Maggie Freleng
speaker
47 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2025
last heard Jun 2025
Maggie Freleng’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
This podcast discusses mature and sensitive content, including descriptions of violence that may be triggering for some audiences. Listener discretion is advised. Hey y'all, welcome to Up and Vanish Weekly. I'm your host, Maggie Freeling. Today's case isn't a whodunit per se with a super urgent call to action. We mostly know what happened.
Instead, this case is emblematic of the best and worst of human nature. This case is a love triangle and murder that has kept the attention of veteran journalist and award-winning correspondent for 48 Hours, Peter Van Sant. Peter has had a nearly 50-year career as a journalist, where his true crime and justice reporting is featured across multiple CBS News broadcasts and platforms.
Additionally, Peter hosts the Blood is Thicker podcast and Train to Kill, which we'll be talking about today. So, Peter, thank you for joining me on OpenVanish Weekly. We are so excited to have you.
OK, so to start, I just want to let listeners know if they don't know who you are, one of the correspondents for 48 Hours for how many years now?
Nearly 50 years as a reporter and correspondent. That is amazing. And I just want to list off some of your journalism accolades. Three Murros, multiple Emmys, a DuPont. I mean, you have done some incredible work that's taken you to North Korea, Bosnia, Albania. You reported on September 11th, Katrina.
I guess as a journalist, my question for you is, what is that like to report on so many different kinds of stories?
When you became a journalist, did you ever think you would be in this true crime niche?
Yeah, so that actually gets us to Train to Kill. So 2011, you did a two-part series, and then you have now come back over a decade later to do it in podcast format. Tell me a little specifically about Train to Kill. How is the podcast different than your 48 Hours investigation?
Right. And I know this particular story is close and important to you. I mean, you've come back and covered it again after a decade. So let's take a few minutes to cover the basics of the case and then we'll get to your experience investigating it, Peter.
The story of what happened to Mark Stover, to me, is representative of the worst in human nature and what can happen to, I believe, any of us when backed up against a wall and feeling desperate. It's a love triangle, and so it can be confusing to follow who is who. So let me try to break down who the main players are. Let's start with Mark Stover. Mark had a rough childhood.
He lost his father, half-brother, and sister at a super young age. It made his mom really distant, so Mark's life was basically about survival. When he was a teenager, he was gifted a German Shepherd puppy and Mark and this puppy immediately bonded and he developed a passion for dogs. This dog gave him purpose and helped turn his life around.
So Mark eventually studied dogs and became a dog quote guru and started a successful dog training business with high profile clients. Some Seattle local celebrities like Pearl Jam's lead singer Eddie Vedder, Soundgarden's Chris Cornell, and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. The business was super successful. He was called the dog trainer to the stars or the dog whisperer of the Pacific Northwest.
So that is Mark Stover, celebrity dog trainer. Linda Opdyke is the daughter of a multimillionaire, Wally Opdyke. He is an entrepreneur in the Washington state community. And so Linda hires Mark Stover, the celebrity dog trainer, to train her dogs. They meet regularly for dog training. And eventually the two of them connect and start building a relationship.
In 1992, the couple launches a dog business together. And then in 2002, they were married. But after the marriage is when things take a turn. Linda says Mark's demeanor changed. He became aggressive and developed a reputation of threatening and intimidating people. She says he would get easily angered over finances and became obsessive over how she spent money.
In 2005, after 14 years of being together, they separated. And by 2006, Linda says she was moving on, but Mark wasn't. She says he virtually started stalking her. He would call her 50 to 100 times a day with threats, one of them being, quote, this is war. This is goddamn war. Her home security camera showed him stalking her house in the night.
And at one time he broke into her home in the middle of the night with a gun. A year later, 2007, Mark agrees to a divorce but is apparently obsessing over their wedding photos and leaves her a message, you know I'm a guy that can hold a grudge until I'm dead, and I can hurt you too, and I know how to do it.
Linda calls the police, but they say they don't have enough evidence to arrest him for stalking, which sounds odd to me. She has a video of it, but either way. Linda starts training herself in self-defense. She stalks her home with 20 guns and seeks out more security. This is how she finds Michael Oakes.
Michael Oakes is a weapons expert, self-taught security expert. He's a single father to four. His second wife says that Michael has a superhero mentality. He's strong enough to take out any bad guy who's harming the weak. So Michael and Linda, they get in a relationship and he and his children move into her house. At this point, Mark is still in the picture, allegedly stalking Linda.
Mark's friends and family say he's moved on from Linda. He's in a serious relationship. He's in a good place. Things are looking up. The new woman who he's with says he was nothing like Linda described and that Linda was the one causing problems. To me, this is a nightmare with children involved, guns involved, and desperate people.
This simplified timeline is only part of the story. Once Michael was arrested, more would be revealed. Authorities would soon discover that on October 24, 2009, Michael traveled to Anacortes. At 7 p.m., he arranged to meet with his ex-wife, Jennifer, and when they met, he told her he was in town for a job. But it was going to be dangerous.
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