After a contentious divorce, thirty-eight-year-old beautician Susan Hamwi moved with her one-and-a-half-year-old daughter Shane from Aspen, Colorado, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

On November 8, 1983, a concerned friend called police saying no one had heard from Susan for a week. When officers arrived at her home, they found the reason: Susan lay in a pool of blood on her kitchen floor. She had been raped, strangled with a telephone cord, and stabbed to death with a carving knife, part of which was still wedged in her chest.

The scene of a blood-soaked woman killed in the prime of her life was horrific, and the subsequent finding was also awful. In a bedroom, the lifeless body of baby Shane lay in her crib. The helpless toddler had perished from dehydration after being unattended for several days.

The carnage was followed by an injustice as a mentally challenged man was falsely convicted of the murders. After nine years, the wrong was rectified and the real killers of Susan and Shane Hamwi were put behind bars.

Susan and Shane Hamwi

The carving knife used to kill Susan was wiped of fingerprints; several strands of red hair found near her became the principal piece of evidence in the investigation.

Police interviewed Susan’s neighbors, one of them being forty-two-year-old John Purvis. They were struck by the noticeably red hair of the “neighborhood weirdo.”

John was a schizophrenic who lived with this mother, Emma Bartlett, as he was unable to care for himself. He had previously been confined to mental hospitals on several occasions, and he was also taking anti-psychotic medication.

John Purvis

Multiple young women and teenage girls in the neighborhood told investigators John made them uncomfortable, with several saying he had made sexually suggestive overtures toward them.

Susan Hamwi appeared to be one of the women with whom John was infatuated. She had told several friends he had made multiple passes at her and that she was uneasy around him.

Susan Is Unnerved by Her Neighbor

Emma allowed police to question her son at the police station; she accompanied him, but she was not allowed into the interrogation room.

As the interrogation became more intense and the detectives became more belligerent, John became more agitated. When Emma, who was sitting in the lobby, heard the detectives yelling at her son, she stormed into the interrogation room and ended the proceedings.

The detectives, Rick Rice and Rich Martin, were certain they had their man. They were determined to further question John, even if that meant sidestepping ethical police procedure.

In early December, four weeks later, they approached John in a convenience store when he was not accompanied by his mother. The detectives coaxed him into again coming to the police station to be questioned.

John Is Interrogated

Upon arrival, the detectives had Dr. Joel Klass administer a personality test to John. Unbeknownst to the psychiatrist, John was given the impression he had to adhere to police orders to take the test.

Dr. Klass administered a series of tests using Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) cards, showing ambiguous drawings requiring interpretation from the tested subject. Several of the cards elicited unusual responses from John and at one point he asked Dr. Klass if he was going to jail and if the doctor thought he had killed Susan.

John repeated the questions several times before stating he liked Susan but had killed her when she rejected his attempts for a closer relationship.

The Tarot Cards Spell Trouble

The detectives were summoned and began round two of their interrogation of John Purvis; he was again soon distressed. Having the IQ of an adolescent, he was incapable of comprehending his rights and did not know he could end the questioning whenever he wished.

After several hours, the detectives told John he could go home if he told them he had killed Susan. John then stated he did so. Instead of going home, however, he went straight to a jail cell and was soon charged with two counts of murder.

John recanted his confession the following day, saying he had only done so because he was told he could then go home.  Only his confession, however, was allowed into evidence at his trial.

Charged with Murder

At the trial, prosecutors painted John Purvis as a pervert who pursued women for prurient purposes. Several young girls who lived near him testified he repeatedly tried to give them rides, and multiple women said he asked them to perform sexual favors.

The state contended he raped and stabbed Susan Hamwi to death after she rejected his sexual advances.

The Trial Begins

Prosecutors also contended Emma had aided her son in cleaning the crime scene, though she was not formally charged with doing so.

Neighbor Amy Rood testified she heard a man and woman inside Susan’s home on the day of the murder arguing about what to do with the baby. Under hypnosis, Amy said she was certain the voices where of John and Emma, but the claims were discredited after the hypnotic therapist was found to have made suggestive and leading statements to her.

Emma Bartlett was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Emma Bartlett

John’s Mother

After tests determined the strands of the red hair found at the crime scene did not match that of John Purvis the crux of the prosecution’s case became his “confession.”  It, too, proved filled with holes.

John had told the detectives that he loved Susan and murdered her because she did not want an intimate relationship with him. After stabbing her to death, he said he undressed her and had intercourse with her body on the kitchen floor; Susan had been raped will still alive.

In addition, John had said he had brought the knife that was used to kill Susan; it was, instead, one of her own kitchen knives that was used. He claimed to have taken a ring off Susan; it was a watch that had instead been taken. He also claimed to have smothered Shane to death; the baby had died of prolonged neglect.

Nevertheless, John Purvis was convicted of the murders of Susan and Shane Hamwi in 1985 and sentenced to life in prison. He maintained his innocence and, after eight years, different detectives came to the same conclusion.

Convicted of Murder

Following mounting pressure brought about by an Unsolved Mysteries broadcast of the case, the Fort Lauderdale Police re-opened their investigation into the murders of Susan and Shane Hamwi in early 1993. Tim Bronson and Bob Williams, the new detectives assigned to the case, found their predecessors, detectives Rice and Martin, had coerced John into confessing to the crime.

The former Fort Lauderdale detectives were also found to have been derelict in investigating the most obvious suspect, Susan’s former husband, Paul Hamwi, a wealthy real-estate developer who co-owned a restaurant with his brother in Aspen, Colorado.

Susan with Her Former Husband, Paul Hamwi

Paul Hamwi had an airtight alibi at the time of the murders; he was at his Aspen home, stricken with a broken leg.

That was enough for Detectives Rice and Martin to eliminate him as the person who committed the actual killing, but their successors found the well-to-do businessman still should have been more scrupulously investigated.

The Ex Was Not Thoroughly Vetted

Following on a tip received but dismissed by detectives Rice and Martin in 1985, detectives Bronson and Williams zeroed in on Aspen resident Robert Beckett, who had previously worked for Paul Hamwi’s construction company. His son, Robert Jr., had recently been arrested for beating his former girlfriend. When questioned by police, she said she had heard the younger Beckett boasting that his father had killed a woman in Florida.

Under questioning, Beckett Sr. admitted his involvement in the killings of Susan and Shane Hamwi. In return for immunity, he told police that Paul Hamwi had paid both him and his friend, Paul Serio, a substitute teacher living in Texas, $14,000 for the hit. Beckett said Hamwi’s motive was to avoid paying Susan child support.

Another man told authorities that Paul Hamwi had also asked him if he knew someone willing to murder his former wife.

                                 Robert Beckett                 Paul Serio

Paul and Susan Hamwi married in 1981, shortly after learning Susan was pregnant. Paul had her sign a prenuptial agreement stating she would receive no money in the event of a divorce.

After two years of abuse and only a few months after Shane’s birth, Susan filed for divorce; the pre-nup was found to have been enacted under duress and was declared null-and-void.

The Briefly Married Couple

Once the split was finalized, Susan was granted custody of Shane; Paul did not protest. He did, however, have a problem with being paying Susan the court-ordered $180,000 in alimony, to be made in $12,000 increments for fifteen months. He contested the amount, but his appeal was denied.

At the time of Susan’s murder, Paul had missed several payments and had recently been warned if he continued to be derelict, he would be charged with contempt of court. He then enlisted the services of Robert Beckett and Paul Serio.

Deadbeat Dad

Both Pauls were arrested for the murders of Susan and Shane Hamwi in January 1993, over nine years after the killings. Both men were convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Justice was served but not without controversy.

The Sinners Pauls

The jury ruled Shane’s death to be accidental.

Robert Beckett testified that he left a bottle of water in Shane’s crib and that Paul Hamwi had told him to call him after killing Susan and that arrangements were made for her body to be discovered and for Shane to be tended.

As arranged, Beckett phoned Hamwi after the murder, but the latter took no action. As a result, his daughter slowly succumbed to dehydration.

Baby Shane’s Death Is Ruled an Accident

After the two killer Pauls learned of Shane’s death, Beckett said Serio broke down and cried.

Daddy Paul, however, showed no remorse when learning his baby daughter had also died.

A Picture Can Be Deceiving

Daddy Doesn’t Love His Daughter

On January 15, 1993, John Purvis was released from prison after serving over eight years for a crime he did not commit. The following month he was officially exonerated of all charges in relation to the murder of Susan Hawmi and the death of Shane Hamwi.

John received a $1 million judgment from the city of Fort Lauderdale in exchange for his mother, as his guardian, dropping any claims against the city. The Purvis family likely could have been granted much more money, but, with the appeals, it would have taken years to collect.

A lawsuit against prosecutors for failing to disclose exculpatory information was dismissed on grounds of prosecutorial immunity.

John Purvis Is Exonerated

 

Paul Serio died in 2004 at age fifty-seven.

Paul Hamwi, now seventy-eight-years-old, is incarcerated at the Union Correctional Institute in Raiford, Florida.

Imprisoned Pauls

Robert Beckett received immunity for his role in the murder of Susan Hamwi and the death of Shane Hamwi in exchange for testifying against Paul Hamwi and Paul Serio.

In 1995, however, he was convicted of first degree murder in Los Angeles as was his son, Robert Jr., whose big mouth provided the big break in the Hamwi case.

Beckett Back in Trouble

The younger Beckett said he and his dad met eighteen-year-old Tracy Stewart at Hermosa Beach on the day of her disappearance, August 9, 1981. Robert Jr. said he and his father convinced Tracy to go their apartment, where they raped and tortured her for three days before clubbing and strangling her to death. He said they dumped her body in the desert outside Los Angeles, in either Riverside or Orange County.

Both Becketts were convicted of murder even though Tracy’s body was not found. Robert Sr. died behind bars in 1997, coincidentally on August 9, exactly sixteen years after Tracy Stewart’s disappearance. Robert Jr. remains imprisoned.

At the time of her disappearance, Tracy Lea Stewart was five-feet-four-inches tall, weighed one-hundred-twenty-five pounds, and had brown hair and green eyes. When last seen, she was wearing a dark flower-print blouse and blue jeans and was carrying a blue purse.

Tracy Stewart would today be sixty-years-old. If you have any information on her disappearance, please contact the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department at 323-890-5500.

Tracy Stewart

John Purvis’ father, John Sr., served in the United States Marines during World War II.

He was killed in combat at age twenty-six on February 20, 1945, during the second day of the Battle of Iwo Jima.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/72664425/susan-kay-hamwi#

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/72664499/shane-kay-hamwii

SOURCES:

• Associated Press
• Charley Project
• Los Angeles Times
• South Florida Sun Sentinel
• Unsolved Mysteries