“I shot them, they came up to our window and had a gun pointed at my wife’s head,” Duncan told a dispatcher while asking for authorities to get to his 3443 Grinnell Road home as quickly as possible.
Duncan is the founder and CEO of Genesis Today who appeared on the Dr. Oz Show and The View nearly a decade ago to talk about weight loss.
A phone message to Duncan wasn’t returned Thursday evening.
Greene County Sheriff Gene Fischer declined to identify Duncan, who has not been charged with any crime.
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Greene County Sheriff Gene Fischer identified the dead woman as Cheryl Sanders, 59, who was a spokeswoman and stunt woman who appeared on the cover of Healthy Living Magazine. Her current husband, Robert Reed Sanders, 56, also was killed in the shooting.
Sanders wrote online that she moved from martial arts and kickboxing to a career as a stunt woman in the 1980s. She said was the stunt double for Brooke Shields, Kathleen Turner, Sharon Stone and other A-list actresses.
Court records show that Duncan and Cheryl Sanders signed a prenuptial agreement in 1999, were married, then divorced in 2009.
Since the divorce, the records indicate their relationship remained sour.
According to a court filing in 2016, Duncan sued Cheryl Sanders and Robert Sanders for defamation, slander, libel and other accusations.
“Defendant Cheryl provided a written statement to both boards of Genesis Pure and Genesis Today, as well as non-board members, employees and various members of the plaintiff’s family,” the suit says. “This statement accused the Plaintiff of false, malicious, defamatory and vicious accusations, which defamed both the plaintiff and Genesis Today and Genesis Pure.”
Exactly what was said isn’t spelled out in the lawsuit. The lawsuit claims Duncan was subjected to numerous attempts at extortion and harassment.
Motions in the lawsuit have been filed as recently as September of last year. The most recent action came in November, according to online court records, when a sub or withdraw of counsel took place. The case status is labeled “pending.”
The Dayton Daily News has requested the documents in the case. The online court records list David Gottfried as the Sanders’ attorney. A message left at his office wasn’t returned.
Duncan’s wife, who is identified as Molly in the 911 call, tells dispatchers during that call that Cheryl Sanders has been trying to kill them for years.
Fischer said during a press conference Thursday that his office is still looking at whether the shooting was a planned ambush of Duncan and his wife. He said the Sanderses were driving a car with fictitious Ohio temporary plates. He also said the two had set up a camera to view the incident.
Fischer also said during the press conference that Duncan had alerted his office about five years ago that he feared Cheryl Sanders had hired someone to kill him. Fischer said extra patrols were dispatched around the home at that time.
He said he didn’t know what the motive of the shooting was but did say money could have played a role.
“Money can be the root of all evil,” he said. “But I can’t say it’s money, I’m not sure exactly why this happened. That’s what’s the investigation is for.”
Officials said the investigation will take a long time and will be presented to a grand jury for review.
According to a Federal Trade Commission press release from 2015, Duncan and his companies faced charges from the commission for, in part, deceptively touting “the supposed weight-loss benefits of green coffee bean extract through a campaign that included appearances on The Dr. Oz Show, The View, and other television programs.”
The commission accused Duncan of misleading consumers by saying that green coffee bean extract would help them lose “as much as 17 pounds and 16 percent of body fat in 12 weeks, without diet or exercise.”
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The commission said that claim wasn’t true.
“…a clinical study does not show that GCBE causes substantial weight loss and fat loss, or rapid and substantial weight loss and fat loss, including 17 pounds in 12 weeks and 16 percent of body fat in 12 weeks, without diet or exercise,” the complaint says.
In a settlement, Genesis Today, Pure Health LLC and Duncan agreed to pay $9 million to the commission and were barred from making deceptive claims about the health benefits of any dietary supplement or drug product, the press release says.
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