True Crime with Rachel Shannon
40: Cops Uncover ENTIRE Family's HORRIFYING Secret: A Murder Plot Gone Wrong
Sun, 09 Feb 2025
Yet another spouse who feels that murder is easier than divorce...
Chapter 1: What are the alarming trends in marriage and murder?
In the past few years, it seems that we keep seeing these cases where a husband or wife will want out of their relationship by any means necessary, except divorce. For whatever reason, people seem to think that murder is easier to get away with than going through a divorce, and because of that, we keep seeing these innocent people losing their lives for absolutely no reason.
Chapter 2: Who was Matt Rastelli and what was his life like?
It's such a wild phenomenon and when you hear the details of this case, you will be just as blown away as I am by how stupid some people can really be. With that being said, let's get into the case. Matt Rastelli was born in Houston, Texas on May 4th, 1982. Matt was known as having a deep love for the outdoors. He was an avid mountain biker and fisherman.
He could spend hours on end exploring various nature trails, whether he was alone or with his kids. Loved ones said that Matt's profound love for adventure and nature were evident to everyone who knew him. At the time of his death, he was married to Kate Rustelli.
It's been reported that the couple had two children, though his obituary lists three of them and one of them appears a bit older, so I believe his oldest son is from a previous relationship. Either way, those who knew Matt said that his family was the most important part of his life.
His commitment to his family was unparalleled, not just giving them boundless love, but also bringing them on so many adventures that brought them closer together. At the time, Kate, Matt, and their children were living together in California, However, after around seven years of marriage, the marital issues they had been facing were really coming to a head.
First, the two were said to be experiencing financial issues, which can definitely put strain on a marriage. Then, according to a family member of Kate's, her and Matt both seemed to have a kind of short fuse. they had a way of getting under each other's skin and getting into arguments that just were not necessary.
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Chapter 3: What led to the Rastelli family's marital issues?
They seemed to have a lot of tension in their relationship at this time, though it's not believed that there was any sort of domestic abuse in the relationship, at least not at that point. Either way, due to the issues between the pair, by June of 2024, Kate decided to take her kids and drive all the way to American Fork, Utah to stay with her mother, Tracy Gist,
while Matt stayed back in California. This arrangement lasted several weeks, but throughout that time, Matt was asking his wife to come back to California with the kids. He even offered to send her money so that she could get a rental car to drive back. But this isn't what she wanted. She wanted to be done with her relationship with Matt.
She wanted to just keep the kids with her, forget about him, and just move on with her life. According to text messages later recovered by police, when Matt first suggested she get a rental car and drive back, Kate's mother said that she should fake a sprained ankle. She said that she knew how to wrap it up and make it look swollen under the wrap.
She texted her, can't drive with that sprained ankle. So Kate did just that. She told Matt that she can't come to California because she wasn't able to drive with her bad ankle. To this, Matt said that he could drive to pick her up. At this point, Kate finally gave in and told Matt that he could come get her.
Chapter 4: What events unfolded leading up to the murder?
But as that was happening, Kate was trying to figure out a way to get herself out of the situation with Matt. She was desperate to get out of the marriage and was going to figure it out one way or another. So by July 11th, Kate scheduled an appointment with the divorce attorney to discuss her rights. After that meeting though, Kate was just left frustrated.
She expressed to a friend that she was pissed and felt hopeless. She didn't know what to do. By the following day, July 12th, Matt texted his wife that he was about to head over to her mother's house to pick her and the kids up. She texted him her address and then sent her a photo of the house so he knew exactly where to go.
He told her that his truck was leaking some oil and was worried about it getting on their driveway. So Kate laid down a piece of cardboard for him to park on.
He also said that once he got there he was worried that his truck wouldn't turn back on if he turned it off so he planned on leaving it running for the about 15 minutes he expected it to take for them to load up the kids and all of their stuff into the truck. She asked him if he would be coming inside once he got there and at first he ignored the question so she asked him again and he said yes.
He would come inside for just a minute. She let him know that the door was always unlocked, suggesting that he could just let himself in whenever he got there. So based on the conversations between Kate and Matt, it seemed that Matt would be driving several hours over to Utah to pick her and the kids up.
He would come inside for a minute to help her grab their things, but wanted to drive back to California that same night so they wouldn't be staying at the house for long. According to security video from a neighbor's house, Matt pulled into the home's driveway by 10.06 p.m. He got out of the truck and went to the front door heading inside.
But almost immediately upon entering the home, neighbors heard multiple gunshots going off from inside the home. Immediately, those neighbors called the family, but no one answered. So by 10.09 p.m., literally three minutes after Matt arrived, the neighbors called 911 to report those gunshots. By 10.15 p.m., Kate's mother also called 911 to report a shooting.
Police arrived shortly after, and when they did, they found Matthew Ristelli unresponsive, lying face down on the floor just past the entrance of the home. He had been shot multiple times, one time in the chest and two times in the back. At the scene, they found that Kate and her two children were still upstairs in the home.
Meanwhile, her brother, 33-year-old Kevin Ellis, was standing near the front of the home, immediately admitting that he was the one who shot Matt. Paramedics arrived shortly after police, but by that point, it was too late. 42-year-old Matthew Ristelli died as a result of these gunshot wounds.
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Chapter 5: What did the police find at the crime scene?
At this point, police knew that further investigation was needed to figure out what was really going on. At the scene, both Kevin and Tracy were taken into the station for further questioning. At that time, police also seized their cell phones as well as Kate's cell phone for further examination.
In their phones, police found evidence that showed that Matt and his wife, Kate, were in a really rough spot in their marriage. As I said, after growing tired of the marriage, Kate went out to Utah to get away from her husband and while there, tried to get a divorce attorney involved to see what her options were. But as I said earlier, according to texts that she sent her mom and a friend,
It seems like she felt out of options. She felt hopeless. So when Matt insisted on coming to pick her up, she agreed. And from there, she and her family formulated a plot to get Matt to come inside to the home so they could kill him and claim self-defense. So going back all the way to May, investigators found texts on Kate's phone to a friend, which said, quote, I'm trying to wait.
I just might murder Matt today, though. Obviously, this shows that Kate was not happy in her marriage. Now, to me, it doesn't necessarily prove that she truly killed him, in my opinion, just because I'm sure statements like this are made all the time when people are having relationship issues, and most of the time, the spouse doesn't end up dead.
But beyond that text, in June and July, it showed that Kate's mother had been searching online for various topics involving Kate's parental rights, gun laws, and getting a passport. These searches included Utah gun registration, Utah shot break-in. How does private sale of firearms work in Utah? How to establish Utah residency?
How to file for divorce if wife is a Utah resident and husband is a California resident? How to get my U.S. passport fast? Apply for child's U.S. passport. What if mom takes kids for over state line visit and dad doesn't agree? What are the legal implications of taking your kids on vacation without the other parents permission? So it seems like initially the plan was for Kate to just
take the kids and run, go somewhere out of the country with them, but as they probably realized, you can't get a passport that fast. It takes several weeks even if you expedite it. In addition to those searches, there were also multiple searches done relating to Dan Markell. For those of you who don't know, I covered the case of Dan Markell on my channel quite a while ago,
and in that case it's believed that dan's wife wendy her mother and brother charlie all plotted together to have dan killed because his wife wanted the kids all to herself if you want to hear more about that case i will have the video i made on it linked below But in Dan's case, it's believed that Charlie plotted the whole thing and hired hitmen to get the job done.
These hitmen have since been tried and convicted for the murder, and so has Charlie Adelson. Wendy's mother, Donna, has also been arrested in the plot, but has not yet been tried for her murder charges. Specifically, Tracy had searched for the following items. How old were Dan Markell's kids when Dan was killed? And Kate McBanwa's second trial defense charts. Adelson Donna.
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Chapter 6: How did the investigation reveal a staged scene?
After this, they found that Tracy had traveled to California in April to help a friend's estate planning because the friend's husband is the one that had passed away. The person subscribed to those tactical boxes was the husband. So...
It's possible, based on this information, that Tracy could have obtained this Eve Attack knife from that box when she visited the friend and then brought it back with her to Utah. Then, knowing that it was a tactical knife that a man might use, she decided to put it in Matt's hand as his choice of weapon to frame him.
At this point, the evidence against Kate, her mother Tracy, and her brother Kevin does not look good. But Kate's behaviors in the days after the shooting made things look even worse. Just one day after Matt's death, Kate was on a video call with one of her closest friends. This was the same friend who she had texted about wanting to murder Matt back in May.
Well, on that video call, the friend reported that she gave Kate her condolences as any friend would after learning that their friend's husband died. But Kate responded by saying it was okay, that she was actually happy.
Then, in another video call later that day with another friend, she said that her husband had died and she wanted to show them the area where he died, including the blood he left on the carpet.
The day after that, so now two days after Matt's death, Kate was talking to that original friend again and she said this time that she was getting ready to go on a date and then showed her the blood on the carpet from where Matt died. She said that she would have sent her a photo earlier had she known that her friend was into true crime.
It's like she couldn't wait to tell everyone around her that she was free of this man who had been such a big inconvenience to her for so long. She couldn't even pretend to be a mourning widow in the literal days after her husband of seven years and the father of her two children was shot.
Based on everything we've discussed up to this point, Kate Ristelli was arrested and charged in connection with her husband's murder. So now, police have Kate, her brother Kevin, and her mother Tracy all in custody, charged with Matt's murder, along with charges of obstruction and two counts of domestic violence in the presence of a child.
Police said that all of this evidence and these arrests came after a long, extensive, exhaustive investigation. But as of right now, they feel like they have enough to get these charges to stick at the very least. Where it stands, I believe that each individual have pleaded not guilty to their charges and are now awaiting their trials.
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Chapter 7: What key evidence was found on Kate's phone?
It seemed like this was something that was carefully planned for so long, yet the way it was carried out was so poor. It never fails to amaze me that people don't think their phones are going to be searched and they just have all of these Google searches and damning text messages right there. It also amazes me that they literally made so many Google searches for Dan Markell's case.
They know that the people responsible were arrested and some have been convicted, yet they did it anyways. I have no idea why they thought they were smarter than them. They did a better job than them. I have no idea. But finally, it still blows my mind that people will take such drastic measures to just avoid divorce.
Instead of just facing the courts and figuring out what to do in the most fair way possible, these people think that they can just get rid of the problem and they can just go about their lives normally, as if there won't be an investigation, as if police are just going to take their word for it. All I can say is that Matt did not deserve this.
He just wanted his wife and kids to come home and they could have figured it out from there. But at the same time, I have to be thankful for dumb criminals like them because they make it easy to solve these horrendous crimes. But that is all I have for you today and now I want to hear your thoughts.
Do you think police have enough evidence to convict all three on murder charges or do they need more? Why do you think this whole family went in on this plot together? Do you think any of them will turn on one another or will this end up just like Dan Markell's case? Let's discuss this and any other thoughts you have in the comments below.
Of course, as with any other case with open ends, I will keep you all updated. If a lot more information comes out, I will either make another update video or if there's not that much, I'll update the description. But with that, if you like this video, please make sure to go ahead and leave this video a thumbs up. And subscribe to my channel.
I put out new true crime and mystery videos every single week. Don't forget to turn that notification bell to on so you don't miss out on any of my future videos. Make sure to follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. All will be linked down below. And if you have any case suggestions, please make sure to fill out the Google form, which is listed down below.
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