NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be

aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold

and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the
publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

her deadly web

Copyright © 2012 by Diane Fanning.

Cover photos: Spider web on barbed wire © Nilsson, Huett, Ulf/Getty

Images. Raynella Dossett © AP photo/Wade Payne.

All rights reserved.

For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York,
NY 10010.

EAN: 978- 0-312-53459-2

Printed in the United States of America

St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / January 2012

St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth
Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 CHAPTER 1

The humidity was rising and not a single speck of blue could
be seen in the cloud-covered sky as Raynella Dossett Leath
turned into the driveway of her farm near Knoxville, Ten-
nessee, on March 13, 2003. She drove past the family vege-
table patch, where newly planted onion sets thrust fresh green
sprouts up through the dark soil.
She continued on past an outbuilding to the house she’d
called home for nearly twenty years. In the time she lived
beneath its roof, she’d lost a husband and a son; raised one
daughter to adulthood and marriage; and now prepared for
the high school graduation of her third child.
Stepping on the porch, unlocking the closed door and
crossing the threshold, she entered a lifeless dwelling. Da-
vid Leath, a barber who had been her husband of ten years,
lay dead in the marital bed.
She picked up the receiver of the telephone on the table
beside his body and punched in 911.
The emergency dispatcher answered the incoming call at
11:23 that morning.
“County 911.”
“Help me! Help me!” Raynella shrieked, choking on her
words.
“Ma’am, where are you?”
2 D IA N E FAN N IN G

“Please help me!” she yelled as she struggled to breathe.

“Ma’am, what’s going on?”
“My—my husband shot himself—three—uh—three-oh-
three-one Solway. Hurry!”
“Okay, where is your husband?”
“He’s still in the bed. Please hurry!”
“Ma’am”
“I’m going to vomit.”
“Ma’am?”
Raynella uttered wordless shrieks and moans.
“Ma’am?”
Raynella gagged and made inarticulate sounds.
“Ma’am, I need you to calm down so I can get some help
to you. Okay?”
The dispatcher sent units to the address to investigate a
reported suicide attempt. Dispatch informed the emergency
personnel: “She’s called in, says her husband shot himself.
The phone’s off the hook, the line is open, and the caller can
still be heard screaming.”
The first responder to the scene, Deputy Sergeant David
Amburn of the Knox County Sheriff’s Office, arrived at
11:32. He found Raynella lying facedown in the grass in the
front yard. He thought that she, too, had been shot or injured.
He bolted out of his vehicle shouting, “Ma’am, ma’am,” as
he ran to her.
He knelt down and nudged her. She burst into unintelli-
gible cries and wails then shouted, “Help him. Help him. He’s
been shot.” She was, he said, a woman “overcome with grief.”
He helped her onto the porch and went into the house with
Deputy Chief Keith Lyons.
They found David Leath, age fifty-seven, dead in his bed.
He had a black hole in his forehead over his left eye sur-
rounded by copious gunpowder stippling, consistent with a
shot fired from close range. He lay on his right side with his
right arm extended straight out and his left arm bent at the
elbow, with his wrist turned under and resting on the mattress.
 H E R D E AD L Y W E B 3

Beside that hand was an old blue steel Colt .38 double-action
revolver with a black grip.
Investigator Perry Moyers arrived at the solid brick house
at 11:51. Raynella was on the front porch now with a rag in
her hand. At five feet eight inches and 170 pounds, with stark
blue eyes and steel-colored hair, Raynella cut an imposing
figure. She was wearing blue jeans, white Skechers tennis
shoes, and a gray and white long-sleeved shirt layered with
a gray sleeveless shirt. He looked her over but saw no signs
of any blood transfer stains. He thought that was odd.
Raynella was a nurse: surely she had attempted CPR on her
husband.
Moyers went inside where Sergeant Robert Lee directed
him to the left and down the hallway to the bedroom. He heard
the sound of a clothes dryer running and made a mental note
to follow up on that observation.
The deceased David Leath appeared to Moyers’s trained
eye as if he’d been tucked into bed for comfort. A pillow in
a green pillowcase was in between his head and shoulder,
another between his legs. He lay on a blue sheet, and a white
quilt with pink and green accents neatly covered the lower
half of his body.
His position simply did not look right: Moyers thought it
seemed unlikely for someone who had committed suicide.
He wondered if the scene was staged.
A plate of food— oatmeal, toast, and jelly—sat on a table
beside the bed. It had not been touched. It bore no blood
evidence on its surface. There were neither lip marks on the
drinking glass standing beside the plate nor any other indi-
cation that anyone had drunk a drop of the milk inside it.
Moyers saw early signs of lividity discoloring David’s
skin. That in all probability meant his death could not have
occurred in the last half hour. He pressed a finger down on
the skin’s surface. Where he applied pressure, he observed
blanching, suggesting that death could not have occurred
much more than five hours earlier. The exposed parts of his
4 D IA N E FAN N IN G

body were cool to the touch, but under the covers the toes
were still warm. Moyers estimated the time of death as be-
tween 6:00 and 9:00 that morning.
Three officers in training were on the scene, learning from
their more experienced colleagues. Before lifting the weapon
from the bed to demonstrate the proper handling of a gun at
a death scene, Moyers noted that the holes in the blue bed-
sheet indicated there had been a fold in the fabric when the
gun was discharged.
“When you rotate the cylinder out, you need to be careful
not to turn it,” he said holding the revolver up so that all the
new officers could see. “Then you need to draw the cylinder
as you see it on a piece of paper.” Moyers made his drawing,
but at the time he did not notice the most significant piece of
evidence the gun contained.
Raynella came into the house with her married daughter,
Maggie Dossett Connaster, and asked, “What’s going on here,
boys? What’s going on?”
Moyers talked with Maggie while Detective Steve Webb
spoke to Raynella. She informed Webb that it had been a
typical morning. Katie was running a little late but she left
home for school at 8:15. Raynella said she’d prepared and
served her husband breakfast in bed. “He always tells me I
bring it too hot to melt the butter.” The detective thought that
was an odd statement but didn’t question her about it. Before
leaving the house, she tuned the television to the Joyce
Meyer show, a religious and inspirational program that aired
at 8:30.
She also told him that the house was locked when she
returned home. When Webb asked her why her husband would
commit suicide, Raynella said, “He just found out yesterday
that his mother has cancer.”
After a moment of silence she added: “Well, he’s finally
at rest. He can finally rest.”
She volunteered her journal, handing it to the investiga-
tor, saying that it chronicled their family life and contained
 H E R D E AD L Y W E B 5

documentation of Dave’s health and state of mind. In re-

sponse to the detective’s question, she said that she started
the washer and the dryer just before leaving home at 9:00
that morning. Lead investigator Moyers silently wondered
why the dryer was still running three hours later.
Moyers looked for signs of the grief and sorrow noted in
Raynella by the first responder but saw none. Instead he a
observed a woman in control, taking charge of the situation.
That made him very uncomfortable.
He also wasn’t pleased to see the gathering of the who’s
who of Knoxville’s legal and political world in front of the
Leath home: public defenders, local Republican Party leaders,
lawyers, and at least one judge. They were clearly there in
support of Raynella, their attention not wavering even when
a burst of misty drizzle blew through the gloomy afternoon.
Investigator Moyers knew the pressure the powerful could
apply. Their involvement always made an investigation dif-
ficult and delicate.
But what troubled Moyers the most was the evidence un-
covered in the bedroom. Techs dug a bullet out of the wall.
It had passed through the headboard with a piece of the vic-
tim’s hair attached. They dug another bullet out of the floor
under the bed. And a third bullet was lodged in David Leath’s
head—the one that had pierced his skull above his left eye,
transected his brain stem, and killed him instantly.
The evidence wasn’t in harmony with the widow’s story.
Was it really a suicide?
 CHAPTER 2

Cindy Wilkerson, David Leath’s daughter from a previous

marriage, arrived at the scene of her father’s death. Investi-
gator Moyers noted that the thin blond woman had a far-
away look in her eyes as she struggled against the ugly truth
that her father was gone.
Crime scene technicians continued their grim but neces-
sary work. Brad Parks set up the stringing of the scene. He
ran a line from the point of impact out along the angle of
entry to find the trajectory of each bullet. This information
would give investigators an indication of the location of the
gun when the trigger was pulled.
After the body was on its way to the morgue for an au-
topsy, techs moved the mattress, revealing spatters and pud-
dles of bright red. Crimson drops fell from the bed to the
floor, splashing up on the molding running along the base
of the wall. The blood stood in stark contrast to the white
lid on the clear plastic storage box tucked beneath the bed
frame.
Techs collected the oak headboard with its intricate carved
medallions and posts, and the pillow where David rested his
head. They cut out a piece of the wall and collected the gun.
They confiscated a pair of rubber gloves from the bathroom.
Gordon Armstrong was unaware of the drama playing out
 H E R D E AD L Y W E B 7

at the home of his best friend, David Leath, until his wife,
Gail, telephoned him at work. “David committed suicide.
He shot himself.”
“I don’t believe he’d shoot himself.”
“There was a handgun beside him.”
“That makes even less sense: Dave hated guns.”
When Gordon returned home, he received a phone call
from Raynella, who was now at her daughter Maggie’s home
because her own house was sealed by law enforcement.
“Gordon, can you go up to the house and pick up the will?”
Gordon, half out of his soiled work clothes, said, “Just as
soon as I can get ready.”
Before he could get out the door, Raynella called again.
“Never mind, Gordon. Maggie’s got to go down there to get
something else and she’ll pick up the will.”
Later that evening, Gordon wanted to see if Raynella
needed anything else. Maggie picked up the phone and said,
“She’s not going to talk to anybody tonight.”
In the background, Gordon heard Raynella ask, “Who
is it?”
“Gordon,” Maggie said.
“Come on. I will talk to him,” Raynella said, taking the
phone.
Gordon expressed his sympathy, shared his sorrow, and
reminded Raynella that if she needed anything at all, she
need only let him know.

The next morning, at 8:15, Detective Moyers and three other

detectives observed as Dr. Darinka Mileusnic, the assistant
chief medical examiner for Knox County, performed an au-
topsy on the body of David Leath.
She made a thorough external examination of the man
stretched before her on the stainless steel table. She noted
scars and his wedding band, and described the body as “that
of a well-developed, well-nourished, and well-built white
male appearing the stated age of fifty-seven years. The body
8 D IA N E FAN N IN G

measures 68 inches in length and weighs 201 pounds. The

scalp hair is brown with gray and short with a residual layer
of dried-out hair spray.”
She noted that he was tanned and wore a short mustache
and beard. She observed one shrunken eye below the gun-
shot entry wound and the remaining eye with its green-blue
iris and cloudy cornea.
She noted a number of developing health problems in-
ternally: a fatty liver, an enlarged heart and spleen, and
mild atherosclerosis with small areas of severe blockage.
Dr. Mileusnic removed the copper-plated bullet that took
his life when it traveled from his forehead through his brain,
ricocheting off the interior backside of his skull before bur-
rowing into the right occipital lobe.
When the autopsy was complete, the doctor released the
body to Cremation Options as the widow had instructed.
David’s body was cremated that same day. Raynella had pre-
paid for the service, although David had a plot in the ceme-
tery next to his parents and had expressed his desire to be
buried there.
Cindy was shocked and dismayed when she learned of the
cremation: she knew Raynella had gone against her father’s
oft-expressed wishes. Gordon was likewise surprised: his
thoughts went to the dark places he’d been trying to avoid.
He was certain his friend had not committed suicide; that left
only murder. There were only three people living in that home.
David was dead; that left Raynella and her daughter Katie.
Who had pulled the trigger?