Woman convicted in plot to kill husband is freed from Illinois prison

Barbara Jean Boyle is free after serving 25 years in prison for the 1979 killing of her husband in a murder-for-profit plot with St. Louis dentist and multiple murderer Glennon Engleman.

Boyle, 67, was sentenced to 50 years in prison for the murder of Ronald Gusewelle, 33. Under sentencing laws in effect at the time, Boyle was eligible for parole after serving half of the sentence.

Prosecutors alleged that Boyle and Engleman plotted for her to marry someone with money and then kill him for an inheritance and life insurance. She married Ronald Gusewelle in 1976. His parents, Arthur and Vernita Gusewelle, were shot to death in their farm home near Edwardsville in November 1977.

Less than two years later, in March 1979, Ronald Gusewelle was shot and beaten to death at his rural Edwardsville home and his body left in the trunk of a parked car in East St. Louis.

In one of the area's most sensational trials of its time, Boyle's attorney, famed criminal lawyer F. Lee Bailey, faced off in April 1985 with legendary local prosecutor Robert E.L. Trone. A jury found Boyle guilty of her husband's murder but acquitted her of the murders of his parents.

Engleman surprised even his own attorneys by pleading guilty two months later of the murders of all three of the Gusewelles. He was sentenced to three life prison terms. At the time, he was already serving life sentences for two Missouri murders and was a suspect in others going back to 1958. He died in prison in 1999 at the age of 71.

An Engleman accomplice, Robert W. Handy, pleaded guilty of conspiracy to commit murder in the three Gusewelle slayings and was sentenced to 14 years.