MO MO - Diana Ault, 26, Independence, 31 January 1994

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bessie

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Diana Ault


Homicide 'cold case' reopened

Posted: Oct 10, 2013 6:12 PM CST Updated: Oct 10, 2013 7:11 PM CST
By Laura McCallister, Multimedia Producer
By Dave Eckert, Assignment Editor

Ault was 26 years old when she was found shot to death in her home located in the 19000 block of East Ninth Street-South in Independence.
Detectives are hoping social media can help in a cold case homicide
Posted: Thursday, 10 October 2013 4:36AM

She had just returned with her son and daughter after watching the Super Bowl with relatives. The house was ransacked, but nothing was taken except for the murder weapon, which belonged to Ault and her husband.
https://www.facebook.com/DianaMarieAult

http://justicefordianaault.com/
 
Police Hope For New Leads In Ault, DeLeon Murders
DNA Technology Could Help Investigators If New Leads Come In

UPDATED 3:11 AM CST Feb 11, 2004

KANSAS CITY, Mo. —Investigators said that technology or new witnesses may help solve two murders more than 10 years ago.

KMBC's Peggy Breit reported that the Diana Ault murder case is cold, but it is not forgotten. Neither is the case of Sarah DeLeon, which has a connection to the Ault homicide.

Ault, 26, was a wife and mother who was walking into her Independence home on a Super Bowl Sunday in 1994 when she was killed. She had just come home from watching the football game with her mother-in-law. As she walked in the house with her infant daughter in a car seat and her 4-year-old son, Ault was shot in the chest as she headed toward the kitchen.

Read more: http://www.kmbc.com/Police-Hope-For...2269478/-/10ybqlmz/-/index.html#ixzz2hP8t0RQi
 
From your link, Bessie:

"Investigators found out she had ties to another murder victim -- 18-year-old Sarah DeLeon.

DeLeon was stabbed to death fours years earlier and her body dumped by some railroad tracks. Police found her car abandoned on 78th Street underneath Interstate 70.Breit reported that the postal worker had dated DeLeon's boyfriend, then he broke up with her to go back to DeLeon. The common thread intrigues police, but no arrest has come of it."

Diana Ault's husband has an affair with a postal worker.
Sarah DeLeon's boyfriend has an affair with the same postal worker.

Am I getting this right?

And both these women end up getting killed?
 
This sounds like a hit. They were looking for something specific in the house. It would be something they thought the Aults had (whether they did or not). It would be something that did not really fit with their lifestyle. But, they honestly may not have owned any such thing.

But, they shot her without hesitation and then just left.

speculation and moo
 
From your link, Bessie:



Diana Ault's husband has an affair with a postal worker.
Sarah DeLeon's boyfriend has an affair with the same postal worker.

Am I getting this right?

And both these women end up getting killed?
Yes, you've got it right.

Ault-->Ault's husband-->postal worker<--DeLeon's bf<--DeLeon
 
Candlelight vigil remembers unsolved murders from two decades ago
January 19
By JOE ROBERTSON
The Kansas City Star


Snipped:

Josh Ault was only 4 when his mother was shot in their Independence home right after she returned with her two young children on Jan. 31, 1994.

He remembers the startling sound of the gunshot by an intruder. He remembers “seeing the shadow of her falling to the floor,” he said.

http://www.kansascity.com/2014/01/19/4763364/candlelight-vigil-remembers-unsolved.html
 
Investigators recently announced that they are close to solving the murder of Sarah DeLeon. They suspect the perpetrator is also responsible for the murder of Diana Ault.

http://www.kmbc.com/news/police-tips-could-help-solve-1989-cold-case-homicide/39778802

Police said Sunday that the investigation into DeLeon&#8217;s death is nearly complete and will be presented to the Wyandotte County District Attorney&#8217;s Office in the coming weeks

They also said they believe DeLeon&#8217;s death is linked to the Jan. 30, 1994 slaying of Diana Ault in Independence, Missouri.

Investigators said they think the two slayings may be connected to a Feb. 13, 1987 incident in which two people tricked a victim into leaving her home in a limousine and took her to a Kansas City, Kansas, motel.

"It's the American Motel at 78th (Street) and Interstate 70 in Kansas City, Kansas," said Detective Scott Howard, of the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department.

They believe a suspect and accomplice with ties to both homicides may be linked to all three cases and several others.

"We believe our suspect is a female," said Howard.
 
Not really much of an update, except that there are still no arrests in either case. Ugh.

"The Kansas City, Kansas Police Department (KCKPD) believes a 26-year-old cold case murder is connected to another unsolved murder just across the border in Missouri. They say that the link is a romantic rival and they are focused on a female suspect.And yet, since the police department made that extraordinary announcement at a press conference this past May, there has not been an arrest in either case."

http://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/could-brutal-murders-two-young-woman-be-related-two-families-n665321

Whoever it is sounds extremely dangerous and needs to be taken off the streets.
 
There has been an arrest in the more-than-likely related case of Sarah Jo DeLeon.

Smithville woman arrested in connection to 1989 KCK cold case murder of Sarah DeLeon
KCK police confirmed late Wednesday afternoon that an arrest was made....in connection with the murder of 18-year-old Sarah DeLeon. Smithville woman Carolyn J. Heckert, 48, is in custody in Clay County.....Heckert is being held on a $1 million bond and was taken into custody by US Marshals at about 3 p.m. [No information has been released yet about] the number of charges that Heckert faces.
 
I do not know how to share a link, but many also mention DianaAult's murder, so they believe they are connected
 
After arrest in Sarah DeLeon case, Diana Ault's family hopes justice is around the corner

http://www.kctv5.com/story/33440256/after-arrest-in-sarah-deleon-case-diana-aults-family-hopes-justice-is-around-the-corner

Bill Laskey believes Carolyn Heckert, who is now behind bars and charged in connection to DeLeon&#8217;s death, was responsible for his daughter&#8217;s death.

Laskey hopes Heckert rots in jail surrounded by pictures of his daughter and Sarah DeLeon.

&#8220;On the walls ceiling and floor, so the only way she can get away from them is to look through the bars,&#8221; Laskey said. &#8220;By looking through the bars, she will say crap, I screwed up.&#8221;

Ault&#8217;s children have changed their Facebook profile pictures, using DeLeon&#8217;s picture with the inscription: &#8220;Justice for Sarah.&#8221;
 
Judge Dismisses Murder Charge in 1989 Cold Case

"On Friday, a Wyandotte County judge dismissed the murder case against 48-year-old Carolyn J. Heckert of Smithville, Missouri.

Heckert was arrested last October and charged with 1st degree murder for the death of 18-year-old Sarah De Leon. She pleaded not guilty.

At the time, authorities said they believed that Ms. Heckert was responsible for the death of Ms. De Leon and linked to the death of another woman -- motivated by romantic rivalry. They also said they believed that Ms. Heckert was involved in multiple instances involving the harassment and intimidation of romantic rivals.

Ms. De Leon's body was found near train tracks in Kansas City, Kansas on December 29, 1989. She had been stabbed 22 times, mostly in the back, neck, and chest. Her car was found abandoned several miles away...

Judge Roberts said while there was no doubt that there was reasonable suspicion implicating Ms. Heckert for the death of Ms. De Leon, there was nothing linking her beyond motive evidence and behavior evidence. He noted the evidence was "replete of [Ms. Heckert's] deplorable behavior", but did not believe there was enough probable cause to move forward with a trial...

Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Tatum presented witnesses who testified about Ms. Heckert's increasingly violent and harassing behavior towards her romantic rivals, women that included Ms. De Leon and Diana Ault, a young mother-of-two who was killed in her Independence, Missouri home in 1994. Ms. Heckert, Ms. Tatum said during the hearing, was the common link between the two dead women and investigated as a person of interest in both cases..."

http://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/judge-dismisses-murder-charge-1989-cold-case-n744241
 
An in-depth look at the murders of Diana Ault & Sarah DeLeon. It gives more information about the investigation efforts that seemed to really pick up a few years ago. According to the author, the expectation was that charges were going to be brought first in Diana's case.

Did the Woman Arrested for Murdering a Love Rival Kill a Young Mom, Too?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/did-the-woman-arrested-for-murdering-a-love-rival-kill-a-young-mom-too

A bullet from .44 magnum revolver ripped into her neck, according to the police report. While Diana bled out across the carpet, the masked killer picked up Josh, pressed him tightly to their body, and gently deposited him into the bedroom closet. Trying to remember it years later, Josh had the awkward feeling the killer was trying to shield him from the horror. It didn’t work. Josh and his sister were sitting by their mom’s lifeless body when the police walked in, their clothes saturated in her blood.

<snipped>

Tim had been having an affair, Sharon told the police, with a co-worker at the post office. He’d walked out on Diana on Christmas Eve of all nights, she told them, but had come back to Diana just a week before the murder.....Even before Tim returned home, Diana had complained about obscene phone calls allegedly from Tim’s mistress, threats about raising her kids without her, even a message she’d found scrawled on her bathroom mirror in blood-red lipstick: “thanks for the use of the bed.”

Detective Bob West found the complaint about the ongoing harassment, but the accused woman had an alibi—she’d been seen at a Super Bowl party 100 miles away in Manhattan, Kansas, the night Diana was killed. There were no other suspects, no witnesses, and no DNA evidence. There was a terrified woman, a friend of Tim’s mistress, who phoned police and told them a story that was almost unbelievable.
 
FBI reopens Diana Ault's 30-year cold case murder (kshb.com)
March 28 2022 rbbm.
''Loren Freeman, a detective with the Independence Police Department and member of the FBI's Violent Crimes Task Force, said the group is cautiously optimistic about the case.

Freeman and Jonathan Spaeth, a special agent on the FBI's task force, recently revealed to the KSHB 41 I-Team their plans to take another look at the case.

"I will say there are new leads and we're going to follow those leads wherever the evidence takes us," Freeman said.''

''They’re relying on new technology that wasn’t available in 1994, including advancements in DNA analysis.

"In consulting with the FBI’s forensic laboratory, we submitted new items to them for testing," Spaeth said. "From that standpoint, we're able to give a fresher look to certain pieces of evidence in that case."
 
by: Liz Dowell Apr 19, 2023
1681995469124.png
''FBI Kansas City Special Agent in Charge Charles Dayoub commented that the new technology may shed new light on the cold case and aid in its resolution.

On January 31, 1994, the Independence Police Department investigated an abandoned 1980’s red Pontiac Grand Prix at the Church of the Nazarene in Independence, Missouri.

The officers took note of a revolver, ammunition, and a spent round. The vehicle was later connected to Diana Ault. The officers arrived at Ault’s residence in the 19000 block of East 9th Street.

When they arrived, they heard a baby inside the home crying and found Ault on the floor of her home, covered in blood and suffering from a gunshot wound. Her two children were unharmed.

At the time of her death, Ault was 26 years old. Her two children were under the age of 5 at the time.''
 

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