Episode 369: Listener Tales 51 | Morbid

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I have been listening to the Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club, which actually Elena recommended to me.

She did not listen to it, but she said, girl, this title sounds so you.

And let me tell you, it did. I've been listening to it while I walk, and I am absolutely loving it.

I love all the different narrators. I love Audible.

There's more to imagine when you listen.

Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial, and your first audiobook is free.

Visit audible.com slash morbid. Hey weirdos, I'm Alina.

I'm Ash. And this is Morbid. 🎵 I think both of our, because mine's just getting back to normal, both of our voices really sound a little strange.

Yeah, Alina happened to curse me last episode because you were like, ah, she's not prone to losing her voice, which is the truth.

I have never lost my voice in my entire life.

Until the day before yesterday, I, like Drew's usually sleeping in the morning when I leave, so I hadn't talked to anybody yet.

And I walk at Elena's kitchen to like start work for the day and just like hang with the kids for a second.

And I go to speak and my voice just simply does not come out.

Yeah. I was like, oh my God. Yeah, that's what happens.

It was not great. The way you described it so perfectly, you feel so claustrophobic.

You do because you feel like you can't yell.

You can't get out what you want to get out.

It's like a really trapped feeling. Can't sing in the car.

No. And we got to go to the ritual in Providence, the ghost show at the beginning of the week.

And both of us had like no voice. I think that was a bit of a contributing factor.

It certainly was. Definitely for prolonging mine.

I know that because I just was like, no voice be damned.

I'm going to make it come out. But we met a ton of you.

And it was so fun. And it was so much fun.

Everybody was so sweet. So every single one of you that came up and said something like it was you made the night awesome.

And it was so much fun. You were all so sweet.

I was so excited to be able to just like scream about Ghost with a bunch of you.

And it was literally the best show I've ever been to.

Oh, John and I both agreed that we have never seen you.

And I've gone to like a lot of concerts with you and John has as well.

Yeah. I've never seen you happier or just like more excited.

Oh, yeah. We got in the car and that's literally what John said.

He was like, I've never seen you happier than I just saw you.

I wish that you had been at Harry with me because that's how I felt at Harry.

Yeah. We both had our super happy concert experiences weeks apart.

It's true. And I'm going through legitimate post-concert sadness.

Oh, absolutely. Because I'm suddenly, every time I listen to them now, I'm like, I'm not going to that show tonight.

I know. I'm not going to that ritual tonight.

I'm really sad. I think we're just going to travel around.

You know how people follow fish? Yeah, we'll just follow ghosts.

What do they call the people that follow fish?

Are they called fish heads? I don't know.

I feel like they're called something. Probably fish heads.

Something like that. I'm not really sure.

We need to come up with a name for people that follow ghosts.

Well, they're ghouls. Oh, okay, cool. I figure the way that I will get over this is just by talking to Tobias.

Yeah. In a couple of days. Because we're doing that next week.

That'll help. Yeah. I feel like that'll help get me through a little bit.

I'm so excited about that. I can't even describe to you.

Like low key shitting a brick. I'm like right now my stomach is doing like, like freaking out because I'm like, oh my God.

Yesterday, I think you guys are honestly really going to like this episode a lot.

We were working on kind of just like an outline for it yesterday.

And we, I feel like it's not the typical interview that like Tobias usually gives or is used to like having, you know.

We're trying to make it a little, a little weirder, a little.

A little more like fun. Yeah, we want to learn a little more about him that you usually don't learn.

So we're trying to get some silly questions in there.

Some of your questions are going in there.

We picked the questions. I think we picked like 15 and we're going to tell him to pick like five or however many he's comfortable with.

So he'll be handpicking whatever questions he answers, which is a really cool thing.

So if your question gets answered, just know he handpicked that.

Yeah. So that's really cool. And I thank you for all the ones that you guys sent in.

Yeah. You guys sent in some really cool questions.

Like a lot of them were really unique. And like, I was like, I want to know that too.

So I was like, yeah, please answer that.

And I found out that Tobias is a cat person and I'm really fucking excited about that.

So, so there's that. I didn't even know that.

I love it. Yeah. It's going to be a lot of fun.

We're very excited about it. And I just had to say like how much fun we had at the show the other night.

It was just a blast and it was really cool to meet some of you.

It's always fun to meet you guys, especially places like that.

Totally. When we can all just like freak out over where we are.

I think because everybody was just so excited that it was like, ah.

And it was like the perfect kickoff, I think, for Pub Week.

It really was. It was the perfect way. I know.

It's wild. The book is out there. You guys have been.

Incredible. I have no words. I have no words.

You've made me feel amazing. You've made this week amazing.

And I literally have no words. I'm like speechless about it.

And I can't wait to like, to give you more.

Give me, give me. Because I'm not done. I'm not done.

That's not it. I know. I wish I could say things.

Not one and done. I wish I could. Oh, well, you kind of said things.

Yeah. I mean, there's, well, there's more to come for sure.

But wait. There's more. Oh, there's more.

There's exciting things coming. So hang on tight.

But it's been really cool to see how much you guys have like embraced Wren and embrace the story.

It's been really cool. So thanks so much for that.

You guys rule. It's also really just cool to see it in stores now.

Like we got to go to Target the other day and it was just like, and like we went to Barnes and Noble on pump day and just like, Elena Urquhart, like Butcher and the Wren.

It's just so cool to see in stores. And see it on like a shelf near Stephen King is like just something I never thought would happen.

So it's just, it's so surreal that I don't think my mind is still grasping it quite yet.

So that's fun. But it's been a great week.

You did it. I did it. You did it. We all did it together.

You did it. Everybody helped, but you did it.

We all did it. But with that being said, we have a themed Listener Tale episode for you guys.

Yeah, I feel like the themed ones are like... You guys are digging those.

Yeah, you're digging them and we're digging them.

They're fun. And honestly, shout out to Deb Deb for like actually theming them.

Yeah. We never really thought of doing that.

Yeah, we always try. We would try to sometimes and then be like, oh, but this one's funny.

So we're just including it. But she like goes the extra mile and really themes these.

I think we've done Home Invasions and That Time I Met a Murderer.

And those two seem you guys really liked those.

So today we're going to do Listener Tales Crazy Families.

Cookie cookie families. Because who doesn't have a crazy family?

Get ready for all of us to feel like, oh, okay, so mine's like that or mine's not as bad.

Would you like to start or would you like me to start?

I don't mind either way. So the first tale is My Uncle the Murderer, who is now a dog trainer.

All right. So it sounds like it's been turned around, I hope.

I hope so. All right. It says, first of all, I will start by gushing over you two wonderful humans because you beautiful biddies bring so much excitement, entertainment, and overall goodness to my life.

Wow. Thank you. You bring the same to ours.

Yeah, you beautiful biddy. I love listening to beautiful, smart, and well-smoking women dive into the worst crimes known to man.

My name is Ashton, and please use my name because I will lose my ever-loving shit if you read this.

Fuck yeah, Ashton. Oh, no, you got to go find your shit now.

Go find it. I'm a registered nurse, so you're a superhero.

Hell yeah. Who works at an inpatient drug and alcohol treatment center.

My job can sometimes get quite heavy, I imagine.

Seriously. And I enjoy having you two to unwind and relax with, but...

But anywho, my morbid curiosity with true crime started when I was a wee eight-year-old fat kid.

Get it? Morbid curiosity? Insert winky face here.

I gotcha. It all started on June 20th, 2003, my brother's first birthday.

We had just had supper and we were outside playing on our swing set.

My dad was pushing my brother and sister on the swings when he pulled out his giant 2000-style cell phone.

He answered an incoming call. I remember the color from his face began to drain and he walked away to finish the phone call.

I watched him stand behind a large oak tree and witnessed him rub his forehead multiple times, my dad's tell of true distress.

My mom came outside then and was briefly confused seeing us kids on the swing set by ourselves.

I pointed to the tree and she walked over to be beside my dad.

I watched my dad hang up his phone and say something to my mom.

My mom immediately burst into tears, and my dad supported her weight as she began to crumble to the warm June ground.

My eight-year-old mind didn't even realize that my family's lives were now different than they had been ten minutes prior.

Suffice to say, the birthday celebration was over.

No. My parents rushed us into the house and explained we had to leave right away to go to my grandparents' house.

We were living on the East Coast at the time, and my grandparents lived three hours away.

I remember thinking, we never take trips this late.

I kept asking my mom for some kind of explanation, but she just kind of brushed me off and kept stuffing our belongings into suitcases.

She told me we would be staying with our godparents.

Another red flag for me is when we visited, we always stayed with my grandparents.

After 30 years or so of frantic pack, 30 years.

Probably felt like it. I was going to say, you were what, eight?

So it was probably, probably felt like 30 years.

Yeah. It was 30 minutes. Yeah. After 30 minutes or so of frantic packing, we loaded up in the car and drove into the warm summer's evening.

When we arrived, it was late. We were tucked into bed and my parents promised to explain some things tomorrow.

I remember even before I knew the word fuck, I was thinking, what the fuck?

The next morning when I woke up, my parents were already gone.

My godmother told me that they were with my grandparents and would be back within a few hours.

I was pissed. My curious mind was spiraling, and they had promised to explain exactly what in the fuckity fuck was going on.

When my parents arrived back to my godparents' home, my godparents took my little brother and sister outside.

My parents instructed me to have a seat on the plaid 2000s-style couch.

If you know, you know. Oh, I know. My parents—it's so funny to hear, like, the 2000s be, like, a thing.

I know. Usually it's the 90s. Yeah. My parents sat on either side of me, and my mom began to talk.

We are down here because your uncle did some very bad things.

Looking back on this statement, it was indeed the understatement of the whole fucking universe.

My mom went on to explain that my uncle was in jail.

She described jail as I earlier said, I was just eight years old and my experience with jail stretched about as far as seeing Western films with my grandpa.

I remember feeling very confused, but the conversation was quickly over and I was told not to ask any more questions.

In typical eight-year-old fashion, I became obsessed with this mysterious family secret and listened in on any adult conversations that I could.

Wasn't that like weirdly the most fun when you were younger?

Yeah, it was exhilarating. I mean... This one's a little different.

This one's a little different. There were like a lot of adult conversations that I feel like I was just like there for because of like how I was raised.

Yeah. So I like, I love a hot goss. Exhilarating to just like listen in.

I'm also a Gemini. So like from an early age, I was like harvesting the good goss.

Yeah. You were just trying to get the tea.

Yeah. The next day, still as confused as a bug on a windshield.

That's adorable. I love that. We went to the jail.

I saw my uncle or at least who I was told was my uncle.

He looked horrible. He was pale and his face was full of scabs and various stages of healing.

He looked sunken in and way too thin. He spoke with me over the disgusting bacteria-covered jail telephone.

I again felt confused and uncomfortable with the glass between us.

I don't remember the conversation, but I have to believe it wasn't of any importance.

Probably the brief comment on my schoolwork or on my team's recent softball game.

When I left the booth, we went into the jail's lobby.

The entire lobby was filled with our family only.

Not a single unrelated individual was within sight.

Family members were going in and out of the booth to see my uncle.

This continued for several hours. Months later, my mom explained what a trial was.

Aw. Aw. Fast forward two years. On a random Sunday afternoon while my mom was sprawled out in our dining room scrapbooking, I decided to pounce.

I was determined to finally get some answers.

I just spit it out. Why is Uncle Clyde in jail?

My mom, obviously shook by my sudden ambush, just looked at me.

I could tell she was resistant, and she began giving me the, we can discuss it when you're older, but I was not taking that any longer.

I kept pestering her until she gave in. That's when she asked me, do you know what murder means?

Oh, man. In fact, I did know what murder was, or at least the basic concepts.

I frequently watched salacious crime shows when my parents weren't around, but always kept Disney Channel on the recall button just in case one of them were to pass by the living room.

You remember the recall button? Yes. I feel like that's not even a thing anymore.

Yeah. Because I think now when you hit like last on your thing, it does some wacky.

It shows all the things that you've recently watched.

Yeah, it makes it more complicated. It's like, no, I just want to flip back to the other channel so nobody knows what I'm watching.

I used to do that shit all the time. And then it just says hashtag conservative Southern Baptist parents.

If you know, you know. I told her I did know what murder was, and she began, do you remember Corey, Uncle Clyde's friend?

Actually, Mother, Corey was Uncle Clyde's boyfriend, but again, whatever ignorant life you choose to live is your business.

Of course I remembered Corey. Corey was around for as long as I could think back to.

He came to all of our family events, and I remember him always being incredibly silly and playful with me and my siblings.

That's when she told me that my uncle had murdered Corey.

Oh. And that is why his residence for the foreseeable future was now four stone walls and cold iron bars.

Oh. That's all I got out of her that day.

Over the years, we always visited him. I've seen the inside of several prisons, actually.

I don't really think that's a flex. I think it is, but I think it's a cool statement to use whenever playing two truths in a lie.

All right. As I've aged, I've done my own research, and here's what actually happened.

My uncle and Corey had a very volatile and abusive relationship.

That's really sad. I know. On several instances, Corey filed police reports for physical abuse.

Oh, Corey. That's awful. At the time of the murder, Corey had an active restraining order against my uncle.

But from what I've heard, those two toxic motherfuckers could not stay away from each other.

That happens a lot. It does. My uncle's red-hot temper was well-established, and I believe in that moment he lost his shit.

It also doesn't help that both men were using massive amounts of drug and alcohol during their relationship.

Instead of calling the police to report what had happened, my uncle panicked and buried Corey in his backyard.

Oh, wow. That wasn't just any house he lived in.

It was my fucking grandparents' rental home.

Uh-oh. My uncle continued to live his life, all while Corey's mangled body lie in his backyard.

After not hearing from Corey for a while, his family reported him missing.

The police immediately began questioning and surveilling my uncle.

With his track record, all neon signs were lit and pointed at him.

They couldn't establish any real proof, and my uncle wasn't talking.

This chaos continued for six months. Holy shit.

Nobody had any idea. Six months. Wow. Wow.

My aunt called police who arrived at the hotel and hauled my uncle away in handcuffs.

My uncle waived his rights to a trial and took a plea deal for 25 years in prison.

I could talk all day on the craziness that surrounds our family related to this crime.

All in all, it was a very shitty time. I think one aspect of true crime that isn't talked about much is how the family of the perpetrator doesn't even recognize the person who actually committed the crime.

That's very true. That is true because I think we have said it before, like, I can't imagine what that other family is going through.

That's a totally different kind of victimization.

Yeah. It is, you know, and it's like that family loses their person too.

Yeah, in like a totally different way. Yeah.

There are a few good things to come out of this mess, and I try to focus on them.

Prior to this incident, LGBTQ individuals struggled to obtain restraining orders in their same-sex relationship in the state of North Carolina.

Well, because conservatism. However, after Corey's death, an initiative titled Project Rainbow Net was formed and established relationships with the LGBTQ community and assisted them in times of domestic violence.

I haven't heard of that. I didn't either.

I'm glad to know that that exists. The organization assists domestic abuse victims in obtaining restraining orders when law enforcement is less than helpful.

I've attached articles regarding this and the horrific tales of other same-sex relationships and their strive to achieve justice just because of their sexual orientation.

Total bullshit. My family is some of the most conservative people I've ever met.

But as for me, baby, rainbow all day, every day.

Hell yeah. Another positive is that my uncle now trains dogs in prison, who eventually will leave him and go into the care of a family with a child who has special needs.

It's like Melinda Loveless. Yeah. Blind, deaf, autistic, and epileptic children have all been given dogs that my uncle has trained.

He receives a dog as a puppy, and the puppy lives with him in his cell until the dog is fully trained.

Usually this process is two years or so.

With a 25-year stint, my uncle has nothing but time.

He is so good at training dogs, he is now the supervisor of other inmates who also train dogs.

I wish you weren't in prison climbing the corporate ladder, Uncle, but hey, I guess we can't all have it all.

I want to believe my uncle is a changed man, but how do we ever really know?

But at least he is serving his community in a way that maybe if he wasn't in prison, he would have never been able to do.

That is true, and that's a nice way of looking at that.

And I do believe that it's like, to train dogs, it has to change you in some way.

I think so. have a way of changing you.

I totally believe that. Being able to train them to be with children that need specific things and people that need specific things.

Right. You have to change fundamentally in some way.

Absolutely. And, you know, presumably like his uncle or his or her uncle, I'm sorry, is sober now and that changes a person a lot.

Yeah, exactly. Hopefully there is. Hopefully there's some change that came out of this.

But that's my story. I'm sorry for the length.

Never apologize. I can already hear y'all say never be.

But still, it felt right. Sending love, peace, happiness, and joy to your beautiful family.

Oh, I love you. Y'all are the best. You are.

Keep it weird. But not so weird that you abuse your boyfriend, kill him with a stolen gun, bury him in the backyard, then flee to the beach, try to kill yourself, then confess to an innocent woman who will probably never sleep again since she had to turn you into police.

But do keep it weird that you continue to fight for the LGBTQ community and train dogs for special needs children because that is what any good human being would do.

Love you, Ashton. Ashton, thank you for sharing that with us.

And thank you for sharing the articles because I really had no idea that was a thing.

I know, neither did I actually. So I'm really glad that you shared those because I want to look at them.

I am very intrigued to look at those for sure.

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Some cases fade from headlines. Some never made it there to begin with.

I'm Ashley Flowers, and on my podcast, The Deck, I tell you the stories of cold cases featured on playing cards distributed in prisons designed to spark new leads and bring long overdue justice.

Because these stories deserve to be heard, and the loved ones of these victims still deserve answers.

Are you ready to be dealt in? Listen to The Deck now, wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, our next one is ListenerTales47?

Not quite, but close. Not quite, yeah, but not too far off.

Dirty John, but worse edition. Oh, God. All right, let's go.

Hey, weirdos, it's me, Courtney. I've always wanted to say that.

Actually, your awesome show has inspired me to start a podcast of my own.

Yes, Courtney. That's awesome, but of a different genre.

I'm a social worker working with adults and children with disabilities and their families.

So my podcast is actually for parents, caregivers, and service providers of those individuals called Adjusting the Sales, and it's still in its infancy and planning stages.

That's awesome. I don't know when this was sent in.

Let me look really quickly. This was sent in in August, so who knows?

It might be out at this point. So maybe it's up, but look out for it.

Yeah, definitely. Again, it's adjusting the sale.

So I like that name. And it's a great, a great idea.

That is. Very needed. Anywho, I have the confidence to start this podcast and hear my own voice on recording.

Yuck. Tell us about it. I feel that. You might think this is a regular run of the mills Dirty John scenario, but oh ladies, it has a twisted ending.

Oh boy. Actually, just remembering it up out of me, excuse me, actually just remembering it up out of my crystallized brain cavities has me feeling anxious all over again.

Names have been changed for anonymity. You did it.

Except for my own. I always struggle saying that.

It's a hard one. In 2015, my mom asked if she could video chat with myself and my sister Janie.

My sister and I were living together with our boyfriends while in college, and my mom wanted to wait and video chat once my sister got home from work, so I knew something was up.

I thought she would be telling us some bad news, somebody was sick or in the hospital, etc., but I was completely thrown off when she held up her left hand and showed us a gigantic diamond on her ring finger.

Uh-oh. She explained that she had met a man, Rodney, on an online dating site and that they had fallen in love and that they were getting married.

This was super quick and Janie and I were both immediately skeptical.

Since my mom's last long-term relationship had ended with the man we think of as a stepfather, she had been in and out of relationships with men that she had met online.

We hadn't been a fan of any of them really, but they all ended fairly quickly and she always swore she would never remarry.

So when she held up this whopping engagement ring after not knowing him for long at all, my intuition told me something was wrong.

Nonetheless, we congratulated her and played along like good daughters because we've learned the hard way that you cannot criticize my mom when she makes decisions.

Oh man. Relatable. Unfortunately, my sister had given her attitude about a boyfriend a few years prior to this when Janie was in high school and I was in college.

That led to my mom making Janie leave home and move in with our dad.

Jeez. My mom said we had to be respectful to any man she chose to have in her life.

And inadvertently, my sister had to leave or chose to leave and did not return.

So our relationship with my mom had been rocky for years.

But that moment was a turning point. And there was a huge wedge that we are still working on today.

Oh, man. I'm sorry. Yeah. So that might explain some why we didn't feel we could or should have questioned her decisions on this.

Of course. I completely understand that.

My mom made plans to come to our college town the upcoming weekend so we could meet her new fiancé.

During their visit, Rodney made several comments about his triplet daughters and how close they all were, how he talked with them every day and visited them monthly, and that they were all very impressive.

He said, He told us that they were all pursuing elaborate careers in Ivy League schools and that he sends them $1,000 each month in allowance and that once he and my mom are married, he'd do the same for us.

I'd be like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. This is too good to be true, sir.

He also asked how much my mortgage was as we all lived in the house my boyfriend and I just purchased.

And he told my sister that she should start looking for a house too once he and my mom were married.

He would pay both our mortgages every month.

What? This really annoyed my boyfriend as he felt like it was too flashy of an offer and that he was trying to buy our approval as my mom's fiance and just blowing smoke.

I totally got that. Yeah. I agreed, but I also felt that a piece of me was not going to argue and wanted to believe that our financial problems would be over with that kind of monetary support.

Yeah. I thought he must really be a family man and takes care of his daughters like this, so he must also want to take care of his stepdaughters out of his love for my mom.

I hate that I was a naive 20-year-old. I would have been the same way.

I would have been hoping. that this was real, you know?

Anybody would. I mean, somebody's like, I'm going to pay your mortgage.

You're like, let's fucking go. Yeah. Red flags were popping up all over the place, even on that first weekend of meeting him.

We all went to a restaurant for lunch and ordered bar food, nothing expensive, just sandwiches, burgers, et cetera.

And when the bill came, my mom grabbed it and slid it to Rodney, literally saying, girls, he can afford this.

We will take care of it. Oh, boy. With almost a wink.

But lo and behold, Rodney forgot his wallet back at the house.

Mm-hmm. My mom ended up paying and Rodney said he would pay her back.

Through the weekend, Rodney had shared many stories with us about his life and all the horses he owned, the properties he owned, and the money he had.

He had houses scattered in our state, but he was currently living in Texas for oil field work.

Yeah. Yeah. Apparently, my boyfriend even caught Rodney alone during their visit and threatened to break his legs if Rodney mistreated my mom.

Wow. That's pretty epic. Like don't break people's legs, but like that's funny.

But like that's protection. Yeah, exactly.

Don't mess with her. I rolled my eyes at that and said, great, that's a good start to this relationship.

But my boyfriend and now husband said something was off and he had a bad feeling.

That man knows. Some people just have intuition.

That's how John is. John always knows. Yeah, exactly.

He always knows like when somebody's not right.

Mm-hmm. My mom then called us on Sunday evening, only a few hours after they left, and said that Rodney wanted to buy a house in our area with at least five bedrooms for his daughters to have a place to stay when they visited and with land for his horses and that they wanted to also be able to spend Thanksgiving there as a family.

So they were going to start looking immediately as it was July.

This is all happening so fast. I know. I'm just waiting.

I'm like, it's going to turn. It is. My sister and I were completely shocked to hear this because my mom had never mentioned wanting to move closer to us all.

In fact, she had been saying for years that she would move to retire.

I just like flipped the retirement. She would move to Florida after retirement to be near her brother 15 some hours from us.

Also, if he was so close to his daughters, why didn't he want to move to them?

She said they were looking on real estate apps and inquiring about properties and that they would be back in a few days to start house shopping.

Because my boyfriend and I had just bought her home literally a week earlier, she asked us about our realtor and she also mentioned that their budget would be around a million dollars.

That is a huge budget for our area. That's a huge budget anyway.

That's a huge budget for sure. My house was a tenth of that amount.

We realized that he must be extremely wealthy.

Hence, we assumed... Sorry, I totally fucked that up.

That was a huge budget for our area. My house was a tenth of that amount.

We realized that he must be extremely wealthy.

Hence, we assumed was why my mom had decided to marry him.

Got it. I did it. We all went back to our respective offices and a few hours later when my boss called me and asked me to come to her house immediately.

I went to her office and she said, are you sure his name is Rodney Howard?

I said, I guess so. He had texted me his name so we could have one another's number.

So unless he misspelled his own name, it had to be accurate.

She turned her computer screen to me and showed me that she was looking at property tax records and that nobody with his name had paid taxes on any properties.

She had gone back many years with no results.

I thought that was odd, so I sat down and we did a search to see if he had any registered livestock.

Since he supposedly owned dozens of horses and not surprisingly, none.

The sinking feeling of anxiety came over me and I knew I had to start digging deeper.

If I was going to tell my mom that her fiance was lying to her, I would need to be convincing.

Oh yeah, these are always the situations where you need to have like all the proof.

All the receipts. I told my sister and boyfriends that night after work that we had found what we had found, excuse me, and they were not surprised, but they also weren't super alarmed.

They were like, he probably just exaggerated that stuff.

As I mentioned previously, criticizing my mom's choice of boyfriend does not go over well with her.

She becomes very defensive, and I felt like she would shut me out if I didn't have any solid proof of his lies.

Maybe they were right and this was a coincidence of some kind.

There must be some kind of misunderstanding.

So that night I started searching on Facebook and Google the names that he had given us of his triplet daughters.

I found all three accounts and immediately friend requested them all.

As soon as I saw their profile photos, I wanted to vomit.

They were absolutely not triplets. It was very obvious that two daughters were twins, but the third was much older.

What? Why would he lie about that? That's a weird thing to lie about.

It's a very strange thing to lie about because you could just say, I have three daughters and two of them are twins.

Yeah. Like what? What the explanation? Like, there's literally no... like valid explanation for that.

Yeah. Like I'm trying to think of one right now and I'm usually pretty good at that, but like, nope.

I'd be like, mom, can you come up with one right now?

Like there's literally none. What do you think it would be mom?

Which one are you going to take? Yeah, exactly.

She was defending him, and I could hear the defensiveness and almost annoyance at me for finding this out in her voice.

I decided not to tell her about the property taxes and the livestock search that I had done just yet.

Good trolley, good idea. I don't blame you.

It wasn't going to get in anywhere. No. She called me the next day from work to tell me that she had confronted him about his daughters, and he said that when they were first chatting through the dating app, it was easier to say triplets instead of saying that he had a set of twins and a third older daughter.

What? Okay, here's the thing. I have three daughters.

Yeah, like you literally have that situation.

I never once in my life have been like, wow, it would be easier just to say they were triplets.

Like, no. You don't have triplets. One. Yeah.

Three. Why can't you just say, I have three daughters?

Yeah. And then you meet in person and like maybe you show pictures and you're like, I have twins.

Yeah. Yeah. What? So weird. So instead of explaining the details, he just said he had triplets because he didn't think they'd ever really meet and it was an unimportant detail.

Wow. That's really fucking strange. That's really weird.

That'd be a pretty large red flag. But then when they were actually dating, he couldn't go back and tell her that he had lied initially because then he would look like a liar.

So he just kept referring to them as triplets.

He said, I didn't want to look like a liar, so I just kept lying.

So I lied again. Like, what the fuck? I'm like, what?

It just makes you look like more of a liar, sir.

I love that he's like, I didn't want to look like a liar.

And it's like, you lied. I didn't want to look like a liar, so I just became one.

Wow. What the fuck? she believed this ignorant story and told me that while it was a stupid thing for him to say she understood because people often exaggerate themselves online oh that's just such a weird thing to exaggerate about though yeah that's the thing it's like you don't get like it doesn't make you like cooler that you had triplets instead of twins in a single right i feel like some people would think that though you know like that will make me seem more cool That's really weird.

It's also a very big thing to lie about.

It's not like you're 5'11 and you were holding him six feet.

Exactly. What? It's just very strange. So strange.

Me being me, I was giving him the benefit of the doubt and was like, OK, maybe that's an explanation, but still thinking that something was up.

I checked on my friend requests on Facebook and discovered that the oldest of the three sisters had accepted me.

Hell yeah. Great. Let's see what's in there.

I began combing through her photos and realized that the lies continue.

The reality of where his daughter lived and the school she attended was the complete opposite of what he had said.

He said he paid for her to have a bougie townhome while she attended an Ivy League school.

Yet I'm seeing photos of her sitting in a kiddie pool beside what was obviously a mobile home in a mobile home community and of her dog snuggled on a couch.

The wall behind the couch had that piece of trim running down the seam of the panels like in a mobile home.

And she's posting about homework assignments and about her nursing program at her community college.

Stark differences from what Rodney had said.

And it's like, there's nothing. That's the thing.

It's like, she's going to school. It doesn't matter where she goes.

She's attending a nursing program. So why is he lying about that?

Like, that is not like something to be ashamed of.

She's doing what she should be doing here.

She has a home of her own. Yeah, she's like, dude, she's going to school.

Like, that's really shitty. Those are things to be proud of.

Exactly. And it's just shitty that he's like lying to try to make it seem better in some way.

And it's like, that's shitty. Just like, love her for her.

That's the thing because it makes it seem like you're like embarrassed.

That you're not like proud of her. Yeah.

I messaged the daughter and I played dumb.

I said something like, hey, my mom and your dad are about to be married.

It's cool that my sister and I will have stepsisters who are triplets.

She responded immediately and said, he did tell me that he was engaged, but not sure why he would have said we're triplets.

I barely know my sisters. We have different moms.

And I was in foster care basically my entire childhood.

So I don't have a relationship with them.

What all has Rodney told you? Wow. I thought, bingo, here comes the tea.

I told her that besides his daughters being triplets, he also claimed to support them all financially and that they were all in Ivy League schools pursuing law, medicine, and engineering.

She responded that all of that was the farthest from the truth and that he had done this before, been dishonest about himself to a girlfriend.

She said her sisters recently dropped out of high school and lived with their mom and that she had no family and she was completely on her own in nursing school at the local community college.

Good for her for making something. Yeah, what a badass, doing it on her own.

I told her I appreciated her being honest with me, and I told her I was going to tell my mom what was going on.

She agreed that I should do so, and she apologized on her dad's behalf.

I'm so sorry that she had to do that. But you shouldn't have to do that.

She said that virtually had no relationship and that she has only started speaking to him in the last few years since aging out of foster care.

That's so sad. She also said that she's never received a penny of money from him and that she would guess her sisters haven't either, but that she really didn't know for sure.

What is this man? This is why there's some beautiful things that come out of online relationships.

Absolutely. And beautiful stories. But there's a lot of these kind of stories.

And it's so scary. Be very, very careful.

Like I have to say, I am so fucking glad that I met Drew when I did because even like everybody knows Drew and I broke up for a little while and I was, both of us were online dating and even the horror stories that I have from that are nowhere near this.

But like, no, I can't imagine having to sift through that many fucking assholes and just Just seeing how like the internet is in general.

I know. Especially now. I feel like right now, if you're online dating, like hats off to you because.

Well, now like ghosting is a thing. The internet is truly a fucking cesspool now.

Like people have gotten worse and worse.

I feel like it's just getting more and more toxic.

And there's all like fake profiles. And I feel like people are just like really out there to hurt people at this point.

Like I feel like with everything that's happening in the world, I think a lot of people are angry.

A lot of people are feeling out of control.

And these kind of people are taking to the Internet and they're going to hurt people.

It's scary. Because it's going to make them feel more powerful or in control of their own shit.

And it's like, so just be careful because that really does feel like that is the landscape right now.

It totally does. And I imagine that like an online dating kind of thing.

It's scary. Would be like close to a nightmare.

And especially. Finding a diamond in the rough.

Especially like if you haven't met the actual person that you're speaking to in person yet, like just be careful about what you share about yourself.

Yeah, just be really careful. Yeah. Like even, this is like so gross, but like revenge porn is like a thing now.

Oh, yeah. It's a cesspool out there. It's so fucking gross.

People, it's really the worst time because of everything that's gone on in the pandemic and stuff.

I feel like people lost jobs. People, you know.

People are just angry. You know, lost homes, lost like, people are just angry.

They were angry that they were stuck inside.

They were angry about, and I feel like you can see it.

You open any social media site or you open anything on the internet and you can see the anger happening.

And we love you guys. And, like, political stuff and everybody is just so, like, fucking venomous out there.

And it's, like, I can't imagine trying to trust someone thoroughly over the internet right now.

Like, and it's sad because, like, some of my, like, we've talked about it before that, like, I grew up with, like, AOL.

Right. Like, you know, like, when AOL first came out.

Like, I grew up when it was, like, created.

And at that point, there was still... some weirdos out there.

Like there's always people on the internet, but it was a little more pure at that point, I feel.

And like, I have friends from that time when I was like 13, 14, all that, that I still talk to.

Yeah. And it's like, and they were still, they're people that I, and they're like actually good people, but it's like, you have to be, it's so different now.

It is. It's so different. There's so many more precautions that you have to take now.

Yeah. share your location and make sure somebody knows exactly where you're going and you know don't go somewhere else afterwards unless somebody knows you're going to be there I truly can't imagine hats off to any of you who are navigating the online well and then think about like what our children are going to experience like I've had like scary experiences online before yeah I can't even imagine how much further technology will advance and the even scarier things that like our kids will oh yeah it's really scary to think about it and like be careful about Yeah.

So back to the Dirty John scenario. I sent my mom a house in our town that was on the market and their price range and that had a pasture for horses.

She said that she would show it to Rodney and get back to us.

I said, where does he live now? I'll look it up and I'll see if it's his style.

That was smart. She said that she hadn't been to his Texas home, but that he had taken her to his main house in our state and that they'd gone horseback riding at another one of his farmhouses.

She said she didn't know the address exactly, but she knew the area and she could identify the houses.

I started searching for houses on Google Earth in that county.

There weren't a lot of options, so it was easy to find with her descriptions, and it happened to be for sale.

I texted her a picture and she said, yep, that's it.

He's selling it so we can buy in your area.

I noticed that it said this particular house had been on the market for hundreds of days, longer than they'd even been together.

So I could smell the BS. I scrolled through the photos, but there was nothing that alarmed me.

Then I noticed the realtor's name, last name Howard, his wife maybe or sister, someone with the same name, the same last name selling his house.

Or is he the realtor? That's what I'm thinking.

Or did he take the name from that? Oh, true.

You're probably on to something more. Wow.

That's fucked. Jesus, seriously. I called her and I told her that while she was at work so she could speak freely without him present in the background and told her that there was more that made me suspicious.

She seemed to steal herself before asking me what I found.

I told her about the conversation that I had had with his oldest daughter.

I actually read the messages out loud to her.

She was completely shocked and confused and really had no way to defend him.

I said there was more and told her that I found the houses he had listed on Realtor and that I could see that he had not been paying taxes on those properties and was also not an owner.

She said that she went into them. Excuse me.

She said that when she went into them, they were really very empty because they were staged to sell.

But there were a few personal things, such as one or two photos on the fireplace mantle, a picture on the nightstand, basic toiletries, etc.

I told her I was fairly certain that he knew his ex-wife's realtor codes and must have staged the houses before bringing her over because his ex was the listing agent. my mom was silent and so shocked she said that she'd been horseback riding several times and had stayed in both of the homes with him and alone when he had to work that's so up like the fact that she just like slept in a random person's home probably yeah and like unknowingly oh yeah she said that she was pretty convinced that he was lying about all of this and that she was going to confront him regarding his his wealth however she said that she knew that was real she said he told her that he would go to other countries and buy gold for much cheaper And when he came to the U.S. and converted it to dollars, it was worth much more.

Like what? I'd be like, I don't know. Gold?

What? Neither she nor I knows how any of that works, but I told her that I had serious doubts.

She said that she had not paid any of her bills since they began dating and that he was covering all of her expenses.

Are you sure? Uh... She also said that she had gone to the bank with him and although she didn't go in to see the teller, he brought the statements out to the truck and let her look over them as they drove away and she saw that he had millions in his account.

That's weird. It's giving me also, did you watch Bad Vegan?

No. On Netflix? It's giving you, it's really good, you should.

It's giving me this kind of vibe. We'll never know how he was paying her bills, but I am sure the statements were forged and that he probably was in the bank getting free suckers and dog treats and using the bathroom and not making a deposit or withdrawal.

Wow. Yeah. But that can make somebody like that really angry.

They were just talking about that. Yeah.

My sister and I, hours from our mom's home, living in our college town, so all we could do was wait for her to call.

About an hour later, my mom called and let me know that she did question him and that he admitted to all of the lies.

He said it was all true and that he lied because he wanted to appear to be the perfect man online, thinking that he would never actually meet any of the people he was chatting with, but that when he did begin to develop feelings for her, he couldn't tell her the truth for fear that he would lose her trust.

It's like, but we didn't even have any trust.

He couldn't tell her the truth for fear of losing her trust.

Like, we don't have trust. This is all built on lies.

You had to lie to me so that I would trust you.

That doesn't even make any sense. She did make him leave and told him that she would need a lot of time and space to decide if there was any chance for them to get past this.

No, no, no, no. He left with no scene. Good.

She told us that they had been already planning their wedding and that they were actually trying to have a small scale wedding before Thanksgiving.

Yeah, because he was probably trying to rush her into this.

They were moving much quicker than I'd even realized.

Rodney was very pushy and wanted to make their marriage official before buying the new house.

Rodney called my mom incessantly for weeks and she would ignore the calls.

My mom said that she wasn't ready and she felt very betrayed and embarrassed to have trusted so blindly.

She told Janie and I that she hadn't totally written him off in her mind, but that she wanted to see how she felt about him after some time apart and that they would essentially be starting over if they did decide to stay together.

After about six or seven weeks of separation, it was September, and she told us she was likely not going to get back together with him.

She felt too betrayed and that she was having trouble moving past it.

Rodney was still calling almost daily and sending messages constantly until one day it just stopped.

Looking back and talking about her with it now, we weren't exactly, excuse me, we weren't sure the exact day it stopped, but it didn't seem like it faded.

Like you might expect somebody to call and text less and less until it stops completely.

It was more like constant and then nothing.

We joked that he probably found his next victim and that she didn't reach out to him and she didn't reach out to him to my knowledge.

That's what I was thinking. He probably found somebody else to do this shit to.

Fast forward to March, six months since she had heard anything from him.

And I'm scrolling through my timeline and I see a post from his oldest daughter.

I'd not been in touch since our first conversation, but we were still friends on Facebook.

She posted that although she and her father did not have a relationship, she was still sad to hear of his passing.

Oh, wow. Oh, that's really sad. I called my mom and I told her that it seemed like Rodney had died.

I asked her if he had any kind of health issues, and she said that he did have a heart condition, but that she didn't even know if that was the truth at this point.

I started Googling, looking for an obituary, and found his mugshot.

Wow. He was charged with sexual abuse by a parent, guardian, custodian, person of trust and indicted, excuse me, on 9-29-2015, the day after he sent his last message to my mom.

That's so sad. His oldest daughter thinks he died and really he's in jail.

For sexual abuse by a parent, guardian, custodian, or person in trust?

So like... So he sexually abused a child?

What the fuck? Holy shit. Oh, my God. Oh, no.

Yeah. This is horrible. Yeah. This information explained exactly why he disappeared, but did not explain his daughter's post.

I soon came across a news article with his name explaining that he had been killed in prison.

Yeah, child sex offenders don't do well in prison.

Yeah, don't do well. I think Rodney went in with a target on his back as a child sex offender, and the internal justice system did its work.

He was truly the slimiest type of person, and while this was all a shock to the system, I'm not sad about the outcome.

When we talk about his whirlwind of a few months, it's almost like a Lifetime movie.

It truly is. Really. When the show or podcast Dirty John came out, I told my mom to listen because it was so similar to her story.

She refused and said that this was a time in her life she just did not want to recall.

I don't blame her. I don't blame her at all.

My mom started dating her now husband, Jerry, in January of 2016.

They were actually together when this Rodney stuff came back around March.

I remember her not wanting Jerry to know about the situation because it wasn't a good look for her, and she didn't want him to think that she was drama.

She eventually told him, and he started referring to me as Joe Kenda.

Oh, my God. Like the homicide investigator.

I love that. Go, Jerry. Jerry sounds funny.

We like Jerry. He even offered to give me his social security number so I could check him out.

All in all, I like Jerry and the family approves, but I did do my digging.

Good. I like Jerry too. I do too. Thank you for reading my story and I hope to hear it on the show.

But if not, that's okay. It's almost therapeutic to write it all down and get it out, I bet.

While it was a short span of time in the grand scheme, this was a traumatizing event for all involved.

I did delete Rodney's daughter from my Facebook and I can't even remember her name nowadays.

It was a short-lived drama that feels like a dream now.

I attached one of the dozens of news articles for you to see and his mugshot so that you can feast your eyes on this slime ball.

I did change his name, not for him, but to protect my mom as she's still insanely ashamed of the situation.

Okay. even though it was not her fault and he manipulated her completely with false promises of a perfect life.

She likes to pretend this never happened, so I will protect her from that.

Thank you, ladies, and keep it weird, Courtney.

Oh, he... Yeah. Let me see him pulling it up.

That makes sense. I get it. He looks like that.

Like he just looks like a slime ball. He does look like a slime ball.

He truly does. Oh, I'm so sorry that you went through this.

I'm sorry your mom went through this. I'm sorry his family went through this, his ex-family.

I'm sorry for everybody he affected. My God.

Like what a fucking tornado of a human. I hate those kind of people that just leave... destruction in their wake.

You know, like just ruin everybody who they come in contact to.

Pieces of shit. Ugh. I seriously just don't understand human beings sometimes.

I don't get it. I don't understand people who just want to hurt people.

I was literally just, I was letting you finish.

I was going to let you finish. And I was going to say, I just don't understand like wanting to hurt someone.

Yeah. And I'm sure that it's not always the intention of wanting to hurt somebody.

No, it isn't always in the beginning. In the beginning.

But as it starts to unravel, you know what you're doing.

Exactly. And someone like that, that's the intention from the get-go.

Like, you're disgusting. He's a monster.

Like, you're a child abuser. You can get the fuck right out of here.

But, yeah. So, thank you for that tale. Yeah.

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That's greenlight.com slash wondery. Hey, weirdos, we need to tell you about something that has completely blown our minds collectively.

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So the next one we're going to talk about is called Alice Went Down the Rabbit Hole But Did Not Land in Wonderland.

Did you open this PDF yet? I was just going to say this is one of the most beautiful PDFs I've ever seen.

They put a border on this and a fucking title in my favorite shade of pink.

Like, wow. And it says, hi, Ash and Elena.

I have attached a PDF, a beautiful one, with our story.

All names have already been changed. Sorry that the two pages with pictures are a tad hard to read.

We also wanted to provide you with some news article links so that you could do a little research yourselves.

Thank you for that. Yeah, thank you. This tragedy is pretty recent, but my fiance felt like this would be a good way for us to verbalize what happened and help us to move forward too.

If you do not wish to tell it, we completely understand.

Love your podcast. Thank you. Thank you.

And thank you for wanting to share it with us.

Yeah, thank you for sharing this. That means something.

This is, like, beautiful, the way it looks.

Ash and Elena, for all intensive purposes, all names have been already changed in this story.

Palate cleansers may be needed, so I have included some small breaks with photos of our pets.

Thank you for that. I love that. Now to start.

Let's lay some groundwork for this story.

There's a bunch of people involved, so we'll start with the who's who and how they relate.

We have us. We go by Veronica and Stacy.

We are engaged. We know you love, love.

Love, love. Stacey's dad will go by Rodney.

Another Rodney. That's weird. Her stepmom we will call Susie.

That's weird that you both chose Rodney.

I know. We will call Susie. Susie has two children, Bert and Ernie.

I laughed way too hard choosing those names.

Drew would be so happy that those are the ones you picked.

Lastly, we have Susie's mom, Gladys. Gladys.

Great names you chose. Basically, Susie and Rodney were married.

Susie had two children, Bert, 33, and Ernie, 35.

And Rodney has one daughter, Stacey, 31.

Gladys is the grandma. Veronica is Stacey's fiance.

All of the above live in the same state, except for Stacey and Veronica.

We're about a 6.5-hour drive away. It's important later on.

Got it. This story really takes place over 20-some years, if you look at causation.

But we're going to stick to a few specific days that surround the events you're about to read.

Causation is a really great word. It is a great word.

Burt struggled with mental health his whole life.

He was misdiagnosed for years with bipolar disorder, then correctly diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Several medications had been attempted. However, Burt often stopped taking them because he, quote, felt better.

On Thursday of this particular week, Susie took Burt to his doctor.

The doctor suggested that Burt be put on new medication, to which Burt swiftly responded with, quote, good luck with that.

At this point, the doctor was concerned and informed Susie that he needed inpatient help.

She declined per usual. Eek. Susie had this idea that she could care for him better at home.

Sounds sweet, right? Wrong. Susie gave Bert a room in the basement.

Hardly any lights. She barely spoke to him or tried to include him in family events outside of eating together.

It's like, why would you not just let him have inpatient treatment if you're treating him like a fucking animal?

Oh, how we wish she had listened to the doctor this Thursday afternoon.

Okay, now it's time for the rabbit hole that stemmed from many years of anger and hatred that Bert accumulated.

Hold on to your butts and your friend's butts because it's a doozy.

Ooh, I'm nervous. I know. Friday of this week was Ernie's birthday.

Originally, Susie and Rodney were supposed to go away to vacation with friends.

However, plans were canceled so a Sunday dinner could be held for Ernie's birthday.

So Sunday comes around. This is the day, guys, so prepare yourselves.

And Susie goes and picks up Gladys from Assisted Living for the birthday celebration.

Poor Gladys. She had recently broken her hip and required more assistance than normal.

She couldn't even walk. But Gladys was known as a bionic woman, and no one doubted that she could survive a bombing and ten tornadoes.

Around noon on this seemingly happy day, Bert sat outside smoking a cig with the neighbor.

We can call him Mr. Goose. Just having a nice conversation.

Susie and Gladys were together inside, starting to prep.

Ernie off, probably scrolling through social media since he loved the limelight.

Jump forward about an hour. Mr. Goose brought over his new and improved hot rod to show off to Rodney.

They decided to go for a short 10 to 15 minute drive, then parked in Rodney's driveway.

Sadly, this was the last happy moment on this Sunday afternoon for the entire family.

Oh no. So full disclosure, there is no completely accurate account of this story.

All that can be said for sure is that during the time Rodney and Mr. Goose were in the driveway, Ernie came running out of the house screaming, Bert has a knife.

Ernie was already covered in blood and sprinted across the street to the neighbors, followed quickly by Bert.

Bert cornered him by the shed and kept attacking Ernie until two of the larger male neighbors pulled him off by his shoulders.

This is so sad. This is so sad. Sadly, Ernie is the most unlucky and lucky member of his family.

But we will get back to him later. This already seems hard to comprehend, but trust me, that is the least horrifying part of this story.

Because there were four people in the house when Rodney and Mr. Goose went for their joyride.

Our best guess is that Ernie was upstairs in his room.

Gladys was seated at the end of the kitchen island, Susie in the kitchen prepping dinner, and Bert, who was most definitely in his basement room at this time.

And then we got pre-palate cleansers because shit's about to get wild and it's too beautiful.

Beautiful baby puppy puppy dogs. They are so beautiful.

On the left is Roscoe, our sweet three-year-old epileptic pup.

On the right is Kiwi, our rescue eight-month-old pup.

Oh, they're beautiful. Roscoe and Kiwi. Kiwi and Roscoe.

I love you. I would travel the world with you.

I love you. Okay, back to it. You see, when Rodney saw Ernie run out, followed by Bert, he immediately ran into the house.

The door from the garage leads to a small foyer.

Directly in front of this door, there was a small but wide set of five to six wooden stairs leading to the kitchen.

What Rodney saw will be an image that never leaves his memory.

At the top of the steps laid Gladys, covered in blood and appearing to try to speak.

To the left, in the heart of the kitchen near the fridge and the stairs leading to the basement, Susie was laid out on her back, seemingly lifeless.

Rodney checked for a pulse but could not find one on Susie.

Some of the other neighbors rushed in to help as well.

Emergency services were called and arrived quickly.

Gladys was taken to a level one trauma center along with Ernie.

Unfortunately, Gladys was determined to be brain dead and removed from a ventilator a few hours later.

Oh, Gladys. Oh. She had survived. She was like the bionic woman.

EMS attempted to intubate Susie on the kitchen floor but were unsuccessful.

It is believed that she was considered DOA, dead on arrival.

Death was pronounced, however, after transportation to a less critical hospital.

Later, we came to find out that she probably died instantly from her injuries.

But again, we'll come back to that. Bert was taken to the same hospital as Susie for a three-day psychiatric hold.

At the end of his hold, he was transported to a maximum security psychiatric facility to await arraignment.

As for Ernie, I told you we'd come back to him.

Ernie survived this tragedy due to a medical condition he was born with called situs inversus.

All of his organs were positioned in a mirror image to their normal position.

Wow. Ernie was stabbed in the chest, an injury that for most people would lead to bleeding out in seconds due to the proximity to the heart.

Right. In this case, Ernie's liver was nicked instead, leading to his survival.

So his liver... Because where he was nicked is not where his normal heart would be.

So then do you know where his heart would be?

It was a mirror image. So his heart's on the right instead of the left?

Yeah, it's like on the mirror image of, so all of his organs are on a mirror image of where they would be.

I've never heard of that before. That's really wild.

Wow, how lucky. I don't actually know where a lot of organs are.

Because when it said liver, I was like, wait.

For some reason, I thought your liver was closer to like your stomach.

Well, and it's how lucky that that happened to be a condition that he was born in, in this situation at least.

Right. I'm sure it's probably led to some issues.

Of course. But in this situation, like, jeez.

It was life-saving. They also put in another palate cleanser because that alone was a lot.

Thank you for that. Wait, your cat is sitting.

And also, they have a bearded dragon named Pear.

Oh. And Apple the cat. We call her applesauce when she's saucy.

The way she's sitting like a human. I'm dying.

I love her and I love Peach. That was a needed palate cleanser.

Oh my gosh. All right. So where the heck did Stacey and Veronica come in this?

I was wondering that. Right here. One of the neighbors called Stacey to let her know that there were ambulances and police outside of her childhood home.

If I remember correctly, the words were, quote, I'd find a way home right now.

Stacey attempted to get in contact with her father immediately, but the call would not go through.

Veronica tried calling as well. You see, at this point, all we knew was that Susie, Gladys, and Ernie were being taken in the ambulance, and Bert was in custody.

We had no clue where Rodney was or if he was okay.

We wonder now if some type of signal blocker was used to keep the lines open for emergency services and to prevent interference in the investigation.

The phone never rang when we called. We heard three beeps, and the call was dropped.

No voicemail or message that the call had failed.

If you know anything about this or have heard of this happening, we truly are curious.

I honestly haven't. I haven't either, actually.

But what you said makes a little sense. Maybe that is it.

Yeah. Let me tell you, when shit hits the fan, we are on it.

Stacey called work to let them know she'd be out and quickly packed the bare minimum for both.

Veronica called out of work and after contacting at least six people, found someone to come stay in the house and take care of the zoo.

Unfortunately, we have to have an in-home sitter since our three-year-old pup is epileptic and requires 13 pills a day.

Within 25 minutes, everything was handled and we were in the car starting our 6.5 hour, I forgot about that, journey that felt like it took years.

We received contact from several family members with updates and information.

We called to make sure the family dog was okay and safely at someone's house.

I was going to say, like, you're dealing with that, but then you're also worried, like, about your own animals, too.

Like, of course, they're being taken care of, but you're not the one doing it, so you're still worried.

Well, and apparently there's also a family dog at this other house.

Yeah, exactly. Like, so much to worry about.

Thankfully, she was unharmed and outside during the whole ordeal.

Good. As we approached the house, police officers were still outside.

We drove to Mr. Goose's house where Rodney was sitting with the plan to stay there for the night.

About 30 minutes after our arrival and sitting with Rodney, the police called and informed us that they were done in the house.

We drove Rodney and Mr. Goose back to the house.

Mr. Goose's hot rod was still in the driveway and needed to be taken home.

Rodney wanted to grab a few things for the night to stay with Mr. Goose.

While Rodney was inside, we both walked to the neighbors to check on the dog and asked them to keep her for the night.

Worried that Rodney may try to stay in the house or clean it, he's a bit stubborn.

Veronica went back over and called him to see if he needed help.

As expected, he said no, and he would be out in a few minutes.

When he came out, he quickly closed the door behind him.

We are almost certain that he didn't want anyone to have to see the crime scene that was left behind in the kitchen.

Side note, they do not clean up crime scenes.

You can hire someone, but they cost more than we both have in our savings.

But to be fair, our savings is pretty empty.

Womp. That is wild that they just don't clean up crime scenes.

I didn't realize that. Crime scene cleanup.

That's what they are for. Like you have to actually call these people and be like, I need this crime scene cleaned up.

And pay for it. Yeah. So what do we do? We decide it's best to get in and clean up ourselves that night because blood is harder to clean when it's dry and coagulated.

That is true. Oh my gosh. Veronica is a nurse and blood doesn't faze her.

Stacey insisted on helping and also had never seen a crime scene before.

Veronica took a few shots of whiskey at the neighbors and we both headed back to the house.

Let me tell you, it wasn't pretty. There was a lot of blood.

From the looks of it, Susie bled out on the floor.

Also scattered around the kitchen floor were shattered plates, food, broken eyeglasses, an earring, and a broken beaded bracelet that we believed belonged to Gladys.

With plastic bags around our shoes and gloves on, we started by bagging up all of the items on the floor and the blood-soaked rugs around the kitchen.

After two hours, we had it 98% of the way cleaned.

We left for the night to stay at Stacey's aunt house with the intention of finishing the cabinets the next day.

As we mentioned before, no one truly knows what happened in that kitchen.

When Ernie woke up and was taken off the ventilator, he gave some minor clues.

Based on that, the injuries that each person had, and what we could see while cleaning up the blood, we have a pretty good guess to offer up.

We believe that Susie said something to set Bert off.

He most likely went downstairs and grabbed a knife.

Susie was most likely facing Gladys as she prepared for dinner.

Based on Susie's injuries, she never saw it coming.

She was stabbed in the back of the head.

Ooh. Oh, my God. It most likely died before she hit the ground.

Gladys most likely said something to try and stop it.

It's likely that Bert jumped partly over the island and threw her to the ground based on the location of the blood in the broken armchair arm.

Ernie most likely came down and tried to stop Bert.

All we know for sure is that Susie had the most stab wounds.

Explain to us as her head looked like swish cheese.

Oh, my God. And Gladys was also stabbed once in the head.

Truthfully, we'll probably never know what happened, but we'll make sure to keep you posted.

That's all that we have for you today. We know it's a lot, and we hope we portrayed it in a somewhat palatable way.

Keep it weird, but don't keep it so weird that you get locked in the basement for a long time and build up a wad of anger and have a psychological break that makes you murder your family and scare the family dog.

Bye. Wow. What a tale that was. Oh my goodness.

I am shook. Shook by that. That is insane.

First of all, thank you for sharing that with us.

Exactly. Because that is harrowing. And you told it in a way that was extremely palatable and extremely respectful to the scene that occurred.

Yeah, definitely. But my goodness, I'm so sorry that you and your family had to go through that and that you had to go...

That Veronica and Stacy had to go back in there and clean that up on their own.

I can't imagine how traumatizing just that would be alone.

That's something that's going to stick with you and you should never have to go through it.

But my goodness. And thank you for the palate cleansers because those were really.

Much needed. Really beautiful. And I love your animals.

God, I love your animals. You two are wonderful people.

You are. I'm sorry you had to deal with that.

I know. What do you think? We got time for one more?

I think we have time for one more. I know these were nice and long.

I know. Well, do you want to choose the one that I read?

Oh, yes. Let's see. Because whatever ones we don't read today, we'll move to another one.

Maybe we can do another installment of Crazy Families.

Of like, wow, family stuff. Yeah. That's what it should be called.

Wow, family stuff. I like that because it's relatable for all.

It is. So let's see. We have... I don't know.

I feel like my mom is a wannabe murderer.

I was just going to say the yeet, my mom is a wannabe murderer.

Yeah, it's really the yeet that spoke to me.

I bet it did. Okay. All right. So it says, hey, weirdos, my name is Sarah.

You can use my name. I am 23 years old and I'm from upstate New York.

Beware, here comes the obligatory, I'm a big fan spiel.

I found your podcast mid last year and have since listened to every episode four times.

Oh, Thank you. Oh, my God. Your podcast helped pass the time when my newborn baby was in the PICU for RSV.

We know what that's like. Oh, I know what that's like.

RSV is so scary. And I had to be with her alone.

She's fine now. Yay. I'm so glad. I spend about eight hours a day listening to y'all talk, and I swear I hear your voices more than that of my husband.

Well, anyway, let's get into my deep, dark trauma and mommy issues in Puttafa format.

With a smiley face. You're not alone, sister.

This story takes place before I was born and honestly should have prevented my entire existence as a whole.

But my mom is a master manipulator and my dad's a sucker.

LOL. I love how it always amazes me how you guys tell these stories.

It's pretty admirable that you're able to tell them in such a lighthearted way.

Humor is a coping mechanism. I have two older brothers, one 14 years older than me, Steve, and the other six years older than me, Nick.

This story takes place when Nick was about two years old and Steve was 10 years old.

With the bar being on the floor, my mom somehow is in hell when it comes to being a good mom.

At this time, she was a nurse at the hospital in her area.

She'd been cheating on my dad with a surgeon at the same hospital.

Eventually, the surgeon lover decided to leave my mom for a man.

It's unclear if he was bisexual or maybe a closeted gay man, but either way, my mom was embarrassed and wasn't going to let somebody, quote, make a fool of her like this.

Ugh. Like that tells you everything we need to know.

My mom, the idiot she is, started asking around the hospital where she could get a gun because she was going to kill him.

Word got back to my dad about this and he decided to be the hero.

And maybe some would call traitor in this story.

Wow. Like, you need to be put behind bars right now.

Yes. So the day came to meet with her newfound hitman for her ex-lover.

My mom loaded my two-year-old brother in the car because all good moms bring their toddler to a meeting with a hitman they're hiring to kill the man they cheated on their partner with.

I am astounded. And drove to the local Walmart to meet said man behind the building.

The meeting goes on and my mom starts talking for one reason or another.

I'm not sure if she could sense that something was up or if she genuinely changed her mind.

But now the plan was just to cut off his hand so that he could never perform surgery again instead of killing him.

Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Six months. Wow. My dad tried to file for full custody of my brother, you know, due to the fact that my mom is apparently out for blood and doesn't mind the toddler watching.

Wow. But lost because New York is heavily into mother's rights and reunification.

My two favorite things. Oy. Oy. So he stuck around and stayed with my mom so he could always be around to protect my brother.

Oh, the dad stayed around just to protect the kids.

Yeah. And then, oopsie daisy, here I came four years later.

Oh, boy. One of the craziest things about this story to me is that I had no idea about it until about a year ago.

I'm 23 now. But when I was in middle school and starving for attention that my mother never gave me.

Oh, I'm so sorry. I used to tell people that my mom went to prison for conspiracy to commit murder.

I always thought it was a lie. Oh, my God.

And I told people that as a lie. Don't come for me.

My mom doesn't believe in therapy. And that lady gave me a lot of trauma.

No, he's coming for you. Don't worry. I mean, yeah, we know.

But it was actually true. No one really understood why I was always so scared of her.

But if I go missing, it was her. And I'm counting on y'all to do a bad episode about me.

No, get away from her. I have some more stories I may write in, like the time I was at a trap house and watched a girl drop dead in front of me and they got rid of her body and I was told that it never happened.

You should write that one in. Yeah. Yep.

Yep. Or the time I dated a homicidal maniac who tried to kill me in my own home, but I fought like hell and survived.

Oh, my God. You have gone through some shit.

Well, anyway, I cut my mother off completely four years ago and I haven't looked back since.

Good. Sometimes you just have to draw a line in the sand.

Try as she might to pretend our family is picture perfect and I'm still her perfect little daughter.

Keep it weird but not so weird that you cheat on your loving partner and father of your children with a co-worker and then he leaves you for a better looking man and you suddenly become homicidal and mentally unstable and try to hire a hitman to kill him behind the Walmart in your podunk but it's actually an undercover cop and you get arrested while your toddler watches the whole thing.

Yeah. Don't keep it that weird. Love ya.

Wow. Oh, my God, Sarah. I am at a loss. I just love that we were like, yeah, let's just end on that one.

We're just going to end on this very light one.

Holy cannoli. Wow. That was bonkers. I don't even know what to say.

That was a whirlwind. Yeah. A true whirlwind of a tale.

Oh, my. Oh, my. My goodness. Yes. I think maybe we can do, there's one more that's like kind of not super long.

Maybe we can end on that. Let's do it. We're like, let's just keep going.

We're just going to keep going. We'll do one more because why not?

Wow. Okay. Which one are you doing? I'm going to do, my uncle is an accused murderer.

All right. Hi, gals. I never thought I would have a listener tale to send in, but my grandma reminded me of this story when we had dinner last week.

I love that you and your grandma had dinner.

I know. That's nice. If you by some small miracle eventually read this on the pod, I just want to say I love y'all so much.

We love y'all so much. We love you. You have kept me lots of company while I work from home.

And I honestly feel like I get to spend my days chatting true crime and spooky ookies with my friends.

You do. We are your friends. Elena, congrats on your book.

Thank you. I ordered your book from Waterstones.

I live in Texas just to get a signed copy.

That's amazing. Ash, congrats on your pending nuptials.

I'm getting married in December. Congratulations.

So I understand both the stress and excitement.

However, I'll cap the fangirling here and get into the story.

Thank you so much. I know. Thank you. The listener tale is about how my uncle is an accused murderer.

My family still thinks he's innocent, so I'm going to change all the names in the story.

You can call me by my extremely generic middle name, Maria.

Let me set the scene. My uncle, Jose, is my mom's first cousin.

His dad and my grandpa are brothers. Back in the 70s, Uncle Jose was dating a woman we'll call Jane.

Jane was in a long-distance marriage and had a child with her husband.

With her husband. Sorry, I was just like, I'm going to keep talking like there is no punctuation.

There is. You did well. Jose was, for lack of a better term, her mistress.

What's the male term of a mistress anyway?

Fucking patriarchy. Yeah. A mister, I guess.

I don't really know. A mistress. My grandma claims that Jane is the only person she's ever disliked.

As Justin Bieber once said, my mama don't like you and she likes everyone.

Apparently, Jane was caught up in some shady shit, buying and selling drugs and occasionally trading sex for a fix.

Her dealer lived several hours away, and as a result, she would often leave her child in the care of my uncle for days at a time.

So even though Jose spent a lot of time at my grandparents' house, my grandma told him to never bring Jane around.

After all, my mom was about 11 or 12 years old at this time, my Aunt Lucy about 14, and my Uncle Eddie about 4.

Grandma didn't want bad influences in the house.

Don't blame Grandma. One night, my grandma had a horrible nightmare.

She dreamed that one of her daughters, my Aunt Lucy, was being strangled and stabbed to death.

It was one of those visceral nightmares where you wake up thinking it actually happened.

Oh, I hate those. She woke up from this nightmare at about 2.30 in the morning, shook my grandpa awake, and immediately told him about the dream.

She went to check on my Aunt Lucy since the nightmare seemed so real and found her fast asleep in the room she shared with my mom.

My grandparents both had work in the morning, so grandma eventually decided to try to go back to sleep so she was rested for the next day.

In the morning, my grandparents went to work like usual.

Partway through the morning, my grandpa called my grandma.

Did you hear the news? What news, she asked him.

I'm coming to pick you up, he replied. We'll talk about it at home.

Uncle Jose had called my grandpa. That morning, he had found Jane dead in her house, violently strangled and stabbed 25 times.

Oh my God. Time of death, somewhere around four in the morning, less than two hours after my grandma had woken up from her dream.

The child was asleep in her crib, unharmed.

The police did all they could, but you know, it was the 70s.

Forensics barely existed. Jose was questioned because A, he found the body, and B, he was the boyfriend, but nothing came of it.

The case went cold. This happened in a fairly small town, and it was the only cold case there for years and years.

Life went on. Uncle Jose moved to California where his parents and siblings lived and understandably didn't come back to visit.

Personally, I only met him once or twice when we were out west to visit that branch of the family.

The case was reopened a handful of times over the years, but there was no movement in the case until a few years ago.

In 2019, the Gone Cold podcast, I know that one.

I do too. That's a great podcast. A Texas-focused true crime pod did an episode about Jane's case.

This garnered a surge of attention, and the police decided to reopen the case one more time.

This time, they seemed to find something new.

The police had never disclosed why, but they named Jose as the prime suspect in the case.

Texas Rangers traveled out to California later that year to interview Jose, and rumor has it that when he answered the door, he said, I knew you would be coming for me.

The DA was just a few weeks away from presenting the case to the grand jury when Jose died unexpectedly due to diabetes-related complications.

Officially, the Texas Rangers closed the case, posthumously naming Jose as the perpetrator.

Again, my family staunchly believes that Jose didn't kill Jane.

As my grandma says, he wouldn't hurt a fly.

Was it a drug deal gone wrong? Was it the estranged husband?

Was it the local club owner who had raped and beaten another woman a couple of months before?

Either way, the story has been passed down in our family, not only because of the gruesome nature of the crime, but because of my grandma's weird premonition.

Right. Hope you enjoyed my listener tale.

As always, keep it weird, but not so weird that you find your dead girlfriend in her apartment, call the police, find out your aunt had a premonition about the murder, move to California, become the prime suspect 45 years later and die before they can indict you.

Definitely don't keep it that weird. I would agree.

Wow. I would not keep it that weird. What a case to land on at the end.

Yeah. That's why, and it's even worse that like you never, you don't have the real.

Right. You know what I mean? Hopefully you can get the real hard. truth there, because that's always really hard.

There's got to be some kind of DNA if it was that violent of a crime scene.

But my goodness. Damn, you guys. Families, am I right?

You're right. Families. Families, amen. Well, thanks for sending those in, guys, because those were really intense.

They were, and thank you for, like, feeling safe enough to share that with us.

Yeah, we appreciate it. And we appreciate you, and we hope that you keep listening.

And we hope you keep it weird. Weird, but not so weird as any of these familias.

Yeah, just, you know, be a good family, I suppose, but... It's hard.

It's real hard. There's always one. There is.

There's always at least one. There's always at least one, usually several.

But we love ya, families. Bye. Bye. If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.

Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

The town of Agde in France is famous for sun, sand, sea and sex.

But lately, life on the coast has taken a strange turn.

The town's mayor, a respected pillar of the community, has been arrested for corruption.

His wife claims he's been bewitched by a beautiful clairvoyant.

Then there's the mysterious phone calls that local people have been getting.

I am the Archangel Michael. The whole town has been thrown into chaos.

As the mayor is unable to carry out his duties, I would like to address you all.

Legal proceedings have been initiated. Join me, Anna Richardson, and journalist Leo Schick for The Mystic and the Mayor as we investigate a story of power, corruption and magic.

Binge all episodes of The Mystic and the Mare exclusively and ad-free right now on Wondery+.

Start your free trial in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or the Wondery app.

[Listener Tales: Stories of Crazy Families and Unexpected Twists]-[Episode 369: Listener Tales 51]

📋 Summary

Listener Tales: Navigating Family Chaos and Dark Secrets

The Dark Reality of Family Secrets

Deception and Manipulation in Modern Dating

A Tragic Descent into Violence

The Manipulative Matriarch

Closing Thoughts

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript