Jack Watkins, a widower from Reisterstown, fell in love with a much younger woman. But when he disappeared more than a decade ago, few people noticed.
About the same time, in May 1996, authorities in Northern Virginia were trying to identify a 111-pound man who had been found drugged and strangled. The body had been packed into a black steamer trunk and left beside a trash can near the Appalachian Trail. For seven years, no one claimed him.
Loudoun County, Va., detectives finally made a match in 2003, and the body was that of 76-year-old Watkins.
Incredibly, prosecutors say, the suspect hadn't gotten far: His one-time paramour, Nancy Jean Siegel, was still in Maryland, cashing Watkins' Social Security checks years after his disappearance.
Today, Siegel, 58, is scheduled to appear in federal court in Baltimore in a case that prosecutors describe as the cold-blooded killing of her older boyfriend. She has been in prison for more than three years awaiting trial.
In documents filed yesterday, federal prosecutors say Siegel plans to plead guilty to theft of government property, bank and wire fraud, and identity theft. But authorities say she does not plan plead guilty to conspiracy to commit murder, a charge in the original indictment.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Christine Manuelian and Tamera Fine object to Siegel's plan, arguing in the new court documents that if she does not admit murder conspiracy, she will not be held fully accountable for Watkins' death.
"Clearly - as defense counsel has already admitted - she seeks to gain strategic advantage," the prosecutors wrote, "disrupting the government's ability to present its case in a comprehensive and comprehensible manner."
The U.S. attorney's office in Baltimore argues that the killing of Watkins was especially egregious, the culmination of a two-decades-long scheme to bilk friends and husbands - Siegel has had at least three - out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Siegel's attorney did not return a call for comment yesterday. Some of those who know Siegel call her deeply troubled, a Baltimore native who once danced on the Buddy Deane television show, lost her father at an early age and developed a serious gambling addiction, court records show. She maintained her innocence for years, according to her attorneys.
Prosecutors have a more sinister description of the wife and mother of two. They say Siegel lured friends and husbands like a siren, only to ruin their good credit and drain their bank accounts.
