Two married true-crime buffs from a tiny city in Kansas are so convinced that a woman they never knew is wrongly imprisoned for the 2002 slayings of her ex-husband and his girlfriend that they’ve devoted their lives to proving her innocence. Even though her own children helped put her away. Eileen and Keen Umbehr's obsession with the prosecution of Dana Chandler led them to spend more than 15 years trying to prove her innocence — an all-consuming odyssey that’s the subject of a new, three-part HBO docuseries.
Chandler, 66, is serving two consecutive life sentences for killing Mike Sisco and Karen Harkness, for which she wasn't arrested until nine years after they were shot in bed inside Harkness's Topeka home early on July 7, 2002. The tortuous legal proceedings that followed include an overturned conviction, a hung jury and Chandler's second conviction last year. The case also ended the career of a prosecutor whom the Kansas Supreme Court said used "intolerable acts of deception" to convince Chandler's first jury to find her guilty after just 83 minutes of deliberations.
"We're just so committed to this case that there's nothing else in life that matters," Keen adds in the series, as the couple also shows investigative journalist Joe Sexton a sprawling field dotted with thickets of trees and a pond. Supreme Court in an unrelated 1995 case, told The Independent. But retired Topeka police Sgt.
Richard Volle, who was the lead detective in the case, told The Independent he had no doubt Chandler was the person who shot Sisco and Harkness — at least five times each. Two juries were convinced — two and a half juries were convinced — that Chandler's in the right place,” he said. Volle added: “Dana's a psychopath.
She's very good at what she does. She can lie easily.” Chandler is appealing her conviction and is represented by court-appointed lawyer Kristen Patty of Wichita, Kansas, although she filed a motion last year to be appointed a different lawyer. Patty, who's asked for permission to withdraw from the case, didn't respond to voicemail and email inquiries from The Independent.
Chandler and Sisco married in 1982 and were raising a daughter and a son in Lawrence, Kansas, by 1997 when Sisco, a sales manager for a welding-supply company, filed for divorce. The divorce was finalized the following year, with Sisco granted custody of the kids and Chandler ordered to move out of the family's home and pay child support. Sisco had been dating Harkness — who was also divorced, with a daughter and a son — for about four years when her father found their bodies ahead of a planned family fish fry at which relatives expected the couple might announce their engagement.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
