In a moment of curiosity, I sometimes use the Illinois Department of Corrections online inmate list to check on memorable felons I have covered. Updated mugshots show what age and prison have done to them.

Barbara Jean Boyle was on my list. Now 67, the blond-haired, blue-eyed, black widow retains some vestiges of her past beauty. The vital statistics list her as 5-foot-3, 145 pounds, and free.

It was news last week that release time had come for Boyle, an icy player in what could be argued were Metro East's most chilling murders.

She was in prison for 25 years. But it doesn't even feel like 25 weeks since a rumor first drew my attention her way. A cop quietly acknowledged that it was true — Boyle had known Glennon Engleman. It proved nothing, but was too much coincidence to ignore.

Boyle had been Barbara Gusewelle, a woman with monumentally bad luck. In 1977, the year after she married Ronald Gusewelle, someone inexplicably shot his parents to death in their home outside Edwardsville. Sixteen months later, Ronald, 33, disappeared and turned up slain in East St. Louis.

The grieving wife reverted to using Boyle, surname of her first husband. He was a dentist who once practiced in the same clinic as Engleman, It was significant, as Engleman was emerging as a serial killer for profit, with a history of enriching widows.

But there was one big hitch: A guy named Andre Jones already claimed that he murdered Ronald Gusewelle.

Jones, a robber and stone-cold killer of three, told police that his girlfriend posed as a prostitute to lure Gusewelle into a robbery at an East St. Louis motel, and that when he resisted, Jones killed him and left the body outside in his car.

Jones was not charged with it. Some detectives said later they doubted his story. But it was hard to suspect Boyle — even if she knew Engleman — when there was somebody else's plausible confession on the table.

Maybe nothing more would have happened had a St. Louis dental supplier named Sophie Marie Berrera not sued Engleman over an unpaid bill. Or had he responded with a check instead of a car bomb. Investigators in that case also unraveled information connecting him to the Gusewelles.

Jones eventually recanted, saying he had been coached to confess by an over-zealous cop (who denied it).

The trail led to a man named Robert Handy, who eventually admitted being Engleman's accomplice. He told of their visit to the elder Gusewelles' home. And of using a gun and sledge hammer to ambush their son in his own garage not far away. And of dumping the body and car in East St. Louis. And of how a helpful Boyle was there with towels to sop up her husband's blood.

Boyle hired the flamboyant lawyer F. Lee Bailey, famous for big-time cases both before (the "Boston Strangler") and after (O.J. Simpson). Madison County used its dean of major-case prosecutors, Robert E. Lee Trone, a character in his own right.

Trone portrayed Boyle as a vicious predator, who married Gusewelle in a plot to kill his parents to fatten his wallet before killing him too. Her take was put at $598,000.

Bailey emphasized Jones' confession. Jones told the jury that he did not do it, and claimed to know that Boyle didn't do it either. He said he knew who did, but didn't give a name. Boyle never took the witness stand.

Jurors in Judge P.J. O'Neill's court deliberated for two days before splitting their decision: Boyle killed her husband, they said, but not his parents.

Engleman would later plead guilty of the slayings, adding three life terms to the two he was already serving in Missouri. Handy cut a deal for a lenient 14-year sentence for conspiracy.

Boyle served her time quietly, attracting little attention until 2002, when 3,600 people signed her former brother-in-law's petition to oppose her request for clemency. It was denied.

But there was no denying her Oct. 9, 2009, release date. It was Boyle's good fortune to commit the crime when the law provided one day off for each day served with good behavior. Fifty years meant 25.

If that arrangement bothers you, it bothered the Legislature too. Under today's law, 50 for first-degree murder means 50. She'd be only halfway home.