Michelle Mockbee was a 42-year-old wife and mother of two who worked the early shift at a warehouse in a small town in northern Kentucky. She was head of payroll at the warehouse owned by ThermoFisher Scientific, a worldwide supplier of laboratory equipment. It’s where she met her future husband Dan Mockbee in 1999. They married in 2001 and continued to work together at ThermoFisher until the day Michelle was found dead in the warehouse office in 2012. According to WCPO, when co-workers found her body, her hands were tied behind her back with packing tape and she had a plastic bag over her head. Michelle Mockbee died of blunt force trauma to the head. Investigators believe a tape gun was used.
[Janitor David Dooley, Convicted Murderer of Michelle Mockbee, Files Appeal]
The sheriff’s department focused on a number of employees who were present at the time of the murder. And then they narrowed it down to one suspect, the janitor David Dooley. Although there was no physical evidence (no murder weapon, none of his DNA found), Dooley was convicted in the murder of Mockbee in November 2014. He was sentenced to life in prison but he defiantly declared at his sentencing, “I did not kill Michelle Mockbee.” In January 2015 Dooley filed an appeal. Dateline NBC will re-air its investigation lead by Josh Mankiewicz on September 4 at 10pm.
