When a thief kisses you, count your teeth (Jewish proverb)

On the 14th January 1980, 50-year-old Sophie Barrera walked to her car outside a medical building in St. Louis. She had a lot on her mind. Most pressing was her civil suit against Glenn Engleman, a dentist who owed her dental lab over $14,000. As Sophie started the ignition to her car, a bundle of dynamite attached to the underside of the car detonated, killing her instantly. Sophie's son accused Glenn Engleman.

The authorities were perplexed; Glennon Engleman was a hard-working neighbourhood dentist who only charged customers what they could afford to pay. He hardly seemed like the kind of man who would kill people for money. But Ruth Engleman, the suspect's ex-wife, painted a very different picture of the kindly dentist. She told the FBI that Dr. Engleman was responsible for seven murders and that she was afraid she would be next.

Ruth explained that her ex-husband had told her he had killed a man he called "Bullock". Further research revealed that a James Bullock was shot to death in St. Louis two decades earlier. Bullock was one of Engleman's patients. Stranger still, Bullock was married to Engleman's ex-wife Edna at the time of his murder. Edna collected $64,000 in life insurance money and promptly invested $20,000 of it in a drag strip Engleman was building.

Further investigation revealed that a number of people connected to Engleman met with tragedy, and in each instance, Engleman and his partners in the drag strip somehow profited.
According to Ruth, Engleman murdered a wealthy elderly couple and then murdered their son, Ron Gusewelle, for his inheritance. But someone had already confessed to the Gusewelle murder. Either Ruth Engleman or her ex-husband was lying. Since the couple were battling over the custody of their son, the FBI wondered if Ruth was just trying to smear Dr. Engleman's name.

Ruth agreed to have her home wired with microphones. he FBI listened from a van outside, while she tried to get Engleman to talk about the murders. The ruse is nearly ruined when Ruth's cat scratched at a microphone planted under the sofa. Ruth couldn't get Engleman to talk about the murders. She wore a wire the next night over dinner, but still got the same result. She resorted to having sex with him so that he would open up. The FBI finally had enough to arrest Engleman and co-conspirators Nick Miranda, Carmen Miranda and Robert Handy.

Nick Miranda made a deal that if he and his sister Carmen were granted immunity, they would both talk. According to the Mirandas, Engleman routinely coerced the women around him into marrying men and then took out insurance policies on their lives. Englemen would then kill their husbands in exchange for a percentage of the life insurance payout. At trial, a jury deliberated for just 12 hours before sentencing Engleman to life in prison. He avoided the death penalty by confessing to the murder of the Gusewelle family.


Engleman was a sociopath; as he stated, his talent was to kill without remorse and he enjoyed planning and carrying out killings and disposing of the remains, in order that it would net him financial rewards (he loved the idea of getting away with his crimes, slipping through the cops' fingers every time).
















Some people are more afraid of the dentist than of a serial killer. When they come to Dentaprime, Dr Regina Schindjalova -our head of dentistry/implantologist- and her staff take away the dental fear. You can trust them with your teeth and life!