The former Janis Kay Sell was a bookkeeper and real estate agent when she met Charles Parnell in 1975. She was 35 and he was 69, but love (or something) nevertheless blossomed, for they were married that December in Reno, Nevada. They lived in rural Trinity County in northern California.
Although Charles had never purchased, nor even shown an interest in, life insurance during his previous marriage of 41 years, Janis immediately began taking out insurance policies for Charles, eventually totaling $300,000 worth; six months’ premiums cost her $600, which was more than a month’s income for her at the time. And “cost her” is indeed accurate, because she paid the premiums herself, and the applications and policies were all sent to her mailing address instead of the post office box where Charles got his mail.
And she also literally “took out” the policies, because Janis admitted later that she signed his name to the policy applications. She did this, she testified, because he told her to do so, and she “just thought that was the way to do it.” On the other hand, except for her statement that he told her to take out the policies, there was no evidence that he ever even knew they were in effect.
Less than three months later, at about midnight, they were driving in a pickup truck on twisty Highway 299, the only major state road through Trinity County, high above the Trinity River. What happened next was never conclusively determined. All that is known for sure is that Charles was driving and Janis was the passenger when the truck went off the road and catapulted down the cliff to the river far below.
Sometime later, a passing motorist found Janis along the roadside “waving her hands, and screaming that her husband was over the bluff.” A police officer who arrived at the scene, however, found no skid marks where the pickup would have left the road, and observed Janis to be calm, without apparent injuries other than scrape marks not deep enough to draw blood.
In lowering themselves over the cliff, the police eventually found that the vehicle fell almost 30 feet before striking anything, then tumbled end over end several hundred feet before coming to rest near the river. One of the officers later testified that it would have been impossible for a 36 year old woman with no climbing gear, under adverse weather conditions, at night, to have ascended from perhaps two hundred feet down the cliff up to the roadway.
There was also the small problem of how she first managed to get out of the car. Because the car became airborne almost immediately after it left the road, another expert later testified that in the moment between when Janis was “startled” (to use her own words) by the vehicle going off the shoulder and when it went over the cliff, she did not have time to get out of the vehicle. That, and the absence of skid marks, suggested that the truck was moving only 10 to 15 miles per hour, or even less, when it left the road. The evidence also was not clear whether Charles had been killed in the fall or was dead before the car fell.
Surprisingly, Trinity County authorities did not immediately pursue a criminal investigation. Instead, when Janis applied for her insurance money, the company’s investigator began poking around and turned up all of the “unusual” circumstances, especially surrounding how the policies had been obtained. This eventually led to Janis’ indictment for murder, but she was ultimately acquitted by a jury.
This, in turn, led to a lawsuit by the widow Parnell against the insurance company for its failure to pay her the money; in California, the failure to do so can lead to large additional damages. The civil jury returned an odd verdict, however; it said that Janis had not suffered any actual harm by the insurance company’s refusal to pay, but pinned punitive damages of $900,000 on the company. Because these two conclusions were apparently inconsistent, the trial judge threw out the $900,000 verdict and ordered a new trial for the insurance company. An appellate court later upheld his decision.
One thing that may have confused that second jury was a statute in California at the time saying that acquittal in a criminal case for murder or manslaughter was conclusive proof of the lawfulness of the person’s death in a later civil trial. The trial judge had instructed the jury about this law, and the jury had tried to follow it.
Now it may only have been a coincidence. But shortly after the court of appeal sent Janis Parnell’s case back for another trial, the California Legislature repealed that statute.
Frank Zotter, Jr. is a Ukiah attorney.
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