Community Believed Senior Couple Was ‘Such Good Neighbors,' Then They Were Arrested for Chilling Cold Case Murders

NEED TO KNOW

• Senior couple Gerald and Alice Uden were parents and neighbors who seemed unremarkable

• But in 2013, their pasts came back to haunt them when Alice was arrested in connection with the decades-old killing of her third husband, Ronald Holtz, in Wyoming — a case that had remained unsolved for nearly 40 years

• Just one day later, Gerald was also taken into custody, accused of murdering his ex-wife, Virginia Uden, and her two young sons in 1980

In the quiet farming town of Chadwick, Mo., residents Gerald and Alice Uden seemed to fit right in. Until the 71- and 74-year-olds were both arrested for murder, in cases that stunned the community and their families.

A 2014 PEOPLE story recounted how the Udens, at the time of their arrests, were living on a sprawling 110-acre property.

Having spent decades raising children and even emus, the couple had rarely drawn any sort of attention or suspicion.

A neighbor who lived nearby described Alice as “a very cordial lady" to PEOPLE, adding, “They were such good neighbors.” When Gerald, then in his 70s, was away on long-haul trucking jobs, the neighbor said he would occasionally check in on Alice, who had health issues, including diabetes. The couple was otherwise unremarkable.

That perception changed overnight on Sept. 26, 2013, when Alice was arrested in connection with the decades-old killing of her third husband, Ronald Holtz, in Wyoming — a case that had remained unsolved for nearly 40 years. Alice shot Holtz in the back of his head while he slept in late 1974 or early 1975; however, his remains weren't found in an abandoned gold mine until August 2013.

Just one day after her arrest, Gerald was also taken into custody, accused of murdering his ex-wife, Virginia Uden, and her two young sons, who were 10 and 12 at the time, in 1980. According to CNN , Gerald shot the mother and sons while they were out bird hunting and attempted to hide their bodies.

Alice and Gerald met in 1976 after the latter had separated from Virginia, and they wed shortly after, according to the Oxygen series, Killer Couples .

For Erica Hayes, Alice's youngest child, who first met Gerald at the age of 4, the revelations were more than shocking. Speaking to PEOPLE in 2014, she recalled a moment shortly before Gerald's arrest when he asked to meet her at a truck stop.

“I asked him what was going on, and then, did he do it?” she recounted. “He sat for the longest time and finally said, ‘What difference is it going to make if you knew?' I said, ‘It will give me peace.' He finally admitted it.”

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While Gerald's confession stunned her, Erica said she had long suspected her mother was hiding something. Years earlier, Alice had privately admitted to killing Holtz after going to confession before joining the Third Order Secular of Carmelites, a Roman Catholic organization.

“She sat me down and said she had killed someone… ‘I did do this,'” Erica recalled to PEOPLE.

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Alice's son, Todd Scott, would later testify that his mother had also told him that she had killed her third husband as he slept.

“She just, out of the blue, told me how she got up one night, got a .22 [caliber gun], and shot Ron in the head,” Scott tearfully told a Wyoming jury in 2014, adding, “I don't know why a mother would tell her children she killed somebody.”

After his testimony, Scott turned to his mom, by then 75 and wheelchair-bound, and said, “I hate you,” reported West Texas CBS affiliate KOSA .

Alice was convicted of second-degree murder that same year and died in prison in June 2019 at the age of 80. Gerald, meanwhile, was sentenced to life in prison in 2013 after pleading guilty to all three murders. The now 83-year-old remains in prison.

Read the original article on People