Hell and Gone Murder Line: Shirley Reine - podcast episode cover

Hell and Gone Murder Line: Shirley Reine

Nov 16, 202345 minSeason 5Ep. 10
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Episode description

It was May 10, 2005 when police in the tiny town of Falmouth, Massachusetts, a sleepy picturesque little town on Cape Cod, got a horrifying phone call. Fifty-one-year-old Shirley Reine had been found, slumped on the garage floor, hanging out of her Nissan Maxima in a pool of blood. 

Police rushed to the scene and later said that she had been shot twice, once in the chest, and then when she fell out of the car, police believed that the killer shot her a second time in the head. There was no sign of forced entry, and it seemed that the killer had been lying in wait for Shirley in that dark garage. But who would stalk and kill a fifty-something woman execution style in her garage? And why? It turns out that there were a lot of suspects. 

If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend and her team to look into, you can reach out to the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Speaker 1

School of Humans. It was May tenth, two thousand and five, when police in the tiny town of Ballymouth, Massachusetts, a sleepy, picturesque little place on Cape Cod got this nine one one calls record. Yeah, I think somebody down at six fifty seventh Highways.

Speaker 2

I think somebody shot Shirley.

Speaker 1

Oh my God, Girland, God man, let me tell you it. Cotnia, here we are. A man named Michael Dominguez had been doing some work for a woman who lived in the house at six fifty seven East Falmouth Highway, fifty one year old Shirley Rainey. Michael showed up a little after five am. He had two cups of dunkin Donuts coffee with him, one for himself and one for Shirley, but Shirley didn't answer the door, so Michael started looking around

the house outside. He peeked through one of the glass panels in the garage and that's when he saw Shirley slumped on the garage floor, half hanging out of her Nissan Maxima in a.

Speaker 3

Pool of blood.

Speaker 2

Michael kicked the door down and he's the one who made the nine one one call.

Speaker 1

Police rushed to the scene, and they later said that Shirley had been dead for a while, around eight hours. She had been shot twice, once in the chest, and then when she fell out of the car. Police believed the killer stepped closer to her and shot her a second time in the head. Then they picked up the shell casings and left the scene. There was no sign of forced entry, so it seemed that the killer had been lying in wait for Shirley in that dark garage.

Shirley was a pretty wealthy woman, but nothing was stolen from the house. So who would stalk and kill a fifty something woman execution style in her garage and why? It turned out that there were actually a lot of suspects. Shirley had been married to Melvin Rainey, a convicted arsonist who was nicknamed the Falm of Fox. He was given that nickname back in the day by a judge who described him as being sly like a fox. Melvin Rainey had a lot of local enemies, and so did Shirley.

They included alleged mob connections, people who owed her money, former lovers who she allegedly made sex tapes with, and who may have been being blackmailed, family members of Melvin's first wife, and even Shirley's own step sons, Todd and Melvin Junior. They were fighting Shirley for control of their family business, and they were due to go back to

court in just ten days. Shirley Rainey was a mysterious woman, and this small town shooting was about to lead to a trail of dead bodies and a lot more dark secrets. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five. I first heard about this case when I took a trip to Cape Cod

last spring. I was talking to a friend who has a house, and they said, you know, why don't you ever take a break from trying to cover cold cases and maybe hang out somewhere like this, this quiet little town for a couple of weeks. And I distinctly remember what I said. I said, if I didn't travel around the country and cover cold cases, I would probably find one near me, because every town has at least one

cold case. I was kind of kidding, but later that day, of course, I did, in fact start talking to someone at a local coffee shop, and they told me about the case of the Famath Fox and his wife.

Speaker 3

As I said.

Speaker 1

Before, the Famath Fox was a local nickname for Shirley Rainey's husband, Melvin Rainey. And that's when I found out that I was sitting there in this sweet little town that basically looked like the backdrop for murder, she wrote, And yet I was on top of one of the most notorious unsolved killings in New England. Shirley Rainey and Melvin Rainey had been married for around twenty years, and Shirley's home that she was living in at the time of the shooting was in the middle of kind of

a compound owned by the Rainy family. Shirley and Melvin's property was on hundreds of acres of land. Her brother in law, John Rainey lived in the house next door. Shirley's step son, Todd Rainey lived on a nearby property, and so did his girlfriend, Joanne, who was the mother of his two children. Melvin Senior ran a trash hauling business.

It was called Five Star Enterprises, and many of you who have read anything about mob history and the history of New England may know that especially during that era, the phrase trash hauling was often shorthand for a business that relied on mob connections and a lot of shady dealings, and that was definitely the case with Five Star. For a long time, Shirley's two step sons, Todd and Melvin Junior, were in the family business, but Melvin Senior and his

sons had a falling out. Now why this started exactly is a little bit of a mystery. It started sometime in the mid nineties. Shirley told her lawyers that Melvin got frustrated because his two sons just weren't working hard enough. Now they would later allege that Shirley manipulated Melvin Senor, but either way, the end result was that Melvin and his two sons, Melvin Junior and Todd, were estranged. Melvin Junior and Todd ended up going to work for another company,

a competitor. Over the years, Melvin was known as a notorious criminal.

Speaker 3

There's just no other way to put it.

Speaker 1

He was also an arsonist, and a lot of people who've commented on the case say that Melvin was a psychopath and that he truly enjoyed and maybe even got sexual pleasure out of setting fires. His family's trash hauling business definitely had a monopoly on the area. But in the late nineties, Melvin Senior's mental health started to decline. He seemed to be developing dementia and eventually he went to stay long term at a psychiatric hospital.

Speaker 3

So by the.

Speaker 1

Time of Shirley's shooting, Shirley was running the family business by herself. There is so much going on with this case and so much history, and good investigative reporting really can change the game in these cases because it's all

about reading between the lines. In this case, reporter Michelle McPhee did a great story for Boston Magazine, and that story had a lot of details that many shows like the CNN Special left out, like the fact that Michael, the guy who found Shirley, wasn't just a coworker of Shirley's. He was married, but allegedly he was Shirley's lover, which is why he showed up so early at that hour of the morning, and how he knew how Shirley took

her coffee. This was something that Michael never admitted, by the way, so at first it's hard to know if it's just local rumor or something more. But it was an early indication that in this case, nothing is what it appears to be on the surface. It reminds me a lot of some of the cases I've covered in Arkansas and other places, small towns, where each person is connected to multiple people in the case in various different ways.

For example, you'll have someone who is a witness and also rented someone a house, and they're the cousin of the prosecutor.

Speaker 3

This is just the way it is in small towns.

Speaker 1

But I have to say the entanglements in the Rainy case are some of the most complicated I've ever seen. Shirley was very close to one family member, her sister, Loretta. Loretta told CNN that from the beginning she suspected that someone in Shirley's husband's family had something to do with the shooting. Now, remember, at this time, Shirley was running her husband, Melvin Senior's business. Loretta did work for the

family business as well. Not only did Shirley and Loretta work together, but they were together almost every night after work too, including on May ninth. After work on May night, Shirley drove to Loretta's house and had dinner with her. Loretta told investigators that was at around six pm. Loretta said Shirley left for her home sometime between eight thirty

and eight forty five pm. Police theorized that, based on the crime scene, Shirley pulled into her garage, her killer stepped out of the darkness with a nine millimeter handgun, which was found to be the weapon used, shot Shirley twice, and left the scene. Police suspected that this could have been a professional hit, or at least it was done by someone with insider knowledge, someone who was intimately familiar

with Shirley's schedule. Plus, there was no sign of forced entry, so it might have been someone who had a key or knew about another way to get inside that house, someone who made a plan and targeted Shirley. So who could that have been? Who would have wanted Shirley dead?

Police talked to Michael Dominguez, who remember was not only Shirley's employee, but also potentially her alleged lover, and then later it came out in the Cape Cod Times that Michael Dominguez was also rumored to be mel Child, a child that Melvin Senior had had out of wedlock from another relationship. So technically he would be Shirley's illegitimate step

son as well. But Michael had an alibi for the night before he was with his wife, Plus he and Shirley were getting along, so there was really no reason to suspect that he would have heard her. And then there were Shirley's stepsons. Because it turned out not only were Shirley's stepsons angry about the family business, they believed that she had their dad locked away and that she had been responsible for them being cut out of his will, but they also believed that Shirley may have been partially

responsible for killing their mother. Cape Cod is known as being a safe, sleepy, little area, but there were a couple of very high profile murders in the years before Shirley was shot. Both of them were women, but both of these women could kind of be described as out of ten people who were renting in the area for locals. This case was different. Shirley Rainey was a local girl. She grew up in the area and it seemed like everyone knew her, or at least knew of her and her husband's family.

Speaker 2

Police asked Michael Dominguez who he thought did it.

Speaker 1

He immediately said Todd and Melvin Junior, Shirley step son's. Shirley's lawyer, William Enright told Boston Magazine quote she was afraid of her step son's end quote. There was also the question of where Todd was on the night of the shooting. His girlfriend, Joanne, said that he had been at their house, which was right down from Shirley's house.

Speaker 2

She later testified that Todd had been at her house on the night when Shirley was killed, but the timeline seemed pretty vague. Joanne said that she went out to run an errand and that when she came back, Todd was gone. Shirley's sister, Loretta also so asked police why no one heard anything, because remember, several family members lived nearby, and yet no one had heard any gunshots. Police also wondered why Todd and his girlfriend Joanne would not let

their two children talk to investigators. Jo Anne later told police, according to the Cape Cod Times, that it was a joint decision. So now that we know how Shirley's life ended violently, we need to take a step back and find out how her relationship with Melvin started, how she got sucked into all this. Melvin Senior was born in nineteen thirty nine, and he grew up in the area. Very early on he started to get into the family trashouling business. He started being involved in criminal activity at

a young age as well. Melvin's first wife, the mom of Todd and Melvin Junior, was a local girl named Wanda Maderos. Apparently, Wanda was a very serious, kind of studious and shy young woman, and her family did not like Melvin when they started going out.

Speaker 3

He was this kind of.

Speaker 1

Squirrely older guy who was hanging around their teenage daughter. And at this point Melvin was already in his mid twenties. But Wanda was in love with him, even though he had a reputation as a gangster, and so right after she turned eighteen, they got married on October twenty sixth, nineteen sixty four. They had two children, Melvin Junior and Todd. As we said before, Melvin was already involved in the family trash hauling business, he was also involved in a

lot of arson. Melvin was arrested for arson a few years later. In nineteen sixty eight. He and a younger guy he was working with, who was actually a teenager at the time, set fire to a bunch of houses and a hotel in Cape cod From reading through descriptions of what happened, it looks like the police were able to talk to Melvin's younger accomplice and kind of get him to flip on Melvin. As a result, Melvin was

convicted of seven counts of arson. That same year, Melvin was sentenced to five to eight years in state prison. And while Melvin was in prison, he seemed to learn a lesson from this. Unfortunately, the lesson wasn't that he shouldn't commit crime and burn down houses. The lesson he learned was that in future he was going to make sure nobody ever flipped on him again. Melvin was released after eighteen months. When he got back to town, everyone

said he was not rehabilitated. In fact, just the opposite. He seemed to have no fear. He was bold both in his criminal activities and in his private life because, according to pretty much everyone who knew him, Melvin was not an attractive man. He was five feet eight inches tall, he weighed around one hundred and sixty pounds, so was pretty skinny, and he had this kind of unkempt pompadour slick back hairstyle. But The main thing that people found

disturbing about Melvin's appearance was his eyes. A lot of people talked about how he had this weird, distant stare, this really weird, unsettling smile that was kind of a creepy leer, but that didn't stop him from being a local player. According to rumors, he dated lots of young women, and I do mean young women, as we've seen in so many cases with narcissistic, controlling, sort of predatory type men, they get older, but they continue to date teenage girls.

I find it really sad reading about Wanda, Melvin's first wife, because it seems like after she married Melvin, she realized pretty quickly she made a big mistake.

Speaker 3

She really loved him, but his.

Speaker 1

Job, combined with him staying out all hours, and her hearing rumors about him pursuing other women, really seemed to cause her to lose all of her confidence. Her mom, Mary, who Wanda was very close to, made a comment to a reporter years later. She said Wanda seemed depressed. She was only twenty five years old, but she seemed older

than her years. Mary said Wanda's expected that her husband was cheating on her, and Wanda was right, because Melvin did have a wandering eye, and he already had that wandering eyes set on someone else, a sixteen year old named Shirley Susa who lived across the street, who would

later become his second wife. Melvin and Wanda actually hired Shirley as a living babysitter, which is a little weird because Wanda was a stay at home mom and she didn't go out that much, so it's not clear why they would need full time childcare help, especially a living babysitter who was gorgeous. Back then, Shirley was tall, she had long black hair, and this very bucksome figure. It was obvious that Melvin was interested in her. So now

this brings us up to the early seventies. Wanda is twenty five years old, She's depressed, she's sure that her husband is cheating, and Melvin has his eye on the babysitter from across the street. On March thirteenth, nineteen seventy one, Wanda's mother, Mary called the house looking for her daughter. She talked to one of her grandsons and they told her that Wanda had gone to visit her grandma Mary.

Speaker 3

Well, Mary knew.

Speaker 1

This wasn't true. Finally she talked to Melvin. He said that the kids had it wrong. What really happened was that Wanda had gone to visit a cousin who lived in a town called Whaream, which was nearby. He mentioned that he and Wanda got into an argument before she left the house, he said, over a small amount of money.

Melvin waited five days to report his wife and the mother of his two children officially missing, and when people asked Melvin what happened, apparently he told them Wanda might have been having an affair and left him for a lover. Her mother, Mary, said this was absolutely ridiculous. First of all, she said, Wanda would never have had an affair. This was a woman who was still devoted to her husband, her confidence had been shattered, and also she loved her children.

She did everything for them. She would never leave her sons. Secondly, the cousin whom Melvin had referred to no longer even lived wear them, and once Melvin talked to police, it turned out that the bus depot that he had supposedly taken one to two to put her on a bus to visit that cousin didn't even go to war them, so none of the story made any sense. Mary and a lot of other people who knew Wanda believed that Melvin had done something to her, that he'd killed her

and gotten rid of her body. They pointed out that it certainly would have been within his area of expertise. Not only was he in the business of trash removal, but apparently Melvin had a brother in law who was a grave digger.

Speaker 2

Police did search his home. They looked in a few areas, including a garage where fresh cement had been poured, and a septic tank, but you have to remember this is a massive compound with a lot of potential hiding places. In the end, police left without finding anything.

Speaker 1

Over the years, Mary has had to hear a lot of local rumors about how Melvin supposedly got rid of Wandah. Some people believe that since part of his business involved picking up animal fats from local butcher shops and then taking them to a factory so they could be processed into soap, that maybe that's what he did with Wanda. Maybe he turned Wanda into hand soap. I cannot imagine how painful it must have been for Mary to hear all of these rumors and consider all of these horrific

possibilities and to never find her daughter. Wanda's family was very suspicious, but the bottom line is with no body and with Melvin not talking, they couldn't really do anything, so the case went cold. After Wanda disappeared, Shirley, the teenage babysitter, moved in permanently. But there was another problem because Shirley already had a boyfriend, or at least a local guy who liked her, a seventeen year old named

Charles Jeffrey Flanagan. In October of nineteen seventy two, Shirley was one of the last last people seen hanging out with Jeff and then he disappeared. He was last seen going out to a movie with some friends, and then those friends told police that Shirley and Melvin pulled up in Melvin's Cadillac and offered Jeff a ride home, then he disappeared. Later, the authorities found Jeff's body. He had been shot in the face with a twenty gage shotgun.

The bullet went out his upper back, severing his spinal cord. He was found in a Cranberry bog right across from Melvin's house on East Falmouth Highway, the same house where Shirley's body would be found years later. There were a lot of suspicions, but again Melvin was never charged in

connection with his crime. John Busby, a police officer who was shot in the face after he offended Melvin, said in a book that he wrote about the case that on the day that Jeff's body was found, Shirley was seen scrubbing down Melvin's Cadillac, but Shirley always dined any wrongdoing in connection with any crime. Over the years, Melvin Senior was also linked to the disappearance and murder of

several more people. In nineteen seventy seven, Paul Alwert was seventeen years old and he worked for Five Star Enterprises, Melvin's trash business. He was the suspect in an arson that supposedly was arranged and masterminded by Melvin. In a way, it was a replay of the charges that Melvin had faced a few years earlier when he committed arson with a teenage accomplice. Police convinced Paul to testify against Melvin. Paul said he was terrified. Police convinced him they could

protect him. They put him on a ferry to Martha's vineyard. He was supposed to testify the next day. The police watched him board the fairy, and then the fairy pulled away and vanished. When it docked on the other side, Paul was gone. No one has seen any trace of him since. There is very little information about Paul online. Just an old pixelated photo of a little boy with shiny brown hair and two front teeth with a really cute smile looking up at the camera. It's absolutely heartbreaking.

Some news reports have said that Paul had a troubled childhood, that he was a ward of the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services. So I don't know if he had any family or friends to even report him missing or to do public appeals. He was just gone. Police never identified a suspect in that case. It is still unsolved. Just another disappearance that Melvin Senior was suspected of being involved in that was never proven. Over the years, Melvin Senior's

trash hauling company got more and more powerful. They developed kind of a local monopoly, and Melvin continued to openly threaten people, even police. In August of nineteen seventy nine, John Busby, the Foulmouth Police officer we mentioned earlier found out the hard way what happened when you cross Melvin Senior. John Busby was on patrol when he gave a guy a traffic ticket. The guy was with Melvin, and Melvin

said something like, don't you know who I am? John Busby basically refused to be intimidated and just told Melvin and his accomplice to pay the ticket. Well, apparently this enraged Melvin. He said, I smell smoke, which was something that he said to a lot of people to intimidate them and threaten them, make them feel like he was going to start a fire. John Busby said that Melvin kind of puffed his chest out, but he just tried to ignore him. On August thirty first of that year,

John Busby was on patrol. A car pulled up next to him. Someone put a shotgun out of one of the windows and shot him at point blank range in the face. The bullets shattered his jaw and severed part of his tongue, and somehow, with half of his face hanging off, John Busby managed to get to a nearby house to get help. He was very close to death, but he survived. However, he did suffer permanent injuries. His speech continues to be affected. He had to have eighteen

years of reconstructive surgeries. His life and his career as he had known it were over. In his book, which was actually written by John Busby and his daughter, called The Year We Disappeared, they talked about how after he got shot, the family had to go into hiding, they had to lead their entire lives behind all because they were terrorized by Melvin. No charges were ever filed in connection with that shooting either, and John Busby was described by everyone who knew him as a good, honest cop,

someone who did the right thing. And look what happened to the guy who tried to do the right thing. He ended up permanently disfigured, while the guy who masterminded his shooting was allowed to go on unchallenged. Melvin's company did get into some trouble over the years. In nineteen eighty five, Five Star Enterprises actually had their contract terminated by the town. Melvin was accused of fraud. He was accused of collaborating with other companies so that the bid

for the trash hauling services would always go to him. Basically, he was accused of rigging the system. But Melvin, like a lot of underworld figures in small towns, had a lot of friends in powerful positions. He was even friends with several police officers. Melvin was acquitted of those charges, which shocked a lot of people, but after that he seemed to become more and more bold. He probably thought he was untouchable, and at that point, the sad thing

is he was probably right. Meanwhile, on the home front, Melvin's personal life had always been rather complicated. After Wanda disappeared, Shirley moved in and they were together after that. Later in nineteen ninety seven, Melvin filed for divorce from Wanda on the grounds that she deserted him, which again must have been so painful for her family and her children to consider that possibility and to know it wasn't true. Melvin and Shirley finally got married in nineteen ninety nine.

They never had children of their own, but according to a lot of people, including people from the family, Shirley and Melvin's sons got along really well in the beginning. She treated them like they were her own. She was living with them in the home from the time they were very young. In the seventies, they grew up together as this sort of strange, blended family. Of course, at first, because the boys were young, they probably had no idea

what was going on. They probably believed whatever Melvin and Shirley told them about their mother leaving and not coming back. But over the years, it seems like the boys began to get suspicious about what had really happened to their mother, and that must have been a really strange household to live in. To love your stepmother and your father, but also to kind of suspect they might have had something

to do with killing your mother. Over the years, Melvin Antics became more and more notorious, but law enforcement just seemed to look the other way, even when Melvin once set fire to a car that was sitting in the police chief's driveway according to CNN, and all those years Shirley worked for Melvin. Her sister Loretta did the bookkeeping, and Shirley was the financial controller. Finally, in the mid nineties,

there was the rift between Melvin and his sons. Again, what exactly went down really depends on who you ask. Shirley's family and her lawyer blame the boys for their bad work ethic. The boys have not really talked about their reasons for disliking Shirley, but I'm sure they must have been suspicious about what happened to their mother. After Todd and Melvin Junior became estrange from their father and started working for the rival company, Melvin started telling people

he missed his sons. Loretta, Shirley's sister, later described Melvin as being like two different people. He was a psychopath who loved to start fires and who terrorized a lot of people in town. But on the other hand, he could be a great neighbor. He loaned people money, and he could be really sweet at home. Melvin's behavior started to become more and more erratic, his mental health was declining.

In October of two thousand and one, things came to a head when Melvin attacked a woman in public in East Balmouth in a parking lot. He threatened to shoot her. He was charged with attempted murder this time, and it was something he couldn't talk his way out of.

Speaker 3

The court put.

Speaker 1

Melvin in a psychiatric hospital after that happened, Shirley was in charge of the money and the business. And there's something else that her stepson's thought was weird, they said. Just before Melvin went away to that hospital, when presumably his mental state was in question, Melvin made a new will again.

Speaker 3

This was just two.

Speaker 1

Weeks before Melvin went into the mental hospital, and in that will it specified that neither son would receive anything. Todd and Melvin Junior were enraged. They believed that their father was not in his right mind. They believed Shirley had masterminded this turn of events and gotten their father

to change that will. Also, on a side note, when Melvin Senior got admitted to the mental hospital right after he got charged with a violent crime, I imagine it could have been one of those things where people were thinking, is he really mentally incapacitated, or is this like the scene in Goodfellas and Casino and New Jack City and every other mob movie where the mobsters pretend to be super feeble, they're all in oxygen in wheelchairs, and then

they roll outside, get up and start walking around and are actually fine. But time passed and Melvin did seem to be having a break with reality. He was committed to Taunton State Hospital. Later it was revealed he had something called Pick's disease, which is kind of similar to Alzheimer's but less common with Picks disease, the front and temporal lobes of the are damaged, and those are the parts of the brain that control behavior, personality, and speech.

So it's a form of dementia and it was not going to get any better.

Speaker 3

Now.

Speaker 1

Around this time, Melvin Junior and Todd's relationship with Shirley completely broke down. They seemed to blame everything, including the estrangement, on Shirley. In two thousand and two, Todd and Melvin Junior seemed to hatch a plan. They went to the police and they said Shirley had stolen some things from them. They said Shirley had one of their guns at three fifty seven magnum and a truck they had taken from her. So the police went in and executed a search warrant

on Shirley's property. They found the truck and the gun, and they arrested Shirley, but no charges were ever pressed against her. Now, this is where the story gets a little bit complicated because later it was alleged that Todd had friends who were high up in the police department. We know he had a relative who was a detective and he was an informant for the foulm of police at one point, and in court what came out was that while the police were at Shirley's residence, they opened

up her safe. Inside were financial documents that were related to Melvin Senior's will.

Speaker 3

Todd allegedly taught.

Speaker 1

To his buddies in the police department about what they found in Shirley's safe. Now they completely denied that, But according to a guy named John Rams, who was one of Todd's associates who had worked with him in the past, Todd approached him and asked him to break into Shirley's house. John Rams had a criminal background, and some of it was violent. In nineteen ninety two, when he was nineteen years old, he got into a fight with a guy

and stabbed him. He ended up being convicted of manslaughter and was sent to prison for seven years. Now his dad told a newspaper that John was just defending himself and that a group of guys were attacking him. But John Rams had also been arrested for other crimes, at one point for allegedly assaulting an ex girlfriend. Much later, John Rams told CNN that he owed Todd Rainey a favor. Todd told him he wanted Shirley and Melvin's will and trust documents, the ones that were in that safe that

the police had seen. He also wanted some VHS tapes, which he said were sex tapes. Todd believed some of those videotapes showed Shirley having sexual encounters with prominent men in town and believed he could use them to blackmail her. John Rams said Todd also told him there was ten thousand dollars in cash in a safe inside Shirley's house that he could grab while he was there. So John

Rams told police he did what Todd wanted. He broke into Shirley's house, he stole those documents, and he stole the sex tapes. By the way, John Rams said there was no cash in there, but it's pretty much impossible to verify that. The next year, in two thousand and three, Todd Rainey filed a lawsuit against Shirley in Barnstable Superior Court. The lawsuit alleged that Melvin was not in his right mind when he wrote that will, and that Shirley had

influenced him. And this is when Todd and his brother did something that, in my opinion, was really brazen. And just kind of shows how much confidence they had that they were going to get away with anything they had. The financial documents that had been stolen from Shirley's house

entered into evidence. So later police questioned Todd about this, and it's a long and weird story, but Todd told police that a random black man had given him those documents, which of course was a lie because he had arranged that break in at Shirley's house. So now police knew Todd had been responsible for the break in at Shirley's place, and they arrested him for it. Now, as a result of this, Melvin Junior and Todd ended up talking to police.

They admitted that their dad, Melvin Sr. Had shot John Busby, the police officer. He had been the one who disfigured him. They also said their uncle, John Rainey, who lived next door to their dad, Anne Shirley, were in the car at the time when the policeman was shot. So the police talked to John Rainey. He also confessed. He told police, yes, he was driving the car the night John Busby was shot, but he said Melvin Senior, his brother, was the one

who pulled the trigger. He also claimed that Shirley was in the car with them, and just to show how potentially corrupt this system was, it later came out that Melvin Senior was friends with a local police officer and he actually bought the getaway car from him. So now the police had a confession. They knew who had shot John Busby and permanently disfigured him. I really can't believe what happened. Next, the statute of limitations had run out, so no one was charged in the attempt on John

Busby's life. It became just one more crime that Melvin Senior had masterminded and then walked away from totally unscathed. So now a lot of people were wondering what did Shirley know and when did she know it.

Speaker 3

One thing to.

Speaker 1

Point out here is that by all accounts, it really does seem like Shirley loved Melvin, but not much as known about her inner life. She did not have many people to confide in except her sister, Loretta. Loretta, when she talked to CNN, insisted that Shirley loved her husband, but she said Shirley had zero knowledge of how bad Melvin's criminal dealings were. But honestly, it's hard to believe that Shirley could have lived there all those years and

not at least suspect that something was going on. A lot of people think she was in deep on several of the crimes. I don't want to sound like I'm blaming the victim here. I'm just trying to understand the dynamics of what was going on inside that house. We know that Shirley was very young when she got involved with Melvin. He was extremely manipulative and cruel, But at the same time, she was involved in pretty much every

aspect of his business for years. It's very hard to believe that she lived with him all those years, worked with him, and knew nothing. Remember, Shirley was supposedly in the car when Melvin Senior shot John Busby. Then of course there's the fact she was one of the last people seen with Jeff, her former boyfriend, who disappeared, and then she was supposedly seen washing Melvin Senior's Cadillac on the day Jeff's body was found in a field right

across from their home. Shirley's family said that she didn't know anything. They said that Melvin's family and people connected to them are just trying to blame the victim, to blame Shirley because she can't defend herself.

Speaker 3

They say that Shirley was a.

Speaker 2

Victim of Melvin and not an accomplice, but it's clear that over the years, not only did Shirley witness a lot of Melvin shady dealings, but that she also developed some enemies of her own, including potentially Todd's girlfriend, Joanne. Jo Anne had been living rent free on the family compound, but according to the Cape Cod Times, after Melvin Senior was sent to the hospital, Shirley had started asking joe Anne to sign a rental agree, which apparently did not

go down well. Also, a lot of people wondered who were the people allegedly on those sex tapes with Shirley.

Speaker 1

In twenty fourteen, police finally charged someone with Shirley Rainey's murder, but to everyone in town's shock, it wasn't Todd or anyone in Melvin's family. It was John Rams. When John was arrested for Shirley's murder, he was given a polygraph. And this really is one of those little side notes just to show you how often there are like zero

degrees of separations between people in small towns. Because The officer who gave John Rams a polygraph task was Lieutenant Dominguez, the father of Michael Dominguez, Shirley's alleged lover, and the guy who found her body.

Speaker 3

Everyone was related to everyone.

Speaker 1

Everyone was tied to multiple people in multiple ways, and just understanding the relationships in this small town got really good, complicated, really fast. John Rams completely denied having anything to do with Shirley's murder. He said Todd told him after the break in that he wanted to kill Shirley, that Todd tried to get John Rams to do it, and that Todd told him that he wanted it to look like a mob hit. But John Rams insisted that he always

refused to do that. Not only that, John Rams later told CNN that he warned federal and local authorities that Shirley's life was in danger when they questioned him about the break in years before she was killed.

Speaker 3

He said that he tried to.

Speaker 1

Warn them and they just ignored him. Now, the authorities deny this, but when CNN was doing the story, they also talked to John Ram's lawyer. He confirmed what John said. The lawyer also said he told the authorities about the alleged threats to Shirley's life, but at the time police denied that John tipped off the authorities. They said that any information he allegedly gave about danger to show Barley's

life is not included in any official report. In two thousand and nine, Todd Rainey was arrested for the break in at Shirley's house. He was convicted and given five years in prison. It seems like authorities were trying to build the case against Todd while he was in jail, but apparently they didn't have enough to charge Todd in

connection with Shirley's murder. So Todd served his sentence and was released, and in twenty ten, the lawsuit that Todd and his brother Melvin had filed against Shirley was settled. The business, Five Star Enterprises, was later sold, and that was it. That was pretty much the end of the Rainy Empire. In November of twenty thirteen, Melvin Rainey Senior died at a hospital in Taunton. He was seventy four

years old. The Cape Cod Times called John Busby the officer who was shot in the face by Melvin Senior and then been forced along with his family to flee town. He had this to say, quote I outlived the bastard. Thank goodness. The devil has a playmate or maybe even a boss or co conspirator. He was hell on earth end quote. John Rams murder trial finally started in twenty fourteen, and a lot of people really surprised that Todd Rainey wasn't charged. The whole trial was actually really much more

about Todd Rainey than John Rams. The prosecutors were saying that Todd had hired John Rams to kill Shirley. They had no evidence, They had no physical evidence, None of John rams DNA was inside the house. They'd only found one fingerprint at the scene, and it wasn't a match to John Rams or anyone else they had in the database.

In fact, they never successfully matched that fingerprint. Todd and Melvin Junior were called to testify, but they took the fifth and the defense pointed out Shirley Rainey had had other enemies, like the people who allegedly appeared in those sex tapes, people who may have been blackmailed. But that didn't seem to make a lot of sense because the sex tapes had already been stolen, and if that was true,

why would someone come back and kill Shirley. Afterwards, in court, John Ram's attorney said Todd was the mastermind behind Shirley's murder, and it seemed like everyone focused on Todd as the alternative suspect. They tried to keep the focus on Todd, and in the end that seemed to work, because in April of twenty fourteen, John Rams was found not guilty.

Speaker 3

He walked out of court a freeman.

Speaker 1

Shirley's family was devastated and some of them have said they still have suspicions about John Rams. There's no way of knowing for sure if he's guilty or innocent. Obviously he now can't be tried again because of double jeopardy. But I will say over the years he has not been shy about talking to the media. He did an interview with CNN and he insists he's innocent. He says

he did not kill Shirley Rainey. Shirley's family have no answers, no justice, and when the jury failed to convict John Rams, they probably felt like they lost any hope of getting any information on anyone else in the Rainy family. Since he walked out of court, John Rams has had more brushes with law in twenty fifteen, he allegedly struck a woman in the face with his hand and pulled a knife on her. He was back in jail for a few months, then released again. A lot of people continue

to wonder why Todd Rainey was never charged. Even if the prosecutors believed John Rams was the trigger man, it seems like they would have filed charges against the person they believed was the mastermind, but they never did so officially. Shirley Rainey's murder is still unsolved. Wanda's body has never been found. It was reported in local news stories that over the years, Melvin Senior would make comments comments that

were kind of tawning. He would allegedly say things like, quote, the police drive by Wanda every day, you just don't see her.

Speaker 3

End quote.

Speaker 1

Maybe hiding in plain sight, buried somewhere on that family compound, right across from where Jeff's body another victim connected to Melvin Senior was found. So in the end, Melvin Junior and Todd did get control of their family property. They were able to move back into the house where their dad lived and where they grew up. But Loretta, Shirley's sister, told Boston Magazine back in two thousand and six that she has zero interest in that house. She said, Basically,

she feels like it's cursed ground. She said, quote my sister died for that property. It's evil land. My sister's murder is showing people that Foulmouth is not the sweet little town everyone thinks it is.

Speaker 3

End quote. I'm Catherine Townsend.

Speaker 1

This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans and I Heartpop. It's written and hosted by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts. Music contributed by Ben Sale and this episode was scored and mixed by Miranda Hawkins. Executive producers of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley.

Speaker 3

If you have a case.

Speaker 1

You'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line. It's six seven eight seven four four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five. Please subscribe and leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Speaker 3

School of Humans

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