Original subtitles

But Imuso could have two-stepped all the way to Texas. He was finally in love. After nearly two

decades of yearning for companionship and romance.

Muso, 59, met Sue Basso in the spring of 1997 at a church bizarre near his home in Cliffside Park,

New Jersey. She was visiting from Houston. Their long-distance relationship moved along quickly.

Muso moaned over the woman. He would blush like a teenager after every phone call,

then tell friends all about the woman he called My Lady Love.

Within months Muso was making plans to move to the Lone Star State to live with Basso.

Muso's friends were happy for him, but there were concerns. He was mentally handicapped with

the diminished intellectual capacity that some gauged as modest as that of an eight-year-old.

On the other hand, why shouldn't he be allowed to fall in love? Muso had been married as a young

man, but his wife had died of cancer in 1980, two years after giving birth to their son, Tony.

Buddy Muso had been lonely ever since. He worked as a grocery bagger at Shoprite and lived at an

assisted living home in Cliffside Park, across the Hudson River from Upper Manhattan. His fellow

residents were protective of him. He dreamed of being a cowboy singer, and he could make anyone

smile with his slightly off-key renditions of country western hits he learned from the radio.

He was so affectionate, neighbor Jean Albanese told a New Jersey newspaper reporter.

If you gave him a little bit of attention, he became very attached to you.

Albanese and others worried about the motivations of Sue Basso, who was grossly overweight and at

44-15 years younger than Muso. Why was she so eager for him to move to Houston? Despite the gossip,

Muso began shipping his meager possessions to Basso's home in Jacinto City, Texas, just outside Houston.

Using his social security check, he bought a cheap engagement ring and a new set of western

duds for the trip. He bid his friends goodbye and told them to prepare for a big wedding

reception at the Cliffside Park Legion Hall. On June 14, 1998, he boarded a Greyhound bus wearing

pointy-toed boots, a neckerchief, and a new cowboy hat. In Houston, his lady love was eagerly

awaiting his arrival. Ten weeks and two days later, a jogger noticed a misshapen lump in a ditch in

a scruffy section of Galena Park, a Houston suburb adjacent to Jacinto City. He got close

enough to see it was a human form and he called the police. In police cause of death jargon,

the Galena Park cops judged that the victim had died of multiple blunt impact trauma.

The description sounds like a series of thuds, muffled body blows. The killing had happened

elsewhere. The body, which had no identification, had been cleaned up and dressed in fresh clothing

before it was dumped. A right shoe was on his left foot and the right foot was shoeless.

A morbidly obese woman lumbered into a Houston police station a few hours after the body was

found. She gave her name as Sue Basso and she reported that Buddy Musso, the feeble-minded man

who lived with her, had turned up missing. The corpse in the park would prove to be that of Buddy

Musso. A post-mortem would reveal that the feeble-minded man had died an awful death.

A seven-page autopsy report contained a numbing catalog of cuts, mutilations, and fractures,

including a broken nose, black eyes, 17 cuts on his head, and a bone fracture in his neck.

The examination found some 30 cuts in cigarette burns on Musso's back, as well as bruises to his

chest, abdomen, genitals, arms, legs, hands, and feet. His skull was fractured and he had 14

broken ribs and two dislocated vertebrae. The likely cause of death was a final fatal blow to the head,

probably from a baseball bat or a two-by-four. Corners said the injuries were inflicted over a

period of days, perhaps even weeks, while the victim was alive. In other words, poor Buddy Musso

had been tortured. An old police adage goes something like this. Intelligence and the

perpetration of a criminal act often are mutually exclusive. The Musso murder was a case in point.

In October 1995, the Houston Chronicle published a Gody-paid engagement announcement for one of

those snooty, silver-spooned Lone Star Brides. The lucky lady's name was given as Suzanne Margaret

and Cassandra Lynn, Theresa Marie-Marie Veronica Sue Burns, Stanlan Slausky. The announcement

said she was heiress to a Nova Scotia oil fortune that she had been educated at fine schools abroad,

had been an accomplished gymnast, a former nun, and a selfless volunteer on behalf of

unfortunate girls in upstate New York. Her equally impressive fiancé, Carmine Joseph John Basso,

was a Vietnam War hero who had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

The announcement continued to describe the exceptional lives of the charmed couple.

Three days later, when the Chronicle hadn't been paid the $1,372 cost of the ad,

the paper ran a note that it was looking into apparently erroneous information in the announcement.

The betrothed woman with the gilded personal history did not surface again until Buddy Musso's

murder. It turned out that Sue Basso's life was something less than charmed. She lived in

suburban Jacinto City in a dumpy house filled with a collection of human misfits, dogs, cats,

and ferrets. One inhabitant was her son, James O'Malley, 24, who lived a fantasy life as a

special operations soldier. He wore military regalia day and night, including in bed. His mother had

a pet nickname for him, Bozo the Clown. Police led Basso and O'Malley to the Galena Park ditch

so they could confirm that the dead man was their missing friend. A cop would later say that Basso

broke out and fake hysteria on seeing Musso dead, while O'Malley was expressionless, as though he

saw just what he expected. The lack of reaction just gave me that gut feeling that he knew before we

got there. Robert Pruitt, Galena Park's assistant police chief, would later say.

Cops took O'Malley aside and asked whether he had any ideas about what might have happened to Buddy

Musso. Yeah, O'Malley replied, we killed him. We would prove to include Basso, O'Malley, Basso's

friend Bernice Arrens Miller, 55. Miller's son, Craig Arrens, 25. Miller's daughter, Hope Arrens,

22, and Hope Arrens fiance, Terence Singleton, 28. O'Malley helpedfully explain that the fatal

beating had taken place at Bernice Miller's apartment in Houston. Musso had been forced to

kneel on a child's play mat for several days, apparently after accidentally breaking a Disney

figurine. He was beaten, stomped, burned with cigarettes, and cleaned with a wire brush.

He was dumped into a bathtub filled with bleach and pine-scented kitchen cleaner. His corpse was

then redressed and dumped in Galena Park. O'Malley and other eyewitnesses would reveal that Musso

lived a life of servitude, not love and romance with Basso. He carried groceries and took out the

trash. Neighbors said he was bloodied and bruised. James O'Malley led police to a trash bin,

where they found Musso's bloody clothing, blood-stained towels, the mat, and rubber gloves.

The six suspects were arrested and charged with murder. Police first announced that Musso had

been beaten mercilessly after he accidentally broke a Mickey Mouse figurine. But after a search

of Basso's house, they would amend their motive to that most predictable one.

Money. The Houston Chronicle summarized the case neatly in a headline, slaying possibly tied to

insurance. The victim's policy paid off extra if he died from a violent crime.

On September 9th, Assistant Chief Pruitt led a team of cops serving a search warrant at the

Jacinto City House. A dog, a cat, and two ferrets had fouled the place. The tiny place was packed

with stacks of plastic storage containers filled with old clothing, record albums and CDs,

stereos, and television equipment. A mattress where both Musso and O'Malley were forced to sleep

lay on the living room floor. A computer was set up in one bedroom. The cops found books on

Irish history and surprisingly highbrow magazines, including The New Yorker and a periodical from

the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. The compact discollection included classical works as well

as Irish and pop music. The liquor cabinet was well stocked. Amid the clutter, police found a

$15,000 life insurance policy written by the Union Labor Life Insurance on Buddy Musso.

A violent death clause boosted the benefit to $60,000. The cops also found a will signed by Musso

and witnessed by Basso and three of her co-defendants that named Basso as the sole heir to his property,

including the life insurance policy. A paper copy of The Will was dated 1997,

but police found the original document file in a computer. It had been created 12 days before

the murder. Police found bank statements and canceled checks indicating that Musso had been

turning over his monthly Social Security check to Basso. They also found documents showing that

Basso had applied to become a payee of Musso's government checks. A relative may have protested.

Musso was out of touch with his son, but he was close with a niece in Virginia, Linda Maras.

In the computer was a copy of a restraining order that barred any of Musso's relatives from

contacting him. The Houston crime cabal wanted Buddy Musso for their own purposes. Although all

six suspects pointed fingers at one another in police statements, the other five agreed that

Subasso was the brains, broadly speaking, behind the murder for profit scheme. Houston prosecutors

decided to seek maximum prison sentences for the accomplices and a death sentence for Subasso.

There's a reason we have a death penalty. Harris County assistant prosecutor Denise Nissar told

reporters, and this is it. Suzanne Basso's real life was something quite different from the fantasy

she created in the engagement announcement. She was actually from a family in Schenectady,

New York. Born on May 15, 1954, she was one of eight children and the youngest of three girls.

Her parents were drunks and Sue was subjected to both physical and sexual abuse, according to a

sibling. The abuse took a toll, and she became a delinquent teenager, problems with sex, truancy,

and theft, who spent time at a Catholic reform school in Albany. She managed to complete high

school and in the early 1970s, married James Pica Marine. They had two children, a daughter

born in 1973 and a son born the next year. The daughter told the Houston Chronicle that the

peak marriage was marked by sexual deviance. As a young woman, Sue Peak was slim and attractive,

with brilliant blue eyes. Later, she let herself go as her daughter put it and ballooned to some

350 pounds on a five foot two frame. She was promiscuous, and her husband abided by the behavior.

The daughter, Christiana Hardy, recalled waiting with her father in a bedroom or on the porch,

while her mother finished grunting and groaning with one special friend or another.

Sometimes she would take her children on a sexual rendezvous.

I remember being embarrassed, Hardy told the Chronicle. My brother and I were sitting at

the kitchen table in this stranger's house, and our mom was in the other room having sex with him.

The family moved several times. To coastal North Carolina, to Houston, and back to Carolina.

In 1982, James Peak was arrested for molesting his daughter. He was convicted of taking indecent

liberties with a child and spent 11 months in jail in North Carolina. Hardy, now married and a mother

of three, said sexual and physical abuse was part of a lifelong pattern. She recalled one time when

Basso forced her daughter and son to undress for two maintenance men who were visiting the house.

The son, James, was beaten and abused by both his mother and father.

That's how I learned my self-defense, he would later say in court. My father beat the shit out of me.

Both children went to foster homes during their father's imprisonment,

but eventually were sent to live with relatives.

In the early 1990s, James, Suzanne, and the children reunited in Houston.

Sue Peak decided to make a fresh start by changing the family surname to O'Malley.

She created a new Irish-American persona and decorated her house with Kelly Green paint,

shamrocks, and leprechauns. Everything was green, said Richard Charlesworth, one of a

procession of people who lived at the Peak O'Malley house. He told the Houston Chronicle that he

accepted their offer of a bed after he lost his job, but the arrangement didn't last long.

It was like living with the Adams family, he said. They would pick almost anyone up off the street,

said Christiana Hardy. They were weird like that. They were weird in other ways as well.

Basso and her son had a sexual relationship, for example, and she sometimes forced him to

shoplift or beg. His mother forced James to eat on the floor, and she often locked him in the

house during the day, nailing the windows shut so he wouldn't leave. The son complained to

authorities when he was 17, but a county social services investigation went nowhere.

In 1993, Sue Peak, who sometimes worked as an apartment complex security guard,

became romantic with Carmine Basso, who owned a Houston security firm,

Latin security and investigators' corp. Basso soon moved in with Sue, and her husband moved over,

but not out of the home. They were a mismatched pair. Basso, who came from New Jersey, was thin

as a stick figure he chained smoked cool cigarettes and paced nervously. Sue Peak, on the other hand,

could hardly lug her heavy load from the easy chair to the sofa without huffing and puffing.

They fought frequently, but Basso eventually replaced James O'Malley altogether in Sue's bed.

James lingered around the house for a few months before moving elsewhere in Houston.

Basso's relationship with Sue led to the flounce and artifice engagement announcement in the

Chronicle. They never bothered to marry. They couldn't because Sue had never divorced James.

No matter, she introduced Basso as her husband and began using his last name.

In 1997, Sue Basso planned a trip to New Jersey, apparently to visit Carmine's family.

During the trip, she met Buddy Musso at the church bazaar. In another odd turn in Sue Basso's

serpentine life, Carmine Basso turned up dead around the time of the New Jersey trip. Sue Basso

said she was in New Jersey at the time, although friends said she was in Houston when Carmine died.

Basso was found dead in the office of his security firm. An autopsy indicated a natural death caused

by Erosivosophagitis, a severe form of acid reflux that was complicated by malnourishment.

The death had two effects. It removed Sue Basso's primary source of income,

and it cleared a place in her life for Buddy Musso. Musso apparently was cognizant of his fate in

the final weeks of his life. In their search of the Hacinto City House, cops found a note Musso

had written in a pair of his trousers. The note addressed to a friend back in New Jersey read,

you must get son down here and get me out of here. I want to come back to New Jersey soon.

The note asked the friend to contact Musso's niece Linda Moras in Virginia to ask her for money so

Musso could buy a bus ticket home. Yet Musso refused help at least twice. Bruce Bierley,

Basso's neighbor in Hacinto City, told police he noticed that Musso had a black eye, bloody wounds

and facial bruises during a chance encounter in the week before he was found dead. Bierley said

he asked Musso whether he wanted him to call an ambulance or the police. Bierley said,

he said, No, you call anybody and she'll just beat me up again.

On August 22, a week before the murder, Houston police officer Jeff Butcher responded to a

report of an assault and found three men in a field near Bernice Aaron's apartment.

James O'Malley and Terence Singleton were leading Musso on a military-style run,

the cop said. Musso had two black eyes, the worst I've seen in my career, Butcher said,

and complained that he didn't want to run anymore. But Musso told the cop that he'd been beaten by

three Hispanics. He refused medical treatment. The officer drove the three men to the Aaron's

apartment. There he found Subaso, who told the cop she was Musso's legal guardian. She scolded

her son for making Musso run and comforted him in front of the cop. The officer said he was

skeptical, but left Musso in the woman's care. A few days later, he was dead.

Texas district judge Mary Lou Keel ruled that most of the six suspects should be tried separately.

Basso's son James O'Malley would go first beginning on April 13, 1999. The trials would

continue with Craig Aaron's also in April. His mother Bernice Aaron's Miller and Terence

Singleton together in May and Hope Aaron's in June. Subaso would be last, with a trial

scheduled to begin in July. Prosecutors Colleen Barnett and Denise Nissar had a very busy four

months. In her opening remarks at the first trial, Nissar painted a vivid picture of Buddy Musso's

heartbreaking hope. He wanted a wife and family more than anything in the world, she told jurors.

He got on that Greyhound bus wearing cowboy boots and a hat. He was coming to Texas.

James O'Malley mounted the witness stand to testify that he felt pressured by his mother to take part

in the killing. I didn't know what else to do, he said. I was scared of my mother. His testimony

gave jurors a glimpse of Musso's treatment at the hands of the Texans. The abuse began soon

after he arrived in Houston, but escalated near the end. Musso was frequently handcuffed.

Sometimes at home, sometimes in the back seat of the car, while the group enjoyed a meal in a

restaurant. O'Malley said Musso was forced to kneel on a mat and was denied food and water.

He cried frequently and was beaten in retaliation. Denied access to a toilet,

he wed himself and was beaten more. The defendant claimed that the end game beatings began because

Musso had either lied about breaking the ornament or failed to obey Basso. O'Malley said he dunked

Musso four or five times in a bathtub filled with household cleaning products and bleach.

Basso poured alcohol over the victim's head while O'Malley scrubbed him bloody with a wire brush.

At testimony's end, the jury quickly convicted James O'Malley of capital murder and sentenced

him to life in prison. At the trial of Bernice Arrens, 55, and her son Craig, 26, each admitted in

confessions read to the jury that they hit Musso, but both fingered Sue Basso as the primary culprit.

After the murder, Bernice Arrens said in a statement to police,

Basso said, we had to make a pact that we can't say anything about what happened.

She said, if we get mad at each other, we can't say anything. The jury convicted both of murder.

The mother got 80 years and the son 60. At his trial, Terence Singleton admitted that he

kicked Musso and hit him with a baseball bat. But his confession, read to jurors,

tried to implicate James O'Malley and Sue Basso as the most highly culpable.

The blows that killed him are the blows of Susan hitting him with the vacuum,

and James constantly kicking him in the back of the head, Singleton stated to police,

I know he didn't die from us hitting him because he had been up and responsive.

The jury judged Singleton equally responsible. It convicted him of capital murder and gave

him life in prison. The trial of Hope Arrens, 23, featured a bizarre vignette.

Arrens, who claimed she could not read or write, asked for a meal before she would agree to make

a statement. Jail officials gave her a TV dinner, which she eagerly devoured. After cops had written

out the woman's statement, they asked Galena Park Police dispatcher Tammy McCormick to read it back

to Arrens to make sure she agreed with every word. Arrens wasn't interested in the statement.

She wanted another free meal. Her statement made me nauseous and sick.

She was calm, fine, like nothing was wrong, McCormick testified. I was so upset I wanted to

vomit, but all she wanted was another TV dinner. Like that of Singleton, Hope Arrens confession

blamed Sue Basso and James O'Malley for inflicting the deadly injuries. But she did say,

Buddy broke one of my Mickey Mouse's and said that he wanted me and my mom to die,

and I hit Buddy with a wooden bird. But I did not hit him that hard.

Buddy told me to stop and I stopped after I hit him twice. Her murder trial ended in a hung jury.

But that worked to the advantage of prosecutors who dangled the possibility of a plea bargain

in exchange for her testimony against Sue Basso, the final defendant.

Suzanne Basso shrunk by more than half while awaiting trial. She weighed 350 pounds at the time

of her arrest. Eleven months later, she weighed 140. She insisted on using a wheelchair and claimed

paralysis, mental problems, and chest and stomach pain. She also said she had regressed to her

childhood and spoke in a squeaky little girl voice. A court appointed shrink judged that she

was faking, and Judge Keel agreed at a competency hearing that Basso was capable of facing trial.

Each day she was wheeled into court. She appeared unkempt, and she sat morosely at the defense table.

Sometimes scowling and sometimes appearing not to pay attention. According to Houston Chronicle

court reporter Steve Brewer, as in the other trials, the jurors heard the defendant's confession.

Basso told police that she hit Muso with a belt, but tried to deflect blame on the five others.

Hope Aaron said it happened differently. She took the witness stand to say that she saw Basso beat

Muso with her fists, a belt, and a vacuum cleaner attachment. She said Basso jumped up and down on

Muso as he collapsed on his punishment mat. Aaron said Basso encouraged O'Malley to kick the victim

with his steel toed combat boots. Muso was moaning when he went down. Then she hit him again on the

back after she hit him on the groin. Aaron said it came as no surprise when the jury convicted Sue

Basso of capital murder. Jurors then had to choose between life and death for the woman.

During the penalty phase, Basso's own daughter, Cristiana Hardy, was the prosecution's marquee

witness. The young woman recounted a miserable childhood. She said there was sexual abuse,

mental abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, any kind of abuse she could inflict.

Psychologist Floyd Jennings said of Basso, she is a whining complainer to whom people would wish

to say, get away from me. Defense attorneys argued that Basso was not a future threat to society,

but jurors were unmoved. After six hours of discussion, they judged that no mitigating

circumstances could lead them to vote for life in prison. Judge Keel announced the death sentence.

Basso slumped in her wheelchair and wept. As she was wheeled out of court, she cried in her little

girl voice, I am not guilty. But prosecutors deemed that justice had been served. Colleen Barnett said,

I've seen a bunch of evil in my job as a prosecutor, but she exhibits so many different demonic traits

that it's hard to see her as anything but an evil minded person. The final loose end in the case

was tied up six weeks after Basso's conviction, when Hope Aaron's pleaded guilty to murder and was

sentenced to 20 years in prison. She is the only one of the six Muso killers with a realistic

chance of parole. Sue Basso, prisoner number 999329, resided on death row with eight other

condemned women at the Mountain View Unit prison in Gatesville, 45 minutes west of Waco.

Seven of the eight women had longer death row 10 years than Basso and her execution was not

expected anytime soon. The average stay on death row in Texas, including both men and women,

is 10 and a half years. So Basso should have been executed around 2010. Her daughter was

counting the days. After the death penalty was announced, she hugged prosecutors and cried tears

of joy. We got a victory, Christiana Hardy told reporters, this is wonderful. Justice has finally

been served. She's off the streets. She can't hurt anybody. Let the inmates kill her. I don't care.

She continued. She was never a mother. She doesn't have any mothering instincts. She threw us away.

Left us out there to fend for ourselves. Now let her do a little fending for herself.

Because Texas stopped giving special final meals to death row inmates, Basso had the usual prison

food before her execution. This meal included baked chicken, fish, boiled eggs, carrots, green

beans, and sliced bread. Her execution took place on February 5, 2014 at the Huntsville Unit of the

TDCJ. When the prison warden asked if she had any last words, she told him, no, sir.

She was declared dead at 6.26 p.m. CST, just 11 minutes after receiving a lethal dose of the drug,

Pentobarbital.