She was a hard-partying, drug-using, club-going, shameless flirt who spent cash prefer it was going out of fashion and beamed as she was photographed bare in a pile of money — however a California mother way back convicted of homicide insists she’s no killer.
Mary Ellen Samuels — recognized for orchestrating the murders-for-hire of her ex-husband Robert and a hitman who allegedly helped do him in — says in newly filed court docket papers that her 1994 trial was “basically unfair” as a result of prosecutors slut-shamed her as an alternative of presenting precise proof.
Now 78 and a great-grandmother, Samuels, who’s serving life with out parole within the Central California Ladies’s Facility at Chowchilla, needs her sentence overturned.
“The prosecution centered on dehumanizing Ms. Samuels by weaponizing her sexual expression, social habits, and basic identification as a lady, moderately than presenting proof that bore on her guilt,” she mentioned in a Jan. 20 California Federal Court docket submitting.
The trial featured “lurid” letters from one in every of Samuels’ lovers, and witnesses who claimed she did cocaine with one in every of her kids and splashed $800 on outfits from a retailer referred to as Trashy Lingerie, court docket papers present.
Allegations even included testimony that Mary Ellen flirted with a cop on the crime scene, “nuzzled” as much as him along with her breasts, and rubbed his head whereas saying she “favored bald guys,” in keeping with authorized papers.
However the pièce de résistance for the prosecution was a single image of a beaming Mary Ellen mendacity nude on a white mattress, along with her physique lined by stacks of money.
The $20,000 was a part of the practically $500,000 Mary Ellen acquired from Robert’s life insurance coverage coverage, cash she spent with abandon on a condominium in Cancun, a Porsche for her boyfriend, a 30-inch tv; a automotive telephone; two fake fur coats, and a $2,500 birthday celebration “to which she arrived in a limousine.”
The jury foreperson later admitted the picture, which helped Samuels earn the nickname the “Inexperienced Widow,” “did ‘extra harm’ than every other proof the prosecution launched at trial.”
Authorities additionally had sexually specific letters from one in every of Samuels’ boyfriends, Steven Breggia: “Once you got here into my room in a fur coat. I’ll always remember it while you peeled that coat again and I actually noticed your stunning physique for the primary time. Your full breasts bursting from that lace teddy and your tiny waist.”
It reveals “simply how stunning, sexualizing, and incendiary” the prosecution’s technique was, Samuels now contends.
The letters, written a yr earlier than Robert’s killing, had nothing to do with the case, mentioned Mary Ellen, who has been the topic of a number of true crime documentaries over time.
Mary Ellen and Robert Samuels had been married for about six years, with Robert, a Hollywood cameraman, adopting Mary Ellen’s teenage daughter Nicole earlier than the pair break up in 1986.
The couple had every been relationship different individuals when Mary Ellen and Nicole “discovered” Robert, 40, useless from a gunshot wound to the pinnacle in December 1988, inside the lounge of the Los Angeles residence the household as soon as shared.
Investigators hit a brick wall within the case till a tipster with a grudge years later claimed Mary Ellen had organized the killing of Robert — together with the homicide of one other man, James Bernstein, who was allegedly able to confess his function in Robert’s dying.
His physique was discovered strangled on the facet of the street in Ventura County in 1989.
“The Folks’s principle was that Ms. Samuels and Mr. Bernstein had conspired to homicide Mr. Samuels for insurance coverage proceeds and, later, that Ms. Samuels had conspired with others to homicide Mr. Bernstein to silence him relating to Mr. Samuels’s homicide,” she mentioned within the authorized submitting.
“Confronted with a whole lack of forensic proof,” prosecutors as an alternative tried to “sex-shame Ms. Samuels right into a conviction,” she mentioned in court docket papers.
She was sentenced to dying in September 1994, however after quite a few appeals, the sentence was vacated and in March 2023, a Los Angeles decide resentenced Samuels to life with out the potential of parole.
Legal professionals for Samuels didn’t reply to messages looking for remark.
