Florida Woman’s Journal Reveals She is the Killer of her Husband: Clear Evidence

 What really happened to a man who was killed in a shower? Investigators soon discovered the culprit was someone close to home.

Radley Horwitz would later tell police he heard “gunfire and screaming and the alarm going off” when he awoke in the Jupiter, Florida home he shared with his parents on Friday, Sept. 30, 2011. He said his mother was hysterical when he found her.“She kept repeating, ‘He was so awful. He was so awful,’” Radley Horwitz, son of Lanny and Donna Horwitz, said on Snapped, airing Sundays at 6/5c on Oxygen.

A private security guard for the wealthy neighborhood where the Horwitzes resided responded to the home because the security alarms were going off. He discovered 66-year-old Lanny Horwitz lying in the running shower, with blood everywhere and a gun in his hand. Although his wife, Donna, insinuated her husband had committed suicide, a phone receiver near Lanny’s hand showed otherwise.

“The way the blood splattered [shows] Lanny’s trying to get to that phone that’s in the bathroom. Which, if you’re committing suicide, you’re not going to try to pick up the phone,” said defense attorney Greg Morse on Snapped.

Police soon discovered more evidence Lanny’s death was not a suicide: a bullet hole in the towel draped over the shower door.

“It had stippling, which would be gunpowder burns on the outside of the towel,” said Tracie McClendon, Jupiter Police Crime Scene Investigator, on Snapped. “Which tells you that the gunshot was from the outside and not coming from the inside of the shower.”

An autopsy showed Lanny had been shot nine times, including once in the mouth. With no evidence that anyone had broken into the house, and the alarm company confirming to police that no doors had been opened or shut that morning, there were two suspects in Lanny’s murder: his wife Donna, and his 37-year-old son, Radley.

Police discover Lanny Horwitz may have been having an affair

Lanny and Donna Horwitz began dating as teenagers and married in 1967 when Donna was 20. After having their only son, Radley, in 1974, they moved from Buffalo, New York to Jupiter, Florida. Lanny soon found success as a real estate developer.

“They had a very high standard of living,” Morse said. “I think there was a Maserati. They had the North Carolina [vacation] home. They’re flying first class. All the accoutrements to what people perceive as success.”With no gun powder residue on his hands, and no evidence that he was involved, Radley was cleared as a suspect. He was also the first to tell police that he believed his father was having an affair. Lanny and Donna divorced in 2000, and Lanny had a relationship with a business associate, Francine Tice. Eventually, Lanny and Donna would go on to be married and divorced twice.

“When my mom and dad got back together, my mom finds out that my father’s still seeing Francine, and he’s going to lunch with her, going to dinner with her,” Radley Horwitz said.“It looked like it was more than just a business relationship. He was paying for her cell phone bill. He paid for her to decorate the house in North Carolina that he and my mom were building. There was a lot of sneaky stuff going on there with her.”

Francine Tice told officers she wasn’t having a physical relationship with Lanny, but said they were “beyond best friends.”

“She indicated that Mr. Horwitz had deeper feelings for her than she was ready for at that time,” said prosecutor Aleathea McRoberts on Snapped. “She admitted that Mr. Horwitz had asked her to marry him.”

Tice characterized Lanny and Donna’s relationship as “volatile.”

“Francine told police that Lanny Horwitz had confided in her that he was afraid of Donna,” McRoberts said.

A diary reveals motive for Donna Horwitz to kill her husband

Donna Horwitz’s diary, discovered in a search of the house, showed a motive for wanting her husband dead. She wrote frequently of her belief her husband was having affairs.

“It depicted a woman in Donna who desperately wants a family,” Morse said. “But then we see her getting lost in her own self … the diary starts to [say], ‘He doesn’t come home again.’ ‘He’s with Francine.’ The reality of how Lanny’s treating her happens.”

In the spring of 2011, when they were divorced and living separately, Donna wrote in her diary that Lanny asked her to get a $200,000 loan from her parents, and told her if she did this, they could live together again. Although Donna fantasized about her marriage being put back together, that’s not what happened.

“According to her diary, Lanny told her, ‘If I had known that Francine felt about me the way that I do now, I would never have asked you to move back in the house.’ I think that that was the turning point,” McRoberts said. “She knew that she got taken. And here she had gotten $200,000 from her mom. What a fool she must have felt like.”

The tipping point turned out to be that Francine and Lanny were set to go on a business trip to North Carolina the day he died.

“He told her that he wanted her out of the house by the time he got back,” McClendon said.

On Oct. 6, 2011 Donna Horwitz was arrested, and in January 2013 she went on trial for her husband’s murder. Her defense team argued it was Radley who killed Lanny, not Donna.

“Even though she tried to blame me, I was very sympathetic to my mom, until I saw the pictures of my dad,” Radley said. “That was the end of any sympathy for my mom there.”

A jury found her guilty, but the verdict ended up being thrown out, causing a retrial in 2017. A second jury found her guilty, and she was sentenced to 32 years in prison.

“It’s tragic that she was so heartbroken,” McRoberts said. “But you can’t just go and kill the person that broke your heart.”

Radley Horwitz has not been in contact with his mother since the trial.

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