Alabama woman, 66, stabbed herself in vagina to make it seem she shot dead her husband in self-defense: Police
A 66-year-old woman from Alabama, suspected for murder, allegedly stabbed herself in her private parts to make it look like she had a killed her husband in self defense, according to police. The woman, identified as Linda Doyle, was arrested on Tuesday, November 24, over the death of her husband, 71-year-old husband James Doyle, last year in July in Foley, Alabama. Linda's arrest came after a grand jury formally accused her of murder. She has claimed that she fatally shot her husband after he stabbed her multiple times in her vagina and abdomen while she slept. Linda claimed that the shooting was an act of self-defense on her part. Prosecutors, however, have insisted that she was the one who harmed herself in an elaborate setup formulated to give her an excuse to kill her husband.
Linda reportedly dialed 911 on the evening she shot and killed James, saying she had been involved in a violent fight with her husband. When emergency responders reached their house, they found both Linda and James sprawled on the floor of their home, according to WKRG. Soon after the emergency responders' arrival, James was declared dead, while Linda was airlifted to University Hospital in Foley, Alabama, to receive treatment for her wounds.
The couple's neighbors, in a statement to Fox10, said that the Doyles were "really nice" and quiet, and that there was no indication that their home was violent. The motive for the alleged murder has not yet been revealed by the officials, Foley Police are also yet to state how they deduced that Linda murdered James. The suspected assailant was arrested by police from her home on Tuesday without any incident.
Officials said that before the shooting incident, Linda had contacted authorities multiple times over alleged incidents of domestic abuse. It is not yet clear whether those reports were fraudulent. She is reportedly being kept in prison in lieu of $100,000 bond. Linda's jail conditions state that she must wear a GPS ankle monitor to stay within the state of Alabama if she can arrange the amount of her bond.
A few days before Linda's arrest, Barbara Kogan, a 77-year-old murder convict from Manhattan, who ordered her wealthy husband's killing so she could collect $4.3 million in life insurance cash, was released from prison. Infamously known as the 'Black Widow', Barbara was in prison for the past 12 years ever since the murder of George Kogan, an antique dealer, who was shot on an Upper East Side sidewalk. Kogan was freed from Taconic State Prison, a women's prison in Westchester County, on Thursday, November 19, according to state records.
Mary-Louise Hawkins, the girlfriend of married millionaire George Kogan, 49, ran out of her apartment in New York after she heard three gunshots on October 23, 1990. She found George, a son of Holocaust survivors, lying on the sidewalk in a pool of blood. There were three bullet wounds in the back of George's head. His estranged wife Barbara's behavior, however, became increasingly suspicious in the days after the tragedy. Prosecutors said that as her husband lay dying in the hospital, she skipped visiting him and instead hired a hairstylist to make up her hair for $500. Barbara, according to prosecutors, paid divorce lawyer Miguel Martinez to arrange the hit on her husband. The alleged hitman in the case, identified in court as Paul Prosano, was not charged for George's murder.
Barbara, meanwhile, absconded and hid for years in Puerto Rico. Nearly seven months after Martinez was convicted in the killing and 18 years after George's death, Barbara was finally arrested in November 2008. George's niece, at Barbara's sentencing hearing in June 2010, recounted that "Barbara occasionally smirked at me as I mourned and wept." Barbara, during a series of hearings, also earned the nickname of "black widow" for the dark clothing she wore in court. She pleaded guilty to the crime in 2020 after being charged of manslaughter, conspiracy, and grand larceny. Prosecutors eventually sought a plea deal in her case because they feared that their circumstantial case would be difficult to prove in court.