This week Six Degrees of Murder looks at the murder of Diane Holik, who was just 43-years-old when her chance of a new life was robbed from her.
November 2001 and Diane Holik was a successful IBM at home supervisor and looking to move from her home in Austin to Houston, where she and her fiancé were planning to continue their life.
However, when she failed to turn up for work her work colleagues became worried and contacted the police. They found her house undisturbed but inside lay her lifeless body. At first they suspected a suicide but marks on her wrists and neck convinced them she’d been bound and strangled.
Police looked at a few suspects including an obsessive friend and even her fiancé. But it turned out the man who did the killing was someone who came to view her home. Another woman remember a man asking about her own home and described him as clean cut, but she was a little worried that he wanted to view without a realtor. She decided to jot down his license plate and was able to identify him from a police sketch.
Police arrested Tony Russo aka Patrick Anthony Russo and found he a criminal record dating back to the 1990s. He seemed to target rich homes to rob and had been involved in the kidnap of a woman in the past.
The former church leader also had a kink for horror fantasy sex, in particular with asphyxiation. They found an active subscription to the adult site NecroBabes.com and evenutally some DNA evidence found in Holik’s home matched his.
Russo was sentenced to life in prison.
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