Donna Scrivo – Mothers Who Murder

Donna Scrivo was born in Texas in April of 1954.  Her father, George, worked as a security guard at a federal prison that was located in Kaufman County, TX.  Her mother, Melba Joyce, was a Sunday school teacher.  Donna has a brother, David, and a sister, Linda.  Growing up, Donna was always very popular and well liked.  

Their small TX town was very much what you imagine when you hear about a small southern town.  The prison was almost like a town unto itself, and pretty much everyone worked there; friends, family, neighbors, etc.   It was a tight knit community, and everyone felt like family, even if there were not blood relations.  As we mentioned, Donna was popular growing up and in High School, she was a cheerleader and voted as an officer for her graduating class.  It’s said that she was always ready to help anyone out when they needed something, and she was almost always in a good mood and very “happy go lucky.”  

After she graduated, Donna got a job at the prison where her father, and so many friends and family worked.  Her friends at the time said that when she got the job, it was mostly just as a stepping stone or building block.  Just something for her to do until she was able to get out of their small town, and she could start to build a bigger life.  When she was working in the prison though, Donna met and fell in love with someone.  He was 3 years older than Donna, and Daniel Scrivo was … serving 3 years for armed robbery.  Donna had fallen in love with an inmate her father was tasked with watching.  Over time, they developed a relationship, and when he was released in 1978, Donna and Dan got married, shocking her family.  Shortly after, she quit her job at the prison, and they moved from TX to Michigan, where Dan was from and had family still. 

When they got to Michigan and settled in, Dan started a painting business which took off.  His business grew and grew and he was working constantly.  Because of how well his business had been, the family was able to afford a home in an upper middle class neighborhood in the suburbs of Detroit.  The community they moved to was widely regarded as an excellent place to raise a family, and that’s what Donna and Dan did.  In 1978, they welcomed Jason and in 1981, they had Ramsay.  For much of their early lives, Donna was a stay at home mom, spending all the time she could with her boys.  By all accounts, she was an excellent mother and very loving.  

After their youngest, Ramsay, started school though, Donna decided that it was time to re-enter the workforce.  Donna enrolled into nursing school, and eventually started to work as a nurse in local hospitals.  Although she was working, she was still devoted to being a mother, and decided that she would just work part time so she could still be with her children.  Their home was the one that everyone congregated at.  On the weekends, it was where all the kids would hang out.   

Donna, like most parents, wanted nothing but the best for her children, especially when it came to their education.  Donna was strict with the boys when it came to their grades and school in particular.  She sent them to a private Catholic school and got them tutors throughout High School.  She had a plan, and that plan was for them to each get a good high school education, then go and get a college education as well.  For Donna, appearances and perceptions were very important to Donna.  She wanted the community to see how good of a mother she was and how nice a family they were.  The way Donna looked at it was that she and Dan had built this perfect family and suburban life, and she wanted her boys to do the same.  Jason threw a wrench in her plans when he finished high school though.  

After he graduated, Jason moved to Detroit to become a fireman.  While she was extremely proud of him and his chosen profession, it wasn’t the way she had planned it in her mind.  With Jason gone, Donna began to focus solely on Ramsay with her expectations.  After he finished high school, Ramsay attended Wayne State University in Michigan and got a degree in accounting.  For the next few years, Ramsay worked for a few different accounting firms, and was generally viewed by everyone as having a successful career.  

A few months before his 30th birthday, Ramsay went out with some friends on a weekend and things got a little hectic.  So hectic in fact that at one point, Ramsay fell back and hit his head on the concrete.  He ended up in the ER and hospital.  Immediately after the injury, everyone noticed a change in Ramsay.  He had extreme difficulty when it came to focusing on a project, or even starting things himself.  He became irritated very easily and quickly, and he was very quick to anger.  After the injury, Ramsay began to have confrontations with bosses at work, and he began to bounce from job to job, alarming Donna.  

In the Fall of 2012, Donna was dealt another blow when Ramsay decided that he was going to abandon the white collar world and career he had established, and he began to work with his father, painting houses.  She was shocked and disappointed, but Ramsay seemed extremely happy working with his father on a daily basis, as they began to run the business together.  To Ramsay, Dan was a rock that he could lean on.  Dan always tried to protect Ramsay when it came to Donna’s expectations, and he would often put himself between Donna and Ramsay when he sensed she was getting too overbearing on their son.  

After disappointing Donna by going to work with his dad, Ramsay dealt another blow to his mother when he decided that he was going to move out of their family home, and he got his own condo.  He received disability benefits from his head injury, and with the money he received from helping his dad, he was able to take care of himself.  

In the Spring of 2013, Dan became quite ill and went to the hospital.  When he was in his 20s, Dan had contracted Hepatitis C from drug use.  He had lived with and fought it from then until he was in his late 50s.  At the hospital, they told him that his condition had worsened to the point that there was nothing they could do for him and sent him home.  Since Donna was a nurse, they gave her vials of morphine to help with Dan’s palliative care, to ease his pain in his final days.  After a 12 day stay in the hospital, Dan passed away less than 24 hours after returning home. Since Dan wasn’t officially in any type of hospice care, the medical examiner had to come out and confirm the details of his death, including creating an inventory of the medications he was given.  

The medical examiner noticed that there was a bottle of morphine missing, which contained enough morphine to kill someone and asked Donna about it.  Donna said that it must have been a mistake, but then asked to speak with the ME privately.  She said that Ramsay had been in an accident and was dealing with the death of his father, and she suspected that he took it.  Ramsay heard them talking, and exploded.  He accused Donna of killing Dan with the missing morphine, and said over and over that she killed.  Donna then said that was part of the mental illness that Ramsay was suffering from, and Ramsay was admitted to a local hospital for an emergency psych evaluation.  A toxicology screening showed that Ramsay had no morphine in his system, but his accusations against Donna were never investigated and Dan was cremated.  

After his release, Donna went to court and said that Ramsay had a head injury and mental illness, and because of that he wasn’t able to care for himself.  She said that she was the best person to take care of her son, given her background in healthcare, and the court agreed.  Donna was given guardianship over Ramsay.  

There is another version to the events that took place immediately following Dan’s death.  Some say that after his death, Ramsay went off the deep end and attempted suicide, which is why he was placed on the psych hold and Donna was given the guardianship.  

Either way, Ramsay was upset that he was not back under Donna’s control.  A neighbor at the time said that Ramsay wasn’t as mentally ill or depraved as Donna made him out to be and that he didn’t need a 24/7 caretaker.  He was self-sufficient.  

Donna had a secret though.  Before Dan had died, Donna was invited back to TX for a high school reunion.  While there, she met up with an old boyfriend, and the two of them hit it off.  So much so that when Donna returned back to Michigan, they two kept in contact and texting regularly.  After Dan’s death, Donna began to think about moving to TX, but there was something standing in her way.  She couldn’t move to TX without Ramsay, and when she broached the subject with him, Ramsay shut it down.  She told him it would be a fresh start for them, and there was nothing keeping them in Michigan.  They could sell everything and make a new life, but Ramsay insisted that he wasn’t going to leave.  Being concerned with appearances, Donna couldn’t just leave Ramsay alone and no longer be his guardian, what would the neighbors think?

On July 31st, 2013, the quiet neighborhood that the Scrivo’s lived in was overrun with police and emergency vehicles.  The Scrivo home was engulfed in flames, and Donna was outside screaming that Ramsay was still inside, in the basement.  As she was screaming, a firefighter emerged from the house with Ramsay.  As they were getting him medical attention, they could sense something was wrong.  He was slurring and just generally seemed out of it.  They asked him what he had taken, and Donna spoke up and said that he had a prescription for Xanax because of his mental health.  Emergency responders suspected that he had taken more than was prescribed, but Ramsay told them that Donna was the one who gave him his medication; he only took what she gave him.  

Investigators looked into how the fire started and were suspicious.  They decided that the fire started in the basement, and said that it looked like it might have been from some rags that were near a hot water heater.  Donna said that Ramsay probably did it because he was always smoking down there, but they said there were no signs of it having started that way.  With no real evidence to go on, they eventually listed the fire as an accident.  With their home being damaged by the fire, and Donna being his guardian, the mother and son still had to live with one another, so they moved into Ramsay’s condo.  All the while, Donna is still talking to Ramsay about moving to TX, telling him he’s being stubborn, but he never gave in.  They constantly fought about it, and Ramsay would go to neighbors daily to talk with them and just vent about his mom.  Donna called Jason who lived out of state at this time and tried to convince him to talk to Ramsay.  Jason refused, saying that she should give up the guardianship, but Donna refused. 

On Monday, Jan 27, 2014, Donna entered the police station and told them that Ramsay had left the day before with his phone.  She told them that Ramsay went out for a walk towards the 7/11 nearby but never returned.  No one who worked at the 7/11 recalled seeing Ramsay that weekend at all.  Donna told the police that he wasn’t answering his phone, and that since Dan died, Ramsay had become aggressive and had mental issues and was suicidal.  At this time in Michigan, it was EXTREMELY COLD (like it hadn’t been that cold in over 100 years), and Donna said that Ramsay was wearing just a Carhart jacket, some flannel pajama bottoms, Timberland boots, and a shirt.  

Detectives tried to ping his cell phone but got nothing, and they subpoenaed his phone records.  They knew it would take several days for the records to be released, so that was more of a pre-emptive move, in case they weren’t able to locate him before they got the records.  While detectives were looking, Donna started to go around and talk to everyone and tell them Ramsay was missing.  A lot of Ramsay’s friends assumed that Ramsay finally got tired of Donna and was just at a friends house somewhere to get away from her. 

Ramsay had been missing for 3 days when detectives received his phone records.  As they were looking through them, one thing jumped out at them.  Everyone in the Scrivo family had been calling Ramsay over and over once word spread that he was missing…. Except Donna… even though she told them she had been trying to call him.  Detectives reached out to Donna and asked her to call them back because of some issues they had with the phone records, and usually Donna would call them back right away, but when they mentioned the phone records, Donna never returned their call. 

On January 30th, Ramsay was still missing, and Donna was still not returning calls.  That’s when a breaking news alert came on the TV, and in a small town about 50 miles north of Detroit, human body parts had been discovered in garbage bags scattered along a county highway.  There were approximately 6-8 bags containing 12 body parts that had been “cut.”  Initially, they were unsure if it was one body or multiple bodies, and they thought it might be related to organized crime.  

After news of the body parts had been circulated, detectives finally received a call back from Donna.  She had been ignoring their calls for 2 days, and now she was calling to say that she needed to head up north and identify the body they found, because she thought it was Ramsay.  Detectives were shocked and told her that they didn’t think it was him and asked why she thought it was him. Donna said she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was Ramsay.  Detectives in both cases thought it was odd that Donna was making the connection, because at that point, there was nothing tying them together. 

Meanwhile, up north detectives were fielding calls and tips from the public about the body parts.  One tip was from a boy in high school who said that he was driving down the road and saw a woman discarding a bag.  She drove a silver SUV.  She was white with long brown hair.  He saw her shake the bag and it looked like a dead dog fell from the bag and thought, “That’s weird, why would you dump a dead dog on the side of the road?”  

Another witness, a UPS driver, said that he saw the same vehicle in the parking lot of the BP gas station.  Detectives then went to the local gas stations and pulled the surveillance camera footage and released it to the public.  Detectives working Ramsay’s case saw the footage and said that while it was typical, grainy gas station video, there was no mistaking that it was Donna.  Within minutes, another call came in from a medical examiner who confirmed that the body parts were those of Ramsay Scrivo.  Detectives said it was an “Oh Shit!” moment, where they needed to find Donna immediately.  They found her and brought her in to tell her the news about Ramsay. 

They told her that the body was Ramsay and asked if he knew anyone up there.  Donna said no, and they asked her when was the last time she had been up in the neighboring county.  She said that she had a patient up there a couple of years ago but hadn’t been up there since.  That’s when they said, well, you were there yesterday and she just said, “No.”  She didn’t know that they had surveillance video of Donna up there and asked if it would help if she looked at the pictures.  And she said “Pictures of what?”  They asked if she needed to see the proof that she was there yesterday and she said yes.  Detectives get the still images from the surveillance footage and show Donna.  She said, “That is me.  If you’re telling me that I got gas there then I must have just been driving around looking for Ramsay.”

They continued to press Donna.  They said that they knew she wasn’t a bad person, but she had been dealing with someone with severe mental issues and that wears you down.  Donna said a few times, “I didn’t kill my son. I don’t know what you want me to say?” Detectives said just the truth, and that’s when Donna said that she needed to find a lawyer.

While they were talking to Donna, authorities began to search Ramsay’s condo.  They said that as soon as you went in, you were almost overpowered by the smell of bleach.  There was a trail of blood and bleach from the bathtub to his bedroom.  You could easily see where bleach was used on the carpeting to clean up blood.  

In February of 2014, Donna was arrested and in jail, charged with discarding her son’s dismembered body.  She made a call to her sister which was recorded.   On that call, Donna claimed that she was in the basement doing laundry.  She went upstairs to Ramsay’s room, and Ramsay was unconscious on the floor.  Then, a man dressed in black from head to toe, including a ski mask stepped out towards her.  He had killed Ramsay by strangling him.  Donna said, “What are you doing?” and the man said, “If you don’t do just what I tell you to do, I’m going to kill Jason too.”  Donna said that the man had a gun and in the days that followed, the man directed her to do everything she did.  She claimed that when she originally went to the police department, the man was there.  He made her go shopping and told her what items to buy.  

Donna claimed that he then used the saw she purchased to dismember Ramsay.  After that, he made her take the bags containing Ramsay’s remains and dump them.  After that, he left, but not before he told her that if she told the police, he would return and kill the rest of her family.  

Donna relayed this tale to her lawyer, who presented it to the police who were essentially like… Okay, well let’s go on this wild goose chase.   They had recovered the saw used to dismember Ramsay and used the serial number to track down where it was purchased at, a local Lowes.  They looked through the security footage and you can see Donna, and only Donna, going into the store, and buying the saw.  They also spoke with a neighbor who said that one morning after Ramsay was missing but before the body was found, she saw Donna struggling to put garbage bags in the back of her car.  She could tell that they were extremely heavy because of how hard of a time Donna was having lifting them. Detectives asked her if she saw anyone else in the car or anyone hiding, watching Donna, and she said no, she just saw Donna. 

They looked at footage from the police parking lot from when Donna said the man went with her, and she’s the only person in the vehicle on the footage.  The UPS driver who saw her said it was just her.  Any surveillance footage only showed Donna.  Suffice it to say, they didn’t believe the “masked man” theory.  

In the wake of everything, here’s what detectives believed happened:

While Donna was in TX for her reunion, she and her old boyfriend rekindled their relationship, and Donna wanted out of her marriage.  When Dan was given his diagnosis, Donna gave him a fatal overdose of morphine to kill him.  She blamed Ramsay for the missing morphine and used that as a way to control him, thinking she could force him to move to TX with her.  When he refused, she set the house on fire in an attempt to kill Ramsay. 

On January 25th, she drugged Ramsay with enough Xanax to render him unable to fight back.  Once he was knocked out, she strangled him until he was dead.  Afterwards, she dismembered her son and scattered his body parts.  

Donna was charged with first degree murder of Ramsay and pled not guilty.  Donna testified on her own behalf and told her masked man story to the jury.  It was the first time many people had heard her story.  Her defense team said that she had no motive to kill her son, while the prosecution argued that her wanting to move to TX drove the killing.  During her cross examination, the prosecutor challenged her story.  He asked her why she didn’t just report the crime when she originally went to the police station and they could have just arrested him then. He asked why she never asked her in-laws for help when she went to their house after Ramsay was missing.  Donna said that she didn’t have any faith in the police, and that’s why she didn’t report it.  

Over the course of the trial, over 30 people testified.  One woman claimed to have heard power tools, something that sounded like a saw during those five days between when he was reported missing and Ramsay’s body was found.  She said it wasn’t odd to hear power tools coming from there, since Ramsay was constantly renovating his condo, but this time, it was almost like someone was trying to hide the noise.  They would start then stop  very quickly.  

After everything was said and done, the jury deliberated for less than an hour before they informed the judge they had come to a decision.  Guilty of premeditated, first degree murder, dead body disinterment and mutilation, as well as dead body moving without medical examiner permission.  

sentenced 30 days later, at which she spoke for over 20 minutes, proclaiming her innocence.  After all of her ranting, the judge addressed Donna  personally before sentencing her. He told her how she had committed the most heinous crimes he’s ever heard of in his history of being a judge, and to her own son no less. He told her her crime defied all belief and was going to face Michigan’s worst sentencing for a crime, and in his eyes, that still wasn’t harsh enough for what she did. He sentenced Donna to life in prison without the possibility of parole.  As she was signing her papers, she told the judge that he was wrong and that she was not guilty of anything.