The REAL Donna Yaklich Story...

a***@gmail.com

2013-06-16 16:43:43 UTC

I didn't know Donna and cannot substantiate or refute anything you have posted here. I met a woman I believe was Barbara Yaklich about 4 years before her death. She told me how her husband was a bodybuilder and used steroids. That the steroids made him violent and he abused her. She said his fellow officers were afraid of him when he lost his temper on the job. She was afraid he was going to kill her, that he had threatened to kill her or her family if she left him. I told her she needed to get out of there, but she was afraid for her children and didn't know how she could take care of them. She said because her husband was a cop she couldn't go to the police because they always stood by him. She felt trapped with no way out. It wasn't until many years later when the Donna Yaklich story came out that I learned Barbara had died. She told me if she ever died, to look to her husband as the person responsible.

2013-06-16 17:08:12 UTC

soc.men,soc.women,alt.feminism Summary: Keywords: X-Newsreader: TIN
[version 1.2 PL1]
CRIMES UNHEARD: THE REAL DONNA YAKLICH STORY ^^^^
Last week, a made-for-TV movie aired on CBS stations entitled
"Cries Unheard: The Donna Yaklich Story." This movie was
supposedly based upon the experience of a real-life Colorado woman
who arranged for the murder of her husband, whom she accused of
domestic violence against her. Here in Colorado, Ms. Yaklich is
local news, and she does not enjoy the kind of saintly image which
the movie attempted to create for her. This movie was shameless
propaganda from beginning to end. For those who live outside of
Colorado and are unaware of the actual facts of this case I shall
present the many ways in which the movie presented half-truths and
outright distortions as "docu-drama."
In the movie, Donna marries Dennis Yaklich, who becomes involved
with steroids as part of his body-building hobby. The steroids
make him crazy and violent, and he is shown brutally beating and
psychologically abusing Donna (played by former Charlie's Angel,
Jaclyn Smith) throughout the movie in innumerable ways. He is
shown shooting up steroids in his abdomen as the camera zooms in
for a lurid close-up of the innumerable track marks scarring his
ravaged flesh. He is shown grinning and laughing maniacally when
Jaclyn/Donna accuses him of having murdered his first wife (after
pointing an empty gun in her face and pulling the trigger). In
the movie, the steroid abuse continues right up until his murder,
arranged by Donna, as a desperate act of self-defense against a
testosterone-crazed sub-human monster.
Donna is depicted in the movie as a woman living under virtual
house arrest, forbidden to go anywhere or do anything by her
tyrannical mate. She is shown as a relentlessly virtuous
self-sacrificing long-suffering victim and a flawlessly perfect
mother of their child. She never wrongs anyone in any way -- until
she arranges her husband's death (and the entire movie is devoted
to convincing viewers that he had it coming). The only children in
the home are the Yaklichs' son Denny, and a teenaged girl named
Patty who is supposedly Dennis's step-daughter. (I missed the
first 15 minutes of the film so I don't know how her presence was
rationalized. Suffice it to say that there was no such "Patty"
person in real life.) To underscore Dennis's allegedly despicable
character, he is shown running this ficticious "Patty" out of the
house when he finds out she is pregnant. After the killing of her
husband, Donna is shown sitting in a restaurant telling her female
companion that it is the first time in years she has been out.
When the on-screen police ask the Hollywood Donna if she has any
idea who might have wanted to kill her husband, she replies that
she knows nothing of Dennis's enemies. At her movie trial,
unselfish to a fault, she is shown as thinking only of her son
Denny and of his uncertain future should she be convicted and
imprisoned.
Now for the facts. For starters, in real life no trace of steroids
were found in Dennis's body upon autopsy. Such metabolites are
highly fat-soluble and remain in the body at detectable levels for
2 to 3 months after even a single dose. The trackmarks which the
movie shows were a Hollywood invention, pure and simple. There
were no track marks found at autopsy. Indeed, an extensive police
investigation failed to uncover any evidence that Dennis ever took
steroids in his entire life. Pueblo Colorado Homicide Detective Dan
Snell, lead investigator in the case, told the press, "We checked
out every lead. We are obligated to do that. No one but her
defense brought that up and we talked to virtually everybody." And
of course, if Dennis HAD been abusing steroids in the weeks leading
up to his death, as Donna alleged, his corpse would have tested
postive for steroids. It didn't. Donna lied. As we shall see,
this was not her first lie, nor her last.
In real life, Donna was not only not under "house arrest," she lead
a very active life outside of their home which included carrying
on affairs with several other men, and leading aerobics classes.
In the latter case, she appeared repeatedly in public clad in
skimpy, skin-tight outfits in front of entire classes of people all
during the period in which she later claimed she was being savagely
beaten on a daily basis. Her bruises and pain should have been
obvious either by being in plain sight, or by visible swelling, or
by weakness/stiffness of the afflicted limbs during aerobics. In
fact, she never showed any sign of abuse according to numerous
witnesses who attended her classes. (In the movie, she is depicted
at one point of going around desperately asking people for help
with a huge bruise across her face. This is sheer fiction).
The insinuations about Dennis having killed his first wife are
vicious, sensationalistic slander and nothing more. In real life,
Dennis's first wife died of a reaction to a prescription drug, a
death which was ruled accidental by the coroner. There was never
the slightest cloud of suspicion upon Dennis as a result of this
tragedy. For Hollywood to smear a man this way is utterly
deplorable.
The movie gave no hint of Donna's extramarital affairs, perhaps
because doing so would conflict with the image of the helpless,
saintly woman held prisoner in her own home, and would make her
seem less virtuous. In the movie, Donna is shown sitting in a
restaurant with a woman friend at the time the police learn that
she had paid to have her husband killed. In real life, she was
soaking up the sun on the beaches of Jamaica with her latest
squeeze, attorney John Giduck, spending her late husband's money at
a prodigious rate. In the movie, there is no mention of Donna
receiving any tangible assets as a result of her husband's death.
In real life, she received $360,000 in cash and benefits from his
life insurance, with which she went on giddy spending sprees (in
Jamaica and elsewhere). She was later able to use this money to
post bond and to pay her attorney fees as well.
In the movie, all the viewer sees is Donna's arrest followed by
Donna's trial in which Denver psychologist Lenore Walker, creator
of the "Battered Woman Syndrome," testifies on the stand that Donna
was an innocent victim acting in self-defense. A male expert
witness is then shown debunking Walker, saying that men get
battered too but seldom report it (accompanied by gasps of outrage
from the courtroom audience, to remind viewers of how absurd this
claim supposedly is). In real life, Donna not only didn't say she
knew nothing about Dennis's enemies, she gave police a list of male
suspects, one or more of whom she clearly hoped to frame for the
murder she herself had arranged. When the two young men whom she
had paid to perform the murder confessed and implicated her, she
claimed never to have met either of them. This claim fell through
after it was discovered that one of them had actually worked for
Donna in the past at a firecracker stand she ran. At this point,
Donna tried to claim that Dennis himself had hired the two men to
kill him so that he could go out in a blaze of glory. Needless to
say, this far-fetched story did not impress police. It was at this
point that Donna first began claiming to police that she'd arranged
the murder as an act of self-defense against domestic abuse.
Lenore Walker DID testify at Donna's trial (one of the few accurate
things in the entire film) but was rebutted by a FEMALE therapist
who testified that Donna was not a battering victim but a
calculating con-artist. The movie left out this testimony, and
made the rebutter male, perhaps to enhance the
evil-insensitive-men-blame-the- innocent-female-victim angle which
they clearly chose to pursue instead of telling the truth.
In real life, Donna and Dennis lived with their child Denny,
Dennis's daughter Vanessa from his previous marriage, and three
step-children, Raymond, Chris and Kim, from his first wife's
previous marriage. Contrary to the Hollywood Donna's image as a
selfless, loving, nurturant person, the real-life Donna kicked
Vanessa, Raymond, Chris, and Kim out of the house after she'd had
their father killed. The only child she seemed to have any concern
for at all was Denny, her only blood child.. The movie version of
events does not depict the other four children at all, perhaps
because Donna's cold, selfish treatment of them fails to jibe with
the sympathetic heroine its producers wanted to portray Donna as being.
One of the children the real Donna evicted, Vanessa Yaklich, was
interviewed on the local news program of the Denver CBS affiliate
station, Channel 7, immediately after the movie was shown. Vanessa
said, "She [Donna] says so many awful things it's unreal. I can't
believe she can say it! And there's no evidence to back it up and
yet people believe it." Vanessa added that as someone who had lived
under the same roof with Donna and Dennis for the entire 8 years of
their marriage, she can testify that all Donna's stories about
beatings from Dennis were "an outright lie." Tom Greenwell, a
longtime friend of the Yaklich family agrees, "I was around the
Yakliches every day. I helped them. They helped me. We fished
and hunted together. And every word that woman said about them was
nothing but a bald-faced lie. You would think somebody would see
through that story and read between the lines." In an interview for
the same news spot, Dennis's brother said that the movie producers
never once called up any of Dennis's relatives or friends. Indeed,
they based the entire plot soley upon prison interviews with Donna
and no one else except Donna. Donna Yaklich conned the movie
producers, but they were not the first people she has conned.
One of the most cynical omissions by the movie-makers was their
failure to make any reference to Donna's bad-check forging sprees
during her marriage to Dennis. In real life, Donna stole the
checkbook of Dennis's parents and proceeded to write checks to
herself, forging their signatures. When Ed Yaklich, Dennis's
father, found out about Donna's criminal capers, he warned her that
he would file a complaint if she did it again. After this warning,
Donna forged yet another check. Dennis's brother told the local
press "Dennis knew nothing about [the forged checks]. We called
Donna over, and she denied she wrote the check. And I shoved it in
her face and she admitted she'd forged it. My dad said, 'As soon
as Dennis gets home, we're gonna tell him about it and contact the
DA.' That's when Donna went to the [battered women's] shelter...
It was because we were gonna turn her in for forged checks."
Apparently, Donna then forged yet another check, this one for $500,
on her way to the shelter. Donna was later tried and convicted of
forgery for these scams. There is no hint of any of this in the
movie, although its producers are unlikely to have been unaware of
these escapades of Donna's, for which she had a criminal record.
Instead, she is depicted as a paragon of misunderstood, wounded
innocence.
Still, the lack of any reference to Donna's check-forging scams is
not the most outrageous omission of the screenplay; the movie
depicts Donna as trapped in an impossible situation as captive of a
brutal, homicidal husband who would not allow her to escape. Her
contract killing of him is depicted as a desperate bid to remove
herself from a marriage which was a deadly trap. In real life, at
the time of the murder, Donna was on the verge of "escaping"
whether she liked it or not. HER HUSBAND HAD ANNOUNCED THAT HE WAS
GOING TO FILE FOR DIVORCE!!!
Donna's extramarital affairs and check-forging antics had finally
worn Dennis down. As his brother told the press, "[Dennis] came
over to my house [in late 1985]. He said, 'I hate to do it, but I
gotta divorce Donna. She's breaking us and running around on me,
and as soon as the [Christmas] holidays are over, I'm gonna file
for divorce.' Donna knew about it. She told my friend Linda that
she was going to get a divorce. Donna came to [Dennis] with
nothing. Everything at that house belonged to Dennis or me or my
family. If they got divorced, Donna would leave there with
nothing. Absolutely nothing." Instead, she had Dennis killed on
December 12, 1985, with the holidays less than two weeks away,
while she was still legally married to him and could inherit his
house and collect his lucrative life insurance pay-off.
With plenty of the legitimate female victims of male violence in
this world, it is inexcusable that the producers of a movie would
choose someone like Donna Yaklich as the heroine of their
so-called "true-to-life" drama. The Hollywood Donna may be a
saintly, and utterly sympathetic character. But the real-life
Donna was and is a coldly calculating lying con-artist and
murderess with clear psychopathic tendencies. It does a great
disservice to the viewing public to portray such a person so
inaccurately. And it does an even greater disservice to her
victim, Dennis Yaklich, and the friends and loved ones he left
behind.. This movie, according to family members interviewed on the
local news last week, has reopened their wounds and deepened their
pain. But in the world of movies, female victimhood sells...
...and for Donna Yaklich, it also pays. Under Colorado law, it is
legal for a convicted felon to profit from selling the movie rights
to her story. Donna has apparently raked in a substantial, but
undisclosed amount of cash from this film. When local reporters
tried to contact her to learn how much she had made, she referred
all questions to her attorneys, who refused all comment.
-Chris Dugan Denver, Colorado

I didn't know Donna and cannot substantiate or refute anything you
have posted here. I met a woman I believe was Barbara Yaklich about
4 years before her death. She told me how her husband was a
bodybuilder and used steroids. That the steroids made him violent
and he abused her. She said his fellow officers were afraid of him
when he lost his temper on the job. She was afraid he was going to
kill her, that he had threatened to kill her or her family if she
left him. I told her she needed to get out of there, but she was
afraid for her children and didn't know how she could take care of
them. She said because her husband was a cop she couldn't go to the
police because they always stood by him. She felt trapped with no
way out. It wasn't until many years later when the Donna Yaklich
story came out that I learned Barbara had died. She told me if she
ever died, to look to her husband as the person responsible.

are you alright

b***@msn.com

2015-09-30 15:36:01 UTC

I didn't know Donna and cannot substantiate or refute anything you
have posted here. I met a woman I believe was Barbara Yaklich about
4 years before her death. She told me how her husband was a
bodybuilder and used steroids. That the steroids made him violent
and he abused her. She said his fellow officers were afraid of him
when he lost his temper on the job. She was afraid he was going to
kill her, that he had threatened to kill her or her family if she
left him. I told her she needed to get out of there, but she was
afraid for her children and didn't know how she could take care of
them. She said because her husband was a cop she couldn't go to the
police because they always stood by him. She felt trapped with no
way out. It wasn't until many years later when the Donna Yaklich
story came out that I learned Barbara had died. She told me if she
ever died, to look to her husband as the person responsible.

are you alright

They just played this movie again this morning on Lifetime Movie Network 9-30-2015 and I tend to be more in agreement with this post here because it makes total sense. All you are doing Chris Dugan is stating everything that we saw in the movie to the complete opposite and I don't believe it. I think you are just trying to make Donna seem like a really bad person yet and why I don't know. My belief is kind of in the middle of the portrayed events in the movie and the true accounts I can find in any reputable news sites and frankly quite a bit of news sites are more towards the version of the movie and before the movie was even out. The big factor that points to Dennis actually being abusive points in the fact that the first wives death was reopened and that upon a more detailed look makes it now a questionable death. I tend to believe he did have something to do with his first wives death and being a cop can definitely help keep all suspicion off of him. Look at how long it took Scott Petersons Wives who disappeared and how long it took for his fellow officers to realize he had something to do with there deaths. This seems to run very parallel to that situation. JMO

2015-09-30 23:21:16 UTC

Post by b***@msn.com

On Tuesday, February 8, 1994 11:17:29 PM UTC-6, chris dugan

TIN [version 1.2 PL1]
CRIMES UNHEARD: THE REAL DONNA YAKLICH STORY ^^^^
Last week, a made-for-TV movie aired on CBS stations entitled
"Cries Unheard: The Donna Yaklich Story." This movie was
supposedly based upon the experience of a real-life Colorado
woman who arranged for the murder of her husband, whom she
accused of domestic violence against her. Here in Colorado, Ms.
Yaklich is local news, and she does not enjoy the kind of
saintly image which the movie attempted to create for her.
This movie was shameless propaganda from beginning to end. For
those who live outside of Colorado and are unaware of the
actual facts of this case I shall present the many ways in
which the movie presented half-truths and outright distortions
as "docu-drama."
In the movie, Donna marries Dennis Yaklich, who becomes
involved with steroids as part of his body-building hobby. The
steroids make him crazy and violent, and he is shown brutally
beating and psychologically abusing Donna (played by former
Charlie's Angel, Jaclyn Smith) throughout the movie in
innumerable ways. He is shown shooting up steroids in his
abdomen as the camera zooms in for a lurid close-up of the
innumerable track marks scarring his ravaged flesh. He is
shown grinning and laughing maniacally when Jaclyn/Donna
accuses him of having murdered his first wife (after pointing
an empty gun in her face and pulling the trigger). In the
movie, the steroid abuse continues right up until his murder,
arranged by Donna, as a desperate act of self-defense against
a testosterone-crazed sub-human monster.
Donna is depicted in the movie as a woman living under virtual
house arrest, forbidden to go anywhere or do anything by her
tyrannical mate. She is shown as a relentlessly virtuous
self-sacrificing long-suffering victim and a flawlessly
perfect mother of their child. She never wrongs anyone in any
way -- until she arranges her husband's death (and the entire
movie is devoted to convincing viewers that he had it coming).
The only children in the home are the Yaklichs' son Denny, and
a teenaged girl named Patty who is supposedly Dennis's
step-daughter. (I missed the first 15 minutes of the film so I
don't know how her presence was rationalized. Suffice it to
say that there was no such "Patty" person in real life.) To
underscore Dennis's allegedly despicable character, he is shown
running this ficticious "Patty" out of the house when he finds
out she is pregnant. After the killing of her husband, Donna
is shown sitting in a restaurant telling her female companion
that it is the first time in years she has been out. When the
on-screen police ask the Hollywood Donna if she has any idea
who might have wanted to kill her husband, she replies that she
knows nothing of Dennis's enemies. At her movie trial,
unselfish to a fault, she is shown as thinking only of her son
Denny and of his uncertain future should she be convicted and
imprisoned.
Now for the facts. For starters, in real life no trace of
steroids were found in Dennis's body upon autopsy. Such
metabolites are highly fat-soluble and remain in the body at
detectable levels for 2 to 3 months after even a single dose.
The trackmarks which the movie shows were a Hollywood
invention, pure and simple. There were no track marks found at
autopsy. Indeed, an extensive police investigation failed to
uncover any evidence that Dennis ever took steroids in his
entire life. Pueblo Colorado Homicide Detective Dan Snell, lead
investigator in the case, told the press, "We checked out every
lead. We are obligated to do that. No one but her defense
brought that up and we talked to virtually everybody." And of
course, if Dennis HAD been abusing steroids in the weeks
leading up to his death, as Donna alleged, his corpse would
have tested postive for steroids. It didn't. Donna lied. As
we shall see, this was not her first lie, nor her last.
In real life, Donna was not only not under "house arrest," she
lead a very active life outside of their home which included
carrying on affairs with several other men, and leading
aerobics classes. In the latter case, she appeared repeatedly
in public clad in skimpy, skin-tight outfits in front of entire
classes of people all during the period in which she later
claimed she was being savagely beaten on a daily basis. Her
bruises and pain should have been obvious either by being in
plain sight, or by visible swelling, or by weakness/stiffness
of the afflicted limbs during aerobics. In fact, she never
showed any sign of abuse according to numerous witnesses who
attended her classes. (In the movie, she is depicted at one
point of going around desperately asking people for help with a
huge bruise across her face. This is sheer fiction).
The insinuations about Dennis having killed his first wife are
vicious, sensationalistic slander and nothing more. In real
life, Dennis's first wife died of a reaction to a prescription
drug, a death which was ruled accidental by the coroner. There
was never the slightest cloud of suspicion upon Dennis as a
result of this tragedy. For Hollywood to smear a man this way
is utterly deplorable.
The movie gave no hint of Donna's extramarital affairs,
perhaps because doing so would conflict with the image of the
helpless, saintly woman held prisoner in her own home, and
would make her seem less virtuous. In the movie, Donna is
shown sitting in a restaurant with a woman friend at the time
the police learn that she had paid to have her husband killed.
In real life, she was soaking up the sun on the beaches of
Jamaica with her latest squeeze, attorney John Giduck, spending
her late husband's money at a prodigious rate. In the movie,
there is no mention of Donna receiving any tangible assets as a
result of her husband's death. In real life, she received
$360,000 in cash and benefits from his life insurance, with
which she went on giddy spending sprees (in Jamaica and
elsewhere). She was later able to use this money to post bond
and to pay her attorney fees as well.
In the movie, all the viewer sees is Donna's arrest followed
by Donna's trial in which Denver psychologist Lenore Walker,
creator of the "Battered Woman Syndrome," testifies on the
stand that Donna was an innocent victim acting in self-defense.
A male expert witness is then shown debunking Walker, saying
that men get battered too but seldom report it (accompanied by
gasps of outrage from the courtroom audience, to remind viewers
of how absurd this claim supposedly is). In real life, Donna
not only didn't say she knew nothing about Dennis's enemies,
she gave police a list of male suspects, one or more of whom
she clearly hoped to frame for the murder she herself had
arranged. When the two young men whom she had paid to perform
the murder confessed and implicated her, she claimed never to
have met either of them. This claim fell through after it was
discovered that one of them had actually worked for Donna in
the past at a firecracker stand she ran. At this point, Donna
tried to claim that Dennis himself had hired the two men to
kill him so that he could go out in a blaze of glory. Needless
to say, this far-fetched story did not impress police. It was
at this point that Donna first began claiming to police that
she'd arranged the murder as an act of self-defense against
domestic abuse. Lenore Walker DID testify at Donna's trial (one
of the few accurate things in the entire film) but was rebutted
by a FEMALE therapist who testified that Donna was not a
battering victim but a calculating con-artist. The movie left
out this testimony, and made the rebutter male, perhaps to
enhance the evil-insensitive-men-blame-the-
innocent-female-victim angle which they clearly chose to pursue
instead of telling the truth.
In real life, Donna and Dennis lived with their child Denny,
Dennis's daughter Vanessa from his previous marriage, and
three step-children, Raymond, Chris and Kim, from his first
wife's previous marriage. Contrary to the Hollywood Donna's
image as a selfless, loving, nurturant person, the real-life
Donna kicked Vanessa, Raymond, Chris, and Kim out of the house
after she'd had their father killed. The only child she seemed
to have any concern for at all was Denny, her only blood
child.. The movie version of events does not depict the other
four children at all, perhaps because Donna's cold, selfish
treatment of them fails to jibe with the sympathetic heroine
its producers wanted to portray Donna as being.
One of the children the real Donna evicted, Vanessa Yaklich,
was interviewed on the local news program of the Denver CBS
affiliate station, Channel 7, immediately after the movie was
shown. Vanessa said, "She [Donna] says so many awful things
it's unreal. I can't believe she can say it! And there's no
evidence to back it up and yet people believe it." Vanessa
added that as someone who had lived under the same roof with
Donna and Dennis for the entire 8 years of their marriage, she
can testify that all Donna's stories about beatings from Dennis
were "an outright lie." Tom Greenwell, a longtime friend of the
Yaklich family agrees, "I was around the Yakliches every day.
I helped them. They helped me. We fished and hunted together.
And every word that woman said about them was nothing but a
bald-faced lie. You would think somebody would see through
that story and read between the lines." In an interview for the
same news spot, Dennis's brother said that the movie producers
never once called up any of Dennis's relatives or friends.
Indeed, they based the entire plot soley upon prison interviews
with Donna and no one else except Donna. Donna Yaklich conned
the movie producers, but they were not the first people she has
conned.
One of the most cynical omissions by the movie-makers was
their failure to make any reference to Donna's bad-check
forging sprees during her marriage to Dennis. In real life,
Donna stole the checkbook of Dennis's parents and proceeded to
write checks to herself, forging their signatures. When Ed
Yaklich, Dennis's father, found out about Donna's criminal
capers, he warned her that he would file a complaint if she did
it again. After this warning, Donna forged yet another check.
Dennis's brother told the local press "Dennis knew nothing
about [the forged checks]. We called Donna over, and she
denied she wrote the check. And I shoved it in her face and
she admitted she'd forged it. My dad said, 'As soon as Dennis
gets home, we're gonna tell him about it and contact the DA.'
That's when Donna went to the [battered women's] shelter... It
was because we were gonna turn her in for forged checks."
Apparently, Donna then forged yet another check, this one for
$500, on her way to the shelter. Donna was later tried and
convicted of forgery for these scams. There is no hint of any
of this in the movie, although its producers are unlikely to
have been unaware of these escapades of Donna's, for which she
had a criminal record. Instead, she is depicted as a paragon of
misunderstood, wounded innocence.
Still, the lack of any reference to Donna's check-forging scams
is not the most outrageous omission of the screenplay; the
movie depicts Donna as trapped in an impossible situation as
captive of a brutal, homicidal husband who would not allow her
to escape. Her contract killing of him is depicted as a
desperate bid to remove herself from a marriage which was a
deadly trap. In real life, at the time of the murder, Donna
was on the verge of "escaping" whether she liked it or not.
HER HUSBAND HAD ANNOUNCED THAT HE WAS GOING TO FILE FOR
DIVORCE!!!
Donna's extramarital affairs and check-forging antics had
finally worn Dennis down. As his brother told the press,
"[Dennis] came over to my house [in late 1985]. He said, 'I
hate to do it, but I gotta divorce Donna. She's breaking us
and running around on me, and as soon as the [Christmas]
holidays are over, I'm gonna file for divorce.' Donna knew
about it. She told my friend Linda that she was going to get a
divorce. Donna came to [Dennis] with nothing. Everything at
that house belonged to Dennis or me or my family. If they got
divorced, Donna would leave there with nothing. Absolutely
nothing." Instead, she had Dennis killed on December 12, 1985,
with the holidays less than two weeks away, while she was still
legally married to him and could inherit his house and collect
his lucrative life insurance pay-off.
With plenty of the legitimate female victims of male violence
in this world, it is inexcusable that the producers of a movie
would choose someone like Donna Yaklich as the heroine of
their so-called "true-to-life" drama. The Hollywood Donna may
be a saintly, and utterly sympathetic character. But the
real-life Donna was and is a coldly calculating lying
con-artist and murderess with clear psychopathic tendencies.
It does a great disservice to the viewing public to portray
such a person so inaccurately. And it does an even greater
disservice to her victim, Dennis Yaklich, and the friends and
loved ones he left behind.. This movie, according to family
members interviewed on the local news last week, has reopened
their wounds and deepened their pain. But in the world of
movies, female victimhood sells...
...and for Donna Yaklich, it also pays. Under Colorado law, it
is legal for a convicted felon to profit from selling the movie
rights to her story. Donna has apparently raked in a
substantial, but undisclosed amount of cash from this film.
When local reporters tried to contact her to learn how much she
had made, she referred all questions to her attorneys, who
refused all comment.
-Chris Dugan Denver, Colorado

I didn't know Donna and cannot substantiate or refute anything
you have posted here. I met a woman I believe was Barbara
Yaklich about 4 years before her death. She told me how her
husband was a bodybuilder and used steroids. That the steroids
made him violent and he abused her. She said his fellow officers
were afraid of him when he lost his temper on the job. She was
afraid he was going to kill her, that he had threatened to kill
her or her family if she left him. I told her she needed to get
out of there, but she was afraid for her children and didn't know
how she could take care of them. She said because her husband
was a cop she couldn't go to the police because they always stood
by him. She felt trapped with no way out. It wasn't until many
years later when the Donna Yaklich story came out that I learned
Barbara had died. She told me if she ever died, to look to her
husband as the person responsible.

are you alright

They just played this movie again this morning on Lifetime Movie
Network 9-30-2015 and I tend to be more in agreement with this post
here because it makes total sense. All you are doing Chris Dugan is
stating everything that we saw in the movie to the complete opposite
and I don't believe it. I think you are just trying to make Donna
seem like a really bad person yet and why I don't know. My belief is
kind of in the middle of the portrayed events in the movie and the
true accounts I can find in any reputable news sites and frankly
quite a bit of news sites are more towards the version of the movie
and before the movie was even out. The big factor that points to
Dennis actually being abusive points in the fact that the first wives
death was reopened and that upon a more detailed look makes it now a
questionable death. I tend to believe he did have something to do
with his first wives death and being a cop can definitely help keep
all suspicion off of him. Look at how long it took Scott Petersons
Wives who disappeared and how long it took for his fellow officers to
realize he had something to do with there deaths. This seems to run
very parallel to that situation. JMO

why are you defending a murderer are you a murderer too

t***@gmail.com

2017-05-05 01:51:43 UTC

Two I ndependent reviews of Barbara's autopsy were conducted and both medical examiner's (consulted/financed by the "task force") concluded the same findings in the original report. Both stated Barbara's death was neither a homicide nor a suspicious death, but Sheriff Corsentino chose not to share this information as it would conflict with his witch hunt. Also, these are the only two actual reviews of her autopsy; the Arapaho County coroner simply responded to information provided to him by a reporter seeking to assist Donna. Dobersen never saw the autopsy report to my knowledge. The original autopsy was requested by Dennis, mind you. Someone knowingly responsible for another's death is not going to demand an autopsy. I certainly wouldn't. Finally, Corsentino, while working as an investigator in 1986, was the first person to approach Donna and suggest Dennis hired the Greenwell brothers to kill him so he could go out in a blaze of glory. And this is in court documents proving Corsentino said this to Donna while she was sitting in a jail cell shortly after her arrest. Clearly, the former sheriff had motive to skew the results of his "independent investigation" into Barbara's death.

2017-05-07 01:30:48 UTC

fake flooding from drug dealer scum posting junk messages to hide
behind traffic they steal your credit card numbers too its from peter j
ross greg hall and alt usenet kooks some of aliases are checkmate kensi
nadegda report identity thieves and pirates to fbi . i win

Post by t***@gmail.com
Two I ndependent reviews of Barbara's autopsy were conducted and both
medical examiner's (consulted/financed by the "task force") concluded
the same findings in the original report. Both stated Barbara's death
was neither a homicide nor a suspicious death, but Sheriff Corsentino
chose not to share this information as it would conflict with his
witch hunt. Also, these are the only two actual reviews of her
autopsy; the Arapaho County coroner simply responded to information
provided to him by a reporter seeking to assist Donna. Dobersen never
saw the autopsy report to my knowledge. The original autopsy was
requested by Dennis, mind you. Someone knowingly responsible for
another's death is not going to demand an autopsy. I certainly
wouldn't. Finally, Corsentino, while working as an investigator in
1986, was the first person to approach Donna and suggest Dennis hired
the Greenwell brothers to kill him so he could go out in a blaze of
glory. And this is in court documents proving Corsentino said this to
Donna while she was sitting in a jail cell shortly after her arrest.
Clearly, the former sheriff had motive to skew the results of his
"independent investigation" into Barbara's death..

--
i am & the great . i win

m***@gmail.com

2018-03-31 06:41:02 UTC

Interesting

s***@gmail.com

2018-06-07 22:00:36 UTC

Where is she now?

d***@gmail.com

2019-06-20 09:22:58 UTC

Someone is really trying to save Dennis...We all know what happened.The coroner ruled no substance in his system..Come on he's with the police on this Don't want to tarnish the Pueblo Police Department.Donna did the only thing she could to get away from that monster..

k***@juno.com

2013-09-27 04:39:48 UTC

she was only 22 when she moved in to take care of 4 kids, too young to be involved in this relationship in the 1stplace. But for her to put up with this man she couldn't have been all right in the 1st place (and vica versa - if she had the issues u state there was something wrong with him to be with this girl). What about the oldest girl testifying for her at the trail? And then the investigators reopening the 1st wife case and not classify it as undetermined (internal bleeding b/c the husband pushed to hard on her when trying to resuscitate her after fainting from weight loss pills- ya right, he was a cop) that was omitted in the film too - saying it was an allergy to medicine she was taking... Many discrepancies, both obviously had issues and shouldn't have been together.

2013-09-27 11:52:07 UTC

Post by k***@juno.com
she was only 22 when she moved in to take care of 4 kids, too young
to be involved in this relationship in the 1stplace. But for her to
put up with this man she couldn't have been all right in the 1st
place (and vica versa - if she had the issues u state there was
something wrong with him to be with this girl). What about the oldest
girl testifying for her at the trail? And then the investigators
reopening the 1st wife case and not classify it as undetermined
(internal bleeding b/c the husband pushed to hard on her when trying
to resuscitate her after fainting from weight loss pills- ya right,
he was a cop) that was omitted in the film too - saying it was an
allergy to medicine she was taking... Many discrepancies, both
obviously had issues and shouldn't have been together.

he did nothing she is murderer that is all that matters . i win

k***@juno.com

2013-09-27 07:16:35 UTC

I read she was only 22 when she moved in to take care of 4 kids, too young to be involved in this relationship in the 1st place. But for her to put up with this man she couldn't have been all right in the 1st place (and visa versa - if she had the issues u state there was something wrong with him to be with this girl). What about the oldest girl testifying for her at the trial? And then the investigators reopening the 1st wife case and now classify it as undetermined (internal bleeding b/c the husband pushed to hard on her when trying to resuscitate her after fainting from weight loss pills- ya right, he was a cop) But that was omitted in the film too - saying it was an allergy to medicine she was taking... Many discrepancies, both obviously had issues and both paid a price.

2013-09-27 11:52:37 UTC

Post by k***@juno.com
I read she was only 22 when she moved in to take care of 4 kids, too
young to be involved in this relationship in the 1st place. But for
her to put up with this man she couldn't have been all right in the
1st place (and visa versa - if she had the issues u state there was
something wrong with him to be with this girl). What about the oldest
girl testifying for her at the trial? And then the investigators
reopening the 1st wife case and now classify it as undetermined
(internal bleeding b/c the husband pushed to hard on her when trying
to resuscitate her after fainting from weight loss pills- ya right,
he was a cop) But that was omitted in the film too - saying it was an
allergy to medicine she was taking... Many discrepancies, both
obviously had issues and both paid a price.

means nothing

s***@gmail.com

2014-10-04 15:48:09 UTC

She said that in the beginning she knew she should have left but she grew up in a abusive household and felt at home in this one believing she could make things perfect enough to please him

s***@gmail.com

2014-11-13 03:47:06 UTC

Yea...I agree with you. Why wasn't all of her infidelities and check forgeries brought up at the trial?

d***@gmail.com

2019-06-20 09:27:37 UTC

I really feel for Donna She was the real victim. I pray her life is much better now that she's paid her dept to society...That stepdaughter of hers was a piece of work.She was either too young or she still covers for her dad..

c***@yahoo.com

2013-09-29 02:47:43 UTC

He killed his first wife--how else did her liver get split in two?!?

2013-09-29 03:19:23 UTC

Post by c***@yahoo.com
He killed his first wife--how else did her liver get split in two?!?

no he didnt

V***@live.com

2014-01-08 18:42:16 UTC

Subject: The REAL Donna Yaklich Story...
Newsgroups: soc.men,soc.women,alt.feminism
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL1]
A second autopsy was done on Barbara, his first wife. They said she died of blunt force trauma to the head and now it was "suspicious". What a coincidence. Unless somebody made that up, there is no way this second wife should have even spent a day in prison. She is a hero. Probably saved the life of the next wife as well as her own. Can't go around killing and beating your wives because don't have supper on the table at the right time without karma.

2014-01-08 20:11:20 UTC

On 01/08/2014 01:42 PM, ***@live.com wrote:
all crap donna was murderer . i win

a***@gmail.com

2014-06-19 18:12:20 UTC

Donna is a murderer!! She could have left but she wanted the money. If Dennis was on steroids and would just go off how is it that the children never saw this? Because it didn't happen!! She had him killed for his money.

2014-06-19 19:50:57 UTC

Post by a***@gmail.com
Donna is a murderer!! She could have left but she wanted the money.
If Dennis was on steroids and would just go off how is it that the
children never saw this? Because it didn't happen!! She had him
killed for his money.

you are right

s***@gmail.com

2017-05-21 00:07:39 UTC

She was as crazy as a loon.I cant believe state couldnt protect that money before she spent it all.i pray for his kids,maybe someone will give her child some of her medicine.

o***@gmail.com

2017-09-23 01:51:25 UTC

Agreeing to pay two young men, one 25 and the other 16 at the time of the murder, 45K is first degree murder in this country, period. The fact that the jury in her case was too stupid to realize that is on them. There is NO reason EVER to murder someone unless they are trying to kill you in that moment. She was in no imminent danger when he was gunned down in our driveway after she called the killers to let them know he was on his way home from work.

She could have left the marriage at any time IF her assertions of abuse were true. He was the one who wanted the impending divorce, not her, and she wanted him dead before the holidays were over, just as the OP stated. I know, I was one of her step-children, and I witnessed her maniacal rage on a daily basis. She was an absolute monster as soon as he left the house. Her NEVER laid a hand on her, and I never saw any bruises, scratches etc of any kind on her. She made the abuse up out of thin air to get away with what she did.

My mother died of a massive heart attack, partially brought on by a potassium deficiency, and he did CPR to try to revive her. He was a kind, loving and giving person and I never witnessed any of the rage he allegedly exhibited. She is a pathological liar who only cares about herself. There wasn't a warm, caring bone in her body!

s***@gmail.com

2014-10-04 15:44:56 UTC

If any of what you say is true then why didnt the DA bring any of it out during trial? All of that would have helped their case against her so im gonna say you are full of crap..,.dennis was a cop and all his cop buddies would have known about any of the things you listed so it shouldve come out in the trial...i feel that those who loved dennis must have started these rumors so sorry you believed them...sucker

t***@gmail.com

2015-01-07 00:50:52 UTC

Except this: "Donna's accusations that her husband may have been involved in his first wife's death led to the creation of a state task force that reopened the investigation into the 1977 death. The original investigation concluded that Barbara Yaklich died of a diet drug overdose.

The Denver Post reported that coroners reviewed the autopsy report on Barbara Yaklich determined that she had died from "a very serious blunt force injury." A task force came to the conclusion that "this is a suspicious death."

2015-01-07 16:06:49 UTC

Post by t***@gmail.com

Except this: "Donna's accusations that her husband may have been
involved in his first wife's death led to the creation of a state
task force that reopened the investigation into the 1977 death. The
original investigation concluded that Barbara Yaklich died of a diet
drug overdose.
The Denver Post reported that coroners reviewed the autopsy report on
Barbara Yaklich determined that she had died from "a very serious
blunt force injury." A task force came to the conclusion that "this
is a suspicious death.."

who cares apprehend women who murder husbands instead

a***@gmail.com

2015-01-30 18:59:11 UTC

You do not offer any evidence to support what you are saying about Donna Yaklich. I was married to a steroid user who was abusive and they use in cycles. They go on for 3 months and then off. He was probably in an off-cycle if what you say about no steroids in his body is even true. Her sister, stepchildren and her husband's co-workers saw the injuries.

2015-02-03 18:09:49 UTC

You do not offer any evidence to support what you are saying about
Donna Yaklich. I was married to a steroid user who was abusive and
they use in cycles. They go on for 3 months and then off. He was
probably in an off-cycle if what you say about no steroids in his
body is even true. Her sister, stepchildren and her husband's
co-workers saw the injuries.

all crap

l***@gmail.com

2015-09-30 14:11:02 UTC

You're an ass, probably an abuser yourself. He murdered his first wife, after the second autopsy. .pretty obvious.
She served time when she should of been haled as a hero as no one would help her.
Either way..she did her time. .leave her alone.
I win

2015-09-30 23:17:35 UTC

On 09/30/2015 10:11 AM, ***@gmail.com wrote:
all crap . i win

y***@gmail.com

2017-05-15 05:20:54 UTC

Post by l***@gmail.com
You're an ass, probably an abuser yourself. He murdered his first wife, after the second autopsy. .pretty obvious.
She served time when she should of been haled as a hero as no one would help her.
Either way..she did her time. .leave her alone.
I win

oh shut the fuck up he did not dumbass

y***@gmail.com

2017-05-15 05:52:51 UTC

Post by y***@gmail.com

oh shut the fuck up he did not dumbass

no i wont leave her alone

y***@gmail.com

2017-05-15 06:00:30 UTC

Post by y***@gmail.com

oh shut the fuck up he did not dumbass

no dumbass you dont win

d***@yahoo.com

2017-05-15 10:39:39 UTC

this thread is hilarious. sounds like a bunch of 6th graders!

s***@gmail.com

2016-08-18 00:22:42 UTC

Not to mention the mail man and telephone repair man saw her bruises. Why wasn't her supposed infidelity brought up at trial?

s***@gmail.com

2017-03-20 22:44:00 UTC

Post by s***@gmail.com
Not to mention the mail man and telephone repair man saw her bruises. Why wasn't her supposed infidelity brought up at trial?

I know people who lived in Pueblo by them and have been told the true story and yes, movies over dramatize as he took steroid pills and shakes. He was abusive and the affairs is hearsay. Even, if she did have affairs I hate to tell you a lot of domesti violence victims do. DV doesn't mean bruises. What about the logs from shelters who verified her story of when she went to them and he going to them to get her?

2017-03-21 00:49:11 UTC

On Wednesday, August 17, 2016 at 6:22:44 PM UTC-6,

Post by s***@gmail.com
Not to mention the mail man and telephone repair man saw her
bruises. Why wasn't her supposed infidelity brought up at trial?

I know people who lived in Pueblo by them and have been told the true
story and yes, movies over dramatize as he took steroid pills and
shakes. He was abusive and the affairs is hearsay. Even, if she did
have affairs I hate to tell you a lot of domesti violence victims do.
DV doesn't mean bruises. What about the logs from shelters who
verified her story of when she went to them and he going to them to
get her?

iow she was the liar

Turin Turd

2017-03-24 05:45:06 UTC

On Wednesday, August 17, 2016 at 6:22:44 PM UTC-6,

Post by s***@gmail.com
Not to mention the mail man and telephone repair man saw her
bruises. Why wasn't her supposed infidelity brought up at trial?

I know people who lived in Pueblo by them and have been told the true
story and yes, movies over dramatize as he took steroid pills and
shakes. He was abusive and the affairs is hearsay. Even, if she did
have affairs I hate to tell you a lot of domesti violence victims do.
DV doesn't mean bruises. What about the logs from shelters who
verified her story of when she went to them and he going to them to
get her?

iow she was the liar

“&” is an infamous and anonymous internet troll. He launches
scurrilous, defamatory, trivializing and false diatribes against
Men’s Rights activists and their posts and against Men’s Rights
organizations. He therefore, has as his goals the disruption of
soc.men and the thwarting of the legitimate goals of the men’s
rights movement, and the denigration, trivialization and discrediting
of the leaders of the men’s rights movement and men’s rights
organizations.

FOAD TURIN you moron

2017-03-24 20:37:55 UTC

Post by Turin Turd

On Wednesday, August 17, 2016 at 6:22:44 PM UTC-6,

Post by s***@gmail.com
Not to mention the mail man and telephone repair man saw her
bruises. Why wasn't her supposed infidelity brought up at
trial?

I know people who lived in Pueblo by them and have been told the
true story and yes, movies over dramatize as he took steroid
pills and shakes. He was abusive and the affairs is hearsay.
Even, if she did have affairs I hate to tell you a lot of domesti
violence victims do. DV doesn't mean bruises. What about the logs
from shelters who verified her story of when she went to them and
he going to them to get her?

iow she was the liar

“&” is an infamous and anonymous internet troll. He launches
scurrilous, defamatory, trivializing and false diatribes against
Men’s Rights activists and their posts and against Men’s Rights
organizations. He therefore, has as his goals the disruption of
soc.men and the thwarting of the legitimate goals of the men’s rights
movement, and the denigration, trivialization and discrediting of the
leaders of the men’s rights movement and men’s rights organizations.
FOAD TURIN you moron

--
i am & the great . i win

t***@gmail.com

2015-10-01 03:04:40 UTC

I BELIEVE ALMOST EVERY PART OF THIS MOVIE. I TOTALLY BELIEVE DONNA'S INNOCENCE. END OF STORY.

2015-10-01 03:10:20 UTC

Post by t***@gmail.com
I BELIEVE ALMOST EVERY PART OF THIS MOVIE. I TOTALLY BELIEVE DONNA'S
INNOCENCE. END OF STORY.

no one cares . i win

s***@gmail.com

2016-01-29 12:28:04 UTC

No one cares.. I win.. Your a complete idiot, murderer & dumb ass liar. Shut up & find something to do other than portray an abusing abuser to be innocent when Dennis is a lying crooked woman abuser. Hey guess what.. He's dead. Thank God. Another idiot woman abuser buried below grown. He got what he deserved dumbass..

2016-01-29 18:09:25 UTC

Post by s***@gmail.com
No one cares.. I win.. Your a complete idiot, murderer & dumb ass
liar. Shut up & find something to do other than portray an abusing
abuser to be innocent when Dennis is a lying crooked woman abuser.
Hey guess what.. He's dead. Thank God. Another idiot woman abuser
buried below grown. He got what he deserved dumbass..

are you mental

Marxette

2016-01-29 19:45:21 UTC

are you mental

LOL she calls you a murderer, ampy. Time to up those meds :)

--
Marxette

2016-01-29 22:53:45 UTC

Post by Marxette

Post by s***@gmail.com
No one cares.. I win.. Your a complete idiot, murderer & dumb
ass liar. Shut up & find something to do other than portray an
abusing abuser to be innocent when Dennis is a lying crooked
woman abuser. Hey guess what.. He's dead. Thank God. Another
idiot woman abuser buried below grown. He got what he deserved
dumbass..

are you mental

LOL she calls you a murderer, ampy. Time to up those meds :)

thats why i called her mental marxette shes mental shes like donna
yaklich a liar . im right

a***@gmail.com

2016-04-12 14:26:24 UTC

I guess this writer never updates. They reopened his first wife's murder and now have changed it to suspicious. So I wouldn't call that slander especially with two medical examiner's saying there's no way she got those injuries like he said she did. Maybe you should update your stuff.

2016-04-12 14:44:18 UTC

Post by a***@gmail.com
I guess this writer never updates. They reopened his first wife's
murder and now have changed it to suspicious. So I wouldn't call that
slander especially with two medical examiner's saying there's no way
she got those injuries like he said she did. Maybe you should update
your stuff.

do you ever update

a***@gmail.com

2016-04-28 11:07:09 UTC

Post by &
do you ever update

Retarded?

& are full of crap, i win.

2016-04-28 11:46:07 UTC

Post by &
do you ever update

Retarded?
& are full of crap, i win.

are you mad

k***@gmail.com

2017-06-04 02:40:31 UTC

Post by a***@gmail.com
I guess this writer never updates. They reopened his first wife's murder and now have changed it to suspicious. So I wouldn't call that slander especially with two medical examiner's saying there's no way she got those injuries like he said she did. Maybe you should update your stuff.

The "writer" happens to be Donna's stepson and the son of the husband she killed. His facts are also correct.

2017-06-04 16:51:49 UTC

Post by k***@gmail.com

Post by a***@gmail.com
I guess this writer never updates. They reopened his first wife's
murder and now have changed it to suspicious. So I wouldn't call
that slander especially with two medical examiner's saying there's
no way she got those injuries like he said she did. Maybe you
should update your stuff.

The "writer" happens to be Donna's stepson and the son of the husband
she killed. His facts are also correct.

y***@gmail.com

2017-07-15 07:44:27 UTC

WTF Your All Idiots!

t***@gmail.com

2015-10-01 03:04:42 UTC

I BELIEVE ALMOST EVERY PART OF THIS MOVIE. I TOTALLY BELIEVE DONNA'S INNOCENCE. END OF STORY.

s***@gmail.com

2017-03-20 22:44:46 UTC

2017-03-21 00:49:31 UTC

On Tuesday, February 8, 1994 at 10:17:29 PM UTC-7, chris dugan

soc.men,soc.women,alt.feminism Summary: Keywords: X-Newsreader: TIN
[version 1.2 PL1]
CRIMES UNHEARD: THE REAL DONNA YAKLICH STORY ^^^^
Last week, a made-for-TV movie aired on CBS stations entitled
"Cries Unheard: The Donna Yaklich Story." This movie was
supposedly based upon the experience of a real-life Colorado woman
who arranged for the murder of her husband, whom she accused of
domestic violence against her. Here in Colorado, Ms. Yaklich is
local news, and she does not enjoy the kind of saintly image which
the movie attempted to create for her. This movie was shameless
propaganda from beginning to end. For those who live outside of
Colorado and are unaware of the actual facts of this case I shall
present the many ways in which the movie presented half-truths and
outright distortions as "docu-drama."
In the movie, Donna marries Dennis Yaklich, who becomes involved
with steroids as part of his body-building hobby. The steroids
make him crazy and violent, and he is shown brutally beating and
psychologically abusing Donna (played by former Charlie's Angel,
Jaclyn Smith) throughout the movie in innumerable ways. He is
shown shooting up steroids in his abdomen as the camera zooms in
for a lurid close-up of the innumerable track marks scarring his
ravaged flesh. He is shown grinning and laughing maniacally when
Jaclyn/Donna accuses him of having murdered his first wife (after
pointing an empty gun in her face and pulling the trigger). In
the movie, the steroid abuse continues right up until his murder,
arranged by Donna, as a desperate act of self-defense against a
testosterone-crazed sub-human monster.
Donna is depicted in the movie as a woman living under virtual
house arrest, forbidden to go anywhere or do anything by her
tyrannical mate. She is shown as a relentlessly virtuous
self-sacrificing long-suffering victim and a flawlessly perfect
mother of their child. She never wrongs anyone in any way -- until
she arranges her husband's death (and the entire movie is devoted
to convincing viewers that he had it coming). The only children in
the home are the Yaklichs' son Denny, and a teenaged girl named
Patty who is supposedly Dennis's step-daughter. (I missed the
first 15 minutes of the film so I don't know how her presence was
rationalized. Suffice it to say that there was no such "Patty"
person in real life.) To underscore Dennis's allegedly despicable
character, he is shown running this ficticious "Patty" out of the
house when he finds out she is pregnant. After the killing of her
husband, Donna is shown sitting in a restaurant telling her female
companion that it is the first time in years she has been out.
When the on-screen police ask the Hollywood Donna if she has any
idea who might have wanted to kill her husband, she replies that
she knows nothing of Dennis's enemies. At her movie trial,
unselfish to a fault, she is shown as thinking only of her son
Denny and of his uncertain future should she be convicted and
imprisoned.
Now for the facts. For starters, in real life no trace of steroids
were found in Dennis's body upon autopsy. Such metabolites are
highly fat-soluble and remain in the body at detectable levels for
2 to 3 months after even a single dose. The trackmarks which the
movie shows were a Hollywood invention, pure and simple. There
were no track marks found at autopsy. Indeed, an extensive police
investigation failed to uncover any evidence that Dennis ever took
steroids in his entire life. Pueblo Colorado Homicide Detective Dan
Snell, lead investigator in the case, told the press, "We checked
out every lead. We are obligated to do that. No one but her
defense brought that up and we talked to virtually everybody." And
of course, if Dennis HAD been abusing steroids in the weeks leading
up to his death, as Donna alleged, his corpse would have tested
postive for steroids. It didn't. Donna lied. As we shall see,
this was not her first lie, nor her last.
In real life, Donna was not only not under "house arrest," she lead
a very active life outside of their home which included carrying
on affairs with several other men, and leading aerobics classes.
In the latter case, she appeared repeatedly in public clad in
skimpy, skin-tight outfits in front of entire classes of people all
during the period in which she later claimed she was being savagely
beaten on a daily basis. Her bruises and pain should have been
obvious either by being in plain sight, or by visible swelling, or
by weakness/stiffness of the afflicted limbs during aerobics. In
fact, she never showed any sign of abuse according to numerous
witnesses who attended her classes. (In the movie, she is depicted
at one point of going around desperately asking people for help
with a huge bruise across her face. This is sheer fiction).
The insinuations about Dennis having killed his first wife are
vicious, sensationalistic slander and nothing more. In real life,
Dennis's first wife died of a reaction to a prescription drug, a
death which was ruled accidental by the coroner. There was never
the slightest cloud of suspicion upon Dennis as a result of this
tragedy. For Hollywood to smear a man this way is utterly
deplorable.
The movie gave no hint of Donna's extramarital affairs, perhaps
because doing so would conflict with the image of the helpless,
saintly woman held prisoner in her own home, and would make her
seem less virtuous. In the movie, Donna is shown sitting in a
restaurant with a woman friend at the time the police learn that
she had paid to have her husband killed. In real life, she was
soaking up the sun on the beaches of Jamaica with her latest
squeeze, attorney John Giduck, spending her late husband's money at
a prodigious rate. In the movie, there is no mention of Donna
receiving any tangible assets as a result of her husband's death.
In real life, she received $360,000 in cash and benefits from his
life insurance, with which she went on giddy spending sprees (in
Jamaica and elsewhere). She was later able to use this money to
post bond and to pay her attorney fees as well.
In the movie, all the viewer sees is Donna's arrest followed by
Donna's trial in which Denver psychologist Lenore Walker, creator
of the "Battered Woman Syndrome," testifies on the stand that Donna
was an innocent victim acting in self-defense. A male expert
witness is then shown debunking Walker, saying that men get
battered too but seldom report it (accompanied by gasps of outrage
from the courtroom audience, to remind viewers of how absurd this
claim supposedly is). In real life, Donna not only didn't say she
knew nothing about Dennis's enemies, she gave police a list of male
suspects, one or more of whom she clearly hoped to frame for the
murder she herself had arranged. When the two young men whom she
had paid to perform the murder confessed and implicated her, she
claimed never to have met either of them. This claim fell through
after it was discovered that one of them had actually worked for
Donna in the past at a firecracker stand she ran. At this point,
Donna tried to claim that Dennis himself had hired the two men to
kill him so that he could go out in a blaze of glory. Needless to
say, this far-fetched story did not impress police. It was at this
point that Donna first began claiming to police that she'd arranged
the murder as an act of self-defense against domestic abuse.
Lenore Walker DID testify at Donna's trial (one of the few accurate
things in the entire film) but was rebutted by a FEMALE therapist
who testified that Donna was not a battering victim but a
calculating con-artist. The movie left out this testimony, and
made the rebutter male, perhaps to enhance the
evil-insensitive-men-blame-the- innocent-female-victim angle which
they clearly chose to pursue instead of telling the truth.
In real life, Donna and Dennis lived with their child Denny,
Dennis's daughter Vanessa from his previous marriage, and three
step-children, Raymond, Chris and Kim, from his first wife's
previous marriage. Contrary to the Hollywood Donna's image as a
selfless, loving, nurturant person, the real-life Donna kicked
Vanessa, Raymond, Chris, and Kim out of the house after she'd had
their father killed. The only child she seemed to have any concern
for at all was Denny, her only blood child. The movie version of
events does not depict the other four children at all, perhaps
because Donna's cold, selfish treatment of them fails to jibe with
the sympathetic heroine its producers wanted to portray Donna as being.
One of the children the real Donna evicted, Vanessa Yaklich, was
interviewed on the local news program of the Denver CBS affiliate
station, Channel 7, immediately after the movie was shown. Vanessa
said, "She [Donna] says so many awful things it's unreal. I can't
believe she can say it! And there's no evidence to back it up and
yet people believe it." Vanessa added that as someone who had lived
under the same roof with Donna and Dennis for the entire 8 years of
their marriage, she can testify that all Donna's stories about
beatings from Dennis were "an outright lie." Tom Greenwell, a
longtime friend of the Yaklich family agrees, "I was around the
Yakliches every day. I helped them. They helped me. We fished
and hunted together. And every word that woman said about them was
nothing but a bald-faced lie. You would think somebody would see
through that story and read between the lines." In an interview for
the same news spot, Dennis's brother said that the movie producers
never once called up any of Dennis's relatives or friends. Indeed,
they based the entire plot soley upon prison interviews with Donna
and no one else except Donna. Donna Yaklich conned the movie
producers, but they were not the first people she has conned.
One of the most cynical omissions by the movie-makers was their
failure to make any reference to Donna's bad-check forging sprees
during her marriage to Dennis. In real life, Donna stole the
checkbook of Dennis's parents and proceeded to write checks to
herself, forging their signatures. When Ed Yaklich, Dennis's
father, found out about Donna's criminal capers, he warned her that
he would file a complaint if she did it again. After this warning,
Donna forged yet another check. Dennis's brother told the local
press "Dennis knew nothing about [the forged checks]. We called
Donna over, and she denied she wrote the check. And I shoved it in
her face and she admitted she'd forged it. My dad said, 'As soon
as Dennis gets home, we're gonna tell him about it and contact the
DA.' That's when Donna went to the [battered women's] shelter...
It was because we were gonna turn her in for forged checks."
Apparently, Donna then forged yet another check, this one for $500,
on her way to the shelter. Donna was later tried and convicted of
forgery for these scams. There is no hint of any of this in the
movie, although its producers are unlikely to have been unaware of
these escapades of Donna's, for which she had a criminal record.
Instead, she is depicted as a paragon of misunderstood, wounded
innocence.
Still, the lack of any reference to Donna's check-forging scams is
not the most outrageous omission of the screenplay; the movie
depicts Donna as trapped in an impossible situation as captive of a
brutal, homicidal husband who would not allow her to escape. Her
contract killing of him is depicted as a desperate bid to remove
herself from a marriage which was a deadly trap. In real life, at
the time of the murder, Donna was on the verge of "escaping"
whether she liked it or not. HER HUSBAND HAD ANNOUNCED THAT HE WAS
GOING TO FILE FOR DIVORCE!!!
Donna's extramarital affairs and check-forging antics had finally
worn Dennis down. As his brother told the press, "[Dennis] came
over to my house [in late 1985]. He said, 'I hate to do it, but I
gotta divorce Donna. She's breaking us and running around on me,
and as soon as the [Christmas] holidays are over, I'm gonna file
for divorce.' Donna knew about it. She told my friend Linda that
she was going to get a divorce. Donna came to [Dennis] with
nothing. Everything at that house belonged to Dennis or me or my
family. If they got divorced, Donna would leave there with
nothing. Absolutely nothing." Instead, she had Dennis killed on
December 12, 1985, with the holidays less than two weeks away,
while she was still legally married to him and could inherit his
house and collect his lucrative life insurance pay-off.
With plenty of the legitimate female victims of male violence in
this world, it is inexcusable that the producers of a movie would
choose someone like Donna Yaklich as the heroine of their
so-called "true-to-life" drama. The Hollywood Donna may be a
saintly, and utterly sympathetic character. But the real-life
Donna was and is a coldly calculating lying con-artist and
murderess with clear psychopathic tendencies. It does a great
disservice to the viewing public to portray such a person so
inaccurately. And it does an even greater disservice to her
victim, Dennis Yaklich, and the friends and loved ones he left
behind. This movie, according to family members interviewed on the
local news last week, has reopened their wounds and deepened their
pain. But in the world of movies, female victimhood sells...
...and for Donna Yaklich, it also pays. Under Colorado law, it is
legal for a convicted felon to profit from selling the movie rights
to her story. Donna has apparently raked in a substantial, but
undisclosed amount of cash from this film. When local reporters
tried to contact her to learn how much she had made, she referred
all questions to her attorneys, who refused all comment.
-Chris Dugan Denver, Colorado

all crap

y***@gmail.com

2017-05-15 05:18:28 UTC

Subject: The REAL Donna Yaklich Story...
Newsgroups: soc.men,soc.women,alt.feminism
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL1]
donna if i ever see you in public you are dead you ugly bitch
CRIMES UNHEARD: THE REAL DONNA YAKLICH STORY
^^^^
Last week, a made-for-TV movie aired on CBS stations entitled
"Cries Unheard: The Donna Yaklich Story." This movie was supposedly based
upon the experience of a real-life Colorado woman who arranged for the
murder of her husband, whom she accused of domestic violence against her.
Here in Colorado, Ms. Yaklich is local news, and she does not enjoy the
kind of saintly image which the movie attempted to create for her. This
movie was shameless propaganda from beginning to end. For those who live
outside of Colorado and are unaware of the actual facts of this case I
shall present the many ways in which the movie presented half-truths and
outright distortions as "docu-drama."
In the movie, Donna marries Dennis Yaklich, who becomes involved
with steroids as part of his body-building hobby. The steroids make him
crazy and violent, and he is shown brutally beating and psychologically
abusing Donna (played by former Charlie's Angel, Jaclyn Smith) throughout
the movie in innumerable ways. He is shown shooting up steroids in his
abdomen as the camera zooms in for a lurid close-up of the innumerable
track marks scarring his ravaged flesh. He is shown grinning and laughing
maniacally when Jaclyn/Donna accuses him of having murdered his first wife
(after pointing an empty gun in her face and pulling the trigger). In the
movie, the steroid abuse continues right up until his murder, arranged by
Donna, as a desperate act of self-defense against a testosterone-crazed
sub-human monster.
Donna is depicted in the movie as a woman living under virtual
house arrest, forbidden to go anywhere or do anything by her tyrannical
mate. She is shown as a relentlessly virtuous self-sacrificing
long-suffering victim and a flawlessly perfect mother of their child. She
never wrongs anyone in any way -- until she arranges her husband's death
(and the entire movie is devoted to convincing viewers that he had it
coming). The only children in the home are the Yaklichs' son Denny, and a
teenaged girl named Patty who is supposedly Dennis's step-daughter. (I
missed the first 15 minutes of the film so I don't know how her presence
was rationalized. Suffice it to say that there was no such "Patty" person
in real life.) To underscore Dennis's allegedly despicable character, he
is shown running this ficticious "Patty" out of the house when he finds
out she is pregnant. After the killing of her husband, Donna is shown
sitting in a restaurant telling her female companion that it is the first
time in years she has been out. When the on-screen police ask the
Hollywood Donna if she has any idea who might have wanted to kill her
husband, she replies that she knows nothing of Dennis's enemies. At her
movie trial, unselfish to a fault, she is shown as thinking only of her
son Denny and of his uncertain future should she be convicted and
imprisoned.
Now for the facts. For starters, in real life no trace of
steroids were found in Dennis's body upon autopsy. Such metabolites are
highly fat-soluble and remain in the body at detectable levels for 2 to 3
months after even a single dose. The trackmarks which the movie shows
were a Hollywood invention, pure and simple. There were no track marks
found at autopsy. Indeed, an extensive police investigation failed to
uncover any evidence that Dennis ever took steroids in his entire life.
Pueblo Colorado Homicide Detective Dan Snell, lead investigator in the
case, told the press, "We checked out every lead. We are obligated to do
that. No one but her defense brought that up and we talked to virtually
everybody." And of course, if Dennis HAD been abusing steroids in the
weeks leading up to his death, as Donna alleged, his corpse would have
tested postive for steroids. It didn't. Donna lied. As we shall see,
this was not her first lie, nor her last.
In real life, Donna was not only not under "house arrest," she
lead a very active life outside of their home which included carrying on
affairs with several other men, and leading aerobics classes. In the
latter case, she appeared repeatedly in public clad in skimpy, skin-tight
outfits in front of entire classes of people all during the period in
which she later claimed she was being savagely beaten on a daily basis.
Her bruises and pain should have been obvious either by being in plain
sight, or by visible swelling, or by weakness/stiffness of the afflicted
limbs during aerobics. In fact, she never showed any sign of abuse
according to numerous witnesses who attended her classes. (In the movie,
she is depicted at one point of going around desperately asking people for
help with a huge bruise across her face. This is sheer fiction).
The insinuations about Dennis having killed his first wife are
vicious, sensationalistic slander and nothing more. In real life,
Dennis's first wife died of a reaction to a prescription drug, a death
which was ruled accidental by the coroner. There was never the slightest
cloud of suspicion upon Dennis as a result of this tragedy. For Hollywood
to smear a man this way is utterly deplorable.
The movie gave no hint of Donna's extramarital affairs, perhaps
because doing so would conflict with the image of the helpless, saintly
woman held prisoner in her own home, and would make her seem less
virtuous. In the movie, Donna is shown sitting in a restaurant with a
woman friend at the time the police learn that she had paid to have her
husband killed. In real life, she was soaking up the sun on the beaches
of Jamaica with her latest squeeze, attorney John Giduck, spending her
late husband's money at a prodigious rate. In the movie, there is no
mention of Donna receiving any tangible assets as a result of her
husband's death. In real life, she received $360,000 in cash and benefits
from his life insurance, with which she went on giddy spending sprees (in
Jamaica and elsewhere). She was later able to use this money to post bond
and to pay her attorney fees as well.
In the movie, all the viewer sees is Donna's arrest followed by
Donna's trial in which Denver psychologist Lenore Walker, creator of the
"Battered Woman Syndrome," testifies on the stand that Donna was an
innocent victim acting in self-defense. A male expert witness is then
shown debunking Walker, saying that men get battered too but seldom report
it (accompanied by gasps of outrage from the courtroom audience, to remind
viewers of how absurd this claim supposedly is). In real life, Donna not
only didn't say she knew nothing about Dennis's enemies, she gave police a
list of male suspects, one or more of whom she clearly hoped to frame for
the murder she herself had arranged. When the two young men whom she had
paid to perform the murder confessed and implicated her, she claimed never
to have met either of them. This claim fell through after it was
discovered that one of them had actually worked for Donna in the past at a
firecracker stand she ran. At this point, Donna tried to claim that
Dennis himself had hired the two men to kill him so that he could go out
in a blaze of glory. Needless to say, this far-fetched story did not
impress police. It was at this point that Donna first began claiming to
police that she'd arranged the murder as an act of self-defense against
domestic abuse. Lenore Walker DID testify at Donna's trial (one of the
few accurate things in the entire film) but was rebutted by a FEMALE
therapist who testified that Donna was not a battering victim but a
calculating con-artist. The movie left out this testimony, and made the
rebutter male, perhaps to enhance the evil-insensitive-men-blame-the-
innocent-female-victim angle which they clearly chose to pursue instead of
telling the truth.
In real life, Donna and Dennis lived with their child Denny,
Dennis's daughter Vanessa from his previous marriage, and three
step-children, Raymond, Chris and Kim, from his first wife's previous
marriage. Contrary to the Hollywood Donna's image as a selfless, loving,
nurturant person, the real-life Donna kicked Vanessa, Raymond, Chris, and
Kim out of the house after she'd had their father killed. The only child
she seemed to have any concern for at all was Denny, her only blood child.
The movie version of events does not depict the other four children at all,
perhaps because Donna's cold, selfish treatment of them fails to jibe with
the sympathetic heroine its producers wanted to portray Donna as being.
One of the children the real Donna evicted, Vanessa Yaklich, was
interviewed on the local news program of the Denver CBS affiliate station,
Channel 7, immediately after the movie was shown. Vanessa said, "She
[Donna] says so many awful things it's unreal. I can't believe she can
say it! And there's no evidence to back it up and yet people believe it."
Vanessa added that as someone who had lived under the same roof with Donna
and Dennis for the entire 8 years of their marriage, she can testify that
all Donna's stories about beatings from Dennis were "an outright lie." Tom
Greenwell, a longtime friend of the Yaklich family agrees, "I was around
the Yakliches every day. I helped them. They helped me. We fished and
hunted together. And every word that woman said about them was nothing
but a bald-faced lie. You would think somebody would see through that
story and read between the lines." In an interview for the same news spot,
Dennis's brother said that the movie producers never once called up any of
Dennis's relatives or friends. Indeed, they based the entire plot soley
upon prison interviews with Donna and no one else except Donna. Donna
Yaklich conned the movie producers, but they were not the first people she
has conned.
One of the most cynical omissions by the movie-makers was their
failure to make any reference to Donna's bad-check forging sprees during
her marriage to Dennis. In real life, Donna stole the checkbook of
Dennis's parents and proceeded to write checks to herself, forging their
signatures. When Ed Yaklich, Dennis's father, found out about Donna's
criminal capers, he warned her that he would file a complaint if she did
it again. After this warning, Donna forged yet another check. Dennis's
brother told the local press "Dennis knew nothing about [the forged
checks]. We called Donna over, and she denied she wrote the check. And I
shoved it in her face and she admitted she'd forged it. My dad said, 'As
soon as Dennis gets home, we're gonna tell him about it and contact the
DA.' That's when Donna went to the [battered women's] shelter... It was
because we were gonna turn her in for forged checks." Apparently, Donna
then forged yet another check, this one for $500, on her way to the
shelter. Donna was later tried and convicted of forgery for these scams.
There is no hint of any of this in the movie, although its producers are
unlikely to have been unaware of these escapades of Donna's, for which she
had a criminal record. Instead, she is depicted as a paragon of
misunderstood, wounded innocence.
Still, the lack of any reference to Donna's check-forging scams is
not the most outrageous omission of the screenplay; the movie depicts
Donna as trapped in an impossible situation as captive of a brutal,
homicidal husband who would not allow her to escape. Her contract killing
of him is depicted as a desperate bid to remove herself from a marriage
which was a deadly trap. In real life, at the time of the murder, Donna
was on the verge of "escaping" whether she liked it or not. HER HUSBAND
HAD ANNOUNCED THAT HE WAS GOING TO FILE FOR DIVORCE!!!
Donna's extramarital affairs and check-forging antics had finally
worn Dennis down. As his brother told the press, "[Dennis] came over to
my house [in late 1985]. He said, 'I hate to do it, but I gotta divorce
Donna. She's breaking us and running around on me, and as soon as the
[Christmas] holidays are over, I'm gonna file for divorce.' Donna knew
about it. She told my friend Linda that she was going to get a divorce.
Donna came to [Dennis] with nothing. Everything at that house belonged to
Dennis or me or my family. If they got divorced, Donna would leave there
with nothing. Absolutely nothing." Instead, she had Dennis killed on
December 12, 1985, with the holidays less than two weeks away, while she
was still legally married to him and could inherit his house and collect
his lucrative life insurance pay-off.
With plenty of the legitimate female victims of male violence in
this world, it is inexcusable that the producers of a movie would choose
someone like Donna Yaklich as the heroine of their so-called
"true-to-life" drama. The Hollywood Donna may be a saintly, and utterly
sympathetic character. But the real-life Donna was and is a coldly
calculating lying con-artist and murderess with clear psychopathic
tendencies. It does a great disservice to the viewing public to portray
such a person so inaccurately. And it does an even greater disservice to
her victim, Dennis Yaklich, and the friends and loved ones he left behind.
This movie, according to family members interviewed on the local news last
week, has reopened their wounds and deepened their pain. But in the world
of movies, female victimhood sells...
...and for Donna Yaklich, it also pays. Under Colorado law, it is
legal for a convicted felon to profit from selling the movie rights to
her story. Donna has apparently raked in a substantial, but undisclosed
amount of cash from this film. When local reporters tried to contact
her to learn how much she had made, she referred all questions to her
attorneys, who refused all comment.
-Chris Dugan
Denver, Colorado

m***@gmail.com

2017-05-24 18:13:05 UTC

This story (from Dennis's family's point of view) was portrayed in Evil Stepmothers- Nanny Nightmare. It's Season 2, Episode 3 if anyone is interested. Vanessa and Chris tell a lot of the story. Vanessa said Donna took her and her younger brother shopping the day after Dennis died, and she immediately cashed in the life insurance policies (fact). Donna abused (mostly verbal and emotional) little Vanessa for years, according to the show. And Donna hit Vanessa at the funeral because she wouldn't stop crying and her aunt witnessed it and took Vanessa away. I know there are two sides to every story, but Evil Stepmothers sure made Donna into a cold blooded murderer, and with interviews from Dennis's family and the detectives, it was pretty believable!

2017-05-25 03:04:07 UTC

Post by m***@gmail.com
This story (from Dennis's family's point of view) was portrayed in
Evil Stepmothers- Nanny Nightmare. It's Season 2, Episode 3 if anyone
is interested.. Vanessa and Chris tell a lot of the story. Vanessa
said Donna took her and her younger brother shopping the day after
Dennis died, and she immediately cashed in the life insurance
policies (fact). Donna abused (mostly verbal and emotional) little
Vanessa for years, according to the show. And Donna hit Vanessa at
the funeral because she wouldn't stop crying and her aunt witnessed
it and took Vanessa away. I know there are two sides to every story,
but Evil Stepmothers sure made Donna into a cold blooded murderer,
and with interviews from Dennis's family and the detectives, it was
pretty believable!

s***@gmail.com

2017-10-14 15:36:43 UTC

Ty for the info. I just watched the evil stepmother-nanny nightmare. Wow! How awful. I believe Dennis’ family more than the movie that I have watched for years on tv. :(

l***@gmail.com

2017-06-20 19:30:19 UTC

Chris do you Vanessa or how to contact her.. She was a very good of mine in elementary school.. It would be nice to talk to her again

l***@gmail.com

2017-06-20 19:32:34 UTC

Chris if you do have any information please text or call me 7197171764

e***@gmail.com

2017-09-22 22:48:56 UTC

Looks like THIS PERSON was NOT LYING. DONNA is featured on DISCOVERY IDs EVIL STEPMOTHERS.

e***@gmail.com

2017-09-22 22:50:11 UTC

There is some TRUTH to all of this

o***@gmail.com

2017-09-23 02:37:37 UTC

Thank you for posting this. Donna is a self-centered. selfish, cold-blooded murderer who should have spent the rest of her life in prison instead of only serving 17-17 1/2 years for soliciting the murder of her husband, Dennis. She is no victim of abuse at his hands, and made all of the abuse up to garner sympathy from the jury. She decided to end Dennis' life in order to prevent the divorce HE was seeking after Christmas had passed, and receive approximately $350,000-$375,000 in life insurance and death benefits.

I have not seen this made-for-television movie that you are referring too, but it's obviously complete fiction. There were no steroids found in his body after his autopsy, and steroids were a central part of her defense. How do her apologists rationalize that fact? As you stated Chris, steroids would have been found in his system had those claims been true. They weren't though, and that fact alone nullifies the rest of her concocted story. She's a self-serving , cop-killing liar whom I hope lives a very unhappy and tortured life!

a***@gmail.com

2017-11-24 21:15:40 UTC

They should make a new movie depicting the truth

l***@gmail.com

2017-12-25 01:57:49 UTC

Subject: The REAL Donna Yaklich Story...
Newsgroups: soc.men,soc.women,alt.feminism
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL1]
CRIMES UNHEARD: THE REAL DONNA YAKLICH STORY
^^^^
Last week, a made-for-TV movie aired on CBS stations entitled
"Cries Unheard: The Donna Yaklich Story." This movie was supposedly based
upon the experience of a real-life Colorado woman who arranged for the
murder of her husband, whom she accused of domestic violence against her.
Here in Colorado, Ms. Yaklich is local news, and she does not enjoy the
kind of saintly image which the movie attempted to create for her. This
movie was shameless propaganda from beginning to end. For those who live
outside of Colorado and are unaware of the actual facts of this case I
shall present the many ways in which the movie presented half-truths and
outright distortions as "docu-drama."
In the movie, Donna marries Dennis Yaklich, who becomes involved
with steroids as part of his body-building hobby. The steroids make him
crazy and violent, and he is shown brutally beating and psychologically
abusing Donna (played by former Charlie's Angel, Jaclyn Smith) throughout
the movie in innumerable ways. He is shown shooting up steroids in his
abdomen as the camera zooms in for a lurid close-up of the innumerable
track marks scarring his ravaged flesh. He is shown grinning and laughing
maniacally when Jaclyn/Donna accuses him of having murdered his first wife
(after pointing an empty gun in her face and pulling the trigger). In the
movie, the steroid abuse continues right up until his murder, arranged by
Donna, as a desperate act of self-defense against a testosterone-crazed
sub-human monster.
Donna is depicted in the movie as a woman living under virtual
house arrest, forbidden to go anywhere or do anything by her tyrannical
mate. She is shown as a relentlessly virtuous self-sacrificing
long-suffering victim and a flawlessly perfect mother of their child. She
never wrongs anyone in any way -- until she arranges her husband's death
(and the entire movie is devoted to convincing viewers that he had it
coming). The only children in the home are the Yaklichs' son Denny, and a
teenaged girl named Patty who is supposedly Dennis's step-daughter. (I
missed the first 15 minutes of the film so I don't know how her presence
was rationalized. Suffice it to say that there was no such "Patty" person
in real life.) To underscore Dennis's allegedly despicable character, he
is shown running this ficticious "Patty" out of the house when he finds
out she is pregnant. After the killing of her husband, Donna is shown
sitting in a restaurant telling her female companion that it is the first
time in years she has been out. When the on-screen police ask the
Hollywood Donna if she has any idea who might have wanted to kill her
husband, she replies that she knows nothing of Dennis's enemies. At her
movie trial, unselfish to a fault, she is shown as thinking only of her
son Denny and of his uncertain future should she be convicted and
imprisoned.
Now for the facts. For starters, in real life no trace of
steroids were found in Dennis's body upon autopsy. Such metabolites are
highly fat-soluble and remain in the body at detectable levels for 2 to 3
months after even a single dose. The trackmarks which the movie shows
were a Hollywood invention, pure and simple. There were no track marks
found at autopsy. Indeed, an extensive police investigation failed to
uncover any evidence that Dennis ever took steroids in his entire life.
Pueblo Colorado Homicide Detective Dan Snell, lead investigator in the
case, told the press, "We checked out every lead. We are obligated to do
that. No one but her defense brought that up and we talked to virtually
everybody." And of course, if Dennis HAD been abusing steroids in the
weeks leading up to his death, as Donna alleged, his corpse would have
tested postive for steroids. It didn't. Donna lied. As we shall see,
this was not her first lie, nor her last.
In real life, Donna was not only not under "house arrest," she
lead a very active life outside of their home which included carrying on
affairs with several other men, and leading aerobics classes. In the
latter case, she appeared repeatedly in public clad in skimpy, skin-tight
outfits in front of entire classes of people all during the period in
which she later claimed she was being savagely beaten on a daily basis.
Her bruises and pain should have been obvious either by being in plain
sight, or by visible swelling, or by weakness/stiffness of the afflicted
limbs during aerobics. In fact, she never showed any sign of abuse
according to numerous witnesses who attended her classes. (In the movie,
she is depicted at one point of going around desperately asking people for
help with a huge bruise across her face. This is sheer fiction).
The insinuations about Dennis having killed his first wife are
vicious, sensationalistic slander and nothing more. In real life,
Dennis's first wife died of a reaction to a prescription drug, a death
which was ruled accidental by the coroner. There was never the slightest
cloud of suspicion upon Dennis as a result of this tragedy. For Hollywood
to smear a man this way is utterly deplorable.
The movie gave no hint of Donna's extramarital affairs, perhaps
because doing so would conflict with the image of the helpless, saintly
woman held prisoner in her own home, and would make her seem less
virtuous. In the movie, Donna is shown sitting in a restaurant with a
woman friend at the time the police learn that she had paid to have her
husband killed. In real life, she was soaking up the sun on the beaches
of Jamaica with her latest squeeze, attorney John Giduck, spending her
late husband's money at a prodigious rate. In the movie, there is no
mention of Donna receiving any tangible assets as a result of her
husband's death. In real life, she received $360,000 in cash and benefits
from his life insurance, with which she went on giddy spending sprees (in
Jamaica and elsewhere). She was later able to use this money to post bond
and to pay her attorney fees as well.
In the movie, all the viewer sees is Donna's arrest followed by
Donna's trial in which Denver psychologist Lenore Walker, creator of the
"Battered Woman Syndrome," testifies on the stand that Donna was an
innocent victim acting in self-defense. A male expert witness is then
shown debunking Walker, saying that men get battered too but seldom report
it (accompanied by gasps of outrage from the courtroom audience, to remind
viewers of how absurd this claim supposedly is). In real life, Donna not
only didn't say she knew nothing about Dennis's enemies, she gave police a
list of male suspects, one or more of whom she clearly hoped to frame for
the murder she herself had arranged. When the two young men whom she had
paid to perform the murder confessed and implicated her, she claimed never
to have met either of them. This claim fell through after it was
discovered that one of them had actually worked for Donna in the past at a
firecracker stand she ran. At this point, Donna tried to claim that
Dennis himself had hired the two men to kill him so that he could go out
in a blaze of glory. Needless to say, this far-fetched story did not
impress police. It was at this point that Donna first began claiming to
police that she'd arranged the murder as an act of self-defense against
domestic abuse. Lenore Walker DID testify at Donna's trial (one of the
few accurate things in the entire film) but was rebutted by a FEMALE
therapist who testified that Donna was not a battering victim but a
calculating con-artist. The movie left out this testimony, and made the
rebutter male, perhaps to enhance the evil-insensitive-men-blame-the-
innocent-female-victim angle which they clearly chose to pursue instead of
telling the truth.
In real life, Donna and Dennis lived with their child Denny,
Dennis's daughter Vanessa from his previous marriage, and three
step-children, Raymond, Chris and Kim, from his first wife's previous
marriage. Contrary to the Hollywood Donna's image as a selfless, loving,
nurturant person, the real-life Donna kicked Vanessa, Raymond, Chris, and
Kim out of the house after she'd had their father killed. The only child
she seemed to have any concern for at all was Denny, her only blood child.
The movie version of events does not depict the other four children at all,
perhaps because Donna's cold, selfish treatment of them fails to jibe with
the sympathetic heroine its producers wanted to portray Donna as being.
One of the children the real Donna evicted, Vanessa Yaklich, was
interviewed on the local news program of the Denver CBS affiliate station,
Channel 7, immediately after the movie was shown. Vanessa said, "She
[Donna] says so many awful things it's unreal. I can't believe she can
say it! And there's no evidence to back it up and yet people believe it."
Vanessa added that as someone who had lived under the same roof with Donna
and Dennis for the entire 8 years of their marriage, she can testify that
all Donna's stories about beatings from Dennis were "an outright lie." Tom
Greenwell, a longtime friend of the Yaklich family agrees, "I was around
the Yakliches every day. I helped them. They helped me. We fished and
hunted together. And every word that woman said about them was nothing
but a bald-faced lie. You would think somebody would see through that
story and read between the lines." In an interview for the same news spot,
Dennis's brother said that the movie producers never once called up any of
Dennis's relatives or friends. Indeed, they based the entire plot soley
upon prison interviews with Donna and no one else except Donna. Donna
Yaklich conned the movie producers, but they were not the first people she
has conned.
One of the most cynical omissions by the movie-makers was their
failure to make any reference to Donna's bad-check forging sprees during
her marriage to Dennis. In real life, Donna stole the checkbook of
Dennis's parents and proceeded to write checks to herself, forging their
signatures. When Ed Yaklich, Dennis's father, found out about Donna's
criminal capers, he warned her that he would file a complaint if she did
it again. After this warning, Donna forged yet another check. Dennis's
brother told the local press "Dennis knew nothing about [the forged
checks]. We called Donna over, and she denied she wrote the check. And I
shoved it in her face and she admitted she'd forged it. My dad said, 'As
soon as Dennis gets home, we're gonna tell him about it and contact the
DA.' That's when Donna went to the [battered women's] shelter... It was
because we were gonna turn her in for forged checks." Apparently, Donna
then forged yet another check, this one for $500, on her way to the
shelter. Donna was later tried and convicted of forgery for these scams.
There is no hint of any of this in the movie, although its producers are
unlikely to have been unaware of these escapades of Donna's, for which she
had a criminal record. Instead, she is depicted as a paragon of
misunderstood, wounded innocence.
Still, the lack of any reference to Donna's check-forging scams is
not the most outrageous omission of the screenplay; the movie depicts
Donna as trapped in an impossible situation as captive of a brutal,
homicidal husband who would not allow her to escape. Her contract killing
of him is depicted as a desperate bid to remove herself from a marriage
which was a deadly trap. In real life, at the time of the murder, Donna
was on the verge of "escaping" whether she liked it or not. HER HUSBAND
HAD ANNOUNCED THAT HE WAS GOING TO FILE FOR DIVORCE!!!
Donna's extramarital affairs and check-forging antics had finally
worn Dennis down. As his brother told the press, "[Dennis] came over to
my house [in late 1985]. He said, 'I hate to do it, but I gotta divorce
Donna. She's breaking us and running around on me, and as soon as the
[Christmas] holidays are over, I'm gonna file for divorce.' Donna knew
about it. She told my friend Linda that she was going to get a divorce.
Donna came to [Dennis] with nothing. Everything at that house belonged to
Dennis or me or my family. If they got divorced, Donna would leave there
with nothing. Absolutely nothing." Instead, she had Dennis killed on
December 12, 1985, with the holidays less than two weeks away, while she
was still legally married to him and could inherit his house and collect
his lucrative life insurance pay-off.
With plenty of the legitimate female victims of male violence in
this world, it is inexcusable that the producers of a movie would choose
someone like Donna Yaklich as the heroine of their so-called
"true-to-life" drama. The Hollywood Donna may be a saintly, and utterly
sympathetic character. But the real-life Donna was and is a coldly
calculating lying con-artist and murderess with clear psychopathic
tendencies. It does a great disservice to the viewing public to portray
such a person so inaccurately. And it does an even greater disservice to
her victim, Dennis Yaklich, and the friends and loved ones he left behind.
This movie, according to family members interviewed on the local news last
week, has reopened their wounds and deepened their pain. But in the world
of movies, female victimhood sells...
...and for Donna Yaklich, it also pays. Under Colorado law, it is
legal for a convicted felon to profit from selling the movie rights to
her story. Donna has apparently raked in a substantial, but undisclosed
amount of cash from this film. When local reporters tried to contact
her to learn how much she had made, she referred all questions to her
attorneys, who refused all comment.
-Chris Dugan
Denver, Colorado
Subject: The REAL Donna Yaklich Story...
Newsgroups: soc.men,soc.women,alt.feminism
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL1]
CRIMES UNHEARD: THE REAL DONNA YAKLICH STORY
^^^^
Last week, a made-for-TV movie aired on CBS stations entitled
"Cries Unheard: The Donna Yaklich Story." This movie was supposedly based
upon the experience of a real-life Colorado woman who arranged for the
murder of her husband, whom she accused of domestic violence against her.
Here in Colorado, Ms. Yaklich is local news, and she does not enjoy the
kind of saintly image which the movie attempted to create for her. This
movie was shameless propaganda from beginning to end. For those who live
outside of Colorado and are unaware of the actual facts of this case I
shall present the many ways in which the movie presented half-truths and
outright distortions as "docu-drama."
In the movie, Donna marries Dennis Yaklich, who becomes involved
with steroids as part of his body-building hobby. The steroids make him
crazy and violent, and he is shown brutally beating and psychologically
abusing Donna (played by former Charlie's Angel, Jaclyn Smith) throughout
the movie in innumerable ways. He is shown shooting up steroids in his
abdomen as the camera zooms in for a lurid close-up of the innumerable
track marks scarring his ravaged flesh. He is shown grinning and laughing
maniacally when Jaclyn/Donna accuses him of having murdered his first wife
(after pointing an empty gun in her face and pulling the trigger). In the
movie, the steroid abuse continues right up until his murder, arranged by
Donna, as a desperate act of self-defense against a testosterone-crazed
sub-human monster.
Donna is depicted in the movie as a woman living under virtual
house arrest, forbidden to go anywhere or do anything by her tyrannical
mate. She is shown as a relentlessly virtuous self-sacrificing
long-suffering victim and a flawlessly perfect mother of their child. She
never wrongs anyone in any way -- until she arranges her husband's death
(and the entire movie is devoted to convincing viewers that he had it
coming). The only children in the home are the Yaklichs' son Denny, and a
teenaged girl named Patty who is supposedly Dennis's step-daughter. (I
missed the first 15 minutes of the film so I don't know how her presence
was rationalized. Suffice it to say that there was no such "Patty" person
in real life.) To underscore Dennis's allegedly despicable character, he
is shown running this ficticious "Patty" out of the house when he finds
out she is pregnant. After the killing of her husband, Donna is shown
sitting in a restaurant telling her female companion that it is the first
time in years she has been out. When the on-screen police ask the
Hollywood Donna if she has any idea who might have wanted to kill her
husband, she replies that she knows nothing of Dennis's enemies. At her
movie trial, unselfish to a fault, she is shown as thinking only of her
son Denny and of his uncertain future should she be convicted and
imprisoned.
Now for the facts. For starters, in real life no trace of
steroids were found in Dennis's body upon autopsy. Such metabolites are
highly fat-soluble and remain in the body at detectable levels for 2 to 3
months after even a single dose. The trackmarks which the movie shows
were a Hollywood invention, pure and simple. There were no track marks
found at autopsy. Indeed, an extensive police investigation failed to
uncover any evidence that Dennis ever took steroids in his entire life.
Pueblo Colorado Homicide Detective Dan Snell, lead investigator in the
case, told the press, "We checked out every lead. We are obligated to do
that. No one but her defense brought that up and we talked to virtually
everybody." And of course, if Dennis HAD been abusing steroids in the
weeks leading up to his death, as Donna alleged, his corpse would have
tested postive for steroids. It didn't. Donna lied. As we shall see,
this was not her first lie, nor her last.
In real life, Donna was not only not under "house arrest," she
lead a very active life outside of their home which included carrying on
affairs with several other men, and leading aerobics classes. In the
latter case, she appeared repeatedly in public clad in skimpy, skin-tight
outfits in front of entire classes of people all during the period in
which she later claimed she was being savagely beaten on a daily basis.
Her bruises and pain should have been obvious either by being in plain
sight, or by visible swelling, or by weakness/stiffness of the afflicted
limbs during aerobics. In fact, she never showed any sign of abuse
according to numerous witnesses who attended her classes. (In the movie,
she is depicted at one point of going around desperately asking people for
help with a huge bruise across her face. This is sheer fiction).
The insinuations about Dennis having killed his first wife are
vicious, sensationalistic slander and nothing more. In real life,
Dennis's first wife died of a reaction to a prescription drug, a death
which was ruled accidental by the coroner. There was never the slightest
cloud of suspicion upon Dennis as a result of this tragedy. For Hollywood
to smear a man this way is utterly deplorable.
The movie gave no hint of Donna's extramarital affairs, perhaps
because doing so would conflict with the image of the helpless, saintly
woman held prisoner in her own home, and would make her seem less
virtuous. In the movie, Donna is shown sitting in a restaurant with a
woman friend at the time the police learn that she had paid to have her
husband killed. In real life, she was soaking up the sun on the beaches
of Jamaica with her latest squeeze, attorney John Giduck, spending her
late husband's money at a prodigious rate. In the movie, there is no
mention of Donna receiving any tangible assets as a result of her
husband's death. In real life, she received $360,000 in cash and benefits
from his life insurance, with which she went on giddy spending sprees (in
Jamaica and elsewhere). She was later able to use this money to post bond
and to pay her attorney fees as well.
In the movie, all the viewer sees is Donna's arrest followed by
Donna's trial in which Denver psychologist Lenore Walker, creator of the
"Battered Woman Syndrome," testifies on the stand that Donna was an
innocent victim acting in self-defense. A male expert witness is then
shown debunking Walker, saying that men get battered too but seldom report
it (accompanied by gasps of outrage from the courtroom audience, to remind
viewers of how absurd this claim supposedly is). In real life, Donna not
only didn't say she knew nothing about Dennis's enemies, she gave police a
list of male suspects, one or more of whom she clearly hoped to frame for
the murder she herself had arranged. When the two young men whom she had
paid to perform the murder confessed and implicated her, she claimed never
to have met either of them. This claim fell through after it was
discovered that one of them had actually worked for Donna in the past at a
firecracker stand she ran. At this point, Donna tried to claim that
Dennis himself had hired the two men to kill him so that he could go out
in a blaze of glory. Needless to say, this far-fetched story did not
impress police. It was at this point that Donna first began claiming to
police that she'd arranged the murder as an act of self-defense against
domestic abuse. Lenore Walker DID testify at Donna's trial (one of the
few accurate things in the entire film) but was rebutted by a FEMALE
therapist who testified that Donna was not a battering victim but a
calculating con-artist. The movie left out this testimony, and made the
rebutter male, perhaps to enhance the evil-insensitive-men-blame-the-
innocent-female-victim angle which they clearly chose to pursue instead of
telling the truth.
In real life, Donna and Dennis lived with their child Denny,
Dennis's daughter Vanessa from his previous marriage, and three
step-children, Raymond, Chris and Kim, from his first wife's previous
marriage. Contrary to the Hollywood Donna's image as a selfless, loving,
nurturant person, the real-life Donna kicked Vanessa, Raymond, Chris, and
Kim out of the house after she'd had their father killed. The only child
she seemed to have any concern for at all was Denny, her only blood child.
The movie version of events does not depict the other four children at all,
perhaps because Donna's cold, selfish treatment of them fails to jibe with
the sympathetic heroine its producers wanted to portray Donna as being.
One of the children the real Donna evicted, Vanessa Yaklich, was
interviewed on the local news program of the Denver CBS affiliate station,
Channel 7, immediately after the movie was shown. Vanessa said, "She
[Donna] says so many awful things it's unreal. I can't believe she can
say it! And there's no evidence to back it up and yet people believe it."
Vanessa added that as someone who had lived under the same roof with Donna
and Dennis for the entire 8 years of their marriage, she can testify that
all Donna's stories about beatings from Dennis were "an outright lie." Tom
Greenwell, a longtime friend of the Yaklich family agrees, "I was around
the Yakliches every day. I helped them. They helped me. We fished and
hunted together. And every word that woman said about them was nothing
but a bald-faced lie. You would think somebody would see through that
story and read between the lines." In an interview for the same news spot,
Dennis's brother said that the movie producers never once called up any of
Dennis's relatives or friends. Indeed, they based the entire plot soley
upon prison interviews with Donna and no one else except Donna. Donna
Yaklich conned the movie producers, but they were not the first people she
has conned.
One of the most cynical omissions by the movie-makers was their
failure to make any reference to Donna's bad-check forging sprees during
her marriage to Dennis. In real life, Donna stole the checkbook of
Dennis's parents and proceeded to write checks to herself, forging their
signatures. When Ed Yaklich, Dennis's father, found out about Donna's
criminal capers, he warned her that he would file a complaint if she did
it again. After this warning, Donna forged yet another check. Dennis's
brother told the local press "Dennis knew nothing about [the forged
checks]. We called Donna over, and she denied she wrote the check. And I
shoved it in her face and she admitted she'd forged it. My dad said, 'As
soon as Dennis gets home, we're gonna tell him about it and contact the
DA.' That's when Donna went to the [battered women's] shelter... It was
because we were gonna turn her in for forged checks." Apparently, Donna
then forged yet another check, this one for $500, on her way to the
shelter. Donna was later tried and convicted of forgery for these scams.
There is no hint of any of this in the movie, although its producers are
unlikely to have been unaware of these escapades of Donna's, for which she
had a criminal record. Instead, she is depicted as a paragon of
misunderstood, wounded innocence.
Still, the lack of any reference to Donna's check-forging scams is
not the most outrageous omission of the screenplay; the movie depicts
Donna as trapped in an impossible situation as captive of a brutal,
homicidal husband who would not allow her to escape. Her contract killing
of him is depicted as a desperate bid to remove herself from a marriage
which was a deadly trap. In real life, at the time of the murder, Donna
was on the verge of "escaping" whether she liked it or not. HER HUSBAND
HAD ANNOUNCED THAT HE WAS GOING TO FILE FOR DIVORCE!!!
Donna's extramarital affairs and check-forging antics had finally
worn Dennis down. As his brother told the press, "[Dennis] came over to
my house [in late 1985]. He said, 'I hate to do it, but I gotta divorce
Donna. She's breaking us and running around on me, and as soon as the
[Christmas] holidays are over, I'm gonna file for divorce.' Donna knew
about it. She told my friend Linda that she was going to get a divorce.
Donna came to [Dennis] with nothing. Everything at that house belonged to
Dennis or me or my family. If they got divorced, Donna would leave there
with nothing. Absolutely nothing." Instead, she had Dennis killed on
December 12, 1985, with the holidays less than two weeks away, while she
was still legally married to him and could inherit his house and collect
his lucrative life insurance pay-off.
With plenty of the legitimate female victims of male violence in
this world, it is inexcusable that the producers of a movie would choose
someone like Donna Yaklich as the heroine of their so-called
"true-to-life" drama. The Hollywood Donna may be a saintly, and utterly
sympathetic character. But the real-life Donna was and is a coldly
calculating lying con-artist and murderess with clear psychopathic
tendencies. It does a great disservice to the viewing public to portray
such a person so inaccurately. And it does an even greater disservice to
her victim, Dennis Yaklich, and the friends and loved ones he left behind.
This movie, according to family members interviewed on the local news last
week, has reopened their wounds and deepened their pain. But in the world
of movies, female victimhood sells...
...and for Donna Yaklich, it also pays. Under Colorado law, it is
legal for a convicted felon to profit from selling the movie rights to
her story. Donna has apparently raked in a substantial, but undisclosed
amount of cash from this film. When local reporters tried to contact
her to learn how much she had made, she referred all questions to her
attorneys, who refused all comment.
-Chris Dugan
Denver, Colorado

WE here in Sweden know the thruth now! -- Discovery ID aired the true documentary about this terrible woman!-- she would have deserved a life sentence!

l***@live.ca

2018-06-09 19:24:45 UTC

I totally agree, BTW, sounds like they didn't mention the horrific abuse that she used to subject poor Vanessa and the other children that were not hers to. Apparently, she was the worst to Vanessa, even going so far as to have told her that she was going to kill her father and said that it was because she was so "bad" that her mother died. SHe was HORRIBLY abusive. Another reason that he was going to divorce her.

d***@gmail.com

2018-08-03 16:04:26 UTC

d***@gmail.com

2018-08-03 16:20:22 UTC

Didn't anyone tell her she could have left & divorce her husband and get more then what she came in with? Donna wasn't a dumb woman and she could have got away from the (so called abusive) husband?? Come on if you believe that none of the children or anyone else saw the signs she is claiming? This came in a time that Real abuse was happening and women were taking a stand and Poor Denise and his family had to suffer under all these false accusations. I think Donna is a smart woman to fool the juror's I don't think she fooled the producer's They went for what would sell. This is the fake media They can say anything and call it fact (so sad ! )

n***@gmail.com

2018-10-04 02:14:26 UTC

Just watched the Evil Stepmother episode. I was hoping to google Donna Yaklich and find out she died a slow and miserable death herself but unfortunately I come to find out she served less than half of her sentence and is already out of jail. I sincerely hope karma gets her one day. She is a wicked, twisted waste of space who should of been locked away for life. It makes me sick to think she may still be profiting from her husband’s death with some BS movie that’s based on a bunch of lies. I’m glad that the family of Dennis Yaklich have been strong enough to speak out against this vile woman and to let everyone know the truth about their father and what a great man he was. I sincerely hope they have found peace if not justice in telling their true story.

c***@gmail.com

2019-09-13 21:57:05 UTC

Hi,

Is she related to a woman named Jacqueline Yaklich? I ask because I had a woman named Jacqueline Yaklich as a teacher. Thank you.

Tracy Pulice

f***@gmail.com

2020-06-04 08:33:05 UTC