Together they beat, tortured and burned Air Force veteran Cordell Richards to within an inch of his life before returning the next day to finish him off with a meat cleaver.

But while Ronald Bell and Kristel Maestas will likely die behind bars for the ‘unspeakable’ slaying, the third member of their evil trio is enjoying a comfortable middle-class life in a Florida suburb, DailyMail.com can reveal.

Minister’s son Bell and former girlfriend Maestas were aged 17 and 16 respectively when they kidnapped and butchered Richards in the Panhandle city of Fort Walton Beach in February 1999.

Accomplice Renee Lincks – tied father-of-two Richards to a tree and took turns in battering him with a baseball bat – at the age of 15.

But while the older teens were convicted of first-degree murder and jailed for life, Lincks was able to plead no contest to charges of manslaughter and false imprisonment in return for testifying against them.

The maximum sentence was 15 years and Lincks would ultimately serve just 12 in a medium-security prison.

Now in their 30s, Bell and Maestas, appeared in court last week to appeal their sentences under a Supreme Court ruling that said mandatory life without parole for juveniles was unconstitutional.

A judge dashed their hopes of release by upholding both life terms – but the same cannot be said of Lincks who was freed in 2012, aged 28.

DailyMail.com can reveal that the tattooed felon has since built a fun new life in Homestead, south of Miami, where she recently purchased her first home with a female partner.

Her carefree lifestyle is laid bare in social media posts which show her partying with girlfriends, sipping drinks by a pool and dressing dogs up in Christmas outfits.

When DailyMail.com approached the now 36-year-old this week to speak about the case Lincks refused to discuss her dark past. ‘How did you know my name?’ she snapped at our reporter. ‘I’m not going to answer any of your questions.’

Richards’ family understood the need for a plea deal in the original 2000 prosecution and regarded it as a necessary evil to secure damning testimony against two of the three. But they have always felt Lincks was integral to the killing – and should also be locked up for life.

‘Without a doubt in my mind, she should still be behind bars,’ the slain Airman’s youngest daughter Rei Richards, 24, told DailyMail.com.

‘Renee Lincks was a very active part of the process – she is just as much of a monster as the rest of them are.’

Links, Maestas and Bell had never met Richards until Maestas was kicked out by her parents in early 1999 and responded to his newspaper ad for a room for rent.

Within weeks of moving in she alleged to Bell, her besotted boyfriend of several months, that Richards had made unwanted sexual advances towards her and Lincks.

On the evening of February 2, 1999, Bell confronted Richards inside his apartment, chocking him unconscious and clubbing him with a baseball bat. Bell, Maestas and Lincks then together tied Richards up and rolled him in a blanket before driving him to secluded woodland.

For the next two days they kept the helpless veteran chained to a tree and subjected him to what the judge at the original murder trial described as ‘unspeakable horror’.

The trio first took turns to hit Richards with the bat, with Bell complaining the girls weren’t striking him hard enough and proclaiming himself ‘Babe Ruth’ as he viciously slugged his victim.

Then, as Richards begged for his life Bell poured lighter fuel over him. Maestas set him alight.

The three ran off into the night but when they returned the next morning to check that Richards was dead, they found him clinging to life and calling faintly for help.

According to Lincks’ testimony, Bell attempted to snap Richards’ neck but failed. He and Lincks then drove to a nearby Target to buy duct tape and a meat cleaver which Bell used to cut Richards’ throat.

They even took the murder weapon back to the store afterwards to claim a refund, according to reports from the time. Bell and Maestas would return to the scene one last time a week later, this time to burn Richards’ corpse and cover their tracks.

The warped trio might have succeeded had a 12-year-old boy not stumbled across the charred remains on March 4.

While the body was damaged beyond recognition, forensics experts were able to retrieve a single fingerprint from a thumb which they eventually matched to Richards’ military records.

By then the doting dad had been missing a month, his family growing increasingly concerned when he failed to show up at Rei’s fourth birthday party.

An autopsy would reveal the shocking extent of the torture, with Richards found to have suffered multiple fractures to his head, shoulder, sternum, ribs, arms and wrist.

Bell was originally sentenced to death but in 2002 the Florida Supreme Court overturned the ruling because the judge had not taken sufficient account of his age at the time of the killing.

Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty against Maestas because she was only 16. She was instead handed a life sentence.

Lincks was never charged with murder because she gave testimony stating that Bell and Maestas plotted the killing and bought the rope and chain beforehand.

However portions of her account were later contested by Maestas, who decided to give testimony post-sentence in an attempt to win favor in any future clemency petition.

She stated that Lincks had demanded PIN numbers from Richards while he was being beaten – and that she was the first to suggest burning him alive.

Maestas also said that when Bell cut Richards’ throat, Lincks quizzed him as to whether he had cut deep enough.

Public records state that Lincks was released from prison on February 1, 2012 and there is nothing to suggest she has ever reoffended.

A Facebook post taken one year later showed her hanging out poolside with a group of girlfriends, drinking beer and liquor.

In recent years she appears to have settled down with a female partner with whom she jointly bought a three-bedroom family home last June for $205,000.

The 5ft 3in former offender now works for a maintenance company and shares her love of dogs on social media.

In a grim irony, the Ford F150 truck she drives has a large decal on the back window paying tribute to fallen US servicemen.

‘The United States flag does not fly because the wind moves past it,’ the sign reads. ‘The United States flag flies from the last breath of each military member who has died protecting it.’

The re-sentencing of Bell and Maestas – who have spent more than half their lives behind bars – was ordered because of a 2012 US Supreme Court ruling that banned mandatory life-without-parole sentences.

The 5-4 decision gave thousands of juvenile lifers across the US a shot at release but Okaloosa County Circuit Court Judge William Stone slammed the cell door shut on the duo’s hopes of freedom.

Bell was re-sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder and slapped with a consecutive life term for kidnapping with a weapon.

More Read:  expressdigest

Maestas, the only one of the trio who has ever contacted the Richards family to express remorse, will serve life plus 30 years consecutive for the kidnapping.

‘I know that a lot of people might want to look at this like it’s a celebration because they are behind bars and they are never coming out,’ Rei told DailyMail.com.

‘Yes, it feels good that justice has been done but this will always be a massive loss for us that we will never recover from. We lost a father, a son, a brother.

‘I’m never going to have my father walk me down the aisle, I’m never going to get to introduce him to his grandchildren. Having them behind bars will never give me back my dad.’

More Read:  expressdigest

Those rejected by their loved ones would disagree

 

Christmas acts as a painful reminder for too many queer people that their families have failed to affirm them, or have rejected them altogether. Consider James, in Congleton, who won’t spend Christmas with his biological family, he tells me, “because they don’t support homosexuality – it’s not for religious reasons, they just don’t like the ‘concept’ (in their words)”. He would like to celebrate anyway, but surviving on paltry disability benefits amid a cost of living crisis, he can’t afford to decorate his cold flat, and he expects to eat a 49p pasty on Christmas Day. Solitude awaits at the toxic intersection between homophobia and social inequality.

 

For others, family has taken on a new meaning. Ben is a 27-year-old bisexual trans man who hasn’t spent Christmas with his biological family for the last eight years. Ben feels his mother was radicalised by Britain’s increasingly assertive anti-trans movement, and when he was forced to return home from university for health reasons, “both her and my dad spent more or less every waking hour trying to convince me to ‘desist’. Essentially they were doing DIY conversion therapy every time they so much as spoke to me.” On his first Christmas away from them, he was taken in by a former family friend whose own adult child was in the process of transitioning, and who understood the trauma of rejection. “In the first two nights I was there,” he tells me, “they showed more care for my wellbeing and interest in getting to know me as a whole person than my parents had shown me since childhood.” He’s now surrounded by a “chosen family” who offer a “joyous Christmas” – some orphans, some with problematic relationships with their own parents – and who make sure no one is alone in the festive period.

 

 

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The expectation that the entire nation will be spending a day celebrating family love is what leaves those without it so miserable. But as Allmark puts it: “It can be a brave step to stop fighting for your family’s love. If they don’t give you the love you deserve, it’s hard to walk away.” And he’s right: but that’s what makes other alternative loving networks so important. Giving up on your birth family is painful, but having one you’ve chosen yourself brings its own kind of joy.

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