Mel Ignatow
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| “ | Good evening ladies and gentleman! We are coming to you live. This is your host Mel Ignatow and with me is the Puta, the Jezebel who tried to leave me. She has been captured and taken prisoner by me now. THE PRISONER WILL IDENTIFY HERSELF! | „ |
| ~ Ignatow taunting Schaefer during his Snuff film |
Melvin Henry Ignatow (March 26, 1938 – September 1, 2008) was a resident of Louisville, Kentucky, who was responsible for the 1988 murder & rape of his former girlfriend, Brenda Sue Schaefer.
The case was controversial because Ignatow was acquitted of the charge. However, photographs that proved his guilt were uncovered after the trial. Under the legal principle of double jeopardy, Ignatow could not be tried again for the murder. He was instead convicted and jailed for perjury in his grand jury testimony for the case on several occasions.
Background edit
Mel Ignatow and Brenda Schaeffer had been in a relationship for two years at the time of the murder. Eventuallu, Schaeffer began to complain about Ignatow's abusive nature and had plans to end the relationship. Ignatow later learned of these intentions and became enraged.
With the intetion of murdering Schaeffer, Ignatow brought upon the help of his former girlfriend, Mary Ann Shore. After the preparation for the murder which included, "scream-testing" Mary's house and digging the eventual grave. They were ready to put their plan into action.
Murder edit
On September 23, 1988, Schaeffer met Ignatow to return some jewelry of his that she had in her possession. Once she arrived, Ignatow took Schaeffer to Shore's house, where he pulled a gun on Brenda and locked her in the house. Brenda was then blindfolded, gagged and bound by her hands and feet.
Ignatow forced Brenda to strip, photographed her in suggestive positions, raped, sodomized and beat her before killing her with chloroform. Ignatow and Shore buried her behind Shore's house then took Brenda's jewelry and the exposed film.
Investigation and Trial edit
After Schaefer's disappearance, Ignatow became an immediate suspect. However, police weren't able to locate any witnesses or physical evidence linking him to Schaeffer's disappearance. Police also had no whereabouts of any sort of body. In search for any lead that could let them move forward with the case, police invited Ignatow to clear his name by testifying before a grand jury. There, he mentioned Shore's name, bringing her into the investigation for the first time.
Police interrogated Shore, who eventually confessed to helping plan the murder, and taking pictures of Ignatow as he tortured and raped Schaeffer. Shore also lead the investigators to the gravesite, where Brenda's badly decomposed body had been buried for over a year. The autopsy showed she had been raped and sodiomized.
The investigators convinced Shore to wear a wire, by promising only to charge her with tampering with evidence. In the surveillance, Shore told Ignatow that the FBI was hounding her and she was afraid the property behind her house was being sold and developed. He was on tape berating her for letting the FBI "rattle" her and told her he didn't care if they dug up the whole property because "that place we dug is not shallow."
With this very blatant piece of evidence, prosecutors brought Ignatow to trial for the murder in 1991. However, the jury decided that one word on the tape was "safe", not "site", as the police believed, which led them to conclude that the discussion involved a buried safe. The defense argued that Shore, not Ignatow, had killed Schaefer.
The jury acquitted Ignatow. The judge was so embarrassed by the verdict that he took the unusual step of writing a letter of apology to the Schaefer family. Schaefer's parents died before the trial began. According to some family and friends, their deaths were premature due to the heartbreak and stress of Schaefer's murder
Aftermath and Imprisonment edit
Six months after Ignatow's acquittal, a carpetlayer working in Ignatow's old house, which had been sold to fund his defense, pulled up a length of carpet in a hallway. Under it he found a floor vent containing a plastic bag, taped to hold it inside the vent. Inside the bag was the jewelry Schaefer had taken with her on the night of her disappearance, and three rolls of undeveloped film. When developed, the film showed Ignatow torturing and raping Schaefer.
Ignatow faced federal charges for perjury and lying to the FBI, based on his grand jury testimony. Knowing that he could not be retried for the murder because of double jeopardy, Ignatow confessed in court at his perjury trial. He turned to Schaefer's brothers in court and said that he had killed her, but claimed that she had died peacefully. Ignatow pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eight years and one month in prison.
Death edit
On September 1, 2008, Ignatow was found dead in his apartment. An autopsy determined that Ignatow died from an accidental fall that lacerated his head or his arm, and that he had eventually bled to death. The neighbor who found his body stated that "It just looked like he had fell... and he tried to go to the kitchen, and there was a blood trail that way, and then it looked like he tried to make it to his room, before he made it to his room, that's where they found his body at."
According to his son, Michael was the one who found Mel dead on September 1, 2008. Michael went by to check on Mel before work. Mel did not answer the door, so Michael let himself in. Michael saw a broken glass coffee table, walker with a bent leg, and a trail of blood leading to Mel’s bedroom. Michael found Mel dead and sitting up against the wall with a “bad” cut on his arm. Michael said Mel did not make any effort to call 911 and probably just decided.
“It was time for him to lay down and die”.