TX - Clayton & Molly Daniels for insurance fraud, Leander 2004

A few weeks after her husband was supposedly burned beyond recognition in a car wreck, Molly Daniels introduced her 4-year-old son to her new boyfriend, Jake Gregg.

However, investigators said Gregg looked much like her dead husband, Clayton Wayne Daniels, with his hair dyed black.

Assistant District Attorney Jane Starnes blamed greed for the bizarre case surrounding the Leander couple. She cited a $110,000 life insurance policy taken out two years before the wreck

Defense lawyer Thomas Vasquez said that Molly Daniels did it for her children, ages 4 and 1. Vasquez said that at the time, Clayton Daniels was soon to have begun serving a jail sentence for sex crimes involving children, and the terms of his sentence would not allow contact with his children.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3167504

I can't believe they couldn't tell the difference between a female corpse and a male corpse. :waitasec: I was not a big fan of biology classes and let most of the information go as soon as class was over, but aren't there differences in the bones of a female and the bones of a male? Like a "missing" rib?

Woman sentenced for using corpse in fraud

GEORGETOWN -- A woman who admitted helping her husband dig up a corpse and use it to fake his death in a fiery staged car accident was sentenced to 20 years in prison Thursday.

more at link

From the Fort Worth Star Telegram

Texas investigators discovered the body inside a charred vehicle wasn't Clayton Daniels, as they had suspected. It was, in fact, a woman.

Just after dawn on June 18, 2004, the Burnet County Sheriff's Department and local Texas firefighters responded to a call about a vehicle fire.

The car had left the road and gone down an embankment. It was charred to the shell and smoldering when officials arrived, according to Accident, Suicide or Murder, airing Saturdays at 8/7c on Oxygen.

“The fire had burned so hot that it melted parts of the vehicle,” said Garth Davis, a former investigator for the Texas Rangers. “That’s very unusual.”

When William Talamantez, a deputy with the Burnet County Sheriff’s Office, looked inside the car he saw “remains of a body,” he said. It had been charred beyond recognition.

At the same time Laurie Daniels had reported that she was looking for her son, Clayton Daniels, 22, who was known to drive in the area of the crash. Earlier that morning, Clayton’s wife, Molly, 20, had said he hadn’t come home the night before. He was driving the borrowed Chevy Cavalier.

Investigators assumed that the body in the car was Clayton. Remains of paperback books, a ball cap, and a shoe in the car were tied to Clayton.

The lack of skid marks at the accident site suggested the driver had fallen asleep or had a medical episode before the crash, according to Talamantez.

But the question remained: How did the car burn at such a high temperature? Investigators weren’t sure it was an accident, said Davis. They hoped an autopsy would provide some answers.

There was very little left of the victim, but the report revealed no smoke in the lungs. There were two possible explanations: The victim’s larynx could have closed due to intense heat or the individual was dead before the fire.