She P0is0n3d Her Husband for his $30,000,000 Inheritance…

She P0is0n3d Her Husband for his $30,000,000 Inheritance…

We think she p0is0n3d him. I’m almost sure she p0is0n3d him. Imagine waking up one morning and realizing that all your financial concerns were permanently over. That life as you know it has changed literally forever and that pretty much anything that you desire is now actually possible.

Well, that was an actual reality for Steven Edward Riley Jr. who found out that he was going to inherit not just a castle in Ireland, but tens of millions of dollars too. A literal dream come true, a fairy tale with a happy ending. But you know, the thing about fairy tales is that they often have a very wicked witch within the story.

And when it comes to today’s case, Steven never got his happily ever after. “screaming” Hi guys, welcome back to today’s case. It is one of those that has so many layers, but also reminds you that sometimes the people that you should be most afraid of are those that you believe are closest to you. Let’s go to the early morning hours of September the 4th, 2023.

This is when first responders arrive at a residence in Minot, North Dakota and at this point they find 51-year-old guy named Steven Edward Riley Jr. in a very bad way. He’s taken to Trinity Hospital in Minot and he’s in such a severe medical condition that at that point they make the decision medically to fly him to St. Alexius Hospital in Bismarck.

And you always know when somebody is flown somewhere from one hospital to another, it’s because they don’t have the tools and resources at the first place to actually do anything positive to change the way that that person is medically and it does usually signal something very bad when they are flown elsewhere.

Now, they had received the emergency responders a 911 call at 12:10 a.m. And during that phone call, it’s reported that apparently he’s unconscious. When they take him from that initial hospital to the next hospital, in that period of time, he never regains consciousness. And then, really sadly, the next day, this is September the 5th, he loses his life in the hospital room.

Like I said, there was nothing that they could do. He never regained any consciousness. He didn’t have a conversation with any of them. He’s just become severely unwell, and now sadly he has died. But concerns are raised really quickly after his death. So, basically, friends and family are all going to speak to the police. I mean, there were a lot of them that went to speak to the police.

It wasn’t as if they were sitting there going, “Oh, this is an unbelievably tragic scenario where somebody’s just passed away.” They were like, “It does not make sense to us that he has passed away, and we believe that we have information conducive to a scenario where you are going to understand that actually maybe somebody has been involved in his demise.”

So, people are telling the police that they believe his long-term partner, who basically calls herself his wife, she isn’t his actual wife. She would be known in some circumstances as his common-law wife, they’re together but they’re not actually legally married. But they are telling the police that this woman, Ena Knoia, has poisoned him.

Now, bear in mind, they haven’t been together for a few months or a year or so. They’ve been together 10 years. So, they have been together a long time. She’s 47 years of age at this point, and it is pretty upsetting if people are going to the police and saying, “You know what? This guy’s dead. We believe that his partner has killed him.”

I mean, it’s quite left field. At the end of the day, like I said, they’ve been together a long time. Just because somebody’s died doesn’t automatically mean that the person they’ve been spending their life with has wanted to kill them. And there’s very little information that I can tell you about the background of Ena.

The only thing that I can tell you really is that she constantly says that she’s his common-law wife. So, again, she’s asserting herself as somebody who loves him and cares for him and wouldn’t want to harm him. Now, when we talk about the term common-law wife, it’s a term that people use to describe somebody who’s in a long-term relationship and marriage-like relationship without having formally married through a legal ceremony or license.

It can, however, drastically impact your legal rights when it comes down to your situation should somebody die if there isn’t a will, for example. Now, the way that these two met was reportedly over an Easter dinner. It had been hosted by a homeless shelter that they were living in at the time in Washington.

And I will say that there definitely seems to be vulnerabilities in both of their backgrounds. Like I said, there isn’t a lot of public record information about this, but just the way that they live is despicable. I mean, the home is filthy. They don’t really understand how to live in an appropriate manner.

And maybe that stems from some of those vulnerabilities. The very fact that they meet in a homeless shelter also demonstrates that there would be some kind of vulnerabilities in their nature. You don’t end up homeless because life has treated you very fairly. And often it’s because there are issues in your background that have contributed towards that.

And part of that might be things like knowing how to pay bills and looking after yourself economically. But essentially, after this period of time, they end up meeting, moving to Dakota, and that’s where they had spent the last decade. Ever since then, both of them have struggled financially. But apparently, they both managed to help one another to get out of their very difficult financial issues.

Now, it’s worth noting that he had multiple sons from different failed marriages, but he was reportedly close with one of them. And that particular son had joined the National Guard. Now, his friends, they report to the police that Knoia’s made quite a lot of comments in the past about using antifreeze to poison him. Also, apparently, she was making those comments in the days after his death.

Now, that’s a little bit on the concerning side, and I’ll just throw it out there. You, like I, probably have a very dark sense of humor. In my own household, I regularly say to my husband that they probably wouldn’t find out if I’d killed him cuz I would poison him. It’s what women do.

Women are more poisoners than anything else. We don’t really like getting involved in violent murder. We might hire somebody else to violently murder our partner if we don’t like them anymore and want to take their money, for example. But, for the most part, women are involved in violent crime, and even when they resort to killing, they tend to do it in quite a quiet way.

And poisoning is effective. And of course, antifreeze, well, you can get that anywhere. It is not something that you can taste if it’s put into a drink. So, if you want to murder somebody with poison, this is something that you could use. But, equally, like I said, if you have dark humor like me, you might just be saying that as a joke.

You can’t take it seriously that somebody said, “Oh, I’d use antifreeze to poison him.” and actually throw that as a potential reality for this person to be taken into custody and tried for this just because their words have been expressed in this way. But, the fact that she’s saying it after his death, that feels very incriminating.

I mean, why would you do that? Again, like I said, when it comes down to what somebody says versus what somebody did, you would still have to have the evidence to prove it. People do say strange things. People also confess to things that they haven’t done. And also, people lie about hearing confessions. So, the friends could just have something against her and basically be trying to suggest that she’s guilty when she’s actually innocent.

Now, some of them also reported that his death was extra suspicious because, apparently, he’s about to benefit from an inheritance of over $30 million. Now, his friends are sketchy about who these people are that he’s inheriting from. They don’t really have the great details about this, but they have heard it’s from an unknown family member from London who was planning to meet up with a lawyer on the 3rd of September at the airport.

This is, by the way, the day before he’s found dying in his home. Now, sadly, that lawyer never turned up at the airport. They went to collect him, but he didn’t arrive. And, initially, that inheritance that he was going to receive was $17 million, but because the person that he was going to inherit this money from had invested in multiple real estate assets, it actually gone way over that.

It made over $30 million. And one of those assets was a castle that the family owned. So, now he was going to have a castle. I mean, that is living the dream, isn’t it? You know, you wake up one day and you’re like, “Oh, I’ve got a new letter.” It’s like very posh letter. It’s written on very nice paper and you open it and you’re like, “Oh, hang on a minute. You’re not going to believe this, hey. You’re not going to believe this, Pete.” “What is it?” “Well, I’ve I’ve only inherited 30 million and a castle and I don’t even know the person who I’ve got it off. So, I don’t even have to be sad. I just skip off into the sunset or, in this case, into my castle with my 30 million quid. Nice one.”

I mean, literally, having no grief or anything to go through when you inherit something must be phenomenally perfect. And that’s what’s happening to him. Now, investigators at this point are trying to figure out what is going on. There are a lot of different threads, aren’t there? You’ve got this massive inheritance. You’ve got this woman who potentially could have a motive to kill a partner if she wants to get the money. You’ve got friends basically saying she said she was going to give him antifreeze. And you have a dead body. The guy’s actually died.

So, at this point, investigators are just speaking to a range of people, and they speak to a woman named Teresa Akin. And she says to them, on the afternoon of that day, she’d actually seen his partner, Knoia, literally throwing his stuff out of the house. Now, this demonstrates there’s obviously some kind of conflict going on. You don’t just throw your partner’s clothes outside your home that you share unless there is something going on between you.

Now, Teresa said this is allegedly because she just found out that he planned to end the relationship once he received the inheritance. Now, that is going to be devastating for you. At the end of the day, if you find out that your other half is about to come into money that none of you could have ever dreamt of, and then you discover that once he gets the cash, you are toast, you are history, you are going to be angry.

And he’d also confided in a couple of his friends and family that he wanted to end the relationship because she apparently didn’t have a job and was leeching off him. And he kind of just wanted to leave her cuz she didn’t really have a job and was like leeching off of him. Again, you’re not going to be happy if that’s how he’s going to be speaking about you, particularly when he’s going to come into that huge amount of money.

One of the neighbors also said, “I feel Knoia overheard things that Stephen had said, and it got the best of her.” She was very resentful at the thought of him having that money, leaving her, and having nothing. And she thought those things she overheard were going to take place.

So, she would get the money before anyone else. So, basically preempting the loss of the relationship, she decides, “I am going to kill him. I’m going to inherit the money and move on.” They do say, a woman scorned is more furious than the devil, essentially. And that would certainly fit that paradigm. So, essentially, people around this couple are saying things are going wrong, there’s a motivation as to why she would actually want him out of the way, and the trigger is the fact that he’s basically said he’s going to leave her.

Now, investigators at this point also find out that multiple friends were with him at the airport that day, and they said that during that period of time they were with him at the airport, his health was declining rapidly. So, he’d been complaining that he was feeling drunk, even though he literally hadn’t consumed any alcohol at all.

He said he had severe stomach pain. He was struggling to balance when he walked. Then, within the hour, he’s vomiting. He couldn’t walk without assistance, and he was basically in and out of consciousness. And his friends, understandably, like, “We need you to get medical attention.” But, at that point, Ena Konyo was adamant that he was apparently just suffering from heatstroke, and he’s going to be okay.

She’ll take him home, he’ll get some rest, everything will be fine. And there’s a bit of me that thinks, “Well, why would his friends be like, ‘Okay. Okay, Ena. You take him home. He’s in and out of consciousness. He’s vomiting. He’s really unwell. What kind of friends would just let him go home in a state like that?'” Well, I’ll tell you the kind of friends. The kind of friends that believe that Ena Konyo has got over 30 years of medical training.

I mean, I don’t know why they believe that. This is woman clearly couldn’t have had 30 years of medical training because she’s not been working the entire time they’ve known her, and she’s not old enough to have had 30 years of medical training because of the fact that if she’s been unemployed for a long period of time, there’s no training going on there, and if she’s not in her 60s.

You know, at the end of the day, it makes no sense. But, she’s like, “It’ll be fine. I’ve got these years of medical training.” And she reassures them they’ll be okay, and he’s got heat stroke, and she’ll treat that. Heat stroke. Which is all lies. Of course, it’s a lie. And it’s so upsetting that they didn’t just think, “Blow it. At the end of the day, we’ll call emergency services.” She is very powerful in this situation. She’s his partner. She’s making a decision. What can they do about it?

Now, the next day, one of his close friends, guy called Wes Togerson, he, like a good mate, goes and checks on him. And when he arrives at his home, Ena Knoeya will not actually speak to him on a physical level. She’ll only speak to him through a closed door. And at this point, she’s told him that her partner is apparently at the walking clinic.

Now, what is amazing about this man’s friends is they care for him because they’re not buying in to what Ena’s saying. Togerson literally goes and checks every single walking clinic in Minot, Amelia, and eventually learns that he hadn’t, in fact, been checked into any of them.

Now, when he comes back to confront Ena, she’s literally locked the door. So, this is very strange. I mean, it’s bizarre behavior to actually be suggesting that your partner’s gone somewhere, and for that person to then come back and say, “Well, I’ve checked. He’s nowhere.” For her reaction to just lock the door, it demonstrates that something very suspicious going on.

Now, while all this is playing out, the police also receive a call from one of his friends, Billy Burket. I mean, I will tell you, this guy was quite popular. There were a lot of people really concerned about him. The people who were at the airport with him, Billy in this situation, his other friend who’s literally been around all of the walking centers.

And I do genuinely believe that that was probably because he’s a really nice guy. A bit of me is like, was it because you could inherit $30 million as well? Was that making him popular at this moment in time? It’s probably just he was a really nice guy, but where there’s money, there’s often a lot of interest. But, Billy Birkhead is literally at this point refusing to leave the shared property of Stephen and Ena because he thinks that Ena Konoia is literally going to sell all of Steven’s stuff.

And at that point, he genuinely believes that she’s poisoned him, and he’s just not having it. “I’m I’m not sure she poisoned him.” “So, what’s your plan right now?” “We’re making sure nothing goes.”

Now, it’s just after speaking to Billy Birkhead that the officers go and tell Konoia that her husband, in inverted commas, had passed away. Now, at this point, she breaks down “SCREAMING AND CRYING. DOESN’T LAST LONG. DOESN’T LAST LONG.” I don’t know whether I’m just a cynic in my old age, but at the end of the day, if the police arrived at my home and were like, “Your husband’s dead.” First of all, I don’t think I’d believe them. I’d be like, “He’s not dead. He’s not dead.” And they were like, “Yeah, he’s definitely dead.”

I’d be completely devastated. I’m not sure how I’d act, but you’d be able to see I was struggling to process. And if I did become hysterical, and I have been hysterical in a circumstance where I’ve lost somebody, and let me tell you, I didn’t come down from that hysteria for quite a long time. It took a period of hours before the hysteria passed to some degree.

I wasn’t like hysterical for about 5 seconds and then like looking at my phone, picking it up and talking about a relationship that he had with one of his sons, and the fact that she hadn’t had a relationship with that son. She just doesn’t come across as authentic. It’s a really strange encounter.

And more oddness is kind of appearing about their relationship. So, other friends are telling the police that during their relationship together, there was this kind of thing that would happen where Steven’s phone would go missing, and they knew that Ena Knoia had access to Steven’s emails, and that she would constantly be contacting this relative on his behalf using his phone.

So, basically, just trying to keep engaged with this person who’s going to give them 30 million quid. And the documents that sometime had all been transferred to her phone. How convenient. This woman’s thinking to herself, well, maybe I need to get all these documents transferred to my phone just in case something happens to my partner to make sure I’ve got to make sure I’ve got access to this 30 million dollars in the castle in Ireland.

Now, police also find out after his death, that the night before Steve was taken to hospital, police officers had already been to the couple’s home. Now, obviously, police coordinate. When you’re talking about 24-48 hours before an event happening, then often they haven’t actually pieced all the dots together.

Now, the reason they’d attended the couple’s home is they’d received a report from Knoia about a neighbor named Chad”who’d apparently tried to kick in the door and had damaged their property after a fight with her quote fiance.” So, now she’s not a common-law wife, she’s a fiance. “Hey, how you doing? Hi.” “Sorry. You thought it was Chad?” “Yeah.” “Who was Chad out here to kick in everybody’s door.” “Who was he out here fighting up my light, and look at the garbage cans over there.” “Who was he out here Who was he fighting with out here?” “My fiance. He gets his inheritance this afternoon. Like I said, he has a really important appointment with his lawyer today. At 2:00. His lawyer gets here today at 2:00. Okay. To sign the paperwork for his money.”

Now, as you can see there in that clip, she just can’t help but tell the officers, who by the way didn’t ask, about the inheritance that he is supposed to be receiving that afternoon. She’s obviously excited about it. I mean, everybody’s troubles would be over if you suddenly have 30 million dollars.

Also, at this moment in time, she is laughing, she’s happy, she’s smiling at Ty, she’s basically saying they’re going to take a long vacation, but then she claims that Steve, the guy who’s about to inherit all this money, he’s just wandered off. She’s just wandered off. And don’t get me wrong, that in itself is weird.

At the end of the day, the police are returning the property, this guy’s meant to be inheriting all this money, but allegedly he’s just wandered off. Bare in mind, this is after reports have come from these concerned friends and family members. Now, understandably, with all of the suspicion that’s very clear in this case, the coroner is made aware of what family members and friends are saying.

And so, the coroner starts doing tests, and I don’t know whether you’ll be surprised. You may have already suspected this to be the case, but the tests showed toxic levels of ethylene glycol in his system. And the autopsy confirmed that the cause of death was poisoning from that chemical. Now, to just help you understand what happens, I’ll explain how antifreeze would kill someone.

So, when someone drinks antifreeze, it contains ethylene glycol. The danger it isn’t essentially in the liquid itself, it’s what the body turns that liquid into. So, at first, the person may appear intoxicated, and the reason for that is because the ethylene glycol is rapidly absorbed, and initially I suppose it does really act like somebody’s been drinking alcohol, so it causes dizziness, confusion, slurred speech, unsteadiness, and you know, if you had one too many, that’s absolutely something you’ll recall happening to your own body.

Now, that early phase can genuinely look like somebody is drunk. This is obviously even if they haven’t consumed alcohol, but then inside the body, the liver begins breaking that chemical down, and as it does, the ethylene glycol is converted into toxic acids. Those acids then cause the blood to become dangerously acidic, and as that acidity rises, the brain becomes impaired, breathing becomes labored.

This is because the body’s trying to compensate, and then the heart begins to struggle. Within a day or two, the damage deepens, and one of the toxic byproducts, it forms tiny calcium oxalate crystals, and those crystals lodge inside the kidneys. That means the kidneys are physically injured, and that then leads to acute kidney failure.

Now, as the kidneys shut down, the body can no longer regulate acids, electrolytes, or fluid balance, so the blood chemistry just spirals out of control. Therefore, without urgent medical treatment to block the toxins breakdown, and to remove it from the bloodstream, death can occur from severe acidosis, so that’s organ failure and cardiovascular collapse as well.

So, in simple terms, antifreeze poisoning, it doesn’t kill by immediate shock. It kills by a chemical breakdown inside the body, and it’s one that basically very quietly overwhelms the organs over hours to days if it isn’t stopped. Now, the police at this point are able to get a search warrant for their property, and the film that they take shows just a filthy home.

I mean, the home is absolutely disgusting. You can see it on these pictures. It’s covered in clutter everywhere, including clothes and garbage. There’s actually what looks like dog feces on multiple surfaces. I mean, you know, we all have bad days, don’t we? We all have moments in our lives where like, I don’t know if I want to do the cleaning today.

We might just leave the kids toys out. We might allow the washing to pile up a little bit that day. But, I am hazarding a guess that every single person listening to me now draws a line where dog feces is concerned on kitchen tops. I’m imagining at that point you’d be like, you know what? First of all, I’d like to figure out how the little blighter got on that work surface, you know, cuz it’s quite a leap to take, but secondly, if there’s dog poop on there, I’m going to clean it off.

Where’s the Dettol? In fact, forget it. I’m going to call I’m going to call the kitchen fitters. I need new work surfaces. That’s a human reaction. Apparently not. Apparently we’re just like it’s just dog poop. Just leave it there. What harm could it do? Like it could make you go blind for a start. That’s one thing along with lots of other issues, but never mind. They didn’t get the memo on that.

Also, the house itself is just diabolical. It’s a complete mess. Whilst they are searching that home, guess what they find? Oh, an old Windex bottle without a cap, which what does it contain? Oh, a bright green liquid, which seems to be antifreeze. Just in the living room. Now, I don’t know about you, you might not be like me.

You might be somebody I don’t know has like a particular cupboard for dangerous toxic chemicals. Maybe you shove them in the garage, but me, I just like to have my antifreeze all over. You never know when you’re going to need antifreeze, are you? What What’s that? You need some of it for your window washers? Not a problem. I’ve got my antifreeze. Just come in the lounge. What’s that? Oh, you need antifreeze? I’ve got it. It’s just in my bathroom on the floor with the cap open. Who doesn’t have that? You know what I mean. Why would it be in your living room?

Also, in the garage, they find a glass bottle of Coors Light as well as a plastic mug, which they expected at that point to contain antifreeze. Now, Ena Koya says, “Oh, no, no. You know what’s been really going on? He was drinking alcohol all day.” So, she’s basically saying he was just consuming a huge amount of alcohol and she’s basically going on that he’s having loads and loads and loads of beer.

You know, it’s like, “Look, this could look incriminating because obviously he’s dead. And you know, there’s this annoying $30 million life insurance and like some castle. But like at the end of the day, he just was so excited about this that he literally drank so many backs of beer that he’s probably poisoned himself. I’m just throwing it out there. Anyone could do If you were going to inherit a castle and $30 million, you probably, you know, toxically poison yourself with alcohol anyway. Just ignore the antifreeze. No, just ignore the mug with antifreeze in it in the bed. Just ignore it. You didn’t see it. Nothing to see here. Let me tell you. Have I talked about my castle in Ireland?”

Anyway, that’s where she is going. She tells that the police they’ve been drinking alcohol and that he had heatstroke. So, investigators are obviously listening to what she’s saying. They have to build a case. They go and speak to his friends again. And one of those friends says, “Look, he was with me mostly the entire day. He was absolutely fine. He didn’t have any signs of heatstroke.”

And other friends, they confirm the same thing. They said he was absolutely fine until the evening and then during that evening, he suddenly fell really ill. But most importantly, of course, when he’s in hospital, they’re going to do blood work. And they did do the blood work at the hospital and they also did the toxicology after his sudden death.

And that showed zero evidence in his system of alcohol consumption. So, there is clearly now a huge amount of suspicion around his partner. You know, in the UK, there’s a national lottery. And in the advert of the national lottery, there’s this big hand that comes down from the heavens and it goes, “It could be you.” And I’m imagining right now when you think about a $30 million win as far as his fiance, stroke common law wife is concerned. She genuinely feels like that big hands come down and done that to her, but really it’s just the hand of suspicion. It’s just the police going, “It could be you.”

Now, in an interview, she does tell detectives that she’s aware of his inheritance and she basically says, “Look, you know what? I’ve got plans to split with his son cuz bear in mind she is his quote common law wife and at this point she’s absolutely incensed when the detectives tell her that North Dakota doesn’t actually recognize common law marriages and she wouldn’t be entitled to any of his inheritance anyway.”

Can you imagine that moment? “Yeah, like at the end of the day I am in the situation where obviously I’m grieving. I’m grieving. I’m grieving the loss of my husb- I say husband. I mean, he’s my husband, but is he my husband? He’s my fiance. Is he my fiance? He’s my common law husband. He’s my common law husband. At the end of the day he’s my common law husband. And I don’t want to be greedy. I mean, I’m keeping the castle in Maryland, but at the end of the day I think the idea of having $15 million is enough. I’m going to give the other $15 million to his grieving son and I’ll figure out what to do during the rest of my life, probably going on a long vacation.” “Sorry, can I just interrupt you?” “Yeah, I mean, you can you can interrupt me, but I’m just talking about my long vacation.” “You’re not entitled to any of it cuz you weren’t married to him.” “What?” “Yeah, you’re not going to get a penny of it.” “This cannot be real. This is against the law.”

Honestly, it’s so ironic, isn’t it? That in a moment where somebody has clearly done something horrible and broken the law to like, “What? The law doesn’t protect me? I’m his common law wife.” Anyway, she’s very upset about that. Very upset, indeed. And she goes on to say how she had googled the symptoms of heatstroke and found that they mimic poisoning.

“Sorry. What?” “Yeah. Listen, I’m really confused now because you just told me I’m not getting my 30 million insurance, but forget that. I think you don’t understand just how similar heatstroke is to poisoning.” “I don’t I don’t think it is. I don’t think it is. I think it’s very different.” “No, you’re wrong. Cuz you know why? I know.” “Go on, tell me.” “I Googled it, and we all know that Google is the number one in giving you the results that you desire, and in this case it confirms that you don’t know enough about poisoning and heatstroke. They’re very similar.”

Officer just Googles it and says, “Yeah, that’s not true.” I literally Googled it whenever I said, “There are no search suggestions whatsoever that suggest that they are similar.” So then she’s like, “Well, let me just think about some elaborate explanations of how he’d possibly been poisoned by antifreeze.”

Like, “Let me just think about that. Right, okay. You’ve now denied me my inheritance. Then you’ve denied me the fact that he actually purposefully drank all the alcohol by getting that pesky autopsy report. And now you’ve denied the fact that Google has told me that actually it could be that antifreeze poisoning and heatstroke could look exactly the same. So I’m now remembering that very often clumsy husbands, even though he’s not my husband, can do things that could cause issues to him physically, such as smoking a cigarette that could have fallen into antifreeze in the garage.” “Please, please.” “What?” “Yeah, you know, at the end of the day the cigarette could have fallen somehow into the antifreeze itself. It could have absorbed all of the antifreeze, and then it could have lifted itself out, placed itself back in the cigarette packet, and then he could have smoked that. It could happen to anyone. If that isn’t happening to your cigarettes, what do you do with your cigarettes?”

But at that point she’s just hoping that she can create some kind of ruse that the police will believe, and it’s ridiculous. Now, it’s around this time in the investigation that Ena’s begun to realize the harsh truth, by the way. The inheritance, that 30 million dollars that obviously now his son’s going to inherit and his kids is going to inherit, yeah, the only problem was no one’s inheriting anything. It wasn’t real. It was a scam.

So, yeah, you know you get those email scams where people are like, “Listen, there’s 500 million quid that this prince needs to get over to wherever, but at the end of the day, we can’t do it. Could you do it for us? And if you do it, you’ll get 100 million. However, before we can do it, what we are going to need are your bank details. And if you could then send us 500 quid, that will be something that will mean we can start with the bank to transfer it to you.”

And most of us, I mean, 99.9% of us are like, “No, I’m not going to do that. It’s clearly a scam.” But obviously in this case, they wanted to believe in it so much that they actually began to. And they genuinely thought they were going to get the cash. And she actually tells the detectives that the emails they’ve seemed to have been deleted, and the family member has just stopped responding to her.

In fact, when they look through all of the emails, etc., there was zero evidence the inheritance was ever real, and that that inheritance appeared to have been part of a scam that had tricked Steve into believing he was entitled to millions of dollars. So, Steve and Ena Koya had believed the money was real, and they’d of course been busily making plans themselves about how they were going to spend it.

And it is really sad that at the end of the day, there are people who play with people this way. And the fact that Steve was living that dream, and even Ena was living that dream, and calculating how she was going to achieve that money, which is devastating when you think about the result of what her actions have created cuz Steve’s dead and even though that he would not have got the inheritance cuz it was a scam, he’d still have his life.

But the very fact that Steve had been telling people he wanted to leave his relationship, she decided that she was going to make plans for herself. Now of course she’s still not admitting what she’s done. She’s continuing the story of his heat stroke. She said he barely drank water that day. But a key part of the interview is when she admits that she’d made him sweet tea throughout the day.

This is really suspicious because of the fact that ethylene glycol is an ingredient that can make antifreeze taste sweet and it can easily be disguised in sweet drinks. It has no scent. So when the police finally confront her with the abundance of evidence, you know what she does? She does the classic. She gets really angry over the accusation.

She’s like, “How dare you?” I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t there. “I WISH I WAS THERE. I WISH I WAS WITH HIM EVERY SECOND OF THE DAY THAT DAY. I WISH I WATCHED EVERY SINGLE BUT I’m NOT HIS GODDAMN MOM.” SHE THEN STANDS up to leave the room and one of the investigators later said, “I think that was the moment where the suspect realized they’d been caught.”

It’s the classic isn’t it? I’ve nowhere else to go. I’m going to stand up to leave. I’m going to tell you how dare you. But it’s all pointing in her direction and what a horrendous reality that we’re dealing with. Steve has likely been murdered because she wanted to inherit the money. There was no money to inherit. If there hadn’t been that scam, he would be alive today.

The motivation wouldn’t have been there for him to be killed by her. Now she also claims to the investigators that she’d wanted to report his condition to 911 on September the 3rd at the airport but had the audacity to claim one of his friends, the same friend who insisted he get help and had gone literally searching for him across walking clinics, had told her not to.

I mean, that just seems to be in line with his behavior, doesn’t it? “No, no, don’t don’t you get any help for him.” “But I I really I feel I feel like he needs help.” “No, don’t don’t get any help for him.” “Why?” “He looks like he needs medical attention.” “Cuz I’m his friend and I’m saying, at the end of the day, as a friend, when somebody looks like they’re potentially dying, we shouldn’t get them any help. It’s as simple as that. And you know what? After you don’t give him any help, I’m going to spend an entire day wandering around walking clinics and hospitals trying to find out whether he ever got help, cuz that’s in line with me saying, don’t get him any help.”

She’s the one who said she had 30 years of experience medically. Now, we get to October the 30th. This is just 2 months after the poisoning, and finally, Ina Kenoyer’s arrested on a felony murder charge. “You want to lock up your house, though?” “Yes.” “Hey, where are your keys at? Where are your door keys at? No?” “You guys passed the drug test.”

Don’t get me wrong. She absolutely maintains her innocence after her arrest. She’s continuing to make claims of what she thinks could have happened. “It could have been voodoo. Could have been voodoo.” “Sorry, what?” “It could have been voodoo. I’m telling you, at the end of the day, have you checked that yet? Have you Googled it? Is it voodoo?” “I don’t think that voodoo presents itself as antifreeze poisoning in the body.” “I am saying, if you knew the first thing first thing about voodoo, you wouldn’t be dispelling the myth that I’ve just created. You’d be saying, possibly. Possibly it’s true. We should definitely explore voodoo.”

Honestly, just making stuff up, just desperate. Have you checked all the cigarettes in the world? Have you checked them all? Cuz somewhere else in the world, I bet there’s one soaked in antifreeze that somebody’s going to smoke and die from. But this is what she wants. She just wants to throw any opportunity out there to make herself seem innocent of something that she’s clearly guilty of.

In fact, she even said he could have poisoned himself out of shame. Yeah, apparently once he’s at the airport even though, you know, it takes a while for this kind of poisoning to really take hold, but when he’s at the airport and the guy doesn’t turn up, he’s like, well, I mean this is clearly a ruse. It’s clearly a sham. It’s a scam. I should probably just drink antifreeze to deal with the humiliation of not having me 30 million quid.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it would be devastating to find out you weren’t going to inherit the 30 million but it’s survivable without a doubt. And also, it kind of doesn’t make sense but because they didn’t actually realize it was a scam until after his death. So, again unless he was prophesying something, which would deny the reason why he were at the airport. Why would he be there? To meet the person he’s going to meet as a solicitor to get his cash. Makes no sense whatsoever.

Also, of course, she blames his friends. That’s something that she did from the get-go and even claimed that she was poisoned herself months earlier, which led to her having a miscarriage. Yeah, there’s no evidence to prove that she had a miscarriage and no evidence to prove that she was poisoned.

Now, police detective who was involved in this case, a guy called Aaron Bonnie, they said that she made sure that the victim was not going to get emergency medical help until it was too late. I believe she was aware that if she secretly administered some antifreeze in his sweet tea, that he would be gone and that she would be the one who would collect the money.

But of course, as I said there was no money to collect. Now, Knoema’s first court appearance came the next day, October the 31st, and the judge at this point ordered her to be held on $1 million bond. Ah, if only she had that pesky inheritance. That could have well dealt with that bond, couldn’t it?

During the appearance, she spoke out saying she was innocent. The prosecutors told the court that the alleged act wasn’t accidental, but intentional and pretty heinous. Now, the police captain involved in this case said, “It was really the people who came forward to us that initiated this investigation. We are very thankful to those who stopped something that didn’t seem right.”

Now, it’s November the 17th when a bond review hearing was scheduled. This reflected defense efforts to challenge the bond amount imposed in October. So, they were basically saying, “It’s too steep. Let her out. Give her some freedom.” As if somebody who just randomly poisons people should be walking our streets.

But, Knoeya’s attorney actually withdrew the request submitted to the court that, quote, “After the discussion with his client, they would not proceed with the hearing at that time.” And then the next step came on December the 7th, 2023. At that hearing, Inna Knoeya waived her preliminary hearing, at which is an early procedural step that otherwise would require the state to show probable cause before the case could go forward.

And through her counsel, she entered a not guilty plea. Of course, she did. Now, as the case moved through the winter, the court ordered a competency and criminal responsibility evaluation. So, a state hospital was actually directed to assess whether Inna Knoeya was mentally competent to proceed with the case.

Also, to just basically evaluate whether she was criminally responsible. But, on the 29th of May, 2024, the court took a turn. This is when Inna Knoeya appeared in court and literally withdrew her not guilty plea. She entered a guilty plea to class double A felony murder. Now, by entering that plea, she avoided a full jury trial and potential exposure to life without parole.

And let’s be clear, she would definitely have got life without parole in front of a jury. It was premeditated, it was evil, and the aggravating factor is that he trusted her. And the fact that she was doing it in her mind for ill-gotten gains to get that money. Now, on October the 16th, 2024, Wood County Judge Richard Hagar imposed a 50-year sentence with 25 years to serve in custody and the remaining 25 years suspended.

The sentence also included 10 years of supervised probation following release and $3,455 in restitution to Riley’s family to cover the funeral expenses. I am not sure whether she’ll get out alive. I don’t think her health is that great just looking at her. I don’t think she deserves to get out of prison alive. But 25 years with somebody like her might be an actual life sentence.

It’s just sad if she does get the opportunity to walk freely after what she did to a man that might have wanted to leave her, but that was all he was guilty of. Now, during the sentencing, the court obviously heard impact statements from Riley’s family. His sister, Stephanie Gonzales, spoke emotionally to the court describing the loss of her brother as devastating saying, “You stole more than a human life. You stole a son from his mother and stepfather. You stole a father from five sons, a brother from two sisters, an uncle from 12 nieces and nephews, and a great uncle to eight, and many friends. How does it feel to have so much for absolutely nothing?”

She also delivered a remark noting that Ena Knoia was fortunate that prisons did not quote, “Serve antifreeze in their iced tea.” I like where she’s going with that. Steve’s son, Ryan Riley, addressed the court as well and described the deep personal hurt resulting from his father’s death saying, “To have taken away someone so important is just hurtful. I can’t even find the words to describe how I feel, how much it burdens everyone. I just wish none of this ever happened. I never expected to lose my dad to something so selfish.”

Ina Knoops herself, well she declined to make a statement in her own defense at sentencing cuz she hasn’t got one to make, has she? At the end of the day, there is no defense. She is currently incarcerated at the Dakota Women’s Correctional Facility and Rehabilitation Center with her estimated release date on or around January 27th, 2045, if she ever is indeed released.

This is one of those cases that really speaks to you, isn’t it? How money can really be the root of all evil. Look, you can have a bad relationship with somebody. You can want to leave someone, but the idea that that would motivate them to believe that they have a right to take your life, and then to essentially walk away with what you believed was due to you? And it also speaks of how these scams that we hear of day-to-day are actually acutely dangerous.

Yeah, in this case, most of us would have realized that this makes no sense. We don’t have family in a certain place, then why would we be left with all that money? But, if you have some vulnerabilities, and if you’re desperate for your life to change, and then you feel you’ve got a golden ticket, well that can genuinely infect your sensibilities, and you can, like Stephen did, believe that maybe your dream has come true.

And that’s the saddest thing about this. Cuz in parallel to his belief that his dream was coming true, his life was basically being ended. Horrendous way to go. Antifreeze poisoning, terribly painful. And to have been fed that sweet tea, believing that she was looking after him, when actually she was just absolutely confirming his demise.

It’s evil in nature. And like I said, it’s what women do on the whole when it comes down to killing, we like to poison. Which probably isn’t the most positive note to end on, but I have to end somewhere. Also, if you’ve got this far in the video and you found my content interesting, would you please subscribe, give me a like, hype my video, and please come back next time where I’ll share more of my true crime cases. Look after yourselves, guys. Be safe.