Shivangi Sinha
Allen Ross had been missing for almost five years when his body was found in 2000. He had married Linda Greene in 1992 and moved away from his friends and family in Chicago. The complex tale of this mystery ensued when Linda Greene was accused of his murder by her ex-husband, Denis Greene. NBC’s ‘Dateline: Searching for Allen’ throws light on the story by featuring interviews with Allen’s friends and family, who started filming a documentary to untangle the nexus of Allen’s disappearance and subsequent murder.
Who is Linda Greene?
Linda Greene was a registered nurse who had appeared in an advertisement for a hospice program in the 1980s. She had become the leader of a cultic group called the ‘Samaritan Foundation’, which practiced dowsing and believed in alien abductions, UFOs, and demonic possession. By 1992, they had bought an old territorial jail and turned it into a living arrangement for the group. As the leader, it was Linda’s interpretations that served as the compass for the group and they started catching the eye of people in the small town of Guthrie in Oklahoma.
As per reports, Allen and his then-girlfriend, Flanagan MacKenzie, were heavily into fringe and occult practices, and it was MacKenzie who introduced Allen to Linda. Allen started attending her seminars alone and during one of these seminars, they got married. He was Linda’s sixth husband, and very soon, Allen moved to Oklahoma to be with her. When a member of the Samaritan group named Nelli George filed for “separate maintenance” of her kids, her husband fought back. It was during this trial that the teaching of the faction came into the public eye.
Consequently, the Department of Human Services declared the old jail unfit for human habitation by the end of 1992. The increasing speculation drove the members of the group away and only Linda, her ex-husband Denis Greene, her friend Julia Williams, and Allen stayed back. When the group began to be associated with the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, reportedly after the bombing of the Murrah building in April, Linda Greene knew it was time to move. Linda, now known for dangling pendulums to make significant decisions, concluded that they must move to Cheyenne, Wyoming, in a house purchased by Julia Williams.
At the time, Allen was making a film with his friend, Christian Bauer, in 1995, and Linda surprised Allen by showing up unannounced. Bauer said that he thought Linda was being very “demanding” and “controlling” and that he felt Allen was embarrassed by Linda’s activities. He suspected that she made him leave town early. In December of 1995, the Cheyenne police received a call from Denis Greene claiming that Linda had killed Allen Ross and buried her in the basement of her house. Denis claimed that she showed up at his house in Colorado in an agitated state and confessed to having marital troubles.
As per Denis, Linda referred to having hurt Allen to save herself. On the other hand, Linda Greene had sent faxes to the Guthrie police stating that Denis had killed Allen and “that people were out to get her and set her up for killing Allen Ross.” In 1999, when Allen’s family and friends started investigating the latter’s disappearance, they could not locate Linda. She had faxed them at the beginning of their investigation and made the same allegations against Denis but when she called them out of the blue, her story had changed.
Linda said Denis had only buried him, and Allen was killed by “specialists” because of a mind control experiment that had gone wrong. When Allen’s body was found in 2000, the Cheyenne police tracked her down and she went back to her original allegation of Denis being the criminal. She maintained this position for the interview she gave to Bauer in 2001. It became known that she had been admitted to a mental institution by her parents a week after Allen’s disappearance, and consecutively, it did not make her a reliable witness.
Linda Greene Died of Liver Failure
In 2002, Linda Greene reportedly died of liver failure in Berryville, Arkansas. The family of the 50-year-old stated that she drank excessively to quiet down the voices in her head. Her friend, Julia Williams, had been interrogated by the police, and she had given conflicting statements. However, after Linda’s death, she was called for questioning again. This time Julia admitted that she had helped carry Allen’s body to the crawl space and disposed of the weapon that Denis had used to shoot him. Denis Greene had failed a lie detector test in the initial days of the investigation and two people had testified to him killing Allen.
The police made him a prime witness of the case that they built and presented the theory that Linda had killed Allen either over a marital or monetary dispute. Linda and Denis Greene’s 18-year-old son was also called to testify at the trial. He stated that his mother owned a 9mm pistol — the same pistol that was used to kill Allen — and he had seen his mother use it to open a gate. Julia was sentenced to 2 to 3 years of prison along with a $2500 fine and $3500 in public defender fees. Allen’s family believes that they did not get a satisfying closure for his death and that their mind will never rest in peace.
Read more: Allen Ross Murder: How Did He Die? Who Killed Him?
