Bernice Miller Ahrens was born on November 28th 1943 in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York into a Jewish family. She was the eldest of two children and had a younger brother who she says was the favorite child. Due to the favoritism of her brother, Bernice says there was tension in her family and she was not close to either of her parents. She sought attention outside of her home and was popular with her friends.

In 1968 Bernice married Jerome Ahrens. They moved to Houston, Texas where he worked for the Houston Arrows hockey team as a statistician. They had two children: Craig born in 1973 and Hope born in 1976. They were together until Jerry died in September of 1982. Both of the Ahrens children were cognitively impaired.

After Jerry died, Bernice claims that all of her friends abandoned her and she became isolated and depressed. She lived with her two grown children and her daughter’s fiancé, Terence Singleton in a small apartment in Houston.

She worked for the Harris County Marriage Licenses and Doing Business As Department. At work one day in 1995, she served a female customer –Suzanne Basso- who was looking for a DBA. Suzanne and Bernice became fast friends.

On June 14, 1998 Suzanne Basso became the caretaker of Louis "Buddy" Musso 59, a mentally impaired, elderly man from Cliffside Park, New Jersey. Investigators say that Basso, 44, lured Musso to Texas with a vow to marry him. The two never married, but Basso tried to take control of Musso's finances. She took out a $15,000 life insurance policy, on Buddy Musso. A violent-death clause boosted the benefit to $60,000.

In August 1998, Suzanne asked Bernice if she could stay at Bernice’s apartment because her home was damp. Suzanne Basso, Buddy Musso and her son James O’Malley came to stay at Bernice’s apartment for five days.

Over the next five days, Suzanne Basso, the leader of the group, encouraged all the accomplices (including Basso's son, Bernice Ahrens, 55; Ahrens's son, Craig, 25; Ahrens's daughter, Hope, 22; and Hope's fiancé, Terence Singleton, 28) to abuse Buddy Musso. They beat him with belts, baseball bats, steel-toed boots, hands, and feet. On Tuesday, August 25, 1998, Buddy Musso died after hitting his head as he was being bathed in household cleaning products and scrubbed with a wire brush by James O’Malley and Terence Singleton. The murder was committed for proceeds from an insurance policy on the victim. The group redressed the body and dumped it on the side of the road in the middle of the night on the outskirts of Houston. On the morning of August 26, 1998, Musso's body was found by a jogger near a ditch in Galena Park.

Police connected a missing persons report to Suzanne Basso. Eventually her son, James O’Malley, confessed to the murder of Buddy Musso and implicated the group. Although all six suspects pointed fingers at one another in police statements, most agreed that Suzanne Basso had engineered the murder-for-profit scheme. The six suspects were arrested and charged with capital murder. They were held in Jancito City Jail without bail.

Bernice Ahrens was among the six defendants charged with killing Buddy Musso and at her trial, she admitted in a confession read to the jury that she hit Musso, but fingered Suzanne Basso as the primary culprit. Ronald Hayes, who represented Bernice Ahrens, argued that others were responsible for most of the abuse and that she allowed the torture to continue in her home because she was afraid of the domineering Basso.

Bernice Ahrens was convicted of murder Friday May 7th, 1999 and received a sentence of 80 years. Her projected release date is 8/26/2078. She is eligible for parole in 2028.

Suzanne Basso was found guilty and was sentenced to death.