Dateline: Why was Kelly Connell suspected of killing her brother and his wife? Harrowing details of double-homicide, explored

Dateline episode titled The Favorite Son, followed Joseph and Olga Connell, a newly married couple in Delaware, who met an unfortunate end on September 22, 2013, as they were gunned down right in front of their home. The shooter had shot almost 25 rounds of bullets at the couple who had just returned home after celebrating Olga’s birthday.

They had only been married for three months and the destination wedding had taken place in the Virgin Islands. Joseph’s sister Kelly had caused a huge scene at the wedding over a replaced diamond ring that had initially made the law enforcement authorities suspect her for the murder of her brother and his wife.

However, as the investigation proceeded, it became clear that Kelly, though extremely angry at Joseph and Olga, did not kill them. The killer was revealed to be Christopher Rivers, who was Joseph’s business partner.

Let us now explore Joseph and Olga Connell’s murder in detail which was covered in the Dateline episode and why Kelly was the primary suspect in the case.

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Kelly Connell had a bitter feud with Joseph and Olga Connell as shown in Dateline

Things turned sour between Kelly and her brother over a diamond ring that their mother Keller had given to Kelly after she got divorced. However, when Joseph told their mother that he wanted that ring to propose to his girlfriend Olga, Keller planned a way to get the ring back from Kelly and give it to her son.

Joseph then took the diamond ring and after taking out the diamonds to make another ring he filled the original ring with cubic zirconia and gave it back to Kelly. However, when Kelly realized that the ring given back to her was a fake, she was naturally furious and caused a huge scene at the wedding of Joseph and Olga.

She also sent nasty texts to Olga to which Joseph replied with equal rage, and this further dampened their relationship. To make things worse, a robbery happened just weeks after the wedding and a lot of Olga’s jewellery and some family heirlooms that were a present to Olga by her mother were stolen.

The suspicion naturally fell on Kelly and a furious Joseph even went ahead and said to their brother John,

“if anything ever happens to me, Kelly did it.”

He also tried to get a restraining order against Kelly a few months before his death. All of these things led the detectives to Kelly when Olga and Joseph were shot. However, when Kelly was brought in for questioning, she firmly maintained that though she had a strained relationship with her brother, she was never associated with either the robbery or the murders.

Keller, who also had a dampened relationship with Kelly over the ring fiasco, confirmed that though Kelly was mad at them, she could never kill as none of their family members were meant for killing.

It was eventually proven that Kelly did not kill the couple and when her name was cleared, the authorities started looking into other aspects of Joseph’s life and that led them to the real killer.

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Joseph and Olga Connell were killed by Christopher Rivers as shown in Dateline

With Kelly out of the suspect list, the authorities came to know of other details of Joseph’s life, which involved information about his time in prison. Authorities also came across his business partner Christopher Rivers, who claimed that Joseph was selling steroids out of the auto shop.

Upon further investigation, more details emerged about Rivers and it came to light that when the two of them became business partners, they had done life insurance policies worth almost a million dollars and enlisted each other as the beneficiary. With Joseph dead, Rivers was the owner of that money.

Details like these finally made the authorities connect the dots and Rivers was sentenced to two life terms in jail for murdering Joseph and Olga. Three of his accomplices were also arrested and while two of them, Bey and Benson were sentenced to five years of jail time, Thompson was convicted of murder and was given the same sentence as Rivers.

Dateline can be streamed on NBC.

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