Murder of the Horse Trainer’s Rival: The Bitter Breakup of Buddy Jacobson and the Model (A Historical True Crime Short)

Book excerpt: From R. Barri Flowers, award-winning criminologist and the bestselling author of Murdered by the King of Western Swing, Murder at the Pencil Factory, Murder of the Doctor’s Wife, and Murder During the Chicago World’s Fair, comes the riveting historical true crime short, Murder of the Horse Trainer’s Rival: The Bitter Breakup of Buddy Jacobson and the Model. On August 6, 1978, firefighters discovered the charred remains of a body inside a wooden crate, set ablaze in an empty lot in the Bronx, New York. The male decedent had been worked over, stabbed, and shot multiple times. The victim was identified as John “Jack” Tupper, a restaurateur, age thirty-four. His killer turned out to be forty-eight-year-old Howard “Buddy” Jacobson, who at one time was the country’s leading Thoroughbred horse trainer. The shocking act of violence was the result of a classic love triangle turned deadly. The woman caught between the two men was an attractive twenty-three-year-old fashion model and cover girl named Melanie Cain, who had recently started living with Tupper in his 84th Street penthouse apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She had previously lived in the adjoining suite with Jacobson for a number of years before moving out. After being convicted of Tupper’s murder in 1980, Buddy Jacobson made a daring escape from custody, fleeing across the country to California with his new girlfriend, a twenty-two-year-old model named Audrey Barrett. The convicted murderer stayed on the lamb for several weeks before being captured to carry out his sentence for the death of Jack Tupper. The stunning tale of Jacobson’s meteoric rise and fall in horse training, and subsequent romantic involvement with someone less than half his age ending up in a tragic crime of passion, had all the makings of an ill-fated contemporary melodrama, except that it occurred on a real-life stage as a sad true event. Bonus material includes a complete and gripping historical true crime short, Murder of the Banker’s Daughter: The Killing of Marion Parker, and excerpts from the author’s bestselling true crime anthologies, Murder Chronicles: A Collection of Chilling True Crime Tales, and The Dreadful Acts of Jack the Ripper and Other True Tales of Serial Murder and Prostitutes.