The Dumbest Murder Ever - The James Duncan story
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Who was James Duncan and what led to the tragic event?
So this guy, you know what? You're going to think I made this story up because it is wild. Now the story is about this guy, James. And James is 35 living in a small town in West Virginia. And he's kind of an awful guy. Like he drinks a lot. He abuses his wife. But one night in 1983, James gets what's coming to him. because it's late, and he comes home from the bar drunk, and he decides his wife needs to make him a snack. His wife is this woman, Cleo, and Cleo's 35. And so he yanks Cleo out of the bed, because it's the middle of the night and she's asleep, and he's yelling at her, make me some food. And so she makes him some soup, but then he gets mad that the soup is too cold, and grrr, he slings the bowl across the kitchen, and bam, it smashes against the wall. Then he notices their wood stove had gone out. So he's all pissed off about that too. And this causes a whole big fight and he's like roughing up Cleo and he's chasing her around and he's dragging her. It is awful.
Now, by this point, all this wakes up Cleo's son. We'll call him 17 because he's 17 and 17 is James's stepson. And I guess 17 tries to intervene and this turns into an even bigger fight. And so James ends up roughing him up too. And pretty quickly, James has Cleo and her three sons sitting at the kitchen table and he's berating them, all while holding a huge kitchen knife and shaking it at them. Then he grabs a .22 and he starts waving it around, screaming at them. Now all this screaming wakes up this woman, Cleo's mom. will call grandma and grandma is 55 and she lives next door and so she wakes up and she runs over and she sees james waving the 22 around and she eventually tries to grab it from him and a struggle ensues but grandma she ain't playing around and she wrestles the 22 away from his drunk ass and he lunges at her to get it back and then blam she shoots him right in the chest
So now James is lying there unalived and Cleo is like, well, now what are we going to do? I guess they don't want grandma to go to prison for murder. And so they decide to bury the body in the backyard. And for some reason they make 17 and his younger brother do it. And so 17 and his younger brother are in the backyard digging this big ass hole and eventually the hole is big enough and they put James in there and they bury him. But now they have another problem. James's truck is there and they need to get rid of it. And so they put their heads together and they come up with a plan to drive the truck down to the local river and push it into the water and make it look like James got into a car accident. Now, I don't know how they're going to stage a car accident while James's body is buried in the backyard, but this is their plan.
And so Cleo and Grandma and 17, they head over to the river and they take James's truck and they take their car to drive back home in. And so the two vehicles drive about 30 miles to the river and they park James's truck on a hill and 17 gets out and he starts pushing it toward the water until it starts rolling forward. And it rolls and it rolls and it gets close to the shore, but then bam, it stops because it gets stuck in the mud. So then Cleo and Grandma get out of the car. And I guess they're like standing there and they don't wanna go up and physically push the truck anymore because it's now in the mud and I guess they don't want their footprints all in that mud, which is smart. And so they're like, all right, I guess we'll just leave. But here's the thing, they locked their keys in their car. Now, why they lock their car door in the first place when they're alone out in the middle of nowhere, I have no idea. But now, they're locked out. And it's 1983, so no cell phones. However, luckily, someone passes by, and it's a small town, and they all know each other.
And so this person gives them a ride back to their house so they can get a spare key and retrieve their car and go home. Then the next day, Cleo calls police and files a missing persons report for James so that she doesn't look suspicious. And immediately the police start looking and they find his truck and they start dragging the river looking for James's body.
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Chapters
2 chaptersSpeakers
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