Beyond Suspicion aka Appointment for a Killing True Story

2011-04-14T18:27:00.000-07:00

Dr. Glennon Engleman was a St. Louis dentist who killed 7 people for their life insurance and unpaid dentist bills. He used a variety of means including car bombs and shooting. He collected the insurance by killing his former male patients, and then wooing their widowed wives to give him money to invest for business purposes. Former female patients who didn't pay their bills were just killed. He was eventually caught by a would-be female victim who wore an undercover microphone. He was sentenced to three life terms.

Photo of Barbara Guswelle

2011-04-14T18:14:00.000-07:00

Barbara Guswelle convicted in the murder of her husband for the insurance money

Dr. Glennon Engleman True Story

2009-04-28T18:26:00.000-07:00

THE DOWN SIDE for Dr. Glennon Engleman is those five life sentences for murder. But on a brighter note, Corbin Bernsen is playing him in the TV movie.
Engleman, the former St. Louis dentist, was credited at his various trials with using his sex appeal to lure women into murder plots. But photos showed him to be short and slight, with a paunch, round shoulders and thinning hair. Bernsen, of course, is the tall, blond and handsome Arnie Becker of "L.A. Law."

But even though they're not look-alikes (except for the thinning hair), Bernsen turns out to be a good choice to play Engleman in "Beyond Suspicion" (8 p.m. Monday on Channel 5). He pours his most snake-like charm into the role of Dr. Stan Benderman, who kills for profit until his browbeaten wife (Markie Post) helps to bring him to justice. The credits say "Beyond Suspicion" was "inspired by" Susan Crain Bakos' book "Appointment for Murder," but it doesn't stray all that far from the incredible but true Engleman case, which transpired over more than a decade beginning in the late 1970s. Engleman was eventually convicted of two murders for profit and pleaded guilty of three; his most common M.O. was to set up a female friend in marriage, then bump off her husband and split her inheritance.

Bernsen's Stan Benderman is the definition of sleazy, from his greased-back hair to his palm-reading mother. Neither he nor Mom (played by Bernsen's real mother, Jeanne Cooper) appreciates his beautiful wife, Joyce (Post). For her part, Joyce defends Stan from charges of womanizing, until she catches him in his dental chair with Gloria (Suzanne Barnes).

Little does Joyce know that office hanky-panky isn't all Stan and Gloria have been up to. Already, he's murdered her in-laws and is just waiting for the will to be probated before he knocks off her husband for his inheritance, which he and Gloria will split. (The fact: Engleman pleaded guilty to killing Arthur and Vernita Gusewelle and later their son, Ronald, accounting for three of his five life sentences. Ronald's wife, Barbara, is serving a 50-year prison term.)

So Joyce leaves Stan, but he keeps coming around to see their son and share her bed whenever he can. And on the night he blows Gloria's husband away, he confides, "I killed a man."

Joyce can't get the police to take an interest until a dental lab owner who is suing Stan is killed by a car bomb and the feds join the case. (The fact: Engleman was convicted of killing Sophie Marie Barrera, who owned a dental lab in south St. Louis, by blowing up her car. He was also convicted of killing Peter Halm, the husband of his dental assistant.)

Kindly Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent Ron McNally (Kelsey Grammer) believes Joyce's evidence and recruits her to set him up to confess on tape, leading to the movie's satisfying climax. (The fact: Ruth Jolley Engleman helped authorities record their conversations while she and Engleman were in bed together. She is now living under protective custody at an undisclosed location, an end trailer to the movie reports.)

Post, even in cutoffs and tank top, is far too classy for Joyce, described as "a little hellcat from the projects," but she's easy to root for. And Bernsen is appropriately scary - when he tells his lover, "I like killing, Gloria," we certainly believe him.

"Beyond Suspicion" carries a violence warning and also features some moderately graphic sex, notably in the opening scene; it's definitely not for kids. But adult audiences, particularly St. Louisans who recall the case, are likely to find it engrossing. What made John F. Kennedy the man he was? "JFK: Reckless Youth" (8 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday on Channel 2) spends four hours exploring his formative years, from daredevil competition with brother Joe through prep school exploits and skirt-chasing to an ill-fated romance with a journalist suspected of being a Nazi spy. Then, of course, there's World War II, when the PT-109 turns his life around and his brother's death makes him the family's reluctant political heir.

Whew. This is quite a story, based on the book by Briton Nigel Hamilton, who views the Kennedys not as American royalty but rather as flawed but fascinating humans.

Witness the Kennedy family life: As portrayed here, father Joe Sr. (Terry Kinney) is a relentless taskmaster who leads his children in the spooky dinner table chant, "What are Kennedys? Winners!" Mother Rose (Diana Scarwid) is cold and distant, feeling that lighting a candle for her ailing son is just as good as visiting him. Brothers Joe and Jack (Loren Dean and Patrick Dempsey) are so competitive that both might be willing to die to win.

Jack spends his youth fighting back from feelings of inferiority, whether from Irish slurs or from a school where his brother is the model student and he is constantly on thin ice. His intelligence is obvious, but he hides it under his charm, and he refuses to act with caution, whether climbing out of a hospital bed ("it may be leukemia") to party with friends or falling in love with married, politically suspect journalist Inga Arvad. (He finally drops her, but only after J. Edgar Hoover gets them on tape - shades of Bobby and Marilyn!)

A huge chunk of "Reckless Youth" is devoted to Jack's affair with Inga; another chunk follows his war exploits in the South Pacific, culminating in an unrealistic re-creation of the PT-109 incident that made him a hero. Both these episodes go on too long and make the movie drag.

Far more interesting is Jack's first political campaign, a race for Congress from Boston, which ends the movie. When Jack finally faces down his father, it's hard not to cheer. I'd have been happier, though, if I hadn't known where politics would lead this vital young man.

Dempsey is a lively, charismatic Jack, dashing in tennis whites or Navy uniform. Everyone else, family and friends, tended to blur together for me into one great, big Boston accent. "JFK: Reckless Youth" has interesting moments, but only true Kennedy buffs may want to hang around for all four hours.

Is the title "A Family Torn Apart" a play on words? Actually, the family is cut up with a kitchen knife and brained with an ax in the "shocking true story" (8 p.m. Sunday on Channel 5).

Neil Patrick Harris ("Doogie Howser") and Johnny Galecki ("Roseanne") are adopted brothers - one good, the other bad. When Mom and Dad are found extremely dead, guess who's suspected?

But, as Harris says in the movie's opening, "Things are not always what they seem." When a family friend and lawyer (Gregory Harrison) lends a sympathetic ear, the good brother (Harris) begins to spin a story of mental and physical abuse by parents for whom adoption didn't turn out to be as idyllic an experience as they hoped.

Linda Kelsey and John M. Jackson are the parents, growing increasingly nutty in extended flashbacks; Kelsey in particular goes over the top, turning her character into a cartoon. But Harris, playing a 17-year-old (will he never grow up?), is extremely controlled and effective, making the story he tells all the more chilling. And Galecki is so sympathetic as the bad brother that I was sorry to see from the obligatory docudrama end trailer that his character is currently in prison.

In other words, "A Family Torn Apart" is much better than it sounds. But about that title. . . .

Beyond Suspicion aka Appointment for Killing

Beyond Suspicion aka Appointment for a Killing True Story

Photo of Barbara Guswelle

Dr. Glennon Engleman True Story