On this day, Feb. 5, in 2002, Sacramento lawyer Larry Williams McNabney was found dead, stuffed in a refrigerator buried in a Northern California vineyard. McNabney’s wife, Elisa, and her female lover, Sarah Dutra, poisoned him with a lethal dose of horse tranquilizer six months earlier. Elisa McNabney, 36, was really an ex-con from Florida who used 40 aliases to mask her past.
Dutra, 21, was a college student who worked at Larry McNabney’s office. Six months after the slaying, Elisa McNabney fled in a red sports car with her teenage daughter.
Authorities caught up with her in Florida. Elisa McNabney hanged herself in her jail cell, leaving a suicide note that implicated Dutra. Dutra was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to 11 years behind bars.
— Scott McCabe
