“I didn’t want to die alone.”
That was 70-year-old South Carolina woman Shirley A. Mahaffey’s explanation to a Sheboygan County court about what motivated her to begin a years-long, long-distance relationship that resulted in $167,500 stolen from a Plymouth company, her boyfriend revealed to be a cruel fiction, herself in jail for over a year, and the primary suspect still at large.

A local man who had multiple packages taken from his mailbox found a way to turn the alleged thief’s method against her and help police find the suspect.