Susan Lee Russo: 'Black Widow' who paid BF to kill Navy chief husband dies in prison
CHOWCHILLA, CALIFORNIA: Susan Lee Russo who was convicted in 1994 for conspiring and murdering her US Navy officer husband dies in prison at the age of 67. Russo had allegedly paid her boyfriend $100 to have her husband David Russo murdered and dispose of his body so that she could collect benefits as his surviving spouse.
Russo was imprisoned and was serving time at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla. She had been receiving medical treatment at a local facility since August 16, according to The Sun. Russo let her boyfriend and an accomplice inside her home, where they shot her husband while the couple's children slept in another room, police said. Prosecutors then dubbed Susan Lee Russo as 'Black Widow'.
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Russo's boyfriend Jason Andrews and an accomplice Bobby Morriss shot the US Navy Chief petty Officer David Russo in the house while her children Jamie and Devin were sleeping in the next room. "I saw my father get shot. I heard the bullet go through the pillow,” the couple's daughter Jamie Guarino said years after the killing of her father. The hired killers disposed of the body of the Navy officer, who was serving at Lemoore Naval Air Station south of Fresno at the time.
(AP/The Sun video screengrab)
Prosecutors then found that Russo was seeking to collect a nearly $1 million insurance policy from her husband's death. On October 15, 1996, Black Widow was sentenced to life without parole in state prison. In 2012 she claimed she was battered by her husband in a clemency petition. She wrote, "In my thinking, I was protecting myself and my children from an abusive husband and father." Despite there being evidence that Russo was abused, Former Governor Jerry Brown reduced her sentence in 2017.
However in January 2018, when a parole board revised Russo's case and ruled in favor of freeing her with regard to her abuse claim. Governor Brown shot down that ruling, saying that Russo was still a public safety risk who had "more work to do." The convicted Black Widow died in prison from natural causes at 67 years old. Whilst the coroner's office will determine her official cause of death.
Susan Russo was convicted in 1994 for having her Navy husband murdered and later claimed she was battered by him.