Episode 42: Stunning: A Very 80s Story of Love, Lies and Murder, Pt 2

In part 1, we introduced you to John Hawkins, a movie-star handsome
young party guy with an endless appetite for sex and scamming—and
Gene Hanson, his much older friend/business partner/possible lover.
After a few years of unsuccessful scams, the two men had finally
launched a successful, legitimate business selling workout gear.
But then it all went to hell when, after a year of supposed health
problems, Gene turned up dead of a heart attack on his doctor’s
exam room floor. John Hawkins was left to pick up the pieces and
move on, albeit $1.5 million richer from Gene’s life insurance
policies. However, when we left you at the end of part 1, a routine
investigation by the life insurance company had alerted detectives
to the astounding fact that the man who had died in that doctor’s
office was NOT Gene Hanson after all. Now investigators were
scrambling to figure out who the hell he was—and where the hell
Gene Hanson was hiding.

Sources:

Vanity Fair, "The Murder Hustle" by Ann Bardach. October
1989.
Timeline of the case from "Forensic Files Now:"
https://forensicfilesnow.com/index.php/2017/06/29/just-sweats-fraud-murder/

LA Times:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-10-14-me-56965-story.html

AP News: https://apnews.com/6056d3bf876f8f4989241f55f32b3831
Oxygen's "Snapped: Killer Couples," episode "John Hawkins and Gene
Hanson"
Columbus Dispatch:
https://www.dispatch.com/article/20140521/NEWS/305219823

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