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Colorado Man Accused Of Murdering Wife And The One Before Makes Claim On Life Insurance To Pay His Defense
By Lonce LaMon - April 20, 2015

A man accused of murdering both his wives 20 years apart wants to make a claim on his latest wife’s life insurance policy in order to pay for his defense.   Harold Henthorn has demanded to get access to 1.5 million dollars of death benefit so he can have some cash to pay for his defense. 
 
This case has now been produced as an episode on CBS’s 48 Hours.
 
Henthorn was charged with the murder of his second wife, Toni Bertolet, 51, last November 2014.  He has entered a plea of not guilty.
 
Police have since reopened their investigation into the suspicious death of his first wife.
 
Both women died in freak accidents to which Henthorn, 59, was the only witness.  Dr. Toni Jill Bertolet plunged 140 feet to her death shortly before their 12th wedding anniversary while hiking with Henthorn in a remote stretch of Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado.  The first wife, Lynn Rishell, was crushed to death under Henthorn's jeep when, according to Henthorn, the jack gave way as she reached beneath the vehicle for a lug nut while changing a flat tire at night on an isolated highway near the couple's Colorado home.
 
In both cases Henthorn was the sole beneficiary of the women's substantial life insurance policies. In the case of his first wife the total was $500,000 and in the case of his second wife $4,500,000.
 
Newly filed documents reveal that he is fighting for a $1.5 million pay out from the policy taken out in July 2001 on the grounds that he needs the money to pay for his attorney for the forthcoming murder trial scheduled to begin in May 2015.
 
Dr Toni Bertolet died on September 29th 2012. The autopsy report stated that she “died as the result of multiple blunt force injuries when she fell or was pushed down a cliff while hiking.”  It concluded that homicide could not be excluded. 
 
But when her husband submitted a claim for the life insurance death benefit policy almost exactly a year later, on September 27, 2013, he gave her cause of death as “Accidental Fall.”
 
At the time Henthorn was unaware that he was already the subject of an FBI investigation that was scrutinizing every aspect of the widower's life, culminating in his arrest last November 2014.
 
But despite facing murder charges, Henthorn has not relinquished his claim to the substantial insurance pay out on his wife's death. Shockingly, not only is he fighting for the pay out to fund his own defense, documents filed in a separate motion in March 2015 show that he fought his late wife's family to have funds from Dr. Bertolet's estate released into his possession.
 
This February 2015, the District Court of Douglas County, Colorado, found in Dr. Bertolet's family's favor and barred Henthorn from accessing his late wife's estate on the grounds that allowing him to do so posed an “imminent risk of substantial harm..to [its] financial interests.”
 
Henthorn attempted to overturn this decision as recently as December 2014 and only finally failed when a court denied him access to the funds and demanded that he appoint a forensic accountant to detail the contents of his late wife's estate.
 
In 2009, Henthorn took out a life insurance policy on his former sister-in-law, Grace Rishell. Grace was going through a divorce and expressed concern for her financial stability when she initially agreed to Henthorn's suggestion that she take out a policy that would pay $50,000 to Grace's brother and each of her four daughters for a total of $250,000.
 
According to prosecutors in Dr. Bertolet's murder case, Harold Henthorn had a romantic interest in Grace Rishell. But she had a change of heart in spring 2010 and told the insurance agent to stop the policy from being underwritten. Instead she took out a policy of her own with another insurer.
 
Yet unbeknownst to her, her signature was forged to procure the original policy with Henthorn making payments on the policy until December 2012, listing himself as the sole beneficiary.
The policy was cancelled in 2013 when the insurer concluded that Henthorn had no insurable interest in Rishell. But the very fact of its existence raises the specter that Henthorn had Rishell in his sights as a third potential victim.
 
Henthorn was denied bail by US District Attorney Judge Kathleen Latoyfa who described him as a “danger”.   She observed there were glaring similarities between the loss of his first wife and the loss of his second.  She also pointed to large sums of money recently transferred by Henthorn to his brother as suggestive that he was attempting to hide funds.  
 
Henthorn's trial is scheduled to begin in September 2015. 
 
 
journalist Lonce LaMon, lonce@loncelamon.com
 
 
 
 

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