It’s utterly devastating when there’s a murder within your family. Besides the ongoing pain of the grief, if the case goes unsolved and you’re left without any sense of justice, it can lead you down a path where you feel like you’re willing to stop at nothing to uncover the truth. Such was the case for a woman named Jane Alexander, whose beloved aunt was brutally murdered in 1983. Alexander was raised in part by her aunt, so when she discovered that the person who committed this heinous crime was someone she was romantically linked to at the time, she made it her mission to help police.
Jane Alexander was devastated by her aunt’s murder in 1983.
Soon after, she suspected her boyfriend was the person who had killed her. According to CBS News, in 1977, Alexander was in a “deep depression” after the unexpected death of her husband of 34 years and the father of her six children. When a longtime friend of her husband, Tom O’Donnell, called to check on her and her family in 1980, “a romance blossomed” and the pair began happily dating, per People. Alexander had no idea how her life would be impacted by this man.
In October 1983, Alexander’s beloved 88-year-old aunt, Gertrude McCabe, was brutally murdered at her house in San Jose, California, CBS News reported. A friend of Alexander’s, Erin Rohde, told the outlet that Alexander was “devastated” by the murder. “She didn’t have a lot of family. So, her Aunt Gertrude was very important to her,” Rohde said.
Ten months after her aunt’s murder, Alexander received a lengthy letter from O’Donnell telling her he had to leave town suddenly, which turned everything on its head.
The details of McCabe’s murder were quite strange.
According to CBS News, the manner in which McCabe was killed was unusual. She was bludgeoned with a blunt instrument, strangled, stabbed, smothered with a pillow, and then choked with a bicycle chain that was encased in plastic, per the outlet. Absolutely brutal.
After a search of McCabe’s house, where she lived alone, it appeared that the killer had tried to stage a robbery when they pulled out drawers and threw clothing around but had not taken anything of value from the home, CBS News reported. The police soon discovered that the only thing missing was the registry for McCabe’s checkbook.
According to a report in an archived issue of People from March 2000, Alexander had entrusted her boyfriend to help look after her aunt’s finances. After O’Donnell left town, she discovered she was nearly broke, which quickly made him a person of interest in the murder.
It appeared O’Donnell had an alibi for the day of the murder, but things aren’t always what they seem.
People reported that after O’Donnell abruptly left their relationship, Alexander discovered that he had “nearly bankrupted” her.
During their time together, O’Donnell had persuaded Alexander to take out a second mortgage, for which she handed over $118,000 to her boyfriend to put in the stock market, but he lost the money, CBS News reported.
Police became suspicious after his sudden disappearance from Alexander’s life and the fact that he had told his girlfriend he had a hefty trust fund that did not exist, per the news outlet. The authorities suspected that money had been O’Donnell’s motive because he had figured that McCabe was wealthy and all her money would go to her niece when she died.
O’Donnell told Alexander that the day before McCabe’s murder, he was flying to Burbank, California, to stay with a friend, CBS News reported. The day after Alexander’s aunt was killed, he returned home. When police checked the mileage for O’Donnell’s rental car, they determined that the mileage from Burbank to the murder scene and back was identical.
O’Donnell was arrested on fraud charges, and in 1996, he was convicted of first-degree murder in McCabe’s death, People reported.
Alexander went on to co-found a group called Citizens Against Homicide, which assists and provide support to the families of murder victims.
