Commonwealth v. Rankins

The defendant appeals from his comiction of murder in the first degree of Robert D’Amour in March, 1993. The victim had been shot several times in his home in South Hadley.

Investigation led the police to suspect the victim’s wife, Suzanne D’Amour (D’Amour), and the defendant. They believed that D’Amour and the defendant had murdered the victim in order to obtain substantial amounts of insurance that D’Amour had purchased on the life of the victim. The police obtained evidence from an authorized wiretap of D’Amour’s home telephone. They interviewed the defendant in a jail in Louisiana, where…