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Small Town Murder

Puppet Master Killer - Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan

28 May 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the shocking discovery in Grosse Pointe Park?

1.027 - 40.983 James Pietragallo

This week in Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan, the horrible discovery of a brutally murdered woman in her car looks like it might have been common street crime until detectives discover her seemingly upstanding husband's affairs and secret life as a BDSM dungeon master. Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay! Yay, indeed, Jimmy. Yay, indeed.

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41.043 - 62.252 James Pietragallo

My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today on another wild, crazy, absolutely insane edition of Small Town Murder. You have chosen correctly if this is your first episode. Buckle up. It's going to be a wild, weird one. So enjoy, everybody. Let's just say that. Before we get to all of that...

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62.232 - 84.819 James Pietragallo

definitely head over to ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com. You need to get your tickets for live shows and merchandise. There's all sorts of new merch up. Church of the Octopus is up, so you can check that out. Do that. Get yourself tickets to live shows here. Next shows with tickets available is going to be after the summer, September 18th in Milwaukee, September 19th in Minneapolis.

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85.14 - 100.438 James Pietragallo

Milwaukee, those are almost sold out. Get your tickets now at the Pabst. Minneapolis, get those damn tickets. Let's go. Don't make don't let Milwaukee punk you. Dilly dally Milwaukee. They're going to then they have they're going to make fun of you for the whole four years till we come back. So you don't want to do that.

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100.458 - 124.792 James Pietragallo

And then, of course, October 3rd in Dallas, October 16th and 17th in San Jose and Sacramento and November 13th and 14th in Tarrytown and Boston. So get in there, get your tickets, shut up and give me murder.com is where you do that. Also, of course, listen to Crime and Sports, which is right now we're doing a long series on Robert Rozier who killed upwards of 10 people and was in this crazy cult.

125.173 - 134.869 James Pietragallo

There's about 10 minutes of sports in a multi-part series. So it's more about cults and murder. So check that out. And also your stupid opinions because it's just hilarious.

135.37 - 136.452 Rachel Gillett

Because it's amazing.

136.432 - 140.318 James Pietragallo

It's just funny and a great show. So do that. And then also get yourself Patreon.

140.579 - 140.999 Rachel Gillett

Oh, yeah.

Chapter 2: What background information is provided about the victim and her husband?

356.136 - 378.984 James Pietragallo

45 minutes to Washington Township, Michigan. Our last Michigan episode, episode 657, Comedy of Horrors. That is the one where the guy was having the affair with the German au pair, the 19-year-old, and she came over and testified against him. Some horribly embarrassing shit. It was a wild episode. Don't do that. This is in Wayne County, just like Detroit. Area code 313.

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379.706 - 386.623 James Pietragallo

Now, a little bit of history of this town. Before it was a city, it was incorporated as the village of Fairview.

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387.008 - 387.949 Rachel Gillett

Yeah.

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387.969 - 404.354 James Pietragallo

Which I guess was a chunk of Grosse Pointe Township, which is another area here. It's from 1850 to 1900. They knocked down all these woods and all that kind of thing. And basically Detroit businessmen bought up all the waterfront. That's how it worked.

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405.316 - 405.456 Rachel Gillett

Yeah.

405.436 - 432.881 James Pietragallo

Yeah, so for a while, Grosse Pointe was Detroit's summer resort, basically. So they had giant houses and... Summer resort. Yeah, it became like the Hamptons, basically, for Detroit people. Reviews of this town. Okay, here's five stars. Best city to raise a family. Exclamation point. Real excited about it. Excellent public schools. Two waterfront parks. Pools, splash pad, private movie theaters.

433.181 - 457.272 James Pietragallo

Private movie theaters? Private? Private. What does that mean? I don't know what that is. I don't know how you get them private. Yeah, then how do you go there, person who's reviewing, current resident on niche? Why are you advertising it? Shut the fuck up. Yeah, it's private, damn it. I can't go there. Beautiful homes that residents take pride in keeping up. Public service is second to none. Oh.

457.572 - 482.271 James Pietragallo

She just described everything's perfect. Three stars. It's a nice place to raise a family, but lacking in things to do. better than the other gross point communities in terms of diversity, but still has the same bourgeois feel and pressure. Yeah, upper middle class, rich people bullshit. Here is three stars. This is fun. Very short. The weather is okay. Pretty average.

482.487 - 500.17 James Pietragallo

Okay, but what about the play? Nope, the weather's okay. And if there's one thing you'd say for Detroit, it's that the weather sucks. Even if you loved everything about it, you'd be like, it's cold as fuck in the winter. It's hot as shit in the summer. The weather's tough here. You know, that's what's tough with this person. You've got to be a hardy sumbitch to survive Detroit.

Chapter 3: What details are shared about the community and its history?

898.95 - 926.51 James Pietragallo

$2,000 price cut last week, too. Oh, two grand, huh? Next up, five-bedroom, five-bath, T-Bowl for each and every b-hole, 4,203 square feet. It's a big white house with the black shutters and the pillars in the front. And it's a nice house. You can see by the neighbors like there's a nice house next door. They have a big driveway. It's a pretty darn pretty damn nice place here.

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926.871 - 950.525 James Pietragallo

Nine hundred forty eight thousand bucks for that. A little pricey. And then finally, another five-bedroom, five-bath. Your b-holes are covered today, everybody. 4,630 square feet. This is on a half-acre lot. It's like a brick house. It's a different style house than the other one. It's not bad. Built in 1978. Inside, very nice.

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950.545 - 970.992 James Pietragallo

Looks like it's been... I like the way they have this long kind of arcing staircase. It's pretty cool. It's a nice house. $1,300,000 for that, though. 15 minutes from Detroit. You're doing all right. It's not bad. You're going to pay for it, though. Things to do in this town. Okay. Here we go. I mean, you can go to Detroit. It's right there. That's something to do.

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971.713 - 981.164 James Pietragallo

Plenty of sports and that sort of thing. Or stick around and go to the Breakaway Music Festival. Oh, boy. And see a bunch of people I have never heard of.

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981.685 - 982.986 Rachel Gillett

How could they?

983.506 - 1003.308 James Pietragallo

It's right next to Detroit. I don't know. This is one of those things where I look at this list and go, okay, I know I'm old now. And I don't know every new artist that's coming out the first minute they're out. You know what I mean? It takes a while for me to catch up to shit because I'm busy and not looking for that. But I've never heard of any of these people.

1003.328 - 1022.754 James Pietragallo

So I feel like it's either I'm older than I thought or these are a bunch of people that no one's heard of. I don't know. I'm going to run them down by you and you tell me if you've heard of any of them. Everyone out there listening, here's two 40-something-year-old men trying to decipher whether these are popular new artists that we've just never heard of or nobody's. This is fun for everybody.

1022.854 - 1032.949 James Pietragallo

Okay. Cannabliss. Nope. Nope. It's a chick. I saw the picture. Daniel Allen. Nope. I bet he has a guitar, though.

1033.329 - 1036.714 Rachel Gillett

I guarantee he plays country of some sort.

Chapter 4: What childhood experiences influenced Bob's BDSM interests?

3600.068 - 3622.834 James Pietragallo

As a kid, he was doing this, tying people up, doing shit. I don't know what was going on. But then he said he pushed it down for a long time. And then sometime in his mid-40s, started getting the rumbling. Started dominating him. Yeah, started getting a little hungry. So he said that the reason was he hadn't even thought about it in years, obviously. He forgot.

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3623.295 - 3625.738 James Pietragallo

Forgot all about what makes his dick hard. Oh, yeah.

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3625.858 - 3628.301 Jimmie Whisman

That's what makes this thing hard.

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3628.321 - 3628.581

As people do.

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3628.561 - 3648.788 James Pietragallo

Nobody forgets anything that's ever made their dick hard, even once, by the way. Not once. No. I remember people from, women from sitcoms in the 80s, when I was like nine years old, that I was like, whoa. I still remember that moment of going, yeah, look at that. So you remember everything that gets your dick hard. Yeah. He's lying there.

3649.228 - 3656.458 James Pietragallo

But he said in his mid-40s, when he's on the internet, he saw pop-up ads for kinky dating websites online.

3656.607 - 3659.53 Rachel Gillett

Where the hell did you get that in your algorithm?

3659.55 - 3666.717 James Pietragallo

He's going to say, where are these pop-up bags? He's on ESPN.com doing his fantasy football league and these just pop up? I don't think so.

3666.737 - 3671.262 Rachel Gillett

Those are targeted, sir. And you get them because of your searches.

Chapter 5: How did Bob's online dating lead to his BDSM lifestyle?

3681.131 - 3699.379 James Pietragallo

Yeah. That's a sight, by the way. I don't know if it is now, but it was in 2004. It's probably huge now. Jesus Christ, are you kidding me? They probably sold IPO last year to that shit. Yeah, that does not sound like it's not lucrative. It's got going away. I don't know if it's – yeah, who knows if it's lucrative, but it's definitely popular. Put it that way. Oh, for sure.

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3699.52 - 3704.107 Rachel Gillett

Yeah. It's like that tentacle one. I forget the name of that one, but if I ever heard it, I'd be like, yeah, that's the one.

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3704.648 - 3713.88 James Pietragallo

Yeah, that's that. So he put an ad up apparently. and he basically said that he was skilled in this lovely life.

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3714.801 - 3717.645 Rachel Gillett

Oh, so Callum, he's like Craigslist for BDSM.

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3717.726 - 3737.456 James Pietragallo

People hook up that way, apparently. Or at least they did then. So he's telling people that. Meanwhile, he's also saying that he didn't get into this again until his 40s. So he's either lying, saying that he wasn't into it for 30 years and then just rekindled it, or he's lying to the people on the website saying he's skilled and knows what he's doing. One or the other.

3738.36 - 3754.301 James Pietragallo

But his ad goes on to say, quote, I will open, train, and guide you in this lifestyle. Kneel and have all your desires and cravings open to you. Are you ready for Master Bob?

3755.283 - 3756.044 Rachel Gillett

Oh, boy.

3756.425 - 3761.192 James Pietragallo

He'll just be Master Bobbing in the corner. Don't worry about it. It's not a big deal.

3761.412 - 3761.953 Rachel Gillett

Open you.

Chapter 6: What plans did Bob have for his relationships and living situation?

3839.022 - 3865.166 James Pietragallo

Yes, actually, I'll have more fries for me. Thank you. So anyway, back to what we were doing. That's insane. This is in Southgate, which is 20 miles south of Detroit. They said, quote, this is from a book that I'll give the plug to later on. There's a couple of them. The woman he met said he was looking for someone to be his submissive. I needed food and shoes for my children. Oh, my God.

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3865.186 - 3868.932 James Pietragallo

So she wasn't even into this. She was just looking for a way to make money.

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3869.3 - 3870.301 Rachel Gillett

I hate that so much.

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3870.922 - 3875.166 James Pietragallo

Yeah, that is disturbing that a woman has to go to these lengths.

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3875.186 - 3877.268 Rachel Gillett

I needed the basics of life, and he wants to dance.

3877.909 - 3894.625 James Pietragallo

For my children, so I'm going to completely debase myself and do something I don't even want to do. If she wanted to do it, great, but she doesn't want to. She just wants to feed her kids. That's tough. He dove into it, though. He went to events, these big swinger events. This is a whole underground thing.

3894.665 - 3896.387 Rachel Gillett

Oh, it's a whole life, James.

3896.502 - 3909.622 James Pietragallo

It's huge, and I don't know a fucking thing about it. I just don't. I don't know what it is. I'm glad that I'm out of that. Were you in it for 20 years? No, no, no. You said, I'm out of that. I'm glad I got out of that finally.

3909.642 - 3912.587 Rachel Gillett

I'm glad I never participated in that.

Chapter 7: What happens when the police discover the body in the car?

7528.289 - 7557.688 James Pietragallo

He gets the call back, but the problem is that when he goes back, he's not able to tow the car because the cop looked through the window and saw what looked like a woman's dead body in the car. There's a body in it. There's a body in here, which isn't good. So the cop calls the Detroit Homicide Police Section here, obviously, so they get a homicide investigator to come check this out.

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7557.668 - 7585.09 James Pietragallo

They get a veteran guy who comes on down and, yeah, he does – they said he does tons of cases. He's done shitloads of hundreds of cases. He's been involved in homicide cases. Now another homicide cop joins him. So they have a couple of veteran people. Yeah. They show up. They find that the body in there, it's a woman. She's fully clothed, wearing slippers, house slippers.

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7585.691 - 7602.816 James Pietragallo

This is important because in 2012, a respectable woman in her 50s ain't wearing slippers out of the house. Now every fucking – every 18-year-old wears – doesn't have – doesn't know how to tie a fucking shoe. So I assume they don't because they never wear shoes with laces on them. I'm sure they know.

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7602.836 - 7617.882 Rachel Gillett

I picked on my daughter from volleyball last night. I got a coffee and I was at the coffee shop surrounded by children. Every one of them was in slip-ons, slippers or fucking Crocs. There was not a lace out there.

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7617.997 - 7624.669 James Pietragallo

No, they don't know. I just think people gave up on teaching their kids how to tie shoes, so they just take these and slip them on.

7624.689 - 7626.031 Rachel Gillett

Anything's too possible, yeah.

7626.051 - 7633.905 James Pietragallo

I'm not sure, but that's an age thing. I don't know. So, again, that's like the bands in the beginning. They were on bicycles, James. Okay, no, you can't wear slippers on a bicycle.

7633.925 - 7635.288 Rachel Gillett

You can't wear Crocs on a bike.

7635.608 - 7658.331 James Pietragallo

No, that's stupid. That's stupid. So that's what that's what she is. They're like, OK, she's wearing slippers. They think that the body's kind of posed in the driver's seat. Basically, her windpipe, we'll find out, is crushed. There's bruises all over her upper body and she has fingernails broken off like she's been in a struggle. Yeah.

Chapter 8: What evidence points to Bob as a suspect in Jane's murder?

7728.011 - 7747.634 James Pietragallo

Yeah, they're like... A woman like her doesn't go shopping in slippers. She'll put something else on for that. You know, she doesn't drive to meetings in slippers. None of that shit at all here. So they said... And they're trying to figure out how did this happen because she was on the phone with her daughter. They know that.

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7747.734 - 7760.146 James Pietragallo

So they're like, did she go in the car, change into her slippers and then come back outside for something? Or why would she do that? Or did she have slippers on to begin with? They check all the whole car, too, by the way. Her checkbook is in the car.

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7760.527 - 7761.508 Rachel Gillett

Oh, shit.

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7761.528 - 7762.729 James Pietragallo

Her purse is in there.

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7762.749 - 7763.129 Rachel Gillett

Oh, no.

7763.63 - 7769.055 James Pietragallo

Full of credit cards, debit cards, all the trappings of, you know, upper middle class life.

7769.095 - 7769.976 Rachel Gillett

Somebody's neck.

7770.462 - 7775.389 James Pietragallo

Yeah. So they're like, okay. Because at first they're like, maybe this is carjackers.

7775.69 - 7776.431 Joseph Gantz

Right.

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