The Betty Jeanne Solomon Case — Fatal Attraction Murder

The Case

The Betty Jeanne Solomon case is a 1989 American homicide in Greenburgh, New York, in which 40-year-old Betty Jeanne Solomon was shot to death inside her own home. Her husband's mistress, 24-year-old elementary schoolteacher Carolyn Warmus, was eventually convicted of the murder in 1992 after two trials. The case became one of the most sensational American crimes of the early 1990s and was widely dubbed the "Fatal Attraction murder" because of its resemblance to the 1987 film.

The Crime

On the evening of January 15, 1989, Betty Jeanne Solomon was attacked inside the family's condominium in Greenburgh, in Westchester County, New York. She was shot nine times in the back and arms with a small-caliber handgun. Her husband, Paul Solomon, told police he discovered her body when he returned home that night, claiming he had been at a Holiday Inn meeting with Carolyn Warmus, a colleague at Greenville Elementary School with whom he had been having an affair.

The brutality of the shooting — multiple rounds fired at close range — and the apparent absence of forced entry suggested to investigators that the killer either knew the victim or had specifically targeted the household.

The Victims

Betty Jeanne Solomon was 40 years old at the time of her death. She lived in the suburban community of Greenburgh with her husband Paul and their teenage daughter. According to subsequent coverage of the case by Oxygen, she was described by friends and family as devoted to her daughter and unaware, at least initially, of the extent of her husband's infidelity. Network documentary footage has also explored what Betty Jeanne may have been trying to communicate in the period leading up to her death.

Investigation

The initial focus of the Greenburgh Police Department was Paul Solomon himself, as is routine in spousal homicides. His alibi — that he had been with Warmus at a hotel that evening — held up against the timeline, and attention shifted when investigators uncovered the depth and turbulence of his affair with Warmus.

Carolyn Warmus, the daughter of a wealthy Michigan insurance executive, was found to have a documented pattern of obsessive behavior toward men in her life. Investigators discovered she had purchased a .25-caliber handgun and a silencer through an intermediary in the weeks before the murder, using false identification. A receipt for the purchase, phone records, and the testimony of the man who had bought the gun on her behalf became central to the prosecution.

At the second trial, a bloody glove discovered near the crime scene became a major focus. As discussed in a later prison interview with Warmus, the defense argued there was no definitive forensic link tying the glove to her, but prosecutors used it as part of a broader circumstantial case.

Trial and Verdict

Warmus's first trial in 1991 ended in a hung jury, with jurors deadlocked over whether the circumstantial evidence was sufficient. Prosecutors retried the case the following year, presenting additional evidence including the disputed glove.

On May 27, 1992, the Westchester County jury found Carolyn Warmus guilty of second-degree murder and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon. On June 26, 1992, Judge John Carey sentenced her to 25 years to life for the murder and 5 to 15 years for the weapons charge, to be served concurrently. Throughout the proceedings, and in extended video commentary on the case, Warmus maintained her innocence and accused Paul Solomon of being the actual killer.

Today

The case is officially solved by conviction, but it remains heavily contested in true crime media. Carolyn Warmus was released on parole in 2019 after serving roughly 27 years in New York state prison, and she has continued to assert her innocence and seek to overturn her conviction. The Solomon murder has been the subject of multiple television treatments, most prominently Oxygen's documentary series The Fatal Attraction Murder, which revisited the original investigation and the disputed forensic evidence. Archival press images of the case continue to circulate, keeping the case visually present in contemporary true crime journalism more than three decades after Betty Jeanne Solomon's death.