Killer Bodies: A Glamorous Bodybuilding Couple, a Love Triangle, and a Brutal Murder

by Michael Fleeman

Overview

***Please note: This ebook edition does not contain the photos found in the print edition.***

HE WAS THE "BAD BOY" OF BODYBUILDING
Craig Titus once earned the championship title of Mr. USA, but that was before his illegal drug use and terrible temper got the best of his body—and his career. Soon he would redirect his attention toward a young, bubbly fitness professional who looked up to Craig as a mentor…and later became his wife.

SHE WAS A COVER GIRL FOR MUSCLE MAGAZINES
Kelly Ryan quickly rose to the top of her field. She appeared on the cover of Ironman magazine's swimsuit issue and was named Ms. Fitness America. A crowd favorite, her fans were shocked to learn that Kelly had been taken into custody, along with Craig, on charges of murder. The victim: the couple's personal assistant, Melissa James.

THEIR BODIES WERE TO DIE FOR…
Did Craig have a romantic relationship with Melissa? And did Kelly find out about—and force Craig to put a deadly end to their affair? When Melissa's corpse was found in the back of Kelly's Jaguar, police made an arrest. Now, the burning question that remains is: Is America's favorite celebrity bodybuilding couple guilty as charged? With this shocking exposé, author Michael Fleeman attempts to find out.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466801035
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/28/2007
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	351 KB

About the Author

MICHAEL FLEEMAN is an associate bureau chief for People magazine in Los Angeles and a former reporter for The Associated Press. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

Michael Fleeman is a Los Angeles-based writer and former People magazine editor and reporter for the Associated Press. He is the author of Love You Madly and Seduced by Evil.

Read an Excerpt

Killer Bodies

A Glamorous Bodybuilding Couple, a Love Triangle, and a Brutal Murder

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By Fleeman, Michael

St. Martin's Paperbacks

Copyright © 2007 Fleeman, Michael
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780312942021

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Chapter One
 
The fire could be seen for miles, burning in the black nothingness of the desert. A frigid December wind had kicked up, temperatures hovering just above freezing, sand and dust blowing everywhere.
 
There’s a reason they called this Sandy Valley Road.
 
One gust and the tinder-dry brush could catch fire, and then Dick Draper would be in trouble. As it was, his fire truck was running low on water and foam. The burning Jaguar was all blistering red paint and collapsing roof, a crackling, flaming skeleton.
 
Draper wanted to keep the fire right where it was, on a bluff at the end of a wash, in the middle of nowhere—the valley on the other other side of the “hump to Pahrump,” as the locals called the mountains that separate Las Vegas from the closest town where hooking is legal.
 
A trucker rumbling down Route 160 called this one in about 4:30 a.m. He could see the fire from the highway, barely a quarter mile away, in the morning darkness. Las Vegas Metro dispatch relayed the call to the closest fire department, the Mountain Springs volunteers, headed by Draper.
 
He responded himself in his truckloaded with water and foam.
 
The drive from his home at the Mountain Springs summit took Draper down a sharp incline that opened to a vast desert floor, the dim lights of Pahrump’s homes, stores and brothels twinkling in the distance.
 
As the road leveled, the fire came into view a few hundred yards off the highway.
 
Draper pulled his truck off at the Sandy Valley sign and hit a bumpy, barely graded, undercarriage-shredding road full of rocks and deep holes. He negotiated around the worst of the dips to the end of the wash, where the Jaguar blazed like Christmas, just eleven days away.
 
Draper opened his truck door and was hit by a blast of winter-in-the-desert temperature: 34 degrees that morning.
 
As he readied the hose to spray down the flames, Draper noticed that the fire was moving from the rear of the car to the front, with flames shooting from the back seat and heading toward the hood, taking out the roof along the way. This was fortunate. The fire was going away from the gas tank in the back.
 
Draper unleashed a spray of water to keep the fire from spreading to the brush. After a few minutes, he had things sufficiently under control to switch to the foam to fully extinguish the blaze, including the burning magnesium car parts, which can’t be put out with mere water.
 
After forty-five minutes, Draper had run out of water and foam. The once-roaring fire had been reduced to a charred car skeleton with a few glowing hot spots. Draper believed the blaze had been contained enough for him to leave the scene for his base atop the mountain and get another truck with more water and foam.
 
The trip there and back took less than twenty minutes—it was after 5 a.m. by now—and Draper again went to work, dousing the remaining stubborn areas. Having responded to dozens of car fires in the desert, Draper knew the car had to be cool before the tow truck could safely take it away. He poured water and foam all over a section in the middle of the car, but the smoke kept coming.
 
Working in the darkness, he poked at the area with a pole, stirring the ashes, and sprayed it some more.
 
It was slow work and Draper struggled to see. He got out his flashlight and directed the beam toward the rear of the car.
 
That’s when he first saw the body, lying on its side, in what used to be the trunk, only now was a cavity separated from the back seat area by nothing, the fire having destroyed the barrier.
 
The flashlight beam shined on a head swaddled in cloth, then landed on a blackened hand.
 
Draper put his pike back in the truck and dialed dispatch, asking them to alert Metro.
 
 
The homicide unit of the Las Vegas metropolitan Police Department got the call at 6:31 a.m. on December 14, 2005. The detectives on duty that morning were Robert Wilson, Clifford Mogg, Ken Hardy and Dean O’Kelley. The rotation had O’Kelley up as the lead investigator.
 
Their supervisor, Sergeant Rocky Alby, briefed them: a car fire in the desert west of Las Vegas, with an apparent victim in the trunk. The report came from a volunteer fireman who had put out the blaze and then found the body. No known witnesses, nothing else to report.
 
As dawn broke on what would be a crisp, clear winter day in southern Nevada, the detectives headed for Pahrump. The drive took them west on Blue Diamond Highway, on the fringe of Vegas, where the desert is fighting a losing battle against the bulldozer. On both sides of the highway, housing tracks are sprouting, miles of identical stucco boxes with Spanish-tiled roofs, advertised on billboards with names like “Trail Ridge” and “Parkview Estates,” despite the absence of any obvious trails, ridges, parks or views. Realtors’ flags in red and yellow strain against the fierce desert winds.
 
By day, so many construction trucks clog Blue Diamond Highway that traffic backs up for a half-mile or more at intersections closest to the Interstate 15 on-ramp, itself a work in progress, plunged into a major renovation.
 
But at this hour—shortly before 7 a.m.—traffic was light and the detectives made good time.
 
Soon, the highway narrowed, and the construction zones gave way to the desert. In the distance to the north, the jagged outcroppings of Red Rock Canyon rose and the road signs warned, “look out for wild horses and burros on highway.” The road twisted and rose up into the mountains, the desert scrub replaced by cool pines. In the rearview: miles of housing tracks and the towering gambling palaces of The Strip, just now shaking off its daily hangover.
 
After the 5,490-foot Mountain Springs summit, where Dick Draper made his base, the road dipped down to a valley floor. From there, it was a couple miles to the turnoff to Sandy Valley, with the fire scene just off the highway.
 
The trip from Vegas took about a half-hour, something to keep in mind for a time line in a homicide investigation.?
 
Copyright © 2007 by Michael Fleeman. All rights reserved.


Continues...

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Excerpted from Killer Bodies by Fleeman, Michael Copyright © 2007 by Fleeman, Michael. Excerpted by permission.
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