Neither knew there was a secret between the two families. Cindy Wilkerson is working in the barber shop her dad, David Leath, founded in West Knoxville when the phone rings. All Raynella has is a copy kept by their lawyer, Charles Child.
David had the original. He kept it in the sock drawer in the bedroom where he died. Nearly three years to the day West Knoxville barber David Leath was found shot to death in his bed, his widow — Raynella Dossett Leath — is about to stand trial in front of a national audience for killing him. Raynella averts her cold blue eyes as she passes rows of TV cameras lining the hallway outside the courtroom. It is January Seven years ago, popular West Knoxville barber David Leath was found dead in his bed, shot in the forehead.
That autopsy included routine blood samples sent off to be tested for drugs. Nobody waited around for those results. And by the time the results came back, his death had been ruled an accident. His lawyer fell asleep at least ten times during his trial and Calvin ended up on death row.
Over the years, she seemed to develop an attitude that the rules were made for others—that she was free to do as she wished. She caused fear in her nursing students and neighbors.
They warned each other not to cross her. When her first husband county prosecutor Ed Dossett died, the first clear sign of preferential treatment in the justice system was demonstrated. The medical examiner bowed to her wishes and did not perform a full autopsy. He ignored the fact that the prime suspect in any homicide occurring at home is the spouse or significant other of the victim. After an incomplete procedure, he issued a full report calling the cause of death an accident, before seeing the toxicology results.
Those prosecutors did nothing. People arriving at the scene said she was not at the intersection at the time of the wreck; but Raynella told the officers that she was there, sitting in the middle seat. No one investigated or questioned what she said. Showing even more preferential treatment, the local prosecutor encouraged the state troopers bringing charges against her daughter and encouraged them to file charges against the other driver for driving without a license.
Then there was the Steve Walker incident. Fortunately, law enforcement did not take her at her word this time.
They believed the victim and charged her with attempted murder. But, then, no one pulled up to her doorstep, handcuffed her, tossed her in the back seat of the squad car and made her perp-walk into the jail. She was allowed the privilege of turning herself into the authorities with her attorney by her side. Throughout the proceedings, she was treated like a delicate flower of the south.
Poor Raynella. She lost her husband and then her only son died in an automobile accident. She lured Walker to a barn on her farm, telling him she had some paperwork related to the child. Once inside the barn, she opened fire on him and chased him across the hayfields until she ran out of ammunition.
She was charged with attempted murder but pleaded to a lesser charge. Then the charge was expunged. On March 13, , Raynella found her second husband, David Leath dead in the bed in their bedroom. Three shots had been fired from the. It is believed that the 2nd shot was the one that killed him. Leath had signed deeds and a will. Both were now missing. The current medical examiner, Dr.
Darinka Mileusnic-Polchan reviewed the file and found that the injuries Dossett sustained were not life threatening. Two years later in , she was charged with the first degree murder of her second husband, David Leath. She maintained that David committed suicide. After hours of deliberation, the jury had no verdict.
The judge declared a hung jury. A retrial began in January After playing the call, the medical examiner stated three shots were fired and the second one was the one that killed him. A toxicology report showed David was drugged with a combination of drugs similar to what is used for patients having surgery. Remember, Raynella was the Director of Nursing at a local hospital. They stated she loved her husband very much and she had no reason to kill him. On January 25, Raynella was convicted of first degree murder and automatically sentenced to 51 years to life in prison.
His legally extraordinary ruling is just another in a long list of unusual occurrences in the life of Leath, a nurse by trade. In , Leath's husband of more than a decade, Knox County District Attorney General Ed Dossett, was found dead in a barn on the couple's sprawling acre farm. It appeared the cancer-stricken Dossett had been overrun by cattle and trampled to death. Randall Pedigo, who was serving as Knox County's medical examiner even though he was not qualified to conduct autopsies himself, ruled it an accident.
Two years later, Pedigo would be unmasked as a pedophile. Six months after Dossett died, his widow married David Leath, a popular West Knoxville barber and best friend of Dossett.
In , the year-old son of Ed Dossett and Raynella Leath died in a car crash. His mother was in the passenger seat, and her year-old daughter was behind the wheel, driving via a learner's permit.
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