Payton Moreland

You're listening to an Ono Media podcast. Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland.

And he was with me in Rochester helping me move into my new apartment. which means Lloyd's alibi is sort of scrubbed now, considering he was only a two-hour drive from his ex-wife's house on the night that she died, not all the way across the United States. And so that's when the police take a much closer look at the family's dynamics as a whole, because they're like, okay, there's lies going on.

We confront her. She doesn't really say, oh, yeah, I lied about that night. She said, well, I lied about my dad and his whereabouts. Right.

So police dig further into this family's dynamics. The people who know them, they begin interviewing. I remember how a lot of the dance moms saw Lloyd as the caring, charismatic father who took an interest in his daughter's extracurriculars. Well, it turns out some of the girl's friends saw another side of Lloyd growing up that sort of scared them.

Apparently Lloyd was a really strict disciplinarian with the girls, kept them on a short leash. He just seemed controlling at times. I'm talking militant drill sergeant wanting to keep control over them, not like a normal parent control. One friend said there was a time when she saw Lloyd snap his fingers and yell front and center, and the girls rushed over to him and knelt in front of him.

There was another time when a friend witnessed Lloyd slap the girls across their faces. This is what he was doing with friends at the house, friends in company.

But this sort of control wasn't reserved for just his children. Apparently, he would also do this in public with his wife. Around 2007, he even made her cut ties with her own parents. Michelle's mother, Jean, believed that that was because Lloyd was threatening to take the children away if she didn't stop speaking with them.

It's also a number one sign of a cult or a cult-like leader.

Which also probably have very severe narcissistic tendencies.

But things only got worse after Lloyd moved to New Jersey and the couple decided to get divorced. That's when Lloyd started turning the girls against Michelle, particularly Carrie, the middle daughter. Now, I don't know all of the nuances of what Lloyd would say to Carrie or her sisters, but over time, I know Carrie truly grew to hate her mother.

30, 30, 30.

And a lot of that had to do with the little seeds that Lloyd was planting over the years of this divorce. Now, just to show you how brainwashed Carrie was, and remember that she already would go kneel in front of her dad. She was visibly shaken. There was one incident that happened back in 2015. This was two years before Michelle's death.

One afternoon, Michelle was backing her car slowly out of the driveway after another fight with Carrie. Carrie tried to block her car from leaving, but eventually Michelle made her exit. No one was hurt from what I can tell during this argument, but Lloyd convinced Carrie that Michelle's intentions that day were nefarious and she was actually trying to run Carrie over with her car.

So her dad looks at her and says, your mom was trying to kill you.

It's just very... That's weird.

She was so convinced of her father's version of events that she actually filed a police report against Michelle. Although the allegations didn't hold up because there's, I mean, obvious reasons. But even with manipulation and psychological warfare aside, Lloyd was also trying to ruin Michelle's life using the court system.

I guess after the couple finalized their divorce in 2013, Lloyd filed 26 separate post divorce filings, which is why this was still ongoing by the time of the murder. He was basically suing Michelle, using false claims to try and get out of things like paying child support. And of course, as we heard earlier, trying to get full custody of their youngest daughter, Charlotte.

You know what you guys, we love you. Thank you. For liking Garrett's 10 seconds or not liking Garrett's 10 seconds, whether you're here for the true crime or just for the whole show, we love you guys. We are so grateful that you're listening. And I think I'm just gonna get right into the episode.

Now, according to some lawyers who worked on Michelle's case, it's normal to have maybe two or three post-divorce filings, but 26 is outrageous, which is strange because that many filings sounds pretty expensive. I mean, imagine all those lawyer fees you're paying each time you head to court. And yet Lloyd was extremely broke. By 2017, he was $100,000 in debt at least, which this debt,

was due to the child support and alimony payments that he needed to make, payments that Lloyd was clearly hell-bent on fighting. That was until August of 2017. On that afternoon, Lloyd didn't show up for his court appearance, the one for full custody of Charlotte, He didn't answer the court's emails or phone calls, just no call, no show.

So the case was dismissed, meaning Michelle would maintain the custody agreement that they had of Charlotte. Obviously, like I said, that was a major win. She was thrilled about it. She was celebrating. And then she died by hanging later that night. The timing of all this is extremely suspicious to police. Here's a man that was fighting his ex-wife tooth and nail over every little thing.

And on the day she dies, he mysteriously doesn't show up for court. It also doesn't help that Lloyd was very well aware of a life insurance policy Michelle had taken out recently. And if she died, $200,000 was meant to go to 14-year-old Charlotte.

Even stranger, one of the first places Lloyd apparently went after he learned about his ex-wife's passing was to family court to turn off his child support and alimony payments because his wife was now dead. So now not only has Lloyd's alibi that he was in California been thrown out the window, He also seems to have a lot of motive as well.

Not just hatred, not just wanting custody of a child, but also a ton of debt and money. And with police having a hard time getting a hold of him, they figure they're just going to have to corner him and get him to answer some questions. Where do they find him? At one of his favorite places, of course, a few days later at the local courthouse settling more business.

Our sources for this episode are allthatsinteresting.com, stargazette.com, cbsnews.com, theleader.com, people.com, nbcnewyork.com, spectrum, localnews.com, oxygen.com, mytwintears.com, and Dateline. Okay, so while most of us probably won't admit it out loud,

Now, once police get to talk to him, Lloyd gives pretty much the same story that Carrie last gave. On the afternoon of August 26th, he helped Carrie move into her new apartment near campus, and then he went and stayed at a hotel nearby. He says Carrie came with him that night. They hung out for a little while, and then she left to go stay at her mother's house.

So he walked her to her car, said goodbye, and invited her back to have breakfast with him in the morning. Then he says he spent the night in the hotel. And the following morning, Carrie came to breakfast and met him, but now she had Charlotte. So when police go to corroborate his story, they look into his cell phone location and find that does track. Lloyd's phone never left the hotel that night.

But the security cameras in the parking lot tell a very different story. It's good for you, Garrett.

That contradicts the story.

So that evening when Carrie left to go to her mother's house, Lloyd, her father got in the passenger seat and drove off with her. So just because his cell phone stayed behind at the hotel, doesn't mean he did. And those cameras don't show Lloyd or Carrie returning to that hotel until 6 30 AM the next morning.

Okay. Even if Carrie's cell phone was there for two hours, which police believe she doesn't come back with her dad until 6 30 AM the next morning. And they are both wearing the clothes that they left it the night before. They never changed into pajamas, which means they probably never slept.

Well, you also have a 14 year old daughter here.

Charlotte's here during all of this. So the next question is, what was she doing? So police realize this and they have a theory. They're like Carrie and Lloyd went to Michelle's house together to kill her that night. Something Lloyd was already banking on pulling off when he failed to appear in court earlier that day. The tricky part now is getting either one of them to confess.

Especially with how little evidence there was to prove this was a homicide. And again, where was Charlotte? So around September 2017, about a month after Michelle's death, police decide to go ahead and put a wiretap on Carrie and Lloyd's phone. And they start listening in on their conversations. Now, at first, they aren't giving them much to go off of.

The conversations are pretty day-to-day stuff. How's school? How's things going? Nothing for police to get them on. So in November, police decide to sort of up the ante. They do something called tickling the wire.

One of the investigators on Michelle's case calls Carrie to deliberately put her on edge. Basically saying, like, we need to meet up with you in person soon. We have a few things we need to talk to you about. When can you come down to the station? Carrie's like, oh, sure. I'll be there Monday afternoon. The investigator's like, yep, see ya. They hang up. Seconds later, Carrie calls her father.

we all have one parent we are or maybe were closer to than the other except me on dad i love you equal you're both my favorite parent just like i'm your favorite child You might be a daddy's little girl or a mama's boy, but either way, that bond that you have with that parent is like nothing else in the world. A lot of us would go to the ends of the earth for our parents.

Takes the bait, hook, line, and sinker. And when Lloyd picks up, it's clear that Carrie is panicking. She says, what do I do? Now, at first, Lloyd's like, look, it's probably just standard procedure. Don't worry. But halfway through the conversation, he starts to sort of panic. He tells Carrie, actually, just don't go in and speak with them. He even comes up with an excuse for her.

Tell them you have to have a counseling appointment back in New Jersey. It's going to be hard to squeeze it in. Then he asks Carrie something really weird. He says, can you cry? Meaning over the phone when she calls detectives back, can she fake some tears? And Carrie says, I might, which is just bonkers. Then they talk a bit more about what the investigators might want.

And Lloyd reassures her if they were planning to arrest them, they'd have just stormed in with a warrant, not asked her to come down for a quick conversation. I can tell you one thing. It doesn't seem like Carrie makes it into the police station that Monday. So in January of 2018, police devise one more plan to try and get the two to confess.

On the 24th of January, two detectives show up to Lloyd's New Jersey office and they tell them, so the medical examiner has ruled your ex-wife's death a homicide and we know that you weren't at the hotel that night because of security footage. He basically says, we're on to you guys. How about you come meet us down at the station? Take a polygraph. We'll rule you out. And Lloyd agrees.

Meanwhile, police are also showing up at Carrie's door, confronting her about their suspicions and asking her to take a polygraph as well. But when Carrie gets down to the station, she proves she's not very good at keeping up with the lies because she completely caves under the pressure of this interrogation. And here's what she says.

about a week before the murder her father went to her and unloaded his problems on her he said that michelle was bleeding him dry he could no longer afford to pay for any of the things he owed her he told carrie that he felt like there were only two ways out of this mess either he killed michelle or he killed himself and he forced carrie his daughter to make the decision for him holy crap

Now, Carrie, remember, has been being manipulated by her father for years and she has chosen to side with him. She sees her mother as the evil one. So together they devised a plan for how to get rid of Michelle. They were going to stage her death as a suicide. Then on the night of August 26th, Lloyd got into Carrie's car and drove with her over to Michelle's house. Carrie let him inside.

He snuck up to Michelle's bedroom, confronted her there. Now, remember, I was like, but Charlotte's there. What are they going to do with Charlotte? What's going on? Carrie's job in this plan. was to keep her 14-year-old sister Charlotte distracted while her father was in another room strangling their mother to death.

And when he was finished staging the death to look like a suicide, the three of them would drive off into the night And apparently Carrie did such a good job distracting Charlotte. She had zero idea her mother had been killed.

Until that following Monday. Imagine the trauma of being in a house when that happened and finding out later that you were in the house when that happened and you had no idea what was going on.

But Carrie tells police that this interrogation, she had no physical involvement. She said, I was just, I knew the plan and I was to distract my sister. I also did disconnect the electronics in the home. I imagine this means like cameras. That could give away the fact that her father was even there that night.

So hearing this over at the Rochester station, police are ready to put Lloyd in handcuffs the second he enters the New Jersey station for that polygraph. only he doesn't show up. So instead, police track his phone and find him miles away at a parking structure in Princeton, New Jersey. When they get there, Lloyd is standing on the roof of the building, threatening to jump.

We would do whatever we need to impress them, make them proud, make them feel loved and appreciated. But today I want you to ask yourself, what would you do if your parent asked you to help them with the unthinkable? Would you risk their relationship and rat them out if you knew that what they wanted was wrong? Or would you help them in their time of desperation?

For the next two hours, police are trying to literally talk Lloyd off of a ledge. Eventually, when Lloyd lets his guard down for a second, one of the larger state troopers who was there pulls him back to the ground. Within seconds, Lloyd is placed in handcuffs and charged with first-degree murder. That same day, Carrie, his daughter, is also arrested.

She's charged with second-degree murder and tampering with evidence for her involvement in the crime.

I mean, yes, but there's also not a ton of physical evidence outside of Carrie's confession.

So basically, the prosecutor's like, I think the only way we can really get Lloyd, who's pleading not guilty, is if we get Carrie, his daughter, to testify against him.

She pleads guilty to her crimes and second-degree manslaughter.

She's given only one to three years behind bars. Okay. But that also means she'll be the star witness in Lloyd's trial, only it doesn't get that far. Soon, Lloyd's defense team learns there's not just circumstantial evidence against him. It's not just his word versus his daughter's. There's actually DNA to prove he was at the scene of the crime that night.

Forensics had processed some of Michelle's clothing after her death. And when the district attorney's office had them re-examined by the state police, they found Lloyd's DNA on the pajamas Michelle was wearing that night. So just two weeks before Lloyd is set to go to trial, the DA goes to Lloyd and says, look, we now have physical evidence. Do you want to plead guilty?

And the 48-year-old Lloyd shockingly says, yeah, I'll accept the plea deal, which was 25 years to life with the possibility of parole if he's lucky. Only it doesn't go that way. He accepts the plea and the judge still gives him life without the possibility of parole.

i mean a judge can override yeah i mean he killed someone so i don't i don't feel bad however on january 16 2020 the 22 year old carrie was released from prison after serving less than two years of her sentence her father remains behind bars in elmira correctional facility in elmira new york now whether or not the two have had contact in the time since their imprisonment i can't say for sure but i do know this

Michelle's mother, Carrie's grandmother, Jean, knows that Lloyd was really the one to blame. So the grandmother says he had spent so much time brainwashing Michelle's children. He weaponized his own daughter against his wife.

And Jean told 48 Hours that despite everything Lloyd said, she felt her job was now to reverse the narrative, to let Michelle's daughters know how much Michelle had loved them and that all she ever wanted was for her girls to be happy. And that is the case of Michelle Nyrider.

Even if it meant risking your own future, what would you do?

I do credit your parents for...

I think, like, the dynamic between a father and daughter, not only, like, planning the murder of the mother, but executing it.

That's pretty, like, that's intense.

You know? All right, you guys, that is our case for this week. And we will see you next time with another one. I love it.

Goodbye.

Yeah, the correct answer is just no.

Eat?

Oh, okay.

Well, I mean, you can't shoot someone.

You can't molest someone either.

But the guy knew that. The dad knew that.

Online.

I'm speaking as someone who doesn't have a kid because I'm pretty sure if I had a kid, I don't know how parents do it.

Because like genuinely.

Okay. so we are in the year 2017. i always when it's like 2017 16 18 i i always want to be like so recently but it's actually no it's not recently okay but 2017 in upstate new york it is the charming little city of corning and that's where michelle knight rider and her ex-husband lloyd had chosen to raise their family. So Lloyd and Michelle were originally high school sweethearts.

Oh, it's not like agreeable or non, it's a statistic.

They met back in 1989 when Michelle was turning 18 and Lloyd was 16. So after they both graduated high school, they tied the knot two years later in 1991. Still, they both went to college, but fresh out of those years, Michelle got pregnant with the couple's first daughter. Then they had another little girl two years later. And then another girl about five years after that.

Yeah. Do you have your 10 seconds?

So now having to support a family of five, Lloyd found work at the glass company the town was named for, Corning Glass, as an engineer. And meanwhile, Michelle worked as an English professor at a nearby college. This was at least in the earlier years because eventually Michelle did quit her job to be a stay-at-home mom to their three little girls.

Still, despite being the primary breadwinner, Lloyd seemed to be pretty present in his daughter's lives. Apparently, he was often seen dropping the girls off at their dance classes in the evening, and many of the mothers found it sweet how good he was with their kids. But inside the Nyrider home, things weren't exactly perfect.

As the girls got older, Lloyd and Michelle grew apart, and in 2008, Lloyd was offered a job down in New Jersey, but Michelle wasn't keen on the idea of uprooting their lives to go with him. So Lloyd went alone, and Michelle and the kids stayed back in their life in Corning.

And friends of Michelle's said she actually seemed much better for this once her husband moved away, that after Lloyd left, it was as if Michelle was more relaxed. She was happier. And apparently the distance made Lloyd happier, too, because sometime after that move, Lloyd told Michelle he wanted a divorce.

But I do want to mention, although the fact that they're both happy or separate, this divorce wasn't very amicable. In 2013, Michelle moved into a new home with the girls. And while their custody seemed to be split, Lloyd wasn't happy with the arrangement. He wanted sole custody of their daughters. something he fought for for years, even as the girls got older.

I mean, their eldest daughter had moved out for college, as did their middle daughter, Carrie, who in 2017 was living in Syracuse, New York, and attending the Rochester Institute of Technology. But by this point, when he's fighting for custody, their youngest daughter, 14-year-old Charlotte, was living at home with Michelle, who still had shared custody.

which was why the events of August 28th, 2017 were so surprising and devastating. So that afternoon, a neighbor stopped by the house to pick 14 year old Charlotte up for a carpool to swim practice. Only Charlotte didn't seem to be home. Instead, when the neighbor rang the doorbell, they saw Michelle, the mother, through the glass paneling at the front door.

She was standing on the stairway, but she was completely motionless. It was as if she didn't hear the door. She just was standing there. And it actually freaked the neighbor out enough. They called 911. Because they were like, is everything like what is going on? I can see her. So officers were dispatched to the house.

And when they get there, they let themselves in and they found 46 year old Michelle on the staircase still like the neighbor had mentioned. Only she's got a rope around her neck.

Give us something.

And she's died by what appears to be a suicide by hanging. So she wasn't actually standing on the stairs. She was hanging.

It is eerie.

But there's something one of the detectives noticed on Michelle. It's this little U-shaped mark on her chin. Sort of looks like the rope maybe got stuck around her face before it went around her neck. She also appeared to have scratch marks on her face, which told the police she maybe had second thoughts and tried to remove the rope. But they can't say for sure.

You're playing pickleball this weekend?

All they know right now is that this is very unsettling. So is the fact that Charlotte, her 14-year-old daughter who was supposed to be picked up that day, is nowhere to be found at this point. And when police try to contact her, they can't get a hold of her. She's not answering her cell phone. No one seems to have seen her. So police are wondering, was she home during this?

Is this some sort of homicide kidnapping? There's just so many things about this scene that are alarming.

Yeah. Then later that day, officers get a call down at their station. And it's Michelle's middle daughter. So 19-year-old Carrie, who's in college in New York. She says she got a disturbing phone call from one of her friends. They had heard that her mother might have died by suicide in the home earlier, and Carrie was literally calling the police to find out if this was true.

Now, unfortunately, police do confirm this for Carrie, but they do get a tiny bit of relief when Carrie says that her younger sister Charlotte had been with her for the weekend.

Carrie explains that on Saturday, which Michelle was found on that Monday, Carrie went back to Corning to spend the night with her mom and sister before getting settled into her new apartment and starting her next semester of college.

Apparently, at that point, Carrie had been back and forth between her mom's house and her dad's house, though during that weekend, her dad was supposedly at a job interview in California.

so carrie probably didn't want to stay at her dad's house alone which is why she went to her mom's house but that saturday carrie said she didn't even make it through the night with her mom she got into a huge fight with her mom michelle over the same thing they usually fought about she was taking her dad's side on the divorce particularly the custody battles so rather than spend the night there carrie told charlotte get in the car and leave with me to my apartment and so

According to Carrie, the two sisters drove to Carrie's new apartment to spend the rest of the weekend there and not with their mom. So now police are thinking, OK, if what Carrie is saying is true, then maybe Michelle was so distraught over the fight and both her daughters leaving and just the divorce in general that she did take her own life that weekend in the house alone.

Before she ends the call with police, though, Carrie gives them her father's number, who that weekend was apparently in California. But it seems like they have a pretty hard time trying to get in touch with Lloyd over the next few days. So meanwhile, Michelle's body goes in for an autopsy. And they determined that Michelle did die of asphyxia, but that she likely died late Saturday night.

So this was after Carrie had supposedly left. It was either that.

that fight or early the following morning. But the medical examiner also notices the little you mark on her chin and the scratches on her face. And this is why they decide to not list the death as a suicide yet. They mark it as undetermined until more investigation is done. So police are continuing to look into how Michelle died and they aren't anywhere near closing the book on this one yet.

And when they speak with Michelle's mother, Jean, she says with a lot of confidence, she was pretty sure that her daughter was murdered and this death was staged to look like a suicide. Now, look, I want to state just because someone has future plans or seems outwardly happy does not mean they aren't struggling. Doesn't mean they wouldn't take their own lives.

And sometimes even the people closest to us don't really know how we're feeling.

And he's the husband.

But Jean, she encourages police just keep following the leads because I don't believe this was suicide. She says Michelle was excited about this new chapter of her life, her kids leaving, her personal interests, her religion, which is why Jean tells them not only do you need to be looking into this as a murder, you need to look into Lloyd, her husband that she's currently divorcing.

Here's the thing. Lloyd's on the other side of the country at that job interview in California. So he's got a pretty good alibi. And while Lloyd does seem to be dodging their phone calls, that doesn't mean police are closing the book on the murder theory or him as a person of interest. So a couple of weeks pass. There's a little movement in the case.

That is until investigators notice something tiny in one of the crime scene photos as they're relooking at the evidence. Michelle's bed appears to be slightly askew. And so they're looking at this photo, zooming in and behind it, they notice a very faint stain on the wall that they didn't notice originally. And it looks like a blood stain.

So police go back to the county medical examiner and are like, hey, we need a second opinion on that autopsy. And when they look closer, they find the damage to her throat is not consistent with the injuries that are usually seen in self-strangulation cases. Which tells them this probably means another party was involved in this hanging.

They also learn there was another detail about that day that Michelle supposedly died. One Carrie seemingly left out when she told police about the big fight she had had with her mom. See, that same day that Michelle was found dead, she had just had a major victory in their court case. Something to do with the ongoing custody battle she had been engaging in with Lloyd for the youngest daughter.

So I was reading this statistic the other day that if you are in the percentage that listen to Murder With My Husband, you're statistically more good looking than the rest of the world.

which is just more confirmation to police that Michelle likely wouldn't have chosen to die by suicide, not after she had just made huge progress in this custody case. But more importantly, when they learn this, it made them question the 19-year-old daughter, Carrie. So they get a copy of Carrie's phone records because they want to corroborate this story she initially told them.

She said she wasn't at her mom's house for very long that night, only about 15 minutes before she took her sister, got in the car and drove to her apartment in Rochester to spend the weekend. But the phone records show Carrie was at her mom's house for a lot longer than she said, more likely two hours in the house before she left.

oh here we go they're like well like that's a pretty obvious lie you would know 15 minutes versus two hours you might not know an hour and a half versus two hours so they're like this is an obvious lie she obviously lied and the fact that her mother according to the autopsy died that same night or in the early morning red flags man here we go that puts some suspicion on Carrie and her story.

So the question for investigators was, would Carrie have done something like this alone? The other sister was there. So this is why the police speak with her again. And this time she tells them, okay, Actually, my dad wasn't in California that weekend. She's feeling pressure from police. And so she gives up this lie and says he was actually back by that point.

It's okay. Some people are really frustrated that you don't know what 10 seconds is. So this one, that one was, this one's for you guys.

Wenn Christen nicht trinkt, wie viele der Partygoers berichtet haben, Dann wie ist sie ausgeschlossen? Das Einzige, was die Leute denken können, ist, dass sie etwas verloren hat.

Weil, als Tim sie aufgewacht hat, konnte er sagen, dass sie wirklich raus war. Tim fragte, wo sie lebte und Kristen sagte, welche Dormitur. Und da es nur eine 10-Minuten-Wohnung von der Party war, war Tim so, okay, lass mich dich einfach in deine Dorms gehen. And that's when another girl who was also leaving the party, Cheryl Anderson, asked if she could walk with them.

She's like, hey, I'm alone as well. Can I walk with you guys? She was headed to the dormitory right across from Kristen's. So the three of them started strolling when out of nowhere, another guy came up and said, hey, I'm also going that way. Let me take over. You just go back in the house. Who do you think this is?

Paul Flores. Tim, ein Senior, wusste, dass Paul seltsam war, aber er wusste nicht viel über Pauls Reputation, weil er nichts davon denkt, dass Paul diese beiden Mädchen zurücknimmt. Während dieses Rückkehrs erkennt Cheryl, dass Kristen viel mehr davon ist, als sie ist.

So when Kristen keeps needing to stop and Paul sort of supports her, she finds it strange that during this, like as Kristen's taking more time, Paul says, oh, oh, Cheryl, just go on. Just go on without us. I can walk her home. You just go ahead. Und schlussendlich kommt Cheryl zu der Tür ihres Gebäudes und sagt Gute Nacht an Kristen und Paul.

Und an diesem Punkt kann sie sehen, dass Kristen nur 40 Meter entfernt von der vorderen Tür ihres Gebäudes ist. Also denkt sie, okay, ich habe ihr Haus sicher, sie ist nur 40 Meter entfernt von ihrer Entfernung. Und sie sagt Paul, wirst du sicher machen, dass sie in ihr Zimmer kommt? Und er sagt, ja, ja, ich werde. Aber dann macht Paul etwas wirklich seltsames. Total auf Brand für ihn.

Okay, er unterstützt Christen sehr aus. Und er sagt, hey, Cheryl, willst du mir einen Kuss geben, bevor du in dein Dorm gehst? Und sie ist so, nein, Paul. Und er sagt, okay, wie about just a hug? Und sie ist so, nein. Und dann schaut sie, als Paul zurück zu Christen geht und sie zu ihrer Dormitur führt. Am nächsten Morgen, am 25.

And I was already awake. And then when Garrett came back in, I said, Garrett, I was near tears because my leg, my entire leg was aching so bad. The pain in my knee had spread all the way to my shin, my calf, the top of my foot. I had been sleeping with elevated. I had taken ibuprofen. I was worried it was a blood clot because, you know, similar things.

Mai, fragt Margarita, warum Christen, ihr Freund, ihre Karten nicht zurückgegeben hat. Die Karten, die sie ihr die Nacht vorher gegeben hat. Sie geht in den Hall zu Christens Wohnung und knallt, nur gibt es keine Antwort. Und es ist nicht bis Christens Freundin später zurückkommt, dass Margarita lernt, dass Christens Seite der Wohnung unabhängig ist.

Es sieht nicht so aus, als hätte sie sie jemals zurückgebracht. Her purse, her ID, her keys, all the things she left there are still in the same spot.

To the door, towards the door.

Yes, Kristen's room.

So they figure, okay, maybe Kristen just met someone at the party. Maybe she's out having a day with someone. Heck, maybe she decided to go home for the weekend, right? Like maybe she'll be back. But when 48 hours pass and there's still no sign of Kristen, her friends decide to call campus police. But it's not until Monday, May 27th,

that the campus police then call Kristen's family, asking if she went home to see them for the holiday. Now at this point, when the police call, and it's been this long since her daughter is seen, Kristen's mom is worried. It wasn't like Kristen to go a few days without calling them, but it also wasn't unheard of. When she gets this phone call, she is like, this is alarming.

And so right after this call, Kristen's parents go to the local police to file a missing person report, because by this point, Kristen has been missing for nearly 72 hours. Yet, the police tell her family, it's still too early to file a report. Which as I will say for the 800th time is not true. There is no waiting period on a missing person report in this country.

But they also say, hey, this is Cal Poly's police's jurisdiction anyways. So you would need to file there if you're going to. And they're probably already on it. However, it is not until Tuesday that Cal Poly actually starts taking this investigation seriously. Partly because of the holiday. They're thinking, well, she probably just went somewhere.

But this is also problematic because a lot can be done in four days to cover up a crime. Now, look, I get that these campus police departments probably don't deal with cases like this very often. It's sort of uncharted territory for them. But it's completely understandable for the smart family to be frustrated with how this whole thing has been handled.

In fact, they say that they treated Kristen's case as if it were like another stolen bicycle on campus. Plus, listen to what the campus police wrote in their initial report about Kristen's disappearance. Quote, Ich finde das verrückt.

So Garrett's like, I think we need to take you to the ER. So at three o'clock this morning, last night, We go to the ER, we get it checked, I get scans done and everything. Turns out I sprained a ligament in my inner knee and also there's a fissure in my meniscus. Do not ask me how it happened, because it's embarrassing, because we did figure out the cause of how it happened.

Jeder andere Student. Sie schämen sie. Sie sagen, wir sind nicht schuldig, aber sie sind schuldig.

So, he had six days to do... Whatever he wanted. Even though police knew that he was the last person she was seen with. And get this, when they do talk to him, they don't check his dorm room either. That won't happen for another 10 days.

Wenn ich dir erzähle, wie seine erste Interview mit den Polizisten war, wirst du sagen, warum hat es sie noch vier Tage gedauert, um diese Kinderzimmer zu suchen. Die Polizei macht Paul jeden Schritt durch, den er am Abend gemacht hat. Sie sind durch den Gratwein gegangen und haben festgestellt, dass sie das letzte Mal mit Paul gesehen wurde. Sie warten diese alarmierenden Tage und holen ihn ein.

Und sie interviewen ihn ein paar mehr Mal in dieser Woche. Und seine Geschichte bleibt nie konsistent, von der ersten Zeit an. But he does manage to maintain that the last time he saw Kristen was after she said goodnight and walked towards her dorm alone that evening. And here's what's even more problematic than the story changes. Paul shows up to that first interview.

That's days after she went missing. With scratches all over his hands and a very obvious black eye.

And he tells the police, I don't actually know how I got this black eye and these scratches. I just woke up with it. That's what he tells police initially. Okay. And so police pull him in the next day and they're like, hey, hey, how did you get this black guy really? And the next day he says, oh, actually, I got it playing basketball over the weekend.

And then when they pull him in the third interview before they've even checked.

I mean, I told you from the very get go. There was one suspect, this entire investigation, and it's very obvious.

And police knew it, too.

And when I like. Wenn du die Geschichte von Paul hörst, dass er von Scary Paul, Chester the Monster, genannt wurde. Ich meine, seine Geschichte ist unglaublich. Es ist verrückt. Also haben sie beschlossen, Pauls Freund zu sprechen und haben etwas anderes gelernt. Die beiden hatten über Christens Verlust geredet, nachdem es passiert ist. Wow. Und der Freund hat Paul verrückt gefragt,

What did you do with her, you know, since you were the last person to see her? Like joking, like you were the last person to see her and now she's missing. And Paul said, she's home with my parents. So this is oddly strange and specific. Something that definitely stood out enough to Paul's roommate for him to tell the police.

But like I said, the police didn't do much about Paul in the way of evidence until 10 days after that first interview. That's when they finally took a team of search dogs through the dorms at Cal Poly. There are zero hits as they are walking these dogs through the dorm, through Kristen's dorm. Until they reach Paul's bedroom. In fact, the dogs go straight to Paul Flores' bed.

They get a hit. So at this point, Paul refuses to take a polygraph. But he did have another 90-minute interview with police, where he acted incredibly weird. He was tucking himself up into a little ball on the chair. He was pulling his arms into his shirt. And then he looked the cops dead in the eyes and said... If you're so smart, then you tell me where the body is.

Okay, at this point, no one even is saying Kristen's dead. She's been missing.

Nope. So after that interview, Paul's parents hire him a lawyer, which was definitely necessary because they have their prime suspect. Keep in mind, for the first month of the investigation, Cal Poly police are also tracking this case solo. It wasn't until after the first month that they finally handed the case over to the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Department.

Und sie kommen rein und sagen, hey, Paul ist unser Typ. Primär, nachdem er gehört hat, was er zu seinem Ruhemann gemacht hat. Der, wo er sagte, Kristen war zu Hause mit seinen Eltern. Aber es hat sie noch zwei Monate gedauert, um endlich zu den Flores zu kommen, 17 Meilen weg. Und sie bringen keine Kadaver-Tüten mit ihnen.

Sex?

Nein, ich habe meine Meniske nicht getrocknet. Ich habe meine Meniske nicht getrocknet während des Sexes.

Sie bringen keine Forensik-Team oder sogar Paul Search oder seinen Vater Rubens Auto. Das ist ein großer Fehler, weil gleich danach einer ihrer Trucks getradet wurde und der andere wurde verurteilt. So, gleich nachdem Paul Flores' Familienhaus gesucht wird, wird einer ihrer Trucks getradet und der andere wird verurteilt.

Oh, okay. Ja. While the proceedings were sort of kept under lock and key, I do know that there weren't any charges filed against Paul Flores at that time. So they basically flirt with the idea and decide not to do it. Even though police know they have their guy. So for the next six or seven months, they keep interviewing witnesses.

It's still not moving the needle, which is why in May of 1997, the sheriff made a statement to the press. One that will actually become a pretty big screw up in this case. He says they have interviewed almost a hundred people. This is what he's saying to the public. Und alles führt zu Paul Flores. Also outen sie ihn.

No, what happened was, the whole reason this pain started happening is, I don't know if you watch on YouTube, but every single time I record, every single time I stream, every single time I color, every single time I ride Passenger Princess, I sit crisscross applesauce, okay? I don't know what it is, there's something very comforting to me to have my legs up.

Aber, und ich quote, wir brauchen Paul Flores, um uns zu erzählen, was mit Kristen Smart passiert ist. Also, ohne etwas von Mr. Flores zu verurteilen, sehe ich uns nicht, diesen Fall zu beenden.

Which is basically handing Paul Flores a pass on a silver platter. As long as he keeps his mouth shut, he will get away with this crime.

And Paul hears them loud and clear. So when the smarts sue Paul Flores in a wrongful death civil lawsuit, because at this point everyone knows he did it. He already has a strategy. Say nothing. Plead the fifth. And when he's deposed by the smarts lawyer six months later for that civil suit, he invokes his fifth amendment 27 times.

He's like, nope, I'm not talking. But it turns out, telling Paul Flores to keep his mouth shut wasn't the only ball dropped by police. Apparently. Da gab es ein riesiges Stück Beweise, das sie etwa drei Monate nach der Entfernung von Kristen erhielt. Und es war eine, die komplett durch die Kratzer gefallen ist. Also, das braucht ein bisschen Hintergrund. Aber als Kristen im Mai 1996 entfiel,

Paul's parents, Susan and Ruben, were separated and living apart. And Susan and Ruben become a big part of this case. I'm just going to spoil it for you because a lot of people believe that both of them were involved in helping cover up. They believe that Paul did something to Kristen and then called his parents and his parents helped him get away with the crime.

So Susan and Ruben, his mother and father, are separated and living apart. But four months later, they thought, maybe we should give it another shot. Susan put her house up for rent and moved back in with Ruben for a bit. And that's when Susan decides to rent their home out to a young couple. And they move in that fall. Okay, this is the home that Paul Flores would have come back to.

So she's now renting this home out to a young couple after Christens disappeared. But one day, while the mother of this young couple is washing her car in the driveway, she sees something on the ground that catches her eye. And it's an earring. It's not just a simple diamond on a post.

It's a very specific earring. Das ist so in... Okay. dass dieses Haus noch nicht mit Kadaver-Tüten gesucht worden ist. Auch wenn Paul seiner Freundin gesagt hat, dass sie bei seinen Eltern zu Hause war. Ja. Weil dieses junge Paar die Verbindung zwischen Susan und Ruben und der Ausbeutung von Kristen Smart weiß, entscheiden sie, den Eingang an die Sheriff-Departement zu stellen.

Well, I've been doing it an abnormal amount. I'm talking, every time I'm sitting, my legs are going into crisscross, and they think, over time... I literally sprained my ligament and fissured my meniscus by sitting crisscross applesauce for prolonged periods of time.

Except for God knows what reason, it was never marked and filed as evidence. So this woman who's living in this house says, hey, I found this earring, I'm pretty sure it's hers, because look at the missing person poster, and they never file it as evidence. And here's the frustrating thing. I know you're thinking that this house that the couple moved into was the house that police had searched.

Es war nicht. Das war Susannes Haus und die Polizei hat nur Rubens Haus gesucht. Also hat sich dieses Haus noch nie gesucht, aber das Eingang wurde in der Fahrt gefunden, was essentiell bedeutet, dass es zwei Orte gab, um Paul zu verstecken, aber nur eines wurde gesucht. Er sagte, es war in meinen Eltern Haus, aber sie waren separat. Sie haben nur Rubens gesucht und Susannes ungesucht.

In fact, Susans Haus wasn't searched until long after that earring was turned in, in March of 1997. This was 10 months after Kristen's disappearance. But the police didn't find anything of note. And it would take three more years before they returned to search her property.

Now, over that time, Susan and Ruben did call it off and Susan was back living in the home where the earring was found. And on June 19th, 2000, there was a knock on Susan's door. And this time it was the FBI's evidence response team with a search warrant. Actually, the warrant even gave them permission to dig up the backyard. Only they didn't follow through with it for whatever reason.

She went missing in 1996. They show up to this house again with ground penetrating radar. Only they don't find anything of note then either.

So you can imagine how frustrating this entire process must be for the smart family to feel like this entire family has something to do with their daughter's disappearance, probable murder. And they are so close yet so far from finding any real sign of their daughter because this entire family has pled the fifth.

Und trotz der Fehler, die sie auf dem Weg gemacht haben, scheint es so zu sein, dass die Sheriff's-Departement wirklich zu dem Fall verantwortlich war, besonders um es für mehr als eine Dekade offen zu halten, während sie weiter Führungen und Suchen beitragen. Aber auf der anderen Seite bedeutet das, dass Paul Flohr einfach draußen lebt.

Okay, also er geht aus der Schule, er bewegt sich nach Südkalifornien, Irvine, um es genau zu sagen.

He gets a job in Irvine. I'm going to mention that Garrett probably went to the restaurant Paul Flores was working at in Irvine at the time he was working. No. I am telling you. What year? Yeah, like the early 2000s, 2007. You were not gone. You were living in Irvine.

And I should have looked it up. It's like a common chain, like a Chili's or an Outback Steakhouse. It's like a really common restaurant.

So I can't even walk right now. And yeah, we were up at three. So and we're leaving tonight and it's a whole thing.

I promise you, you probably ate at this restaurant while he was working there. And might I add, this entire time that he is out at this restaurant, he is hitting on girls, roofing girls, like he's still being Scary Paul. After he is the main outed suspect in Kristen Smart's disappearance. He's a free man and maybe the only person in the world who knows what happened to Kristen Smart that night.

However, there was one person who couldn't stand the thought of that. And it wasn't someone related to Kristen. It was actually a complete stranger. A journalist, podcaster, named Chris Lambert. So this is where we enter Chris Lambert into this story. Chris grew up in the San Luis Obispo area. In fact, he was about 8 years old when Kristen disappeared from college.

And he remembered driving by a billboard of her missing poster every day on his way to school growing up. And then one day, when Chris reached adulthood and became a CBS News consultant, he had a thought. I wonder whatever happened to that girl on that billboard that I drove by from my hometown. Whatever happened to that girl? Why hadn't her case been solved? That billboard was still up.

So Chris's intention was to get some answers. He wanted to reignite conversations around her case. This was a hometown case for him. So Chris started interviewing people about Kristen and Paul. And from that he launched his own podcast called Your Own Backyard in September of 2019. By then it had been 23 years since Kristen went missing.

So basically what Chris did is he's like, I'm going to look into this case. He didn't even really know that much about it. He looks into it and he's like, wait, you're telling me we we probably know where her body was at one point. We know who did it. We know who she was last seen with. And this is unsolved. And Paul Flores is free. So he decides to make a podcast.

Yeah. Yeah, that's our.

He's like, if I can spread the word, maybe the police will do something. And I'm gonna be honest, the podcast was very successful. A lot of people started coming out of the woodwork to say, hey, we listened to your podcast, it was released episode by episode, and I have information about Paul Flores. And they wanted to share it with Chris.

So this is when a lot more victims of Paul Flores, not murder victims, but sexual assault victims, roofie victims, creepy dates, creepy work stories. This is when all of these women start coming forward.

For example, in February 2020, about six months after the podcast was released, and honestly, a couple months later, Gerrit and I were going to start murder with my husband, Chris got a really fascinating tip. Apparently, just a few nights after police conducted their last search on Ruben Flores' house, a neighbor noticed something strange.

Ruben and his ex-wife Susan, along with her new partner, all stayed up throughout the night after police had just searched it, doing something underneath Rubens deck. So the police search their house, they leave, and then a neighbor notices all three of these adults doing something underneath Rubens deck.

There were also a lot of accounts that came from women, like I said, who had had encounters with the now 42-year-old Paul Flores. Apparently, there were a number of women who Paul had made inappropriate passes at, who he had tried to kiss, who he tried to force himself upon. An ex-girlfriend of his even said he was physically and verbally abusive throughout their relationship.

Now, Chris also made sure to share these tips with the police. Okay, he wasn't just making the podcast. He was taking everything he was learning to the police. I mean, his goal was to find out what happened to Kristen once and for all to make sure the right person ended up behind bars.

Eventually, the noise surrounding Paul Flores in this case, because of the Your Own Backyard podcast, was so loud that police could not ignore it. So in April of 2020, because of the podcast, Nur wegen dieses Podcasts, das Steam erzielt, entscheiden die Polizei, Pauls Zuhause in San Pedro, Kalifornien zu zerstören. Und was sie gefunden haben, hat die Nase in Pauls Koffer gelegt.

Ich denke, wir müssen in heute's Episode reingehen, weil... Warte, die Leute werden wirklich wütend sein, dass ich nicht gesagt habe, was meine Überraschung war von dir.

Es war eine Tröte von Videos und Fotos auf Paul Flores Computer. Okay, er ist jetzt 40 Jahre alt. Er lebt in seinem eigenen Haus. showing him engaging in sexual acts with at least 10 different unconscious women. He had roofied women and then videoed himself sexually assaulting them and all of this was found on his computer. But police don't move in to arrest Paul just yet.

They were still going for the big ticket, which means they were trying to find evidence that he had murdered Kristen Smart. So in March of the following year, they returned to Ruben Flores' house, because at this point they're pretty sure the parents are connected. The one where he and Susan were seen doing something under the deck by the neighbors, and this time they find something notable.

After digging under that deck, because the podcast tells them to go do this police collect soil samples when they send them out for analysis they discover that the soil underneath this deck contained fibers and biological evidence meaning there was human blood and dna underneath this deck They also find a four foot deep hole under that deck that is just empty, but it's four feet deep.

And they find some suspicious stains inside a trailer parked on the property, but they don't find a body. And you have to understand that this was happening live as he's reporting on this podcast.

Okay, wir posten es auf... Ich sage dir, was es ist, und dann poste ich ein Bild auf Socials. Gerrit customierte mir einen neuen Weddingring.

He drops an episode and then the police go and dig it up. And then he drops another episode and he's like, there's a four foot hole under there. Okay. Unfortunately, that biological evidence was so old that it couldn't be concretely tied to Kristen Smart, but it was enough for them to get an arrest warrant.

In April of 2021, police not only arrest now 44-year-old Paul Flores for murder, they also arrest his 80-year-old father, Ruben, for being an accessory after the fact. Because if they believe this body was on Rubens property, then that means he was involved.

Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Sie haben zwei separate Jury, eine für jeden von ihnen. Und obwohl viele Beobachter an den Stand gerufen wurden, gab es einen, der dieses ganze Case aus dem Wasser flog. Es war eine Frau namens Jennifer Hudson, die oft mit Paul zusammengehalten hat, kurz nach Christens Verlust. Und ihre Geschichte, ihr Testimonial hat alles verändert.

Jennifer sagte, dass sie im Sommer 1996 mit einigen Freunden in einem Skatepark war. with Paul when a message came on over the radio about Kristen's disappearance and that's when Paul turned to Jennifer and said hey I was at a party with that girl last night so he's hanging out with this girl at a skate park

Something comes over the radio about Kristen's disappearance and he just tells them, hey, I was at a party with that girl that night. And he said, I actually was there and I did it and I put Kristen under a skate ramp at my parents' house. So through tears, Jennifer tells the jury how

Sie haben all unsere Ringe gemacht. Sie sind großartig. Wir lieben sie so, so sehr.

Er hat im Grunde genommen zu diesem Mörder verabschiedet und sie hat diese Informationen aufgenommen, weil sie Angst vor Paul hatte, aber es hat sie jahrelang verletzt. Aber als ihr Freund ihr über Chris Lamberts Podcast erzählt hat, dachte sie, okay, ich werde es endlich machen. Ich werde es Chris weitergeben und erzählen, was Paul mir gesagt hat.

Und so weit wir wissen, war das die einzige Verabschiedung, die er jemals zu jemandem über Kristen's Mörder gemacht hat. Between Jennifer's testimony and the stories from the other women Paul had sexually assaulted, he didn't really stand a chance. On October 18th, 2022, Paul was found guilty of first-degree murder.

literally he is found guilty of her murder at trial however his father ruben flores was acquitted for his charges of accessory so the two juries don't necessarily line up the one says yes paul did it the other says no the father was not involved and susan flores and her boyfriend were never charged either

But in March of 2023, Paul was sentenced to 25 years to life for killing Kristen Smart, which was a pretty big win for the justice system, considering to this day, Kristen's body has never been found. It was a no body case.

Oh mein Gott. Wir müssen zurückbringen. True Serum. Und wegen dessen bleiben viele Fragen noch. Hat Paul Kirsten gemeint zu töten? Ja. War es eine Schwierigkeit am Abend, die Kirsten das schwarze Auge gegeben hat? Hat er ihr zu viel aufgerufen und ihr Überdosis gemacht? Wo war Kirstens letztes Restplatz? Wir glauben, dass es an einem Punkt in Rubens Hintergrund war. Das ist so verrückt.

Aber jetzt, offensichtlich, weil der Wärme und die Polizei versuchten zurückzukommen, haben sie sie bewegt.

Das stimmt. Und wenn es nicht für Chris Lambert und die erneute Interesse, die er in dem Fall erzeugt hat, und ehrlich gesagt, viele der Beweise und Beweise, die er entdeckt hat.

Ich glaube nicht, dass die Polizei jemals etwas gemacht hätte. Und um ehrlich zu sein, wurde er als Podcaster im Trial bezeichnet und er wurde von der Verteidigung, von Paul Flores Verteidigung, mehrere Male gebracht. So at this trial, it's the podcaster, the podcaster, because he becomes like an integral part of the resurgence of this case and the evidence that's brought up.

But like I said earlier, it's cases like these that remind me why podcasts, true crime podcasts are valuable. Why these stories need coverage, especially unsolved ones. And it was nice to hear this sentiment from Kristen's mother, Denise Smart, too. She said,

Ja, schau mir meine Socials für das an.

Du hörst einen Ono Media Podcast. Hey alle, willkommen zurück auf dem Podcast. Das ist Mörder mit meinem Mann. Ich bin Peyton Moreland.

Unethical coverage, if you will.

Es sind nicht nur die Podcaster, sondern auch die Zuschauer.

Ich meine, Chris, sein Podcast war nur ein Train für Zuschauer, die Kontakt mit Paul Flores hatten, um zu sagen, warte, ich muss vorwärtskommen und meinen Interaktion mit ihm sagen. Wortlos. Und das ist die sehr beschlossene Geschichte von Kristen Smart. Nochmal, wenn du einen tiefen Dive und einen sehr gut gemachten Podcast möchtest, würde ich dir empfehlen, zu deinem eigenen Hintergrund zu hören.

Alright you guys, that was our case for this week and we will see you next time with another one in 2025, I believe. I love it.

Goodbye.

The reason you reached out is they don't typically do rings like the one Garrett made, but they were totally up for the challenge and they nailed it.

Yes, so thank you, Garrett. I love the ring so, so much. It was the best gift I had ever been given. It totally caught me by surprise and I love it. So thank you.

Our sources for this episode are cbsnews.com, newyorktimes.com, ksby.com, santamariatimes.com, latimes.com, people.com, foxnews.com and npr.org. Okay, bevor wir in diesem Episode kommen, wollte ich euch wissen, dass dieser Fall viel übernommen wurde. Es gab viel Aufmerksamkeit über diesen Fall. In Wahrheit gibt es einen Podcast namens Your Own Backyard, der diesen Fall übernommen hat.

Und er ist der Mann.

Aber es ist auch eine Geschichte, die Garrett hören und prüfen muss, warum der True-Crime-Genre manchmal extrem hilfreich ist.

Wenn du auf YouTube schaust und du denkst, du siehst aus wie Tod.

If you're wanting every nitty gritty detail the deepest dive, go listen to your own backyard. So every once in a while, a case comes along that reminds me why we do what we do. Because true crime shouldn't just be entertainment, it also serves a purpose.

Whether that's spreading awareness to a cause, highlighting a community that doesn't get as much coverage, or just getting a missing person's face and name out there. We got into this business to offer support to the victims and their families. And to me, that is what comes first. And I know for a lot of you listeners, that comes first as well.

And we keep doing what we do because honestly, you never know who will hear an episode and have the missing piece of the puzzle. Das war genau das, was zu einem anderen Podcaster, Chris Lambert, passiert, als er einen jahrelangen Fall über eine junge Frau namens Kristen Smart beobachtete. In 1996 fuhr Kristen aus ihrem College Campus in San Luis Obispo, Kalifornien.

But when there wasn't enough evidence against the primary suspect, the suspect that they knew from the very first day of the crime, the investigation slowed. That was until Chris Lambert decided to make a podcast on this case and give it a new life.

He encouraged witnesses to come out of the woodwork, to speak up about their connection to the case, and ultimately he helped get justice for Kristen Smart's family, nearly three, Das ist so cool. So in the mid 90s in California's San Joaquin Valley, just a little northwest of San Francisco, we have a teenage Kristen Smart who is thriving.

She's crushing all of her high school classes, A's and B's across the board. She's a proficient athlete who loves swimming and skiing. She's also done a good amount of traveling for a kid her age in the 90s. We're talking about trips to London, Venezuela. She even spent one summer as a camp counselor in Hawaii.

Kristen war super ambitioniert und immer auf die nächste Abenteuer gebeten, weshalb sie, wenn es an der Zeit kam, eine Universität zu wählen, ihre Eltern begten, sie zu einer Schule in den Völkischen Inseln zu lassen. Aber beide von Kristen's Eltern riefen zurück. Sie dachten nicht, dass das ein sicherer Ort war, um zur Schule zu gehen.

Sie sagten, hey, wir würden sich viel besser fühlen, wenn du nur in der Nähe der Universität gehst, wo sie sie mit einem schnellen Fahrrad fahren können. The campus they preferred was one with a really low crime rate, Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. So Kristen didn't love the idea, but if her parents were paying, how could she argue?

At least she'd be out there on her own, starting a new chapter of her life. A day that finally came when she moved into the campus dorms in the fall of 1995. Like most college students, Kristen saw Cal Poly as a way to sort of reinvent herself.

When she wasn't studying for her architecture degree, the 18-year-old Kristen was dying her hair from blonde to brunette or trying out new nicknames for herself like Roxy or Trixie. Aber Kristen hat auch ein bisschen zu tun, wahrscheinlich weil sie in einer Gruppe stand. Kristen war alt für eine Mädchen. Sie war sechs Fuß eins, um es genau zu sagen.

Und während Kristen hart arbeitete, um die soziale Szene bei Cal Poly zu navigieren, hat sie auch mit der Schwierigkeit ihrer Klassen zu tun. Kristen brachte ihre Eltern oft zu, wenn sie sich fragte, ob Cal Poly der richtige Ort für sie war. Sie war in einigen ihrer Klassen hinterhergelaufen, die nicht ihr waren, aber sie fand sie zu herausfordernd und sie war ein bisschen heimisch.

Jetzt sage ich das nicht, um zu sagen, dass Kristen keine Freunde hatte. Ich denke, es ist nur das normale Frühjahrsjahr, das viele von uns durchgehen, wenn du deine Heimat verlässt und irgendwo neu gehst. So, by the spring of 1996, after her freshman year, 19-year-old Kristen was begging her parents to let her drop out altogether.

And around April, Kristen's mother wrote her a long letter encouraging her to push through. It was almost summer break. She told her, hey, things are going to get better. She said, quote, world of opportunities are at your fingertips. dass sie sich auf ihr Klassenarbeit konzentrieren sollte und von ihren Fehler lernen sollte. Im Grunde genommen, einfach wieder auf die Piste gehen.

Also, als die Memorial Day-Weekend umgekehrt wurde und viele der Schüler für die Weihnachtszeit auf der Klasse weggingen, hat Kristen entschieden, zurückzukehren. Sie wollte in den Dorms über Weihnachten bleiben. Sie hat gedacht, sie könnte ein paar Studien für ihre Finals machen. Eigentlich hat sie ihre Mutter an dem Tag um 5.30 Uhr angerufen, um zu sagen, dass sie gute Nachrichten hatte.

Sie konnte einen Biologie-Test von früher im Semester machen. Und glücklicherweise war sie nicht allein am Wochenende. Seine Freundin und Nachbar aus der Halle, Margarita Campos, stand auch zurück. Und obwohl die Schule definitiv auf dem Gehirn war, wollte Kristen auch das Wochenende ein bisschen Steam ausbrechen, wie alle College-Studenten.

Also hat sie ihre Freundin Margarita ermutigt, mit ihr am Freitagabend, also am 24. Mai 1996, zu gehen. Okay. Okay. But Margarita was over it. She told Kristen, no, I'm heading back. Kristen told her, you can't leave. She had forgotten her purse, her ID and her keys. And if Margarita went back before she did, she wouldn't be able to get back into the building. So Margarita compromised.

She gave Kristen her set of keys and headed back to the dorms while Kristen continued to search for a party solo. So Margarita said when she left Kristen, it was around 10.30pm that night and they were both stone cold sober.

I'll update you on the sitch for Garrett's 10 seconds. So here's what's going on. My knee has been hurting for a while. Okay. And then the last couple of days I've been noticing that it's just been hurting a little bit more than usual. And then two nights ago it was hurting really bad at night to the point where my foot started to go numb, which of course made me panic a little.

And if you're confused like, well now Margarita doesn't have keys, I'm assuming they thought that Margarita would be able to get someone to let her in at 10.30 rather than in the early morning hours when Kristen came home.

Okay. Oh, she's six feet tall? Six foot one. Dang. But reports of what Kristen was doing there were sort of murky. Some said they saw Kristen that night flirting with a bunch of boys at the party, maybe even kissing one of the basketball players, maybe even pulling one into the bathroom. And others said they saw her chugging tequila.

Others said, no, she didn't have a drink in her hand that night at all.

But there was one thing that several party goers agreed on. And it was that at one point in the night, there was a loud crash in the hallway at this party. And when everyone gathered around, Kristen Smart was on the floor. And a guy... Okay. Okay. He's pretty quiet, okay? He doesn't talk to too many people at the party. He mostly plays pool and hangs out by himself.

But for a quiet guy like Paul, he sure does stir up a lot of gossip among his peers. For starters, Cal Poly was a bit out of Paul's depth. He never really had good grades or SAT scores in high school, but people said he got in because the university gave a little grace to applicants who were local to the area. Okay.

One night he drunkenly climbed a trellis up to one girl's balcony outside her apartment and when she demanded him to leave, he refused and then she called the police. Apparently this wasn't an isolated incident. Paul was known to inappropriately hit on other female students. In fact, that was kind of sort of the only thing people on campus knew about Paul Flores.

He literally would show up to all the parties and then just act creepy. He had no friends. The girls were just... He literally earned nicknames around campus as Chester the Molester and Scary Paul.

He's their age.

And people literally refer to him as Scary Paul. Oh, Scary Paul's here.

And then the next day I woke up, I could barely walk on it. And by last night, It was so swollen, but I didn't do anything to it. So I had no idea what was going on. Okay. So I wake up at three. Well, Daisy wakes Garrett up at three to go potty.

So basically when the crash happens and people see Paul Flores on top of Kristen, they're like, dude, Get off like it's just another Paul thing. No one's really that surprised. But other than that strange incident with Kristen, Paul seemed fairly subdued that night at the party, according to witnesses. Kristen, on the other hand, had drawn a little more attention. I guess at around 2 a.m.

that night, a senior student named Tim Davis, who was helping throw the party, was clearing people out. Und das ist, als er Christen bemerkt hat, die sich eigentlich als Roxy verabschiedet hat. Und sie wurde auf ihrem Nachbarns Blatt übernommen. Also ist er alle raus, es ist 2 Uhr Uhr, Zeit zu gehen. Und dann bemerkt er Christen, aka Roxy, wurde übernommen. Und hier ist das Alarmierende.

Well, it's at this point, obviously, that Esther, the mom, darts upstairs to find her husband and son both bleeding out in her foyer. und der Mann, der sie getötet hat, ist jetzt nirgendwo zu finden. Die ersten Anwesenden waren in einer Minute im Haus. Sie platzierten Mark, der noch auf einem Gürtel atmet, und rutschten ihn in den Krankenhaus, aber es war bereits zu spät für Daniel.

I'm in my jammies.

Er wurde an der Szene gestorben. Mark, sein Vater, hat kräftige Schmerzen am Nase, aber glücklicherweise hat er eine volle Rückkehr gemacht.

Und obwohl die Polizei noch nicht bewusst war, dass ein solches Verbrechen, das nur eine Woche früher in Kalifornien war, ich meine, wir sind in zwei verschiedenen Teilen der Vereinigten Staaten, es wäre nur eine Frage von Zeit, bevor sie herausgefunden haben, weil beide von ihnen die Hilfe der FBI einbauen werden. Und hier ist das Ding.

One's a judge.

Yeah. Now, Judge Salas has, of course, gotten threats in the past. She's a high profile judge prosecuting big cases. So the occasional scary phone call or intimidating letter probably wasn't all that foreign to her. But this is certainly the first time anyone has acted on it. And she has no idea who it could be.

While the FBI works to figure that out, they equip her with 24-hour protection from US Marshals, so they're pulling out the big guns for this. Especially because they aren't sure if this is one person or an entire group of people targeting her family. So the FBI is mentally preparing themselves for what they think is going to be a doozy of a case.

Don't forget, add free content and bonus episodes on Apple Subscriptions, Patreon. All the things if you are listening on Apple Podcasts. Double click, boom, bonus episode.

They're getting ready to start collecting any shred of a threat that's been sent to the judge in the past. When the following day the FBI hear about another death that happened 150 miles away in New York State's Catskill Mountains. So this is now the third death in this case. Am 20.

Juli, das ist nur der Tag nach Daniels Tod und Marks Schuss, bekommen die New York State Troopers einen Anruf über ein bescheuertes Fahrzeug, das auf einer Todesstraße in Sullivan County, New York, sitzt. Sure enough, when they arrive at the scene, they find the vehicle is abandoned. But they also discover that just a few steps away is a dead body lying in the grass.

And this man has been shot in the head. And he has his wallet and his ID on him. Es ist ein 72-jähriger Mann namens Roy Den Hollander, aber sie finden etwas anderes an der Szene, sortiert in der Brust. Es ist eine semi-automatische Pistole und von der Richtung der Wunde sind die Bewerber ziemlich sicher, dass der Schuss in diesem Fall selbst verurteilt war.

Now, the name Roy Den Hollander doesn't ring any bells for police. It doesn't seem like he's on any sort of suspect or wanted list at the time. But a quick background search on Hollander reveals he's also an attorney, though he's from New York City. So the question now is, why would an established lawyer with a big career come all the way up to the Catskills to die by suicide?

Well, one of the officers on this case, Captain Brian Webster, starts asking this exact question. But once they start rifling through Hollander's car, things become even clearer. So, probably the most telling clue was that Hollander had a FedEx envelope sitting in his car that was addressed to Judge Salas in New Jersey. And Captain Brian Webster, well, he watches the news.

So this name sets off a bunch of alarm bells for him because he's been following the story over the last 24 hours about how a prominent New Jersey judge and her family was targeted by a FedEx worker at their home. So once he sees that FedEx envelope, he's thinking, wait, I might have the suspect in this case, but he's now our victim in this case.

So he alerts the FBI right away. Oh, and by the way, a .38 handgun, like the one that was found right by the deceased Hollander, is the same weapon used in the attack on the family. So, I mean, one plus one equals two. Yeah. But that's not the only telling thing police find in the vehicle. They also discover a piece of paper with an address for a home in the mountains just outside of Los Angeles.

It was bad on purpose. I wasn't showing you my skill. I would never show off like that. Do you have 10 seconds for us today?

A home in San Bernardino belonging to Mark Angelucci.

Esther. That sucks. So I do want to just be clear. We have two marks.

The first victim is Mark Angelucci.

Yeah. Yeah. And the second one is the husband who was shot but is alive. Now the FBI gets in touch with the police in that district because they're like, why does this paper have this name on it? Und dann lernt er über Marks Mord, weil er sich erinnert hat, dass das Verbrechen damals noch von lokalen Polizeifahrzeugen untersucht wurde.

Und sie hatten keine Einzelperson auf ihrer Aufmerksamkeitsliste in Kalifornien. So, als sie die Teile zusammenbringen, fühlen sie sich ziemlich sicher. Okay, wir denken, dass diese drei Verbrechen oder diese drei Todesfälle, wenn man will, are connected.

They're also like, not only are these all connected, we're pretty sure Hollander shot himself. So now we're thinking he's the guy. But then why did he shoot himself? But it's on the opposite side of the country. So did he act alone? Is there more people? Is this a group of people who are attacking lawyers or judges?

Seems to be the former because they find evidence that Hollander had taken a train out west to San Bernardino on July 7th, four days before Mark Angelucci's murder. Got there, rented a car. It's a car with the same description as the one that showed up at Mark's house that day. And then he fled back to Los Angeles, dropped off the rental and got back on a train at Union Station to come east.

So this is just even more damning because they have proof he went to California. So Hollander is captured in surveillance footage at both train stations, L.A. and San Bernardino.

He's walking in this footage with a coffee in his hand, but it confirms exactly when he arrived and left. This just fits the timeline of the crimes. So shortly after making this discovery, police also test the ballistics in the weapon that they found with Hollander at his place.

crime scene i guess if you will a self-induced crime scene and they run it against the one that shot both daniel and mark sure enough the bullets are a match so the fbi is certain we have our guy and we know that he was very likely working alone in this but now we need to know why Roy Den Hollander war kein hartes Krimineller oder jemand, der sich auf seine Glück verletzt hat.

It would be so fun.

Seine Leben wurden von Judge Salas oder Mark Angelucci schwerer gemacht. Er war nur ein anderer Mensch für sie. Also warum wollte er beide tot machen? Zum Beispiel, dieses Geheimnis wächst nur mit einigen anderen Teilen der Beweise, die er in seinem Auto gefunden hat. Denn Hollander scheint eine Art Hitliste zu haben gemacht.

Die Polizei hat auch ein Foto eines New Yorker Hauptjudges namens Janet D. Foray entdeckt. Es gab auch eine andere Anzeige für einen Staatsverfassungsgericht in seinem Auto. Jetzt fragen sie sich also, ob das jemand war, den Holländer geplant hatte und nicht konnte? Und eine Anzeige für eine Gerichtsschule könnte alles bedeuten.

Aber mit Hollanders Geschichte und Agenda, war er planen, einfach da rein zu gehen und Feuer auf eine Runde voller Menschen zu öffnen? Es scheint einfach, dass es viele Was-Wenns um Holländer herum gibt. Der eine silberne Linie ist, dass er niemanden mehr schaden kann. Sie sind ziemlich sicher, dass sie ihren Mann haben.

I. No. I wouldn't because you would yell at me.

Aber all diese Tätigkeiten, die schuldig sind, sind ein bisschen schrecklich für Investigator. Offensichtlich war Hollander jemand mit einer Verbrechung, einer Verbrechung. Und der einzige Weg, um zu den Boden zu kommen, ist, um tiefer in Roy's Leben zu blicken.

Also am Tag, nachdem die Polizei Hollander tot findet, sind sie in seinem New York City-Apartment, um jeden Schreck der Beweise, die sie haben, um dieses Geheimnis zu entfalten. Sie sprechen auch mit jedem und jedem, den sie finden können, der sie verbrechen kann. Interessant. High profile murders. He's like, yeah, that doesn't really surprise me. This guy Hollander had a huge anger problem.

No, you wouldn't.

See, Jeffrey met Hollander back in 1977, when they were both volunteering for a state senate campaign out of Boston. They both then moved to New York around the same time, three years later. So the two kept in touch, being in a new city and all. But eventually, Jeffrey says he started to put distance between them.

He said Hollander was toxic, always extremely angry about life in general, and was just the kind of unpredictable person you never really wanted in your life.

I'm not sure he was trying to get away with it. I think he was just trying to get his anger out considering that he then took his own life. Und hier ist die Sache. Sie interviewen einen anderen seiner Freunde, Joe. Und er hat fast das gleiche gesagt. Joe und Hollander haben sich 1999 in Moskau getroffen. Joe arbeitete für einen amerikanischen Konsultationsfirmen dort.

Und in diesem Jahr hat Hollander auch mit dem Team zusammengearbeitet. Ich weiß nicht, ob das Job, was Hollander nach Russland gebracht hat, war, aber ich weiß, dass Joe von Hollanders Vergangenheit ziemlich beeindruckt war, weil Hollander tatsächlich ein sehr intelligenter Kerl war. Er hat in den USA an prestigiosen Geräten gearbeitet und ein MBA aus einer Ivy League Schule gehabt.

Plus, Hollander really seemed to keep up with his appearance because he worked out all the time, he was dying his hair a lot. So Joe thought, for a 50-year-old single guy, this is someone who has a lot going for him. He's smart, he's handsome. And Hollander seemed to think so too, because he was always out in the nightlife scene in Moscow looking for women to date.

In fact, Joe said it almost seemed like an obsession for Hollander. All he wanted to do after work was go out, drink and pick up a new woman. And in that nightlife scene in Russia, the 50-ish-year-old Hollander met a 24-year-old model named Alina. The two had a whirlwind romance and got married in Russia in 2000.

Then when Hollander moved back to the States, she came with him under a temporary visa.

Later, Hollander would argue that Alina falsely accused him of abuse, just so she could stay in the States under the Violence Against Women Act, which does offer those sorts of protections and can help survivors petition for immigration status. Here's the thing, though. People who knew Hollander... believed Alina.

Because Hollander always had this sort of lack of respect or honestly rather total disdain for women. He was openly anti-feminist and he used his skills as a lawyer to argue a lot of things that he felt were inherently favorable towards women.

But as a fellow lawyer, Nicholas Mundy told the Post, quote, In my opinion, he was already a controlling, misogynistic, sexist, delusional and disturbed individual before his marriage failed. So this is just the type of person people around him think. And then in the 2000s, friends noticed that Hollander was starting to call women by a new name.

So instead of calling them women, he started calling them feminazis.

Our sources for this episode are CNN, Oxygen, Paramount Express, USA Today, LATimes.com, DailyNews.com, People, 6abc.com, sbsun.com, newyorkpost.com, dailybreeze.com and CBS News. Do you ever stop to think about how many strangers we come into contact with every single day?

So the angry anti-feminist remarks got less subtle, more consistent from there, which would make sense considering some of the cases he started taking on at this point in his career. Like this one. In 2008, he sued Columbia University for providing women's studies classes. He claimed it was bigotry against men. And he won that lawsuit, by the way.

Yes. He also filed a handful of lawsuits against bars for having ladies' nights. He said they violated the 14th Amendment that says everyone should have equal protection.

He's basically saying the fact that you're giving women a discount to get into the bar and not men is prejudicial. So it was sort of trivial nonsense that Roy Den Hollander was wasting his law degree fighting for. But in Hollander's eyes, his fight against women seemed to be a cause worth dying for. And this all appeared to stem back to his mother.

Apparently, at one point in his career, Hollander wrote a book and dedicated it to his mother, writing, May she burn in hell.

This was a lifelong crusade for Mr. Hollander. Something that was made apparent to police when they discovered a 2,000-page manifesto in his apartment. Dude. Ich kann nicht mal anfangen, alle Details zu sagen. Aber wie Sie sich vorstellen können, hatte viel mit dem Manifesto zu tun, wie viel er Frauen hasste.

It kind of signaled why he had driven from New York up to the middle of nowhere to die by suicide. Apparently it had to do with the fact that his family had a cabin there when he was a little boy. You're probably wondering, okay, why the heck did he pick these people? Like, why travel all the way across the United States to shoot one person? Especially because Mark was a male rights activist.

This would seemingly be right up Hollander's alley, so you'd think they'd be in the same corner. Not really. Let me start with Mark. Yes, they may have had a similar line of work, but turns out Hollander actually had a grudge against this man for years. And it appeared to be over something that seems small. I guess Mark had filed a lawsuit alongside the National Coalition of Men around 2014.

And Hollander had already been working to file a very similar lawsuit. So now he's like, hmm, even though we're fighting the same battle, you are now my competition.

Yeah, because you're fighting the same battle as me.

What a guy. And to make matters worse, Hollander was a board member of the NCFM at the time, but he was kicked out a year later, in 2015, because he called the president of the NCFM, Harry Crouch, and threatened his life after Hollander learned he'd been left out of that lawsuit that Mark was now filing. So he's literally just petty.

Yeah.

Now, Mark Angelucci had received a handful of threats from Hollander over the years, but apparently didn't know they were coming from him. Or if he did know they were coming from Hollander, he didn't tell anyone. So, all right, we now know his motive for Mark. But why Judge Salas and her family? In 2015 hat Hollander eine Gesetzesordnung verabschiedet, die Judge Salas übernommen hat.

Der Fall argumentierte, dass selektive Serviceregistrierung nur für Männer benötigt wurde. Also im Grunde, wenn es jemals einen Draft für den Krieg gibt, sind nur Männer darin eingegangen. Aber Hollander argumentierte, dass das diskriminierend ist.

Whether that's passing someone in the grocery store, running next to them on the treadmill at the gym, sitting next to them at a restaurant. There's so many people that we know absolutely nothing about, yet we have these little interactions with them almost mindlessly all the time.

Hollander sah diesen Fall als einen großen Meilenstein für seine Karriere. Ich meine, wenn er dieses Gesetz ändern könnte, würde er die Geschichte von Amerika literally ändern. Aber Judge Salas war ein Wegblock dazu, weil sie den Fall immer wieder verlängert hat.

Offensichtlich gab es so viele Verabschiedungen, dass Hollander im Jahr 2019 den Fall zu einem größeren New York-Firmen verabschiedet hat, weil er behauptet hat, dass etwas in seinem Leben gekommen wäre, das ihn von seinem Job verhindern würde.

Troy Dan Hollander, at this point in 2019, had just been diagnosed with cancer.

Might as well go out, taking everyone down with him. It was terminal. Treatment would only be in vain. I'm not sure how long they gave him to live, but the way he saw it, he wasn't going to go out alone. In that manifesto, Hollander confessed that the diagnosis motivated him to go after those he felt had wronged him.

In his writings he included the quote, The only problem with a life lived too long under feminazi rule is that a man ends up with so many enemies that he can't even the score with all of them. But law school and the media taught me how to prioritize. Und leider waren Mark Angelucci und Judge Solace einige seiner hohen Prioritäten.

Obwohl es nicht Judge Solace war, der ihr Leben am Tag verloren hat. Es waren ihr Sohn Daniel und fast ihr Mann Mark auch. Judge Solace fühlte, dass eine große Teil der Probleme war, wie einfach es war, ihre Informationen online zu accessieren. Dank einer kurzen Google-Search konnte Roy seinen Weg direkt an ihre Tür finden. And in November 2020, she pushed for legislation to change that.

That month, Daniels' law was signed into effect. This bill is aimed at protecting public officials from having any of their personal information listed online. Judge Salas' hope is that no judge, attorney or lawmaker will ever have to worry about a stranger showing up at their doorstep again.

She wants to make sure that none of her colleagues ever have to go through the heartbreaking devastation her family went through Und das sind die Mörder von Marc Angelucci und Daniel Enderle.

Yeah. Like, what the... And I'm sure... And it's weird that at his first murder, he waited for the correct person to get to the door.

Ich denke, er war nur ein negativer, kräftiger, wütender Mensch, der ständig die Verletzung gespielt hat und Rage hatte und dachte, weißt du was, wenn ich sterben werde, so werden auch andere Menschen. Er ist so verletzt. Was ehrlich gesagt nur der schlimmste Typ der Person ist. Es ist schrecklich. Du bist einfach kräftiger.

Manchmal ist es einfach zu vergessen, dass diese Menschen auch echte Menschen mit ihren eigenen Leben, ihren eigenen Familien, ihren eigenen Hoffnungen und Träumen und ihren eigenen Grudgen und dunklen Geheimnissen sind. Wir stoppen niemals, zu denken, wie die Aktionen eines Verwandten uns beeinflussen, weil sie die meiste Zeit nicht beeinflussen. Untertitelung des ZDF, 2020

Well, if you're grumpy because you didn't get to have a cookie, that makes sense and that's okay. But if you're grumpy because you hate women, you should go to therapy.

Alright you guys, that is our episode for this week and we will see you next time with another one. I love it.

Goodbye.

But when you open the door, your entire life changes forever. Just because that stranger was out looking for revenge.

Why I don't leave my house.

Du sollst sein. Ja, ich soll. Okay, so let me introduce you to a 52-year-old man named Mark Angelucci. So in 2020, Mark is living in Crestline, California. This is a small little mountain town in San Bernardino County. It's about two and a half hours outside of Los Angeles.

Now, Mark's never been married by 2020, he doesn't have kids, and that's because his entire life has been pretty much dedicated to his work. See, Mark is a high-profile, well-liked lawyer. Und er ist nicht der Art von Anwalt, der in einem lustigen Auto fährt, immer in perfekt gekleideten Schuhen trägt. Mark ist viel tiefer auf der Erde. Er liebt den ruhigeren, humbleren Lebensstil.

Das ist wahrscheinlich der Grund, weshalb er sogar in den Bergen lebte. Er hat noch sein altes Auto, das er in den Boden fahren wird. He's not flashy or materialistic, according to any of his friends. He's just a fun-loving, light-hearted person who cares more about his close friendships than showing off to strangers.

But there is one thing about Mark's career that some might find a little controversial. See, Mark was a men's rights attorney. And I know in this day and age, that just sounds a little wrong in general. But everyone who knew Mark said he was never someone who was against women. In fact, he was very supportive of the feminist movement.

But he found it important to look for places where men were maybe underrepresented in situations that mattered. For example, Mark was big on representing men who were victims of domestic violence. There does need to be representation. Actually, in 2008, he led a lawsuit against the state of California, claiming it was unconstitutional to exclude male victims from domestic violence resources.

But he also fought for men who were, say, having a hard time getting the custody rights that they deserved. That sort of thing. Everyone needs someone in their corner. And for men who were struggling in certain cases, Mark was their guy. A lot of the time he even took on cases pro bono.

Aside from that, Mark was also the vice president of an organization called the National Coalition for Men, or the NCFM, which is a non-profit civil rights organization aimed at fighting legal discrimination against men. So this is a big part of Mark's life and his identity, to say the least.

And while Mark might have upset a few people along the way, no one anticipated what happened to him in July of 2020. So on the 11th of that month, Mark was enjoying a quiet little Saturday at home with a friend, when a little before 4 p.m. there was a knock at his front door. Marks Freund schlug aus dem Fenster und bemerkte, dass es ein FedEx-Deliverer war.

Während Mark beschäftigt war, öffnete der Freund die vordere Tür und bestellte, den Package zu signieren. Aber der Deliverer behauptete, dass es Marks Signatur war. Also warten sie auf die vordere Tür, während der Freund Mark holte. Okay. The delivery man then ran back to his white car, got in and sped off. And this is before Mark's friend has even really realized what happened.

Like he heard the bang. He didn't realize, though, that the delivery man had shot Mark that fast and then ran away. Oh Gott. Hm, das wird schwer zu finden. Besonders wenn man da wohnt. Well, two things were sort of happening simultaneously here. There were both no suspects and dozens of suspects at the same time.

You're listening to an Ono Media Podcast. Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland.

Because while they had no idea who this FedEx driver could have been and why he might have deliberately wanted Mark dead, Mark did have a lot of clients in cases he was working on where he was either representing or working against some pretty troubled people. I mean, anytime a lawyer is killed, Du wirst eine lange Liste von Verbrechern haben.

I think maybe some attorneys in really high profile cases.

Well, it's just that if you feel like you have had injustice against you and then there's someone actively working to keep that injustice against you, fight for the person who's hurt you, that is frustrating. I can imagine just sitting there being like, oh my gosh. Just feeling so out of control of the situation.

So when this happens, Marks friends confidently told police it was very likely that the person who had shown up on the doorstep and shot him was someone that he had worked with or was currently working with that probably has a grudge against him. But as police started to look into who those suspects might be, another tragedy happened. It was eight days later and 2,800 miles away.

And he's the husband.

You guys really seemed to like our merch drop, the new Strangey Dangy merch.

So it's now July 19th in North Brunswick, New Jersey, about an hour and a half outside of New York City. And the Anduril family is having what starts off as a lovely Sunday afternoon. 20-jähriger Daniel war ein Junioren an der Katholikern-Universität in Washington, D.C., aber das Jahr war an ihm schwer, wie es für fast alle in 2020 war.

Wegen der Pandemie hat Daniel viel dieses letzte Semester nur zu Hause studiert, seine Freunde verpasst. Aber Daniel war nicht der Typ, den Kind zu klagen. Er und seine Familie waren die Art von Menschen, die das Beste aus jeder Hand, die sie getroffen haben, machen. Daniels Mutter, Esther, wurde mit einer kubanischen Mutter und einem mexikanischen Vater geboren.

Und ehrlich gesagt, war diese Frau ein Held in mehreren Fällen als nur einer. Als sie jünger war, hat sie ihre Familie im Ausstieg von einem Hausfeuer geholfen. Dann wächst sie auf und geht weiter, um eine Gerichtsjahre zu suchen und wird 2011 der erste latinische US-Distrikt-Gesetzberichtsführer, was eine große Sache ist.

It was through her law career that she ends up meeting her husband, Mark Anderle, who went on to be a criminal defense attorney. Judge Salas, which is Esther's last name, was actually in charge of a pretty famous New Jersey case back in 2014. If you watch The Real Housewives of New Jersey, she was the judge assigned to Teresa and Joe's financial fraud case.

Yeah, I think so too. They were so cute.

Me neither. I just don't. I think a lot of people think I'm crazy for that, but never been my thing.

Es ist nicht das. Es ist nur so, dass es andere Dinge gibt, die ich lieber mehr sehen würde. Und ich späte nicht viel Zeit, TV zu sehen. Und deshalb habe ich nicht genug Zeit, um dann auch die Realität TV zu machen.

They were so cute. We'll probably definitely drop those again in the future. So if you didn't snag one, don't worry. Hopefully we will drop those again.

Guys, Garrett is struggling.

No, that's the family drama show.

Remember Chris Schell's ex-husband? He was on This Is Us.

Selling Sunset, Chris Schell. Justin.

No, that's Glenn Powell, but close. I'm talking about Justin Hartley.

Yeah. I mean, yeah.

Same loaf of bread, I guess.

Anyways, she was the judge for the Real Housewives of New Jersey. So all to say, Daniel, who is the only child of two very prominent people in law, decides obviously he's going to follow in their footsteps. So he's planning to go into law school once he graduates from Catholic University. But as I mentioned, it has been a while since Daniel has seen any of his friends, thanks to the pandemic.

So earlier that summer, he asked his parents for a favor. Could some of his closest college friends come by and spend the weekend for his birthday if they promised to be super careful? And Esther and Mark say, yeah, sure. So on Friday, July 17th,

A handful of old pals stayed at the Anderles' house, spending the weekend laughing, reminiscing and having beautiful meals to celebrate Daniel's 20th birthday. And when it came time to pack up their things that Sunday morning, the 19th, they thought it would only be a matter of time before they would all be reunited again at school.

Little did they know, just a few hours after they would leave Daniel's home, everything would change. So that afternoon, there is another knock on the door of the Andorral family home. Now Mark peers out the window to see a FedEx delivery guy standing at their doorstep.

Now he thinks to himself, it's a little odd for a delivery driver to be working on a Sunday afternoon, but he figures, I don't know, it's 2020, nothing seems to be normal right now. So before Mark can even get to the door, Daniel, his son, who had been chatting in the basement with his mom, darts upstairs to answer the door.

And when he opens it, he finds a white man standing there in a FedEx uniform, saying he has an envelope for Esther. He asks Daniel if she's home and if she can come to the door to sign for it. But before Daniel can even make a move to go fetch his mom, the delivery man pulls out a gun.

You're reppin'.

His dad Mark comes around the corner just in time to see his son raise his arms in the air, scream no and then get shot and fall back onto the ground. So, because Daniel has gotten shot and is now on the ground, Mark, the dad, is now in the man's line of fire. So the gunman then points his weapon at the dad and fires three more times.

Which was why Eileen was terrified to go to the police when things in their relationship started getting violent. According to their friend Mike, who knew about this throuple, the first physical fight between Eileen and Christina happened in his house back in 2017.

When Eileen made a comment about how she'd been sleeping with Zach long before Christina had even knew about it, that they had been having an affair, Christina began throwing punches at Eileen. But the fighting seemed to become a regular occurrence, especially when the two women were drinking. Mike said it wasn't abnormal to see one or both of them with a black eye.

Soon the fights were almost daily. But Eileen's friend Ali said she heard a different side of the story. She would get calls from Eileen saying, please come over and help me. He hurt me again. Meaning Zack.

Als Ali sie ermutigte, einen Polizeireport zu verabschieden, verabschiedete Ali, Christina's Vater zu rufen, dass sie nicht glaubte, dass sie geliebt werden würde, weil Christina's Verbindung zur Macht war. Aber schlussendlich sagte Ali, dass der Verbrechen so schlecht war, dass sie eigentlich zu einem Punkt Eileen ins Krankenhaus nehmen musste.

I want to ask you guys to do something for me. And that is that what I'm doing right now, sitting alone, getting ready to dive into a true crime story is literally what I do over on my solo show into the dark. Okay. It is basically bonus episodes for you guys. Murder with my husband listeners.

Und auch dann, als die Mitarbeiterin fragte, woher die Schmerzen kamen, war Eileen Angst, es legal zu veröffentlichen. Also war Ali, als sie sie erwartete, Wenn du aus dieser Situation nicht rauskommst, wird jemand sterben. Aber an diesem Punkt fühlte Eileen sich enttäuscht. Sie war finanziell anstrengend. Sie konnte nicht mehr einen Platz auf ihrer eigenen Seite haben.

Und um März 2018, anstatt von dem Paar weiterzugehen, hat sie tatsächlich entschieden, mit ihnen mitzugehen. Ich meine, es kann definitiv genug herausfordernd sein, mit deinem Partner zu leben und zu arbeiten. But then double that? Two partners? And there's already a violent, contentious dynamic to begin with? This is not going to end well.

Still, Eileen told her friends and sister, no, no, no, it's just temporary. She was going to give it a month or two and see how it played out. But Eileen couldn't even make it that long. A few weeks after moving in, Eileen had to get out of there. Dann hat sich alles verändert, als Zach am 7. April zu Eileen kam und ihm sagte, hey, ich bin auch fertig mit Christina.

Also, an dem Tag hatten Zach und Christina einen witzigen Kampf. Vielleicht sind sie noch nicht am stärksten. Eileen hat ihren Freund Ali nachgefragt, um zu sagen, dass sie und Zach aus dem Haus und weg von Christina waren. But Ali thought that meant out to the mall or a coffee shop for a minute. She didn't think that meant they were running away, like out of the state.

However, the next call Ali received was from Christina. She said, hey, since Zach and Eileen aren't answering my calls, I'm going to call you and have you relay a message to them. Sie sagte, sie würde die Fahrzeuge, die Zach und Eileen fuhren, als gestohlen, wenn sie nicht für sie zurückgekommen wären.

Also hat Ali Eileen angerufen und gesagt, hey, Christina hat mich angerufen, das ist, was sie gesagt hat. Aber Zach und Eileen waren bereits auf der Route nach Georgia. Und es scheint, dass sie so schnell aus dem Haus gekommen sind, dass Eileen nicht mal ihr Telefon oder ihre Wallet genommen hat. Sie hat einfach Zach benutzt. Still, Eileen kept telling Ali this was the best thing, okay?

They were just gonna finally escape Christina and be together, how it had originally supposed to be. But this doesn't last long. So when they run away together, Christina begins sending Zach texts saying you two deserve each other. But over the next few hours, they become more threatening. She began saying things like, my dad's gonna be calling you. You F me over and now I'm F-ing you over.

Over the course of 24 hours, Christina sent them over 150 text messages. And Zach and Eileen did not reply to a single one, okay? They were ghosting. So it looked like they were holding strong until the following day. The couple reaches Texas. And that's when Christina changed tactics. Suddenly, she's begging Eileen and Zach to come back home.

So if you are all caught up on everything and want to just keep listening to your typical true crime murder with my husband case, minus Garrett, okay? And I know he's the best part, but over there it is minus him. Please, please, please go follow my show Into the Dark. And honestly, if you don't want to listen to it, can you please just go follow it and turn on automatic downloads?

She promises to change, says you'll never have to question my love again. Und Zach schlägt. Aber anstatt Eileen zu sagen, wir müssen zurückgehen, wir müssen uns umdrehen, hat er ihr gesagt, dass er Christina eingeladen hat, um in Dallas zu fliegen, um sie für den Rest von dem, was jetzt nur eine kleine Reise wird.

Und natürlich, nachdem Christina in Texas aufsteht, werden Dinge zwischen den drei von ihnen nackt. Eileen würde mit Zachs Telefon aussteigen, um Ali zu rufen und zu sagen, dass es zwischen den drei von ihnen wirklich schlecht ging. Sie wusste nicht, wie sie aus der Situation rauskommen konnte, besonders weil sie ihren Telefon oder ihre Wallet nicht hat.

Nun, das bleibt für mehrere weitere Tage und Eileens Schwester Francesca wird auch extrem berührt, weil sie nicht von ihrer Schwester in über einer Woche gehört hat, was wiederum sehr anders ist als sie. But when the throuple finally turns back and passes through New Orleans, Eileen gives her sister a call. And on this call, okay, Eileen tells Francesca flat out, I think they're gonna kill me.

Now, of course, this terrified Francesca, who told her sister, hey, run to the nearest police station, gas station, anything, get away from Zach and Christina. But for some reason, Eileen tells her she can't. And then she rushed Francesca off the phone, leaving her completely hopeless. She had no idea what hotel they were staying at, what they were doing next, where they were going.

All Francesca could do was pray that her sister somehow would make it back to Miami okay. Now that was around April 17th, when the two spoke. By April 21st, the throuple is back in Florida, still driving their way down to Miami, when they decide to call it quits on the driving for the night and hole up in the Sportsman's Lodge Motel in East Point, Florida. This is our crime scene.

And for the first night, it seemed like the trio was actually getting along. Remember, according to hotel staff, they were pleasant, they check in. On the evening of Saturday, the 21st, the three of them grabbed dinner before going out to play mini-golf. Then they went back to the sportsman's lodge and partied for a while before calling it a night. Am folgenden Morgen, am 22.

Juni, haben die drei einen Plan für den letzten Teil ihrer Reise gemacht. Sie haben entschieden, eine weitere Nacht am Hotel zu verbringen, bevor sie am Montagmorgen nach Tampa gehen. Also gehen sie in den Likerstore. Sie kaufen zwei große Bottle von Vodka und ein riesiges Ding von Fireball. Dann spielten sie die meiste Zeit am Motel, barbecuieren und trinken.

Aber Eileen hatte nicht eine gute Zeit an diesem Punkt. Wieder einmal schlug sie weg, um Ali zu rufen. Und sie sagte ihrem Freund, ich muss wirklich einen Weg finden, um jetzt zu gehen. Ich kann nicht warten, bis morgen. And she tells Ali, honestly, I'm being treated like a sex slave right now in this relationship. Zach was being scary ever since Christina joined them.

According to her, she told Ali that Zach had this look in his eye that she didn't recognize. She said, can you help me? Please help me come up with a plan. So Ali buys her a Greyhound ticket and tells her hop a bus when they made a pit stop in Tampa the following day. So wake up the next morning, get to Tampa and then take this bus.

And then Ali would scoop her up from the bus station in Miami and she'd take her home to get her things while Christina and Zach were still on the road. And then Eileen would go stay with Ali for a while until she figured out her next chapter in life. Only as we know, Eileen would never make it to Tampa. And that was the last time Allie would ever speak to her friend.

And then maybe one day when you have nothing to listen to, you can listen to it, okay? I work really, really hard on that show and it is my baby. And it surprises me how many listeners of Murder With My Husband still don't even know that Into The Dark exists. So yes, that is my solo show. I do basically the same thing I do over here.

By Monday morning, Zach and Christina were back on the road. And as we know, Eileen is no longer with them. Now, I'm not sure where they went that afternoon, but it seems they spent those early hours probably looking for a place to dump Eileen's body. And I know that by Monday night, April 23rd, they were knocking on the door of their good friend Mike back in the Miami area.

Now, when they arrived to Mike's house, he's like, Guys, where's Eileen? He knew the three of them had been on this road trip together, so it's a little strange that just Christina and Zach are showing up. Christina's like, oh Mike, Eileen ran away. Now Mike doesn't buy this for a second. He can sense that something is up. The two are acting weird. It doesn't take long for Zach to break it.

He looks at Mike and says, Eileen is dead. Jetzt ist Mike offensichtlich von dieser Nachricht witzig. Ich meine, er hat auch Freunde mit Eileen. Und auch zwei seiner wirklich guten Freunde, die in einer Gruppe mit Eileen sind, sitzen in seinem Zuhause, actieren wirklich seltsam und sagen, dass Eileen tot ist.

Aber es ist nicht bis Christina den Raum verlässt, dass Mike die Details aus Zack bekommt. Und hier ist, was Zack Mike sagt. Okay. He claims that on Sunday night, the night before, Christina killed her. He didn't see or hear it happen, but when he woke up that morning, apparently Eileen was dead in the bed next to him. He woke up, tried to give her CPR, which wasn't working.

And when he told Christina he was going to call 911, she stopped him. And when Mike's like, dude... Warum? Er sagt, naja, ich habe sie gehört, weil ich Christina schützen wollte. Ich meine, sie hat Eileen getötet. Aber er gibt ihm auch eine ziemlich gute Beschreibung davon, wo sie das Körper verlassen haben. Was definitiv eine nützliche Sache ist in dieser Versöhnung. Außer jetzt...

Mike's worrying for his own life. He's thinking, okay, I just let a murderer, maybe two, who killed a girl yesterday, into my home. And now they're confessing to me that they've done it. This is dangerous. Am I next? Who knows what these people are capable of? So Mike pulls a really smart move. When the couple passes out on his couch, He takes a photo of the two of them.

And then he goes on Google Maps to try and find the exact location Zach was talking about. And it isn't hard for him to find that abandoned cul-de-sac in the small, rural Florida town. Finally, he goes on Facebook and finds Christina's father. Because Mike knows Christina's dad's a police officer. Obviously, she's told him a million times. And he thinks, I've got to reach out to her dad.

What you're getting today is basically what I do on Into The Dark. Okay, that being said, let's jump in to today's case. Okay, so let's be honest, you guys. We have seen parents do some pretty unthinkable things for their kids on this show. We have seen parents who hide evidence. We have seen parents who hide bodies, even attempting murder themselves for their children.

He sends him the photo he just snapped of the couple on his couch and tells Colonel Tony that he has some really important news to share about his daughter. And Colonel Tony doesn't hesitate, okay? He tells Mike, meet me at a gas station nearby. So Mike pulls up to this gas station. Colonel Tony is there. And he really can't hold it in. Mainly because he's worried for his own safety now.

He tells Colonel Tony outright, your daughter just killed someone. Und wenn Colonel Tony realisiert, wie ernst das Ding war, das Mike ihm erzählen musste, sagt er, nein, wir machen das hier nicht und verpasst keinen Zeit, Mike an der Station zu bringen, um ein formelles Statement zu machen, was das ist.

In Wahrheit, er bekommt sogar zwei andere Offiziere, um die Frage zu machen, weil er weiß, dass das ein Interessekonflikt ist. So despite Christina saying that her father could protect her from anything, that is definitely not what this scenario is shaping up to be.

Colonel Tony Arojo takes this statement very seriously, especially when they learn from the Franklin County Sheriff's Department, hey, we did find a body. They try to corroborate Mike's story of what Zach and Christina had told him. They call Franklin County Sheriff's Department, they're like, Yeah, we found the body exactly where Zack had told Mike it would be.

So that same day, Colonel Arojo has Mike take a look at a photograph of the victim and he confirms without a doubt, yes, that is my friend Eileen Seiden. So what does Colonel Arojo do? Well, it's the opposite of what his daughter Christina has been threatening all this time. He doesn't actually help her get away with anything. Instead, he coordinates her arrest.

Within hours, police are circling Mike's home with arrest warrants for 30-year-old Zachary Abel and 38-year-old Christina Arojo. They were transported back to Franklin County and were later charged with first-degree murder. But thanks to a series of complicated delays during the pandemic, it would actually take six years before there was any movement in this case.

So, like I said, the arrest happens in 2018 and the murder happens in 2018. It's not until January 2024, one year ago from the time I'm recording this, that Zachary Abel stands trial first. He is pleading not guilty to those first degree murder charges. But eight months prior to that, Christina actually accepted a plea deal to lesser charges of second degree murder.

Along with that deal came 25 years in prison and the agreement to testify against Zachary Abel in court. You know, just your typical two-person involved murder, who's going to turn on who. And it's exactly what happened. Christina Araujo becomes the star witness in Zach's trial. And for the first time, she reveals more details on what had happened that evening in room 15.

Or at least, we get her version of it. Here's what she said. That Sunday night, the three of them were just relaxing in the room after a day of heavy drinking. But Zach was not acting like himself. She said, whenever he was drunk, he became more aggressive. And this is exactly what happened when Eileen posed one tiny question to Christina that night. She said, Christina, guess what?

now christina doesn't know what eileen is gonna say but according to her zach clearly knew what she was about to say because he snaps she says he gets up walks over to eileen and starts hitting her in the face screaming at her and asking her why she's always got to start problems christina gets in and she gets involved in it but For different reasons.

She wants to know what Eileen was going to say. She wants to know what Zach was trying to cover up. She says violence was a normal thing in this throuple. So when she can't break up what's happening between Zachary and Eileen, she says she just leaves the room to catch her breath.

And when she came back 15 minutes later, Zach was in the bathroom with Eileen and he had that shower curtain rod in his hand and was beating Eileen with it. Now, Christina said he moved her back to the bedroom where he began hitting her with a wooden walking stick and he hit her so hard that he broke it.

That's when Christina claimed she got in between Zack and Eileen because this was too much for her to bear. Wow, I'm so glad that eventually at this point it was too much. She said Zack stopped beating her. Eileen was still laying there. You remember the autopsy? Absolutely broken. She said she and Zach passed out shortly after from exhaustion, thinking they would all wake up.

Eileen would be injured, but would be alive. She says when they woke up the next morning, they realized that wasn't the case, that Zach had beaten her to death. christina nur verurteilt hat, dass sie den krimi verhindert hatte, weil sie furchtbar war, was zack mit ihr tun würde, wenn sie nicht helfen würde.

ich weiß nicht, wie viel von christina's account vertraut werden kann, nachdem wir wissen, dass sie in der Vergangenheit gewalttätige Tendenzen hatte und klar gegen eileen abwesend war, aber einige der Beweise sehen sich an, dass sie ihre Beweise ergreifen, obwohl ich möchte beiseite legen, dass es offensichtlich ist, dass auch diese Verleihung dieser Version der Geschichte

does not make Christina look like a good person, okay? The bruising on Eileen's body was consistent with a shower curtain rod, one that was confirmed to have a palm print on it that matched Zach's, which doesn't match Zach's version of events. Detectives also testified that they found broken shards of wood in the motel room, again with Eileen's DNA on it.

So Christina is saying how the murder happened does kind of match up as far as the murder weapons. However, Zachary Ables' defense at trial painted a totally different picture. They said Christina was the aggressor and she had acted alone.

Evidence that was supposedly visible in the photo Mike took of the couple sleeping on the couch because in that photo, Christina's hands and feet are covered in bruises. Nichtsdestotrotz gab es die 150 Textmessungen, die sie zu Zack und Eileen geliefert hat, als sie sie auf der Reise verlassen haben. Viele davon sprachen von den körperlichen Schäden, die sie von ihnen verursachen würde.

Als sie sie wieder gesehen haben, hat sie sie bedroht. Sie haben auch darüber gesprochen, dass Christina von Zack gesagt hat, dass er den Kürtelrahmen holen würde, damit er seinen Prinz verlassen würde. Dass sie fast die ganze Zeit den Bus gefahren hätte. Das war alles kalkuliert. Etwas, das wurde veröffentlicht, als ein Beobachtungsvideo die beiden nach den Mördern gefangen hat.

In this, Christina's driving Zach's car and he's riding in the passenger seat. The defense argued, Zach had no reason for wanting Eileen dead, but Christina Arojo did. Jealousy. But the jury didn't buy the idea that either of them sat idly by while this crime was committed. And when they returned from deliberations, they found Zachary Abel guilty of second-degree murder instead.

But their friend Mike, who is probably the closest to all of the people involved in this case, he thinks that might have been a mistake. He says he doesn't think Zach is the kind of man who would murder someone. He doesn't think he's capable of killing Eileen.

In fact, Mike said he had a camera inside his apartment that night that captured Christina admitting to being solely responsible for the murder. Why this wasn't included in evidence during the trial, I'm not totally sure. But Mike does think that Zach was pressured to help cover up the crime.

Still, one of the bigger questions is, what triggered either Zach or Christina that night in the hotel room? What happened? Was sagte Eileen, als sie sagte, Christina, schau mal, warum hat Eileen ihren Freunden gesagt, dass sie da raus müssen? Warum hat sie Menschen gesagt, dass das gefährlich war? Sie musste weg. Sie wurde wie ein Sex-Selfer behandelt.

But when you're in law enforcement and your job is to serve and protect from people like this, What do you do when your child is the one who steps out of bounds? Do you use your connections and your power to make it go away? Or do you stick to that oath of honor? I honestly imagine that this is probably one of the biggest moral dilemmas you could face in your life.

Well, Zach shared a clue during his sentencing hearing about maybe what Eileen was about to say that moment in the room. He told the judge that he had proposed to Eileen before Christina had joined them on that road trip. Okay, when they ran away, he proposed with a ring pop. According to Zach, Eileen said yes.

Now, was this a story at trial to sort of reduce his sentencing, maybe make the judge sympathize with him more? If he was willing to get engaged to Eileen, why would he then kill her? I don't know if we'll ever have that answer. But I do know that Zachary Abel will be spending his life in prison, while Christina is scheduled to be released in 2043, when she's 63 years old.

And I also know that her father made an incredibly difficult but correct choice in making sure that she got what she deserved. At her sentencing hearing, he made sure she knew what side he was on when he told his daughter, quote, You will own up to the truth. You will accept responsibility. You will be the voice of the victim and you will testify under oath in a court of law.

And then whatever is sentenced to you, that's fine. And that is the case of Eileen Seiden. I don't know If we have a clear-cut picture of what happened in that motel room back in 2018. But I do know that Eileen loved Zach, okay? She loved him. She wanted to be with him. And she also felt like her life was in danger. She couldn't wait to get back to Miami and get out of this situation.

And sadly, she wasn't given the chance. Her life was taken unfairly and unjustly. And in my opinion, long sentences should be served because of that. You guys, thank you for sticking it out this week. I think Garrett will be back next week for another episode. I love it and he still hates it. Goodbye.

But if you ask Colonel Tony Araujo, he would say, duty and justice comes before all else. So today we are headed to Miami, Florida. And in Miami we are meeting a little girl named Eileen Seiden. Now Eileen and her sister Francesca are the two daughters to a pretty wealthy local businessman named Frank Seiden.

He had the unique job of selling furniture to luxury hotels and cruise lines, including the Disney resorts. But from a very early age, Eileen and her sister learned what it was like to suffer a tragedy. When Eileen was nine and Francesca was 16, their mother died of cancer.

You're listening to an Ono Media Podcast. Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And Garrett Moreland is alive and well, but he is not here today, okay? Garrett had a procedure two days ago and currently, right now as I'm filming, cannot open his eyes because they are completely swollen shut, okay? He talked about it.

The illness was swift, leaving the girls with little time to say goodbye, let alone process that they were losing their mother. Und plötzlich, Frank hatte die beiden Mädchen alleine geboren. Aber das Leben war nicht fertig, sie Herausforderungen zu stellen. Als Aileen 14 Jahre alt war, starb ihr Vater Frank von einem Herzattack.

Also wird das jetzt die beiden Mädchen, Aileen und Francesca, verheiratet. Now, Francesca at this point is 22 years old. She's barely an adult herself, but she becomes the legal guardian to her 14-year-old sister. Now, she was in charge of making sure her sister got fed and got to school on time, all while trying to finish up college and keep a job for herself.

So, sieben Jahre gehen vorbei, okay, und Francesca endet, aus dem Westen nach Los Angeles, um ein Künstler zu werden und frisch zu starten. Und mittlerweile, Eileen, jetzt in ihren Zwanzigern, hat sich gehalten, um ihr eigenes Leben in Miami zu bauen. Sie hat einen Job als Landwirtschaftsführerin. Sie lebte in einem wunderschönen Apartment.

Sie wusste, was es dauerte, independent zu sein und auf ihren eigenen zwei Füßen zu stehen. Sie hatte es schon so lange gemacht, dass sie wirklich keine Wahl hatte. Now, Eileen built this strong group of friends that practically became family. And she stayed close with her sister, even though they were on opposite sides of the country.

In fact, it seems she was even considering moving out to Los Angeles when she visited her sister there back in 2016. But when Eileen goes back to Miami, those plans to move fell to the wayside. Now, while Francesca was likely bummed that her sister chose to stay on the East Coast, she knew Eileen was independent, smart and had a good head on her shoulders.

However, this is where the story takes a turn. Eileen's friends started to question some of her decisions around March of 2018. Okay, we're back in Miami. Am 25. März 2018 hatte Eileen Pläne, sich mit mehreren ihrer Freundinnen für Brunch zu treffen, aber sie zeigte es nicht. Und das ist etwas, was sie sehr anders ist.

Und so entscheiden ihre Freunde, ihren Ort zu fahren, weil sie weiß, dass Anne nicht gesagt hat, warum. Aber Eileen scheint nicht zu Hause zu sein. But later that night, one of Eileen's friends received a call from her on an unknown number. Okay, so Eileen calls her friend and says, hey, my cell's broken.

And over the next few weeks, that same friend received texts and calls from a few random numbers. Und wiederum, es war immer Eileen, die sie für etwas angerufen hat, aber sie sagte, ich rufe dich auf eine andere Telefonnummer an, weil mein Telefon kaputt ist. Aber sie sagt immer, sie ist okay, sie arbeitet darauf, einen neuen zu bekommen.

Und vielen dieser Freunde, Eileens Leben an diesem Punkt, war ein Geheimnis. Sie wussten alle, dass etwas passiert war, aber sie waren nicht sicher, was. So at around 5 p.m. that night, a couple is driving around Apalachicola, Florida, about 600 miles northwest from Miami. It's this sleepy little coastal town on the panhandle. It's quiet, it's quaint.

Niemals der Ort, an dem man erwartet, dass man einen toten Körper auf dem Weg raus sieht, um fischen zu gehen. Und das ist genau das, was dieses Paar an einem verlassenen Kühlschrank am Abend befindet. Also nennen sie es in das Sheriff's Office der Franklin County. Sie sagen ihnen, es ist direkt auf der 98er Straße in diesem unterentwickelten Bereich am Wasser.

Und wenn die Polizei kommt, sind sie überrascht bei dem Zustand, in dem dieses Körper ist. Es ist klar, dass die Verletzte eine Frau ist, obwohl sie so schlimm getötet ist. Es ist schwer, Distinguierungen zu machen. Sie hat Schmerzen von Hand zu Hand. Fast alle ihrer Rippen sind gebrochen.

In fact, the medical examiner says her injuries are so substantial that it's comparable to what you would see after someone gets in a terrible car crash. The body also has no phone, no wallet, no ID on her. So for now, they take her in as a Jane Doe. But the police are wondering, does our quiet little town have a serial killer on the loose? Like this is a very gruesome murder.

I think maybe last week's episode, he got his hair transplant, it went well, but geez, no one tells you how invasive and insane that procedure is, okay? 14 hours, entire head bloody, can't lay down for a week, like now can't open his eyes because his head is so swollen and it's like moving from the top of his head down and it reached his eyes, like he literally looks like

What could we possibly be dealing with? But the following day, things become a bit more clear when police get another call. It is about a room at a sportsman's lodge motel six miles away in East Point, Florida. So when detectives arrive, they are led to room number 15. And immediately upon entering, they realize that this is most likely where their Jane Doe had died.

Not only do crimes like this never really happen around this part of Florida, they really have two crime scenes found a day apart from one another. So to them, they figure she was killed here and dumped here. Plus, the room is destroyed. There is furniture knocked over and thrown everywhere. The sheets are missing from both of the beds in the room.

And one of the mattresses is still soaked in blood. Oh, and by the way, this hotel room reeks of vinegar. was den Untersuchern erklärte, dass jemand klar versucht und verfehlt hat, ihre Tracks hier zu öffnen. Nicht zu erwähnen, ein Luminol-Test zeigte Tränen von Blut über dem Raum, okay, nicht nur auf der Mattrasse.

Im Grunde hat der Raum gekleidet, aber es gab nichts, was sie über die Mattrasse tun konnten. Also gibt es auch Blut im Bad. Und sie finden auch, dass der Schlauchkarton-Rot wurde entfernt, And there is a giant bloody handprint left on it.

So, I mean, for any investigation, this is a pretty big piece of evidence, which also told detectives that whoever did this was rushing to get out of there quickly. They must have just forgot to clean this. And when police speak to the manager of the motel, they get some pretty good intel as to what happened leading up to that crime.

The manager said that on Saturday evening, four nights before police arrived, three people checked into that hotel room. They said the trio was well dressed and well spoken. They were respectful when they had a little barbecue in front of their room on Sunday night. They even brought the manager back a little gift after they went out.

And they were checked out by Monday morning with their bill all settled up. Of course, the motel staff at that point had no idea that their hotel room they were checking out of was a bloody crime scene. It wasn't until later that afternoon that the housekeeper went inside and noticed the red stain on the mattress, the furniture strewn about, and obviously something bad had happened there.

Und sogar dann, der Motel-Property-Manager hat es nicht an die Polizei geantwortet, bis zum nächsten Tag. Und ich weiß nicht wirklich, warum sie warten. Aber es sah fast so aus, als ob sie weniger um die Krimszene und mehr um die Schädelung des Hotels kümmern.

Weil, als die Polizei mit ihnen darüber gesprochen hat, haben sie gesagt, wir brauchen wirklich nur einen Polizeireport, für den wir die Kreditkarte für extra Schädelung zahlen. Now, of course, the biggest question here was who paid for that room. Obviously, there's a credit card on file and police do get a name from motel staff. 38-year-old Christina Araujo.

But who were the other two people Motel staff saw her with? Remember, three people checked in. Well, after testing the DNA from Jane Doe alongside the blood found in room 15, police learn, okay, we were right. This was in fact the same woman. Both of these crime scenes are tied together. And it doesn't take long for them to get a name, too. Jane Doe ist jetzt 31-jährige Eileen Seiden.

Sie haben also 38-jährige Christina Arojos Kreditkarte auf dem Fall. Und sie haben jetzt bestätigt, dass die andere Frau mit ihr 31-jährige Eileen Seiden war. Also sind sie natürlich Eileens nächster Kind, Francesca. Was hat diese schwere Frau nicht genug durchgemacht? Sie hat ihre Mutter, ihren Vater verloren und jetzt hat sie ihre einzige Schwester verloren. Es ist schmerzhaft, das zu denken.

Aber wenn sie Francesca ruft und sie sie auf alles, was sie so weit wissen, berichtet, sie sagt ihnen, dass sie eine ziemlich gute Idee hat, wer die dritte Person in der Hotelrunde mit den beiden Mädchen that night. Sie glaubt, es ist 30-jähriger Zachary Abel. Jetzt erinnerst du dich, als ich vorhin erwähnte, dass Eileen nach Los Angeles nach Miami gegangen ist und ihre Pläne verändert hat?

He has the worst bee sting allergy on both of his eyes. If he lets us, I'll put a picture in. But if not, that is why he's not here today. Okay. It was a very heavy and hard procedure. The aftercare is intense and he's not sleeping very well. So I told him, hey, just take the week off and it'll just be you and I today. But hey, listen, before we jump into the episode.

Nun, laut ihrer Schwester war eine große Teilnahme dieser Entscheidung an Zack Abel. Zack und Eileen haben sich eigentlich seit der Hochschule kennengelernt. Und im Jahr 2017, kurz nachdem Eileen diesen Trip nach L.A. genommen hat, sind die beiden in Miami zurückgekehrt und begannen, sich in den Wochen danach zu verabreden. Aber Secretly. See, Zack already had a girlfriend at the time.

One he had been with the last five years. Do you want to guess who the girl is? Christina, the other woman who was in the hotel with them. Now, Zack had told Eileen repeatedly that he planned on ending things with Christina. They weren't a match. She was controlling and demanding things.

Aber Zach hat seinem Freund Mike Pickavette gesagt, dass es nicht einfach war, dass er einfach von Christina wegfährt, für Eileen, so wie das. Nicht nur lebten er und Christina zusammen, sie hatten eigentlich ein Geschäft zusammen, eine verwendete Autodealerschaft. But still, Eileen was head over heels for Zach.

And every time he told her he was waiting for an opportunity to end it, she believed him. Until one day, he finally did have the conversation with Christina. She offered a different solution. She said, okay, instead of leaving me for her, why don't the three of us date instead? A throuple, if you will.

Und schockierend, wenn Zach über Eileen ansieht, stimmt sie. Also, sie stimmen. In fact, when Eileen lost her job as a property manager that year, she also joined Zach and Christina's used car business. And when she lost her apartment, she got a place in the same building as them. But as you can imagine, this wasn't the happy solution they were all hoping for.

It wasn't long before Christina began getting jealous of the affection Zach was showing Eileen. If she was the odd man out, she made sure her frustrations were known. Okay, she got even more erratic when she drank, often threatening Zach that she could make him disappear without repercussion. Christina's father was a high-ranking colonel with the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office.

And she made sure everybody knew it. She often threw it in Zach and Eileen's face that if anything happened, she could easily cover it up because her father was police royalty. That he could make her problems go away in the blink of an eye. And that she had gotten away with pretty much everything in the past by pulling her cop's daughter card.

Now, I don't know if Amy gives them a reason for why she's doing this in the moment, but that's not the only suspicious thing they notice. As they're going through the house, they notice that Bruce's cell phone and wallet are still in his house.

Wir wissen natürlich. Ich meine, okay, es ist 1996. Telefone sind nicht so, wie sie heute sind. Aber für Bruce's Business sind sie. Und so ist es nie gut, besonders wenn du ein Bookie bist. Und wie ich gesagt habe, dein gesamtes Geschäft ist meistens durch Telefonanrufe gemacht. Also sagen sie Amy, hey, wir werden einen Missing Persons Report anrufen.

Aber wenn sie an die Polizei gehen, sind die Polizei so, dass er nur heute weg ist. And you're trying to say he's missing like he's a grown man.

They tell them, hey, we're going to give it a few days before we start using resources. The families like this is not good enough. So the following day on July 7th, when they still haven't heard from him or seen him, they hire a private investigator named Michael Wasaki. And one of the first things Michael does when the family tells him what's going on is say, we got to focus on Amy.

I mean, the shampooing the carpets doesn't look great. But some of Bruce's friends also say that this relationship, Amy, there was just something a little bit off. So Michael questions her a few times over the next several days, but she maintains her story. Bruce went out the night before and didn't come home.

Und nach einiger Anreise erkennt er, dass Bruce es natürlich nicht zu Lake Tahoe gemacht hat. Aber hier muss man etwas beobachten. Wenn Bruce Amy sagte, hey, wenn ich nicht morgens zurück bin, werde ich dich in Tahoe treffen. Warum ging sie nicht nach Tahoe? Warum war sie zu Hause, die Karpfen zu shampooen? Ja. These are all just things that Michael's curious about.

Especially by Thursday, July 11th, when Amy starts mentioning to Michael, yeah, I would love to help you, you know, search for Bruce, but I actually have plans to leave the country. So the following day, Amy and Michael speak again. And this time she has a different version of events.

Michael geht zu ihr und sagt, hör mal, du planst, das Land zu verlassen. Du musst uns sagen, was passiert ist. Sie sagt, okay, okay, okay, das ist die Wahrheit. Sie sagt, dass eigentlich am Abend des 5. Juli vier vermaskte Männer in die Haus kamen. Sie war im Schauer, aber sie haben sie rausgeholt und sie schlug sie aus, damit sie nichts sehen konnte.

Sie hörte sie Bruce nach oben führen, ihn aufschlagen und dann hörte sie drei Schüsse. And after that, all she heard was what sounded like his body being tossed down the stairs and dragged out of the house. She said before they left, the masked gunman said something to Amy. They told her to clean up the house. And if anyone asked, tell them that Bruce left and said he would be back soon.

They also threatened to come back and kill Amy and Bruce's young daughter, Jacqueline, if anyone ever found out the truth. She needed to keep this a secret. So this is definitely a little bit more than like, hey, he went out at 11 p.m. and didn't come back. He's saying, hey, intruders broke in, tied me up, murdered him and then told me to cover it up or else they would come back and kill me.

Well, Michael's talking to people, you know, like he's investigating, he's investigating, the cops are, but Michael is. And there are some neighbors who corroborate this story. So one of the neighbors said that on the night of July 5th, they did hear three loud popping noises that sounded like gunshots coming from Bruce's home at around 10 p.m.

Doesn't like it.

And you have to take into consideration Bruce's line of work. Sometimes it did involve shady characters, even if it was legal. Though apparently there were some operations that he was running there, too, that were a little below board. So Michael at this point decides to take this information to police. He's like, hey, this is what I found out. She lied, but then she tells the truth.

And then I check with the neighbors and they also heard the gunshots. Und zehn Tage nach dem Missing von Bruce, ist Amy endlich getrackt und in die Polizeistation gebracht, um ein offizielles Statement zu geben. Und da sagt Amy der Polizei, dass die Grund, warum sie nicht weitergekommen ist, all das war, weil sie furchtbar war.

Sie erinnert sich an die gemüffelten Geräusche, die Füllung eines Pfeils, das sich an die Rückseite ihres Herzens drückt, und die Erinnerung an jemanden, der ihr sagt, wenn sie gesprochen hätte, würde sie sterben. Die einzige distinguierende Feature, die sie der Polizei geben konnte, war, dass einer der Männer einen schweren New Yorker Akzent hatte. She said she did what they told her to.

She cleaned the carpets, kept her mouth shut. Here's the thing though. Amy isn't recalling all of this from memory. She has these handwritten notes with her during her statement. So when she comes into police, she brings paper. And she's reading this statement off of paper. Police are like... What is going on? So they decide at this point they have probable cause.

They're going to search Bruce's house.

So keep in mind, Bruce has been missing for 10 days at this point. And what they're looking for is basically any evidence that can confirm Amy's story or at the very least a sign of what happened to Bruce. Was sie nicht finden, sind irgendwelche Fingerprinte, die aus dem Allgemeinen aussehen.

Aber noch interessanter ist, dass es keine Bullen, Kassierungen oder irgendwelche Einflussszenarien in der primären Wohnung gibt, die sie bemerken. Was sie finden, nach dem Test von Illuminol, ist eine riesige Trelle von Blut, die von dem Master-Bedroom nach vorne führt. Also ist es offensichtlich, wenn die Polizei das entdeckt, dass es sich von einem missbrauchten Fall zu einem Mordfall handelt.

So, Amy's version of events, whether it was her who did it or someone else.

i don't know how it works i do know there is a way to like clean up enough to not have it show on a luminol test because there's been times where they've like had to pull up the floor boards to find the blood that was missed so are you asking

It's not just you though. You don't like when anyone sings to anyone in a public setting.

Great. Your phone just got sent to the FBI.

You literally chat GPT. Is there a way to pass a luminal test?

okay so at this point they're like hey we do think murder happened here and when they check amy's car as well as bruce's which had been left behind they don't find any fiber or blood in either of the vehicles so they find this evidence in the house but then where did the body go once it left if it wasn't in either of their vehicles and so this is when they are like Wait, is Amy telling the truth?

Was there a third party involved in this?

Police are still searching at this point and they find Bruce's hidden safe in his bedroom. And when they get it open, they discover there's only $20 inside. Now, according to some sources, Bruce originally had $100,000 inside this safe in the 90s. But upon further investigation, they also noticed something they missed.

Bruce's mattress had actually been flipped over and on the other side there were bullet holes. So it does seem like Bruce was shot while on or in his bed. Police are thinking maybe this was part of the Amy cleaning up out of fear scenario because to them there was no way out.

dass sie in diesem Raum ihre Freundin erschießen konnte und sie dann aus dem Haus ausgedrückt hat und von ihrem eigenen Körper ausgedrückt hat. Sie ist sehr klein, er ist riesig.

Richtig. Between that and the lack of evidence in their cars, the police are like, hey, there has to be something else going on, which is when they start to wonder, maybe she's telling the truth. And when they dig deeper into Bruce's life back in Los Angeles and the reason why he left, that's when things start to make a little more sense. So as I mentioned,

Bruce's bookie operation was legal most of the time. There were apparently a few incidents back in LA in the late 80s where Bruce was arrested for illegal bookmaking though. And during the last instance, the LAPD approached Bruce with an offer. They said, give us a few names of other illegal bookies in town and we'll clear your charges. Wow. Das sind viele Feinde.

Also natürlich, wenn die Vegas-Polizei hier, er wurde verurteilt, und sie lernen darüber, entscheiden sie, es gibt eine Gruppe von Leuten, die sie schauen werden. Ich sage, alle diese Leute, die Bruce verletzt hat, waren jetzt im Gefängnis, aber das bedeutet nicht, dass sie keine Verbindungen auf der Außenwelt hatten.

But also if they were like, hey, you need to be on your best behavior, clean this up or I'm going to come back and kill you. Now, now I'd be like, yeah, okay. And then the second they left, I would call the police.

But back in the 90s would people have done that.

I think people just don't believe that criminals are going to come back and kill them as much as they used to.

Yeah, I get what you're saying.

Ja. Ja. Now, Ken was Bruce's roommate at his home before Amy moved in. But he's also Bruce's business associate. And before Bruce died, the two had started a little side hustle together. The two of them would take the cash from their clients, the cash that was meant to pay off lost bets,

Und anstatt die Wettbewerber mit dem Geld zu bezahlen, würden sie das Geld in einen Casino nehmen, um zu sehen, ob sie einen kleinen Profit machen könnten. Sie begannen mit ihrem Klienten Geld zu handeln. Es scheint, dass es einige Nächte gab, als Bruce im Rot war und er etwa 5.000 Dollar von Ken bezahlt hat, um all das zu lösen. Police think, well, 5,000 is like chump change to these guys.

Would someone really kill their business partner and friend over an amount that small? Here's something else strange. Remember how I said Bruce, his daughter, Jacqueline and Amy were all supposed to go to Tahoe with another friend that weekend?

Well, that friend was Ken. Well, when Ken hears his buddy is missing and they're not going to Tahoe anymore, he doesn't really seem to care. He heads to Tahoe without Amy, Bruce and Jacqueline and does the vacation anyway. And when police try to question him, there was zero sense of urgency to come down to the station to talk.

And it's like the worst is it's like this staff you don't even know.

Plus, it seems like Ken was one of the last people to actually see Bruce alive. On the day before Bruce vanished, Ken and Bruce went to watch some horse races and then he dropped Bruce back off at his house at around 9 p.m. Ich erinnere mich, dass diese Schüsse anscheinend um 10 Uhr losgingen. Aber wenn die Polizei endlich Ken aufhört, sagt er ihnen das.

Er ging irgendwo in den Stunden nachdem er ihn ausgelassen hat, was bedeutet, dass Ken einen starken Alibis hat. Er hat den Rest der Nacht mit einem Freund verbracht, mit dem sie mit mehreren Anwesenden kooperieren. Das bringt sie also wieder einmal zurück zu der Person, die am nahesten zu Bruce ist. Amy. Also nach all dem, sind sie so, als hätten wir sie zurückgekehrt. Ja.

But when the police decide to go question Amy again, they realize they can't find her. She's gone.

So now they're thinking one of two things happened. Either Amy skipped town Or the people came back and killed her. Like they said they would.

Maybe whoever threatened her came back after she talked to police. So they tried to reach out to her a few times and nothing. But then on August 11th, a little over a month after Bruce disappears, there's a break in the case. A body is found in the Las Vegas desert. A couple of hunters are out in this isolated part of the desert when they notice this strong chemical odor hit them all of a sudden.

And it's like they all hate it, but they're just sitting there having to do it. And then you don't even know them and they're singing happy birthday to you.

And near that smell are a bunch of stones on top of skeletal remains. So the police are called out to the site, but the remains are pretty decomposed. It's kind of hard for them to make out any identifying features. All they can tell is that the body belongs to a man. But they also notice the smell. And they say it doesn't smell like the normal odor of a decomposing body, as gross as that sounds.

They're noticing that it smells like a cleaning solution of some kind. But that's not even the most shocking part of this entire thing, as they're scanning the area looking for clues. 400 yards away, there's a second body.

It has long reddish hair and appears at first glance to be a female. So police have these bodies bagged, taken back to the lab, and the Las Vegas police are feeling like they think it's Bruce and Amy.

Und Amy's? Wow. Police don't know. But what they do know is that Amy might still be alive somewhere. And Bruce's family is encouraging the police to look for her. Their guts are telling them that she had something to do with this. So the police issue a fugitive warrant for Amy. And about a month later, they get a hit all the way in Maryland. Turns out, Amy has been pulled over for speeding.

She tries to get out of it. However, there is something else in the vehicle that catches the officer's eye. The big bag of cash, stacked with $100 bills, amounting to about $100,000. There's also another woman's birth certificate, a passport, a bunch of wigs. And at first the officer thinks the road she's on is a well-traveled path for drug traffickers. So that's what they think.

But then he sees that she has a bunch of newspaper clippings about Bruce Weinsteins case in her car. Und wenn er herausfindet, dass es einen Gefängnis-Warrant für ihre Anrufe in Vegas gibt, stellt er sie in Händen. Sie wird in der Gefängnis-Familie in Maryland geschlagen und die Las Vegas Polizei arbeitet, um sie zurück in Nevada zu bringen.

Aber bevor sie sie extradieren können, kommt jemand und zahlt ihr Geld. Und sie fliegt, bevor die LVPD sie in ihre Gefängnis-Familie bringen kann. But there's still this big missing piece for detectives. I mean, Amy did not do this alone. At least she did not move this body alone. So they are thinking that she has someone else involved.

And that's when they figure out a little bit more about this case. In January of 1997, someone finds a .38 caliber pistol in the desert, close to where Bruce's body was found. By the way, the bullet wound in Bruce's chest matches this. So they run the serial number on the gun, and they find it belongs to a 58-year-old man named Robert Wayne Bobby Jones. Bobby ist auch auf dem Weg.

Und er wurde von Amy's Upholstery-Cleaning-Business beteiligt. Also, die Waffe, die sie nahe dem Körper finden, gehört zu einem von Amy's Mitarbeitern.

Jetzt, wenn sie Bilder von Bobby sehen, realisieren sie, This is definitely the guy that could have helped Amy move a body. So they get a warrant to search Bobby's property. And then they get to his house and they notice something odd. It's that same weird chemical smell they noticed when they discovered Bruce's body.

And that's when they realize it's a chemical they use for the upholstery business. But as I mentioned, Bobby's nowhere to be found. He's also MIA. So the police issue a fugitive warrant for him as well. And to place even greater attention on the case, they get America's Most Wanted to run an episode about Bruce's murder. And shockingly, it works. I think I need to say something real quick, too.

How do the neighbors react

Well, they just said that they heard the gunshot.

They didn't say that they saw people, they were just saying, yeah, I mean, if she's saying there were gunshots that night, yeah, we did hear them.

So, six more months go by. They can't find Amy, so they decide, let's reach out to the producers of America's Most Wanted and see if we can run the episode again. And it works. Again, someone says they know where Amy is currently. She's bartending at a nudist colony in Fort Pierce, Florida. So cops storm the campground, but Amy's already a step ahead of them. They say she left mere hours ago.

Though it only takes a few more days to track her down, on January 28th, she is tracked down to a friend's home 16 miles away and finally placed in handcuffs. And this time, police aren't letting her get away. She's sent back to Vegas, where she tells the police the same thing she originally did. The same exact story. She thinks the mobsters killed Bruce.

Our sources for this episode are nydailynews.com, caselawfindlaw.com, tampabay.com, lasvegassun.com, murderpedia.com and Oxygen. We've said it before, but Garrett and I do think a lot about how blessed we are to do what we do, that we work from our house, our studio, and that while we might be telling stories about dangerous people, our line of work isn't inherently dangerous.

Aber sie kaufen es nicht, besonders weil sie wissen, dass sie Bruce's Geld mit ihr auf der Straße hatte. Also später in diesem Jahr, im Oktober 1998, sind Amy und Bobby zusammen getötet, um den Tod von Bruce Weinstein zu verurteilen. Die Verwaltung bildet die Geschichte als einen Enttäuschungsprozess falsch.

Es scheint, dass Amy ein paar Freunde in der Woche vor dem Verurteilung hintete, dass sie eigentlich Bruce töten wollte. But she wanted to find a way to keep his money after he was gone. So in order to do that, she needed a bit of help. That's when she recruited her employee Bobby, who she knew was already strapped for cash.

She told Bobby he should pretend to break in one night and hold Bruce at gunpoint until he gave him what he was looking for. That evening, Bruce recognized Bobby. He could make out his voice. So Bobby panicked. He shot Bruce, dragged him out of the house and the two used cleaning supplies to cover their tracks.

Amy came up with the fake story and mopped up the house while Bobby brought Bruce out to the desert. Then they took his cash. Whether or not that's exactly what actually happened, the jury believes it. Amy was found guilty of first-degree murder and given two life sentences, while Bobby was also found guilty for his part in the crime and given five years. But it doesn't end there.

Two years after this, both of their convictions are overturned. Apparently, during the trial, one of the former homicide detectives called Amy's story a complete, quote, fairy tale, which Supreme Court justices agreed should not have been allowed during testimony, because that's a matter of opinion, but could sway the jury.

So as a result, Amy and Bobby were granted a new trial, but instead of risking her life in the hands of another jury, Amy pled guilty to second-degree murder and was given a new sentence of 10 to 25 years. She was actually released in 2011. Bobby was not retried at all. The judge felt he had already served the majority of his time for the case, so they decided to release him.

And while both of them are back out living their lives now, the lives of Bruce's family are changed forever. Seine Tochter Jacqueline hat den meisten von diesem nächsten Kapitel gemacht. Sie hat beschlossen, die Gefährdung des Familienunternehmens zu vermeiden. Sie ist aufgewachsen, um ein Arzt zu werden.

Aber ich denke, es gibt definitiv etwas Herzbrechendes in diesen Fällen, wenn Mörder rauskommen und die Verbrecher immer noch tot sind. And that is the case of Bruce Weinstein. Thank you guys so much for listening to today's episode. Garrett actually had to run out like three minutes ago to go jump in a meeting. So I love it and he still hates it. We'll see you next time. Goodbye.

We're not out there putting our lives at risk every day to make a living. Though that is what some people do. For some professionals, danger is a part of the job description. Comes with the territory, right? Whether you're maintaining the law, working as a police officer or breaking it, like working with the mob or doing illegal bookkeeping.

Some professions mean you don't know how the day is going to end. But there's something else that's interesting about these dangerous lines of work. You never know who will come for you. And if it does end in the worst case scenario, say a murder investigation, your greatest enemies become suspects, even though they may be a cover for the people closest to you.

You're listening to an Ono Media Podcast. Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland.

That is what we will be talking about today. So, I want to introduce you to 46-year-old Bruce Weinstein. Now, he was originally from Liberty, New York. Bruce and his family moved to Los Angeles, California, I believe sometime when he was a kid. And that's where he spent much of his formative years.

And while I don't know a ton about Bruce Weinsteins early life, I know that he was the eldest of four siblings and he and his family were really tight. When his brother Steven got older, he decided to start a little family business with his dad. This is one that Bruce himself would join later, though we're not talking about running a laundromat or getting into real estate.

No, Bruce's family ran their own bookkeeping business. A.k.a. this is collecting bets and then paying them off. So say there's a basketball game you feel really confident about or a horse you want to bet on. You might seek out the Weinsteins to place a bet. And this is especially in the days before apps like DraftKings.

And he's the husband.

And Bruce was really good at his job, mainly because he earned the trust of a lot of his players. Which, let's face it, while this is legal in many states, it can be a bit sketchy. But Bruce probably had some wealthy people making some pretty hefty bets while he was living in Los Angeles.

oh all right you guys we're back we were filming and we have our back door all the way open because daisy likes to go play in the backyard while we were filming and then garrett looked over and there was the biggest deer on our Like concrete. Like could have walked into our house that close to the door. The wide open door.

And Daisy just looked at it and didn't even come inside.

Just casually walking on our house.

And then the deer just looked away and walked down into the ravine.

Oh my gosh.

It was so close.

Okay, we are getting back into Bruce, who has now grown up in L.A. with his family. His brother and dad started business and he is now also working at this bookkeeping business as an adult. And like I said, Bruce probably has some pretty wealthy clients. Because he ends up making a good living off this profession.

He drove a nice car, he lived in a beautiful house, and he knew how to have a good time. Bruce was always the life of the party. He lived life in the fast lane, always out enjoying nice dinners with a few drinks. Plus, everyone said he had this laugh that was just infectious. Bruce sounds like the kind of guy you really want to be around.

At least, that's what Elisabeth Tuch felt when she met Bruce. So, the two of them meet and then they get married in 1990. And they end up welcoming a little girl into their family. It's Bruce's first and only child, Jacqueline. But over time, things started to get rocky between Elizabeth and Bruce. And in the early 90s, they decided to call it quits.

But Bruce wasn't just moving past the relationship. He actually decided after this divorce that he wanted to move out of LA. Though there was one thing Bruce wasn't willing to be done with yet, and that was his bookie business. So Bruce found a place where he could really build his roster of clients.

and still see his daughter on the weekends, which is why in the early 90s he decides to move from L.A. to Las Vegas. Now, a single dad in his early 40s, Bruce was excited about this brand new chapter. He really embraced the gambling scene. He got to know the people around the hotels. He began entering poker tournaments at the casinos. And that's where he meets 46-year-old Amy Deschamps.

Nun, es gibt ein kleines Ding über Bruce, das ich noch nicht erwähnt habe. Und das ist, dass er in einer Gruppe aussteht. Bruce ist ungefähr 300 Kilo. Er hat einen langen silbernen Ponytail, diesen großen runden Bein. Und 1995, während er Texas Hold'em am Mirage Casino spielt, He definitely stands out to Amy. She's a petite brunette who sits next to him at the poker table. They get talking.

Bruce tells her, oh yeah, I actually run a bookkeeping business. She tells him she has her own upholstery cleaning business and works for a lot of hotels on the strip. And Bruce says, hey, I'd love to hire you for a job. She probably gives him her business card. And a few days later, she shows up on Bruce's doorstep, ready to clean whatever it was he needed cleaned.

Aber es ist klar, dass Bruce nicht wirklich interessiert war, dass Amy zu Clean kommt. Es ist eher eine persönliche Sache. Also kommt sie her und sie sprechen. Und er lernt, dass Amy beide ihrer Eltern verloren hat, als sie jung war, bevor sie sogar zehn Jahre alt war. Sie wurde dann von ihrer Tochter und Onkel in New Jersey geboren. Und als sie 17 Jahre alt war, fuhr sie weg.

Sie heiratete ihre Highschool-Sweetheart. Die beiden wurden verheiratet. Amy wurde wieder verheiratet, was nach einer zweiten Verheiratung gefolgt wurde. und das ist, als amy beschlossen hat, dass sie eine Veränderung der Szenerie brauchte, also 1992, um die gleiche Zeit wie bruce amy in las vegas umgekehrt wurde und ein Konto gekauft hat.

Sie startet das Kühlschrank-Business mit einigen Freunden, hat einige ziemlich große Klienten, wie mgm und scenic airlines, und jetzt ist sie hier, wurde von bruce weinstein verurteilt und es scheint, Amy is into it. Bruce asks her out. Things go from professional to romantic pretty quickly.

And within just a week or so of meeting Bruce, Amy is selling her condo and moving into his large Spanish style home.

I mean, within a week, she's like, let me dip in that pool. So things were moving so fast that even Bruce's mother, Sylvia, was like, bro, you've got to slow down. She nearly fainted when she heard that Bruce bought Amy a diamond necklace and a new Chevy Camaro just weeks after they met. But there were others who thought Amy was kind of a source of light in Bruce's life.

She was helping him get back into shape. She was helping him monitor his diabetes. Bruce even started to slim down in the weeks after meeting her, getting a little healthier. And the two did seem to be in love. They were planning for their future, booking vacations and doing things together. So about a year into their relationship in 1996, They plan to take a little trip to Lake Tahoe, California.

This is close to Vegas. They're just going to go have fun. So on July 6th, Bruce was going to leave work, meet up with Amy. But fate had another plan for Bruce. Am Samstagabend bekommt Bruce' Mutter, Sylvia, einen Anruf, dass er nie in seinem Büro aufgehört hat. Das ist für sie seltsam, weil sie dieses Geschäft gut kennt. Ich meine, die Hälfte der Familie ist im Buchhaltungsbusiness.

Und sie weiß, dass Bruce um 6 Uhr da sein muss, um das, was sie nennen, die Linie zu setzen. Was im Grunde genommen bedeutet, dass er um 6 Uhr da sein muss, um die initialen Betting-Ausgaben für diesen Tag zu erstellen. And this is something that you cannot miss. Like it absolutely has to be done and Bruce has to do it.

Which is why Sylvia then calls Bruce's girlfriend Amy to see why he didn't show up to work. And Amy tells Sylvia, Bruce's mom, that the last time she saw Bruce was actually around 11 p.m. the night before. That was when he told her he had to go run off and do something pretty quickly. But if he wasn't home by the morning, he would just meet her in Tahoe after work.

Ich habe versucht, dich weniger alt zu machen.

Well, I think that to her, because of the line of work he's in, she maybe doesn't think it's weird that he has to go do something at 11 because there could be maybe sketchy stuff going on. And maybe if he does have to work and they're going to leave for Tahoe, he's thinking, you just go with my daughter and then I'll meet you there.

Something's off. Well, so Sylvia's like, okay, but Amy doesn't seem totally alarmed. She's kind of treating it casually, but Sylvia's like, I just don't, something's not right. Lately, Bruce had kind of been a creature of habit. Him going out at 11 p.m. at night just didn't seem like something he would do anymore.

Like, yeah, he used to be a party guy, but Sylvia just decides she's gonna call Bruce's brother Steven. Jetzt muss ich dir sagen, dass als Bruce zu Las Vegas geflogen wurde, so auch seine Mutter Sylvia. Sie ist auch da geflogen, um nahe zu sein. Sie nennt Bruce' Bruder Steven, der noch in L.A. lebt, und sagt ihm, hey, Bruce ist missbraucht. Er ist heute nicht mehr auf der Arbeit.

Erinnere dich, das ist wie ein Familienunternehmen in den Staaten. Steven fliegt aus L.A. an, um zu helfen, ihn zu suchen. Und natürlich ist ihr erster Stopp Bruce' Haus. When they get there, Bruce isn't home, which may not be surprising. However, Amy is there. And when they get there and go inside, they realize that Amy is shampooing the carpets at Bruce's home.

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Ich war 10.14 Uhr. Ja, gut gemacht, Baby.

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rocketmoney.com slash husband. So Steven and Sylvia show up being like, hey, where's your, you know, our family member, your boyfriend Bruce, open the door and his new girlfriend of a year is shampooing the carpets in his home saying, I haven't seen him since the night before.

I will play it.

Ja, ja, ja. Okay. No, but we did get a call that we couldn't geolocate. So we sort of just let it go.

And while we're recording this, we are currently trying to get episodes banked so we can go on this little trip and Daisy has had it.

Do you want to hear the 911 call before you jump to conclusions?

Okay. Hello? Hello? But in the audio you can hear what sounds like someone running through the woods and then you hear them scream goddamn before several rounds of gunshots go off.

And after that there's no more voices, just the operator saying hello, hello.

Okay. So they heard gunshots on this call and then just didn't do anything about it. I... I have no idea how or even why a call like this could go investigated. At one point you even hear the operator acknowledge that they're hearing gunshots. So this definitely feels like something they should have at least tried to look into, but they didn't.

Not until the officers who are actively investigating Lorenzens case get their hands on that 911 call. And now everyone's like, Okay, well, we need to follow up. But like I said, it has been eight days since that call was made. But on July 28th, they trace it to a wooded area in southeast Memphis. And that day, equipped with a team of cadaver dogs, police find 34-year-old Lorenzen Wright.

He has been shot to death and his body is already decomposing in a field from the summer Memphis weather. So, there were a few other telling clues at the crime scene though. For example, police found shell casings to two different weapons, a 9mm revolver and a small caliber handgun. Welche typisch eine Person nicht zwei Art von Waffen benutzt, um jemanden zu töten.

Also zu Investigatoren, das bedeutet wahrscheinlich, dass es mindestens zwei Leute gab, die Lorenzen Wright in diesem Feld verabschiedet und ermordet haben. Ja. Sie erinnern sich auch daran, dass Lorenzen noch alle seine Kleidung anhatte. Er hatte eine gute Anzahl an Geld auf ihm. Aber seine Wallet und sein Telefon sind vermisst.

Also das ist seltsam. Es sieht mehr so aus, als ob sie seinen Identität verstecken wollten, anstatt ihn zu töten.

Right. Especially because Lorenzen had been shot five times. Twice in the chest, once in the forearm and twice in the face. So to police, this is saying this murder was personal. It wasn't just some random robbery gone wrong. But for now, the next step was breaking the news to his family, friends and family.

So less than a week later, more than 3,000 people gathered at the FedEx Forum in Memphis for Lorenzen's televised funeral. And many of those people had just a few years earlier watched Lorenzen dominate this same exact court. They probably never imagined sitting in the same spot to say their goodbyes to him.

And while it was certainly devastating to say goodbye to their hometown hero, you have to wonder, how many of these people even really knew Lorenzen and who he was off the court? It was a question even Lorenzens own family might have been asking, because the police were now being forced to entertain one possible theory.

Oder deine Familie ist stressig.

Ist es möglich, dass Lorenzens Tod irgendwie mit einem dunklen Geheimnis verbunden war, das er in seinem Leben versteckte? War da ein Teil von Lorenzen, den niemand wusste?

Oh, das ist eine sehr große Summe. And she believed that the box he was carrying might have been full of drugs. So police have to take this into consideration. Was Lorenzen involved in some drug deal gone wrong that evening? Hatte er die Menschen, die ihn ermordet haben?

Man muss sich fragen, warum würde jemand, der über seine Karriere 55 Millionen Dollar verdient hat, sogar Drogen verkaufen oder Drogen fahren müssen? Also glaube ich, die Polizei beginnt, in das zu blicken. Und sie finden, dass die meisten der Geld, die Lorenzen gemacht hat, weggegangen sind.

Ja, ich weiß nicht. Es passiert wirklich oft. Also, obwohl Lorenzen nur seit einem Jahr verabredet wurde, war nicht nur Lorenzen in Alimony und Kindertagesstatt verabredet, seit dem Verheirat. Shara hat viel von ihrem Geld ohne Lorenzens Wissen, als sie noch verheiratet waren. Oh. Wow. Wow. Police begin to entertain that possibility. Motivationally, it made sense.

However, there's a few other accounts they have to take into consideration because all of this is coming from his ex-wife and then backed up by money, right?

So, we have Lorenzen's mother, Debra. She's positive that Lorenzen would never get involved with selling drugs, no matter how hard of times might have gotten for his family. His friends all say the same thing. And when toxicology reports come back from Lorenzen's autopsy, he has no drugs in his system. Was ich weiß, ist anders als sie verkaufen, aber oftmals gehen sie Hand in Hand.

Ehrlich gesagt, je mehr sie realisieren, dass Shara die Einzige ist, die dies beurteilt, oder das hinkt, sie finden keinen einzigen Schreck von Beweis außerhalb ihres Statements, das sagt, Lorenzen war involviert in irgendeiner Drogenaktivität. Unfortunately, it takes some time for police to rule this theory out. Time that honestly could have been better spent looking at other angles.

And if they had listened to Lorenzens mother, Debra, that might have meant taking a closer look at Shara, Lorenzens ex-wife and her ex-daughter-in-law.

Because from the beginning, Debra is confident that Shara knows more than she's saying.

But when police go back to try and speak with Shara in the months after Lorenzens death, she's not very helpful. She's quite the opposite, actually. She's radio silent. They figure maybe she's still grieving. She has six kids to take care of on her own now. Maybe she just wants to move forward with life.

Just because you don't want to keep talking to the police doesn't necessarily make you a suspect. But it does seem fishy that she wouldn't want to find out who murdered the man who gave her that beautiful family. However, police just don't think she fits the profile. Not only is she a mother of six, she's deeply religious.

She's in the process of becoming an ordained minister, which honestly doesn't really mean that much. And reportedly, she was now dating a cop. While I don't think there's any big conspiracy in that.

I do think it helped police rule her out as a suspect. Yeah. After Shara, there's no new leads, like at all. So weeks turned into months, turned into years, while Lorenzens case accumulated dust. Shara moved on with her life. She became a minister at the Mount Olive Baptist Church. She ran a non-profit called Born to Prosper Ministries that helped local kids.

And eventually Shara got back on her feet with the help of Lorenzens life insurance policy. Well, sort of. Oh mein Gott. Okay. Because he found out that the money that was supposed to go to the kids didn't go to the kids, had honestly been spent on, quote, luxury expenses. I'll show you the receipt.

It was a 32 grand on a Cadillac Escalade, 26 grand on a Lexus, 69 thousand dollars on furniture, 339 thousand dollars on a down payment for a home, 11 thousand dollars on a trip to New York. You get the picture.

She's living big.

By the way, this life insurance policy wasn't the only income she's made off of Lorenzen since his death. She'd also started collecting insurance and pension money from all of the NBA teams that he'd played on throughout his career. Ultimately, Shara lost that suit in court and the judge ordered a professional to monitor the rest of the insurance money. There's not that much left.

It's honestly a slap on the wrist. But it gets weirder. The following year, Shara decides to pick up a new hobby. She decides to start writing fiction, like books. She wants to become an author. I know where this is going. And in 2015, she publishes a novel called Mr. Tell Me Anything. This book is about a woman who marries an abusive basketball player.

There's nothing about murder in it, from what I can tell. But at this point, the 44-year-old Shara likely thought the past was behind her, that she had turned a new leaf, she wouldn't have to look back. She had moved to Riverside, California with her family. She'd gotten her story out through this fictional novel about her marriage, basically. Maybe it was a therapy in a way.

Little did Shara know that new information had been brought to the police back in 2012 and they were waiting for all of the pieces to fall into place. So back in 2012, Sharas Cousin, a man named Jimmy Martin, had gotten arrested for killing his girlfriend.

Now, when he finds out he's going to probably go to prison for the rest of his life, he goes to the police and he says, I have information you might want to hear. Can I cut a deal? They're like, okay, what? And he says, Shara Wright is my cousin and I have information on the murder of Lorenzen Wright. Und er sagt, ist das wertvolle Immunität? Also, die Polizei zeigt sich auf.

Sie zeigen sich auf die Tennessee-Prison, wo Jimmy gehalten wird. Und sie haben dieses Geheimnis mit ihm, um zu hören, was er sagen muss. Und er sagt, zwei Monate bevor Lorenzens Mord, wurde er an die Sheriff's House angerufen.

Ich weiß es nicht. Ich habe es eigentlich gedacht, als ich Law & SVU gesehen habe. Und ich habe es nie aufgeschaut, weil sie einfach einen Deal auf dem Tisch haben und dann einfach die Informationen teilen. Ich bin so, ist da kein Papier?

Wenn jemand das weiß, lasst es bitte in den Kommentaren auf Instagram oder YouTube. Weil ich habe das eigentlich gedacht und habe es nie aufgeschaut.

So we have Billy Ray Turner and Jimmy Martin showing up at Shara's house. Okay. Now, Billy also had a bit of a criminal history, but in the years leading up to Lorenzen's murder, he had kind of turned himself around. He started a landscaping business. He went to Shara's church, where he becomes the deacon of that church, and also began an affair with Shara while she was still married to Lorenzen.

Okay. So he's the deacon, but he's not exactly rich with morals. But here's the thing. When Jimmy gets to share us that night, she tells him she can help him out with some cash, but she needs a favor. She says, she looks at Billy, she looks at Jimmy, her cousin, and says, I need you to kill Lorenzen.

And Jimmy says, after agreeing to the plan, he and Billy went to Atlanta one weekend in 2010 because, remember, that's where Lorenzen was living after their divorce. They went to his condo one night with plans to shoot him. They crawled in through an open window, but he wasn't home. Instead, they find a bald-headed man sleeping on the couch. It's not their guy. Turns out it's Lorenzen's roommate.

So what do they do? They leave. Their plan has failed. They go back to Shara and they break the news to her.

She's like, okay, let's make a new plan. Sie sagt, kill Lorenzen the next time he's in Memphis. So that July, Jimmy says he drove around Memphis with Shara and Billy looking for the perfect place to commit the murder. And that's when it dawned on Shara. She and Lorenzen used to have a little lover's lane they would sneak off to when they were very young.

It was a wooded area that would be perfect for his murder. Like, fathom what I'm saying.

Shara realized maybe she could lure Lorenzen out there one evening.

According to Jimmy, she says, I will lure Lorenzen, my ex-husband, out to our old Lover's Lane meeting area, promising having some sexy text messages.

And Jimmy and Billy could just be lying in wait.

So this does make sense to police because they noticed that in the days leading up to Lorenzen coming to Memphis, Shara had been texting him a lot. And it was a lot of flirty texts that seemingly made Lorenzen hopeful for a future between the two of them. And I think it's important to note that

Lorenzen's friend came forward after his murder and said that right before his murder, Lorenzen had told him he was thinking about getting back together with Shara. But the text didn't stop when Lorenzen arrived on the night of the murder while Lorenzen was at his friend's son's basketball game. Lorenzen had received a bunch of X-rated text messages from Shara.

So when police look back on them, they think, while Jimmy could be making all of this up to get out of a bad sentence.

It kind of all lines up. It makes sense. But his account doesn't end there. Jimmy says on the night, Shara decided it was time to go through with the plan. He wasn't actually in town. Jimmy wasn't in town. He was in Batesville, Mississippi. Which is why Shara and Billy ended up committing the murder alone. So that night, according to Jimmy... Billy was already waiting in the woods.

Shara, who had lured Lorenzen back into her arms, told him she needed him to come along with her to pick up some money from a guy. She had chosen their old lover's lane spot to do it. And when they get there, Shara and Lorenzen get out of the car. And that's when Billy starts to approach. And then he points his gun at Lorenzen. But apparently the NBA star starts running.

So Billy chases after him and Cher is not too far behind. Both of them took off after Lorenzen, where he was frantically getting his cell phone out to make that 911 call.

And then the shots are fired. Now Jimmy says when he came back to town, Cher told him everything that had happened, that they had pulled off the murder, where exactly they had done it, and where she asked Jimmy to help them dispose of the murder weapons.

So, Jimmy essentially tells the police, not only do I have this account to help you close this NBA Stars murder, I can also tell you where they disposed of the weapons.

He says the guns were tossed in a lake in northern Mississippi. Police are like, okay, if we can find these weapons, then we can validate Jimmy's story and we have enough to prosecute.

So they take a little trip 45 minutes southeast to the town of Walnut, Mississippi, and they do a pretty substantial sweep of the lake for the guns. And nothing. You don't find anything. So they're thinking, okay, is Jimmy just leading us on for some sort of immunity? Did he play us pretty good? Keep in mind, this is all in 2012, two years after Lorenzens murder.

But because they can't validate Jimmy's story, police just sit on this information for years. They don't tell anybody. They just keep it in the case notes.

He's like, there's not enough for us to arrest Sheriff or Billy. And as time passes, new leads come in, tips that continue to lead to dead ends. And eventually new investigators are put on the case to give it a fresh set of eyes. Still, nothing comes of it. And then this goes round and round for five more years. No one in Memphis can get the mystery of Lorenzen Wright's death out of their heads.

I mean, you have to think he's a hometown hero and he was just murdered in a field and no one knows what happened. Which is why in 2017, some of those detectives look back at Jimmy's claims and think, okay, Jimmy, der Cousin, sagt nicht nur, dass er wusste, was passiert ist. Er wusste auch über diese sexy Textmessage. Shara hatte Lorenzen gesendet, was ihr Plan war, richtig? Er ist Sharas Cousin.

Also hat er eine direkte Linie zu ihr. Sie sind so, es fühlt sich an, als könnte es wahr sein. Vielleicht gibt es etwas zu dieser Geschichte. Also entscheiden sie, den Fluss noch einmal zu schweben. Also, lasst uns den Fluss all diese Jahre später beobachten.

They send a dive team down to the lake and this time they find a gun. When it's sent back to the crime lab, police confirm it matches the ballistics found at the crime scene. Which means Jimmy Martin was telling the truth.

Yes.

No, no, he murdered his girlfriend.

So to be clear, this confession doesn't give Jimmy immunity from the time he's serving for killing his girlfriend, but it gives him immunity for the crimes against Lorenzen. So they're like, we're not going to let you get out on murdering your girlfriend, but we're not going to charge you for your involvement in this case.

Wow. Nun, ich habe darüber nachgedacht, während ich diesen Fall gemacht habe, und es ist sie, sie nimmt diesen Plan aus, um ihren Ex-Husband zu töten, mehr als sie weiß darüber, richtig, sie ist mit zwei anderen Jungs involviert, wahrscheinlich.

Und dann geht sie einfach auf, ihr Leben zu leben, ein Cadillac zu kaufen, ein Haus zu kaufen, sich mit einem Polizisten zu verabschieden, wie mit diesem riesigen, warte, denkt sie, okay, es ist vorbei, ich habe mich nicht getroffen, initialerweise werde ich nie getroffen.

Yeah, well, maybe she needed the life insurance payout because he wasn't paying child support. They were out of money.

Yeah.

Yes, they like went to her.

Money is the motive. Okay. But I'm just sitting here wondering if like when the cops showed up, did she think in her head, I knew this day would always come? No, no, no.

Es ist verrückt, dass du das in deinem Kopf hast. Jeden Tag könnten die Polizisten aufstehen und mich verabschieden.

Also, in erster Linie hat sie nicht schuldig gebeten zu all den Angelegenheiten, aber im Juli 2019 hat sie das Gebet verabschiedet zu schuldig für die Veranstaltung von Verteidigungsmörder. Also, sie ist so, wie ich es in weniger Zeit bekommen werde, wenn ich einfach sage, ja, ich habe die Idee gemacht, aber ich habe ihn nicht tatsächlich ermordet. Okay. Ja.

So as a result, she was given 30 years in prison instead of the life sentence she was facing. And as for Billy Ray Turner, he was found guilty on all three charges and sentenced to life in prison. So Billy gets life, she gets 30.

Right. So, at Shara's change of plea hearing, Lorenzen's mother, Debra, actually thanked Shara for giving her her grandchildren. She says to me, they are a little piece of Lorenzen.

Six kids. And all the... And your mom murdered your dad.

And then like went on to take his pension from the years that he had given to the NBA.

You put six kids through an unknown murder of their own father.