BATTERED, SHOT...
ON the face of it, Donna Roberts and Robert Fingerhut were the perfect couple. But scheming money-grabber Donna always wanted more, and she committed murder most horrid to get her mitts on her husband’s £500k life insurance pay-out...
WHEN Donna Roberts was found guilty of husband Robert Fingerhut’s slaying in 2003, the wickedness of her actions finally seemed to dawn on her.
She turned to the jury and openly told them to give her a death sentence, shrugging: “It’s the right thing to do.”
And having listened to the harrowing details of Roberts’s sick plan, those jury members were well within their rights to agree.
Roberts had embarked on a steamy 14-month affair with criminal Nate Jackson before the pair conspired to have Fingerhut brutally killed so they could cash in on his £500,000 life insurance policy by making it look as though he had been the victim of a carjacking.
This mild-mannered, generous bus depot owner was battered and tortured inside his garage, before being dragged inside his house and shot at point-blank range in the back, chest and head.
And, in a final and heinous act of indignity before he breathed his last, Mr Fingerhut was forced to watch as Roberts performed oral sex on Jackson as the woman he’d been with for 20 years committed the ultimate act of betrayal.
Throughout her trial, Roberts claimed mitigating factors – she’d had a tough upbringing, she’d been in a bad car accident and suffered injuries that affected her judgement, and she’d had suicidal thoughts.
But the judge saw through her excuses and lies.
Roberts’s son, Michael Fingerhut, is in no doubt about the true character of his stepmum.
During the trial, Roberts had callously turned to Michael, pointed at the banks of TV cameras and said: “They’re all here for me, Michael!” as if relishing her new-found fame.
Speaking in 2014, Michael said: “In the 40 years I’ve known Donna, she never claimed a head injury.
“My father was a good man. He gave prisoners a job. He gave prisoners a bus ticket so they
could visit their families.
Prejudiced
“He didn’t look down on people. He was probably the least prejudiced person on the planet.
“My father is more than just a dead body. He was a person that people cared about.
“She, on the other hand, was pure evil.
“When my father was killed, we didn’t even know about it until after he’d been buried.
“When the detective told me, ‘Your dad’s dead’, my first thought was ‘Donna’.”
Roberts, now 78 and incarcerated on Death Row, had grown up on a farm in rural Youngstown, Ohio.
As one of five kids, she claims she “never got any attention or affection”, saying: “I always felt empty.”
While her statements have been proved to be untrustworthy, Roberts says she saw her father both physically and verbally abuse her mother, and suggests she was raped by her cousin as a young girl.
In 1966, she married William Raymond and moved to Miami, Florida, where she had a son.
The marriage ended in divorce in 1971.
A year later, Roberts wed Burton Gelfand, but that relationship fell apart in 1980.
By 1983, she married Robert Fingerhut and moved back to her home town in Ohio.
The pair officially divorced in 1985 but friends and family say it was purely for financial reasons.
Fingerhut wanted to protect their assets in case his business was sued or collapsed. So for many years after their ‘split’ Roberts and Fingerhut were, to all intents and purposes, happily married.
He regularly referred to Roberts as his “wife” and doted on her like any husband would.
The pair were well off, too, earning around £150k-a-year between them, with Roberts also running a local diner.
But there was trouble brewing…
At some point in 2001, Roberts, then 58, met and began a sexual relationship with petty crook Nate Jackson, 44, behind Fingerhut’s back.
She was besotted, despite the fact Jackson was several years her junior.
Witnesses in the small town told how they’d seen the pair kissing in public and even booked themselves into a motel suite for illicit romps.
Fingerhut must have sensed his wife was slipping away from him, so he sought to restrict her movements by giving her less access to his money.
Pal Frank Reynolds told how he’d overheard Roberts ask Fingerhut for £2,500. When he refused, Reynolds said Roberts was “shaking with rage” and giving him “the dirtiest look”.
Despite toyboy lover Jackson being sent to prison in 2001 for a string of burglaries, the vile lovebirds began hatching a terrible plan in a string of letters and phone calls.
One letter from Jackson to Roberts, dated October 2001, read: “Donna, I got it already planned out on how we are gonna take care of the Robert situation – and baby, it’s the best plan ever!
Cash
“Because, Donna, it’s now time that we really be together so that we can really see the true side of our love.
“I’m tired of not being able to be with you.”
Roberts, angry at not being able to use Fingerhut as a cash cow, had written back: “You know you can always count on me – you always could.
“It’ll just be a little tougher now because he
only gives me £80-a-week for everything and he makes me write checks to keep track of it all.
“I haven’t even been allowed to use any of my 52 charge cards. He says they’re for emergency only.
“I’m not used to living like this. I’m used to having plenty of cash for whatever I want and buying everything I want.
“Maybe those days will return again soon.
“Do whatever you want to him ASAP. Amen.”
Jackson and Roberts grew ever more brazen, dreaming of how they’d spend Fingerhut’s life insurance money.
Jackson scribbled: “I told you I’m tired of living like this when I don’t have to.
“After we’re done, will you get me a 2002 Cadillac Deville? Even if I gotta come to the house and shoot Robert in his f**king head, you’re gonna be with me.”
Roberts, meanwhile, secured the murder kit. She replied: “I went to four stores and finally found your ski mask, boxers and a pair of beautiful fleece-lined black leather gloves.”
Authorities at Lorain Correctional Institute, where Jackson was being detained, recorded telephone calls between the couple.
Court records show: “In recorded phone conversations between Jackson and Roberts during November 2001, they continued to discuss what Jackson planned to do to Fingerhut.”
In one conversation on November 8, 2001, Jackson told Roberts that he wanted Fingerhut to see Roberts performing oral sex on Jackson before Fingerhut “goes away”.
And on December 11, 2001, just two days after Jackson was released from prison, Fingerhut was mercilessly executed.
The first cops knew of it was when Roberts called 911, telling them: “There is something wrong with my husband.”
That was something of an understatement.
Trumbull County forensic pathologist Dr Humphrey Germaniuk told how Fingerhut had sustained “lacerations and abrasions to his left hand and head, as well as multiple gunshot wounds to his head, chest and back”.
The damage caused by the bullets from a powerful .357 Magnum handgun had literally ripped Fingerhut’s face to shreds, leaving him in a pool of his own blood.
Tears
Police officers quickly spotted his wife was acting erratically, with one detective noting: “I didn’t see any tears coming from Roberts’s eyes when she appeared to be crying.”
Police then learned that Jackson and Roberts had been spending time together at a Days Inn hotel in the days following the murder.
They combed that hotel room for forensic evidence – and hit the jackpot.
Investigators found used bandages and traces of Fingerhut’s and Jackson’s blood.
By 2001, both Jackson and Roberts had been indicted on two counts of aggravated murder.
In 2002, Jackson was found guilty and a jury recommended the death sentence.
Roberts continued to plead her innocence through her subsequent trial the following year, saying she had never meant to instruct Jackson to kill Fingerhut, that she’d only been acting out “fantasies”.
She said: “I never intended for that to happen. I still can’t believe it.”
But her unpersuasive behaviour in court helped seal her fate.
She moaned about the “young inexperienced” jury, while whingeing: “I had everything. Now I have nothing.
“But the most important thing I don’t have is Robert. Oh, and my two little girls...”
She then showed the jury photographs of her two dogs.
On June 21, 2003, Roberts was finally handed a death sentence of her own.