An Outrageous Murder Plot

A patient with an suspicious medical history. A Doctor with a strange bedside manner. A diabolical plot. This story had it all, strange haracters, secret identities, and a con so daring it is hard to believe they actually pulled it off. An incredible murder scam, stranger than fiction, and very close to being the perfect murder.

Around 7:00 AM on April 16th 1988, a Saturday morning, in Glendale California, Dr. Richard Boggs calls 911 to report a patient has had a heart attack in his office. Paramedics and Glen Dale police officer James Lowery rush to the scene. Dr. Boggs tells police his patient, 47 year old Richard Hansen called him the night before complaining of chest pains. The patient told Dr. Boggs that he would meet him at his office at 6:00 AM the following morning. During the examination the patient had suffered a heart attack and died on the floor of Dr. Boggs office.

Right off the bat police are skeptical. They know that Doctors offices are not open at that time of day, especially on a Saturday. Paramedics also doubt the Doctors story. Doctor Boggs said the patient described the pains as an elephant sitting on his chest. It doesn't take a genius to realize that those are signs of a heart attack and you need a hospital facility. Still, the Doctor had a story and he was sticking to it.

Doctor Boggs comes across as a person who really didn't want to be questioned. He was somewhat incensed that the police were there. Coroner's Investigator Craig Harvey heads to the Doctor's office to examine the body. He observes a male lying on the tile floor, with his feet slightly elevated on a pillow. He finds in his wallet credit cards and a birth certificate listed in the name of Melvin Eugene Hansen. A birth certificate but no photo ID. A dead man alone in a Doctor's office. Investigators can't rule anything out.

One of the concerns was that Doctor Boggs may have assaulted this person, so one of the things James Lowery looks at is the clothing to see if it had been removed and put back on by someone other than the patient. They also did a sexual assault collection kit as a precautionary measure. No evidence of a sex crime turns up but Harvey does make an odd discovery. The body temperature was about ten degrees cooler than one would have expected had he been deceased in the time frame the Doctor maintained. Doctor Boggs volunteers to sign the death certificate but Lowery refuses.

The body is transferred to the Los Angeles County Coroner's office for an autopsy. With suspicions mounting, Glendale Police assign homicide Detective Lt. Jon Perkins to the case. The first indications that something isn't quite right is the fact that the Doctor made a notation in the autopsy report that this appeared to be the body of a patient that was much younger than his stated age of 47 years old. And there is another red flag. At the time of death, the victim had a blood alcohol level of .20 which is totally drunk for such a small man.

But regardless of the questions there is no sign of foul play. After the autopsy is completed the final cause of death is determined to be Nonspecific Focal Myocarditis. In other words inflammation of the heart. It looks like the Doctor was right after all. The dead man appears to have suffered a simple heart attack. The coroner rules that Melvin Eugene Hansen died of natural causes. Despite their lingering doubts there is nothing police can do.

The coroner's ruling closes the criminal investigation. The day after Hansen's death, his business partner, John Hawkins flies in from Ohio to identify the body and make final arrangements. He demanded the body be cremated immediately which caused even more suspicion even among the mortuary workers. But with their investigation shut down, police have no grounds to stop the request so Hansen is quickly cremated.

Three months later Farmers New World Life Insurance pays out $1,000,000 to Hansen's sole beneficiary, John Hawkins. When the check comes Hawkins's roommate Erik DeSando signs for it and calls Hawkins and the check is deposited on the following Monday and has a five day hold on it. By Friday it has cleared and on Friday night they go out and celebrate. That celebration would also be John Hawkins Bon Voyage. A week later he and his $1,000,000 would be gone without a trace. While the police have their hands tied the insurance company is about to do some snooping of their own. And what they discover will blow the lid off the whole case.

The insurance company opens an investigation. Insurance Investigator Melvin Weinstein is assigned the case. A few days earlier a claims adjuster became suspicious when she came across when she noticed that the dead man in the photo seemed much younger than the 47 years stated in the report. In an effort to get a photo of Hansen to match against the photo of the dead man, she contacted Glendale police. She is put through to Detective Jon Perkins and asks if their is a drivers license photo to go along with the identification. He tells her no, that he was identified by Doctor Boggs, but that he could send to Sacramento for a copy of the Drivers license photo.

When the photo arrived the adjuster got a terrible shock. The Photo of Hansen bore little resemblance to the photo of the corpse, but the $1,000,000 had already been paid out. Now the insurance company wants Weinstein to get to the bottom of this mystery. They needed fingerprint evidence. So they send to the FBI in Washington for Melvin Hansen's fingerprints. They find Melvin Hansen's Army fingerprints in the FBI database. They check Hansen's fingerprints against the fingerprints of the corpse and they did not match.

Convinced that a crime has been committed they contact Detective Jon Perkins again. Now they have a dead body, who was already been cremated, and they have no idea who it is, a guy who is the beneficiary of the policy who took the money and ran, and they have Gene Hansen who they don't know if he was dead or alive. This case was getting stranger by the minute.

Police can't open a homicide investigation because officially, no homicide has been committed. But they can take a closer look at the key players. They do a background check on Doctor Boggs and find his lifestyle had diminished from at one time being a reputable Doctor to having financial issues, some rumors of a strange lifestyle, and some drug issues. He had pretty much been shunned by a lot of the professional Doctors in the community. Court records that Doctor Boggs has been sued for malpractice and several hospitals have fired him. The Doctor had definitely declined into drugs and desperation. Once Doctor Boggs had a prestigious Doctor with a mansion in the hills. Now it seemed he was capable of almost anything.

Police still don't have any proof of murder but that doesn't mean a crime hasn't been committed. Law enforcement will just have to go at Boggs from a different angle. Jerry Treadway is an Investigator with the California Department of Fraud. He quickly puts together a search warrant with the Coroners office and did a search of Doctor Boggs office and of his residence. In addition to the documentary evidence, phone records and the like, they find two stun guns. Then Investigators find something even more bizarre. In one of his drawers in his examination rooms they find martial aids or sex toys and a whip which they find rather unusual for a Doctor.

Investigators confiscate the medical records he identifies as Melvin Eugene Hansen. In looking through the file the Detective was struck by the fact that it was very clean, pristine, and very well organized. But they also have three EKG strips. At first everything in the file appears normal. Then as Perkins sifts through the evidence one more time, he finds what he is looking for. When he puts the three EKG strips down on his desk he notices that the ends match. Three different EKG strips are marked with three different dates. But when Perkins line them up the tear marks line up exactly, which means the EKGs must have been done at the same time. someone has forged the dates on the EKGs.

That is their first indication that this was a fabricated medical file. While Investigators continue probing the Doctor, reporters get wind of this puzzling case and start to run with it. Back in Ohio where Hansen and Hawkins were business partners, the Columbus Dispatch assigns their top reporter, Cathy Candisky, to the job. She quickly finds out that John Hawkins and Gene Hansen had been business partners in Columbus in a business called "Just Sweats". Starting with a single location they quickly grew the business. It was a chain of 22 stores that was pretty successful. The merchandise was fairly cheap and very popular with college age 20 year olds.

Hawkins liked the spotlight, even staring in the companies commercials. But with Hawkins and Hansen both missing their once successful business was quickly sinking. When John Hawkins got the insurance money and left town, the business is in an awful situation financially. There are several outstanding loans that the bank is calling due. The reporters search for more personal information on Hansen and Hawkins. Gene Hansen was probably 20 years older than John Hawkins. He was estranged from his family because of his Gay life style. He was kind of a loaner and kind of quiet.

Hawkins appears to be Hansen's polar opposite. According to Hawkins room mate, Erik DeSando, John was a great room mate, and an all around fun guy. He was extremely charismatic and had a well deserved reputation as a ladies man. Most other people said John was a con man and a scam artist. Cathy Candisky tracks down John's Mother and uncovers another secret. His Mother said John was a male gigolo and when she asks if she means a prostitute she answers yes. Erik DeSando disagrees. He says there was never any indication that he was either gay nor a prostitute.

The cast of characters had just gotten even stranger. Whether Hawkins was gay or straight he certainly seemed to have Hansen under his spell. And that kind of sick attachment can get people to do crazy things. Crazy or not Hansen and Hawkins seem to have gotten away with the perfect crime. But Investigators have an ace up their sleeve. And they are about to play it. What began as a 911 call in California has now turned into a compelling mystery. An unknown man is dead, Doctor Boggs is suspected in a murder plot and business partners John Hawkins and Gene Hansen are missing with $1,000,000 in insurance money.

The Farmers Life Insurance Company hires private detective Vincent Volpi to look into the suspect's past. He quickly uncovers a criminal connection between all three men. John Hawkins used to work at Studio 54 and there was a confirmed report that Doctor Boggs was getting drugs from Gene Hansen who was in turn giving some of the drugs to Gene Hansen to sell. Back in Glendale California begins trying to think of a way to bring charges against Hawkins, Hansen, and Boggs. He divides the task up into two parts. He has Jerry Treadway of the fraud department work on the fraud side of things and Jon Perkins of the Glendale police department work on the homicide part of case.

But it is an uphill battle. The coroner has already ruled that the death was ruled natural and there is no body to re examine, because the victim, whoever he is, has already been cremated. But they come up with a brilliant idea. The conduct what is known as a "virtual" autopsy. That is one where an independent coroner reviews the pictures and files from the original file and then reassess the original finding. The new pathologist makes a stunning discovery. If one looks carefully at the crime scene photos, it can be seen that the victim suffered from a condition known as cyanosis. That is when a person dies from a lack of oxygen and their face turns red or purplish pink and is a good indication of suffocation. The coroner now has enough information to change the cause of death from natural causes to unknown causes. This is a major victory for Investigators but the question remains who is their victim?

Investigators run fingerprints of the victim through all the normal databases and come up empty. But their perseverance is about to land them a huge break. One of the Investigators in the case got a printout of all the missing persons in California just prior to the death of their victim. They locate a missing report that is dated the day after the day of the incident in Doctor Boggs office. In his report is a description of the clothing and a description of the victim and it matches their victim. It belongs to a person named Ellis Henry Green, a 31 year old accountant. His Aunt and some friends had reported him missing. The Investigators think that the description is sufficiently close to their victim to go out and interview the Aunt and friends and they positively identify him as their victim. Green's mother lives in Ohio. Reporter Robin Yocum is the first to contact her.

He tracks Mrs. Green down in Portsmouth Ohio and calls her up to ask if she has been in contact with the police from Glendale and she replies no and asks what this was about. So he is the one who has to tell her that her son is dead. His Mother says they hadn't seen her son in over 5 months and it was a complete shock to learn of his death. It turns out that Ellis Green and Doctor Boggs went to the same bars. Friends describe him as well liked and trusting, perhaps too trusting. His Mother says he would do anything for anybody and never knew a stranger. She says if a stranger walked up to him and needed a dollar and he only had a dollar he would give it to him.

Mr. green worked as a tax preparer. He had been out celebrating the end of tax season on the Friday before the Saturday he was discovered in Doctor Boggs office. Obviously the question became how did he wind up dead on Doctor Boggs office. Police are convinced that Doctor Boggs orchestrated Green's murder but they still don't have enough evidence to arrest him. Then reporters discover a bizarre lead that happened just two weeks before Mr. Green's mysterious death. A man fitting Doctor Boggs description was accused of another assault. A police report had been filed by a man named Barry Pomeroy claiming that he had met Doctor Boggs at a Gay bar in the Hollywood area and that the Doctor had taken him back to his office late in the night and offered him a free EKG. But once they got into the office, Doctor Boggs attacked him with a stun gun. The man manages to escape but just barely and is injured and severely shaken by the event.

Investigators suddenly realize that Pomeroy bears a striking resemblance to Hansen. Did Doctor Boggs intend for him to play the role of the corpse? Doctor Boggs gave Barry Pomeroy a false name and as far as the police are concerned that was Doctor Boggs first attempt to kill somebody. When reporter Cathy Candisky of the Columbus Dispatch contacted Barry Pomeroy and told him of the situation he freaked out now realizing just how close he had come to death. Police that after Pomeroy escaped, Doctor Boggs struck again. It now appears that Ellis Green was murdered and used as a body double for Gene
Hansen to collect on life insurance. This was such an outrageous plan. Green didn't resemble Hansen in the slightest and still they managed to pull it off. But that kind of arrogance could only lead to more trouble.

So far, Hawkins and Hansen have done a good job of staying hidden. But police are about to turn up the heat and what they discover will throw everyone for a loop. While police launch a nationwide manhunt, insurance Investigator Vincent Volpi picks up a promising lead in Hawkins trash. He found phone records and by tracing them he found phone calls to Wolfgang Von Snowden in Miami. They are able to get a copy of the application of Von Snowden's apartment in Miami and coincidentally he lists both Boggs and Hawkins as references. They conclude that Gene Hansen is now using the alias Wolfgang Von Snowden. Now if you want to lay low, "Wolfgang Von Snowden" probably isn't the best alias. Either this guy was dumb as a box of rocks or he was playing a high stakes game of cat and mouse.

By the time police get to Florida get to Florida Von Snowden has flown the coop. But he's left some photos behind. Apparently he met a young and very good looking man in South Beach who looked strikingly similar to John Hawkins. Investigators fear that the young man in the picture is the next target. It appears that Hansen Hawkins and Boggs are preparing to run the scam again, this time with Hawkins as the "victim". The beneficiary would have been Wolfgang Von Snowden.

As the manhunt intensifies, Investigators discover a laundry list of previous scams. Everything from staged auto accidents to fake property claims. For example, one of the first scams they used to do was that Gene would go rent a car under one of his alias' and load it up with insurance. Then he would drive to a prearranged location and pretend to hit John in a crosswalk. John would then go to Doctor Boggs for his "injuries" and Boggs would bill the insurance companies for services rendered and they would all split the money.

Over time Hawkins, Hansen and Boggs refined their craft transforming from small time hustlers to big time con artists. There scams go from claims involving hundreds of dollars to scams involving thousands of dollars. Once when they moved to New York and renting a really nice apartment and put in their own furniture. They then insured the furniture, rent two trucks and take all the furniture out of the apartment and then claim to have been robbed and collect the $100,000 insurance.

The money from the furniture scam is the seed money for the Just Sweats business in Columbus Ohio. In fact the Just sweats business was intended to be a scam in itself with the object being to defraud investors. However the business became wildly successful and their was no need to defraud except, of course, when they skipped out on the business. Despite their success, Hansen and Hawkins grow restless after they determine how much work it took to run the business. Basically they were con men running a business and their were easier ways, albeit illegal, to make money.

As they lose interest in their business it begins to slip. It is at this point that Investigators believe they begin to plan their biggest scam of all. Some people don't think it was only the money that drove Hawkins and Hansen but rather the high they got from running the scams. And now they needed a bigger fix. Investigators believe that this was a criminal enterprise that found it easy to go from medical and insurance fraud to murder was easy and just a natural progression of things. The plan was apparently months in the making. To get ready for it Gene started depriving himself of sleep and quit eating properly so as to look like he was going to die. Although his drinking and smoking did help him out in that department. Everyone the reporters talked said he looked like he was going to drop over dead at any moment. So it would be no surprise if he were reported dead. He told some people he had a heart condition and other people he had AIDS. A well crafted scheme indeed.

Hansen visited his lawyer to have his will preprobated. This would make it impossible to challenge after his death. He told the Judge that he wanted his good friend to have all of his worldly possessions in the event of his death. Both Hawkins and Hansen bought million dollar life insurance policies, good for just one year. Now, there was a ticking clock on the life insurance policy. This is when all the investors at Just Sweats started asking questions about why they weren't seeing any of the money the business was making. So they had to get a body to make it appear that Hansen had died so Hawkins could collect the life insurance money. And that is where Ellis Green comes in.

By October 1988, police and Investigators have uncovered a well planned trail of fraud, deceit and murder involving Gene Hansen, John Hawkins, and Doctor Boggs with Ellis Green as the victim. There is evidence that Ellis green was asphyxiated and that Doctor Boggs has falsified medical records. They have tracked Hansen to Florida where he is using the name Wolfgang Von Snowden. Time dated phone records help investigators reconstruct the time line of the entire time line of the crime.

It goes like this: In the fall 1987 Hansen tells employees he has a fatal disease. In California, Boggs begins searching the Gay bars in search of a victim who resembles Gene Hansen. On April 1st, 1988 Doctor Boggs finds the perfect victim, Barry Pomeroy, but when Pomeroy escapes he becomes frustrated he decides murder is a two man job. He calls Hansen and Hansen heads for California. On the night of April 16th 1988 they likely close in on a likely candidate, one Ellis Green. Ellis Green was quite intoxicated and an easy mark. Telephone records reveal that Boggs called his office at 1:22 AM. Hansen was there waiting. Shortly after that Doctor Boggs escorted Ellis Green to his office.

Although no one really knows how Ellis Green died there are several possibilities out there such as smothering, a heart attack from being shocked with a stun gun, and Doctor Boggs also had access to a wide array of drugs to chose from. After Boggs is dead, Doctor Boggs makes his fateful call to 911 and Hansen now using the alias Wolfgang Von Snowden slips away. In fact just about the time the paramedics were responding to the 911 call Hansen was checking into a hotel in Glendale within walking distance to Doctor Boggs' office.

Investigators have pieced together the master plot but the killers are still on the loose. Nine months after the murder of Ellis Green police finally get the break they have been desperately searching for. Customs officials at the Dallas Fort Worth airport have detained a suspicious looking man on a flight from Acapulco. His name is Wolfgang Von Snowden. The initial suspicions were that he was a drug runner so he is stopped. Once they start going through his bag they find a dozen different IDs, $14,000 in cash undeclared, and most comically, a Dade county library book entitled "How to change your identity. They also find the original driver's license for Ellis Green.

After months on the run Hansen is finally in custody. Glendale police move swiftly to arrest Dr. Boggs. This arrogant man wants to know what the trouble is and when he is told he is being placed under arrest for murder he says that he finds that very amusing in light of the coroners report. What Boggs doesn't know is that the coroners report has been changed from natural cause of death to unknown cause of death. Boggs safety net has been ripped out from under him. Boggs and Hansen may have done the dirty work but most think that Hawkins called the shots as he was definitely the brains of the bunch and he
wouldn't stay hidden forever but it would take an international manhunt to track him down.

Almost a year after the murder of Ellis Green, Gene Hansen and Doctor Boggs are both behind bars. But John Hawkins is still a most elusive criminal. There are sightings in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Europe. He is obviously the most difficult to find. He was a chameleon. He could assume any persona and convince anyone of anything. Police ask for the public's help on shows like America's Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries. Finally they get a promising tip. An informant with a very thick Dutch accent calls to say he knows where your murderer is. The informant says Hawkins is sailing his own private yacht around the Mediterranean island of Sardinia. It was a cat and mouse game for several weeks, the Military Police in Italy start searching around docks and finally find a red and white catamaran docked with John Hawkins getting off. They confront him and he tries to run and the fight is on. After a scuffle with Italian Police, John Hawkins is arrested.

The manhunt is over but it seems that Hawkins has already spent most of the million dollars on himself. Ironically the men who had actually committed the money are left with the least amount of money. Hansen had $14,000, Boggs was almost destitute. The ultimate recovery of the insurance money was less than $100,000. Boggs goes to trial first. He is quickly found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. For Doctor Boggs themotive was money. Court records show a massive debt and an expensive drug habit. Most feel that he is without remorse and is a textbook sociopath. Gene Hansen and John Hawkins are tried together. Hansen is convicted of murder and receives a life sentence. Not only has he lost his money and his freedom but he has lost the one thing that really motivated him, John Hawkins. Hansen was truly in love with John Hawkins. John Hawkins is convicted of the lesser crime of conspiracy to commit murder. He is sentenced to 25 years in prison. The man who masterminded the entire plot receives the lightest sentence of all.

Erik DeSando says apparently John Hawkins is two different people. If you are lucky enough to know him on the one hand he is a great friend but the problem with John is that he has another side to him that is mysterious and dark. His experience with him, however, was good and that he was a true friend but if one were to talk to Ellis Green's mother you would get a different opinion entirely. For police and Investigators who unraveled this plot it's a case they will never forget. Craig Harvey says that he has seen some pretty heinous things that one human can do to another but in terms of ingenuity this case was impressive. Investigators also realize just how close these con men came to walking away scot free. It was truly an outrageous murder plot.