The tragic case of Susan Monica
The police searched a rural farm in Wimer, Oregon.
The farm was hidden within a forest, and a local man had recently disappeared from that location.
Then, the police stumbled upon something far more gruesome. They found skeletal remains of a human leg just outside a pigsty.
The farm owner, Susan, had told one of her farm workers earlier, “I would like to see how fast my pigs can get rid of a human body.”
“I do not value human life very much. The only thing wrong with this planet is there’s people on it. If it weren’t for us, all the other animals, dodo birds and whatever else, would still be here.” — Susan
Susan Had a Good Life
Susan Monica, born Steven Buchanan, had a pretty good life.
Susan was a former soldier who served in the Navy during the Vietnam War before being honorably discharged. Then Susan started living as a woman.
She went on to purchase a 20-acre land nestled in the woods in the small town of Wimer, Oregon, USA.
For the next few months, Susan transformed the 20 acres into a tidy farm where she kept chickens, pigs, etc. But she soon realized it was hard for her to maintain the farm independently. So, she started hiring transient people to work on her farm for short periods.
Most of her workers were people struggling to find work elsewhere. That was either because they lived a transient lifestyle or had criminal records. But Susan could care less.
Over the next 20 years, Susan hired many people, and she never heard from these people again after they moved away.
Susan Noticed a Car Approaching Her Farm
In January 2014, sixty-six-year-old Susan saw a car coming towards her farm.
The car pulled into her driveway. Then, two young men and a young woman got out. The people said they were looking for their father, Robert Haney.
In 2013, Susan had placed an ad looking for extra help on her farm. And the children’s fifty-six-year-old father, who was a handyman and carpenter, was interested.
Robert told his children that he was going to stay and work at Susan’s farm for a bit of cash.
Robert always contacted his children at least once every two months, but now it had been a long time without hearing from him.
Since he had no cell phone or permanent address, his children had no other way to contact him.
Susan immediately knew who Robert was.
Susan told the children that she had hired Robert. Robert was nice at first. He worked very hard, and he was reserved and quiet. But Robert suddenly changed.
He began drinking heavily, not working much, and spending much of the day ranting and raving outside his trailer about how he wanted revenge on someone.
Susan soon found out that one of Robert’s sons was assaulted, and Robert felt guilty for not being there to protect his son. So Robert turned to alcohol and became vengeful.
Robert went to Susan one day. He handed her an envelope full of cash and asked her to take care of his dog for a while. Then Robert went away, leaving a lot of his things behind.
Robert Was Reported Missing
Robert’s children filed a missing person report for their father.
However, it was going to be very difficult to locate their father because he lived a transient lifestyle with no cell phone and permanent address.
The authorities traced Robert’s food stamps card. They discovered that it had been last used a month earlier at a Walmart located a few minutes from Susan’s Farm.
Then, they reviewed the security footage from Walmart and saw that Susan was the one using Robert’s card.
The authorities then obtained a search warrant for Susan’s farm.
They arrived at Susan’s farm and questioned her about the card.
Susan claimed that Robert gave her the card and the pin to buy food for his dog in case she ran out of the cash he gave her.
Meanwhile, a police officer who was searching around the farm stumbled upon something gruesome on the ground. He found skeletal remains of a human leg just outside of a pigsty.
So the police took Susan down to the station with them.
The Police Questioned Susan About Their Findings
The investigators asked Susan if anyone had died on her property.
The story that Susan went on to tell was just horrific and unexpected.
Susan said that she didn’t lie about Robert leaving her farm. But she had left out that Robert had returned to the farm after some time.
However, Susan was unaware of that.
She had woken up one morning and gone to feed her pigs. But the pigs that would normally be lying down and lazing around were all awake and converged to one part of the pigsty.
The pigs formed a circle around something. It was as if they were all trying to look at something on the ground.
As Susan got closer to the pigs, she realized they were not just looking at something on the ground. They were eating something on the ground.
Susan pushed the pigs aside. And to her surprise, Robert was right there in the middle of the floor.
Robert’s intestines were out.
It was as if the pigs were disemboweling him.
Susan tried to pick up Robert and move him, but Robert’s body was almost split in two. So, Susan shot Robert dead as an act of mercy to end his suffering. Susan left Robert’s body in the pigsty for her pigs to continue feasting on him.
She returned three days later, picked up the bits of his body that the pigs hadn’t eaten, put them in bags, and tossed them into her barn on top of a trash pile.
Susan claimed she didn’t tell anyone about the incident because she was afraid that either her pigs would be slaughtered or people would stop buying her cannibal pigs.
Susan Told the Authorities About Stephen
Susan also told the police that the same thing had happened to Stephen Delicino in 2012.
Stephen had worked for Susan for a while. He was a good worker at first until he also suddenly changed.
Susan decided to confront Stephen.
The two got into a fight.
At some point, a gun went off, and Stephen fell to the ground in the middle of the pigsty. Susan’s pigs suddenly surrounded Stephen and started eating him.
Susan later collected Stephen’s remains and buried them.
The Aftermath
Nonetheless, the authorities believed that Susan had a very short temper, so she intentionally shot Stephen and Robert.
Then she fed them to her pigs.
The police recovered the remains of Robert and Stephen. Then, they tested them.
Medical examinations showed that Robert’s legs were dismembered with an axe. Stephen suffered three to four headshot wounds, making it difficult to believe that he was accidentally shot.
So Susan was convicted of two counts of murder, two counts of abusing a corpse, and identity theft.
She was sentenced to a minimum of 50 years in prison.
Sources: Wikipedia.org, MrBallen