Post by Joanna on Apr 26, 2015 2:40:28 GMT -5
Murder of the Millionaire Model
The murder of 60-year-old Eva Kay Wenal in Gwinnett County, Georgia, is not a case without clues. It is not a case without leads. But still, after seven years, her murder remains a mystery. Investigators hope a new wave of social media attention can break the case.
The Millionaire’s Wife. Eva Kay was a model and Playboy cocktail waitress when she met millionaire businessman Hal Wenal. They married and spent two decades traveling the world and living a happy life of luxury. That ended in 2008 when someone got into the Wenal home when Eva was alone.
The Murder Scene. Hal and Eva had lunch together May 1, 2008. It was their last meal together. He left home for just six hours. When he returned that evening, Hal made his way through their Sugar Lake Court home, toward to kitchen. That’s where he found his 60-year-old wife lying in a pool of blood. He ran to a neighbor’s house and called 911.
Mrs. Wenal was murdered in the middle of the day in an upper-class suburban neighborhood. “He noted her face was swollen. He even implied she had been beaten. Punched in the face. And when you slit somebody’s throat, that’s personal. So we are looking at a crime of passion here as a good possibility,” forensic death investigator Joseph Scott Morgan told 11Alive’s Vinnie Politan. “They noted some blood spatter immediately adjacent to that, which you’d expect from her bleeding out. But the rest of the area is essentially clean. So it happened right there.”
“They [the detectives] felt the person was very angry. That he actually knew Kay and Hal. Kay more so than Harold,” Gwinnett County Police spokesman Jake Smith said in a previous interview.
Wenal was quickly cleared of any suspicion. “He came home at 6 p.m., but investigators believe the murder took place some time between 1 and 3 p.m. He was cleared within weeks.” He later offered a $100,000 reward for information concerning his wife’s murder.
The Sketch. Two months after the murder, with the case quickly growing cold, police released the sketch of an unidentified man considered a “person of interest.” He was spotted near the Wenal home the night before and the night after her death.
The Letter. In 2012, as an effort to warm up the cold case, police released new evidence that included a copy of a letter (above) sent to the Atlanta Journal Constitution just after the murder. The characters making up the note were cut from a magazine. The anger-filled, expletive-laced letter laid out the motive for Eva’s murder: a wronged lover. If the letter is from the actual killer, the note supports law enforcement’s assumption the killer knew both Eva Wenal and her husband.
“I loved her. She said we could be together. She told me she hated her house and that fat miserable lying motherfucking husband. She said she loved me, but that was a lie, too. I told her this would happen if she didn’t keep her goddamned promises to me. ... His money was more important than our love. We could have been so happy together.”
“Maybe she tried to break it off. Maybe it started out as an obsession, that led to an affair, and she tried to break it off and he said no,” former detective Mike Brooks suggested – an “If I can't have you, no one can” situation.
Pam Sleeper, Eva Kay’s sister, believes the man who wrote the letter is the man who killed her. “I realized for the first time I read that letter that I really think the man that murdered Kay is the one that wrote that letter,” she said. “There’s things in there that he wouldn’t know otherwise.” Sleeper spoke to her sister two to three times a week and Kay never mentioned anything about another man, which makes Pam wonder if the relationship was all in the killer’s imagination. “Kay was friendly. If somebody mistook her for maybe wanting to have an affair with him or something, I don’t know,” she said.
The Photos. After Hal Wenal’s death, family members were going through old photos and discovered some that looked familiar. It wasn’t someone they knew, it was that person of interest from the 2008 police sketch. Family members have passed the photos around, but no one knows the man’s identity. One of the pictures is time-stamped at 1987, more than two decades before Eva’s murder.
A group of private investigators sat down with Politan and looked at the photo and sketch (above). “Both of the Wenals knew this person in the photo and that’s really significant,” Criminal investigator Charles Mittelstadt said because some of the photos show the mystery man with Mr. and Mrs. Wenal. He said the similarities are there, but he also has some questions. He points to the photo, where the receding hairline is almost gone and the sketch (more than 20 years later) showing some hair. “There’s several things noticeable about the hairline: the hair loss. I would presume by now that person would be completely bald.”
“Look at the hair or toupee or could it possibly be hair plugs? When someone gets hair plus, what you notice is that it gets very thin. That’s also a possibility,” Brooks suggested.
Forensic death investigator Joseph Scott Morgan notes something else about the man: “He has got distinctive – what I believe to be – acne scarring, that ranges from his temple area all the way down the side of his face.” He points to another photo: “If you look closely here, it’s hard to tell if this is a wrinkle here from smiling or is this area scarring and it’s covered with a beard?”
A Sister’s Plea. Eva Kays murder has baffled investigators for seven years and these years have taken a poll on her sister, Pam Sleeper. Her nightmare began with a late night phone call. “About 20 ‘till 12 on a Thursday night, May 1st, 2008, we got a phone call from my brother-in-law. I answered the phone and he sounded really distraught and I asked if everything was okay and he said, ‘No, Pammy. Kay is dead.’” Sleeper shared details of what family members were told concerning the crime scene. “Evidently, what the guy did was he walked in – Kay answered the door and he walked into the house and hit her in the face and there were some cuts and definitely big bruises on her face,” she said. “And then it looked like she ran into the kitchen to grab the phone and then he slit her throat. There were no footprints, no fingerprints, and the blood was from the kitchen door, all the way across the kitchen.”
Despite the clues: a sketch of a suspicious man, a letter sent by the alleged killer and photos of a man that may match that sketch, the case remains cold. Pam believes someone knows what the clues mean. “There’s somebody that knows something and I’m just begging them to come out and let us know. It doesn’t really give you closure, but it’ll help,” she said.
It’s something investigators hope could change with a new wave of attention from social media. “Really the key to solving this case is social media,” Mittelstadt said, pointing to the photo of the mystery man. “The only viable lead we have is talking to this person right here.”
If you know something about Eva Kay’s murder, you can contact the investigator in charge of her case: Sgt. Richter at (770) 513-5387 or the Gwinnett County Police tip line: (770) 513-5480.
Sources: Vinnie Politan and Julie Wolfe, 22Alive, April 24, 2015; and Georgia Bureau of Investigation.