings. The fire had burned away any bruises or
fingerprints on the body. Her death was ruled a homicide.
Dennis Bulloch became the prime suspect after investigators learned
that he was the sole beneficiary of her estate. His story of being in
St. Paul during the time of the murder quickly crumbled after a
business colleague on the same trip informed police Bulloch had asked
him to serve as an alibi. Police suspicions were further aroused by
Bulloch's failure to attend Julia's funeral and the discovery of nude
photographs of past lovers among his possessions.
Bulloch disappeared on May 9, 1986, and two days later his mother's
car was found abandoned by the Martin Luther King Bridge near the
Mississippi River. It contained a suicide note written by Bulloch and
dated May 8 which insinuated that Julia's need for "tender roughness"
had caused her own death. One line, "I am taking my final baptism,"
failed to convince police that he had jumped from the bridge and an
all points bulletin was immediately issued. FBI wiretaps on the phones
of Bulloch's friends and family led to his arrest in Santa Cruz,
California, on July 3, 1986, where he was using the alias "Jonathan
Dennis."
Jury selection in Bulloch's first degree murder trial began in
Clayton, Missouri, on May 26,1987, more than ten months after his
arrest. In opening arguments, the prosecution portrayed Bulloch as a
social climbing sadist who married Julia for her money and then tied
her up and watched her suffocate when he could no longer control her.
Bulloch's counsel countered with the controversial "sex-death" defense
that essentially blamed the young woman for her own death. The defense
argued that Julia was not the victim in bondage, but rather the
"sexually promiscuous" initiator and instructress. Bulloch had never
before engaged in bondage until his "femme fatale" wife
demanded it. Her death was just an "accident." As Julia's pathetic
audiotape was barred as hearsay evidence, a former lover of Bulloch's
testified that she had engaged in a bondage relationship with him well
before he met Julia. The defense's star witness, a highly paid
forensic psychiatrist, testified that Bulloch knew nothing of bondage
until he met Julia and that her death could have been accidental.
On June 2, 1987, a packed courtroom listened as Dennis Bulloch
attempted to recount the confused events leading to his wife's death.
As part of their lovemaking ritual, he bound her to the chair as she
instructed and watched as she placed the strips of cloth in her own
mouth before he taped her mouth shut with over 30 feet of duct tape.
Drunk and nauseous from alcohol, Bulloch went to the bathroom and fell
asleep. Sometime later he awoke to discover his wife had fallen over
in her chair. She did not respond to resuscitation. No longer wanting
to live, he carried her to the garage intending to commit suicide by
carbon monoxide poisoning, but the car would not run. Confused,
Bulloch decided to immolate himself with Julia, but first wanted to
read her diaries so as to become "closer to her." What he read there
so enraged him that he used the diary to start the fire. Unable to
withstand the intense heat, Bulloch fled the scene and flew back to
St. Paul under an assumed name. When he later felt that Julia may have
been burned alive, Bulloch testified that the only thing which
prevented him from jumping from the Martin Luther King Bridge was "my
fear that I could burn in hell forever."
The prosecution was confident that Bulloch would be convicted of first
degree murder and face the death penalty when the case went to the
jury on June 3, 1987. Six hours later, they returned with a verdict of
"involuntary manslaughter" for which Bulloch was sentenced to the
maximum of 7 years and fined $5,000 onJuly10, 1987. Public outrage was
so great over the verdict that the jury received hate mail. Declaring
the verdict to be "a terrible mistake," the prosecution filed charges
of arson and tampering with evidence (burning Julia's diary) against
Bulloch 15 days after the verdict. Opening arguments began in Cape
Girardeau on July 12,1988, and the next day Bulloch was found guilty
and subsequently sentenced on November 4, 1988, to an 11-year prison
sentence (6 for arson, 5 for tampering). The state appeals court
overturned these convictions on February 13, 1990, citing
prosecutorial error in referring to Bulloch's failure to testify in
his second trial. Bulloch was released seven months early on June 18,
1990, after having served 4 years and 7 months on his manslaughter
conviction. He remained free on $150,000 bond awaiting his retrial on
arson and evidence tampering. In less than 90 minutes of deliberation,
a Columbia, Missouri, jury reconvicted Bulloch of the charges on
August 29,1990. On October 9, 1990, Bulloch was given the maximum
sentences of 7 years for arson and 5 years for evidence tampering to
run consecutively. In November 1992 the Missouri court of appeals
ruled that both sentences be served concurrently. On January 26, 1993,
Bulloch was paroled from the Central Missouri Correctional Center
where he lived in a minimum security dormitory and worked in the food
service area. Seven years after her murder, Julia Bulloch's estate was
settled on March 2,1993. Dennis Bulloch received nothing.
From "Murder Cases of the Twentieth Century" by David K. Frasier
ISBN 0-7864-0184-2
The RudeDog
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DedNdogYrs
lie about having any. Then to ensure her safety she should let him know that he
will only share anything she has if she remains alive because all the money is
set to go to family members upon her death.
Dogs & children first.
Merc@tral_la_la
rude...@my-dejanews.com wrote in message
<78v650$pr3$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>Bulloch, Dennis Neal (a.k.a. 'John Mason," "Dennis Block," 'John
>Block," "Dennis Toksvig," 'Jonathan Dennis," "Dennis Bender," "David
>Johnson," 'John Masterson")
>
>Born November 29,1953, in Hollywood, California. Senior management
>consultant at Price Waterhouse. Ballwin, Missouri; 1 murder;
>strangulation;
Golly gosh....what more can I say after reading this little tale ? It sounds
incredible - then...it must be true!
Merce