#489 - Psycho Stepmom - Edgerton, Kansas
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This week, in Edgerton, Kansas, a wild family dynamic leads to fighting, bad feelings, and eventually as cold-blooded a murder as a person could think up, perpetrated by the person you'd least expect. Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yeah!

Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you, folks, so much for joining us. We could not be happier to be here with you today for more insane stories of murder. And this one, wow, again, like we say every week, this is a crazy story. It's a crazy story. Just assume it's a crazy story. Otherwise, we wouldn't be doing it.

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Oh, boy. So over the last few thousand years, we've thought of some weird things to do to people, and we'll talk about a lot of them, so that'll be a lot of fun. Really danced on it, yeah. Really just, I mean, people thought about it. They lit a candle, they sat there with their quill pen, and they figured it out.

That is patreon.com slash crime in sports. And crime in sports, if you're going, what is that? That's our other show. You should listen to that show. Even if you don't like sports, trust me, you'll like that. Listen to the most recent Joe Pepitone episodes. You don't need to like sports. There's hardly any in there. It's all about his craziness. And then, yeah, do that. Also listen to Your Stupid Opinions, which is our other podcast. Our other podcast. Great show.

It is hilarious, the fastest hour in podcasting, as we like to say. It goes by so quickly because it's so damn funny. Other people's insane reviews. That said, quick disclaimer. Here we go. We're comedians, and this is a comedy show, everybody. There will be jokes. I can say that much about it. There will also be terrible, horrible murder. That's the thing. Thing is, we like to, we really tread the... Horsetail a little?

Yeah, yeah. We walk that line very nicely. That's the thing about it. What we do is we never make fun of the victims or the victims' families. Why is that, James? Because we're assholes. Oh, yeah, but? But we're not scumbags. That's how that works. See? There you go. There's plenty of stuff to make fun of. We make fun of murderers. We make fun of a dumb murder plot. We make fun of a small-town police force that doesn't realize they've talked to the murderer ten times. What?

We make fun of small towns because we're all from somewhere small. If you don't believe me, listen to Fishkill, New York episode where I completely destroy where I grew up. So, I mean, there's nothing sacred here. It's all a big fun roast and we're going to have a good time here. Except for dead people. We try to keep that pretty sacred. So, if that sounds good to you, man, are you going to hear a fun show. Here we go. If you think true crime and comedy should never, ever, never go together, maybe we're not for you. I don't know.

Maybe we are. Maybe give it a shot. And either way, no complaining later. That said, I think it's time, everybody, to sit back. Let's all clear the lungs. Let's all shout. Shut up and give me.

Let's do this, everybody. What do you say? Let's go on a trip, shall we? Yeah, we have to. We have to get somewhere. Let's go to Kansas. Okay. Most people, that's not the... Fine. You say, let's go on a trip. They don't go to Kansas? Yeah. You know, so we are in Kansas. This is Edgerton, Kansas. Okay. It's in northeast Kansas. Yeah. And it's about 40 minutes to Kansas City. Yeah. Kansas City, Kansas, that is. Right.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, because there's one on each side there. About two hours and 15 minutes to Wichita and about three hours and 23 minutes to Great Bend, Kansas, our last Kansas episode, the Carnival Mafia, which was insane, obviously. That's right. The Carnival Mafia. You can just...

Just tell by the title how crazy that was. So go back and listen to that one. This is in Johnson County and a little bit of Miami County as well. Area code 913. The motto here, they just like it because it rhymes. So that motto is global roots or local roots. So global routes, local roots. See? Roots and roots, how they do that. That's why they did that. Global roots. Local. What does that mean?

No idea. They just like the wordplay. That's what I mean. Where's it going? It doesn't mean anything. What's going on?

They were like, that's pretty good wordplay right there. Huh? Yeah, let's do that. See how roots and roots are two different things? That's hot shit. History of this town. Edgerton is the winner of the name battle between this had four names before Edgerton, before they finally come up with Edgerton. It was Lanesfield. It was McCammish. It was Hibbard. And it was also Martinsburg.

And they landed on Edgerton. They didn't know what edging was back then. No, they had no idea what edging was. Now it's Blue Balls Town. Now it's like, well, where are the Mormons then? Yeah.

They'll be coming in any minute. This was Blue Balls, Kansas. Come on in. Judge David Martin, he owned a farm in the area where Edgerton exists, and so they named it Martinsburg. And then Edgerton, though, in 1870, the railroad was extended out to here, and people rejoiced. And it was named for the chief engineer of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway.

Edgerton. So they named it after him. His name was Edgerton. His name was Edger, I think. And they called it Edgerton. Yeah, that's how it happened. So the reviews of this town here. Okay. There's only one review because it is a small town, this town. Really? This is like kind of in the middle of nowhere. As we'll talk about in our story, most of the story takes place in a pretty big suburb of Kansas City. And then they use this rural area as a place for murder kind of. So it's a...

Yeah, it's one of those type of deals. So there's not a lot going on here. Here's a review. One review, and it's from a site where you don't have to give any stars. So this gets zero stars. Unless you like to drive 10 minutes for a gallon of milk, this is not the place for you.

I mean, 10 minutes isn't that bad. That's pretty good. That's not bad. People who live in cities back in suburb neighborhoods, it takes 10 minutes just to get out of their neighborhood. 10 minutes, that's like, what, five miles or so? Yeah, not even probably. The only thing here besides homes, about one-third of them need to go. It's in parentheses. They're replanning here. They're just going to re-community plan this thing. It's a gas station, a liquor store, and a bar. So lots of places to get booze. Places to buy booze. Yeah.

Three places. What are places to buy booze, Alex? A place to buy beer there, a place to buy liquor here, and a place to drink beer and liquor over here. Perfect. Oh, and the trains come through about every hour. Better places to be if you're looking in Kansas. So it's constantly loud, constant trains going on, and it just sounds like it's a few drunk people wandering around. Yeah, yeah. They made it sound like it was an old west town, like it was Dodge City.

Well, it doesn't seem like it's very far beyond that. You got to like, you got to clear the streets at high noon to avoid the gunfly or the gunplay. Cause people will be dueling. Like it's going to happen. I lost a kid last spring. Oh man. Took, took his eye right out. People in this town, 1901. So small, very small. And it is mostly, it's 53 and a half percent female. Median age is exactly the, uh,

countries median age, they're about 37 and a half, 53% married. It's very much a kind of a married family type of town out here. Race to this town, 95% white, 0.0% black, 0.0% Asian, 0.7% Native American, 2.7% Hispanic, and then two or more. So unemployment rate here is low. It's about 3.1%, which is...

just a touch lower than the rest of the country median household income here is a little bit higher than the rest of the country it is seven seventy four thousand seven hundred forty one dollars a year the average is sixty nine thousand twenty one dollars so what the fuck are they doing that's not bad they're doing well here and cost of living 100 is regular average here it is 106.2 so not too bad but they got money and

And the housing's slightly lower than the average, though. Yeah, because it's Kansas. You've got tornadoes and shit. Oh, yeah, that house is coming down. It's got to be like a breakaway. You either build a solid, like, three-layer brick house, or it's like a breakaway that you just pick up and rebuild over here. 1993 NBA pants. Yeah, yeah. You tear them off. You can put them back together pretty quick, too. You can go get it from half a county over and just set it back up again pretty easy, you know?

That's how it works. Median home cost here, $270,300. So not cheap, but not that expensive. Now, maybe we've convinced you that this is the only place for you. And if we, maybe you work in Kansas City and you want to ride in. Well, listen, yeah. We have some stuff for you with the Edgerton, Kansas Real Estate Report. ♪

So the average two-bedroom rental here goes for about $1,080 a month. So that's below the national average. About average, though. All the houses, though, you can't find a cheap house here. That's the thing. You can't find a house that's the average. Here's a four-bedroom, three-bath, 1,670-square-foot house. So not huge, but nice, livable, and real nice. The problem with this house is it's not finished. Okay. Okay.

From the outside, it looks great. But then from the inside, there are rooms that are just concrete and wood. It's just like there's no finishing. There's no flooring. There's no walls. There's no drywall. There's no anything. It's just two by fours. It's just two by fours. There's rooms that are just concrete. I don't understand. And they're selling that? They're selling it like that. So someone built it most of the way, and they're like, I don't know. People might want to.

They want to decide what kind of walls they want. Floors, right? I don't know. We can't just tell them. Or they're like, this is hard. I quit. Yeah, fuck that. This is expensive. I'm stopping now. Just sell it for what it is. And there's even pictures, a couple that are photoshops of what it could look like. Oh, I hate that so much. Like, yeah, there's the room and then there's the room. If it was finished, it'd look like this. Well, it's not finished. So...

That's crazy. $399,950. So $400,000 for an unfinished house on less than half an acre of property in Kansas. You've got a lot of work to do. Seems pricey, I think, yeah. Next up, five bedrooms, six baths, T-ball for each and every B-hole, 6,096 square feet.

Oh, my. 21.61 acres. Holy. It is ridiculous. The house is too big. It's not built like a normal- 6,000 square feet is so much house. It's so long. It's just so long. It looks like- It's one story? No, no, no. It's two stories, but it looks like it's some kind of like an inn or something. It doesn't look like a residential-

It looks like there's many people from all around sleeping here. Even if it's 4,000 on the bottom and 2,000 up, that's a fuckload of house. It's so much. There's so many windows, and there's just so much going on. It's a lot. There's like six garages. It's a lot of shit going on. $1,815,000 for that, though. Yeah. That's a great deal. Yeah, in Phoenix, that's like $15 million for that thing. Oh, man.

On the low end. And that's for an acre, if that house was on an acre. Never mind 21 acres. That's crazy. That would get you 21 acres of sunny slope. Yeah. Ooh, man. You'd buy all the meth heads. Perfect. Yeah. I own several dozen meth addicts and a lot of bicycles. Tell you what. A lot of scrap metal. Tons of copper.

A lot of copper wiring and bicycles is what I own. Children's bikes. So here's a two-bedroom, one-bath, 1,246-square-foot house on 160 acres. Oh, terrain. You're paying for the land because the house is a tiny little shithole dump of a house, so much so that they don't even show any pictures of the inside. Of the outside, it's only from a distance. Wow.

Gives you the idea of a house being over there. And there's just pictures of the land. So that's all there is to it. It's rough. $4,300,000. Fuck. That must be some fertile farmland or some shit. 100 acres? Yeah, that's awesome. 160 acres. Oh, God. Over 150. That is a whole lot of Kansas right there. That's a shitload.

Things to do. You can see every corner of it. You can see all of Kansas. Yeah. Dorothy's over there. I can see. What else is in Kansas? I don't know. Nothing. So things to do here. Frontier Days. Here we go. Yeah. That's common out there. That's all the towns have a Frontier Day. The 53rd annual Frontier Day here. Live music, food, beer garden, and activities for the kids. They're going to the music this day. Here we go. Peace, love, and music.

Nope. Nope. Nope.

So I don't know what bands they're saying of Woodstock or imitating of Woodstock. It's probably all that shit, but they're probably just playing a CD. Just like one of each band? Yeah. That'd be fun. So there's that. That's a tribute thing there. And otherwise, there's like bounce houses and shit like that. Not a lot going on. Then there's Festival on the Trails.

Okay. You can go on the trails and enjoy live music on Friday and Saturday night, as well as a kid's own car show. They need to come up with different things for these. Every festival has the same shit.

Well, I call it frontier days if you've just got local bands and bounce houses. That's not a frontier at all. That's what I mean. How is that frontier? It doesn't say anything about candle making or some sort of like – Right, horse shoeing or blacksmithing. Yeah, fucking dugout digging and fucking teepee making. None of that is on there. So yeah, and the other one too, Festival on the Trails is just –

You're on it in the trails and then there's bands playing. I don't know what's going on there. And then finally, the Milldale Farm Fall Festival. What do they do? Well, you bring the family and spend the day exploring the Milldale Farm property. Oh, boy. And enjoy a number of fall activities during this free public event.

Oh, it's free. And he's just inviting people to his farm. That's his insurance has to be outrageous. Let's just have random people there. Listen, why though? It's a 22 acre deal that you can, you can go on. And if they call it the region's premier venue for weddings, family reunions, and corporate retreats and special occasions. So this is their way of advertising. Yeah. You can be, all this is beautiful. And he goes, well,

We should get married in April. This is perfect. Let's just do it here. That's what they're doing right there. Let's bring the corporate gang out here. We can have corporate cow milk and everybody will be happy. We'll sit your bridesmaids on a bale of hay. There's a pumpkin patch, a craft in the barn, cider and coffee, roasting marshmallows, storytelling. This sounds like a free event. None of these things. Yeah.

None of these things cost money. Better not charge for this. At most, there's a tent involved here. There's not any kind of structures or nobody's putting speakers up or anything. This might take two bags of marshmallows to get the whole thing done. Yeah.

There's C, a fire truck. Also, not touch. C. Kids, look, but no touch. It's different. They usually have touch a truck. Fuck that touch a truck. No, this is just look. You touch with your eyes, kids. Yeah. A petting zoo. Small fee for feeding the animals. Cash only. You've got to pay for the food. Not like they wouldn't have fed them anyway. And then a pancake breakfast with pancakes and sausage for just $5 a plate.

That seems fine. And catch and release fishing. Waving the permits that day. You can just do it. Go fish. And there's also going to be tractor-drawn hay rides, disco golf, and a DJ. What the fuck is disco golf? Or disc golf, not disco golf. Oh, I know what that is. Yeah, and you put it over there. Okay, froth. Perfect. All right. There you go. So crime rate in this town, what we are here for, property crime is about half.

the national average here. Yeah? So pretty safe to leave your shit unlocked and fine. Not bad. Violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course assault. The Mount Rushmore of crime, less than half of the average, under half the average. Oh. Yeah, it's like a third of the average. Very safe. Very nice place. Yeah, and it's only 40 minutes from Kansas City. It's not that bad. No, if you work in Kansas City, this seems like a

Yeah. Decent place to go if you can find a house. I don't know. There's not a lot available. So that said, let's talk about some real fucking weird murder. OK. And like I said, a lot of this is going to take place in Overland Park, which is a much bigger suburb of Kansas City. That is only about 15 minutes from here.

That's the thing. We're talking maybe 12 to 15 miles from one site to another site that we're going to talk about. So it's very close to Overland Park and that sort of thing. Was BTK in Overland Park?

He was Wichita, I thought. Wichita is a different park. Yeah, but didn't he do something in Overland Park? That sounds familiar with him, too. It does, doesn't it? Yeah, it does sound familiar there. I'm not sure. I don't know why. He was the Wichita area. Yeah. But yeah, that does sound familiar. Maybe he had to go there for business. Was that one of the motels he used to stay at all the time? Maybe. Disneyland parties and all that shit? Yeah.

Oh, man. We did a Patreon about BTK's. Some of his weirder stuff. Wow, is he a fucking weirdo, man. His Disneyland parties are creepy. Look that up if you have a strong stomach.

For middle-aged male self-gratification. You need a strong stomach for it. Let's talk about some people here. Let's talk about Edward. Everybody calls him Ed. Big Ed. Big Ed Hobson here. H-O-B-S-O-N. Ed Hobson. He's born in 1942 and...

Ed is. And Ed's a big, like a strong, sturdy blonde guy. He's Dutch. So he's a former all-state football star. He was an all-state player in high school. He's a big, tough guy. And he ends up being, he's in the Army for a while in the late 50s, early 60s. Oh. So between Korea and Vietnam, he was in the sweet spot there. Nice time to, yeah.

Decent time. Decent time. So he's there. I guess his aunt would take him on trips around to other countries. So he's been to a bunch of different places all around the world. And he's also been in the army, gone around the world. So he's really a well-traveled guy. And as we're going to catch up with him, for years and years, he's a mill worker at the Ralston Purina factory.

So he makes dog food. Imagine coming home smelling like dog food every day. There's one in Flagstaff, I believe. Yes, I think so. Yeah. So the smell of dog food, I don't know what it is. It's just, I can't, I don't want to smell it. The grease that's on it. I feel so bad for them. And they fucking love it. That's the thing. You put it in there like, ah, I'm munching it up. And you're like, God, you guys are gross. And they know what good food is. We've given them stuff.

You know what I mean? I've never eaten pieces of cheeseburger before. Yeah, you've had steak. You've had medium rare steak and you loved it. Fuck yes. You eat your shit food with the same gusto and it's a little insulting. I'm going to be honest here. I'm a little insulted that you eat those with the same amount of gusto. How do you bury your face in that bowl at the same rate as you eat fucking filet at medium rare? That's delicious shit. You're a jerk.

I swear to God. The only reason I gave it to you is because it has that fucking ribbon of that thick, chewy shit in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not going to chew that. I'm full and there's like two bites left. I'm not going to save two bites. I don't want to throw it out. And the dog looks like they'd really enjoy it. So there you go. Then he eats fucking this kibble. Yeah, that just warms him up. That's an appetizer to go eat his shit. Ugh, you're nasty. Nasty cat food's even worse. Oh, my.

That's why cat shit is the worst, I think. Don't tell a dog because Vaughn will eat cat shit with the same gusto that he eats my fucking steak. Fuck yeah. Oscar with the turkey shit. Oscar, if he sees a turkey turd, it is like, he'll stop. Really?

It's a delicacy. I mean, it would be like if you were walking down the street and an ice cream sundae was on the sidewalk. It's the same reaction, like a fresh one, too. Just cherry on top of everything. There will be chocolate on my cheeks. And a spoon next to it. Just, oh, wow, this was made for me. That's what he looks like. Someone loves me. So when he's 22, Ed, so 1964, he is going to get married here, which, again, that's very common in 1964 to get married at 22. Yeah.

He marries a woman named Shirley Teed, T-E-E-D. Shirley Juanita Teed here. Juanita Teed Wilson also because she was married. Oh, Shirley. She's been married before. That's why she's got multiple names. She is divorced. She's 33 when they get married. Really? That's highly unusual back then. Back then, she has two daughters as well, a 14-year-old and a 12-year-old.

In 1964, a single mom who's 33 with a 14-year-old and a 12-year-old, it was the most damaged of goods back then. Like, no, guys, it would take a lot. You got to find the right guy to, quote, take that on. You know what I mean? That is fascinating. Yeah, it was weird back then. To me, that's...

That's goods that are doing okay. You know what I mean? But all the guys wanted a 19-year-old virgin back then, you know, to marry. That's what they wanted. So you're getting the 19-year-old virgin, the homecoming queen that a man cast off, and that means he probably didn't fuck her very much, which means she is jacked about starting a new relationship. At least twice that we know of they fuck. She has two daughters. Probably didn't have a good relationship.

LaLona is the one daughter. She's 14 when they get married in 1964. And so she's only eight years younger than him. Yeah. Interesting. And Tani, T-A-N-I, or Tani, she's 12 at the time. Right. So, yeah, he's all about it, loves it. Really? Yeah. He takes the kids as his own. That's a boy. And that's a lot of times back then, too.

But part of the reason people didn't want to get a ready-made family is because a lot of times when people broke up back then, that was it. They didn't go see their kids. They just separated and started new families. So this is like if you were going to take this on, you weren't just like, oh, the stepdad and the kids will be gone on the weekend. You're their dad now, period. You're 22, and now you have a 14-year-old.

You're 22 and you have a ninth grader. How do you feel about that? That is wild. That's wild. That's a weird thing. But he's a real mature guy. It's impossible for him to be her dad, though. You know what I mean? It's very hard. He's got to be, if anything, just like an older brother that gives good advice and shit like that. I mean, biologically, there's no eight-year-old that can drop a load, right? I would hope there's not a lot of squirting eight-year-olds out there because the world would be a real fucked up place, I would say. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

That'd be bad. Eight-year-olds going, I'm going to take a shower for about 45 minutes. What? What are you talking about? I don't do my laundry. Yeah, no. Watch Bluey. Get out of here. What are you doing? So 19, that's when they're getting married. So 1967, February 4th of 1967, they have a kid together. Shirley and Ed have a kid together. Ed and Shirley, by the way, is a very 60s couple's name. You know what I mean? This is Ed. This is his wife, Shirley. This is...

People from work that you meet at a barbecue. My uncle were Rick and Shirley. Same thing. There you go. Same shit. Yeah, that's Richard, right? Richard and Shirley. No, his name was Ricky. Oh, my God. So he's a retired NASCAR driver or something, right? It's the only profession you can be when your birth certificate name is Ricky. You're just asking for DUIs, aren't you, at that point? He had so many. I knew it. I knew it.

And it's mainly because if I'm a cop and I pull a guy over and he shows me his license and on his license it says Ricky, I'm going, step out of the car, please. That's good for a .08 right there.

Just your birth name being Ricky. .08. Boom. If we were going to leave his house, we'd have to plan to leave about 45 minutes before the time we wanted to leave because he was so drunk that he would just start telling the same stories we'd heard. We're like, we know that time that Dale Earnhardt came back from behind and won. We know. Thanks, Ricky.

Unbelievable. I'm going to tell you about it again, man. Fucking Ricky. Ricky, that's not even real. That was Days of Thunder. What are you talking about? No stripper pulled anybody over. Stop. No, that did not happen. That was Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder. You're way off, sir. No, let me tell you about the time I wheelchair raced down a hospital hallway. Same movie. We've seen it. There we go. Ricky.

You know what, Ricky? I'm done with you, okay? You're too drunk. Put your hands behind your back. You're under arrest. That's him to the cop, not even to you. He's telling the cop those stories. Ricky, we said you failed. We said you failed the field sobriety. We didn't say we wanted to hear your story.

So they have a son together. Yeah. And his name is Kristen. C-R-I-S-T-E-N. Yeah. They call him Chris. Yeah. So Kristen, Kristen Hobson here, young Chris. And it's they they have a nice house. They have a nice, you know, a nice family. He's got two brothers.

ready-made older sisters who are a lot older at this point. Oh, fuck. They can certainly babysit. They're like 17 and 15 now. So, I mean, yeah. But, I mean, he's not really going to... The age difference is that much. They don't really grow up as siblings at that point. No. They can almost breastfeed that kid. Yeah. They're more like an aunt that's, you know...

whose own kid died and then we want to make her feel okay and let her watch the kids. Fascinating. I can't imagine being 17 with a toddler sibling. That's insane. That is different. You know what I mean? And how about being Shirley who has a 17-year-old and a fucking toddler?

Brand new kid. Wow, as a newborn and a 17-year-old. That is a, man, that's a lot to process in your brain of, you know. Yeah, but at 17, if you've got a toddler. One's filling out college application, the other's filling their pants. So you're like, this is way different problems that I have to fucking negotiate with the two of you. That's certain life skills, though, that you're learning of how to sleep through a baby's cries. That's going to be good for you later. That's going to come in handy.

So it's a nice household. They raise Chris very lovingly. And to have an older mother at that point, she really knows what she's doing. You know, in her late 30s at that point, that was considered like a geriatric birth in the 60s. Like, holy shit. What the fuck, lady? Yeah.

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Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash smalltownmurder to get free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com slash smalltownmurder Now back to the show. But he gets a lot of support. They have, you know, they make a good living. Not a lot of struggles. Everything is fine. Now,

The other, the girls have some issues. Tani especially has some issues. The youngest? Yeah, the youngest. At this point, when he's born, being 15. When she's in junior high school, so it's a couple years before Chris is born, Tani is raped. Oh, no. Yeah, that's horrifying, obviously. Do we know by who? Well, that's the thing. Relatives say that she accused a 14-year-old cousin of doing this.

which is even horrible, even more horrible, not only because she should be able to trust her 14-year-old cousin, but then also at 14, that probably means somebody did that to that cousin. So the whole thing is a bad cycle of awfulness. That 14-year-old shouldn't be aware of

of how to force things on people. That's crazy. Unless it's been done. So yeah, when, when kids that young do shit, it's for, it's, they were taught, you know what I mean? It's learned behavior. So, but after investigating the police declined to press charges. Oh, even worse. So now she's got to see this kid. She's got to see him. Hopefully not too many Thanksgivings. Let's key. Let's leave. Let's leave cousin touchy at home, please. Can we leave him at home? Cause you know, this is the family doesn't really want to see him. Yeah.

So anyway, that's right away, that's a hard thing to come up with. That's horrible. Very horrible. And then years later, she goes to the University of Missouri. And she does well in school and everything like that. And she finds a man, a boy, whatever you want to call him, and dates and falls in love with him here. That's great. A love of her life named Gary Hollinsworth. He's an engineering student who's also in the Navy.

Okay. So a very upstanding young man who's engineering. Busy motherfucker. Yeah. He's a very smart guy too if he's an engineering student. So he, she finds somebody very smart and nice in college. Just what the parents wanted her to do was, you know, do all of that. Then there's some issues here. February 19th, 1973. Tawny accidentally kills her boyfriend. What? Yes. This is not the murder by the way. Um,

How did she do that? Let's see here. According to the police reports, it was the evening of February 19th, 1973.

Tani goes to pick up Gary at a local bar after friends had called at her apartment and said that he was too drunk to drive. Oh, no. He was too drunk in 1973, which means he can't walk to the car. They let him walk and he couldn't put the key in the lock to get it in. He went to the wrong car. You go to the wrong car and then you get three tries to put the key in the lock and if you can't do it, scratch the shit out of somebody else's car. Yeah, they go, okay, you're too drunk to drive. That's the test.

back then so they had to call her um so friends took her to the bar because gary had his pickup truck at the bar so she said will you give me a ride and i'll drive his truck home with this fucking drunken idiot in it so and no one's happy about that no one's happy to be called late at night to pick up your drunk boyfriend at the bar but you know i guess it's college it's college kids do dumb shit like that but what ends up happening is an argument ensues

Which doesn't really even need to be said. Yeah. They talked about it. Yeah. She's wearing pajama bottoms and slippers in the bar parking lot waiting for him to come outside and then getting in the car. She's not thrilled with this arrangement. He smells like wild turkey. Yeah. This is not cool at all. He's like, hey, baby, how's it going? Your tits look great today. Like, no, I don't want to hear that shit. Shut up.

Get in the car. So an argument ensues as they're driving, and Gary says, pull over now. I'm getting out of this truck, and I'm walking, which should have done that to begin with then, you asshole. Why the fuck am I here? If you're going to walk. I'm not stopping. You made me get up. I'm going to drive. Oh, we're driving. Yeah, it's happening. If I have to handcuff you to the seatbelt thing, we're driving.

So he walks a short distance and apparently decides that maybe walking isn't such a great idea. I'm a little hammered. This is much harder than I thought. It's far and stuff like that. So, you know, he tries to, at that point, he cuts across the interstate to try to intercept Tammy on the way home because she did a U-turn or whatever. So he's going over trying to flag her down on the other side of the interstate. Okay. So...

I guess when he tried to flag her down, she... He tries to flag Tawny down. Yeah. She hit him with the truck and killed him. Now, it's dark.

And so there's a lot of questions of what the fuck went down exactly. You know what I mean? Because it's really difficult. She told a friend the next day that she didn't see him until it was too late. She saw him at the last second. And she told the friend, quote, this is horrible. It was like the Twilight Zone. All of a sudden his face was right in my windshield.

She didn't see him dark, dark, dark. And then boom, you hear that the sound of hitting someone has to be ungodly, horrible. Number one. And then your your boyfriend's face is on the fucking windshield. That's horrifying. He was looking at me with the strangest look like, why are you doing this to me? Holy shit, man. Everybody wonders whether Gary, whether this was an accident or Gary threw himself in front of the truck.

Oh, because he was so drunk in the argument. Maybe he might have thrown himself in front of the truck like, ah, this is what you did to me type of thing. But that nobody knows if that's what happened or why he didn't seem suicidal. No, but none of his friends thought he was suicidal. Maybe it wasn't a suicidal thing. Maybe it was just this will make her stop. This will make her. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then it's dark and she doesn't see you. That's possible, too, because it's a dark Kansas interstate. You know what I mean? The problem is, though.

She can't get over this, Tawny. No. And does not give herself much of a chance to because two days later, she goes... She gets her boyfriend's shotgun and shoots herself. Tawny committed suicide over this? She shot herself with a shotgun over this. Wow. Two days later. So before the funeral or anything, just couldn't handle it. So now there's two dead people. Now there's two dead people, yeah. I mean, and Tawny, I mean...

Guilt feelings have probably been with her for a long time. And, you know, even being assaulted will make you have guilt feelings. And then... Yeah, she probably can't go home and expect comfort there because the last time she had trauma with her family, that probably didn't go well either. Yeah, I think, well, the family supported her. The police just didn't want to investigate. The family... The whole family, though? I don't know about the whole family. There's got to be some. Her parents, her household is a safe place for her. But...

In college, I don't know. Maybe she didn't feel like she could go to her parents. I don't know what her deal was. But her body was found by her mother, too. Jeez. Shirley found her. Oh, by the way, six-year-old Chris is the one who actually finds the body. No. Yep. They were calling her and couldn't get her to answer. So they drove from Kansas City to Columbia. And when they went into her place, Chris was sick. So he ran up ahead and ran in. Jeez.

and found his sister. A shotgun suicide is ugly, too. I can't imagine. A six-year-old shouldn't see brains on a wall. Especially his sister's brains on a wall. Following that Murdaugh trial when they were describing the boy's body. It plunked the brain out whole, and it's just laying there. That's crazy. After he shot him, he shot that fucking kid, didn't kill him, and then went closer.

And in the head, in the head. So I'm going to finish like a fucking mob hit. That's how mobs do it. You know, and just opened it, took his whole brain out. That's how Chris taught little Michael to fucking kill people on the wire. You know what I mean? Hit him in the body and then come up and finish the job. Like what? What the shit are you? Are you a Baltimore drug hit man? What are you doing?

So this, obviously, this is a huge tragedy. And Ed has a hard time with this, even though it's not his real daughter, quote unquote. He's known her for the last 12, since she was a child. And now she's in college and he's raised her. And, you know, he was she was 20 years old at the time. And he says it was not a suicide. He will not.

Really? One of those. And some people have a problem with that. And sometimes it's legitimate and sometimes they just can't imagine that their kid wouldn't have come to them. Right. And it's understandable or that they wouldn't know that this was bubbling up or something. So he said it's not a suicide and will not be convinced that it is. He said, quote, suicides don't cost as much as homicides.

Oh, yeah. For the county when they investigate a suicide. They go, oh, it's a suicide. Sweet. You know, done. Marry the kid. No court case or any of that shit. None of that shit. No big investigation. No detectives. No any of that. He said, I raised her since she was 12. I know it wasn't suicide. They said it was a 20 gauge shotgun and her arms were hardly 20 inches long. She was legally blind without her glasses and her glasses were found in the next room. You can't tell me she did it. Now.

That's tough because you don't really need your glasses to point a shotgun in your mouth. You need zero. And a lot of people, too, it's very, very common. I don't know why I know this, but it's very common for people who wear glasses. When they kill themselves, they take their glasses off. That makes sense. They throw them. They break them. Wow.

They break them a lot of times. That's a very common thing to find broken glasses in the suicide. They're like, don't need these anymore. Fuck this. And they hate these fucking things on my face all the time. Annoying me and making my ears pinch. It's interesting. I never even thought about that. It happens all the fucking time. If you've ever seen Mad Men, when Lane kills himself in the Jag or tries to kill himself in the Jaguar, he breaks his glasses first. Yeah. And then the car won't start because it's a 60s Jaguar. It won't fucking start. And he's like, God damn it. I can't even kill myself.

He's holding broken glasses up to his eye as he's under the hood trying to fix whatever's wrong so he can commit suicide. It's pathetic. So it's sad. So, yeah, he says that you can't tell me that she did it.

That's just the way it is. As if it couldn't get worse for poor Tani. Obviously, the junior high incident and then killing her boyfriend. No, she didn't want to kill her boyfriend and then killing herself. She can't even rest in peace at all, and neither can this poor family. The night before her funeral.

Someone broke into the funeral home and defiled her body. What? Why would you do that? Are you fucking kidding me? What did they do? I would say it's probably kids, but why would kids be scared of corpses? You know what I mean? Yeah, I would never. It's horrible, man. He said, quote, she was a mess, meaning Tawny.

Her blouse was pulled out. Her rosary was clear out of her hand. Her rose was gone. We had in her hand. Her hair was all messed up. She was lying over the back of the casket. Her skirt was all loose and wrinkled.

Also said that her belt was broken and her skirt was a mess and her blouse had been split in the back. Her head was lying back over the pillow. She was in a sitting position. Her legs were spread apart. Her mouth was open and her eyes were open. What the? Her hair was, quote, unbelievable. They had to call in an embalmer to redo the whole thing. What the hell would they... They, like, posed her...

As like a fuck doll, basically. Why would somebody do that? I don't know. I don't know what kind of a monster fucking lunatic would break into a fucking funeral home and say, who would break into a funeral home? That's the craziest shit ever. Do they assault the body or is it just that shit? We don't know. Even that shit's sick. This is sick. Yeah, they posed her like this, which is they posed her like a serial killer poses a victim that they've... And this is a body with a...

gunshot wound to the head. This is crazy. This is a wild thing to do. And so, I mean, if you're a grieving parent and the next day is your kid's funeral in the morning, they tell you, hold on a minute. We have to send another embalmer over because listen to what they did to her.

I mean, dude, how much more pain can you endure? Jesus Christ. At that point, if you're the people there, wouldn't you just be like, boy, did we fuck up with security? We got to fix this and not tell anybody? I can't believe they told anybody. Yeah, I wouldn't do it. The embarrassment alone. Either that or you'd go, you know what, guys? This one's on us. You know what I mean?

We're going to call this a freebie. We're going to call this a freebie. We really should have kept better watch over the corpses probably. That's horrible security. Wow. At least get 20% off something. I don't know. Break on the coffin price. That

That is horrible, man. Jesus. So I don't know if they did anything else to her. This happened in the 70s. So I don't know if they would have said like, oh, these people fucking broken and defiled a corpse sexually. I don't know if they put that in the paper really or if they kind of keep that under wraps. The family said, please don't put that in the public. Let's not talk about that.

that. But they definitely posed her in a sexual way. That's fucked up, man. Which is absolutely the creepiest, weirdest, fucking strangest thing I've ever heard anybody do in my life. We try not to judge too much on your weirdness. We're judging that hard. That is...

That's beyond weird. Not small town murder approved behavior right there, everybody. You crave that? Please see a doctor. Yep. For Christ's sake. Yeah, good Jesus sake. Please, before you do it again. So Ed maintains always that she was fucking murdered and that the Boone County investigators had bungled the job. And someone doing this to the body extra convinced him it was murder. Yeah. Because he's like, yeah, they killed her and then did this to her too. Yeah.

So it just adds to his suspicion. So 1976 comes around here. Jesus Christ. And this is horrible, man. He's about nine years old, little Chris. Okay. And he's had it rough already, too, because he's already found his dead sister.

Yeah. In a horrible way. His mother is diagnosed with cancer. Yes. Shirley now. And she ends up basically being in a hospital for two years. Between 75 and 76, she's just in the hospital the whole time. Do we know what cancer? Liver cancer. Oh, shit. Liver cancer in the mid-70s. So it's not even... Yeah, there's nothing that it can do. Over 40 years ago. Yeah, there's nothing that can be done for that shit. Oh, boy. It's...

It's really brutal. She basically just withers in pain for two years in the hospital. So she is going to end up dying at the end of 1976 in the hospital. So now this poor kid has really, he's been through it. You know what I mean? And so has Ed. Ed's been through it too. I mean, he's having a hard time. Everybody's having a hard time here. You know, he keeps in touch with the other stepdaughter as much as he can. She's older. So, I mean, you know, whatever.

And he tries to get close to Chris and embrace Chris and hold him close. Every summer, they'd go hunting and fishing. They'd go to a family farm in King City, Missouri. And yeah, he said they would. Chris loved using the 12-gauge shotgun.

Love that. He said the kid was a hell of a shot with that thing when he was out there, 11, 12 years old. It's a lot of gun for an 11 year old. He's sure. Apparently he's doing it, though. Yeah. He said the one that was like his gun was a Belgian made single shot. Thirty nine. Ninety five special. A cheap gun, he said. Just a cheap 12 gauge. But.

One shot at a time type of deal. But, you know, he's learning how to use a shotgun. Sure, sure. So a little bit about Ed here. Ed's a strange guy. It depends on who you talk to, what they say about Ed. Ed...

Has a temper. He flies off the handle. He's also a soft-spoken guy that you feel bad for. People keep using the word paradox with him. He's a real paradox. Yeah? Yeah, strange guy. His minister praised him as caring and religious, and other people said he was violent and vengeful. So those are interesting things. John Adams, who's an associate pastor at the Leawood Baptist Church, said he considers Ed a friend and a trusted ally.

He said, I find Ed a very warm and caring person, a man who's deeply religious. There might have been times when he did have some problems, but considering what he's been through, I think he's a very nice man. Yeah, Monday through Saturday, he's a motherfucker. On Sunday, nobody's nicer. On Sunday, there's a 20 in that basket is what I'm getting at. You betcha. That's the important part here. Yeah.

People said, though, he was just, like I said, a paradox. At one point, he said, no one steps on my toes that I don't step on back. That's a quote he put in the newspaper when he was talked to about. You can print it. You can print that shit, yep. Wow. People said he'd have a real quiet demeanor, like a quiet, blonde, Midwestern man, and then violent outbursts would happen. And they said that was typical of Ed. Yeah.

I don't know if he didn't wear a good enough helmet in high school when he played football or what the fuck happened, but he's got some like, it looks like he's got CTE or something. He's got life trauma on top of it. Oh yeah. Yeah. All sorts of trauma on top of it. I think that's probably what it is too, that he was also in the military. We don't know what he did or saw over there too. So we have no idea what his mental status is. Sure. One person said he is an irrational man, a contradiction, but the best way to describe him is that he's a survivor.

And he's got to be because he's got a lot to survive. Now, relatives of Shirley, his wife here, said that the marriage at times was happy and at times was violent as well. They did not have a perfect, idyllic little life here that people kind of thought from the outside. This is funny. A great line here. Ed admits that there was a lot of screaming and said, yes, Shirley did pull guns on people. What?

But he denies ever pulling guns on anyone personally. He goes, yeah, we'd yell and scream and we'd fight. And yeah, if you came to the door, Shirley might come to the door with a shotgun. You never know. She pulled guns on people, which means multiple different guns and multiple different people. What was up with Shirley? Plural of both. Jesus Christ. What was she like? I just picture her coming out on the porch going, consign it, get off my property. Like, what the fuck, man? Yeah.

That is insane. Why is she pulling guns on people? Wow. Like an old, this is, I mean, it's like old west times, like crazy. Annie Oakley style. One relative said, quote, it was weird. Yeah, this is weird. That sounds weird. The whole thing is weird so far. The whole story is weird. Said it was weird. It was nothing at all for the phone to ring at our house at 4 a.m. And my parents would have to go over to their house and break up a fight between them.

She would call for help or he would call for help. The kids would call for help. Oh, my God. The daughters would go, could you come over here before, you know, dad hits mom and mom shoots dad, please? Oh, my. Yeah. Because they're having blowups. Knockdown, drag out fights. Yeah. Fights that need to be intervened upon. I mean, that's a fight. You know what I mean? Fights that aren't going to break up on their own volition is tough.

The relative went on to say, you could go over there any night of the week and find them up. We were young. We thought it was fun. What? What's fun about that? Well, we got to go break up. And Uncle Shirley or Uncle Ed and Aunt Shirley again. Oh, that's hilarious. Let's go. Come on.

That's fun. How funny was it? She's got a gun in her hand and he took a swing at her. This is great. What the fuck are we talking about here? He said, now that I think back on it, it was pretty strange. Yeah. There you go. In retrospect, I would say so. So that's who we're talking about. So now Ed is a...

A real paradox and a real contradiction of character. And it's just him and Chris. And that's it. Him and, you know, like a 10-year-old. That's his whole... This is like a movie. It's what it sounds like. Ed coming, you know, with his 10-year-old and...

And he's trying to give the child the best things he can get him to try to forget. He's trying. Tragedy. That's big. Yeah. Fall in this family. You found your sister, your mom's fucking bed. This isn't good for a small child. You know, it's tough. So he ends up, you know, kicking around for several months and, um, not really, not meeting anybody, just kind of hanging out with the kid and trying to work and do his thing. And then he's going to meet somebody here. Uh,

A little while later, he meets a woman named Sue Ann. S-U-E-A-N-N-E. Sue Ann, but one word. Yeah. Yeah, but it should be. It's weird. That's a lot of vowels straight together like that. One, two, three. Yeah, there's U-E-A right in a row there. Wow. Sue Ann. Sue Ann Sally is her name. S-A-L-L-E-E. So there's a fuckload of vowels in her shit. It's all S's and vowels, man. It's a lot. Yeah.

So if you take the L and the N out, there's nothing else. Really, the only other ones are there's only three consonants in her whole name. S, L, and N. That's it. Wow. R, S, T, L, N, E on Wheel of Fortune would knock her name right out of the park. Oh, you'd be done. Fucking Val, you're done. Is it Sue Ann Sally? I think it's Sue Ann Sally, possibly.

She's born in 1943, so she's a year younger than Ed. And she's described as a slim, red-haired secretary. Everybody says she's pretty, has red hair, and is thin. Sounds great. He meets her at a skating rink where she worked part-time.

Oh, she's working there. Yeah. What the fuck is Ed at 37 years old, 36 years old, going to a skating rink for? He's giving them everything. Yeah. Maybe that's what it is. I don't know. This is him and the kid, James. And he's hitting on women. That's hilarious. Yeah. That's better than a puppy probably. Why don't you go skate? I'm going to try to find you a mom. No, no, no. I got you an extra half hour, Rick. Just keep going. Circle, circle, circle. I'm going to go skate.

I'm going to go to the snack bar, and I am going to get a pretzel and a mom for you. Those are the two things I'm going to grab. You want a soda, too? Pretzel and new mommy. Here we go. Some nachos, a mom, and a soda. Okay, gotcha. $3 an hour. Half hour. Keep spinning. So, yeah, they get together. She is a divorced single mother as well. That's great.

She brings with her to this relationship a daughter named Suzanne. Not Sue Ann. Suzanne. God damn it. Which is S-U-Z-A-N-N-E. So Sue Ann and Suzanne. When you want one of them, it's a motherfucker to get them. Suzanne. You can't just say Sue because that's fucked. No. It's Sue Ann and Suzanne. That's tough. You got to call her Susie, I guess. Yeah. They call her Suzanne. They always call her Sue. They call her Sue Ann and they call her Suzanne. It's tough. Holy shit.

Shit. So Suzanne is two years older than Chris. So in the same ballpark. Yeah, that's nice. Ready made sister. So that's decent anyway. That's nice. So they met accidentally just while they were at the skating rink. But Sue Ann said it was not an accident. It was anything but an accident. She had been anticipating this meeting for two years.

Did she fucking manifest it? What happened? Quote, Mary Jacobs, a North Kansas City psychic, told me that I would meet a blonde man at work. God damn it. She told me two years before that he would be supporting a child and that he was alone. Well, I would hope he'd be alone if you're going to meet him and hook up with him. Yeah. He's going to be married for 12 years. He's going to be very happy, but you're going to say, fuck all that. Suck his dick in the bathroom and he's yours. That's what the psychic told me.

So they're going to meet. She seemed like the perfect wife candidate for him, he thought. Same age, she had energy. Sure, I mean, it makes sense.

Said she was real attractive, very well organized, a really good mother. Her daughter seemed like pretty and well-kept and shit. Like, you know, wasn't dirty or anything. Malnourished and dirty or anything like that. Seemed to be good. And she had willingly accepted Ed. Ed told her about his past of tragedy and horror and everything else. And she was like, oh my God, that's terrible. And was supportive of him. So...

She, though, she had been divorced for years now, about eight years at this point. She had left her husband, James Crum, C-R-U-M-M, James Crum, and their son, James Crum Jr., and just took Suzanne along, but left Jimmy Crum behind. They call him Jimmy. What the fuck?

Jimmy Crumb Jr. gets left behind. Why did she do that? She said, you keep him and I'll take this one. All right. So poor Jimmy Crumb Jr. stays with dad, doesn't talk to mom for about 10 years. She doesn't even talk to him, doesn't call him.

Just leaves nothing. Just nothing. Not even a card. Nothing. Just you don't have a mom for fucking 10 years now. And he was a little kid at the time. He was like, that'll ruin you. Yeah. You think mom left it up. Took my sister and said, I don't want you. And then ever called back again. Yeah. That'll fuck a kid up. I would say real bad. We're seeing lots of trauma happening. This is like,

Psychiatrists everywhere are like, oh my God, the bills I would be charging for these kids. We are destroying children every 10 minutes. There's another one. There's another hard, hard tragedy. It's not going to end there. Don't worry. So they, Ed and, and, and,

Ed and Sue Ann. I was going to call her Suzanne, and I couldn't get it out of my mouth that it wasn't Suzanne. Ed and Sue Ann have a nice romantic connection between them. It's pretty instant, and they begin seeing each other. Here we go. Ed decides to propose to her.

Like, well, I mean, shit, what are we waiting for here? We both have all these kids. Let's just get them in the same house and pool bills. Yeah. Fuck this life. You're like 36 and 37 at the time. Like, what the fuck are we doing? So before they decided they decided to get married, though, they agreed to see a marriage counselor to work out problems that they anticipated might surface. Haven't surfaced. Haven't surfaced.

Have it surface. No problems. They're going to get coping and skills to be able to handle the fact that... Because they have both kids coming from broken homes, and one has seen some tragedy. His mom died, and then he's going to get a new mom. That's probably going to be a problem. Will Suzanne...

Hasn't had a dad in 10 years. Will she take to Ed as a new father figure? Is Sue Ann going to look at my boy and see her boy and treat him like dog shit because she hates little boys? Because she just hates little boys. That's the problem.

All that shit. So they thought the counselor would be able to aid them with routine problems, but, you know, all that kind of shit. So Sue Ann takes an interest in the children, though, and Chris especially, and little Chris. She one time goes to talk to one of Chris's teachers before Ed and Sue Ann are even married here. Oh. So that's involved. That's a mom. Yeah. I mean, his mom's dead. This is like overboard at this point. You know, she's got Roy. Is that your name?

This is from the teacher, Mrs. Shank. She said she told us there had been some difficulties, that Chris was a problem and that he was hard to get along with and that he caused difficulty between all the members of the family.

And does she also add also told the teacher that she wanted to delay her marriage to Ed until Chris could receive help. But that Ed really wanted to get the marriage going and over with. So he's divulged this shit to the teacher. She told the teacher. Sue Ann tells the teacher all this. So, yeah, that's weird, though. I'm going to make sure that the kid's not a pain in the ass before I marry. The dad is kind of a.

It's tough. You know what I mean? My kid's teacher get a couple of facts about my kid, their name and their age. Outside of that, you teach them the rest. Let's talk about everything else I got going on. Well, me and my dad. Oh, shit. She thought they were girlfriends just fucking hanging out there. Just gabbing. That's gabbing.

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So December 1978, she says, okay, I'm ready to take the plunge. And Sue Ann and Ed get married. They purchase a new home in a very nice neighborhood in Overland Park, Kansas. And they live together with little Suzanne.

And little Chris. That's how they do it. And so it's going fine. Everything appears to be okay. Nobody's being called to break up fights. Nobody's... Sue Ann hasn't pulled any guns on anybody. That's good. Terrific, terrific. Then Jimmy Jr. comes a-knocking. Little Jimmy Jr. comes back into the picture here. He drove over. Well, the thing is, it's Ed that convinces Sue Ann to bring Jimmy Jr. to the house. Really? Really.

She said, he said, how can you have not talked to your son in fucking nine years? That's insane. Bring him here. That's nuts. Cause she would talk about how the father, Jimmy Crum senior is not a good father and he's a piece of shit and all this. And he was like, we have a nice house and all this stuff. Bring him here. We'll fucking raise him. This is crazy. How could you leave a,

a boy with a piece of shit. That's the thing. And that's exactly what it was. So he said that he asked, uh, that Ed himself said he asked Jimmy little Jimmy jr. To move into his home. Because one time they went to when he had talked her into going and seeing him at least and picking him up and visiting him. They went to pick him up where he was staying with his father and his father's new wife. And Ed said, quote, it was brutal. I wouldn't treat an animal the way they were treating Jim. Oh,

Just terrible. They said he didn't have any like decent clothes or, you know, anyway, he was, he was, he was like 14 at the time and he wasn't going to school most of the time because he would pick up day work and shit.

Like they would let the kid do day labor shit instead of going to ninth grade. Stuff like that. Where was he living? Right near here. Wow. In the Kansas City suburbs. Jesus. Yeah, it's fucking strange. No good. There was problems immediately here. And that was the kids melding. And both kids kind of reached... Suzanne and Chris both kind of...

rebelled a little bit against this whole thing once they got married and then Jimmy Jr. comes into the picture and so there's a little more struggle. He's got plenty of reasons to be mad. He's got issues too. All these kids have a lot of anger. Reasons to be angry is the problem. So Ed said, we had problems, yes, but any two people regardless of their walks of life that get married are going to have problems.

We were bringing my son in, her daughter in. We were bringing four totally different people from all walks of life into one household. And we knew there was going to be some jealousies and some bickering back and forth. Which is why they went to counseling ahead of time because they anticipated this. So at least they seem healthy enough to know there might be problems and to actually try to solve them. That's good. But the problem is...

They invite... Ed insists that Jimmy move in, too. Well, Jimmy Jr.'s gonna move in. Yeah, we gotta get him out of that fucking environment. That's bullshit. So, they bring in Jimmy Jr., and...

She mom here who hasn't done shit for him in 10 years has very high expectations of him. Yeah. That he'd be very well put together. He's got good grades. He's got, you know, all this different shit. Now, meanwhile, she has no idea what he's been doing. He's been doing day labor because he hasn't been going to school and stuff like that. He hasn't been raised well. So now she's got it. She's like now act like a kid who's been raised perfectly. Yeah.

Act like a kid whose mother didn't run away on him and not fucking call him for 10 years. Act like that, please. Now let's leave it to Beaver this. Yeah, totally. So he starts to rebel a little bit. He'll eventually, after a little bit of a while here, he'll end up getting his own apartment.

Jimmy? Yeah, when he's 16. He'll just get his own apartment. So I guess she, they say that Sue Ann was rude toward Jimmy, her own son. And she, the thing is, though, everybody said that she hated Chris, the stepson. Did not like him at all. Couldn't fucking stand him. Thought he was a real pain in the ass.

Um, doesn't like her son or the stepson hates little boys. Really? What is it with boys? I don't know, but she hates them. Uh, she hated him so much. She would even call them names in front of other people, shit like that, which is tough. Um,

She said starting in 1979, she started talking to Jimmy Jr. about sending Chris to a mental hospital or sending him off to military school or just something where he's not in my house. She was getting rid of him. Get rid of him. So wherever it is, I don't care. Commit him. Send him to a military school. I don't give a shit. Just out of my house. Then around 1980, she kept saying that she wanted to get. She hopes she can get rid of him before Christmas.

because she doesn't want to have to spend money on Christmas gifts for him.

What? So by the end of this year, we got to get him either in a mental hospital or military school or somewhere where I don't have to buy him presents. It's going to cost me $300, $400. Yeah. What do they think? He doesn't come home from military school for Christmas. Right. Haven't you seen the ref? Give me a fucking break. Christmas is the time they get rid of them, too. That's it. You're going to still have to buy him presents. I guess as time went on, she liked him less and less and less to the point where if he walked into a room, she'd walk out of a room. Wasn't interested in seeing Chris at all. What?

Sue Ann wants nothing to do with her stepson, who is 12 going on 13 at this point, late 79, early 80. That's bizarre shit. It's fucking weird. It's weird. And she's treating her own son terribly also. Suzanne, though, everybody says she's fine with Suzanne. Well, she must be because she took her with her and has had her with her for a while. So Jimmy has a lot of issues, Jimmy Jr., let's just say. Old Jimmy Jr. admitted that he started drinking alcohol around 10,

Like, just casually, not like a drink. Like, he started drinking like, ah, it's been a long day, you know? Gotta relieve it with some booze. Pull a big plug out of this, yeah. Yeah, he started stealing after that, too. And a lot of it was there was very little parental supervision with him at all from his dad's side. He was also into drugs. Jimmy's into drugs. Yeah. So...

Yeah, he now later on when Ed's asked, why did Jimmy Jimmy Jr. come to live with you? Ed said, because I asked him to. Everybody deserves a good start. I just felt sorry for the kid. Yeah. He explained that he'd been living with the former husband, had shit clothes, would go to work instead of school. And that he said, though, Jimmy Crumb, when he came in, affected the family's adjustment. They were all adjusting to each other in the first year or so. And then you throw in a wild card.

like a 15 year old with a fucking drug problem and a penchant for stealing and you can really you can really throw the whole thing into a whirlybird at that point it's a mess it's all messed up now a 15 year old wearing clothes too small for him too yeah pissed off wearing high waters yeah and yeah there's no flood motherfucker i know that ready to throw down over that because he's heard it enough from kids at school he's tired of wearing short corduroys going this sucks

Ed said if everything was going Jimmy's way, everything was fine. If it wasn't, there was hell to pay. That was about Jimmy. Yeah. I guess Jimmy Crum refused to attend family counseling sessions with the rest of the family. They found not only weed in his room, they also found Coke. They found acid.

He's doing it all. Whatever he can get his hands on, he just puts it in his room and then they find it. He also got into trouble using stolen credit cards in early 1980. Yeah. Jimmy Crum at that point. After that, he moves out of the house in early 1980 and into an apartment in his own apartment.

which is really weird. Jimmy was a really bad student. Wow, that sounds like they're talking about me in high school. Both of us, this is bad. If you don't know, my whole family...

Comedy is the only place where I'm called James, by the way. That's literally the only place on earth. When I started comedy in Phoenix, there was like 12 guys named Jimmy, including you. And I said, well, I can't be fucking Jimmy, I guess. So I guess I'm James now. And I've never been called or used the word James in my entire fucking life.

Not even just in local Phoenix comedy. On the planet, there are so many Jimmys. Out of every late night show, three out of four of them had a host named Jimmy. It was fucking ridiculous. It was too much. I can't do this anymore. I got to be that. Whenever I hear this, I hear my family saying this. Jimmy was not a very good student. Yes, I know, okay? I didn't do it. And you know what? It worked out fine. Did I need any of that shit? No.

And also, I partly blame you guys. You sure didn't help me. Yeah. Where the fuck were you? I was a kid. This is what I mean. They blame. I don't know. I didn't know what I was doing. Set me up for success. You fucking jerks. No. They said that his grades were normally either failures or just inferior, like D's or worse. And they said, if anything, they got a little worse as he grew older. His grades, too. Yeah. Yeah. He'll end up dropping out of high school.

And by early 1980 here, first couple months of 1980 after he gets an apartment, he's got a roommate and everything. He drops acid. He does coke and says that he has a this is remarkable. This is like a professional wrestler level of tolerance here. Yeah. He did an average of 100 to 150 valium per day. He said 100 to 150. There's no way.

If you build up to it, yeah. The wrestler Raven talked about when he went into rehab in the 90s, he was doing about 175 perks a day. That's what he was doing. And they told him, holy shit, you're going to die if we stop you doing this. We got to wean you off, man. This is a lot. That's heroin, though, but Dianapam is just like a powder.

Yeah. Yeah. It's not it's not like heroin. Yeah. I don't know what I know. There's different milligrams on those. Maybe they were small one two to eight mils. A hundred fucking a day. A hundred of them. It doesn't matter. How do you get that many?

How do you have to afford that many at that age? She's 16. Forget affording. How do you have access to that? Whether or not you can afford it is another fucking level. We had to chip in on an eighth when I was 16, all of us. We'd all throw in $5 and get a fucking eighth and fucking be like, yeah, we got that now. And we'd smoke the eighth. That's all we had. If we could afford an ounce, we would have smoked it. A hundred Valium? We didn't kind of...

the fuck? Percocets were like five to seven dollars a pill, right? And I know they're more than that now. Yeah, I don't know what they were in 1980. I can't imagine what a Valium cost. Five to ten bucks, I guess? Valium were a lot more common back then, though, too, I think. Really?

They were prescribed real commonly. Yeah, if you went to the doctor and went, I get a little nervous sometimes, they go, here's a Valium, and they just give you, take some Valium. Remember Henry Hill in Goodfellas? The doctor took mercy on me. He gave me two Valium and told me to fucking rest. It was just like, here, just take some Valium. Every movie in the 80s, the housewife was drinking Chardonnay and taking two, three Valium. Yeah. And she was comatose, and nobody could fuck her. She was a mess. She didn't want to anyway, so it was good. Yeah.

So he also, Jimmy, reads at a much lower grade level than where he is, which makes sense. Wouldn't go to the counseling sessions, like I said. They found drugs in his bedroom, stolen credit cards, all this type of shit. So Chris, on the other hand, he goes to Indian Creek Junior High School. He was enrolled in a remedial course called the Learning Center, which is the

version of that. But over the from 79 into 80, his grades had been coming up. Creeping up. Yeah. He turned it all around. He said his grades went from C's and D's to B's and A's. Not bad. Being here. His father said he picked up so much he'd spend hours up there in his bedroom studying. He wanted to be a computer programmer. Well, he fucking nailed it.

To want to be a computer programmer in 1980 is brilliant because you're going to be on the cutting edge and you're going to have very high-paying jobs. Yeah, big house in Silicon Valley pretty soon. Think about that. You are going to own the 90s, man, if you... Oh, yeah. Fuck, he's only 13. Think about that shit. He's 13 at the time. By the time he's 20, it'll be...

1987. Like, it's perfect. It's all about to blow up right before him. So, really, really smart thing he wants to do. He said, we talked about him going to college and getting a master's degree in that. So...

He was talking about what he wanted. Now, his teacher, Mrs. Shank again here, this is the same one that Sue Ann had talked to and told all her problems to. The gal that's gabbing. Yeah, she even said he had been having problems but had been making progress. She said he seems a lot happier and more relaxed and really started taking responsibility for himself and doing things that he needed to do. So good for him. Now, February of 1980.

Okay. Jimmy was going hunting. Jimmy Jr. Jimmy Jr. is going hunting. His mother said, bring Chris with you. Okay. And she said in passing, and he didn't know if his mom was serious, but kind of thought that she was. He said, if you can shoot Chris and kill him and leave him there.

So he took that seriously as mom told me to shoot Chris and leave him in the woods. Yeah. But he couldn't do it. He said he got out there with him and they were hunting. He goes, I couldn't shoot my, I couldn't shoot him. He was a nice kid. I don't fucking, I'm not going to shoot him out in the woods. That seemed crazy. He was going to do it. Yeah. He thought about it. He was like, I mean, she told me to, I don't know. I like work. Maybe if I don't, she won't talk to me for another 10 years. You know what I mean? Yeah.

So he said when they both came home from hunting that Sue Ann was fucking pissed that Chris was there, too. She was mad at him. I told you what to do. You lazy motherfucker. Like she told him to take the trash out. Yeah. I told you to clean your room, and now look. Now it stinks. You didn't do anything. You didn't wash the dishes. People are coming over in a half hour. The whole place is a mess. You guys are assholes. Chris is still here. Is he?

I know you left shit marks in the toilet, didn't you? Didn't you? Clean it. So that's February 1980. And she must be pretty serious about this because in March of 1980, she decides one night Chris is having a bowl of ice cream. And she says, oh, I'll get it for you, which is weird that she would want to do anything for him. But she says, I'll get it for you. She put...

Okay. She gives him the ice cream. He eats the ice cream. And then he went to sleep for like 14 hours and then woke up and she was angry when he woke up. You don't fall asleep after ice cream usually. No. Well, you do if someone puts eight quaaludes in it. She put quaaludes in it? Eight quaaludes in it.

Like he's a bassist for a fucking rock band. Eight Quaaludes? What are you fucking... He's not in Motorhead comedy. Yeah, what are you... DiCaprio and Wolf of Wall Street? What are you eating? Eight Quaaludes? Wow.

Yeah, so that is what she does, and she hoped that would kill him, ate Quaaludes. Which, what were they going to do? I'm sure they would have looked and done a talk screen and said, oh, your kid does Quaaludes? Weird. Your kid died on a great night. We found out your kid is super cool, brah. He's awesome, man. Diagnosis, too rad to live. Too rad to live. Too cool to die.

So, yeah, that's what it was. We're looking for a bass player if he makes it, though. If he pulls through, man, it sounds like he's probably good. So he wakes up. She's pissed off. And there's rumors that during this time she tried again to spike his food with pills, but that didn't work either. The kid's got a strong constitution, apparently. It won't work out. But he's just the coolest kid in school now. Now he's just awesome. He's got a great quaalude tolerance. The best in junior high.

Best Quaalude tolerance in the eighth grade. Sick leather jacket. Oh, yeah, yeah. He's all metal, man. He's all fucking metal. Yeah. In 1980, he could have joined Metallica, for Christ's sake. Fucking perfect. So April 17th, 1980 comes around, and Ed and Sue Ann were on a dinner date.

Which sounds nice, but we'll find out it's not very romantic at all here. Ed had gone straight from work to a union meeting in Kansas City for the local dog food makers 413 division. They have a union there. Local kibble farmers of America. Yeah, that's what it is. Local kibble curators of America. You've got to have alliteration.

So he called home to see what was cooking for dinner before he left. Imagine that. He's like, let me call and see what we're having for dinner on the way out. So he said, normally we don't go out to eat, but it was already 7 p.m. So Sue Ann said, why don't we just stop and have a hamburger? We'll go out and grab a burger here. So they go out for a romantic dinner at the Burger King in Overland Park. All right. A sit-down romantic dinner.

A sit-down date night over a double cheeseburger. Yeah. Over a Whopper Junior. Staring my eyes over a Whopper. Junior. She's watching her figure. You know what I mean? They return home at 8.30 p.m. So they really milked the whole experience here. When they get home, Chris is gone.

Okay.

okay, where the fuck is Chris? He's only 13. Where did he go? You know what I mean? So they're, they're asking where'd he go now? Suzanne is home. The daughter, she's 15 at the time. And she said that he was home doing his homework. That's she, last time she saw him, he was doing his homework. She went to take a shower, but when he came, when she got out of the shower, she couldn't find him either. He wasn't in his room anymore. When she walked by there and then she didn't see him. She doesn't know where he is. She just,

She didn't see him in his room and just said, I don't know, he's somewhere. Who cares? She didn't see him leave. So Ed went into the basement looking for his son, too. Maybe he's in the basement. He looks around. He doesn't find his son. But what he does notice is on his gun rack, one of his shotguns is missing. OK, so Chris is left with a shotgun. The 12 gauge that Chris uses. Yeah, yeah. That's his. That gun is missing.

He's like, okay, that's weird, interesting. He said, I didn't suspect anything until 10 p.m. that night, and then it just didn't set right. So by 10.30, he called the police and said, my son's gone, and he's got a gun, and I don't know what's going on here. So he got worried about him. And he's 13. He's 13, yeah. We need to get him back now. So the authorities launch an APB and go looking for him because he's a child. So they didn't say call back in two days, you know? Yeah.

They look for him. Let us know if he turns up. Yeah. We'll take him off the board if he comes up. So they look for him, and they can't find him. No one can find him. And for several days, no one can find him. And Ed is just...

Beside himself. Ed is going everywhere looking for him. Calling the cops every half hour. Where are you guys? Where'd you look? I'm going to be over here. I'm going here. Trying to coordinate efforts with them and everything like that. They're thinking, why would he run away?

You know, that's what he run away. So they talk to his friends. They talk to Chris's friends because normally kids that age will confide in somebody. Something they're going to do. Their friends know more than the parents do all the time. Yeah. And especially if they're going to run away. It's almost like a unless it's from a very abusive situation. It's almost like a power move. So you'll tell your friends you can do that.

thing you know what i mean otherwise it's kind of pointless unless there's a lot of abuse and they're running away from that but that's not really what's going on here so one of his friends named bob said when some of us were mad at our parents for not letting us do something we'd sometimes talk about running away and he said but chris would never even talk about running away 13 year old named bob huh bob yeah poor guy how you doing how's the life and kids bob there was a

When I was like 20, I had a job and there was this guy who was 19 years old and his name was Bob. And he was like, his hair had like, he had like a very like 40, like in their 40s dad haircut. And he wore like these button down plaid shirts and khakis to work. And every time I go, how the wife and kids, Bob, I knew he lived with his mother and he just, he was going to like community college. And every time,

Bob, you're wearing loafers and your name is Bob. We're 19. What the fuck are you doing? It's Bobby at this point, man. No, Bob.

So fucking go by Robert or something. Yeah. You know, Robbie, I don't know. You don't get Bob until you're 35, 35 is, but you have to have three kids and, you know, and a reason to be mad three kids. And you're applying for a management position before you're like, call me Bob. When you go into the interview twice before. Yeah. Um, so he said that he, five days before he went missing, Chris went to Bob's 15th birthday party. Yeah. Yeah.

And Bob said he looked like he was having a real good time and seemed in real high spirits. He's just not the type to run away. And in addition to that, Chris has a motorcycle and a bicycle that are both still in the garage.

Chris has, okay, like a dirt bike. Like a dirt bike. So if a kid who's 13 is running away. If I'm taking off, my transportation is going with me. You're taking at least your bike with you. Absolutely. You need to be able to get around here. You need wheels. The gas is going to run out of that motorcycle eventually. Then what am I going to do? The bike, it's not going to break down as often. That goes forever. It can go forever. And none of his clothes are missing either.

is the other thing that's very strange. None of his clothes are missing. He left with a shirt on his back and a shotgun. And a shotgun, and no form of transportation, and his undone homework, and it's just very, very strange. So the next day here...

basically people are there at cops are asking a lot of questions of, of the, how is the family would to see if he would run away. Basically, how is his family life? And they said they got a real portrait of Sue Ann as nervous and patient, jumpy and always on edge.

Like a poodle, basically. Just always going. Poodle woman here. And they said that's how everyone described her. But then from April 18th, the day after he went missing on, everybody said that she seemed at peace and relaxed and happy. Yeah.

Which is like Cinderella. Her stepmom was decent compared to this fucking lady. You know what I mean? At least Cinderella's stepmom didn't put Quaaludes in her ice cream, I don't think. Yeah, she made her scrub shit, but not high. She would have been terrible at scrubbing on Quaaludes. That's why.

She probably gave her, like, uppers in her ice cream. Yeah, some speed. Keep going, kid. Yeah, no, I know it's 2 a.m., but that ground isn't going to clean itself. Let's go. Let's go, Cindy. Move it. That'll explain why she thought birds were dressing her. Yeah. All of this is just a quaalude.

It was all one big Quaalude hallucination delusion. That's all it was the whole night. It's just Quaalude. I rode to the ball in a pumpkin man. It was fucking awesome, man. And then the most rich, handsome guy, we danced all night. And then he gave me a shoe. It was amazing. That sounds like a high thought. Nothing turned back into mice and pumpkins. She just sobered up at midnight. Yeah, I was like, whoa, what the fuck, man?

Jesus, she had rabies. She's been just getting bitten by rats and mice all night. Just, oh, Jesus, what happened? Jesus Christ. Ass is sore. Did I do something last night? So the next night, a friend named Margie Hunt, who's a friend of Sue Ann, said that she and Sue Ann went out drinking on April 18th, the day after-

yeah the kid ed is out looking for a son and she's just chill having a she's going to the bar with her friend having shots she's doing a secretary's night out over here like what the fuck and uh she said that it felt that night like that suan was out celebrating something like she was like you know just graduated college or some shit she was out having a good old time we'll have some slippery nipples

Woo! Now, they end up, a man ends up calling the police department saying that he found a wallet containing, he saw that there was a missing kid and I found a wallet with a library card with that kid's name in it. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, so... That's the creepiest find of all time. That's where it was just lying in a shopping mall's parking lot. In a strip mall parking lot. Just sitting there. So...

They have a wallet and it's in a strip mall parking lot in Overland Park. So they but they have no Chris. They don't know what to do. So they end up after that. They go, OK, if his wallet's gone and all this. Now they really search for him like they don't just think he ran away now. Now they're thinking there's trouble. So they launch a huge air and ground search and everything. Planes, helicopters, you name it, all this type of shit.

They do find a pair of tattered blue jeans and a plaid flannel shirt in a wooded area between Nall and Interstate 435. The clothes are Chris's size, but his parents say they're not a part of his wardrobe. He doesn't have those clothes. Yeah.

So that's interesting. Some other kid apparently had his clothes ripped off his body and thrown out here. He's 13. It's not like an adult had it happen to. You know the difference between an adult and a child's clothes. You know what I mean? For sure, yeah. If he was 16, it's different. But 13, you're a boy. Unless you're Bob and you don't wear a man's clothes. Only time a kid leaves their clothes out in the woods is if they shat them while camping. Yes, or is there shit upon them. Yeah.

Does it look like they feasted upon Hormel chili out of a campfire? And these pants are all like torn up too, which is strange. So when they hear the clothes, they get, oh, maybe we found Chris. Even if something bad happens, something happened. But then they say, no, they're not a part of his wardrobe. So we never find out if they were or they weren't. So-

Ed says he has no idea what happened to his son. He is frantic. He's on the phone with the cops several times a day. Still, where are you? Where'd you look? He wants to know everything. He said he was positive. He tells the newspaper he is 100% sure his son did not run away.

He said, number one, Chris had a phobia about being out at night alone. That's one. So that didn't happen. He said he did not like darkness by himself. As long as I was with him, it didn't bother him, but not by himself. He's still a kid. Yeah, but in my 40s, that's fucked up. Being out just walking anywhere, even if it's in a fucking metropolis. When it's dark out, I hate it alone.

Really? Oh, my God. A city street walk alone? Nope. I can't wait for Uber to pick me up. Can't wait. Oh, no shit. I don't know why I enjoy that for some reason. Don't like it. I don't know why. Yeah, well, I don't know. I'm frightened. Oh, I don't know. I wasn't even thinking about it like that. I was just, it's kind of nice. I'm just a little guy. I like watching things. I mean, even when I walk down the street, like with a fucking stare and feel like I'm fucking unfuckwithable. Yeah.

I'm still fucked with. Walking down the street in Sacramento, I'm walking with a smoking a black and mild and a guy fucking shadowed me as I was walking towards him. I'm trying to walk around him and every step I take, he blocks me off and then asked to hit the cigar. I'm like, you can just have it, man. I'm going to share a cigar with you. This is weird. That's because he was, you were in his bathroom though. That's the problem. Yes. There's a lot of poop on the sidewalk there.

Yeah, I think you were in his bathroom. I mean, I was in his living room. I was in his bathroom. You were all up in dude's business. I don't think he liked it. So anyway, he doesn't like being out there by himself, I guess, in the rural area or anything. He said, I knew he hadn't run away also. One thing I taught him all his life was that he couldn't run from his problems. If he had done something wrong, he was to face it.

And then he looked down. He said, and now I wish to God I had told him to run because something obviously happened. So he's very, by the way, in the newspaper, it says he paused looking suddenly old as looking suddenly as old as the light looking suddenly old as the light played with his whiskey. So he's drinking whiskey, talking about his son. As the light played with his whiskey.

He's fucking sitting there drinking whiskey now. I wish to God I told him to run. And then he finished his drink. Who the fuck wrote that? Wow. Somebody wants to be an author. They're working on their first novel, this guy at home here. Somebody just painted that portrait lovely. Looking old as the late light played with his whiskey.

It's three fingers of whiskey. Wow. That is hilarious. So while this is going on, this is he's, you know, in the first week we can't find Chris. Sue Ann starts doing some weird shit like giving away Chris's clothes and bedroom furniture.

She starts giving shit away of his. That's, hmm. He's been gone like six days. We're still hopeful he's coming back. Time to clear it out. Fuck his bed. Fuck him. Yeah. Ed's out with the cops searching and she was at home talking about redecorating Chris's bedroom and turning it into an office. So she's telling her friends, I got to get rid of his shit so I can turn it into an office. They're like, aren't you looking for him? And she's like, yeah, but you know, we'll turn it into an office. He can sleep on the couch. He's blown it.

Wow, that is fucking insane. So that's really weird. And she even told on the 18th when she went out drinking, part of what she was telling her friend about was her plans to redecorate the bedroom. Why would she do that? It wasn't even gone 24 hours yet. So a tip comes in here from a young girl.

Not from Sue Ann's drinking partner? No, not from her. She should have been like, I have to use the restroom, Sue Ann, and then go to the pay phone by the bathroom. You really want to come here, this bitch is saying, because it is fucking crazy. I'll wear a wire right now. This is unbelievable. This is wild. So they get a call from a 15-year-old girl who claimed that she was at a party with

with a bunch of kids from school, and heard a guy named Paul Sorrentino talking about getting rid of a teenage boy at a party.

Pauly. Hey, Pauly Sorrentino, what are you doing? Why is it always you, Pauly Sorrentino? Come on, Pauly. Jesus Christ, Pauly, you're making it hard for me when I say it on stereotype and then you do shit like this. So, Pauly, the police reportedly said the tipster, at that point they asked the girl to come into the police station. She does. They make her call Paul Sorrentino to get him to talk about Chris while they record it.

Okay. During the conversation, he admitted that he got rid of, quote, got rid of Chris. Why did you do it? Well, as a favor for my friend Jimmy Crum Jr. Oh. Okay. It's getting weird now. So the cops are, they still don't talk to the boys right away because they want to try to see if they have anything on them that they can pin them with here. So then on May 3rd, 1980-

There are a couple of boys looking for worms in the Edgerton area. Okay. Now we're in Edgerton here, which is in the area of Bull Creek. Okay. And they're looking for worms for a fishing trip the next day. Right.

Which is weird because last week we had a story about the little girl with blood all over coming out and talking to the boy looking for worms. So it's dangerous for a little boy to look for worms, guys. Don't do it. Also, as a father, to pick worms is so hard to do.

It is. It is. And they are $1.99. Just go buy the fucking worms. Everywhere. Find the bait shop. Anywhere within three miles of a river, a creek, a lake, something, every gas station has a little fridge with fucking night crawlers in them for like $2.99. So cheap. They're so cheap.

So cheap. In a little foam with a lid. Just buy the bait, man. It's so easy. Like at my house, if you go take a scoop of dirt out of my woods, there'll be like 12 worms in it. Really? Oh, my God. There's so many fucking worms back there. It's insane. Jesus. It's insane. Yeah, it's wild. But to look for them, I guess they're cheap. That's something you can tell your kids to go do. Go dig for worms. Go pick some worms. That'll occupy some time. Jesus.

Well, they're digging, and while they're digging, they come across something horrible. How deep are they digging? 16 to 18 inches. They're going almost two feet deep for worms? Yeah, a foot and a half for worms. Oh, my God. Yeah, because they're going to be down where the soil is moist. They don't hang out. Just buy the worms. Buy the fucking worms. Someone's parents are being cheap as shit. Yeah. Well, in here, they discover...

A body in a 16 to 18 inch deep grave. Very shallow grave here. And the police, they go home and they tell their parents and they call the cops. And the police come and they find it is a small, very decomposed, as you might imagine, because it's been in the ground for, you know, almost three weeks now. Yeah, three weeks, yeah.

And it's a small boy, and they're worried that it's Chris. This child has three shotgun wounds. Three. One in the back of the head. Good Lord. One in the chest and arm area, and one in the throat.

Two different types of shotguns used. Is that right? 20 gauge and a 12 gauge. They figure out through the holes and the size of the wounds here. So this is horrific. I mean, this kid has been shot to shit and just basically just a thin layer of dirt put over him. Yeah.

From chest high, too. That's fucked up. It's fucking crazy. And the other part that's crazy is they're lucky these kids were doing worms out here because they were about to. They wouldn't have found him this body ever pretty soon because had it gone undiscovered for the next year.

It would have never been recovered. The site is in a sparsely populated area that they were just about to cover with millions of gallons of water to form the new Hillsdale Reservoir. They were going to make a lake. The project was going to be done in the next year. So they were just about to completely flood this fucking area. You would have never found that. Wow.

Ever, because he was already decomposed. He probably wouldn't have floated, and that would have been that. No, and he's deep. I mean, he's almost two feet deep. He's about to have a lake on top of him. Yep. So that would have been that. No one would have ever fucking found him except for a couple kids needing worms. Yeah. Wow. Seeking the treasure.

Yep. So now there's rumors spreading all over Shawnee Mission South High School where both Paul Sorrentino and Jimmy Crum Jr. were going to school. Jimmy Crum isn't going anymore, and Paul is about to drop out, by the way. He's going to drop out here in late April, he does.

So this is when that girl comes with information. So police now, since they found the body, because at first they didn't know if it was just some kid talking shit. They couldn't bring him in and really put the screws to him because who knows? Now they have a dead child. Now it's time to put the screws to these kids. So they bring in Paul and Jimmy, who are both 16 at the time. So they sit Jimmy down and they play games.

What the friend said and what Paul was saying on there. Get out of my life. Yep. And he said, all right, I did it. Jimmy gives it right up. Yeah. Jimmy gives it right up. Because he's 16 and he's dumb. Yep. He said that my mom came over to my apartment that day and said some things. He had been making derogatory remarks about my sister Suzanne and all

This other shit. And he said that his mom asked him to do it. His mom said, will you do this? We got to get rid of this kid. He's making he his mom also told him that that Chris was the one who turned him in for the credit card fraud he was committing. He locked you up. Yeah. Chris didn't do that at all. That's not what happened. But she told him that to piss him off. So he'd go, all right. Yeah. Fuck that kid.

So, wow, he met up. She came over and met Jimmy in the apartment complex parking lot and told him that something had to be done about Chris was his quote. Something had to be done. He said that she said she would buy him a new car. I'll buy you a sports car if you do this is what she told him. She he said, well, I, you know, I don't know if I can do this by myself. I don't know what to do here.

So she said, well, who do you know? Get somebody else then too. Oh, I know a real dumb loud mouth kid. No problem. I know a guy. Yeah, perfect. I know some fucking dumb Guinea that'll do it. Yeah. So I know a guy that talks more than most Italians. Yeah. He really likes to, likes to spread his news of violence rather than keeping it under his hat here. So they end up, he ends up going to Paul Sorrentino and he,

She said, Sue Ann asked Jimmy, what does Paul want to participate? And the answer was $300 so he could repair his motorcycle, which is an amazing deal right there. If he wasn't 16, I'd say he's definitely a cop is what I would say. That's 99.5% off. That is way too little to kill a child. I will kill a child for $300. It's bonkers. Paulie is dangerous.

That's a fucking poof, man. That is crazy. How many parts does he need for his motorcycle? $300, yeah. A stater and I'll kill your mother. Well, you think he would inflate the price a little bit, like an estimate from a shop. Get a new bike, man. It's going to be like $950.

I think, you know, he just needs spark plugs. But he's like, you know, $950, maybe a grand. I'm not sure. But I think, you know, up the price a little bit. Pad your estimate, douchebag. Yeah, don't ride this bike anymore. He said $300. I'm going to fix my shadow.

Later on, the figure fluctuates to maybe as much as $350 was promised. Nevermore. That's the highest figure given is $350. There's also $320 thrown around a little bit, which is the least we've ever heard of. A battery and a throttle cable. I'll do it. Have we ever heard of anybody? No.

Do anything. Usually when it's five grand, we go too cheap. That's a cheap. Yeah. This is I think we've had them for five hundred dollars down. You know what I mean? Like, you know, five grand once the insurance comes in. But this is just three hundred and three hundred. Done deal. That's what I paid for. That's my fee. Wow. So Jimmy Jr. says that he and Paul went to the house to the Hobson house that night and convinced Chris to come for a ride with them.

While Jimmy would went in the basement and grabbed the shotgun. So while they were doing stuff, Paul was talking to Chris. Jimmy went down, grabbed the shotgun. So they took him. It gets worse here. They take him out here where they found young Jimmy. They get him out of the car, both holding shotguns on him. And then they listen to this. This is this is like so fucking cruel. They force him to dig his own grave. Oh, come on.

They force him to dig his own grave and then they made him sit down in it and then they shot the fuck out of him. Wow. So they wouldn't have to move him.

He's 13, man. What is this, the Khmer Rouge? Like, what the fuck is happening? Is this, this is like what, you know, they did to, like, Vietnamese prisoners back then. Like, they would, you know, the Northern Army would just shoot them in the head. They'd fall into a fucking hole. This is insane. What is going on here, man? That's, holy shit. That's cruel. Super fucked up. For two teenagers to think about this? And your stepbrother.

Your stepbrother. That's what I mean. You know him. You know he's a nice kid and you're going to make him dig his own fucking grave and then sit in it. And did the kid, he might not have known that these kids were serious. He might have thought they were fucking with him. You get hazed and razzed by 16-year-olds when you're 13 and your brother, this might be a way to fuck with him. Ha, ha, ha, ha. They're going to laugh at him and then fucking go, come on, let's go get Dairy Queen. That's some rural Kansas jokes.

Yeah, that is not a funny joke at all. Yeah. If someone, if I had an older brother and they did that to me and I went home and told my father, he would murder that kid. He would murder my older brother. Good news. There's a grave already dug. Get in the back seat. I'm taking you back out there. Where are you going? We're going to that freshly dug grave. Remember that grave you made your brother dig? That's where we're going. Hop on the back of the Harley. That's what I'm going to do. Let's go. We're going. Get on. Get on. You can either jump off when I'm going 60 or we're heading there. Those are your options.

So, yeah, they said, why did your mother want her stepson dead so bad? The kid said, quote, she just didn't like him. Jimmy. She just didn't like him. That's what Jimmy said. She said he caused unrest in the family.

Good Lord. Wow. He said that on the day of the killing, he decided not to go through with it. He didn't want to do it here. They talked about it, but he said, I don't want to do this. You know, it was like this the last time she tried to make me do it. I didn't want to do it. She said, but his mother forced him. She, he said, quote, she was very upset. And when she found out that he had decided not to kill Chris, quote, she wanted to know what the hell was going on. She said it was too late now to back out. Yeah. Why? Why?

Just stop doing it. Because this is the best bargain I've ever gotten in my life. Yeah, it's going to cost me nothing. Don't you fuck this bargain up for me. Fuck. So, yeah, she wanted him dead. That was that. Jimmy Jr. told the cops that his mother told him on several occasions that something had to be done and had, you know, forced him into helping. What's her fucking problem? He then told them about the Quaalude ice cream, which is not my favorite flavor of Ben and Jerry's, honestly. No, it's... You know.

I like that Americone Dream. That one's pretty good. I like a pistachio. I think that fish one is overrated. That fish food is. That's not my favorite, no. I think it's a bit... Fish food, too much stuff going on there. Too many things, yeah. Too busy. Yeah, I can't put my... My mouth can't put my finger on what's going on in there. That cookie dough one's pretty rad, though. They're doing a nice job. Yeah, yeah. It's a good one there. I don't know about the Quaalude cookie dough. That's a different recipe. No?

So he said after that, he ate the ice cream. Chris started getting real groggy, stumbling around the house, and then he went to bed and slept for a long time. And she was disappointed when he woke up. So then after that failed to kill him, then she suggested, why don't you do it, Jimmy Jr.? He said, quote, she told me to make it look like a suicide or an accident, possibly a drug overdose. He said the first time he asked me to find someone to kill him. But later she decided that maybe I could do it.

Do you know anyone? And then say, you know what, kid? You're responsible. I think you got this in you. You're almost a man. I think it's time. I think it's time that you had your first kill. The mafia doesn't have you kill people that young. No.

Even in The Sopranos, they had Tony do it when he was like 22. And his dad was in the mafia. This is fucking crazy. Now more than ever, people are relying on their community pharmacy. Fortunately, CVS Pharmacy team members are passionate about their local communities. In fact, 87% of pharmacists wish their customers would ask more questions about their health needs. Does your CVS pharmacist go above and beyond for you? We'd love to hear your story.

Share it at cvs.com slash stories. That's cvs.com slash stories.

cvs making healthier happen together we get support from dove hey y'all it's your girl kiki palmer host of the wondery podcast baby this is kiki palmer let me cut to the chase did you know that in many states across the u.s it's still not illegal to discriminate against people based on the way their hair grows out of their head to deny black folks from jobs and opportunities because they have braids locks twists or bantu knots that's misogynistic

And today's sponsor, Dove, agrees. That's why Dove co-founded the Crown Coalition in 2019 to advocate for the passage of the Crown Act. Crown stands for creating a respectful and open world for natural hair. And the Crown Act is legislation which prohibits race-based hair discrimination in workplaces and schools in the U.S.

So,

Yeah, he said that she wanted someone to maybe you could do it. And then she said, well, maybe you could find someone to help you. And yeah, he said that he he talked to Paul because, quote, he seemed like the kind of guy who would do it, which is hilarious. Really?

It gets even better with that, yeah. He's my most badass friend, really. He's the toughest guy in the 11th grade. He gave himself a tattoo. It was wild. I can't even tell what it's of. He doesn't draw well, but he did it. Just three dots on his hand. He wrote something on there. But she says that later on we'll find out why Sue Ann thought it was a good idea to use Paul. It's pretty funny, but...

She said that she thought his dad might be. This is great. Paul would be a good choice because Sue Ann thought quite his dad might quote his dad might be connected with an organized crime group. Maybe because his name is Sorrentino. Literally, they said, why did she think that? And he said, because of his name.

Okay. We had no idea. And that self-made tattoo. Yeah. And he's also in Kansas. So unless he's in the witness protection program, living next door to Henry Hill, eating egg noodles and ketchup like a schnook. I think he's probably not. Yeah. Yeah.

It's probably not in the mob. So she said he said he tried to put her off. And then finally he told he told her that Sorrentino would do it and that it would cost three hundred fifty dollars to fix his motorcycle. And she said, that sounds reasonable. It's not an estimate for fucking new windows for new dual panes. What are you talking about? That sounds reasonable. Yeah. Hundred bucks to cut the lawn.

Twice a month? Yeah, that sounds reasonable. You get a George Foreman with that. Yeah, something, anything. Maybe just like a toaster, like at the bank back then. So he and his friend Paul picked Chris up at home, drove him out there, and did this. And then they covered his body with dirt.

And his mother told him later that told told Jimmy Jr. later that she was the one who threw his wallet away in the shopping center. Really? She went and tossed it because I guess they brought it back to her. So here's his wallet. She tossed it. I don't fucking want this.

So he also said that his mother promised to buy him a car, and that's how it is. So the cops are like, let's bring everybody in. They find the 20-gauge. They never find the 12-gauge, by the way. They can never find it. They find the 20-gauge at Sorrentino's home. So he must have just grabbed a shotgun from his shelf and went out that night and said, I'll take this. But there's no way to determine...

If it's the same gun because the shotgun, that's why Omar used a shotgun. Yeah, it's just no ballistics the same way. So no, was it twists and screws or whatever the fuck twists and turns and all that shit. So Sue Ann, the cops now want to talk to Sue Ann. They arrest both the boys, obviously.

They want to talk to Sue Ann here about this. They said she was a fucking stonewall, wouldn't admit to shit. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what you're talking about. Yep. First, Paul was defiant as well when they brought Paul Sorrentino in. Then the police played the recording of the phone call that he had with the girl. They went, that's you, you stupid fuck.

Remember this call? Yeah. And then he went, okay, Jimmy Crum came to me and it was for a motorcycle and $350. His mom didn't like the gun. He was just spilling it. I have so much I want to tell you. I should have bought a Harley. Fuck. God damn it.

So, and then Jimmy was talking everything too. They said that Jimmy seemed relieved to be getting this off his chest. He probably felt bad about it. He's not, he wasn't a monster before this. He was just a normal kid. Yeah. I knew a million kids that did way worse shit than Jimmy at that age. And they're fine now. They have families and you know, not more than murder, not more than murder. Yeah. When he was just fucking around, stealing credit cards and doing Coke and acid. I was all my friends doing shit like that. So yeah,

Um, during questioning, she, this is all that she will say. Sue Ann. She said, I had nothing to do with this. She did say that Jimmy told her on April 18th that Chris had been killed, but didn't not to tell anyone because, and she didn't want to tell anyone cause she was frightened and wanted to protect her son. Yeah.

And she said that she said that that Paul had told her Paul had told Jimmy that if you don't, then, you know, my organized crime family will kill your whole family. So that's what she said. So she was a scare. She was scared of getting killed by the mafia. Now, so scared she needed a bunch of kamikazes to walk down to hang out with her buddy there. I need a new office and some kamikazes to stop the fear of the mafia. A home office and some kamikazes will keep the mafia away.

So she admitted to the police she went to Jimmy's apartment and told him that something had to be done with Chris. She said, I discussed that with him. Yes, but not kill him. I meant like, you know, counseling or military school or something. She said police then asked her if the word killing ever came up. Did it ever come up? And she said, no, absolutely not. They asked her, did the mention of the word get rid of him ever come up? And her response was, it probably did, but I didn't mean it in that context of death.

Get rid of him, like send him away somewhere, you know, like you do with a 13-year-old. Get rid of him. Like, what the hell is that? So they also now go between 5 and 6 a.m., they go on May 4th and question Suzanne, the 15-year-old. Uh-oh.

Suzanne is never considered a suspect, but she's brought to because she was home at the time. She's certainly helpful. But they bring her in during the interrogation. She volunteers a whole bunch of shit that's not good for her mother. Uh-huh. Notably that she overheard her and her mom and Jimmy talking about the need to get rid of Chris. Uh-huh.

And she also, by the way, she knew about stuff and they said they could have charged her as an accessory, but they grant her immunity if she tells everything. She had no active role in it. She just knew what was going on. Fly on the wall. And when you're 15 and it's your mom, what the fuck are you going to do? You know what I mean? I'm going to tell my mom anything. Yeah. Yeah.

So they said she definitely had some involvement. So they tape her interview. She tells the officers that Chris had been causing problems between Ed and Sue Ann and that Sue Ann had told Jimmy that something had to be done about Chris. The day of the disappearance, Sue Ann overheard Jimmy tell Sue Ann that he and someone else were going to take care of Chris, take him out, and get rid of him. Jesus.

Yeah. So at that point, Sue Ann told Jimmy, I'll get Ed out of the house that night so you can take Chris. So that whole Burger King thing was a fucking plan. She didn't cook on purpose. Yeah. Because at this point, she's not working, so she's usually cooking every night. She said that this... I'll take him out for onion rings. Yeah. This was on purpose. She didn't cook so they could go to Burger King because she knew he'd be hungry. Oh, dude, how angry would you be if your wife...

Distracted you with Burger King. To kill your kid. Burger King. To have your kid whacked. Couldn't even have a decent meal. And it's a dumb plan, too, because what if he was like, no, I'm tired. I worked at the fucking dog food factory all day. Then I had a union meeting. Let's just order a pizza and we'll eat in. What if he said that? Yeah. You're fucked at that point. I don't want to smell anything that smells anything like dog food now. Nothing. Burger King counts. So...

She said that, yeah, she heard that. And later that day, Sue Ann told Suzanne that you need to stay upstairs and take a shower when you hear Jimmy come over to take to get Chris. Jimmy's going to get Chris at that point. You see them come and you go jump in the shower. So you're not a part of this. So her mother told her a few days later when Suzanne asked her mom what happened to Chris. She said that Jimmy took Chris out and took care of him.

And Suzanne said she thought that meant he was killed. I hope Suzanne has had 40 years of nightmares. And then therapy also, so this doesn't happen again. She also, I mean, she gave it right up, though, to the cops when they came for her. This is a dick move, man. It is.

At 15, I don't know if you can tell on your mom at 15. Maybe not, but you can't say. Especially if you know your dad's a piece of shit that can't be counted on. He's a no count, and now your mom's going to be fucking going to jail. What are you going to do? But your mom says, go up and take a shower so you're not part of this. That's fucked up. Oh, it's mad fucked up. Yeah, the mom is a monster here, obviously. And I feel bad for Suzanne because I think she's just a pawn in this whole thing. I don't know. Judging by the life she's had, I don't know. I mean, obviously, this wasn't cool. She could have maybe...

done something. She could have told Ed about, I don't know, but then what do you do? Because then what, then what if she denies it now that both the parents are yelling at you and you're in trouble. And as when you're 15, you have no agency. She could have told him to get the fuck out of the house. I don't know. She's in that. Yeah. But then for what to me, I don't,

Yeah, no, no, I totally get it. I'm trying to just play devil's advocate of what you would be thinking if you were 15 and this was going on in your house. Your family's about to murder your stepbrother. I don't know. It's bonkers, man. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to do this. So she said that... Suzanne said her mom also told her that she threw away the wallet at the shopping center. Wow. So, yeah. Following the interview with Suzanne, they...

Then tape record another interview with Sue Ann after the Suzanne interview after the daughter. So this all she'll say is that she had been Chris had been causing problems by threatening Suzanne, which Suzanne said that's not true at all. And that Sue Ann had asked Jimmy to talk to Chris and knew that Jimmy and his friend were going to take Chris out that night and try to scare him so he would leave Suzanne alone. Yeah.

That's what this was. When she found out the next day what happened, she was afraid to tell her husband. She admitted now that she hears her daughter on tape saying it. She admits to taking the wallet to the shopping center the day after the disappearance. And yeah, she would she just hope that this that it would. She said, I never thought he would hurt.

It's all Jimmy Jr. He's a crazy person. So now she's throwing her son under the bus who she has done nothing but shit on since he was a small child. The whole fucking time. He never had a goddamn chance.

And she denied ever talking to Jimmy about killing Chris. The day after the disappearance, Jimmy called and said that Paul had killed Chris and that he said that he would kill all of them if she told anyone. So she said she couldn't do it because she was terrified of the 16-year-old mafia hitman. Right. Yeah. She didn't tell her husband or the police for fear of what Sorrentino would do to her and her family and of what her husband would do to Jimmy and Paul if he found out. Yeah.

Yeah. So it would have been a big battle. You know what I mean? So a lot they talk to a lot of people and a lot of people say that Jimmy had stated often that he hated Chris and was angry with him for telling his parents that he used drugs and stole credit cards, even though he did neither of those things. Right. Chris, mind that his own business. The Sue Ann will say also that Jimmy kept saying he would get even with Chris. I didn't know this is what he meant. Wow, that's terrible.

So, yeah, that's interesting. She's just blaming her son. Just throwing him right at Jimmy Jr. That's crazy. She's a super piece of shit. She's a huge piece of shit. She made her son do it and then fucking just threw him under the bus and was like, what a crazy person. He did what? Poor Ed. Everybody in his life.

Wow. Yeah. Ed can't win. He really can't. It's a, you can't depend on shit. So a cousin of Chris's said in a recent interview that Chris told his grandmother a few weeks before he was killed that he was afraid of Sue Ann and Jimmy. Oh, his stepmom and a stepbrother. The last time this is the cousin, the last time he was at my grandmother's house, he begged not to go home because he was afraid of Sue Ann and Jimmy. He said, I don't want to go home because he's going to kill me.

How bad does that grandmother feel? How awful would you obviously go? He's 13. He's being dramatic. Oh my God. How bad would you feel? Holy shit.

When told of that statement, because Ed was there, and Ed, when told of that statement, rose up out of his chair and angrily asked, then why didn't they get off their ass and tell somebody? If he told them that, why didn't they do something about it? Why didn't they help him? He was freaking the fuck out. Jesus Christ, he's mad at everybody now. Ed went into a rage. So now they talk to Terry Cole, who is Jimmy Jr.'s 21-year-old roommate. Yeah.

And he shares the apartment with him since April 1st. So the kid moved in for two weeks and then killed somebody. And then he's gone. I don't think he's going to pay May rent. You know what I'm saying? I really don't. I think you're getting stiff there, Chief. It's over, yeah. He said that Jimmy Crum did not like Chris. After Chris's disappearance, Jimmy told him the little shit ran away.

That's what he told him. A little shit ran away. He said that Jimmy Crum repeatedly referred to his stepbrother with a derogatory term and said that Chris had narked on him about the credit cards and the drugs. And also this roommate said that Jimmy Crum told him that Sue Ann planned to buy him a car with the money she expected to get from a lawsuit plan. She's planned to file against her former husband for child support.

So she's her whole plan is back. Child support will finance all of this. Yes, she's going to sue. And I'm going to sue this guy who's a fucking he's not a real good dad. I don't know if he has anything to sue for at this point. So now she's arraigned.

And they said that her lawyer said that, look, nothing she said is important. They have nothing to incriminate her. They said she said very little quote. Mostly it's a lot of rhetoric on the part of the police officers and that all she said was that she didn't kill the kids. So why are you holding her on this heavy, hardcore bond? So she's originally the bond is set at one hundred thousand dollars and then they reduce it to fifty thousand dollars for Sue Ann.

And fucking Ed pays for her bond. Ed? To get her out of fucking jail. Why did he do that? Ed is, Ed, I don't know what's going on in Ed's brain, but Ed's brain has got to be like fireworks and things moving around. The seesaw. It's wild. Because Ed then, this is fucking crazy. He gets her out of jail. Then he divorces her. Okay. But before they try her, he remarries her.

What is happening? He divorces and remarries her in the time between the arrest and the trial. Oh, boy. And she's out of prison to be divorced and remarried the whole time. She's out of jail. Hey, how do you justify it? But, like, what's happening? It's fucking insane. I know less about what's happening than that, evidently. No shit. Then this is fucking crazy. Two months after she's arrested, they drop the fucking charges against her.

Say again. They dropped the charges against her. Then on June 22nd, 1981, he he they refiled the charges against him, against her. OK. When she was originally arrested the first time, Ed wanted nothing to do with her. He said, oh, my God, she she killed my kid. He asked the court officials to have her kept away from the family home if she gets bail. Then he bailed her out.

Then he divorced her. Then they dropped the charges. Then they remarried her, and then they reinstate the charges. So I guess he remarried her. When they dropped the charges, he said, oh, my bad. I guess I jumped too soon. He acted too fast, yeah. And then they refile the charges, but they're already married again. He remarried her, he said, after. He said he divorced her, and he thought it was a mistake. By the way, it was like three days after their divorce went through, they got remarried.

So right when it finally came through, they went right down and got remarried. And he said he remarried her after realizing that she was completely and totally innocent. He said if there was any question in his mind that she wasn't innocent, he would have killed her himself.

He said, I'd have killed her if I thought she killed my kid. I thought that's where this was going. He said he bailed her out. I thought he was going to open this woman in the living room. Where are we going? To dig for worms, sweetheart. That's where. Dig for worms. Dig your grave. I mean worms. I mean for worms. Need a lot of worms. We're going fishing. He said, oh, yes, if she wasn't totally innocent, I would have killed her and we wouldn't be here today talking about it. This is, by the way, while he's sitting at the kitchen table with her. He says this to a reporter.

He said he initially refused to allow her to return home because he was confused. He said, I knew in my depression over the loss of my son that I could not at that time make any kind of fair judgment on her. And then he pats her on the hand and said she could have walked away. She could have walked in that door totally as innocent as she is. And I would have killed her. I don't know if I would have, but I could have. This is while he's patting her nicely on the hand. Yeah.

She'd have walked in. I'd have blew her brains out the back of her fucking head. I don't know. It would have been good. He said, my son came first to me, and everyone knows that, including Sue Ann, which is another reason why she didn't like Chris. Because he came first. There's the reason right there. Yep. No one hurt my son that didn't get hurt back. I loved him, and I miss him very, very much.

So now stories start to come out from relatives and neighbors saying Chris wasn't allowed to eat at the dinner table because Sue Ann didn't want to look at him. And they said he was forced to eat alone either before or after the family had eaten their meal. Ed says, of course he ate with us. Had my son not been allowed to sit down at the table with me, there wouldn't have been a damn table to sit down to. I'd have taken this house apart and put it back together again. Everything's anger with that over the top.

He said that it's crazy that he said, I just don't understand it. I didn't know there'd be, uh, there was anything wrong. They had ups and downs him and Sue Ann, but I didn't see anything abnormal. He goes, so, you know, why would I think that? He said that the kids, Jimmy Jr. And Chris had a couple of spats, but nothing I saw as unusual. He said, maybe I was blind. Yeah.

I think so. I think you're at work a lot is what it is. And that's, you know, you don't have time to see all this shit, which has happens. He said that, you know, Jimmy Jr. stayed there for about eight months. He left two months ago and moved to Lenexa and the parting was amicable. And I didn't think there was anything wrong. He said that Chris was a happy boy. He wasn't a problem child. Yeah. And, uh,

His Sunday school teacher said he was a very loving, happy, outgoing child. You immediately liked him because he was bubbly, talking about Chris. So it doesn't sound like the type of kid who would completely ruin the harmony of a household. No, he's not. Yeah, he's not.

So Jimmy goes to trial first. Jimmy's going to go to trial on this, which I don't know what he's going to trial for because he already admitted that he fucking did this. Is he claiming not guilty in that charge? What's he trying to say? They're doing, they got psychiatrists testifying here. Now a psychiatrist testified first that Jimmy knew it was wrong to kill his stepbrother, but committed the killing out of fear and love for his mother, who he thought was the most powerful person in the world at a,

you know, a disproportionate, you know, out of whack view of his mom, which kids do. Sure. That happens. One doctor told the jury that Jimmy Crum knew the killing was wrong, but didn't have the mental capacity to fully appreciate the consequences of how wrong it was.

Jimmy admitted he killed him but told police he did it for his mom. And they said, yeah, that's why he did it is what these doctors are going to say. Make him dig his own grave, though, is a little much. Now, Jimmy Crum Sr. is even going to testify here. Really? Yes. The defense testimony, they paint a picture of Jimmy Crum as a lost child who grew up wanting to please a mother who abandoned him when he was eight years old.

It's a pretty good picture. Didn't see him for more than eight years. She attempted to reestablish a relationship with him in 1978, asked him to move into her home in Overland Park. And she had the other kids there and all that kind of thing. So for almost he lived there for a while. And they say no one knows why he left the home. But things seem to be developing here.

The doctor said that Jimmy Jr. loved his mother but was terrified of his mother's omnipotent or omnipotent power. So she's omnipotent, this broad. He saw her as a wealthy and powerful person who could effectively use other people without any repercussions. Really? Yeah.

When you're a kid, you see adults as knowing what they're doing, even though they don't. But when you're a kid, you go, well, they must know what they're doing. They have like a car and shit. I don't know. She's got $350. She's yeah. She could just whip that out at any time. And another psychiatrist that did some testing on Jimmy at a clinic here said that his mother was paranoid and kept him constant and repeated pressure on him to kill, to kill Chris. They said that he was told the psychiatrist was told by Jimmy Crum Jr. That he,

He had attempted to kill the kid before and told Jimmy Jr., this kid's spreading rumors about me, spreading rumors about your sister. You know, one time she tried to put cocaine on a stick of gum to kill him. I don't think that's going to do it. I don't think it'll work. This is the opposite of the Quaaludes. You're just making him so cool. Yeah, you're just making him learn how to party. Like...

This is wild. So when asked if Crum was insane, the doctor refused to say. He said, I cannot answer that question. That's for the jury to decide. He said that James knew in an intellectual way that killing was against society, but it's plausible that he didn't appreciate the wrongfulness of his act in the same way a person with better sense of who he was would have. He didn't have the apparatus to fully appreciate the wrongfulness of his behavior. They bring in Jimmy Jr., Jimmy Sr. Uh-huh.

He's been going to the trial. He said that his divorce led to drinking problems and intermittent contact with his son as well. I don't know where the hell the kid was. He's crying, saying he hadn't treated his son very well. He said, no, sir, I haven't been a very good father. Virtually, in a sense, I dumped him.

So he's been just shit on by both his parents. He was openly weeping on the stand. And he hugged his father as he left the courtroom. Jimmy Jr. did. So I guess he felt bad. His dad was crying. Even though his dad's treated him like shit, he's got this weird thing he wants to make his parents happy.

So his lawyer now, Crum's lawyer, said here that Jimmy was invited to live with them. And the reason why he was the only reason why he was invited into the house is because Sue Ann was already plotting to kill Chris and had decided that Jimmy was the one who was going to do it.

That's the defense. Jimmy never had a chance because from the minute he was told, oh, now I love you again. Come live at my house. It was only to. Yeah, I put a roof over your head. Now you murder for me. Yep. But Ed said on the stand that, quote, that's all a bunch of crap.

He said, we brought Jimmy into this house to try to give him a chance for life, something he never had. Anyone who's saying that doesn't have enough intelligence to know what's going on. I don't think anyone has enough guts to say that to my face, he says. He's ready to fight in court, this guy. He fights everybody. He'll fight everybody. He's like Joe Pepitone's dad.

So they present extensive psychiatric testimony dealing with his Jimmy Jr.'s history, his suggestibility, his alcoholism since a very young age, his weird relationship with his parents and every other goddamn thing there. Three different psychiatrists testify for the defense and express the opinion that he did not know the difference between right and wrong at the time of the killing.

Two psychiatrists testify for the state, and they all say that he was sane at the time, knew the difference between right and wrong, understood the quality and nature of his acts, and knew that the killing was wrong. Yeah, so they did that. Now, they talk about all of this. They say, will he testify? He was scheduled to testify on his own behalf, Jimmy Jr.,

But a private investigator who worked for the defense said that the decision was made in the middle of the week not to put him on the stand. Yeah. He said one of the main reasons we didn't was because his mental condition was so fragile. The drawing showed his condition was deteriorating during the trial. They're talking about these. He's apparently constantly Jimmy Jr. scribbling pictures on a yellow legal pad. Yeah.

They said those drawings were shown to Dr. Charles Welsh, a psychologist who said the drawings indicated personality disintegration right on the spot. Like you could see them over the days. Really? Fall apart. He said the drawings were not shown to the public because of the concern for his mental state. And yeah. So in closing, OK, the prosecution urged the jury to remember that little Chris Hobson will never laugh or cry again.

Yeah. And he told the whole story as he's telling the story. Jimmy Crumb Jr. is just looking down at the floor crying. Yeah. Which is a bad, not good in a closing your trial. So he said the prosecutor said, I've got to believe when the dust settled down around Chris's body and his pulse faded away, Jimmy Crumb had no idea if he'd ever been caught. If it hadn't been for a quirk of fate, he never would have. That's true. It really was. This was out in the middle of nowhere. This is about to be flooded, about to be flooded forever.

Six men, six women on the jury. Two hours it took for them to come back.

And they bring in a verdict of guilty for Jimmy Crum Jr. And at that point, he maintained his composure until he was taken back to the jail area where he became emotionally upset and started crying and screaming. Fucking freaked out, lost his shit. I'm about to stay in here forever. Forever. And they said that as people filed out, James Crum Sr. could be seen standing in front of the jail openly crying as well, weeping.

So the sentencing comes around and if they didn't do it so bad, if they were just like, he was walking the other way so I just shot him in the back of the head so he wouldn't see it coming. They made him dig his own grave. It's fucked up. Mom didn't say make him dig his own grave. Like that's

extra i think that's you're lazy too so he's but i do feel terrible because he just wants his mom to love him anyway you young man may fuck off 15 years to life for him okay yeah so they're 15 to life he's gonna do 15 and they're gonna try him up for parole and there's no fucking way he's getting out the first time we'll talk about it oh my god so

The reactions, the jury foreman, Daryl Williamson, said that all the jurors felt sympathy for Jimmy Jr. They all felt the same as I do. They said they know he was used by this woman, is what they said. He said, quote, most of the people felt sorry for the boy being an instrument of his mother. I imagine most of the people would rather have seen his mother on trial, meaning the jurors. He said the verdict took two ballots because there was a question of sympathy for Jimmy Jr.

They went around and someone said not guilty and they had to go, look, I know we feel bad, but the law says this is this and that. So another juror said they agreed with Williamson saying he had no doubt that Crum was killed into, coaxed into the killing by his mother. He said, it's a shame to say, but I don't think he would have done it if she hadn't told him to. I guarantee you he wouldn't have done it. His mother was the ringleader of it all. If she's not charged, somebody is wacky.

And, yeah, they said that the prosecutor said that he was pleased with the conviction. But then they said, are you going to charge Sue Ann? Because this is when her charges were dropped in that time. He declined to comment.

Wow, that is fucking wild. He said, I cannot comment on charges being filed. That's not my decision. Upstairs says I can't talk about it like that. They said it was he was the county attorney or Crum's attorney said he was shocked by the short only two hours taken by the jury. He said, I was surprised they came back that fast. I don't see how they could have given fair consideration to all the facts.

But he also criticized the insanity law, calling it a simplistic rule. He said it's a rule that should have been trashed out 100 years ago. So, yeah, he said that the defense wasn't a choice. Jimmy's a very, very sick man with severe emotional problems. And, you know, this is crazy. So Sorrentino now they offer him a deal.

Really? Yeah, because I think they just said he just came in at the end. They don't think they got a good enough case? No, they don't know. So they give him a deal to plead guilty to aiding and abetting first-degree murder, even though they're pretty sure he tired a lot of the fucking shots. He certainly shot that kid.

And he will be he gets the same thing. You young man may fuck off 15 to life, which he'll be eligible for parole after serving six and a half years. Holy shit. Yes. Six and a half years. He's given a life sentence for pleading guilty. But they said that, yeah, he's they say at first he's not eligible for parole for 15 years. But then they find out that he is eligible in six and a half years based on the sentencing at the time.

So, yeah, he entered that plea. And he also, Jimmy, by the way, agrees to testify against his mother, too. Uh-oh. Yep. And then so does Paul. So that's how that goes. So they're saying that the deal, Ed's really pissed off. Ed said it's bullshit that they made a deal with Sorrentino in exchange for his testimony against my wife. He said this is about politics is what this says. No, it's not.

The DA is Dennis Moore, and he says, here's where Dennis Moore is coming from. He says, let me do it this way. I'll charge her, and we'll let the court decide. I don't believe it's revenge of any kind. I think it's strictly that he's wanting to run for attorney general, and he wants to save face.

Yeah, he said he's opened his mouth and stuck his foot in it by filing charges against Sue Ann. He knows she's not guilty, but he won't admit it. He won't admit to making a mistake. He'd be a much bigger man to say, hey, I made a big mistake. I was just trying to do my job. Ed doesn't trust a soul on this planet, and it may stem from his daughter being raped at a very young age by a family member. His wife died. He doesn't trust a fucking thing.

They defiled his daughter the night before the funeral. Everybody's out to get Ed in his mind. And she didn't commit suicide. No, that's the other thing. Someone killed her. He also mistakenly believes that Sorrentino will be out of jail in 120 days.

He says about the prosecutor, he flat out lied to me. He made a deal with the person who cold-bloodedly killed my son, and that lets him get back on the street in 120 days and kill somebody else? And I don't buy that in any way, shape, or form. But they say, the prosecutor said, it will not be 120 days. In fact, it'll be a number of years before he ever sees a parole board, is what the prosecutor said.

which is a fact. So he then says, Ed says, last year, District Attorney Dennis Moore promised me justice. He said we were going to go for first-degree murder on both of them, and he wouldn't stop until they got it. Dennis Moore said he wasn't going to plea bargain, but he has.

So, after that, Sue Ann's trial, talk about that a little bit here, they are going to, these different attorneys are going to team up to prosecute her. Moore and another county's attorney are going to team up here. It's like Johnson, Miami County's working together here. He said, Steve and I will be working together here on this case of the stepmother, and our next step is the preliminary hearing, and so they're going to do that. She's currently free, by the way, on bond still. Unreal. Ed...

is adamantly defending his wife's innocence and wore, wore a t-shirt to the courthouse that said, they promised me justice. I promise them revenge. Oh my God. He's making a threat. He's making threats in t-shirt form in public fucking. Wow. He went and had his, had his threats screen printed and wore them to the court.

That's amazing. Why did you take out a billboard? Holy shit. He said that Sue Ann did not kill his son. He says anyone who hurts his family will be hurt in return, and I'm not hurting her, which means she didn't do it.

They say the newspaper says, quote, when talking with Hobson, he comes across as a sincere, quiet man, a man with an intense inner conflict, a man confused by what life has offered him. That's a good way to put it. Confused by what life has offered him. He said, I've had a lot of sleepless nights, but I just take it one day at a time. No, I don't think I'm cursed. No one is cursed. They actually asked him, do you think you're cursed? All this tragedy in your life, Ed. Yeah.

He said that he's going to stand beside his wife and every day of this trial, he said she's being framed by two drug dealing punks. Yep. Crowds lined up for hours in advance. It was like the OJ trial. Hilarious. The reporters were like, hey, Ed, all these things happened. Maybe it's you. Yeah. What do you think, Ed? You cursed or what?

Did you like piss off a lady with a big wart and a weird nose in your past? Had like a cauldron going. She was putting like Eye of Newt in. Did you tell her to fuck herself or something back in the day? Maybe it's you, man. Yeah. That's a fucked up thing to say to a man at a courthouse. That is like that. Everyone's dead or in jail and his whole family.

So, yeah, all sorts of people come to this trial. There were a lot of doubt surrounding the courtroom ability of District Attorney Dennis Moore. They said that it was a suburban town and he doesn't try a lot of complicated murder trials here. So another witness here that comes up, this is Margie Hunt here, the one that went out drinking with Sue Ann. And they said, do you know anything about her wanting to get rid of her son? And she said, quote, she hated him and wished that he was gone. She wanted him out.

She said she wasn't mental. She said he wasn't mentally right. And for his own good, he needed to be put in an institution. And she also said that, wow, holy, by the way, through all of this, Sue Ann is just glaring death rays through this woman. Death rays. She testified that Sue Ann once asked her, quote, if I knew anyone in the mafia and asked if I ever heard the name Sorrentino mentioned in connection with the mafia. Yeah.

You watch documentaries. You ever see like a Sorrentino mixed up in there or anything? When was the last time you watched a date? I got a question for you. So this lady had moved away to Connecticut and works as a bartender now here. And yeah, she moved away. She said she's been friends with Sue Ann for several years and saw her several times a week. And after she married Ed, their conversations often centered on the problems that Chris was causing in the relationship.

She said that he was a problem. She said he would act like a three-year-old and embarrass her, and so she refused to be seen in public with him. Oh, God. Good Lord. That's awful. The jury's seven men, five women on this one, by the way, so pretty even. The day after he was reported missing, they talk about the going out to drink, and she said she was in a good mood. She said Chris was gone. Within an hour, she was at my place saying, let's go out and celebrate.

Twice that day they went out and had drinks and twice Sue Ann toasted Chris's disappearance. She toasted it. She got hammered twice in one day. To Chris going missing. That's how much she's partying. Holy shit. What is she on vacation in the fucking Bahamas? Like that's what people do when they go to an island for vacation. They get up, get hammered, take a nap, wake up, eat some food and get hammered again.

They have toasting everything. It's all inclusive. Let's drink some more. Holy shit. Now, they tried to get it so this woman wouldn't be able to testify because they said a warrant had been issued for Margie's arrest and a civil judgment was entered by a judge because she had taken more than $40,000 worth of jewelry from a client of theirs.

So the court records show that a judge entered a default judgment against her last December when she failed to answer a claim that she had Sue Ann Hobson's jewelry. She's saying that

I guess Sue Ann said, I gave her my jewelry when I went to jail to hold and she just took it and took off and she sold it. Yeah. So they're saying this bitch killed a kid. She's never getting out. I'm selling this. Well, they're saying she's lying so she can keep this jewelry and not have anything, you know, put out there. So that's how it goes. Um,

So anyway, twice during the testimony, Sue Ann slammed her hand down on the table and said bullshit under her breath very loudly. Loudly like bullshit, fucking bitch. That's she can't control it. Even OJ didn't do that. Like you got to chill the fuck out.

Another witness, a teacher, came in and said that Sue Ann had told her that Chris was causing difficulties in the family. Jimmy testifies against his mom. Yep. And said he had nothing to do with moving the wallet from the bedroom to the shopping center. He said, my mother told me that she did that.

And they get his they get his probation officer in there as well. And she said that she discussed the credit card problem with Jimmy Crum and Sue Ann Hopson a few days before Chris was killed. She said Sue Ann talked with her about her family. She said, we discussed the tent situation in the home. And she said that she was saying she wanted to leave the marriage but couldn't afford to because of financial reasons.

She was talking about leaving Ed. Oh, my God. Then there's a delay in the trial because it has to be delayed while she's hospitalized for a drug overdose. She got drugs in the joint. No, she's at home. She's out on bail. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So she got access to all her quaaludes. Access to all her drugs. And so the judge throws her in jail for the rest of the trial because. Can't be having you killing yourself in the middle of this. Can't be partying after trial. Yeah.

So they said Jimmy in court looked like he was resigned and defeated. He spoke quietly. They said he was the only one that didn't appear to parse every word. He's testified about the bizarre relationship with his mom, about her coming over. They asked if he liked Chris or hated Chris. And he said it would be more like it would be more than dislike. He said he didn't like Chris at all.

And she he said that she just kept pressuring me. She was always in a hurry to see if something could be done. And then she came over to my apartment and said she'd like to be rid of him before Christmas season so she wouldn't have to buy any presents. Yeah. Yeah. That 350 is going to pay for itself when I don't have to pay for Christmas. It's free. Basically, it's a wash.

So he said that take him hunting and once you get out there, shoot him, get rid of the body. He said my mother was upset when I couldn't do it the first time. And she said if I couldn't do it for her, she'd find someone who could. And that's when he found Paul and all of that kind of shit. So, wow. He said at first she was being vague about it, but then she came right down and said she wanted him dead. So, yeah, after all the attempts and she and then she told him that she was trying to kill him with drugs and that didn't work. So he was like, fuck, she's serious.

So, Suzanne, at this point, she totally said what her mother did, and now she flipped it and won't fucking say shit. Really? Yep. She attempted to change her story. So, the district attorney approached the bench and asked to have her deemed a turncoat witness, a fucking hostile witness, like they did with Kate O'Kalen. And then he could do whatever he wants, questioning her. He can abuse her. He can get her to fucking say what she said before, and he does. He fucking rips her apart.

And then she finally confirms the story that she does. She couldn't keep it up under the cross-examination. She she does it. She testifies. She's sobbing. And they said they said they asked her if she had hired and conspired. Was it you that did it? Because the mother was saying maybe it was her. And she said, no, no, no, no. Yeah. By the way, Suzanne, Sue Ann's going to testify. And she says, no, no, I love that boy.

She's on the stand for two and a half hours. She said her and Ed were having normal problems adjusting to the marriage, but there's no major problems involving Chris. She said Chris thought it was great, the marriage. He called me mom even before I said yes to Ed. He was looking for a mom. He was dying for a mom. His mom was fucking dead. Right, because his mom died horrifically. Yeah. She said, I did say get rid of, but I meant send to military school or an institution. Right.

And she said when she found out about it, she said Jimmy said Chris was dead and that he didn't do it. And he was crying and he was scared. And he said Paul had gone berserk and killed him. It was Paul. It was Paul. It was always Paul. That's what she said on the stand. He swore to me he had nothing to do with it, meaning Jimmy Jr., and that I had to help him. And so she said I had been told by Jimmy Jr. not to say anything and that Paul told him that if I said anything, Paul would just make it a package deal and get rid of us all.

She said, all I wanted him to do was talk to Chris. Just talk to Chris about spreading rumors about Suzanne, which I guess is the only thing that he did that was true, is he spread rumors about his sister. Other than that, he didn't tell on anybody. He didn't do anything like that. What could the rumors have been? That's what I mean. She's 16. Who knows? Or 15. During closing arguments, she...

the prosecutor said, Dennis Moore said that she is the prime mover in the killing of Chris Hobson. She ordered, hired and approved of the killing of Chris Hobson.

The defense attorney said there's no evidence to implicate her at all. None. She said the only evidence is coming from Jimmy Crum Jr., who's a known and admitted liar and a murderer. Yeah, they painted very different pictures. The prosecutor said Sue Ann Hobson lied to you. Sue Ann Hobson may now appear to be remorseful, but there are two sides to Sue Ann Hobson. And Chris knew her dark side all too well.

Said you should find her guilty of all the charges against her. And although she wasn't physically present, the presence of Suzanne Hobson was very real at the grave site. Sue Ann Hobson was the prime mover in this case. The state is not required to prove a motive, which is true. It's not one of the elements they need to prove. We don't need why. But the motive is there. It's probably the oldest motive in the world. She didn't like him. Oh, yeah. Just didn't like him. Plain old didn't like him.

Take it easy. He's like on Seinfeld, the guy, Jimmy's jumping for dollars. He's that guy. Jimmy's open.

He said that, yeah, they go all of that. And the verdict comes in. And I guess it's an eight-day trial. The verdict, the jury comes back after two hours. And they want to listen to the tape statements by Suzanne, the daughter, again. They then recess for the night. And they come back again at 845. And 4 o'clock the next day, they come back with a verdict. And it is guilty of murder for Suzanne. Yeah.

As she left the courtroom, she said, oh, it's awful. That was her response to it. Miscarriage. So this is from a newspaper while awaiting sentencing. She's still out on bond. She only had to go to jail for the one night as like a contempt thing. Quote, for three hours Friday night, Sue Ann Hopson sat in her kitchen sipping cranberry juice and smoking one Bel Air cigarette after another.

Her husband, Ed Hobson, pulled at his pipe and drank black coffee from a cup she kept full. I've never seen a picture of him without a cigarette, by the way. There's like 20 pictures of him always got a cigarette in his hand. They said between puffs and sips, they talked about the murder and everything like that. She said, it makes me look stupid that I do not have good answers for everything. But people make an irrational situation into an everyday occurrence. But if they had been in my shoes, they would have all done the right things.

OK, would not murder a kid. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, probably. Yeah. Just ride it out till he graduates from high school. I don't know. Ed said the reason my son got killed was because two kids were on drugs. He said that's the reason my wife had nothing to do with it. He said I've had to put myself or this is her again. I have to put myself on so many guilt trips the last two years and I'll be damned if I will take all the responsibility for Jimmy's behavior. I will not. His father had him to.

What? They are delusional. And Ed said Jimmy wasn't even that bad. Ed said Chris was finding out about sex. Jimmy was older and Chris would talk to Jimmy about things he couldn't talk to me about. Jimmy was a problem, but he was not a hassle every day. He said they didn't understand why this happened. They said, well, why didn't you tell anybody about this? Why didn't she tell you? And he said, fear. Fear is a small word. She said, I was terrified.

It's not fear. It's terrified. So, wow. This is very interesting. They just talked to her. She said this has ruined her daughter's life.

And she said, I pray about that every night. She feels like Jimmy betrayed us to get even with me for abandoning him. Lady. That's what she's blaming everybody. It's fucking. Fuck. It's intense, man. And Ed said that I'm going to get Dennis Moore on election day. That's not a good thing to say. Say that. He said, if I have to, I'll run against him myself. He's not stepping on us for his political gains. So he's threatening to either kill him or run against him or something. I'm at a primary. That guy.

Wow. That is wild. Yeah, primary is that. He said...

They said that she awaits her prison sentence, and he said she's not going to have to. I have enough faith in God and man. What, are they going to give her fucking probation for this? The two of them. They are yes men to each other and can't stop this loop of incorrect information that they just keep feeding off each other. It's so gross.

She said she couldn't run away if she wanted to. She said, we have nothing now. We have Ed's salary, and where can you go with seven cats? They would die. Why do you have seven cats?

Sentencing comes around. She is, you ma'am may fuck off here. Okay. She is sentenced to life in prison for the murder charge with the possibility of parole. There's no hard 50 like they have later on. And then five to 15 years in prison for the conspiracy charge. Right. Yeah. So she gets that. Yeah. It's just he probably. Yeah. Yeah.

Ed said, yeah, Ed said, I don't hate her. I still love her. I just don't understand what's happening. That's what Ed said afterwards. Here's the thing, Ed. She hated your kid and she murdered him. That's what, what's so hard to understand, man? So she's in prison. Ed divorces her. Yeah. And then two years later, he remarries her while she's still in prison. Ed can't stop.

Ed can't stop. They have three, they've been married three fucking times now. Three times. These two. Three times. Two divorces. 85, she has an appeal here and it's based on affidavits from prisoners that talk about Paul. They said that Paul Sorrentino said that Sue Ann had nothing to do with the murder, but Paul Sorrentino, when they bring him in, he says he'd never met these three people before and doesn't fucking know them at all. Okay.

So they go, well, throw that fucking appeal out. You're shit out of luck. 85, Ed pleads guilty to something. What? He pleads guilty to a charge of illegally using his dead son's social security benefits. He's...

Holy shit. He pleads guilty to falsely obtaining $7,039 in benefits his son would have received after his natural mother died in 1976. Shit. He faces a maximum prison sentence of 10 years and a $10,000 fine. He could get 10 years for that? He could get 10 years.

Yep. Last summer, the regional office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that Chris was continuing to receive monthly payments ranging from $153 to $189, and the checks were being directly deposited into a bank account, which was set up after the boy died. They found out it was controlled by Ed and his wife, Sue Ann, and payments were made to the account from September 80 to August 84. Wow.

Wow. 89, Sue Ann's up for parole for the first time. That quick. They call it. People are mad. A lot of people are saying it's a bad law that she's allowed to do this. They fixed it since then. The prosecutor said we're opposed. And they said one prosecutor said she hasn't served enough time for the contract killing of a stepchild. It doesn't get much worse than that. That's true. Yeah.

Denied. But she's up every three years. Yeah. 92 up for parole. She repeatedly refuses to admit any involvement in the killings. That's not good, ma'am. You are doing a bad thing.

Ed keeps going and pleading for her at all of her hearings. He said, we just want to have a chance to put our lives back together and we can't do it without your help. He at one point they talk about the victim's family and he said, I am the victim's family. It's just me. His mom's dead. This is everybody. Yeah. Everybody else is dead. What the fuck? Ed said he mentioned the two books that were published. We'll talk about those. I'll mention them what they are.

And he says, you know, books have been published, all this shit. Let her out. Everybody deserves a second chance. They said, yeah, that's that's that. Everybody deserves it. They go, well, not this time. You're denied, fucker. Yeah. No. At one point they said they talked about the prosecutor said he was sad and shocked that he and the other prosecutor were the only person to attend the hearing on Chris's behalf.

He said that kid was murdered by his own family. Who's here for him? Yeah. Nobody. Oh, by the way, Suzanne also speaks and saying that she does not want her mother freed. Yeah, because she was manipulated and looks like she made you look like a shit bag. Oh, yeah. There's all sorts of op eds, too, with people. Here's one of the teachers of Chris. One of Chris's old teachers wrote a fucking op ed.

Yeah.

Ninety-seven, Sorrentino's up for parole. He's been passed over six times already. Oh, boy. And they deny him again in 97. Make it seven. Yep. By the way, Jimmy Crum was passed over for parole earlier that year. He is currently in a work release program as of 1998. My God. 1998, Sue Ann up for her sixth parole.

The prosecutor said she needs to admit what she's done. If she does that, we won't oppose her release. All she has to say is I did it. And we'll say you should let her out now and let her out now. She won't fucking do it. No, no. And Ed keeps supporting her. That's right. Ed's. Yeah. Ed said I are. One lawyer said I told him the best thing to do was wait and see if we could get her out on parole. I just feel sorry for Ed. He's a really nice guy. Yeah. Denied again.

January 4th, 1999, Jimmy is paroled. Jimmy Jr.'s paroled. He ends up moving to Texas and becomes an electrician and does just fine for himself. Really? Yep. As long as he's away from mom. Yep. April 21st, 2000, Paul's paroled as well. Oh, boy. Don't know what he did, but he went off somewhere. Okay.

Wow. So he then, I guess everybody calls him fucking spineless. By the way, there's like a people who hate Ed that call him Ed spineless Hobson all over the place. He joined the Kansas city chapter of parents of murdered children and

A support group where we normally would do things like try to block her from getting released from jail. His active participation led to the position of co-leader of the group, which he now got dropped out of it because he said he still loved his wife and wants her to get out of jail. So they didn't like that. We can't have you, man. You make us look bad. Can't do it. So she's denied again in 2000. 2003, she's up for parole.

And yeah, they said all you have to do is say you fucking did it. It's the seriousness of it. It's a serious crime. She's denied again.

2006. She's up for parole. By the way, since 2004, she's been disciplined four times. Wow. Once for work performance, once for unauthorized dealing or trade, and two were for violating published orders on rules inside the facility. So who knows? But they said they would use that also to see if she gets parole and not so fast denied again for the eighth time. February 25th, 2011. Ninth parole hearing here. Yeah.

84-year-old Ruth Brettel told Kansas Parole Board that she's opposed to having Sue Ann living in her neighborhood. Now the neighbors are against her. If you let her out, she has to be in a house somewhere. Yeah, she said,

I don't want her near my house. An 84-year-old neighbor would probably be the last person she's going to kill, I would think. So finally, it is approved on her ninth parole. 2011. She's released and moves right in with Ed in her parents' family house. Oh, boy. Ed lost everything. I think they're gone. Yeah. Yep. And at the time of her release, several residents...

Much disapproval. They were upset. They are also upset that they were moving into this home. Here is a comment on the on an article online about her release. It's from a user here that says, I have a couple of freaky facts. We live in Prairie Village and Sue Ann and Ed Hopson live less than a block away from us.

She came to my house a few years ago. This is from 2020, by the way, knocked on the door and wanted to chat. I honestly don't remember about what. I just thought she was a random weirdo. Then she said she said she had grown up on my street. I had no idea who she was and I never heard the story. My husband saw her driving off as he came around to the front of the house and recognized her. Of course, he was shocked she was out of jail even.

We looked her up, and sure enough, she lives in the house that she pointed out to me. She talked a lot and was very gossipy. Also, my husband went to middle school with Suzanne Hobson, the daughter. A while back, one of his old classmates ran into Suzanne at the grocery store. He said it was clear that she did not want to chat. My husband said that back then she was in school, and then suddenly she was gone and never returned, and then later everyone found out why.

She says, I knew this lady at my door was nuts, but I could not have imagined how evil she really is. I'd know her anywhere. She doesn't look as old as she is, but she's a, but has a very unattractive personality. Ed is an idiot to live with her. I would say, I would say they have visitors quite frequently. Wow. So,

Now, there's also two books out there, but none of them are – there's no e-book. There's no audio book. One is called Crazy Maker from 1992. Crazy Maker, The Shocking True Story of Murder and Betrayal in an American Family. And that is by Thomas O'Donnell. You can get a hardcover for $5.99 on Amazon or a mass market paperback for $7.15. Jesus Christ.

And then the other one's called Family Affairs, and that is by Andy Hoffman. And it says, was she the perfect wife and mom or a cold-blooded murderer? I would not say a perfect wife and mom. Not even close. What are you talking about? Not even close. That's also 675 in paperback. It's from 92. It's old as shit. There you go. That, everybody, is Edgerton.

Oh, she's out. She's out there. And she looks great. Did you hear that? Oh, yeah, yeah. You'll see her too. She looks great. That's fucked up. She does not look her age at fucking all. Not even close to her fucking age when you see her like last mug shots. She looks 20 years younger than she is. And in 2020, Ed, who was sucking down butts all day long for 40 years, he's crushing it. Fucking hats off to Ed there. Good for you, Ed. You're doing it.

Wow, there you go. That is Edgerton. Like we said, it's more Overland Park, but the fact that they brought, they wouldn't have killed him in the neighborhood. So I thought it was interesting that this is like a dumping ground. We brought him out here to this place to kill. You live in a nice little neighborhood. It's a lovely place. It's nice and rural. A thousand-something people here, and then they're fucking murdering children here. They're building a lake here, for Christ's sake.

Yeah, this is supposed to be great. So anyway, there it is. If you like the show, please tell everyone you know and also get on whatever app you're on and give us a review. It doesn't matter what you say about us at all. Say the worst quality that your step-parent had. We'll be happy with that. They didn't kill you, though. Remember that. That's helpful.

Do that. Follow us on social media. We are at Small Town Murder on Instagram, at Small Town Pod on Facebook, at Murder Small on Twitter. You definitely want to head to ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com. Get your tickets for live shows, baby. Live shows like crazy. Durham, May 31st. Durham, North

Carolina you are up next some there's a few tickets left to that Nashville the next night is sold out so get your tickets for Durham right now Minneapolis you get your tickets for a couple months from now because it's going to be our biggest show ever god damn it be a part of it don't you want to be a big part a bigger part of this show we can't wait to hear we love the road we love hearing people sing along with Bob Marley nobody no crime beforehand we love hearing who's the loudest shut up and give me murder we can't wait to do it that's shut up and give me murder.com get your

Oh, boy.

Yeah. Wild shit. Anybody get in there, do that. And you get a shout out here in a second as well. So get in there and do that. By the way, that is a patrion.com slash crime and sports. Also listen to crime and sports. If you haven't yet, you don't need to like sports. We promise you and listen to your stupid opinions because there's no reason anyone wouldn't like it. It's so much fun. Check that out. Do that. But one thing, Jimmy. Yeah.

Hit me with the names of the most wonderful fucking people on this earth. I need them now, Jimmy. Hit me with them. This week's executive producers are Vicki Schell, Jordan Bennett, Gary Howard, and Dan and Julie Slamma. Happy birthday. No, anniversary. Happy birthday. Congratulations, you sons of...

Thank you. I'm happy for you. Jordan, Gary, all those people, we appreciate you. Other producers this week are Corporal Carl Kirshner. He's back. It's been so long. We missed you. Douglas C. Niedermeyer IV, Sergeant at Arms, right? Is that what it was? Oh, yes. I believe so. Kent Flounder-Dorfman, Peyton Meadows, Janice Hill, Michelle Hike, Jess Cease, Magda Reeder, Paul Porkerup. Porkerup. Porkerup. Porkerup. What?

Don Severson, Sarah Clary, Casey Heckard, James Lackey, Sky Hackler, Paige Dorey, or Dore? She got two patrons, I imagine, for somebody else. Thank you so much, Paige. That was nice. Bailey McKee, Joseph Reese, Christina Miller, Leah Folley, Autumn, Autumn what? Martinez, Timothy Mather, Mr. Patrick 1207, Son Devilish, Tony Davidson,

Lindsay Bergeri, Bergerair, Berger, Berger, Mark Morningstar, Eric Ica, Ica, what the fuck? Icapini? Is that a thing? Icapini. Yeah, it's a pasta, right? Mel with no last name, Kristen Grossenbacher, Abby Martin, Pamela Tanner, Lagerbaugh, Tracy Lee Hunt, Michelle Dyer, Pugnacious, Pugilist. All right.

Melinda Layton, John Penrod Jr., Allie Perez, Isabel Michelini, Ginny Newton, Lisa Ann Pierce, Disgolfing Goon, 97, because there's 96 others. He's the 97th. Henrik, with no last name, Justin Glover, KJA, Alexandra Whalen, Alexander, not Alexandra, Alexander Whalen, Tanya Palermo, Jocelyn Morrow, Chris...

Chris Santucci. There's a lot of fucking gins this week. Love that. Amanda Todd. I love it. Thomas Meissenbach. Susan Kaufman. David. No, that's Tammy. Dickinson. Dux Lupus. Dux Lupus. I don't know. Yammel. Yammel. Yammel Shamley. Oh, Yam Shamaley. Shamley. Shamale. Shamale. Shamale.

I don't know. Maddie Brostrom. Terran Rachinsky. Rachinsky. Rachinsky. Christina Redd. Michael Happner. Brandon Zupke. Zubik Zupke. Barb with no last name. Caleb. Caleb Phillips. Shannon with no last name. H. Solace. J.

Jack Snacks, Isabel Martinez, Tracy Hempel, Amy Berry, Lachelle Walters, Harley Edwards, Christina Smith, Nicole Feigl, Brett Beatty, Brett Beatty, Rustin, Rustin, Duncan, Zachary Shantz, Jonathan Hones, Matt, oh boy, that's a fucking rough one this week, Matt Goulet, Mara Rice, Dalton Wall,

Julie with no last name. Lisa DeBruin. Kim Biscan. Rita with no last name. Justine Zumwalt. Katie Kirby. Nick Ola. TJ Hughes. Topher Watkins. Denali with no last name. Watson.

God damn it. Monica Yeaton, Jay Gonzalez, Tyler Gottfried, Jim Scruggs, Janessa Massey, Josh Jordan, Elizabeth Garofalo, Maddie Townsend, XDaddy316, Ash Khalib, Kabe, Khaib, Khaob.

Fucking Jesus. Taylor Nazarichuk. Nazarichuk. Michael Ireland II. Dominic Rodriguez. Catherine Clark. That's your dildo. Damian Lidicoat. Brandon Bintleff. Rachel Stoutstott. Okay. Schlappia with no last name. Just somebody named Schlappia. Christopher Zimmerman. Jane with no last name. Zimmerman.

Allison Fairfail, uh, Firefail, Firefile. Uh, all right. Mark McDonald. I'm never going to get it no matter how many times I try it. McKaylee Wofford, uh, Carol King, Stephanie Mazurowski, Nick Sitaro, uh, Diane Parnell, Chrissy Houston, Lina, Lina with no last name, Sarah Herman, uh,

Michael Daly, Maria Mason, Susan Kirkman, Spooky Vixen, Jeff Ignatowski, Elisis, Alessis, Alaysis, Mayna, Patty with no last name, Desiree Roberts, Alyssa Allison, Bash, Daniel Carrington, Carmen with no last name, Tony Lameck, Allie with no last name, Lisa Greenstreet, Maria Osen, Osen Shachit, Oskuskuskin, Asen Kushin, Kushin, Kushin.

Good try, Jimmy. Good try. That sounds like a rough one. Kenneth Browning, Kayla Hessling, Tyler Pilgrim, Amy Anderson, Annabelle Hughes, Dean Wallman, Joshua Peet, Josh Anderson, Alexis Rogers, Esparcia, Birds of Sulphur, Teresa, what is this, Ross Mismail, Ross Measel, Jameel, Jamie, Jamie Weibelhausen,

What is that? Weibel House? Jesus. Michaela with no last name. Corey B. Weasel. Wesley. Weasel. Weasley. Wesley Sanders. Kelly Collins. Cody Johnson. Brandon Marker. Colleen with no last name. Witch Cunt. Debbie Christensen. Rebecca, you know. Yeah. Rebecca S. Gotta have one of those. Mariah Gregory. Rachel Sanders. Tammy. Tammy.

Uh, Clemente, Holly, hot, Stephanie, Stancil, Polly, DeLuca, DeLucia, uh, Lauren would know last name. Bernie would know last name. Laura would know last name. My blue Dolly, Michelle S. Melanie S. Melanie, Melanie D'S Dendas, uh, Connie. Oh, con Sean. Sorry.

That's fun. Alex Guide, Tanya Schaffens, Katie Louise, Jamie Schneckloff, Amy Nesbitt-Wright, Alex Solar, Nicolette...

Nicolette Hill, Ian Stoneking, Dan Gunther, Colton Curtis, Aaron Schlantzer, Andrew Crystal Waters, Ashley McBride, Ginger Fitzgerald, and all of our patrons. You guys are fantastic. Thank you. Thank you so much, everybody. We love you. We cannot do this without you. Honestly, thanks for all that you do for us. If you want to find us on social media, shut up and give me murder.com, drop down menu, hit that up, do that. Keep coming back. And until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure. Bye.

Was there a crime committed?

As far as I'm concerned, there wasn't. Guilty by Design dives into the wild story of Alexander and Frank, interior designers who in the 80s landed the jackpot of all clients. We went to bed one night and the next morning we woke up as one of the most wanted people in the United States. What are they guilty of? You can listen to Guilty by Design exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.