Susan Monica: The Pig Farmer Killer of Oregon

The Strange, Self-Made Life of Susan Monica

Susan Monica wasn’t exactly what you’d call average. Born Stephen Buchanan in California in 1948, she served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War as an engineer before deciding to trade military life for… pigs. Lots of pigs. In the 90s, she bought 20 acres of raw, undeveloped land in Wimer, Oregon, and set out to build a farm from scratch.

And “farm” might be generous. At first, it was just a thick patch of wild Oregon woods that had zero business being called anything but a forest. But Susan wasn’t afraid of hard work. She built herself a house, then a barn. Bought a herd of pigs. A few chickens. And, because apparently she didn’t have enough going on, she also launched White Queen Construction, her own company specializing in wrought iron fences and gates.

With all that on her plate, it wasn’t long before she needed an extra set of hands. She hired 59-year-old Stephen Delecino, a handyman who quickly became the go-to guy for most of the heavy lifting around the place. But according to Susan, Stephen didn’t stick around long—about six months in, he packed up and left.

So, back to Craigslist she went. That’s where 56-year-old Robert Haney answered the ad. His son, Jesse Haney, later summed it up: “My dad and Susan Monica had a deal. He’d get part cash and be able to stay on the property. My dad agreed to build a house from the bottom up.”

When Robert Haney Disappeared: A Quiet Life Turns Dead Silent

Susan was getting a solid deal: a new handyman and a new house out of it. But Robert Haney wasn’t exactly getting a raw deal either. According to his son, Jesse, Robert had been looking for a quieter life—something far from the chaos of cities, crowds, and traffic. Susan’s farm? Perfect.

At least, it seemed perfect… until Robert stopped answering calls.

“We hadn’t seen or heard from my dad for two months,” Jesse said. “We just all started to panic.”

The holidays passed. Still no word. So on January 1st, 2014, Jesse and his siblings drove out to Susan’s farm to check on their dad themselves. But when they got there, they didn’t find Robert. They found Susan. And according to Susan? Robert had “basically left.” She told them he’d taken off—and suggested they come collect his stuff.

But the moment they saw Robert’s trailer, Jesse knew something wasn’t right. “His leather jacket was there,” he said. “His dog was still running around. All his tools were there. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.”

They left the farm and headed straight to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office to file a missing person’s report. That kicked off a visit from detectives, who went to the farm to question Susan directly. This time, Susan had a little more to say.

She told them things had been fine at first, but sometime that past fall, Robert changed. According to Susan, Robert got a disturbing phone call from a family member claiming she’d been assaulted. After that, she said, Robert started drinking more, acting erratic. Then one day, he told Susan he was leaving for a while and asked her to take care of his dog.

Susan said she agreed. But detectives weren’t buying it—not after they uncovered security footage showing Susan using Robert’s debit card at the local supermarket.

So they went back to the farm. And that’s when they found it: a severed bone lying in a shallow pond.

“It was clear that it was not an animal bone,” one detective said. “It appeared to me to be a human leg that had been severed mid-femur, down to the toes.”

The Horrifying Discovery on Susan Monica’s Farm

The discovery of that severed leg kicked off a full-scale search of Susan Monica’s farm. And what investigators found wasn’t just one stray bone. Buried among piles of garbage, scrap metal, and animal bones were more human remains. They appeared to belong to not one—but two men: both handymen who had worked on Susan’s property. Stephen Delecino and Robert Haney.

For the next three weeks, investigators kept digging. Literally. They searched the grounds, digging more than 50 holes—some reports say closer to 100—looking for more evidence. And possibly… more victims.

Because, according to Susan herself, there weren’t just two bodies buried on her land. She claimed there were around seventeen more.

A neighbor later shed some light—or at least a theory—on what might’ve happened to the people Susan claimed had died on her farm. The neighbor had often seen Susan tossing animal remains into her pigpens, letting her pigs do what pigs do best. And Susan? She didn’t exactly deny it.

When it came to explaining how her two handymen died, Susan’s stories shifted. A lot. But there were a few common threads.

She said that during the time Stephen Delecino lived and worked on her property, they got into a fight. At one point, she claimed Stephen stole her gun and shot himself in the head. Which sounds wild enough—except the remains showed Stephen had been shot multiple times in the head. So later, Susan’s story changed: she said they struggled over the gun, and Stephen was shot while she was defending herself.

And then? According to Susan, her pigs started eating his body. She told investigators she waited until they were done before gathering what was left and burying him.

Her story about Robert wasn’t any less disturbing—or any clearer. Susan stuck to her claim that Robert left after getting that upsetting phone call from a family member. But about a month later, she said, she found him back on the farm—being eaten by her pigs.

“I put him out of his misery,” she told detectives. “I do that for my animals, and this was the first time I did it for a human being. I knew it was wrong, but if it were one of my pigs suffering out there, I would’ve done the same thing.”

The Trial of Susan Monica: A Killer Hiding in Plain Sight—or Just “Weird”?

Eventually, Susan walked back parts of her already-contradictory confession. She admitted she wasn’t entirely sure Robert had still been alive when she shot him. According to her, after she fired the shot, she let the pigs finish what they’d started. When they were done, she gathered whatever was left of Robert’s body, stuffed it into plastic bags, and left the bags in her barn. As for how one of Robert’s leg bones ended up in the pond? Susan had an answer for that too: she believed a wild animal dragged it there.

And if you’re wondering how someone could talk about this so casually—Susan had thoughts about that too. In a taped interrogation, she told detectives: “I do not value human life very much. The only thing wrong with this planet is there’s people on it. If it weren’t for us, all the other animals, dodo birds and whatever else, would still be here.”

By the time Susan stood trial, she faced two counts of murder, abuse of a corpse, and identity theft. She pleaded not guilty. But if you think the trial was straightforward, it wasn’t. It wasn’t even close.

For starters, Susan decided to play defense attorney. Sort of. At one point, she insisted on directly cross-examining the lead investigator, Detective Eric Henderson, herself. And while she didn’t exactly pull off a Law & Order moment, she certainly made an impression.

Then there was testimony from Susan’s cellmate, 23-year-old Jordan Farris. Jordan told the court Susan had sent her a birthday card—sweet, right? Well… not exactly. Susan had signed it: “from the sweetest murderer in Jackson County.”

“I got chills from the birthday card,” Jordan said on the stand.

Jordan also claimed Susan confessed what really happened to Robert. “Susan told me,” she testified, “that Robert got drunk, tried to come on to her, they fought, she shot him, and then pushed him into the pigpen.”

Meanwhile, Susan’s defense team tried to paint her as eccentric, not dangerous. “Just because Susan Monica is different and strange and weird,” her lawyer told the jury, “doesn’t make her a murderer.”

But Susan wasn’t done making the courtroom a little weirder. Just as the judge was giving jury instructions, Susan stood up and interrupted, saying she wanted to show them exactly how she’d shot Stephen Delecino.

“I’d like to demonstrate how I shot him for ten seconds,” she announced, holding her hands in front of her like she was gripping an invisible gun.

The judge ignored her. The court officers didn’t. Susan was escorted out.

The jury didn’t take long. After just an hour of deliberation, they returned a verdict: guilty. Susan Monica was sentenced to fifty years in prison for the murders of her two handymen.

And with that, Susan’s strange, violent chapter closed—though questions about what really happened on that farm will probably linger far longer than her sentence.