There are three incidents of mail order brides being killed in the US over the past decade.
In September 2003, 26-year-old Ukrainian engineer and mail-order bride Alla Barney bled to death on the floor of her car after her American husband Lester Barney, 58, slashed her throat in front of the couple's four-year-old son, Daniel. Lester fled with Daniel from the scene in the parking lot of the boy's daycare center, but after an Amber Alert was triggered, he turned Daniel over to a friend and was himself taken into custody by police. Alla had been granted a restraining order against Lester a few months before and had been given temporary custody of Daniel.
Susanna Blackwell met her husband through an international marriage broker called Asian Encounters and left the Philippines to settle with him in Washington state in 1994. The husband, Timothy Blackwell, physically abused Susanna, including one incident in which he choked her the day after their wedding. Susanna reported the abuse to the police and obtained a protection order against him. While awaiting divorce/annulment proceedings in a Seattle courtroom many months later, Susanna and two of her friends were shot dead. Blackwell was convicted of murdering all three women.
Anastasia King, a young woman from Kyrgyzstan, was found strangled to death and buried in a shallow grave in Washington state in December 2000. At the age of 18, Anastasia had received an email from a 38-year-old Seattle man, Indle King, from a mail order bride website. He flew to her country and they were married soon after. Two years later, after considerable strife, Indle wanted another bride. He was allegedly unwilling to pay for a divorce so he ordered a tenant in their Washington home to kill Anastasia. Weighing nearly 300 pounds, her husband pinned Anastasia down while the tenant strangled her with a necktie. Both were convicted of murder. King's previous wife, whom he had also met through an IMB, had a domestic violence protection order issued against him and left him because he was abusive.
