Jeff and Jill Cahill had been having serious financial problems and were headed towards divorce, legally separated but living in the same house until Jill could afford to move out. When Jill Cahill was leaving to return home after visiting with her family for a week, she turned to her sister with a grin, and said: "If Jeff kills me, you can have all my things". A few days later, she was in a coma in a Syracuse hospital, her skull shattered with an aluminum baseball bat.
Fearing an assault charge, Jeff slipped into her hospital room and gave her a lethal does of potassium cyanide. It took the jury only five hours to find him . . . guilty.