Millionaire family were slaughtered on Easter Sunday after dad discovered son's lie

Born into a wealthy upper-middle class family, Dana Ewell had everything a young man could wish for. But he wanted more. His obsession with his father’s wealth left three dead in a gruesome murder that left police baffled by a hard-to-explain yellowish residue on the bullets.

Dana was studying for a business degree at Santa Clara University, but lied to classmates about his family’s wealth, claiming that he was a self-made millionaire. He even convinced journalists at a Santa Clara newspaper about his “business success” and the paper ran a glowing profile listing his imaginary achievements.

But Dana’s father Dale, who had served in the USAF before amassing a fortune with several savvy investments, including a company that sold light aircraft, was unimpressed when he heard about his son’s lies. According to relatives, Dale was considering cutting Dana out of his will.

Dana almost certainly knew about his father’s plans as he spent the Easter weekend with his girlfriend's family in April 1992. Meanwhile Dale, his wife Glee and their daughter Tiffany had spent that weekend at the family’s beach house in the exclusive Pajaro Dunes area.

The family separated on the way home, with Glee and Tiffany making the two-hour journey back to Sunnyside by car, while Dale, 59, chose to fly his own light aircraft part of the way before picking up his car at an airfield near their home. But the trio’s enjoyable Easter weekend turned out to be their last.

Glee and Tiffany arrived home first on Easter Sunday (April 19, 1992), and were killed as soon as they walked into the house in Fresno, California. Tiffany is believed to have been the first to die. The 24-year-old Fresno State graduate student was killed by a single gunshot in the head. Her 57-year-old mother was shot four times.

It was around half an hour later when Dale’s car pulled into the drive. The killer was still lying in wait for him and as Dale opened the connecting door from the garage he was also shot in the head.

The victims’ bodies were not found until two days later, when housekeeper Juanita Avinita arrived for her regular visit on April 19. She was horrified to discover the three corpses as she entered the Ewells’ home. “You don’t expect to find something like that — It’s pretty scary," she told Oxygen’s true crime documentary, In Ice Cold Blood.

Investigators noticed some unusual details about the crime almost immediately. The killer had been an excellent shot, with only one bullet missing its target. They had also taken the time to collect the shell casings and early signs pointed towards a professional hit. While the house had been ransacked, Chris Curtis, homicide detective at the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office, felt that the burglary had been staged to conceal the real motive for the murders.

Multiple lines of enquiry were investigated; Glee Ewell had acted as a translator for the CIA in the 1950s, and Dale had been involved in an aircraft sales business with a California man named Frank Lambe who was later convicted of drug smuggling. There were also reports that Dale had been involved in a major real estate deal that went sour - with several investors losing millions of dollars.

However, as Chris pointed out, the most likely suspects in a murder case are often the closest to the victim. “We learned from the housekeeper that they had a son that was away at school,” he said. “Dana lived on campus at the University of Santa Clara.”

In fact, Dana had been with his girlfriend’s family at their beach house, but her father, who worked for the FBI, organised a private plane to ferry the “visibly shaken” 21-year-old back to Fresno. Detectives immediately noticed that Dana was not acting like a typical bereaved relative.

That odd behaviour only intensified at the reading of Dale’s will. The wealthy California businessman had left some $8million (£6m), but Dana was told he would not be able to access any the money or property it until he was 30 years old.

“He immediately slammed his hand on the desk and yelled, ‘Why did my father do this to me?’” Curtis said.

The fact that Dana had moved back into the family home immediately after the killings — even though his sister and parents’ blood still stained the walls – was another red flag to detectives. Their suspicions only intensified after a college friend of Dana’s, Joel Radovcich, moved in with him. A paper trail of payments from Dana to Radovcich only heightened their suspicions.

The breakthrough in the case came when another friend of the pair told police that Radovcich had a package delivered to his address and instructed him not to open it. However the curious friend had peeked inside the parcel. “Joel had ordered some books," Curtis said. "One was on being a hitman, and the other one was how to make a silencer.”

The instructions for the home-made silencer – composed of cut-up tennis balls – provided the explanation for that mysterious yellow-green fuzz adhering to the fatal bullets.

Dana, Radovcich, and an accomplice who had helped conceal the murder weapon were arrested. Their trial started on Dec. 16, 1997, with the accomplice being granted immunity in exchange for testifying against the two conspirators. In May 1998, the pair were found guilty of the murders of Dale, Glee and Tiffany Ewell in an effort to inherit the family’s $8 million estate.

Radovcich, who actually pulled the trigger, narrowly avoided the death penalty and is serving a life sentence. Dana Ewell, now 55, remains in Corcoran State Prison serving a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole