Austin

Hi, Jessica, Beaver Pumps, Angelina Dawn, whatever the fuck your name is, and Katrina, the other girl, lesbian. I just wanted to let you know I've had some more shit, and here's what it is. It's about work, kind of. I've just had it with these really long fucking job titles. Like, what the fuck? Why is your job title 46 words long?

Like, how are you the senior chief junior vice president of global strategy and manager of human resources and data analytics three? What the fuck does that even mean? And don't get me started with the signatures on your email. You have the signature that's like your name, your position, your company, and your phone number. That's fine. I like that. That's actually really helpful.

But then you have people who also sign their name above that. They just like write... Yours truly, Rebecca, or whatever the fuck their name is. And then right below it, it also says that their name is Rebecca, their job title, all that stuff. Their email address says that their name is Rebecca. How many times do we need to confirm that your name is fucking Rebecca?

And please know, I'm just using a random name. I don't know if it's the name Rebecca that I work with or that I've emailed with recently. I'm just making shit up. But what the fuck is with these long job titles? I've had it with that.

Yeah.

And we both got a little handwritten note from the CEO. It seems like a really nice guy. Yeah. Nice fella.

Yeah.

But prosecutor Juan Martinez by law did not have to provide a motive for the murder. All he had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt was that Scott planned to kill Yarmula and then committed the murder.

So without a convincing motive, Prosecutor Martinez developed a theory that Scott had become estranged from his wife because he wanted more children, but she had not, and also because he wanted her to be more involved in the church, but she was unhappy in the Mormon faith. They had both converted after being raised Catholic.

So according to the prosecutors, Yarmula was found in the pool without her wedding ring. Which, I mean, that could be a sign. It could be indicative of maybe a failing marriage. But also, if you're going to bed, sometimes people take off their jewelry. It was late at night. So who's to say? But... Here's a really interesting piece of this case.

According to their son, Michael, he said, quote, I had a father that worked hard and supported the family and a stay at home mom who was always there when I came home from school. I never saw my parents argue or fight or yell at each other. It was a very loving home. I think that right there makes this the biggest head scratcher ever.

Right. And considering this, Michael had just lost his mother. So to put that into place here, I don't That seems like that would have been the prosecution's ace in the hole had the children been like, no, it was actually awful there. But he said the exact opposite. So the defense brought several sleep experts forward.

Dr. Rosalind Cartwright, an expert from Chicago, had examined Scott during four nights of sleep, done experiments with others, and claimed it was possible to be aggressive during a sleepwalking episode. She thought Scott's case was a textbook example of a sleepwalking disorder. She believed it was entirely possible that in his sleep,

Scott was going through some routine, such as cleaning the pool or fixing a faulty pump, which he had allegedly been doing that night before, and Yarmula had gone out to get him to stop and come back in. His brain, interrupted, went into a state of alarm, and he attacked her with the knife that he was holding, which he was apparently prying off the O-ring or something like that to the pool.

But he might have not been conscious through any of it. That is the theory that Dr. Rosalind Carter was proposing, that to piece together what had occurred before the actual murder, what was his state of mind like and what was he doing? So she was proposing that he was in this routine of possibly going back to the pool to fix it.

Yamala was like, hey, what are you doing out here in the middle of the night? Then something escalated while he was still asleep.

Which I don't know though. Improbable.

Yeah.

Right. So we're considering the stabbing, the dragging to the pool, the drowning, then the Going and cleaning yourself up, taking your clothes off, putting your gear back in the car, and then bandaging a wound. That's a lot of stuff.

So here's my idea. If he's still in this routine to go fix the pool... If he's doing something and he has the tool, which allegedly is this knife that he was trying to pop an O-ring off. So he's going to the pool. Then he's a part of that routine to then, oh, he might be a little bit dirty from the work.

So he's going to go shower and then he's going to return the, his work clothes and his tools to the location in his car. Like that would be a part of the routine of him fixing the pool. And it just so happened that there was this crazy horrific murder in between the routine. I don't know.

Yeah. You think you couldn't miss that too. If, if you go on like shower. So that also makes me think if you just committed a murder, wouldn't you be like hyper paranoid if you had like any more blood on you to make sure you wipe it all off?

They're admitting, like Dr. Brown said, unlikely that you can do all this, but possible.

Yep. So towards the end of the trial, Scott Flader took the stand and through tears, he declared how much he loved his wife and how he didn't know what he was going to do without her. He called Yarmula, quote, virtually all of my emotional life. And he said, quote, there was no way I could do that. Not intentionally. I loved her. I don't know what I would do without her.

He also admitted, you know, because the prosecution brought this theory forward, he admitted that Yarmula had wanted to be less involved with the church than he had, and she had not wanted more children, but he had respected her decisions.

Jurors, in the end, were split on whether or not the testimony seemed genuine, but after deliberating for eight hours on June 23rd, 1999, the jury found Scott Flader guilty of first-degree murder. Some jurors later said they had been swayed by issues like why Yarmula's screams, like Josh said, had not woken him up, and why he had been using a hunting knife to fix the pool.

Yeah, often they don't have motives. They can't find motives for these crimes. Typically you don't have to supply a motive though to convict someone, but that's the weirdest part. They're like, we have no idea why this person would do something like this in a lot of these cases. So we'll be covering a few this episode.

No, me neither.

this could have been you know a murder yeah but the motive is is on is weak i like i could totally see this being a sleepwalking case it's really really hard to believe though so i don't know if you were a juror like i don't know how you would go in there and start deliberating and being

I don't know how, what would be so convincing that you're like, yeah, this guy definitely would be other than the sleepwalking experts. That's basically like, is what this case is hinged upon is that you're bringing in these experts who know a lot about neuroscience, but at the end of the day, they're just saying that it's possible.

we can't confirm that this actually was the case, but we're just here saying this is based on our credentials and our experience. And it's even unlikely. Like they're even saying like, it's unlikely it is possible. So it's like, that's really tough to go on something like that.

No. And the fact, yeah, Michael's testimony where he's like, no, I came from a loving family. Never once saw my parents fight.

So I think that was a good call to at least just do life in prison here.

And, and even he will like admit that, um, and he does, we'll get to it later, but yeah, uh, that's a big point with like the doctors that critique this defense is that If you just say, okay, yeah, he is not guilty by a non-insane automatism defense. There's no repercussion. We can't even mandatory like a sleep treatment or anything like that. We can't even put him. He kind of just goes free.

I think we have three cases we'll go over and kind of break down and then we'll get into the studies as well. Yeah, just sleepwalking in general. Yeah, just to try and wrap our heads around what exactly is going on.

So yeah, to your point, it's like, oh, we're just letting him go. Yet he still might have this potential problem in the future. And if you remember, he was quoted saying like, Just take me away. Don't let me sleep near my children ever again. Stuff like that. So even he was aware, like, wow, I can't believe that I'm this much of a danger to those around me.

But, you know, in the end, his sleepwalking defense had failed and many scrutinized the argument as a quote unquote Twinkie defense, which you kind of hear sometimes in true crime. Meaning that sleepwalking was an unconventional and improbable legal defense. But Scott's case is still argued to this day.

A bit more convincing because we actually have neuroscientists coming in and sleep doctors that can come in and at least vouch for something like this. So, I mean, it is interesting. They're saying it's possible. Even that alone is kind of mind blowing that the experts were coming in and be like, this is totally possible for someone to sleepwalk and commit this crime. That's terrifying.

Yes.

Yeah. Like a dream. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it is like we'll admit it's very odd. Why is he fixing the pool with a knife? How come he wasn't woken up by the screaming? Why was he storing the like his clothes that he had worn to commit the murder in in the car along with the murder weapon? Was he trying to hide them? Because that seems odd.

But if you look at the pictures of where those items are found, it doesn't really seem like he was like hiding them. I mean, it looked more like he was just storing them there.

I had a family friend who their railroad tracks were like from their, the back of their house. We're talking like not even 50 feet to a railroad track. That whole family slept through trains going by all the time. So I think, I don't know. Sometimes sound doesn't really wake people up like you think it would. Yeah.

That's the crazy part.

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No.

Maybe when I was a little kid, yes, I definitely wet the bed like at least once. I remember, I think I was like six and I was so embarrassed. Or to make noises.

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I've slept. I've have talked in my sleep, but not for a long, long while. I used to more when I was like in middle school and a teenager, I remember I would, I would sleep talk or like I would have a sleepover at a friend's and they'd be like, yeah, you were saying some weird stuff. But I, as far as I know, I haven't done that into adulthood.

Yeah. That's a lot to carry. It is. Especially if you truly believed he was sleepwalking. I don't know how I would live with myself after something like that.

God, he just, he doesn't sound like a guilty man to me.

It's just, how do you convince a jury? Right. I think that is the big question. It's like, how do you actually convince people? Something that seems like you just can't even really find the data point for at the end of the day, you can bring in all the sleep experts you want, but like, like you said, he wasn't hooked up to a machine that could read what he was doing that night.

It's just like to our best ability, it's possible. And how else do we prove it?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

God is just so brutal.

Right.

Almost the death penalty. Yeah. The judge put a stop to it. That's wild.

And I wonder maybe is that indicative of who were the jurors? Is that indicative of, I mean, I'm not trying to slam any state. Is that indicative of Arizona? Especially Maricopa County, man. Yeah.

So maybe that's a bit.

Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. So I think maybe if we had a different location and a different jury, this might've been completely different is my opinion, but. Tough, tough to say. So if you're still listening and you're still like, what the hell is going on? We're going to start breaking down the sleepwalking defense a little bit here because there is a lot to unpack.

Um, and I tried to condense as much information down in a palatable way. So you don't get a little sleepy on us through the study portion of the show, but it's important. Yeah. Especially addressing, this is such a unique defense that really, I don't think we've ever come across this in any of our other, uh, uh, episodes.

I mean, across the shows, have you ever come across, I know Kendall has covered one, right? Yeah. Yeah, no. But these are really rare. So is the sleepwalking defense a legitimate defense? Let's dive in a little bit, starting with parasomnias, which I like the name just because it sounds like paranormal, but a parasomnia, it's the catch-all term coined in 1932 for sleep behaviors and experiences.

It's derived from Greek and Latin, meaning alongside sleep. So this is essentially just our collection of sleep disorders characterized by abnormal actions or events that occur during sleep.

Yeah, yeah. So like grinding your teeth, I think Daniel was saying earlier, he grinds his teeth. I clench my jaw. That's technically a parasomnia. We're not supposed to be doing that.

Huh.

What am I going to do? That is such a weird feeling though. The tingling sensation of when the blood comes back in. Yeah.

So the SFA, which we'll be quoting a bit through this, is the Sleep Forensics Associates out of Minneapolis, and they characterize parasomnias as, quote, disruptive events that occur while entering into sleep, while sleeping, during arousal from sleep, when the central nervous system activates the skeletal, muscular, and or nervous systems in an undesirable manner.

So to your point, I think that would be under the umbrella of

I know I haven't had a night terror in a long time. Like I haven't like woke up screaming or anything like that in many years. But yeah, that's one.

Yeah, that's crazy.

If you remember in Scott's case, they mentioned stress-induced factors, which lead to sleep deprivation. You're not really getting that much sleep. That can contribute towards, in his case, sleepwalking. But yeah, we'll dive into how the hell do we get into parasomnias, especially sleepwalking. But yeah, I think stress... Can do a bunch of weird crap to us. Stress is the devil, man. It really is.

I think it's like the worst, you know, quote unquote disease you can have is stress. Got to meditate more. Got to meditate. We need to find our centers. After this episode, we're going to do. We're going to lead you in a group meditation. Yeah, 10 minutes.

Yeah, there we go. So the Sleep Forensics Associates, like I said, we're just gonna be calling them the SFA going forward, is a group of medical and legal consultants who review cases of extreme parasomnias and previously indescribable human behaviors arising from sleep.

Formed in 2006, lawyers and law enforcement officials have turned to this group when investigating crimes that may be explained by a sleep problem. And according to SFA, clinical research regarding sleep-related behaviors are impractical and ethically problematic because recruiting study participants would be extremely difficult. If you can imagine, I don't even think you could get...

you know, reasonable study results from this. If you like get people together, how do you even like study that they become violent? You're like putting them in a little test chamber and like leaving a baseball bat near them or something. Like, it just seems like they said, yeah. Yeah. But like they said, it just seems ethically problematic, right?

Just putting people in these weird sleep situations. So they've taken an ethological behaviorist research approach, or in other words, their approach is more like animal behavior researchers who just study primates in the wild, hoping to learn which behaviors are genetically determined and which are conscious control.

So, parasomnias include things like sleepwalking, sleep driving, sleep talking, nightmares, sleep terrors, sleep-related eating disorders, sleep paralysis, REM sleep behavior disorder, which is kicking, yelling, or grabbing, or other actions often associated with a violent dream, And bruxism or grinding and clenching your teeth, which that's what I have. Which seems like all three of us. Yeah.

It seems like we all have parasomnia.

But yeah, so I think it's also they throw a few more in that list. So you could look up a full list. There's plenty more. But as for sleepwalking specifically, which is kind of what we're going to focus on here, according to the Mayo Clinic, somnambulism is a disorder of arousal that occurs during N3 sleep, which is the deepest stage of non-rapid eye movement sleep.

Two studies report that either 4% of adults or less than 1.5% of adults have sleepwalking experiences. So not many. That's tiny. That's really rare. Very rare. Wow. Yeah. Which is what makes these cases even crazier because if it's already that small of a pool and then we'll get into it, even smaller are violent.

It's very small. So- According to Dr. Michelle Kramer Bornemann from SFA, only a small percentage would turn violent. Location and access to a weapon, as we said earlier, are key factors. He said, quote, by and large, criminal allegations seen with forensic implications are associated with close proximity.

For the vast majority of cases, violence occurs in instances where the victim just happens to be within arm's length. So that's also important.

No, no. Not that I've ever heard of them.

Yeah. So if you sleepwalk, you know, they say it's advised to remove potential weapons from your bedroom or house. And according to the SFA, the potential forensic implications for sleepwalking include DUIs, motor vehicle accidents, sexual assault, and sleep-related violence or murder.

I did find an opposing French study of sleepwalkers in 2013 where 58% of the 140 adult sleepwalkers studied displayed violent behavior during their sleep, with 31% of violent incidents being towards themselves and 46% toward their partner sleeping next to them. But I mean, that also does go in tandem with Dr. Bornemann's statement where it's proximity. Yeah.

So if your partner's right next to you or if, you know, people are trying to wake other people up from sleepwalking, typically you're very close to them. You might even be shaking them or something like that.

The study also found that those who started sleepwalking at a young age had a higher frequency of violent behaviors causing injuries and that sleep terrors often accompanied violent behavior during sleep.

I mean, that is interesting. Obviously, like if someone's going to like start a fire or they're doing something, yeah, you want to wake them up. But then I am, I am considering, you know, in these weird niche cases where

Like they said in Scott's case, if he was potentially wielding a knife while sleeping, maybe that would be a circumstance where you wouldn't want to try and wake them up because it's like, I don't even know what to do here. He's sleepwalking with a knife in his hand. That was at least proposed.

Allegedly, that was what one of the sleep doctors was saying was one of the scenarios that could have taken place there. But everybody has a knife. Everybody has access to inside their home.

So that's why he's using a fricking hunting knife. Yeah. Jesus. Yeah. Um, We'll see, like, in a later case, you know, towards the end, where it's another circumstance of, like, we don't actually know what proceeded immediately before the murders, but it might have been another case where it's like, He's not supposed to be here.

He might have a knife or someone that there's a knife nearby or something like that. Um, but I, I don't know this whole thing. I'd like, there are questions that I don't think we'll get the answer to because sleep and dreams are almost nonsensical at times. And it's just hard to pin down exactly what to do in, in any given situation.

And then like while I'm sleeping, I will wake up the next day like, man, I'm refreshed. What happens if you get mugged on your wall? Here you go, sir.

Right.

Yeah. I think at the end of the day, what we really need, it's a good reminder. If you have sleep disorders, go get them treated. I think that's maybe the bottom line here is go see a professional and stop sleepwalking is really, I think maybe the number one thing here.

Josh needs a CPAP. No, that's what I don't want. You need a mouth guard probably. I probably need a mouth guard from the clenching. Sometimes I wake up and the whole left side of my jaw is like really in pain and then I'll eat and I'll be like, damn, do I? Get a grind guard. Yeah, I probably should. Get a grind guard. It's always on my left side too. Do you sleep on your side? I do typically.

Which side do you sleep on? It depends. So I usually go back and forth, but I, it seems like I always clinch my left side there. At least I'm not up and walking though. Cause then I'd be very concerned. Yeah.

No.

Yeah. Yeah.

Now, I don't know if this is true. You remember Roseanne Barr? Oh, yeah. She said some racist crap on Twitter years ago, and then she was like, oh, I was on Ambien, and I didn't even know I was doing that. I always think of that one.

Yeah. It's one of the side effects, but yeah, no, people cook full meals. Sleep tweeting. Yes. Yeah.

I only knew that because Gene Wolfe, he likes to use all these crazy old antiquated. Yeah, he's got all sorts of crazy stuff. You've probably heard from Ian around a mile higher, but yeah. I was like, he called someone a somnambulist, and I'm like, what is that?

And I think there's somebody in the office, but I don't want a HIPAA violation here, but I'll just say, uh, there's somebody, they were saying, if you take Ambien, make sure you're like in bed, ready to go to sleep because they think at least that it's when you take the medication, but you're not fully like going to bed or in bed that if you're in the kitchen doing something, all of a sudden you fall asleep and then you're sleepwalking.

Come on, man.

Yeah. She invited me in. That's crazy. Also, that seems like we're in some ethically dubious area. If the other person is like, oh, it's their sleepwalking. Yeah. Can you consent while sleepwalking? I don't think you can. That's crazy. That's crazy. Yeah.

Yeah, it wasn't until I read a book, The New Sun, and I looked it up, and then I never forgot that because I thought it was such a cool word. It is a cool word, though.

I don't think the sound theory really holds weight.

You just wake up from a sound, especially if you're in that deep of a sleepwalk, right?

So Mark Mahold, another teammate of Sleep Forensics, the director of Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorder Center and a professor of neurology at the University of Minnesota Medical School said, "...you don't have to extrapolate very far to connect what we see on a routine clinical basis weekly to say that, if this went a little bit further, this could easily have resulted in violent or injurious behavior with legal implications."

They studied the case of a man named Ron Voetli, and while sleeping, he'd race out of bed, sometimes two times a night, and snap into what they were calling just protective mode. This is kind of like what you were doing when you were waking up and you thought gunshots were going off, right? So while sleeping, he perceived there were intruders in his house.

He'd even grab a knife or a baseball bat and run around the house screaming while his wife and kids stayed locked away in their bedrooms. They're like, oh shit, dad's doing the crazy sleepwalking thing again.

Right? So Ron had never acted like that while he was awake. When interviewed, he said that if he had hurt his wife or one of his kids, he wouldn't have been able to live with it. And since he was so afraid of what he'd do in his sleep, he refused to own a gun. Smart.

In 1989, Dr. Shank diagnosed him with sleepwalking and sleep terrors, and then he prescribed him Klonopin, which is used to treat panic disorders. And this seemed to cure his problem. So clearly some patients, you know, they can be successfully treated with medication, but it's not always as simple as having a psychiatric disorder and then taking medication.

It's really, you can't just say like, oh, you have a sleeping disorder, take this and you'll be fine. Back in the 1970s, it was commonly believed that all complex behaviors arising from sleep were just some form of sleepwalking, which is funny. It just shows how far we've come into studying this and

It's kind of cool that we're in the midst of the, I guess, if you want to say like golden era of like neurology with sleepwalking disorders, because it's really a fairly new thing. And for adults really in the 1970s, the stigma surrounding sleepwalking meant, you know, they just suffered from an underlying psychiatric illness.

But this has since been debunked, and Dr. Mahold and Shank claim that psychiatrically healthy adults also have the potential to behave strangely while they sleep. Which is why it's not an insanity plea or anything like that, it's non-insane automatism. Which we will get into in a little bit. But as they explain it, sleep is not a quote, whole brain phenomenon.

Neurophysiological studies of sleepwalkers have shown that during sleepwalking episodes, brainwave patterns indicate a state of neither full sleep nor full wakefulness. This means that part of the brain can be awake while the other part is asleep.

I do want to point out, you know, to the, we're thinking that screaming would wake someone up. If you're not being woken up by, you're walking out in snow and you're frostbitten, you can't even feel pain, right? So I think there's just weird things going on up there that we're not registering properly. Yeah.

I want to know what I'm doing while I'm sleeping. So it's like the REM sleep behavior disorder, not sleepwalking. It's another layer of sleep that we're still acting things out in.

So with all this said, if the part of the brain generating behaviors and actions is awake, but the part of the brain that can monitor and govern what we're doing and create memories is asleep, this is what can create really bizarre behaviors without the person being conscious. even murder.

Considering that people can act outside of their own governance and the normal procedures of sleep, this is what can lead to verdicts such as not guilty from non-insane automatism. So according to Black's Law Dictionary, automatism is defined as, quote, Behavior performed in a state of mental unconsciousness or dissociation without full awareness.

The term is applied to actions or conduct of an individual apparently occurring without will, purpose, or reasoned intention on his part. A condition sometimes observed in persons who, without being actually insane, suffer from an obscuration of the mental faculties, loss of volition, or of memory, or kindred affections. And in layman's terms means. Yeah, so basically, you're not insane.

You are losing your mental faculties. You are not retaining any memories from it. And kindred affections, what they mean by that is that I think it's that your family members, you are not recognizing relationships to you, which could explain how Scott would brutally murder his wife.

Is he recognizing her in this state as his wife, or is this just some entity in a dream or a sleepwalking fit that he's coming across? Right.

Sleep forensics also acknowledge what's called a Twinkie defense, which we mentioned earlier, where they really might not be any scientific merit to the parasomnia murders and the accusers just trying to get off the hook. I mean, I could see how this would be abused. Why do they got to go after Twinkies like that? I think the name does come from some Twinkie litigation. Yeah, I think so.

I think it actually comes from that. Actually.

Yeah. Daniel, you want to look up where the name Twinkie defense comes from?

I think it might be. Little Debbie's. Yeah.

It's a hostess. Hostess. Yes.

Yeah, they're weird as an adult. They taste odd, but as a kid, I was like, this is awesome. Well, all those taste so fake and processed.

Damn! That's crazy. And that is a bullshit defense.

Like, oh, he just ate a bunch of sugary foods.

Yeah, that's crazy. How would that fly? So yeah, it comes from Twinkies.

Oh, I'm sure they do. What? So sleep forensic scientists, they also recognize that even true parasomniacs can commit crimes while they're conscious. That is what makes it so hard to pin down. So like I could, if I know that I have a sleepwalking disorder and then I go commit a crime, then I could be like, well, hey, look at all my family history.

And my partner has seen me sleepwalk a million times. And this is so you can kind of fabricate something just because you are a parasomniac. So in Dr. Shank's own words, quote, that's one of the major challenges for us in sleep forensics associates, to work backwards to evaluate the evidence both in favor of a sleep disorder and in favor of criminal activity.

You can't assume that just because someone has a parasomnia, that's why the crime occurred. So that's kind of like what we were talking about, working backwards. You can't have that data available to you in the moment.

So in the early morning, around 4.30 a.m., Mary was found brutally murdered. She was discovered by one of the boarding house owners who noticed smoke coming from her room. She was found lying on her back in her nightgown, nearly decapitated. The neck wound measured six inches long and three inches deep.

The room was also clouded with smoke because someone had set fire to the bed and a few other pieces of furniture inside the boarding house. The presumed murder weapon, a blood-stained razor, was discovered at the foot of the bed, and Mary's hair was singed and her skin was charred.

Part of one ear was split open and missing an earring, and nearby a man's vest and a cane were spattered with her blood. It's believed this was Albert's clothing, but it was not confirmed as far as I could find. Mary was last seen with Albert the previous evening and he was immediately accused of murder. On the previous evening, Albert allegedly visited Mary's bedroom at the boarding house.

He was later seen bargaining with the stable keeper and he said he was, quote, in a scrape and needed to get away. He then drove south to a relative's house in the town of Weymouth. They hid him there and even gave him some money to flee the state. So it's important to clarify here It's unclear why he's fleeing. Some are like, it's because he's guilty of murder.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. Same.

Others were saying that he, no, no, he was fleeing the adultery charges. Right. He then headed into Canada and wrote his family from Montreal, announcing he had plans to sail to Liverpool, but bad weather forced the ship to return to land.

He then boarded a ship in New York City bound for New Orleans, but authorities received a tip and arrest him on December 5th near Louisiana while he was aboard a vessel in the Gulf of Mexico. Newspapers in Boston had already sensationalized the crime and many argued that Albert was guilty. Albert ended up getting a lawyer named Rufus Choate. Dude, this guy, man. Yeah, this is a character.

No, he's a prodigy of the law and a former United States Senator from Maine. This is funny. Rufus once spoke the longest sentence ever known to man during a speech, which was 1,219 words. Damn. It's like a whole page. This is the 1800s equivalent of going viral. If you want to make a newspaper headline, it's like, that guy right there, man, he said the longest sentence ever known to man.

No breath. Yeah, nothing. Just forced his way through it all. His mentor was Daniel Webster, another famous lawyer and politician at the time. Who made the dictionary.

Yeah, it's a different Webster. But Daniel Webster's strategies often included exaggerated character assassination of the alleged victims and elaborate narratives. So Rufus, the prodigy, took note. And in the defense of Albert, he put together an argument that he was a chronic sleepwalker.

And if he did kill Mary Bickford, he only did it because he was in a sleepwalking trance and could not be held responsible. It's believed he was inspired by a friend who had been reading a book about a sleepwalker called Sylvester Sound, The Somnambulist. This guy's a crafty lawyer.

So even back then, they were pulling in the medical professionals into the courtroom.

Convenient for them. Yeah. So Rufus Choate then argued during a six hour speech, six hours, that nobody saw, never took a breath, that nobody saw Albert kill the victim. Fair. Nobody saw him near the boarding house around the time of the murder. Also fair. Nobody saw him with blood on him and he had never confessed. Albert also had no apparent motive.

Rufus then, which I don't know, he kind of seems like circumstantially like there was a motive. He was, it was an adultery charge and he's living with this woman who's not his wife. It seems like contextually that- Could Mary possibly testify against him? Yeah, something like that. Rufus then emphasized the sleepwalking argument and stressed that 12 witnesses had testified to Albert's condition.

The jury deliberated for- two hours, and returned with a verdict of not guilty. This seems like some, maybe there's some, uh...

privilege at play here uh that he's a man and i wish so bad we could see this play out it'd be kind of funny right like i uh i this seems like an unfair trial here um it was a different time yeah different time in the fact that it's like really compared to the the medical tech and science that we have today compared to back then it's like what

As long as you can convince the jury and be Rufus Choate and very, very influential for six hours, kind of wear them down. But spectators then got to their feet and applauded. Yeah, what the fuck is that? Albert began to sob, which was his first display of emotion throughout the entire trial. It's like, I can't believe this. God off with this.

Rufus then used the same defense in the next trial to acquit Albert on the arson charges for setting fire to the boarding house, which also seems like he's trying to cover up the evidence. That's why he was setting the fires inside. But this is funny. Albert later sent Rufus a letter asking for a refund for half of his legal fees because it had been too easy to persuade the jury of his innocence.

His lawyer never refunded him. Albert went on to live the remainder of his life in obscurity, but his trial will go down in history as the first case in the U.S. that successfully used a sleepwalking defense, or what was once called, quote, insanity of sleep. In the 1840s, there were virtually no medical explanations for sleepwalking, and medical experts had argued over its cause.

Yeah. And I think this kind of sets the tone, right? It does.

It was like a bunch of bullshit to me.

But yeah, that's why I do think medical science has since kind of changed the face of this defense quite a lot.

So back in the interrogation room, he was told that he was a suspect in his wife's murder. He appeared confused. He said that he loved his wife and nothing had happened. And then he asked how she had died. So if you remember when they arrested him, he said there are three other people in the house and he mentioned his wife and his two children, right?

An hour later, Kenneth's wife, Karen, got a visit from police saying that her mother had been murdered and her husband, Kenneth, was the suspect. This didn't make any sense to her. She had known Kenneth for six years and not once had he ever shown violent tendencies. Plus, he had always gotten along with her parents and they had a close relationship.

Kenneth and Karen first met when Karen was in high school and Kenneth was 20. It's unclear exactly how old Karen was at the time. But at this time, Karen was often rebelling against her parents and their relationship was constantly strained. But Kenneth was actually the one who encouraged her to reconcile her relationship with her parents, especially her mother.

Despite the age difference between Kenneth and Karen, her parents accepted him into the family. Kenneth had come from a broken home and had seen Karen's family like quote-unquote the Brady Bunch and the family he always wished he had. He was always particularly fond of Barbara, who was his future mother-in-law.

Kenneth and Karen then married, and within two years they bought a car and put down a payment on a house. Everything seemed to be going fairly well until the night in question. So when Karen finally brought herself to visit Kenneth in jail, she tried to get any answer she could from him.

Kenneth had no explanation for any of it, and Karen left angry and confused, as you can imagine, and Kenneth was later charged with the second-degree murder of Barbara Woods and the attempted murder

So you kind of, was he, we'll get into this a bit later, but just right off the bat, you're thinking, Did he know what he was talking about? Was he genuinely confused? So that's kind of the question you have to ask going forward here. According to the investigation around 11pm the night of, Scott and his wife were both in the backyard.

So Marlis then got permission from the courts to set up a temporary sleep lab in a parole office where Dr. Broughton could study Kenneth while he slept. Allowing Kenneth to undergo sleep studies and have his case reviewed by multiple sleep experts would monumentally change the course of this trial.

Technicians monitored his brain waves, eye movements, muscle tone, and blood oxygen levels as he slept. So here's Dr. Brown explaining these sleep studies.

It's unclear how they ended up there, but Scott wielded a hunting knife and began brutally attacking her. while he stabbed her 44 times the next door neighbor greg coons and his girlfriend could hear moaning noises so they looked over the fence seeing what was going on greg's girlfriend ended up calling emergency services while greg watched scott hold his wife's head in the pool

So as they monitored Kenneth, he fell asleep and quickly reached level four or deep sleep. Then he suddenly woke up without moving through any of the other levels of sleep. One or two instances of this behavior is apparently common for many people, but in Kenneth's study, this happened four times, which was completely out of the ordinary.

And according to Dr. Brown, this is commonly seen in sleepwalkers. As they looked into Kenneth's family history, his maternal grandfather was also a recurring sleepwalker. The man would cook full meals and grunt through the process. His family knew not to wake him during his cooking, or he would quickly become violent. And once he woke up, Kenneth's grandfather could never remember any of it.

So Kenneth's mother was also reportedly a sleepwalker, and Kenneth himself... had sleepwalking incidents as a child. As early as six years old, Kenneth had tried to climb out of a six-story window in his sleep. It was also reported that he had even gone grocery shopping while sleeping.

So during Kenneth's sleep test, Dr. Browden also discovered Kenneth had other sleep disorders that were commonly found with sleepwalking, including sleep terrors, sleep talking, and a pattern of very deep sleep. He was also a deep sleeper and had difficulty waking up.

Besides his family history and his own history with sleepwalking, other factors like stress and exhaustion might have contributed to the incident, and the defense used this in their argument. One weekend, about a year before the attack, Kenneth and Karen had gone on a double date to the Queen's Plate, which is Canada's oldest thoroughbred horse race.

Kenneth bet on a horse and won $45, and knowing that they had dreamed about vacationing to Australia, he figured he would keep playing the horses until he had enough for a vacation.

Essentially like drowning her. Exactly. Under the water. So according to the investigation's timeline, the murder took about an hour to commit. The medical examination concluded that most of the 44 stab wounds were defensive wounds, but some were fatal.

And, uh, and it also makes sense with the routine thing, like kind of how we were talking about with Scott, where he's like, I have to go fix the pool. So he's doing this in his sleepwalking. Same argument here with Kenneth, where it's like, I know I have to go to my in-laws tomorrow and confess what's been going on. So maybe that was his prerogative while he was asleep.

So during the trial, certain aspects of the case were unclear, so the defense tried their best to fill in the gaps. No one could explain how Kenneth entered the victim's house.

Once inside, it was argued that Barbara, confused by seeing her son-in-law in her house at 4 a.m., tried to physically get his attention, and this is common for people to do with sleepwalkers, but this might have initiated Kenneth's violence while sleepwalking. Then she might have tried to use the telephone and tried to grab the kitchen knife in self-defense.

Then Kenneth possibly attempted to take the kitchen knife from her blade first, which would explain the deep wounds to the tendons in his hands. Dennis Woods, according to his testimony, first woke up with Kenneth choking him and he testified that he couldn't remember Kenneth saying anything before passing out.

So we really don't even have Dennis as like an eyewitness to anything going on in the house. After Kenneth murdered Barbara, the unnamed children who were relatives in the house might have come to check out the commotion. They testified they heard Kenneth making grunting noises, similar to how his grandfather sounded while cooking in his sleep.

At some point, Kenneth returned to his vehicle and left. So if you remember, remember the flashing images and what he was kind of seeing? It was Barbara's face concerned. than him telling the kids to like get out of here and the phone being off the hook. So trying to piece together like why he would see those flashing images specifically.

The neighbor also told police that Scott's actions seemed out of character and they had never witnessed Scott and his wife arguing or fighting before. That's important to note.

According to the defense, this is when he came to when he had left in his vehicle. Five neurological experts testified that Kenneth was sleepwalking during the time of the incident and he was not suffering from any kind of neurological or psychiatric illness. The prosecution failed to find any sleep experts who disagreed.

But they argued that the time that had elapsed during Kenneth's alleged sleepwalking episode was much longer than most documented sleepwalking incidents, which is typically less than 30 minutes, sometimes only a few minutes at most. Plus, several witnesses inside the local police station heard him confess to murder.

The prosecution proposed that Kenneth might have created a motivation for killing his in-laws while awake so he would commit the murder in his sleep. I was like, what? But according to Dr. Broughton, he said, quote, there's no evidence that one can create a motivation in wakefulness as a sleepwalker in a way that would carry over in sleepwalking.

1.

If the acts were not conscious and voluntary, what crime was committed? Those are great questions. The jury deliberated for nine hours, and in the end, they found Kenneth Parks not guilty. He dodged a life sentence in prison.

His attempted murder charge was also dismissed, and Judge Watt agreed, ruling that the state had failed to establish, quote, "...beyond a reasonable doubt that Kenneth Parks was aware of his actions."

And since he wasn't judged to be insane either, since the sleepwalking defense is specifically not an insanity defense, he was not required to attend a psychiatric hospital, although he did get treated for his sleep disorder on his own.

After leaving the courtroom, Kenneth then appeared before a district court judge and pled guilty to the previous fraud charges, and he received a three-month suspended sentence.

Right. What is going on? Right. So when Detective Norman kept asking what set him off, Scott responded, quote, And as the interrogation continued, Scott finally came to the realization that his wife was truly dead. You can kind of see like he's just confused about what's going on. And once it sets in that she's actually dead, he then leaned against the wall, tilted his head back and began weeping.

If he's going grocery shopping by himself, that's clearly, that's not going to be a few minutes.

Yeah, they do say sleepwalking is passed down. Like if you have it in your family history, that's a big sign that you'll probably sleepwalk as well.

And the prosecution could not find an expert to go against those. Yeah.

true but i don't think that that necessarily like would change the the way that this case would have gone yeah because i mean it's kind of the same with the u.s slots like beyond a reasonable doubt right and then also with uh sleepwalking not being characterized as a mental disorder we also do that here so it's it's not that different

I mean, maybe culturally they have a different idea on this, or maybe they're just more receptive to these types of very weird, nuanced discussions on sleepwalking. Maybe they're more open to it.

I think even if you are not guilty by non-insane automatism, it does feel like there should be a little caveat, a little asterisk on that law to be like, but you have to go get treated for this, right?

Yeah. Luckily in, in the two cases, at least Scott and, and Kenneth, they both did get, uh, their sleep disorders checked out and, and they worked through it. So at least they did that kind of on their own volition. Um, I guess it's something right.

I do. I think it should be incredibly hard to prove or to get a jury to agree on because it is such a crazy defense to propose that. So it should be difficult, but I do think there should be, I think it should be legitimate. I think it should be used when applicable. I could see how people would abuse it though.

And then he covered his face with his hands. This interrogation continued and Scott continuously told Detective Norman that he had no memory of what had happened. And when Detective Norman asked him about the blood on Scott's neck, Scott wiped the blood off the back of his neck confused and said he didn't even know that he had blood on him. And this was in the interrogation room.

I mean, yes, just by the nature of being so close to something like that, but that's also why I'm not on the jury. Right. Yeah. So I would hope that God, that would be an incredibly difficult situation to be in, but I would hope that, I don't know. In the case, like we saw Dennis Woods, he came to testify for Kenneth.

He's like, this man murdered my wife, but I'm still here to defend him because he has had no reason to do something like this.

That's why I said it should be very hard to convince a journalist. It should be very hard. It should be.

And I think in the case of Kenneth Sparks, it was like we had five experts come in. They all unanimously agreed that he was sleepwalking during this scenario. And the prosecution couldn't find anybody to say differently. I think that's a pretty strong case there.

I think more of a more preventative approach here is just go get your sleep disorders worked through. Go see a professional and do something about this because clearly you just never know. I don't think the case of Kenneth, do you ever think that it crossed his mind that he could do something like this?

He like wipes the back of his neck and he's like, huh? The interrogation continued for hours without going anywhere. Scott kept saying he had no recollection from that night, and as the investigation unfolded, many wondered, so why would a deeply religious, mild-mannered, sober, he's Mormon, right?

He doesn't touch alcohol, financially stable, devoted husband and father stab his screaming wife to death in their backyard near the lighted swimming pool? as their children slept in the house upstairs.

I think it Randy Herman or something. I think that's his name.

Yeah, with a lighted swimming pool. Then the neighbors do see, right? Right. That's who calls the police. All authorities could apparently find were minor tidbits of gossip, such as a comment Yarmula allegedly made to her friends about her marriage not being as ideal as outsiders might have perceived.

Beyond that, why would Scott then drag his fatally wounded wife to the pool, hold her head underwater while the neighbor watched, right? Was he just completely unaware that the neighbor was there? So unfortunately, a lot of these questions might never have complete answers, but we will dive into kind of the investigation of what they uncovered.

And we'll get into this a bit later, but yeah, that's essentially how it was described by one of the doctors. It's like we just have these programs that we do, especially with routines that we do all the time, driving a car, going grocery shopping, cleaning, cooking. It's like these things that we've done a million times, we almost go into autopilot mode.

And so especially in this state, this non-insane automatism, We're just doing something we've typically done many times over. But stabbing someone?

Essentially, you're saying my client did do this. Yes. But we're going to explain why they weren't even in control.

This might be... This is top three episodes for researching for me that I've had the most fun researching.

Hello, sir. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Sure.

Yeah, so I'm kind of in a little bit of a dilemma. I've been with my current company. I've been with them for 10 years now. I started with the company when I was in my mid-20s. Me and my wife were having a kid at the time. We're like, okay, this seems like a good option for us. They have really good benefits. I've had good medical care. I have a great time off, flexible schedule.

But the pay has been lacking. And 10 years down the line, I still have the same job I started with. I was hoping with this particular company, there'd be growth opportunities, ways to move up, and it just hasn't happened. So I kind of feel like I work myself or back myself into a corner being with the company for so long.

So I want to know, like, what do you think the possible options are to possibly move away from this company? Or because the benefits are so good, do I stick it out for a little bit longer? Kind of my dilemma, do I move forward or do I just move on?

Yeah, so it was this particular field. So I currently work, I guess you can call it a customer service role. I've been doing that for 10 years. Well, I kind of thought this company is so big, it's got a good name for itself. If anything, it's going to look great on a resume.

I was like, I would, I mean, the dream scenario, I would love to own my own business someday.

If I were in a management position in that same particular field, I would have been happy with that.

Yeah, yeah, I have. I've had the same answer for quite a while and we've had those conversations and I have moved or done rotational roles that only last for like six to nine months. I've tried those opportunities and I've unfortunately haven't really accumulated or current into anything beyond that.

Hey guys, how's it going?

I had a question for you. My wife and I are currently on baby step two. We do have two cars that we have about between the two of them, about 20,000 on one and just under 10,000 on the other. We're looking at downsizing right now just to help put more toward other debts and kind of get rid of those big payments. But I know on one of the cars, we're probably about three to $4,000 upside down in it.

And so I'm trying to figure out, we do need two cars with our kind of work and, and my,

kids school situations we we really do need two cars to survive but i don't have the cash to like if we were to sell my wife's car i don't have the cash to cover that that upside down amount that three to four thousand to get the lien so what's the best way to go about this um yeah i guess well quick question that car how much do you owe on that car so hers is hers is between 19 and 20 i don't remember the exact amount i think it's like 19 four is it a good car

It's a decent car, yeah. It's a pretty nice SUV that we like. We have three kids, so it fits all the kids and all the stuff that we need.

Yeah. Yeah, that's the one that's upside down. What other debt do you have? We do have about $60,000 in student loans as well. Other than that, we don't have anything else we're currently renting, so we don't have a mortgage, no credit cards, nothing else. What's your income?

Uh, my, I have, uh, my main job salaried at 75 and then I have a couple of side gigs that bring in about five to 10,000 a year.

My direct deposit's about $54,000, and then between my side gigs, it really fluctuates month to month. But we've currently budgeted at that $5,400 amount because my other side gigs are pretty, like, it's not consistent. It's kind of up and down, and it ebbs and flows.

It'd be probably two to three months.

I'm an architectural drafter, so I work for a home builder. That's my full-time gig, designing house plans. And then on the side, I do it as well.

Yeah, great question. So currently we are on that safe plan, but with the uncertainty of whether that's actually going to be approved or not. So all of mine and my wife's loans are currently in forbearance. So we're at zero insurance, zero payments right now. And so we haven't been paying on them for the last few months to put more toward our car loans and do that.

So that's currently where we're at. But I'm also like, I don't want to just let those sit there without making payments on them. But we are starting with those smaller car debts as well to, you know, get rid of those.

It's a sedan. It's a Subaru Legacy that I drive. So that's my commuter car. I commute about 35 minutes every day. I could sell that for pretty much what it's worth. I'm not upside down on that one at all, but I would need something. So I don't necessarily have the cash to go buy another cheaper vehicle.

That's another question.

We have three.

Six, three, and one.

Hi.

So I am a full-time college student. I'm graduating next week, and I'm currently on step one. I'm just having trouble racking my head around paying off all of the debt that I have.

So I have, I don't have any student loans to start out with. I have about $15,000 in car loans and credit cards.

I don't have a degree. I have a diploma for graphic design.

I have recently, I've just looked at the job market and I've decided that's maybe not something I want to pursue.

I've been looking more into becoming a mechanic.

I am. I currently work at FedEx Warehousing, just moving boxes around. And I was doing part-time. I should be going full-time here, and I'm projected to make about $35,000.

I'm currently living with parents.

Just helping around the house. Okay, cool.

It's a local. It's a tech school in Tennessee.

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