Mel Ignatow

Case record: Mel Ignatow

Identity

Mel Ignatow was a resident of Louisville, Kentucky.

Victim

Brenda Sue Schaeffer (Brenda Sue Shafer in parts of the narrative) was murdered in 1988.

Brenda Sue Schaeffer was described as a 36-year-old woman in Louisville, Kentucky.

Relationship and motive context

Mel Ignatow and Brenda Sue Schaeffer had been in a relationship for two years at the time of the murder. Schaeffer had complained that Ignatow was abusive and was planning to break off the involvement. Ignatow was aware of her intention to leave.

Friends described Brenda as “a wonderful, sweet person, but some what naive.” Brenda had told others she was afraid for her life and vowed to end the relationship. Ignatow knew she was going to leave.

The offence

Intending to murder Schaeffer, Ignatow worked with a former girlfriend, Mary Ann Shore, to lay out plans for the murder, spending several weeks laying out extensive preparations.

Shore testified that they had “scream tested” her house and dug a grave in the woods behind it.

On September 23, 1988, Schaeffer met Ignatow to return some jewelry of his that she had in her possession. Instead, Ignatow took Schaeffer to Shore’s house, where he pulled a gun on Brenda and locked her in the house.

Brenda was blindfolded, gagged and bound hand and foot. Ignatow forced Brenda to strip, photographed her in suggestive positions, raped, sodomized and beat her before killing her with chloroform.

Ignatow and Shore buried her behind Shore’s house. He took Brenda’s jewelry and the exposed film. Ignatow tape recorded what he did to Brenda and these recordings were later played to the jury.

Recorded transcript (verbatim)

Ignatow: "Good evening ladies and gentleman and we are coming to you live. This is your host Mel Ignatow and with me is the puta, the Jezebel who tried to leave me. She has been captured and taken prisoner by me now. (Yelling) THE PRISONER WILL IDENTIFY HERSELF." Brenda: "My name is Brenda Sue Schaefer, I have been captured and taken prisoner by Mel Ignatow." Ignatow: "Describe your situation Brenda" Brenda: "You have treated me like a dog and humiliated me by stripping me naked. You have bound me hand and foot. Oh no! I am trapped like a beast in a snare!" Ignatow: "(Laughing) Well Brenda my bound beauty welcome to your nightmare!" Brenda: "(Sobbing) Oh no! Oh Dear God please no! Mel I am so sorry. Don't touch me! Oh God please don't hurt me!"

Investigation

Police suspected Ignatow almost immediately, but were unable to locate any witnesses or physical evidence linking him to Schaeffer’s disappearance, or even to locate Schaeffer’s body.

In search for any lead that could let them move forward with the case, police invited Ignatow to clear his name by testifying before a grand jury. There, he mentioned Shore’s name, bringing her into the investigation for the first time.

The police interviewed Shore. Shore eventually confessed to helping plan the murder, and to taking pictures of Ignatow as he tortured and abused Schaeffer. Shore led investigators to the gravesite, where Brenda’s badly decomposed body had been buried for over a year.

The autopsy showed she had been abused, but any DNA evidence, from blood and semen, had decomposed.

Investigators convinced Shore to wear a wire, by promising only to charge her with tampering with evidence. In the surveillance, Shore told Ignatow that the FBI was hounding her and she was afraid the property behind her house was being sold and developed.

Ignatow was on tape berating Shore for letting the FBI “rattle” her and told her he didn’t care if they dug up the whole property because “that place we dug is not shallow”.

On the recording, he “mumbled the word ‘dug’ and the jury also thought he said the word ‘safe’ instead of ‘grave’ on the tape,” which led the jury to conclude the discussion involved a buried safe. Police later believed the discussion involved a buried grave.

A bug was described as “the common name for a covert listening device, usually a combination of a miniature radio transmitter with a microphone.”

Arrest and discovery of additional evidence

Six months after Ignatow’s acquittal, a carpetlayer working in Ignatow’s old house found a plastic bag under the carpet containing the jewelry Schaeffer had taken with her to return on the night of her disappearance.

Police re-searched the house and discovered three rolls of undeveloped film in a heating duct. When developed, the film showed Ignatow torturing and raping Schaeffer, just as Shore had described.

Ignatow’s face was not in the pictures, but body hair patterns and moles matched him perfectly.

Trial (murder charge)

Prosecutors brought Ignatow to trial for the murder in 1991.

In court, the jury decided that one word on the tape was “safe”, not “site”. The jury concluded the discussion involved a buried safe rather than a buried grave.

Shore, the prosecution’s star witness, wore a tiny miniskirt to court and laughed during her testimony, which undermined her credibility in the eyes of the jury.

The defense argued that Shore had killed Schaeffer out of jealousy.

The jury acquitted Ignatow of the charge.

The judge was embarrassed by this result and took the unusual step of writing a letter of apology to the Schaeffer family.

Perjury trials and sentencing

After Ignatow’s acquittal, police and prosecutors pursued perjury charges related to his grand jury testimony.

Knowing that he could not be retried for the murder because of double jeopardy, Ignatow confessed in court at his perjury trial.

He turned to Brenda’s brothers in court and said that he had killed her, but that she had died peacefully.

Ignatow served five years of an eight year sentence for perjury.

A later state prosecution involved perjury charges in a case against Brenda’s employer for threatening to kill Ignatow if he didn’t tell where Brenda was. He was sentenced to nine years for that perjury charge.

Sentencing for state perjury (January 14, 2002)

Judge Stephen Ryan sentenced Mel Ignatow to nine years in prison on state perjury charges and persistent felon charges.

Ignatow’s attorney asked the judge to set aside the verdict saying that his client was a “model citizen”, but the request was denied.

The judge also denied defense requests for a new trial and for probation.

NewsChannel 32’s Steve Burgin reported that Ryan called Ignatow “evil” and said that “evil people must suffer the consequences.”

Mike Schaefer, Brenda Sue’s brother, told Burgin: “It’s come full circle.” He also said: “We're just glad to be here and get the result that we have.”

Release from prison and later events

Ignatow was released from prison on December 1, 2006.

He returned to Louisville and lived in a home about four miles from the house where he murdered Brenda Sue Schaeffer.

In December 2006, Charlie Ricketts said: “I guess I felt a sense of relief that maybe this is the final chapter of a long story that has been burdensome for this whole community.” Ricketts also said: “Is he a danger? No, I don’t think so.” He added: “Perhaps if he were somewhere else and he fell into some old habit, then there might likely be such a danger, but as long as we know who he is and what he is, I don’t think there’s any danger.”

Prosecutor Scott Cox said: “I genuinely believe he is still a dangerous person.”

Adelyn Spaulding, the widow of Dr. William Spalding, said she was stunned when she got a letter saying the man who lied at her husband’s trial was going to be freed. She said: “Just a wonderful Christmas present,” and: “I’m really upset about getting the news at this time, when I didn’t expect it… Wasn’t anything I could do about it.” She also said she wished he was still behind bars.

Death

On September 1, 2008, Ignatow was found dead in his home. At the time of his death, Ignatow was 70 years old.

An official cause of death had yet to be determined; however, based on initial remarks made by his upstairs neighbor who found Ignatow’s body, and follow-up remarks given to the media by Ignatow’s son, it was believed that Ignatow’s death was due to an accidental fall that caused a laceration to either his head or his arm and that he eventually bled to death.

Ignatow’s son stated: “Apparently, he fell and hit a glass coffee table and, from what I can tell, he cut his arm”.

The upstairs neighbor stated: “It just looked like he had fell and hit his head on the table,” and: “And he tried to go to the kitchen, and there was a blood trail that way, and then it looked like he tried to make it to his room, before he made it to his room, that's where they found his body at.”

The upstairs neighbor also described him as: “a sick and elderly man, alone and struggling for help when he apparently stumbled to his death. I used to hear him all night, asking for Jesus to come get him, because he was in a lot of pain.”

Ignatow’s son also said: “He will probably go down as one of the most hated men in Louisville”. He added: “He went on to say that now he hopes his father's death will help people forget some of his transgressions.” He said: “Maybe it'll just put it to rest, that we all don't have to keep dealing with this over and over. That's what I hope.”

Other details

Ignatow’s grand jury testimony and subsequent photographs that proved his guilt were uncovered after the trial.

Under the legal principle of double jeopardy, Ignatow could not be tried a second time for the murder.

Bob Hill wrote a book on the case called Double Jeopardy. The book became a top bestseller and provoked widespread interest in the case. Hill also wrote Double Jeopardy: Obsession, Murder, and Justice Denied and it was published by William Morrow & Co in 1995. ISBN 0688129102 was listed.

Mary Ann Shore and Ignatow were said to have allegedly dug the grave weeks before the murder.

The family’s search context included that Brenda’s car was found abandoned the next day less than half a mile from where she lived with her mother and father, and her disappearance was described as starting on Sept. 24, 1988.