Bob Bashara (Photo from Free Press livestream)
An online dating site may helped do in convicted murderer Bob Bashara.
George Hunter of The Detroit News reports that two jurors in the trial in which Bashara was convicted of killing his wife Jane, said that one of the strongest reasons they voted to convict was the testimony of Lorna Beth Riikonen, who had met handyman Joe Gentz on an online dating site. The jurors talked to the media Tuesday.
Prosecutors theorized that Bashara had hired Gentz to kill his wife.
And during trial, Riikonen testified that she had met Gentz on an online dating site, and he told her someone named “Basher Basher” was going to pay him to kill someone.
“Gentz had just spilled his guts,” jury foreman Bill Mohney of Wyandotte said, according to The News. “In my opinion, he was trying to impress her.”
Juror Regis Johnson of Detroit, an unemployed marketing executive, said evidence of phone calls Bashara made to Gentz in the weeks leading up to the killing was also convincing, the Detroit News reported.
“Mr. Bashara had called Mr. Gentz 22 times before Mrs. Bashara became missing,” Johnson said. “So it was showing they had some type of relationship.”
The jurors said that the unflattering picture prosecutors portrayed of Bashara as a cheating manipulator, who betrayed his family, played into decision to convict.
Bashara is sentenced to life in prison without parole.
