Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
She Destroyed Her Best Friend's Life - The Linda Leedom and Lula Young story
Mon, 10 Feb 2025
This is the story of Linda Leedom and Lula Young, and Linda's plot to scam insurance money from Lula's death.
Chapter 1: What happened to Lula's house?
So one night, this woman is in her bed when suddenly, kaboom, part of her house explodes and the whole thing goes up in flames. But despite how loud the explosion was, she's still asleep as the fire creeps closer and closer to her. Now, her name's Lula. And unfortunately, things haven't been going very well for Lula. Because one day, bam, she finds out she has breast cancer.
Chapter 2: Who is Snake and how does she help Lula?
But luckily, Lula has a best friend, this woman, who we'll call Snake. And Lula and Snake have been friends for over 20 years. So naturally, Snake is like, don't worry, bestie. We're going to beat this cancer together. And Snake is also Lula's neighbor, so she starts helping her a lot. She drives her to her chemo appointments and buys groceries for her and helps her around the house.
Chapter 3: What was Lula's medical situation?
But still, things aren't looking good for Lula because doctors find more cancer than they initially thought. And she, unfortunately, has to get a mastectomy. But Snake, she's still there for her friend the whole time. She's cooking. She's cleaning. She's caring for her. And this goes on for years. But at some point, I guess Snake is like, well, Lula isn't gonna be alive long anyway.
Chapter 4: What scheme did Snake come up with?
Might as well make some money from all this. So Snake goes and she starts taking life insurance policies out in Lula's name, but she makes herself the beneficiary. Life insurance policies worth over $700,000. And because they're worth such a large amount, they require Lula to go and get a physical to make sure she's in good health. But obviously Lula isn't in good health.
Chapter 5: How did Snake plan to profit from Lula's death?
So Snake poses as Lula and she gets a physical done. And poor Lula has no idea Snake is doing any of this. And it seems like it's just a matter of time before she passes away and Snake is able to finally cash in. Until... At this point, Snake's been taking care of Lula for about six years. And one day, suddenly, Lula gets great news. Her cancer's going into remission.
Chapter 6: What unexpected news did Lula receive?
She's not actually gonna die from this. And everyone is happy. Except for Snake. Because now the life insurance policies she took out are kind of pointless. So Snake comes up with a new plan. She's like, fine, I'll unalive her myself. And she just happens to know a guy who can help her out. A family friend. This guy. Wayne.
Chapter 7: What drastic measures did Snake consider?
So Snake goes to Wayne and she's like, I'll pay you $5,000 if you burn down Lula's house with her inside and you make it look like an accident. And Wayne's like, all right, sweet. So Wayne goes and he gets a propane tank and he goes to Lula's house and he tells her, hey, Snake wants you to hang on to this propane tank for a while.
Chapter 8: How did the plan to harm Lula unfold?
It's a gift for one of her daughters, we're just gonna store it here if that's cool. Then, Wayne gives her some sleeping medication, and when he's sure she's asleep, he opens the propane tank's valve, and he puts a space heater next to it, and he puts some newspaper down next to it, so that it'll catch fire. And then later that night, kaboom!
Part of Lula's house explodes, and the whole thing goes up in flames. And so the fire department rushes to the scene and there they find Lula unconscious. But unfortunately, it's too late. She doesn't make it. She dies of smoke inhalation.
But when firefighters investigate and they find that a propane tank and a space heater are clustered together in the same room, they immediately know something's up. However, there's no hard evidence of any foul play. So the whole thing is ruled an accident and ol' Snake starts cashing in on that insurance money. Until again, the insurance agent who sold Snake one of those insurance policies.
She hears about Lula's death in the fire and she's like, oh, that's a bummer. But then she goes to Walmart one day and she suddenly sees Snake, but she thinks it's Lula. Because remember when Snake came in and bought the insurance policies, she was pretending to be Lula. So the insurance agent is like, I thought this woman just died in a fire. And she knows something's up.
So she goes and she reports it to the police. So the police, they know it's all a scam, so they go and arrest Snake for wire fraud. But unfortunately, they can't seem to prove that she had anything to do with the fire set to Lula's house. But then, two years later, this man, David Vincent, he's sitting in jail. And David Vincent, he doesn't like it there.
So he decides he wants to lighten his sentence by snitching on someone. And by sheer coincidence, David Vincent used to work with Wayne doing landscaping. And one time, Wayne had confessed to him that he once burned down an old woman's house in exchange for $5,000. So David Vincent takes this information to the police, hoping that they'll lighten his sentence, which I believe they do.
And the police, they eventually arrest Wayne. And Wayne not only confesses to starting the fire that unalive Lula, but he reveals this isn't the first fire Snake asked him to start. He had also helped her burn down her own daughter's house, hoping to collect insurance money.
So police arrest Snake again and they search her house and they find evidence showing she's also in the middle of committing another insurance fraud scheme, trying to have another guy who's totally separate from anything else in this story, trying to have him unalive too, so that she can collect his insurance policy money. So anyway, here's her mugshot. And so she eventually goes to trial.
She's found guilty and she's sentenced to life in prison. And Wayne also gets convicted. He pleads guilty and he's also sentenced to life. So shout out to Mississippi.
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