A MURDERED MISTRESS?

Suspicion immediately fell on Christopher ( pictured right). Erin had texted a friend the day before she had disappeared, telling her that she was going to the desert to meet her lover. She’d even confided that she thought he was going to propose.

Friends also said Erin was pregnant – although the body was too decayed for medical examiners to confirm this when she was found. But of course, if she was expecting, was the baby Jon’s or Christopher’s? Did Erin even know?

If she was going to have a baby, this could have led to the couple’s affair being exposed… Was this something

Christopher wanted? Could it have led to him killing her?

Police certainly thought this was a possibility and arrested him immediately.

Yet Christopher denied everything. He claimed that he and Erin weren’t having an affair at all. He admitted that they had once kissed but that was as far as it had gone. And rather than meeting up with Erin on 28 June, he stated he’d gone to Joshua Tree National Park on his own to go hunting. It certainly wasn’t, as the investigators would allege, a meeting for them to celebrate Erin falling pregnant.

Yet, despite Christopher’s strong denials, there were no other suspects – and as the police looked into him further, the evidence began to mount.

Authorities found gun casings and pieces of steel rods by Erin’s body – and the same items in the back of Christopher’s truck. A witness also came forward to say that

Christopher had asked him the best way to dispose of a human body. Christopher had also been reprimanded by a commanding officer for using rifles and rocket launchers like they were toys and seemed to the other Marines like he was becoming obsessed with weapons.

They also found a poem, written by Christopher to Erin that read, ‘Like it or not you still hold a part of my heart, Ready or not we were gonna get caught. Don’t give up and I won’t too, Hopefully like me, you still think “I love you”.’ There was no way that Christopher was going to escape trial. But did he indeed murder his mistress?