High School Sweethearts, Hall of Fame Expectations, and the Start of Something Expensive
Late 1940s, Buffalo, New York. Two high schoolers, side by side. Donna Carnevale was bright, sharp, and the kind of beautiful that stops a crowded room cold. Lanny Horwitz? He was the guy who couldn’t believe she even knew his name.
But somehow, she did.
Nervous, maybe even sweating through his collar, Lanny asked if they could make it official. And when Donna said yes, it hit him like a grand slam straight to the chest.
But there was one small catch. Donna wasn’t just a pretty face. She was also the daughter of Dan Carnevale—a local legend who had played for, managed, and run the Buffalo Bisons. The man was literally in the Baseball Hall of Fame, and his wallet reflected it. Donna had grown up surrounded by money, comfort, and the kind of lifestyle that didn’t come cheap.
So while she liked Lanny, he was going to have to work for it. A lot.
And he did. By sixteen, Lanny was already helping his dad sell real estate. By their early twenties, he and Donna were married, and Lanny was on his way to building a small empire.
“They were traveling the world,” his brother Barry said. “He had sailboats, airplanes—anything life could offer was there for them.”
From the outside, things looked golden. They had a son. They had the cars, the clothes, the gated community in Boca Raton. Lanny even built the family’s mansion himself.
But inside the house? Things weren’t nearly as perfect.
Donna had everything money could buy. The one thing she didn’t have was her husband.
Divorce, Remarriage, Repeat: Love, Litigation, and One Very Persistent Ex
Somewhere along the way, Lanny and Donna stopped being starry-eyed teenagers and became two people who couldn’t stand to be in the same room. The love story turned into shouting matches, and those eventually turned into silence—the kind that fills every corner of a house.
By 2001, the marriage was done. After nearly forty years, they called it quits.
For a minute, anyway.
Because five months later, they were back in it. Divorce finalized in May. Remarried by September. Love was love, apparently. Or maybe it was habit. Or muscle memory. Either way, it didn’t last.
By June 2002, they were divorced again—this time for good, or so it seemed.
Lines were drawn, assets divided, and everyone went their separate ways. And for the first time in his adult life, Lanny fell in love with someone who wasn’t Donna.
Her name was Francine Tice, a woman he knew from work. It was new, but it was real. According to Lanny’s brother Barry, “They were holding hands… kid stuff.” He said he hadn’t seen Lanny that happy in forty years. Which also happened to be the exact amount of time Lanny had been married to Donna.
But Donna still held a position no other woman ever could. She wasn’t just his ex. She was his high school sweetheart. His first wife. His second wife. And the mother of his only child, Radley.
Radley had just hit a rough patch of his own. Now a single dad with a baby daughter, he needed support. So the family rallied. He and his daughter moved into the Florida home Lanny had built decades earlier—and Donna and Lanny moved back in too.
The setup was meant to help their son.
But it was about to bring everything full circle.
A Rekindled Romance and a Death That Didn’t Add Up
Moving back in was supposed to be about supporting their son. That was the plan. But somewhere between cohabiting and co-parenting, Lanny and Donna started to drift back toward something more. Despite Lanny’s feelings for Francine, despite their long, messy history, Donna seemed determined to pick up where they’d left off—again.
Then came September 30th, 2011.
Radley was asleep when he heard the gunfire. He jumped out of bed and ran to the master bathroom. What he found was his mother screaming and repeating over and over, “He was so awful.”
But he hadn’t seen the body yet.
Lanny was on the floor, covered in blood, barely hanging on. He’d been shot nine times. He died seconds later.
The community security guard was the first to arrive. He found Lanny with a gun in his hand. Donna told him it was a suicide. But even the guard wasn’t convinced, and called the police.
When officers showed up, Donna clammed up. Wouldn’t answer questions. And there were a lot of questions.
Like—if Lanny really shot himself, why was he holding the house phone like he was trying to call for help?
How does someone manage to shoot themselves nine times—including once through the mouth—and still have time to hold a gun?
Why was there gunpowder on the outside of his towel if he supposedly fired from behind the shower curtain?
None of it tracked. Police quickly moved from suicide to homicide. Which left them with one pressing question: who did it?
There was no sign of forced entry. No alarms had gone off. The gated community had no reports of strangers on the property. Whoever pulled the trigger had already been inside.
And that left two options: Donna, or her son Radley.
Neither had a solid alibi. Both had reason to be angry with Lanny. And now, the investigators had to figure out if one of them had pulled the trigger—or if both had played a part.
A Journal, an Affair, and a Family Torn in Half
Inside the house, investigators found what can only be described as an arsenal: 26 firearms and thousands of rounds of ammo. Among the collection were the two revolvers used to kill Lanny.
But it wasn’t just the weapons that caught their attention.
They also found Donna’s journal.
And it wasn’t just personal reflections and the occasional ramble. Donna had been keeping tabs on Lanny—down to the minute.
“Lan went to Frans 5:20. Another day of lies and being ‘Mr. Meanie.’”
Turns out, the relationship reboot hadn’t erased Lanny’s feelings for Francine. Not even close.
According to Radley, Donna had figured out pretty quickly that her ex-husband was still very much in touch with the other woman. “He was still seeing Francine. Going to lunch, going to dinner. It looked like more than just business,” he said. “She found out he was paying for her phone bill. Paying her to decorate the North Carolina house he and my mom were supposedly building together.”
Sneaky? Sure. But it wasn’t exactly a secret.
Lanny had made it pretty clear where his heart was. He wanted to be with Francine. The only reason he wasn’t was because she wasn’t ready. At least, not yet.
Prosecutor Aleathea McRoberts told the jury that Francine admitted Lanny had deeper feelings than she did. He’d even proposed.
Phone records backed it up. The two had been in constant contact. They were texting the night before Lanny died, making plans for her to pick him up the next morning.
She never got the chance.
According to court testimony, Lanny had told Donna it was over—for real this time. He expected her to be out of the house before he returned from his trip with Francine.
Instead, he was dead by sunrise.
Donna was arrested for his murder just six days later.
At trial, her defense took a hard left and pointed the finger directly at Radley.
Yes, her own son.
They argued that Radley, a convicted felon with a prior charge for illegally selling a firearm, had the most to gain. He was financially unstable, struggling to support his baby daughter, and would’ve benefited from Lanny’s life insurance payout.
The defense claimed Radley let a hitman into the house that morning. That’s why no alarms went off. That’s why someone else’s DNA was found under a smear of Lanny’s blood on the gate outside.
It was a bold strategy. But the question wasn’t just who had motive.
It was who wanted Lanny enough to kill him, and who had the most to lose when he walked away.
A Verdict, a Twist, and a Son Who Walked Away
The prosecution pushed back hard. That unidentified DNA on the gate? It could’ve been left there days or even weeks before the murder. It wasn’t proof of a hitman. But Donna’s journal—that was personal. That was detailed. And it painted a picture of someone consumed by jealousy and resentment.
Someone who knew exactly when to strike.
The jury didn’t need long. After just two hours, they found Donna guilty of first-degree murder. She was sentenced to life without parole.
But that wasn’t the end.
Her conviction was overturned when it came out that the prosecution had used statements Donna made before being read her Miranda rights. So she was retried.
This time, the jury found her guilty of second-degree murder. Her sentence was updated to 32 years. She’ll be in her 90s before she’s eligible for parole.
Radley hasn’t spoken to her since.
“Even though she tried to blame me,” he said later, “I was really sympathetic to her. Until I saw the photos of my dad. That’s when the sympathy ended.”
