The Jack in the Box Murder CATCHING THE KILLERS

BEVERLY MCCALLUM WANTED HER BOYFRIEND DEAD-AND ENLISTED HER DAUGHTER AND A FRIEND TO KILL HIM

- CHRISTINE PELISEK

On the afternoon of May 8, 2002, a blueberry farmer in Michigan was driving on his land when he spotted scorched trees and the charred remains of a man crumpled in an open footlocker. Police gathered evidence at the site, tried to identify the body with dental records and followed countless leads, but to no avail. In a last-ditch effort, in 2004 authorities asked a communications professor to make a documentary, titled Jack in the Box, to help solve the homicide-but the case went cold.

Nearly a decade later Ottawa County Sheriff's Office detective Robert Donker had finished work for the day when he received a pair of emails. "The first one said, 'I'm scarred'-I believe she meant 'scared'-and the one after was 'I've got information about a case," recalls Donker, now retired. The messages were sent by Dineane Ducharme, who had seen the documentary and told the detective that she thought the remains belonged to 37-year-old Robert Caraballo, her mother Beverly McCallum's boyfriend. Furthermore she suspected her mom-who she claimed had recently cheated her out of an inheritance from a deceased relative-was also Caraballo's killer.