Her Sister-In-Law Killed Her Amid A Family Inheritance Fight
On June 15, 1999, 31-year-old Kelly Fuss of Stone Mountain, Georgia, was found dead on the kitchen floor of her home. She’d been stabbed over a dozen times, and her murder has since been attributed to a nasty family feud over inheritance.
That day, her husband, David Fuss, arrived home to the grisly scene. Kelly was covered in blood, but when he attempted to call the police, he realized his phone line had been cut.
Authorities ultimately arrived at 10:30 a.m., and David was waiting for them outside. There were no signs of forced entry, yet Kelly’s car, a Mustang, was missing from the driveway.
As for Kelly’s slaying, retired Dekalb County PD detective Brian Harris said, “I have seen many crime scenes. That is the top as far as bloody crime scenes.”
“There were at least 20 to 30 stab wounds. Defensive blows to her arms. She had stab wounds to her chest as well as her back. There was blood all over the kitchen [and] blood splatter on the walls.”
Chris Harvey, a second retired detective of Dekalb County PD, claimed the evidence suggested that Kelly was in the bathroom when the “initial encounter” occurred and proceeded to “put up a heck of a fight.”
She and her killer seemingly traveled down a hallway toward the kitchen, which is where Kelly was “overcome.”
“Whoever did this was angry. And when you have a lot of anger, in my experience, it’s someone that knows you, or it’s domestic related.”
David wasn’t home at the time of his wife’s death. He told officers he’d received a call from his sister, Margaret Branch, who asked him to meet up at their late mother’s residence.
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So, he left at approximately 9:00 a.m., but after going to his mother’s house, Margaret never showed up. David wound up heading back home and stopping for cigarettes at a convenience store on his way, which has been confirmed by store staff. Then, he discovered Kelly was dead.
David immediately suspected Margaret, as well as his other sister, Melissa Erives, had been responsible for his wife’s murder. Ever since their mother, Jackie, died, they had been arguing over inheritance money and were taking each other to court.
The police launched their investigation, which revealed the Fuss family had been dealing with sibling tension for years.
They learned that David, his sister Melissa, and his brother, Charles, had all been adopted by their parents, Jackie and Bill. This meant that Margaret, their eldest sibling, was Jackie and Bill’s only biological child, a fact that caused a lot of strife.
“Margaret enjoyed being an only child. She was very resentful of the additions to the family each time it happened,” remembered Kelly’s friend Nancy Waters.
“From what I understood from David, Margaret would tell all of them, ‘You’re just adopted. They’re not your parents. They’re my parents,” added David’s biological mother, Joyce Burge.
Additionally, the police realized that Kelly’s murder wasn’t the first in the Fuss family. Their mother, Jackie, had also been killed at 72 years old.
“It is very, very, very rare to have a homicide happen twice in one family,” Harris noted.
Jackie’s murder came to light on June 21, 1996. The police had been asked to perform a welfare check at her house when they found her dead in her son Charles’ bedroom.
Charles, who’d been diagnosed with schizophrenia, had lived with both his parents as an adult. Then, after his father Bill passed away in 1993, he resided with just his mother.
Jackie’s cause of death was a blow to the head with an axe. Charles wound up confessing to murdering his mother, and he was admitted to a state mental hospital. This left Jackie’s home unoccupied for three years.
But while the Fuss siblings had already been feuding, things intensified after Bill’s death. They began fighting over inheritance, including cash, jewelry, and properties, which had a value of around $500,000.
“After the father died, the children came home thinking that they would start getting all of this inheritance. However, Jackie decided not to divvy out any inheritance,” Nancy explained.
So, their mother’s murder marked a major turning point for the Fuss siblings. Once Jackie was dead, Margaret was supposedly “very adamant” that she deserved the entire inheritance sum because she was Jackie and Bill’s only biological child.
All of this animosity led David to believe that Margaret had lured him to their mother’s house on the morning his wife was killed to get him out of the way. Apparently, Margaret accused David of stealing jewelry and other items from Jackie’s estate, but he insisted he didn’t get anything.
Soon, other evidence started to corroborate his theory. Witnesses spotted Kelly’s Mustang being dropped off a few blocks away from her home. They reportedly saw a man exit the vehicle and hop into a white pickup truck with two women.
The man was later identified as Joel Domingues, and one of the women was his girlfriend, Melissa Erives. Strangely, after they began dating, they found out that they were actually biological siblings.
“The odds of that occurring are astronomical. It’s one chance in two million. Kelly had married into this very exceptionally dysfunctional family,” pointed out Harris.
The other woman in the pickup truck was Margaret, and in the end, Joel told authorities what had really happened. According to him, Margaret had called David on June 15, 1999, to get him out of his home. That way, she could head inside and determine if David had taken any items from their mother’s estate.
Margaret also asked Joel and Melissa to go with her. Melissa stated she “wasn’t too keen” on going to David’s residence but claimed “there was no talking her out of it.”
“Margaret went in; we waited in the truck, maybe, I figured, 15 to 30 minutes max. I got out, and I started to go to the house… before I could even knock on the door, she came out… and she did have blood on her,” Joel recalled.
Melissa told a slightly different version of events, saying that Joel had actually gone inside Kelly and David’s house. Police later found blood on his sock, and testing confirmed it belonged to Kelly.
All three individuals, Margaret, Joel, and Melissa, were charged with burglary and murder. Yet Margaret and Melissa accepted plea deals in September 2000, so they were each given 10-year prison sentences and released in 2009.
Part of Melissa’s plea deal involved testifying against Joel, who went on trial in March 2001. In the end, he was convicted of Kelly’s murder and sentenced to life behind bars, with an additional 20 years.
Joel was discovered dead in his prison cell in February 2018. His cause of death was an apparent suicide.
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