Rumplestiltskin
Knee-Jerk Contrarian
Transgender Farmer, Veteran Killed Two and Fed Their Bodies to Pigs
Susan Monica with lawyer Christine Herbert (Credit: AP)
US — Medford, Oregon. “I do not value human life very much,” a killer of two, now serving a sentence in a women’s prison, said in a taped confession. “My feeling is the only thing wrong with the planet is there’s people on it. If not for us, all the other animals, even dodo birds, would be here.”
Steven Buchanan of California, a 66-year-old male Vietnam war veteran, began identifying as a woman named Susan Monica following an honorable discharge from the Navy. He enjoyed a successful engineering career before 1991, when he retired to a 20-acre rural property he purchased in Wimer, Oregon, where he raised pigs and chickens.
Years later, Mr Monica hired Stephen Frank Delicino to work on the property as a handyman. In return for his work, Mr Delicino was financially compensated and allowed to reside on the land. In 2012, Mr Monica shot Mr Delicino to death and fed the corpse to his pigs.
Mr Monica later hired Robert Haney as a handyman. Mr Haney was shot dead in 2013 and fed to the pigs.
The crimes came to light after Mr Haney’s children grew concerned after not hearing from their father for some time and went to check on him. Mr Monica told police investigating the disappearance that Mr Haney had quit and left. The story unraveled when an investigation turned up security footage of Mr Monica using Mr Haney’s Oregon Trail Electronics Benefit Transfer card at a local Walmart the day after Mr Monica claimed to have last seen Mr Haney.
Investigators found the remains of Mr Delicino in plastic bags on the property. According to testimony from State Police forensic anthropologist Veronica Vance, Mr Haney had suffered three to four gunshot wounds to the head. His legs had been chopped off with an ax, though it was unclear whether the mutilation took place before or after Mr Haney’s death. The thigh bones had been gnawed on by an animal.
Mugshot of Susan Monica (Courtesy: Fox17 News)
Mr Monica told the police various stories in taped confessions, none of which aligned with the forensic evidence. In some instances, he claimed Mr Delicino had shot himself repeatedly in the head. At other times, he claimed to have shot Mr Delicino in self-defense, and that some of the corpse was eaten by pigs before Mr Monica could gather the remains. He claimed Mr Haney had disappeared for a month, and he had shot Mr Haney as a mercy killing after discovering him being disemboweled by the pigs.
According to the testimony of a 23-year-old cellmate serving time for a burglary conviction, while jailed, Mr Monica signed a birthday card, “from the sweetest murderer in Jackson County.” The former cellmate, Jordan ‘Janae’ Farris, said the card gave her “chills.” For some time after the trial, she “had nightmares” that the two-time killer would get an appeal and she would have to face him in court again.
In April 2015, Jackson County Circuit Judge Tim Barnack handed the 66-year-old pig farmer a life sentence, with the possibility of parole after a minimum of 50 years.
Susan Monica’s case recently sparked public interest due to a re-airing of his story on Snapped, a true-crime television series on the Oxygen Network.
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