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Dateline Season 26 Episode 11 titled “The Favorite Son,” featured the shocking murder case of Joseph and Olga Connell on Oxygen.
Joseph had a feud with her sister Kelly over their family engagement ring, which led the police to believe that she had murdered her brother and his wife. But as it turns out, someone else took advantage of Connell's feud and conveniently murdered Joseph and his new wife.
The official synopsis of the episode reads as follows:
A small-business owner and his bride are murdered shortly after their wedding; police suspect a family feud is the cause.
Here are 7 chilling details about the murder of Joseph and Olga Connell.
Dateline: 7 details about Joseph and Olga Connell's murder case
1) Who was Dateline victim Joseph Connell?
Joseph was the middle one of the children in the Connell family and her mother Keller's favorite child. He spent most of his childhood in the Connell's Delaware home, where he rode bikes and fish.
As a teen, Joseph liked to play pranks on others and was a notorious child who often liked to party with his friends.
2) Dateline victim Joseph was once sentenced to seven years in prison
When Joseph was 29 years old, he found himself on the bad side of the law. One night, he was out with his girlfriend and friends to party when they got involved with a group of men in a parking lot.
He took out an unloaded shotgun from his truck, which cost him seven years of his life. When police arrived on the scene, he was charged with gun charges and resisting arrest and was sentenced to seven years in prison
.3) Joseph changed his life after prison and met Olga
As told by his mother on Dateline, Joseph was a changed human when he got out of jail. He set up C&S Auto, an auto-repair shop, with his business partner Christopher Rivers.
He later met a Russian woman named Olga online, and the couple started a relationship. According to his mother, Keller:
“She [Olga] was so different. That girl was so kind and she was thoughtful.”
4) What was the Connell's engagement ring family feud?
Joseph's sister Kelly was given a beautiful diamond ring worth $20,000 by their family's matriarch, but Joseph wanted that ring for himself as he was planning to propose to Olga for marriage.
He conspired with his mother, who 'borrowed' the ring from her daughter and replaced its diamonds with cubic zirconia for her son.
On Dateline, she admitted that she had no guilt for this action:
“I’m not sorry for it. I didn’t mean to hurt anybody. I just did it out of wanting to do something good for Joe.”
5) How did Josephy and Olga die?
Just months after their wedding, in September 2013, the couple was returning home after celebrating Olga's birthday. When Olga was about to unlock their front door, the couple were ambushed and were shot multiple times until they dropped dead to their deaths.
New Castle County police detective Jamie Leonard concluded that there were at least two gunmen on the scene because there were 20 shots fired from two different guns.
6) Dateline victim Joseph's sister Kelly was the primary suspect
On investigation, it was later found out that Kelly learned about her mother's ring swapping, and she was furious with her brother. She even sent a threatening text to Olga on her wedding day. Joseph was certain that it would be Kelly if anything happened to her.
However, Joseph's mother confirmed that Kelly would not do something like this, and footage from her location showed that she was at her home when the murder happened.
7) Who killed Dateline victims Joseph and Olga Connell?
After the police found a discrepancy in Joseph's business partner Chris' statement, they looked into him and found that he was an opioid addict who was drawing large sums of money from their business. In addition, they both also had $1 million life insurance policies and listed each other as beneficiaries.
It was later found that Chris contacted one of his drug dealers, Joshua Bey, and paid him $60,000 to murder the couple. He was later sentenced to two life terms in prison.
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