Mary Orsini

An Arkansas housewife brutally murdered her. There is a white female in the closet. She was dead.

“And at her feet, was a racing of flowers.”

Police learned this wasn't the first attempt on her life.

They had enough explosive support to kingdom come. But it didn't mark. It was America, the kids weren't in the car. [MUSIC PLAYING] The investigation reveals her husband

might have been the real target. He was definitely the top criminal attorney in the state of Arkansas. Didn't criminal work. He was angered a lot of people.

But when detectives uncover the truth, they find a mastermind who's obsessed.

“He's a worse hotel, thinking that he was the greatest attorney ever.”

She can keep three stories juggling at one time and part of the year remissed beat. She belonged to jail hell, yeah. She belonged to jail for the rest of her life, for sure. [MUSIC PLAYING]

It's late afternoon in Little Rock, Arkansas, when police receive a 911 call from a prominent defense attorney, saying he found his wife murdered. The original call came through our communications center, and one of our officers responded to the call, which was the address of Altsville, MacArthur.

As first responders arrive, they are met by the 911 caller, Bill MacArthur.

He tells officers he had just returned home from work when he found his wife Aless shot to death inside their bedroom closet. I'd go to my officer to get what he's got. And he kind of walks me back through the hallway toward Aless's meal's bedroom. The closet is a walk-in, and it's probably 10 by 10, and there's a white female laying in the bottom of the closet. You had to move some clothes out of the way to kind of see a rubber torso on face.

There's blood. The gunshot went to the head. The officers that got their first, he said he had checked her pulse. I went ahead and checked her pulse too. She was dead. There's little evidence to explain why Aless was shot, but on the floor, police find something bizarre.

At her feet was a rason or a bouquet of flowers. The flower, because I had a note, basically attached to it, said have a nice day.

Right next to the door facing is a bullet hole in the wall. And down underneath the bullet hole was fire pellets, so it's telling you a story.

“I think that who are shot Aless brought the flowers.”

Investigators waste no time scouring the crime scene for more clues. We did get a spit round from the wall. It was 38. As we inventory everything out of the closet, we do find a hang-on there, a pistol. And it was one of the sheriff's cover-up that put the photo to close. Bill was there, and he was asked, I mean, who's gun is it? He said it was Aless's.

I didn't think it was the murder weapon, because the way it was found. I believe she believes that she could get a hold of that gun and maybe defend herself. With no quick answers from the scene, investigators focus on potential motives. I wonder who in the hell would do this and why Bill was a high-profile attorney, so he knew this would be a high-profile case.

Aless had a small circle of friends, she kind of kept herself, but Bill was kind of in the forefront, one might suspect that he would be a target, because he was the top criminal attorney in the state of Arkansas. So, the investigators and people that were trying to determine what took place, it was more circle around why would anybody be mad at Aless?

Aless Miller was born in Southern Louisiana in 1941.

“She was from a small town called Golden Meta, Louisiana.”

She had a couple of brothers, the mom and dad were still alive. Aless was a PE or gym teacher for the local high school, so she was very athletic. In the mid-1960s, Aless met the love of her life, a young Arkansas lawyer named Bill MacArthur. They met the mutual friends at a wedding. My brother had got his undergraduate degree, and then he went to the army.

And served two to three years. He had gone to law school, graduated, and was real early on his journey to be a criminal attorney. I thought they'd fit together pretty well. Bill was real laid back and Aless was driven's not the word, but she was kind of you know, front and center, a kind of person. They were married, probably, in the late 60s. Bill's practice was just starting out.

He was just getting the name for himself, building his practice up. With Aless's support, Bill rose to prominence as a defense attorney in the little rock court system. He had natural skills in the courtroom. He was excellent in closing the army because he'd just talked to people. He was just himself. We'd point out reasonable doubt. Everyone too long before his practice had really kicked in. They moved out towards the

Pleasant Valley area and bought a house out there. They had two children. She stayed home with them, she cared for them. She was a very strong, very opinionated. Some would say she probably might have worn a pants in the family. Aless was about the most direct human being you'd ever meet.

“Did you have to worry what was on Aless's mind? He was real direct with me about anything.”

Bill and Aless, they frankly had neighborhood parties and they always asked me out.

They're, I think, the best couples. I know they're different just enough where they kind of pull and push each other where it needs to be done and fill in gaps and support each other. I thought things were well over there. She was a great mother. She was fiercely low to her family. And she and Bill from what I asked her team and when I was around, we're happily married. Now, Aless has been shot to death in their bedroom closet and Bill has found himself on the

other side of a murder investigation. speculation was she became aware at some point that somebody was going to hurt her and she ran. She was trying to get to the closet because that was how she was going to try to defend herself. There would have been no reason for her to run to the closet except for that young. We're looking for fingerprints. If you get a fingerprints, if you got a suspect, then you can make a case. I'm in the closet and, of course, the book I

is there on the floor. A fingerprint person had an opportunity to fingerprint some of the evidence to come up with a fingerprint. The print is sent to the crime lab to see if they can find a match. But as police speak with Bill about possible motives, they begin to suspect Aless might not have been the killer's intended target. I can't think of a reason Abel had wanted to kill Aless, but in doing criminal work, you anger a lot of people. In his line of work,

“you don't deal with the Ageless of humanity, you know? So, you know, did he piss him by off?”

The officer's line of thinking proves correct when Bill brings up another recent attack on his family just six weeks earlier. Aless was just jumping in her car and doing mom's stuff.

She started the car up. It wouldn't start first. Then she's recrained it and that's when it went off.

why would they do that to Aless? Did they make a mistake? But new questions arise when another

“mysterious shooting surfaces. She said something's wrong with my husband. He's bleeding.”

A lot of boat comes on. She's going to kill somebody else. Arkansas detectives are talking to defense attorney Bill McCarther in the aftermath of his wife's murder. The officers can't help but wonder if there is a link between Aless's shooting and another attack six weeks earlier. We had had an attempted homicide with a pop bomb under Bill McCarther's car.

It was maybe a couple of weeks before the accident shooting. It was a pretty punk bomb.

It took the floor board and pushed it up all the way to the front of the seat. So, I mean, either of the legs pretty good. Even though the bomb failed to fully detonate, it was still destructive. They had enough explosives to lower the kingdom come, but it didn't work. It was a miracle the kids weren't in the car. The mystery of it was,

“why would they do that to Aless? Did they make a mistake?”

They were working that bombing as if Bill was the actual target because it was his car. Could it be somebody that he's represented and maybe didn't represent to the liking of the individual? Investigators questioned anyone with access to Bill's client last. We questioned him. We questioned his staff and I don't think that there was anything discovered that indicated that there was somebody that he had represented.

Everybody thought it was an odd, crazy thing to happen, but she got back to a routine, so life goes on even though there was still an act of investigation. Though the bombing investigation hit a dead end, it's not long before a new lead in Aless's murder surfaces. The Plastic County Sheriff's Office received the information that there was supposed to be too bad guys in town from Chicago that was supposed to kill a high-value target. The

tipster says the name of one of the hitmen is Larry McClendon. While police are looking into the tip, the fingerprint results come in from the lab. However, they belong to a different man in their system.

“The flowers are particularly important to the case, because the fingerprints pulled off the”

bottom of the vase identified as Yankee Eugene Hall. Yankee Eugene Hall was a petty theft criminal

who had never engaged in any violence prior to this.

We have warned some time from Reiki Hall, and he is arrested, brought to Little Rock Police Department, and it was interviewed. When detectives put on the pressure in the interrogation room, he quickly crumbles. He kind of spilled his guts. He started talking and did implicate his partner, Larry McClendon. He gave only information that Larry was the shooter.

Hall's claim lines up exactly with the anonymous tipster who also named Larry McClendon as the gunman. He said Larry McClendon is just a, he's a jailhouse pre-empts what he is. Yankee Anne Hemp, they got to know each other in the jail in Pintantre. Neither Hall nor McClendon appeared to be professional killers, but Hall claims the woman who hired them was offering too much money to turn down.

She supposedly, according to Yankee Hall, was going to pay him $25,000. Yankee was going to pay it, Larry McClendon, $10,000 to murder Alice McArthur.

They planned a flower delivery rose to get inside. However, Hall says things didn't go as smoothly

“as they'd hoped. Yankee Hall and Larry McClendon rang the doorbell at Alice's house with”

sister delivering flowers. Alice opened the door. He had the gun, and she took off running, and headed up the stairs. She runs down the hallway, and she's being pursued by Larry McClendon. She gets to the bedroom, and McClendon fires a shot at her. She runs to the closet, gets in the closet, grows the closet door. She, I do not believe, was hiding in that closet. She was looking for her gun, which she camp all her friends to know everybody,

that her gun, which she knew had to use, was in like a hat moth or something. She's roughing through the clothes only, shelf, that's right there,

had her fingertips, basically, and he opened the door and shoots her.

If what Hall's saying is true, police now know the shooter, and they have his accomplice in custody. But investigators are also eager to speak to the woman, Hall claims hired them. He said it wasn't likely by the name of Mary Lee or Senior. When her name come up,

“I had never heard it before. I mean, you have to look at everything.”

It's not hard to kind of take that step and say, what does she think she would gain from it? Why would she have anything to do with this? Why would she be involved with this at all? After hearing Yankees Hall's confession, authorities run a background check on the woman he claims hired him, 34-year-old Mary Lee or Senior. Mary Lee lived in Indian Hills, which is almost the border of Dortharoth.

She grew up middle class. Our middle class, you're just like everybody else, everybody went to the same school.

“She did not see the need to go to school and she dropped out of high school in 10th grade.”

She was just a pretty girl and she had the biggest eyelashes glued on that you've ever seen. She looked like Tammy Faye Baker. Mary Lee had been married twice.

Her first husband was in the Air Force, and they had a daughter together before splitting up.

But her second marriage to a man named Ron or senior ended in tragedy almost a year prior to Alice's death. On the morning of March 12, 1981, Mary Lee called 911 in a panic asking for medical assistance. She said something's wrong with my husband. He's bleeding. It may be his nose. I'm not sure, but I need an ambulance. The first police officer's got there. They go in the room, pulled the sheet back, and then they saw, half his head was blown away.

When officers asked Mary Lee what happened, she claimed Ron went to bed alone around 10pm, and she found him that way in the morning. Her story was, her daughter was sick. So she slipped at the bed with Tiffany across the hall from Ron's bedroom. They said, "You sure you didn't hear in again shots?" Ron's were, and she was no, I didn't, and Tiffany didn't. She was just while I was just

really tired. She said to the police, maybe he shot himself. But if he shot himself, then he managed to hide the guns somewhere, and they could not find it. Mary Lee had a questionable story, but detectives needed more evidence to make an arrest.

So the shooter gets some of the power from the force of the bullet going out.

“She had nothing, was she either meant she didn't fire gun or she did, and she had taken a”

full-out shower bath and scrubbed everything off. Investigators were stalled until they got a call from a private investigator named Fred Meyers. After Ron's scene, it was killed within a couple of days. I call the prosecutor, and I told

him about my involvement with Mary Lee or Seney. It was in the first week of November 1980.

I was told there was a lady on the phone by the name of Mary Lee or Seney that wanted to talk with me. So I spoke with her. She told me she would like to see me about a personal matter.

“Myers said Mary Lee showed up looking like a femme fatale.”

Usually when people said an apartment with me and came into the office, it might be a business attire, and she came in with a tight fitting silk louse, opened down the middle.

She had on the skirt, and it was split on the side. She told me that her husband was Ron or Seney,

and she had come to me to do what is commonly known as an activities check on her husband. She told me that she was virtually certain. She said that Ron had become involved in the buying and selling and transporting drugs. I told her that we would have to do a surveillance.

“We watched them for the next week starting on Monday morning. We did that every day,”

Monday through Friday, and we saw nothing out of the ordinary.

But Myers told the prosecutor he did find something of note.

We determined that they were behind on their bills. The credit report told me that and it included the linkancy on their home mortgage. In fact, financial issues made it difficult for Mary Lee to pay Myers for his services. I was telling her that I cannot keep working unless you can pay me. She made the statement well, perhaps we could bargain. I said, "What do you have that you can give me that would compensate for the money that you owe me?" She told me, "Come to my house."

On comfortable with Mary's insinuation, Fred quickly rejected the invite. She said, "I'll give you a time, or we can meet somewhere, and we can discuss it." Well, I did not accept the invitation for either one. After receiving the tip from Myers, prosecutors looked into the Orcini's finances and found a motive for murder. They did have many. She did have grounds for divorce.

She would lose everything. If they got a divorce, but at some point, they decided to get life insurance. Myers said, "After Ron's death, Mary Lee paid him another visit." She asked me then if I would refer her to a good criminal lawyer, so I gave it the names of three criminal attorneys that I knew personally that I had done work for. And she chose the El MacArthur. Detectives investigating the death of Alice MacArthur have found the connection between her

and Mary Lee or Seney. What's still unclear is why Mary Lee would have hired Hitman to kill her lawyer's wife. My brother represented Mary Lee or Seney in murder trial. She was accused of murdering her husband, and he was able to get her off. He was able to point out investigators. Took shortcuts or didn't thought their eyes and crawls or tees. The grand jury returned a no-true bail and did not indict her for her

true beyond a reasonable death that she did this. She's just free. Just walk on out.

“Clients usually want to get back at a lawyer who loses their case, not one who wins it.”

But when police dig a little further, they discover Mary Lee had different intentions. As a result of that representation, Mary Lee or Seney developed the idea that Bill MacArthur had romantic entrances in her. A main sea worship tunnel. Thinking that he was the greatest attorney ever.

I could tell she kind of had a thing for Bill. I didn't see that back to you the way at all.

Bill's is kind of dashing trial while you're in. And she's not his type. After the trial, it seems Mary Lee kept looking for opportunities to see Bill. My brother and two other partners opened up. BJ starts at Hunky Talk. It was a country western bar and it was huge at the time. I was there for a couple of shows and I knew that Mary Lee or Seney was there

and came by the ownership table wanting to make an effort to come over and say how to Bill. It made sense from her being in fact way than my brother and in her mind if Alice was out of the way, maybe she could have Bill. This was obviously was obsession. Labo comes up. She thought that in the long run she would have Bill and then she would have all the social ramifications and all his riches and everything else is she was actually

“desiring. And that's why she went and found Yanky Hall.”

With new understanding of Mary Lee's intent detectives resume their questioning of the hitman she allegedly hired Yanky Hall. He says they met in like a bar and I think that she went there to meet not necessarily Yanky Hall with somebody like Yanky Hall. She did have an appeal and she knew how to use that. He said that that they had sex and that she was a doctor. She kind of prompted him into a lot of things as she developed the relationship and eventually got off into this

what she wanted to do. At that point they said just to try the bobbin. It'd be difficult if not impossible to trace it back to anybody but it didn't work. After the failed bombing, Paul says Mary Lee asked him to find a shooter so he called up his old prisonmate Larry McClendon. The thing that stands out most in my mind is that he had no remorse, emotion, whatsoever about killing Alice McArthur. And as a matter of fact I remember him

stating specifically we killed that bitch. Unfortunately investigators know Paul's confession won't be enough to convict Mary Lee. Yanky Hall was the implicating Mary Lee or Seanie and Larry McClendon but he didn't got no evidence. You're not going to make a case on Captain Bell and murder

“with a co-conspirator's testimony. You have to have something to backs it up and I'll be honest”

with you. I mean I've just pulled over my case while trying to find something. I mean anything. Coming up detectives get the break they've been looking for. He said she wrote everything she wanted me to say. She gave it a script to reach so

recording was completely bogus. And the full story is finally revealed.

She said she won't complain. While looking for evidence that Mary Lee or Seanie paid to have Alice McArthur murdered, investigators subpoena her bank records. One transaction immediately catches their eye.

Over what she owed on the house. So Mary Lee put that in her account.

“It's the exact amount Yankee said she was going to pay for the hit. But detectives still need”

stronger evidence to make sure Mary can't dodge another murder charge. They get a lead from the suspect herself. When Mary brings them a tape with audio of a call she says she recorded while speaking with an anonymous tip star. I was saying they're going over stuff and assistant chief police come in and he hands me an audio tape and he says if you can identify this guy on this audio tape. I get to listen to the tape and during the

conversation he made a comment talking about his business and I got the name from that. The name they find is Mary Birch. I eventually get him on the phone and I tell him I need to talk to him. He said well I'll come in and we get to talking. Birch starts by explaining how he is more than just an anonymous tip star to Mary. They said they met at bars and things like

“that a couple of times. That's how they ended up having a relationship.”

Birch admits he was the one who called in the tip about the pair of hitmen just a few days into Alice's murder investigation. He's some that Mary Lee had instructed him to call class of County Sheriff's Office and give them the information. The next day he says Mary convinced him to recreate his previous anonymous tip with more detail so she could take the recording to police. He I think gave it up pretty quick that she gave it even script to reach real the phone so

that recording was completely bogus. He said she wrote everything she wanted me to say and how she wanted me to say it. I said do you still haven't he said yeah? I said I'll go get him around back to you

“and sure enough he had I think there were three pages the other pages notebook paper.”

The handwritten notes provided by Birch match the recorded call that Mary Lee brought in. I logged it in evidence and then sent it to the state crime lab for handwriting analysis. It was a hundred percent I mean it was a hundred percent Mary Lee or seen his handwriting. We'd already taken a statement from her so we had her handwriting to compare it to you. For investigators it's strange that Mary Lee provided the real names of her co-conspirators

but they suspect she thought it would make the hitmen story less believable if they gave her up. Instead her plan has backfired. It had not been for the Mary Birch type.

We had never made a case of Mary Lee or see. As soon as we kind of got to go ahead on

the handwriting set analysis they gave us the arrest warrant. And we went to arrest her. We transport her back to the right place department. Her interview was it wasn't that long of the interview because she was still denying everything. I mean she was at the point when we first got her that she didn't know that her Birch was. She didn't know who Yankee all was.

After taking a statement she was charged with capital filling murder. Mary Lee isn't the only one facing jail time.

Yankee always arrested first and I want to say that it was probably within three or four days

we had Larry McClendom. He was charged and I'm pretty sure it was capital fill in murder. Same as Yankee home. The three suspects were arrested and they had a chance at the end. That's kind of when things took a turn. Now that the Poleski County Sheriff has charged Mary Lee or seen him for Alice McArthur's murder,

What he wanted to hear was there was more to this that Birch was involved with her in this plot.

“The Sheriff didn't lie my brother and his department there were lots of them that didn't”

lie my brother because of simply my brother's tactics and defending clients. Because there's people you know well did your brother and her have an affair because nobody could imagine I can you build this fantasy um if there was something going on it didn't make sense for a normal person. There was very little other that he had enough to be able to raise the charge. Get in front of a judge and arrest my brother.

Despite Mary Lee's claims that Bill was involved it's a move investigators at the Little Rock

“Police Department don't agree with. Little Rock City Police and the Sheriff's office”

Leslie County Sheriff's office were at odds. There's nothing. I mean absolutely nothing. No physical evidence. Nobody's testimony set Mary Lee or seen he's that ever indicated that Bill was involved having his wife built. There wasn't any evidence. And so the grand jury returns a no true bill. If there's a no true bill meeting state did not put together enough evidence to convince them beyond the reasonable doubt. But you know damage was already done at that point

in time. Bill's psyche and quality of life was never the same after that.

Mary Lee or seen he's murder trial begins in September 1982. The star witness against her is confessed hitman Yankee Hall. Especially in murder cases. The first thing that you want to

“do is avoid the death sentence. And the best way to do that is to turn yourself in, cooperate.”

And that's what we did with Yankee Hall. Hard offenses is that Yankee Hall might all this stuff up. And that you know Larry Burge and all the nodes. They don't mean anything

because she didn't ride them. She denied it basically. And that's kind of the way the her defense

attorney went with it is that we don't have anything. The jury sides with prosecutors convicting Mary Lee of capital murder. Yankee Hall and Larry McClendon face justice as well. Early or seen Yankee Hall both got alive in prison without parole. Larry McClendon got 20 years. She belonged to jail hell yet. She belonged to jail for the rest of her life. For sure.

In 1983 Mary Lee is also found guilty for the murder of her husband Ron Orcini. But the conviction is overturned. I charged with big and excessive to the homicide of her husband. But in the trial they didn't show anybody else there but

her husband. It's not until 2003 that Mary Lee finally comes clean about her role within

investigators. She ended up dying in prison and prior to her death she gave a deathbed confession both to her involvement in Ron Orcini case and her involvement in the Alice McArthur case. She contacted the prosecutor attorney and said she would like to talk to investigators from his office. He ultimately sent him down. She told him that she shot her husband and killed him.

She said she confessed her sins and Jesus forgave her and she wanted to clear the record.

“I think it's very possible that people do things that are completely out of character and”

truly do snap. But I think for her it was she was evil. She's manipulation. She's remorseless.

She's smart. She can keep three stories juggling at one time and hardly ever miss a beat.

“This is all just some deranged woman that had an obsession and decided to act on it.”

The person that was probably the most innocent out of everybody would have been Alice.

She had nothing to do with she didn't bring any of that on herself. She had nothing to do with Maryly Orcini. (upbeat music)