Two Trumbull County elected officials appeared before a worldwide audience to introduce one of the more gruesome Mahoning Valley murder cases during the last century.

Investigation Discovery TV channel’s “Deadly Women” series recently highlighted the case of convicted murderer Marie Poling, who had lived in Howland.

The commentaries of Prosecutor Dennis Watkins and Sheriff Paul Monroe were prominent in the 14-minute dramatized segment of “Deadly Women — To Have and to Harm.” The show debuted July 15 on the ID Channel, which appears on local cable systems and can be streamed at www.invest igationdiscovery.com.

It is the fifth episode of the 14th season of the “Deadly Women” series, according to a publicist with the Discovery network.

Watkins said this isn’t the first time the Poling case has garnered media attention. He said a book, “The Road to Justice” has been written by a former Pennsylvania state trooper about the grisly details, and Watkins remembers going on the “Oprah Winfrey Show” with the sister of the murder victim, Richard Poling.

During the summer of 1988, area residents were captivated to read about the dismembered body of a Howland man found lying beside Interstate 79 in rural western Pennsylvania. The grisly discovery eventually led to Richard Poling’s wife Marie going on trial for the murder. She ultimately was sentenced to 20-years to life in the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville.

Watkins tried the case and has written letters to the parole board in an effort to keep Poling incarcerated. Her next parole eligibility is in October 2022 and in the television show, Watkins gets a head start telling about Poling’s penchant for violence.

Watkins said he spent a day in March 2020 with the producers of the TV show, who were from Australia.

“It was well done and obviously the storytelling took some liberties with a few inaccuracies,” Watkins said about the TV docudrama. “But they took what we said and crafted a re-enactment. Personally, I don’t like to sensationalize the murder of any human being.”

DRAMATIZATION

The segment shows exterior shots of downtown Warren and begins with a dramatic depiction of a happy Poling family with the couple planning for a child.

During an interview with Monroe, who helped investigate the crime when he was with Howland police, the sheriff said outside the home, Poling was not the “homebody you’d expect.”

In the docudrama, Poling is shown using a pillow to muffle the sound of the .38-caliber gunshot as she kills her husband, a steelworker, as he slept on the couch. Then she sought help in getting rid of the body.

In the television segment, Monroe tells about the woman “guiding her younger illicit lover Rafael Garcia Jr. through their relationship and the plot against Richard Poling.”

Watkins noted a few details about the case that did not get into the Discovery Channel production. He said a videotaped interview with Garcia broke open the case and led to the successful prosecution of Poling.

During the confession, Garcia told the detectives Poling wanted him to use a chainsaw to remove her husband’s head.

“I said, ‘No, that would be too much blood,” Garcia said on the videotape. “She asked if I had any ideas and I said I watched the movie ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ and said: ‘What about an ax?'”

On the video, Garcia told detectives Poling had thought about killing her husband for months, saying she considered hiring a hit man locally and in New York, testing battery acid on chicken legs and then trying to buy a gun with a silencer.

The TV story gets graphic at times, as the producers go through the woman’s devious plot right to graphic scenes of Garcia swinging the ax. Garcia, who secured the tool from a rental business, was convicted of abuse of a corpse, obstruction of justice and aggravated burglary and sentenced to five to 25 years in prison. He served 13 years in prison before being released in 2001.

Poling, now age 62, was convicted by a jury of one count of aggravated murder and one count of abuse of a corpse.