Crime Library: Criminal Minds and Methods

Deadly Delivery: The Donald and Marsha Levine Murders

A Hired Gun

A check of McKinney's fingerprints revealed a match to those on the maps. Detectives were elated, but their work was far from over. They put a surveillance team on McKinney and began looking into his recent activities.

Bruce William McKinney
Bruce William McKinney

Police found that McKinney had used Robert's driver's license to rent a car that matched the description of the vehicle used by the killer: the invoice filled out during the registration process listed McKinney's phone number. The car, leased from a rental company location near Midway Airport, was rented at 11:19 p.m. the night before the killings and returned to same company's O'Hare International Airport location the next day at 10:55 a.m. two hours after the murders.

Chicago's Midway Airport
Chicago's Midway Airport

A search warrant was obtained for McKinney's home. Police found a blue-steel .38-caliber revolver, a receipt for a .357 Magnum revolver, Magnum shells, clipboards, and a tan trench coat. The bullets that killed the Levines could have been fired from either the Magnum or the .38, criminalists determined.

McKinney was arrested shortly before Christmas. His mug shot was placed in a folder with several other photos of similar looking men and showed to the Levine neighbor who had seen the gunman flee the house. The neighbor picked out McKinney.

McKinney protested his innocence, saying he had been in Tucson when the killings occurred and had even rented a car from Enterprise Auto Leasing in Phoenix. The day of the murders he had visited two people in a real estate management company, he said.

Prosecutors didn't buy it, and McKinney was charged with two counts of murder and the assault upon Mark. He was extradited to Indiana, where he faced the death penalty if convicted.

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