Louisville, KY: He Murdered His Fiance, Admitted it (In Court) And STILL Got Away With It...

On September 24th, 1988, 36 year old Brenda Sue Schaefer didn’t return to her parents Louisville, KY home where she’d been staying. The next day, her parents filed a missing persons report. Police suspected her 50 year old fiance Mel Ignatow (their relationship had been a stormy one), but they were unable to find any evidence.Police questioned Ignatow, but he denied any knowledge of what had happened to her. A few weeks later Ignatow took police up on their invitation to “clear his name” through a Grand Jury hearing. During the hearing, Mary Ann Shore-Inlow (one of Ignatow’s former lover’s) name was brought up and police brought her in for investigation. Shore-Inlow first denied any knowledge of Ms Schaefer, but eventually broke down and told police that she was a witness to her kidnapping, rape, torture and murder.Mary Ann told police that she and Ignatow planned for two weeks how they would go about killing her. The plans went as far as “scream testing” Mary Ann’s home. Ignatow waited outside while Mary Ann screamed as loud as she could from inside her house to make sure no one would be able to hear Schaefer as she was being tortured, then dug a grave a short distance behind Mary Ann’s home. She then took police to a shallow grave where they found Schaefer’s body.On the night of September 24th, Ignatow called Schaefer and told her someone he knew was interested in seeing some of the jewelry that Ignatow had previously bought her. Ignatow picked her up and drove her to Mary Ann’s house. Once there, Schaefer was bound, gagged, stripped and tied to a glass coffee table. Mary Ann took over 100 pictures while Ignatow raped, sodomized, tortured and then murdered Schaefer.Prosecutors offered Mary Ann immunity in exchange for her testimony. Ignatow was arrested and brought to trial. Defense attorneys argued that Ignatow had had nothing to do with the murder, that Mary Ann had killed Schaefer all by herself. The pictures that Mary Ann claimed she had taken could not be found and the body had decomposed to where any evidence of rape or torture were gone.To the shock of the judge and the local community, the jury found there wasn't enough evidence to convict Ignatow and he walked away - a free man.Six months later Mel Ignatow sold his home and moved on. The people who bought the house decided to replace the carpeting and when the carpet installer was removing the carpet, he found a covered over heating vent that had a bag stuffed inside it. He opened the bag and found some jewelry and 3 rolls of undeveloped film. Aware of who had previously owned the house, he turned it over to the police.When the film was developed, they found over 100 pictures of Ignatow raping, torturing and murdering Schaefer. Confronted with the evidence, Ignatow admitted that he was guilty, knowing he couldn’t be tried twice for the same crime. He was "kind " enough to tell Schaefer's family that she had "died peacefully..."Ignatow did serve a total of 14 years in prison for perjury (during the Grand Jury hearing) but never served a day for rape, torture or murder.Mel Ignatow was released from prison on December 15, 2006 and moved to a house less than 4 miles from where he had murdered Schaefer. He died on September 1st, 2008, but it was HOW he died that most people find interesting… He was at home alone, where he fell on a glass coffee table, cutting himself… and bled to death…