Wives have historically used a great assortment of methods to kill their husbands from poison to guns to knives to cars. However, Raynella Dossett-Leath is under suspicion of murdering Knoxville District Attorney Ed Dossett by first drugging him and then trampling him to death with his own cattle. The allegations have come to light after prosecutors sought to exhume the body — and Dossett-Leath awaits trial for the murder of her second husband.
Dossett’s death seemed both tragic and straightforward when he was discovered in his pasture in 1992 with his breastbone and ribs broken. There was a hoof print on his chest and it seemed obvious that he was trampled to death by accident.
There is now great suspicion, however, that the 44-year-old was first drugged and then murdered in a stage accident. Dossett was dying of cancer and had a morphine pump implanted for pain. At the time of his death, he had a lethal level of morphine in his system.
Dossett-Leath is fighting the exhumation as “abuse of the corpse and . . . an insult to the dignity of the family.” This argument would be more compelling if she was not awaiting trial in the 2003 alleged murder of her second husband, David Leath. He was shot in the head while sleeping in their bed and an autopsy found painkillers and antidepressants in his system that had not been prescribed. Dossett-Leath is a nurse.
Dossett-Leath insists that she took her husband out into the pasture at his request. But the toxicology report “showed a level of morphine that is so extraordinarily high it is unlikely that any human could function in an ambulatory manner or continue to live.”
Presumably, the prosecutors believe that Dosett-Leath first overdosed her husband and them led the animals over him.
These are not the only run-ins with the law for Dosett-Leath. Raynella Dossett-Leath is charged with the 2003 murder of David Leath. He was shot in the head on March 13, 2003 as he slept in the couple’s bed. The death was In 1995, she was charged with attempted murder. She was accused of firing several shots at Steve Walker inside her barn in what investigators believe was an argument over a child who may have been her first husband’s illegitimate son.
For the full story, here