#509 - Almost Got Away With It - Idaho Falls, Idaho
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Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay! Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you so much for joining us today on another wild, crazy episode. We're heading out to the Northwest this week, Idaho. Idaho never lets us down either. It's one of those... Terrific. Terrific shithole. It's...

It's just potatoes, Mormons, and interesting murders. That's all you got going on up there. And I'm very, very interested. We will get to that. Before we do, head over to ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com. You should get there because we have tickets for sale. Live shows. September 20th is our next live show. Minneapolis State Theater. It's big. It's a beautiful huge show.

huge wonderful venue it will be our biggest show ever if you sell it out so get in there and get your tickets right now while there's still good ones left and then the next night I don't know if it's sold out yet or not but maybe a couple tickets left at the Pabst in Milwaukee get those also Boston Austin any

Anything with an Austin in it. OKC, KC. We're doing, we said only cities that rhyme or have similar names. It's all we're doing this year. Tarrytown, New York, we got in there too. And I think that's it. So get in there, get your tickets. That's it, yeah. Head over to the website and you can check it out and see for yourself. Yeah, Harvey's is over there. Shutupandgivememurder.com is how you get that. So definitely do that. Also, you'd want Patreon. Let's say. Oh, yeah.

Let's say you're listening to our shows. You like this show. You like Crime and Sports. You're listening to your stupid opinions, and you're like, I'm all out of shows, and I want more. We have so much more for you. Oh, I can overwhelm you. On Patreon. Patreon.com slash Crime in Sports is where you get all that. Hundreds of back episodes, bonus stuff you'll get immediately. New ones every other week. One Crime in Sports, one Small Town Murder. You get it all. That's how we do it. We just give you everything we got here. Throw it on the table this week, which you're going to get at Patreon.com slash

slash crime and sports is for crime and sports, which you'll have access to. We're going to do something very fun. We're going to talk about the two most penalized hockey games of all time.

Oh. Okay, so it's just fights for the entire game. We're going to watch the videos and watch all the fights together and laugh our asses off. Oh, I love it. That crazy hockey. It's insane, dude. These games are crazy, so I can't wait to do that. Then for Small Town Murder, something we've been wanting to do for a while and has been requested, we're going to do what we like to call Internet Salad, which is...

What we do before the show starts and we talk about just whatever's on current events and whatever's going on. And those are usually that's the most fun we can possibly have. And it's so funny. And we're like, I wish people could hear this. And we're like, why don't we just record that part? They can. And you can hear it. So hear us talk about more current stuff. It'll be a lot of fun. Then we'll go back to weird stuff the week after that. But.

Right. Patreon.com slash crime in sports. And you get a shout out at the end of the show as well. Jimmy will certainly mispronounce your name, but he really wants to get it right. That's the thing. You can feel his need and his want. It's just not, doesn't work for him. That said, we got to do the disclaimer. Hmm.

It's a comedy show we got going on here. We're comedians. We are. We're going to make jokes. That's how it works here. Also, people are going to die. Oh, for sure. Yeah, there's a tasteful way to do it, though. That's the thing here. We never make fun of the victims or the victims' families. Why is that, James? Because we're assholes. But? But we are certainly not scumbags. So that's how that works. And if you are on board with that and you're also not a scumbag,

You're going to have a great time. If you think true crime and comedy should never, ever, never go together, you might not like the show. Or you might like the show. Either way, you know what you're in for, so no complaining later. That said, I think it's time, everybody. Here we go. I don't care where you are right now. I don't care. Let's say you're driving a gravel truck. You could be. That's what you do. I'd like you to pull whatever lever makes that go up. Drop every three tons of gravel on the car behind you. Get out. Stare in. Make sure they're still alive. And then shout. Yeah, yeah.

Shut up and give

Let's do this, everybody. Okay. Let's go on a trip, shall we? Yeah. We are doing it. Going to Idaho Falls, Idaho today. For the locals. For the locals, yes. It's southeastern Idaho, down in that quadrant over there. It's about four hours to Boise. Boy, is that a ride. It seems like a long ride, too, because you go down, over, and then up again. It's like a big smiley face you're making with the roads. Yeah.

And it looks like a long time, three hours down to Salt Lake City. So it's actually closer to that. About an hour to Sandpoint, Idaho, which was our last Idaho episode. Mystery of the Fake Dad, which was a weird episode. You should certainly go back and listen if you missed that one. This is in Bonneville County. I'm going to say Bonneville because that's the car.

I believe that is correct. Once Pontiac names a car after it, that's how it's said. Sorry. Well, there's a Cadillac Eldorado, and they didn't say that shit. No, that's why I will never say it the way they say it, because Cadillac popularized it. John Wayne made a movie with the name. It wasn't Eldorado, it was Eldorado. So it's Eldorado, everybody. Very Mormon here, by the way. It's like 70% Mormon. Therefore, their motto is...

Oh. Motto is, quote, can I tell you about the joy of, ah, shit, they slammed the door. That's the. Hello? Hello? Okay. Their motto is.

That's their motto. Ding dong. Their motto is listening to your doorbell app ring. While the dogs bark. Yeah. So a little bit of history in this town. 1864 is when this became like a settlement where people started coming to. So a guy built, a guy named Matt Taylor built a timber frame toll bridge across a narrow black road.

gorge of the river, basically. Oh. And it was downstream from the ferry, so the bridge improved travel for people so they didn't have to go all the way to the ferry. And then, of course, there was a lot of miners coming through here and people seeking gold and, you know, all that kind of thing. This was after the gold rushes. So, originally, it wasn't known as Idaho Falls. It was known as Taylor's Crossing.

Matt Taylor's the guy. Oh, because that's the guy that built the bridge, yeah. But postmarks indicate by 1866 it became known as Eagle Rock. Exactly. Fantastic. Which is hilarious. There was an island out that the ferry went by where approximately 20 eagles nested, so they called it that.

Then later on, they switched it to Idaho Falls because they were like, yeah, let's do that. I don't even know if there's a falls here. I don't think there is. I didn't see any anyway. I mean, maybe there's a little one somewhere. There might be. You know what you should do out there? Build a falls. That's what you do. Dig a deep trench in the Snake River. Make it fall. Wherever the welcome sign is, put a big falls next to it so people know why they're there. In 1949, the Atomic Energy Commission opened the National Reactor Testing Station in the desert west of Idaho Falls.

Oh, is that the site? On December 20th, 1951, a nuclear reactor there produced electricity for the first time in history. Like useful electricity that you could like power shit with. It was up there. It was up there. They had built more than 50 unique reactors built at the facility for testing. Wow.

So they were all different setups to see what would work. On January 3rd, 1961, unsurprisingly, this became the scene of the only fatal nuclear reaction incident in U.S. history. Wow, how about that? It occurred at an experimental U.S. Army plant. And, yeah, due to poor design and maintenance, a single control rod was manually pulled out too far from the reactor. This can cause horrible problems.

Congrats, Idaho. Good job. They just stuck a potato in there and were like, huh? Plug it up quick. You want to be a Mormon? No, it won't. It's not listening to reason. I don't know what's happening. And I guess at that point, the reactor became critical, which led to a destructive power excursion. And people who were in there died.

When this happened, they tried to fix it, and that didn't work either. So as the steam expanded, a pressure wave of water forcefully struck the top of the reactor vessel where two guys stood. Oh, so drowned them? The explosion was so severe, the reactor vessel was propelled nine feet into the air, hitting the ceiling and then going back to where it was.

One man was impaled by a shield plug and lodged into the ceiling. He got stuck to the ceiling by something. Is he the one that died? I think he is, possibly. He died instantly, they said. Yeah, yeah. Other men died from their injuries within hours. Three men were buried in lead coffins because they were radioactive. It's not the...

Holy shit. The way it sounded was one person died. This is horrific. That's terrible. Three people died. Everyone in the room died. And one of them was stuck to the ceiling by a fucking hunk of metal, like a note with an arrow stuck through it.

So let's see what people think about this thing. Maybe they like a little bit of, you know, they like to have knocks at the door. They're lonely. They want company. And they like the air to be a little bit, you know, tingly with something. Is there a college here? I think there's one nearby, but it's not the main thing. Idaho Falls is a pretty big place now. It's grown a lot recently. Here's five stars. I've always loved Idaho Falls ever since my family moved here on my 12th birthday many, many years ago.

We don't know how old this person is. They could be 60 and they could be 73. We don't know. This is awesome. I love how family friendly it is with lots of culture and love for everyone.

Culture? Get the fuck out of here. If you consider going to the Mormon church culture, then there is culture. Chili's is not culture. Applebee's is not. Strip malls generally aren't culture. Here's three stars. I'm not sure how to answer what I could change about Idaho Falls or what I like about Idaho Falls. It's a good town.

I have no specifics is what they just said. I don't know what I would make better or I don't know what is like already good, but I do know it's okay. I don't know what I don't like because I don't know what I like. That person is very confused. What do you want for dinner? I have no idea. You pick. They've never had an idea. No. Here's two stars. It's a beautiful place. The only issue is that the Mormons from the area are known to be very rude toward those who aren't Mormon. In that area? First of all,

Mormons are never rude. That's one thing I'll give them. You don't think that's rude? You can spit in a Mormon's face and tell them to go fuck their mother and they'll be like, all right, you know, okay. They'll smile at you still. They try to kill you with kindness. That's one of the things they do. I can't say about them. But they'll go find their Mormon friends and talk Mormon shit about you. Oh, yeah, yeah. But I don't care what they're doing in their little Mormon circle. That's fine. Okay.

That's all right. As long as they're fake to my face and I don't have to deal with them, it's fine. They'll dress funny. And too many people are starting to move in and it's taking up farm slash country land. But you, of course, are fine to be here and take up. You're allowed. Nobody else. Nobody else. One star. If you want to move to a city that's run by teenagers, Idaho Falls is the place for you. How is that right? It's not run by teenagers.

From terrible hygiene to rude interactions, this place has it all. Yeah, and Mayor Grayson's a real dick. Rude, smelly people, and Mayor Johnson sucks my cock. He beats me at fucking Call of Duty and then calls me racial slurs over the fucking...

P.S. Mayor Grayson and his brother Ruger and his 38 brothers are dicks. Dicks. Almost everyone you run into will be acting as if the end of the world is near. Most people won't smile and say hello, even if you do first. Enjoy. Okay.

So enjoy this place. And finally, one star again. Idaho Falls is by far the worst town I have had the unfortunate experience to live in. I'm going to put your stupid opinions line in here. If I could give it zero stars.

I would. Why did you move? They hate it. If I didn't have to live here, I wouldn't. This place is overrun with meth, a sex slave kidnapping ring. What? Drug dealers. The list goes on. The last person just complained about Mormons. This person's like, it's sex slave kidnapping, meth addicted drug dealers. That's all it's here.

The other guy, that's utopia if it weren't for the Mormons. Yeah, that's what I mean. So very different ideas of what this place is. Wow. This is not a good place to live, and I, for one, can't wait to get out of this place if it's the last thing I ever do. Make a better life for me and you. Let's do this. I'm more fascinated with the guy that's okay with the sex slavery. He's fine. The other guy's fine. He's just annoyed by rude Mormons. Yeah.

This is the only out of all the reviews is the only one that mentions sex slave kidnapping rants, by the way. So we don't know. I think this person might be insane. That's possible, too. A little paranoid. We never know who's writing these reviews. And that's the point of the reviews is like, who knows? It's more about the person who wrote it than the person.

And whatever they're reviewing. So people in this town, population right now, 64,399. Wow. A little bit bigger than we normally do. When our murder happened, it was about 40,000. That wasn't that long ago. I'd been there in fucking...

2006, nowhere near this. Yeah, it's grown a lot, especially the last 15 years. It's really like since the housing fallout in 2007, 2008 there. Since then, it's really popped. More females than males. It's about exactly normal. Weird part is so many stats are exactly the national averages of things here.

It's like the American quintessential town here. Median age is just a little bit lower, 33.6. And that is because of the obscene number of people under 18 that are here. So many children because Mormons and that's why. So lots of fucking people. I mean, which is good if you run a sex slave kidnapping ring.

There's a lot of material for it. Otherwise, it's not great. Just tons of kids. Shit loads of them. Unless you have kids and then you want more kids. The inventory is a plethora. It's huge. It's huge. Married population is a little bit higher than normal, but not normally as high as it is for this high of a Mormon population. Like in Utah and certain places, it's usually 60-something percent. Here it's 52 percent. Divorce rate is actually higher than the normal here.

Really? Yes. The widow rate is lower somehow, though. So people are living longer. That is interesting. Everybody I know there that lives in that area, every one of them are divorced. Does that make sense? I think they go there after their divorce.

Go there after they get married to get divorced. Put the pieces back together, take them apart or something. Unemployment rate here is 3.4%, which is insanely low, as low as a thing could get. Median household income here, though, not great. Normally it's almost $70,000. Here it is $57,412, so a little bit low. Cost of living here, though, $100,000 is regular. Here it's $94,000.

So not that low. And the housing is actually right around the national average. $344,700 is the median home cost. So it's steep. It's steep on 57 grand a year. It's going to stretch you. And in case you have everything all set up and you're going to come here, suppose you want to start your own competitive sex slave kidnapping ring or a meth lab. We don't know what you got going on.

We have for you the Idaho Falls, Idaho Real Estate Report.

The average two-bedroom rental here is actually much less than the national average. It's $980 for a two-bedroom. Oh, wow. So that's not bad. Here's a three-bedroom, two-bath, 924-square-foot trailer. It's a trailer. There's nothing more we can say about it. It's corrugated steel sides. It's nicer on the inside than on the outside. The outside, it looks like it's going to be that real dingy carpet with those floors that if you walk, the whole fucking trailer shakes. You've been in those trailers. Yeah.

It's not that. Yeah, it's not that, though. You get inside. It's nicely done. It looks like somebody did a really nice job of remodeling it in 2005. It's like the kitchen is too... Everything's 2005, but it's nice and clean and decent. Weird carport thing. It's a carport, but the sides also...

It's closed in. Oh, they closed it? Okay. But there's no door, so it's just an opening, and it's all corrugated steel. Looks like a hot box. Looks like your car's going to be 7,000 degrees in there. It's just to keep the fucking snow off of it. That's all it is, yeah, and make it a little warmer to start it off when it's cold. $85,000 for that, so affordable. Here's a five-bedroom, three-bath,

2632 square foot place here on .26 acres so not a huge lot but you know decent sized yard nice inside though kind of dark it needs some windows it's very dark all the pictures are dark a lot needs to be redone the carpet doesn't look wonderful

You're going to move in and you're going to spend 50 grand getting this place how you want it if you're, you know, picky about that sort of shit. Semi-finished basement, not bad. Strange two-story shed out back. It's a shed, but it's two stories and there's a little balcony coming off the second story with a ladder climbing up to it. Let's just go sit out on the tiny balcony of our shed for a while. Who the fuck does that? It's weird. That's the bird's nest lookout for cops. It's facing the woods. What are they looking for?

It's $325,000 for that. Okay. That's kind of your average house here. It's a nice, big, good-sized house. Here's a six-bedroom, 4.5 bath. So not even a tea bowl for every b-hole, but you do have room for a lot of b-holes. 7,212 square feet.

Holy. That is three good-sized houses. That's massive. No shit. 4.42 acres. It's a huge, beautiful house. It's nice. It's nice on the inside. It's got a nice outdoor basketball court. It's got a stream on the property. Beautiful landscaping. Nice, mature trees. Very nice. $2,425,000 for that.

$2 million living in Southeast Idaho? $2 million, almost $2.5 million. Oh, my God. Things to do while you're...

Trying to fucking pay off a $2.5 million mortgage. Selling your children into the sex slave market. Hiding your children from the sex slave ring, kidnapping ring here. You can go to the Eastern Idaho State Fair, everyone. Yes, you can. Hit it, yeah. I've done it. They are back and bigger than ever, they say here, with entertainment along with food, which is the primary reason many people attend the Eastern Idaho State Fair every year. Yeah, for fried shit. They're going to fry.

Insert the blank of weirdest thing ever. And I'm going to try it. They put powder sugar on it. It's fine. Why not? Just a motorcycle spring. That's all. Whatever. We're in. We're in. We're going to do it. So it says that they're going to come there. They have Indian relay races. I don't know if those are Indians running the race or there's some kind of...

I think it's a three-legged race. Okay. Nighttime Grandstand Acts and also eating contests and... What? Livestock. Yeah, eating contests. They do that a lot there. Oh, no. Idaho. From the pictures, it looks like kids eating contests, too. So there's going to be some kids throwing up in the car on the way home. Jesus. And livestock as well. And now here are the grandstand events. So these are the nighttime...

Grandstand hot shit events here. This is what they're advertising. Truck pulls and demo derbies. I already know that. Well, there's a bull riding championship, a pro rodeo. The pro rodeo is actually there three different nights. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday are pro rodeo days.

It's a big fucking deal, James. The Demolition Derby is on Saturday, of course. Yes! Gotta have that. I mean, this is fun stuff. The Demolition Derby, that's fun. Yeah. The rodeo I can do without because I smell shit. It's just shit. I want to take you somewhere else. I just smell shit.

If there was no other people there, I would go, but I'm not sitting with shit kickers and smelling shit. I'm not doing it. I won't have a good time. I guarantee you. I just root for somebody to get hurt. It's a good time. That I'm okay with. Yeah. Yeah. Then Craig Morgan will be there. Hell yeah. More country, it says, with special guest Matt Stell.

Okay. I don't know. Craig Morgan does not look like a country singer, though. He's fantastic, James. He looks like... Sings the Redneck Yacht Club. Oh, Jesus. Fucking Christ. Oh, boy. He's great. He looks like Redneck Gordon Ramsay in his picture. That's what he looks like. He does not look like a country guy. But then there's also the Western Truck and Tractor Pull.

Yes, sir. I guess that's for Western people. And you can enter your own shit in that, James. Oh, can't wait. I've been preparing it all year, Jimmy. I got it ready. Then there's, you can see, Journey, more hits. So Journey. But I think it's like Journey Journey with the new singer. With the little Filipino boy? Yeah, with the Filipino child that they have. They got to protect him so he's not kidnapped into the sex slavery kidnapping ring, obviously. So got to watch out for him.

And then finally, of course, the main headliner here for it all, Jeff Foxworthy will be here. Get the fuck out. So if you'd like to see some demolition derby and hear jokes from 1988, it's all there for you.

Jokes and the music with Johnny. It's all of it, yeah. If you want to pretend like it's 1987, we got you covered. No problem. It's all in. So crime rate in this town. Here we go. We're interested in property crime exactly at average. And I mean it's like statistically on the nose. And then the weird part is perfect violent. Well, it's at the national average. I don't know if that's perfect. Violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course assault. The Mount Rushmore of crime also exactly average.

How did they do it? I don't know how they did it, but don't kill him. We're at the number. Stop raping. You're going to fuck up our number. You put that kid back. Put him back. You have kidnapped enough kids in the sex slave rings this year. I'm sorry. We have a quota and a limit. Sex slave rings. Kidnapping rings. That's all that's there.

It's it. Hilarious. Nothing else there. And Craig Morgan plays it. He's going to play it and fucking blow that shit up. So let's talk about some murder here. Okay. Here we go. Let's start out hot here, and then we'll figure out, put the pieces back together. Why don't we? January, or I'm sorry, July 24th, 1989, 7 a.m. All right? This is in Idaho Falls, 939 South 45th East Crowley Road.

That's a weird way to South 45th East Crowley Road makes no sense. Those are two different roads. How do you get there? I don't know how you get there, but that is how this happens. And this is a guy named Roy. Leave it comes here. 11, I guess. L.E.A. V.I.T.T. Yeah, that's what it's L.E.A. He wants it. It makes me makes me want to say leave it. So I know it's I know it's Levitt. Don't tell me about names.

Listen to the end of the show. This guy's trying to tell anyone how to pronounce names. I'm just saying, that's tattooed on my back. I know how to pronounce that one. But we know, too, El Dorado is El Dorado. And fucking this one is El Dorado. So I'm not saying it's...

What's correct and what's not. I'm saying you're probably correct, but we don't know if that's ever correct. What's correct? What's right might not be right here in this situation. God damn it. So Roy Leavitt here, he arrives at this house at 7 a.m.

and a few minutes early than he should have been. He was going to be there about 7.15, but he figured he'd get there early. He is supposed to take his friend Rita. Rita is R-E-E-D-A, by the way. Rita, not Rita. Rita.

Yeah, I know. Shit is right. And it's a lot. Rita Roundy is her name, too, which makes it sound like she's like a satire of Ronda Rousey is what all I hear. Rita Roundy, and she comes in, hey, I'm this person. Yeah.

Like the cartoon fucking version of that. She just keeps getting kicked in the head. Over and over again. That poor woman's career was over with one fucking kick. Yeah. Well, she made way more money than most people did in that. That kick made her a cattle farmer. It made her get millions of dollars from WWE is what it made her get. Oh, yeah. She went there after, didn't she? And they gave her millions to go there. Yeah, I believe it. She made bank. That kick in the head was the most greatest business move she could ever take in her life.

Pardon in her life here. So he pulls in this guy. He pulled into the driveway behind a white Subaru, which is Rita's friend Betty's car. Right. Okay. He's supposed to drive Rita to the airport. That's why he's showing up now. Okay. Now he goes to the front door, rings the doorbell. The door is open, screen door shut and locked.

It's been very, very hot. It's July. It's been extra hot. So a lot of people have been leaving their windows and screen doors open at night to get some air, basically, because this is a brick house, too. Oh, boy. It gets hot. It stays hot type of deal. It's an oven. So he wasn't surprised the door was open, and he figured that they would be inside because Rita would be ready to leave for the airport. So he rang the bell a few more times, and nobody responds. So he's like, what the?

the fuck here? You know, Jesus Christ, doesn't see anybody in there. Goes around to the back door. The double sliding patio door was open and the screen door was closed. So, open sliding glass door and screen door open for air. Just got a wind tunnel in there. Cross breeze happening here. And nobody, this was an absolutely not abnormal thing to leave your screen doors and stuff open here. Not a high crime area, especially in 1989. Nowadays, obviously, she'd be hiding from the

sex slave kidnapping ring, but at the time didn't exist, or at least it was unknown.

So he he calls out both of their names and nothing. It's silence here. The windows and screens are locked. So he's like, what the fuck? And he knows Reed is always he's going to drive her somewhere, especially for a flight. She's going to be standing on the front doorstep with her suitcase when she pulls up most of the time. So he's like, what the hell here? So he doesn't know what to do. He walks back to the front of the house and notices that Reed's car is there. Betty's car is there.

They said if the girls weren't home, they didn't take off in the cars. So they said maybe Rita decided not to go to Las Vegas, he said, because that's where she was supposed to go. Oh. But he said she would have called me. She wouldn't have me coming over here in the fucking morning for nothing. Like, who does that, you know? Yeah, he said he saw them the night before. He was over the house visiting about 7.30 the night before. They never said any plans were changed, so he assumed it was on. ♪

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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. So he stood in the driveway for a few minutes and figured out what the hell to do. He looked up and down the road. He said, maybe they took a morning walk. You know what I mean? Who knows? No sign of anyone on the road. He said, oh, they're probably sleeping in there or maybe they're in the back of the house packing and can't hear the doorbell.

It's a pretty shitty doorbell if you can't hear it from your bedroom. And your mind just starts racing, creating all kinds of scenarios why they wouldn't be here. That's, yeah. So like I said, he looked up and down the sidewalk, nobody coming. So then he went around back and he said, okay, the screen door is unlocked in the back. So he goes, I'm just going to go in there and look around. They can't hear me. I'll go at least in the living room and shout for them. You know what I mean? Sure. So he does. He goes out. He calls their names. You know, Betty, Rita, no answer, no answer.

So he goes toward the back of the house where the bedrooms are, and he's like, what the hell is going on here? So he steps into the bedroom hallway there, and he looks. You can see into a bedroom from there. Right. And he sees Betty in her bed peacefully sleeping.

Oh. Out cold. Wake up. Yeah. So he's like, okay. Oh, no. Betty could keep sleeping. She's not going to the airport. Rita's got to go to the airport. That's the thing. He also knows Betty quite well, as we'll talk about. But he and both of them are married, by the way, also. Betty is married. Betty and Rita? No, no. Betty is married. To somebody else. And so is our friend Roy here walking around. Oh. So leave it or love it. So-

He notices Betty, sees her. Then he takes a few more steps and sees Rita sitting up in her bed. He's like, what the fuck, man? I'm yelling from the living room. These two are sleeping. What the shit? So he sees her in her bed, her head's tipped back against the bedboard with her neck kind of protruding forward. Like if you fall asleep on a plane, one of those. Yeah.

That embarrassing situation. You don't want anybody seeing you. Yeah. One of those. So he said, oh, fuck. And then he said, why does she have a red bandana across her face? Like, oh, dude, what's going on? Why does she have a red bandana on? And he said, oh, no. He thought right away because she wasn't. She looked like she was in a weird spot. He thought maybe she had a heart attack because recently she'd been going to the doctor for some heart issues. Yeah. So he said, oh, my God, Rita had a fucking heart attack.

So he turns around and runs into Betty's room where Betty's sleeping and starts shaking her. Betty, Betty, wake up. Rita needs help. We got to help Rita. And nothing from Betty. She doesn't. She's not moving. She's not doing anything. And he goes, what the fuck? So he's yelling in there. And then he starts seeing he at that point he notices there's a large amount of blood under Betty's head, he says.

Her color was very gray and blue, and he said, oh, shit, she's fucking dead here. You know what I mean? Is she an older lady? No, no, no. She's 47. Okay. 47, and her friend is 49. Yeah.

Rita's 49, Betty's 47. So not like they're 68 or anything like that. Or even 75, 85 where they might just die in bed at night. Well, my aunt was just here for Thanksgiving and she is 85. She died near your house? No, no. She was sleeping on my couch and I thought she was dead. Oh, yeah, yeah. An 80-something-year-old woman falls asleep and you're like, oh, my God, what's happening? Oh, yeah, yeah. They look terrible when they sleep. My grandmother, we thought she was dead for 10 years straight. Every...

Ten times a day when she'd fall asleep. She'd always wake up, though, somehow. It's crazy the transformation that happens as soon as they lose consciousness. It's like, oh, my God, that's a dead body. Italian grandma wasn't going out in her sleep, though. She wasn't happening. No. She was painfully awake and aware when she was dying. It was the only way to go.

So he's seeing this and he didn't touch her. He went in to start shaking her and then realized it was up and didn't shake her. So he said, oh, my God, what the fuck? So he ran for the phone in the kitchen because it's 1989. That's where the phone is. And he dialed one one nine instead of nine one one. It was so flustered. What does that call dyslexia? That's called paranoid dyslexia. Let's call that and find out what that is. Amazing.

And he could barely couldn't get his hands. He was shaken and everything else. So 911 answered and he said, I need the quote is I need the police and an ambulance. It looks like there's been a murder. Two people.

Which is very strange, number one. Usually, and this is a, they do long-term studies like the FBI and police departments and homicide people do long-term studies of 911 calls made by people who they found out later were the murderers and made by people who weren't the murderers. And they notice very distinct differences. One is that normally when someone is calling for actual help and they've had nothing to do with it, they normally lead with the address.

Uh-huh. They normally, immediately, they're like, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, address first. Yeah, because they need help and they're trying to get help. And then they're giving details short. People are, this one's, someone bloody, they're bloody, it's hurt. They need help. Like, it's that. They don't make diagnoses or generally they don't say, I think there's been a murder. That's not...

It's a weird thing to say. And two people. So the dispatcher was trying to get an address and more information out of him. And he's not being very helpful. Right. On the phone. He's all flustered. And then he blurts out in the middle of the 911 dispatcher trying to ask him questions. He blurts out, quote, it's written in blood on the kitchen. It says Satan loves you. Oh, my God. Written in blood in the kitchen.

So that's what he said. So he said he walked around the center aisle on his way to the rear of the house. And he said as he came in, he'd noticed some red substance in some bowls. But he thought that Rita had been canning red jam because she canned stuff. So he didn't even notice that it was anything was written because he was looking beyond that. You know what I mean? That's what he says. Anyway, he said only when he came back to the phone did he notice the writing.

So the dispatcher's like, great address is what we need here. Where are we going? You could say, and you could say aliens just landed in the yard. Terrific. We don't have a fucking address. You're not, no one can help you. House is on fire. Wonderful. Great. Should we look for smoke? Are you going to tell us where it is?

You got it under control? Yeah, you got it yourself. So they're continuing to ask, but then he interrupts again and said, they're both in their beds and there's stuff all over the house. Looks like there's candles and blood written on the stuff. Satan loves you. That's his exact quote. Written on the stuff. Satan loves you.

They said, are you absolutely sure neither one is breathing? None of this is important. They don't care about that. Yeah. The thing is, do we need medical help? What's the address? These are pertinent factors. My job is send people. I don't know how to do anything else with that. When the cops get there, go, hey, look, it's Satan Loves You is written right there. But until then, it's not important. So it's very strange.

And then the dispatcher asks, are you absolutely sure that neither one's breathing? Let's start there. And he says, I didn't check their pulse, but there's blood everywhere. So this 911 call is really useless as far as a lot goes here. I mean, he's got no information that's helpful other than there's people and you should come here wherever this is possibly. So let's find out about these people, our deceased folks.

And find out, and we'll find out also if maybe Roy is on the up and up or what here. What's happening, Roy? Let's talk about the Hales family first. This is Betty's family. Betty Lou Hales is her birth name here. Plural Hales. Yes, Hales, H-A-L-E-S. So it's plural, more than one. Betty Lou is her name. Her dad was in the Navy in World War II.

She was born in 1942, so like right before he went off to war. Wow, how about that? Came back, yeah. So he returned to California where she's born in Long Beach. He's in the Navy, which makes sense because there's naval shit there. And he's got a wife. This is Betty's mother. Betty Lou's mom is Dorothy. And Betty Lou's got a sister named Joanne who she's very close with and a brother named Dan who's the younger brother. So they were very happy, obviously, that Dad was home from the war.

And he's a building contractor. The dad, Joseph, is his name. Betty is born June 12, 1942. So my birthday just decades earlier. So we share a birthday, though, me and Betty Lou. So the dad builds homes. He's a contractor that builds homes. So he's a home builder. So good business, too. Very cool. They're not struggling, this family, at all. He began to buy homes in need of finishing or remodeling and then flipping them. Wow.

How about that? He was doing that in the forties. He was flipping houses. So that's so original. This is, there wasn't a lot of houses to even flip back then. Like after the war, we had to build fucking so many hundreds of thousands of houses in this country because we need the houses. Yeah. And that was like, that's kind of when the American dream of that became a thing of like, uh,

Buy a house. Yeah. Yeah. That's what they did. They started building like Levittown, which is the place in Long Island, which was a big suburb they built. And that was like the model of, hey, you can build track housing, all the same house. No one cares. Just do that. And that's how that happened. So Joe does all sorts of shit, though. He's an expert carpenter, a cabinet maker, a plumber, an electrician. He can do all the work. Thank God he's a carpenter.

Yeah. Thank God Hitler didn't take that man. That's awesome. And he kills Nazis. This guy's great. This guy fucking rules. He's like, hey, fix that up. You know, it's all 220 now. It's going to be 220, 221, whatever it takes. You know what I mean? We do that. That's all nice. No, no. I fixed that leak and everything. And I killed three SS officers in your backyard. I didn't like the looks of them. Yeah. OK. I like this guy.

Not too bad. Killed a couple guys in leather jackets. Don't know if they were SS. I just don't like leather anymore. I said no. Leather and a hat? I'm not buying it. Boots up to your knees? Not a good look, man. You're going down. I dropped out of a tree. I cut their throats. That's how I did it. I'm sorry. Had to do it.

So it wasn't the most lucrative way to make this living, but it got him a good living and he liked doing it. He enjoyed fixing up these houses. He really liked it. So Joanne, in 1952, Joanne is 16 already. That's the older sister. And she marries a guy who they'll be married forever and...

They'll be very nice to Betty over the years. They're kind of, they're always Betty's refuge. Joanne, whenever things aren't going well, she can go to Joanne's and they'll take her in and like live, let her live in a different world for a while here. So yeah, the parents weren't happy that Joanne was getting married so young, but later on, I think they married until they both died. So it seemed to work out. Yeah. Seemed to work out. I think here now Joe, the dad,

He likes like the areas outside of L.A. and California. He likes that. California. He likes that. Yeah. Yeah. He's into it. Weird. So he said the high country of South Central California, though, he likes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. In that area. Yeah.

Shit, yeah. Yeah. By the way, this is a book. A lot of this comes from a book that I'll give you the title of at the end of this thing and everything here. So that's what he likes. And he found a house there and he could remodel it in Crestline is the name of the town where he can remodel the house and they can live there. So he found the perfect setup there. So they move there. Obviously, Betty's not thrilled about this. And...

But she's 16 at the time when they move a couple of years later. And Dan's 14. So nobody's really thrilled about nobody wants to move in the middle of high school. But they do. And Betty meets a young man during all this. She meets a young man named William L. Gray, Bill Gray. He was born December 4th, 1939. So he's about three years older than her. And he's originally from North Dakota.

Which is very strange because he talks like a Bowery boy, like from the 20s. Really? He'll say like, so I says to him this. Like that's how he talks, like his quotes. So I says to him this and then he says to me this. It's so funny the way his verbiage is. It's very strange. I says this. I says...

So his early life was pretty average. Apparently, he's a sick kid, always having accidents sickly. Second grade, he had a broken collarbone and a broken nose and a fall. By the time he was in sixth grade, he had pneumonia for the seventh time. Golly.

So he's really just not a healthy kid here. His family left North Dakota when he was 14 and they moved to Crestline, California. He's got a sister that stayed in North Dakota and all that kind of thing. Now, his parents are Bill Sr. and Sarah is his mom. And they opened and they operated a small grocery store in Crestline.

And Bill worked in the store on the weekends and, you know, all that kind of thing. And it was pretty good money for the family. And his dad also sold insurance. I don't know if it was out of the grocery store or what. But they ended up their upper middle class existence here from this. They're doing pretty well. His parents are they dote on him hardcore because he's sickly. Yeah.

So, I mean, his mom, anything he wants, he gets and anything like that. And everybody says, too, when he's younger, if he didn't want to do something, he could just say, I don't feel good. And they'd be like, oh, no, honey, you know, you need to rest. Let me make you something. Lay down. That is pretty dope. That's awesome.

That is awesome. Yeah, that's a nice get out of jail free card for anything. I don't know. I'm just not feeling great. When I was a kid, they'd give me some weird old country remedy and then tell me it worked and you're healed and now go outside because we don't want you in here anymore. Drink this olive oil. Get out of here. Yeah, get out of here. There you go. Ginger ale and olive oil. Have at it.

Now go do backflips. Yeah, go get outside. Eat these garlic cloves. Oh, man. Fuck me. So now while still in high school, Bill begins to start his own business, actually, which is pretty ambitious for a high school kid. Sure. It's cutting firewood for local residents. Fuck yeah. It's a good business for someone in school because we get firewood and the kid who brings it's like a college kid.

Yeah. Also able-bodied somebody. That's the thing. Because I don't want to do that shit. When he comes and loads it all in our woodshed and shit, I'm like, you couldn't, there's not enough money you could pay me to do. And it's like not a lot of money. To throw the wood, yeah. It's a few hundred dollars. I'm like, oh my God, that looks like it took you, it would have taken me a month to cut all that. And then you had to carry it to your truck, put it all in, then take it all out and stack it nicely in my woodshed. So I want to take him aside and go, listen, young man.

You're doing it wrong. You need to charge way more than this because I'm shocked at the low amount of money I'm paying. I pay him like double, like as a tip, because I'm like, there's no way. The amount of work that it takes to do it. Oh, we pay him a fortune. Yeah, because why? I can't.

it's crazy how much work he puts... I can't do that. You can't do that for that little money, dude. I mean, I can certainly split wood. It just would take so long. I can split it and then the next day I can fucking sit there because every part of me is sore. Also. I'll split it and then in a few days I'll go load it. Exactly. That's what it is. I split wood like last year. My neck was so fucked up because I have a bad neck anyway. It was all fucked up for a while. I was like, Jesus Christ, all I did was split some wood. This is ridiculous. Right.

They've got little machines that you can buy for home that'll split them for you. That's fucking great. There's also one you put on the wall and pull it down and it splits them like that. Yeah, there's different ones, but we'll just pay this college kid. Or you get a stump and a mace. Yeah, just circle crazy. Yeah.

There are a lot of dynamite. So he does tree removal as well. Oh, wow. Yeah. So his father bought Bill's father bought a truck and other equipment that he needed for jobs. So his father was like buying him shit here. Tree removal was in high demand. So he picked up some jobs and he discovered, though, that this is really hard job. Anything with trees is difficult. They're heavy trees. Yeah. Real heavy. That's the problem. A lot of physical work.

they're really deep too oh sawing them cutting them carrying them pulling them from the ground fuck that the nice part about what he's doing is that he's creating him uh more product more product to split and turn into firewood that's how that helps but cutting a tree down is not it's not easy you gotta do it to make it fall the right way all that shit not break the person's house who paid you so bill just got friends from high school to do the work and then he made

Less profit, but he didn't have to work. Subcontracted. Pay him out and don't do a goddamn thing. He was really good at getting other people to do work for him. That was basically his talent at 17. And his father would keep buying more equipment and Bill would just tell his crew where to go and then collect the profits. Yes. Cool.

Quite the business model. Joe Hales, the Betty Lou's dad, hires him to cut some trees and do some yard work and some wood stuff. He's been hired to clear timber from their yard, and he right away spots...

Joe's daughter, Betty Lou. Oh, likes Betty Lou. Bill's three years older than Betty, but back then, that's not a big deal in the 50s. It's not so bad. No. Like we said, she could be 14 and your cousin, and it was like, I don't know. He's got his own business back then. Nobody cared. It was weird. What are the ages here? Are they 17 and 14, or are they 18 and 15? 17 and 14 going on 18 and 15, which back then, they were like, they're both high school. It's fine. Yeah.

Which, I mean, if you're going to put kids in the same school, you have to expect them to hook up. A couple of them are going to like each other that you don't like the age gap. How do you get animals in captivity to reproduce? Fucking put them in the same cage. And you're putting them all in the same cage and going, now you don't go out with these ones here and then you stay away from those. Oh, okay. Yeah.

So they do that, and Bill strikes up conversations with her and takes her out a little bit here and there, but very to the soda shop and to the places like that. Nothing crazy. They're not hanging out all the time. A year later, the Hales sell their house in Crestline and buy an apartment complex to remodel down in Long Beach.

Wow. Yeah, so they're stepping it up a little bit. Betty was happy because her sister had moved there, her married sister. And so she got to go see her sister more. And Bill didn't care either because he would just drive from Crestline to see Betty wherever she was. Down to the beach? I'm in. Gee, I don't know. I'll stay here. If Betty was at home, he'd drive there. If Betty was at her sister's babysitting, he'd just go over there. Wherever she was, he'd just pop up. There's Bill again. Oh, yeah.

So he knew he wanted to marry Betty from the beginning. And Betty wasn't quite sure of him. But over time, Bill grows on her. She warmed up. He grows on her. He hangs out and hangs around, hangs around. And he, I guess after he's like a junior in high school, he asks her to marry him.

And she said, well, not now, obviously. And he said, no, no, no. Later. Yeah. But later. You know what I mean? But the thing that they said was the parents, Joe never graduated from high school. Joe Hales, dad. So he said that was a mistake of mine to drop out of high school to work.

Oh, he said so, because he went into the army in his late 20s. He was, you know, later on. Yeah, yeah. He was he didn't go when he was 18 or something. He went in the war in his 20s when he could process what murder was. Yes. He was like, I want to kill Nazis. I don't just think I want to kill Nazis. I know it. I know it for a fact.

So he was he wanted at least his daughters to finish school. And Joanne didn't. Joanne went off and got married. So he wants Betty Lou to finish fucking high school. It's a big deal. But two weeks before her graduation, which is the day after her 18th birthday. So June 13th, 1960, they go off. Bill and Betty take a trip with Bill's parents down to Las Vegas.

If she's 18, so now she can go in the casinos and stuff. And they elope. They elope. Bill's parents are there, and apparently they knew that this was going to happen, but nobody told Joe and Dorothy. No, nobody told Joe and Dorothy. So, yeah, they were a little...

taken aback by this basically yeah but this was one of those things what do you want do you want to not go to work today or school today bill okay you can stay home do you do you need tree equipment no problem i'll go get it for you you want to ride to vegas so you can marry your fucking barely 18 legal girlfriend no problem get in the car you don't feel good get in we'll get in we'll drive you

So in the early years of their marriage, Bill seemed to get along fine with Betty's family. They'd had no big issue with him other than the fact that he was not making a terrific living and they wished he would find a career other than the tree business, which isn't

It's fine if you have like a big giant business and a lot of employees and all that kind of thing. But if you're kind of slapping it together and piecing it together like he is, it's not really the best way to go. Now, his sister, her sister, Joanne's husband, Dick, had begun a commercial landscaping business, which, you know, he was trying to build up. So, you know, they were doing OK, but not terrific. Now, Betty, on the other hand, never had any money.

Bill gave her any money that she had. He gave it to her and gave her a certain amount. She didn't know what he made. She didn't know what the bills were. Nothing. Betty has no idea what's going on here at all. And he would give her just enough to cover bare necessities of food for the house and things like that.

So, yeah, it was interesting. They end up having a daughter here, the Grays, Bill and Betty here. They have a daughter. Sarah Lynn is her name, I assume, after his mother is her name. Yeah. She's born April 21st, 1963. And then less than two years later, in 64, they have a son named Jeff. Two kids real quick.

So now Betty's a mother and her sister also has two kids. So now they're always hanging out and spending time together. And, you know, they have little kids and all of that. By the way, the sister has no girls. She only has boys. So little Sarah Lynn gets spoiled with fucking dolls and dresses. And the sister can't wait to do that. Well, thank God for all the spoiling because whenever they have a get together, she's fucking bored. Yeah, very, very. So Betty is very naive.

Very naive. She knows shit about money. She has no idea what's coming into the house. Nothing at all. He controlled the checking account, paid the bills. She just thought, knew they were poor. That's it. It's all Betty knew. Oh, we're not doing great. Not doing great. Like Joanne would, like her parents would slip her money now and then. Her sister Joanne would, you know, take her out and go, oh, I'll get you that dress or I'll get you whatever. And, you know, it's on me. It's my treat. That sort of thing. Fuck.

They knew she needed help. Joanne says, quote, Betty kept her kids clean and neat. She was an excellent housekeeper, but they always looked kind of shopworn. They looked poor. Even though they're clean and neat, they look like clean, poor people. There's some threadbare on the elbows and knees. Faded hand-me-downs, that sort of thing. So the only newer, nicer clothes they had were what either me or my mother bought them. That was it.

So, and Betty never spent anything on herself. If she had any money, it went toward the kids and the household. And she never complained about this, though. She doesn't know any better. She just thinks this is fine. She said that I never heard her complain about Bill. She's always supported him no matter what he was doing. So that's kind of how it goes. Bill is very controlling, though, in more terms than just the money. Yeah.

He is everything she does. He's involved in it and he has a say in it and she doesn't really get to do what she wants. She had to ask Bill about every little thing she wanted to do. Like if she was going to be late coming home from her sister, she was like, oh my God, I'm going to be late. Like she'd freak out. Yeah. Grab the kids, rush into the car, peel out of the driveway. Like,

I don't know. Way to live, man. Yeah. It's like someone was robbing a bank and she was going to stop it. Yeah. She was scared. Her sister said, quote, I thought, give me a break. Everyone should be allowed some leeway in their lives, but you couldn't talk her out of it. She wouldn't even make a phone call to tell him she would be late or ask for a little extra time. When it was time to go, she packed up the kids and went, bus is leaving. Let's go. In the car. She's just racing the clock all day. That's crazy. I guess...

He has had some tirades against her, so that's why she's afraid of that. And her sister said basically it's easier to just deal with it and comply than to have to deal with the rage that comes from it. So everything that she bought has to be profiled.

prior approval from Bill. But Bill could buy whatever he wants. He can do anything he wants here. Of course he can. Yeah. And he would she'd have to like do a whole presentation of why the one kid needs new underwear. And then he would, you know, achingly dole out two dollars for new underwear. You know what I mean? Like it was ridiculous. Ridiculous.

If there was any change left over, he took that into account the next time he gave her money for groceries. He goes, oh, well, you should have $1.50 left from that, too, so you can add that to this. So I'll give you a little less than I was going to give you. Here's $10. Take that $1.50. Pick up some food. Oh, my God. He's a moody fuck, too. No one knew if he was going to be pleasant or pissy or anything. You couldn't tell.

It's just everybody said that just out of these dark moods, he would just like give people these dirty looks, even the kids for anything. And Joanne, the sister, said his eyebrows would turn down and those black eyes would stare right through you. I didn't want to be around him any more than I had to. It was obvious that he didn't care much for me either.

And he doesn't make you want to cough on the guy, right? Yeah. Take that. You sickly shit immune system. Motherfucker. No immune system. Having fucking bitch ass. Take that. And that's, and she's like, he doesn't like them too, because he calls the sister that rich bitch all the time. Her rich bitch sister.

Because her sister's a, she has good money after a while. She's doing fine. She does well. And he takes it as, oh, helping my wife and kids is throwing it in my face type of thing. Oh, my God. He won't give her a shit. So what do you want? Then there's a time when, this is wild, Joanne and her husband, they bought a wooded, unimproved lot. And they were going to build their first home on it. Hell, yeah. To do that, they needed to have some trees removed.

By then, Bill had sold off most of his tree-cutting stuff, but he'd been working some odd jobs and all that kind of thing. So the brother-in-law, Dick, he gets bids from different tree-removal companies. Bill hears about this, and he goes, what the fuck? I want the job. Don't take bids from people.

Joanne didn't want to do it, but Bill was like, they need money. They're struggling. We're always giving the instead of just giving Betty money for shit. Why don't we let's let him earn it. Let him fucking work for it. At least at least he can do something. And so she said, okay, why not? They're family. What the hell? And Dick said he didn't expect Bill to beat the lowest bid. There's

There's big companies in there that can do that. But he was prepared to pay in a medium to higher range for it, somewhere in the middle range to pay Bill. He was happy to do that. He said that's not a big problem for him and it would help their family. So Bill gets the job. He does the work and then sends the bill in the mail. And the bill is three times more than the highest bid that he had ever received that he received for this job. Three times more expensive than the most expensive bid.

80 grand. Yeah, it was like 80 grand to remove five trees. And by the way, remember when I was complaining over Christmas about the tree removal and how much it cost me and this guy turns me upside down and shakes my pockets out and all that? Literally within two weeks of saying that, that guy dropped dead.

Did he really fucking died? Straight died. We called the company back to do something with another tree or put some trees in. And Sarah was like, hey, where's so and so? And they're like, oh, he died. We're like, huh? Oh, yeah, he's been dead. We're like, what the fuck? He's been dead. Like, oh, OK. My bad. I feel bad now.

Ron White found out his ex-wife's divorce attorney died and he called the office. They were like, I'm sorry he's died. He hung up and called back. They're like, I'm sorry he died. They're like, we just told you he died. He goes, yeah, I just like hearing you say it. That's fucking funny. It just sounds great to me. Just can you say it one more time? Oh, man.

So this triple price bill, Dick says, what the fuck, bro? You fucking charging me? This is crazy. You're charging me three times as much. And Bill said, oh, well, you know, Betty and the kids and I need the money and blah, blah, blah. Three times. So Dick ends up paying it just because he's like, wow, whatever. Maybe this will shut him up for a while. So Bill continues to drift from job to job. He tries heavy equipment operating for a while. Wow. Spent some time working in the quality control division at U.S. Rubber.

That sounds fun. His old high. Make sure the tires are done right. I guess so. You check them out, kick them a couple of times. Dan, Betty's brother, works there and got him a job at that point working in the heating and air conditioning field. That's I guess that's so he goes into that. And Bill started night classes to learn the sheet metal trade.

Oh, that's not easy stuff. That's a hard job. That's hard work. That's all day hard work. When he eventually got that job, they were talking about the construction. He was the talk of all the construction workers around town. Everyone's talking about him.

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And he's jerking off. He's probably in the bathroom. He's in the port-a-potty. He's fucking smoking. There's that guy. I was going to say, that guy is one of us. Yeah. If we were both on the same job, they'd fire us both. It's like, we can't have two of you. There can only be one. You're just sitting over there giggling, making fun of everybody. You can't do that. You have to actually work. Does this guy ever pick up a hammer? What's happening? These two are useless.

So he would call in sick all the time. Yeah. And even when he got there, the co-worker said they wouldn't see him all day. And then they'd see him like at punch out time. Where the fuck have you been all day? He's taking off. Why are you in line for the time clock? You were here today. You were here. They would at one point they discover him like sleeping under a staircase, like away from the job.

Or in an area, just standing in an area where no one was working, hanging out, sitting on a bucket or just smoking cigarettes. That's the best. And no one complained.

No one complained to the boss. They just were like, he's fucked. This guy's crazy. I can't believe he's doing it. Just ignore him, basically. He'll get fired eventually. And he's got a real threatening attitude, too. He's a real like, what are you fucking saying to me type of guy. Very angry guy. And so they're like, it's not worth it. Who cares? So he also told people to mind their own fucking business all the time. In conversation, too, he was always real braggart of how tough he was.

If somebody would say they had a big problem with somebody else, he would say, like, that would never happen to me. Nobody would dare try that on me. He said, boy, I'd go over there with my gun and blow them away. Then he'd say, you want me to go over there and take care of it for you? And they'd be like, no, no, no, no. Calm down, psycho. Yeah, or like he'd talk about like getting in a beef with someone at wherever the fuck at the grocery store. And he'd say, I fixed them, but good.

One of those. Fixed him good. He'd say, or I sure put the fear in him and I told him where to get off and all that kind of shit. The guy didn't want any part of me and he ran away. He's always one of those guys. He always, no benefit of the doubt, no fucking quarter. He's just coming at you all the time. And so, yeah, it's Bill at one point here. Betty, again, very naive. Never questioned anything Bill did or said.

That's how it works. And her dad, growing up, was working and would be out of town for two weeks at a time working on houses and stuff like that. So for her, for a guy to go away for work was normal. So when Bill would just take off and be gone for a whole weekend, she thought he was working. Meanwhile, he'd be staying at some motel somewhere.

To do what? Well, we'll find out. But one time she said she knew where Bill was going and he was staying somewhere through the weekend. So she said, let's go surprise dad to the kids. Oh, this is going to be great. So they found the bathroom window open in the motel room. So they opened it up and she shoved little Sarah Lynn through the window to go unlock the front door. Yeah. And there was no one was there. They opened the front door. Bill's not there.

Bill gets back. He's alone, actually, which is surprising as hell. We all expected him to be in bed with the skankiest of prostitutes at this point. The worst. Sores, covered in sores. Just somebody that was terrifying to poor Betty. But instead of going, oh, my God, hey, guys, he was furious. How fucking dare you? What? Cursing. Betty's crying, sobbing. He's yelling at her, berating her.

He was like, she was like front of the kids. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. The kids, that doesn't matter. So they ended up, she took off with the kids. And at that point she started being suspicious that he was seeing someone at these motel rooms. Why else would she be so mad? Yeah. Um, she, he's acting differently. His seems sneaky, more controlling than he ever was and all that kind of thing. What is he hiding? It's very weird. So Betty ends up finding out one of his coworkers, I guess, uh,

And somehow, thinking he was doing a favor for Bill, Bill was out of town on a job when the paychecks came in. So the co-worker took Bill's paycheck and gave it to Betty, figured she could go deposit it, they could get the money in the bank earlier. Right.

And this is the first paycheck she'd ever seen. They've been married for over 10 years. She never knew how much money she made. How much is it? And she told, I don't know the amount, but she told Joanne that she was like, what the fuck? He's making good money. I'm living like we are poor and he's making good money. He, you know, fucking squeezes $10 out for me. And we have, this is ridiculous. So she's pissed at that point. Bill, rather than being chastened by the whole thing, is furious at the co-worker and threatens to kill him.

You ruined my life. You gave my wife my paycheck. I'll murder you. How dare you? The guy's like, Jesus Christ. And back then, though, that's a big deal. Guys didn't tell their wives that. Like, even I read the ball for the Jim Boughton book, the old baseball book memoir from 1969. And he said that one of the guy's wives found out that they get paid for spring training.

found some money in his pocket because they had all they all told their wives we don't get paid for spring training it's all free and we would they take that money and keep it for themselves and buy like a boat or something and they said they found out so the guy had to tell her yeah that was a new in the new contract it's just this year that started meanwhile it's been for the last 10 years he's been playing he's been doing it it's what guys used to do i had a friend in their 60s that uh they were married and she said the the secret to their relationship was that they keep separate bank accounts she doesn't even know how much he makes

Well, do they both work and both have a... Yeah, they both have their own thing. That would be different, but this is like she was a housewife. Right. If you're a housewife and you only get the money this guy hands you... Yeah, this is our money. Like, hey, what the fuck, bro? I at least want to know how much we make, you know? So...

Bill does not get fired, by the way. Really? Yeah, even for this. He screamed. He even shouted at his boss because his boss tried to intervene and just go, hey, what's going on? And he said. You gave him my fucking check. It's partly your fault. Partly your fault. He said, I'm the man in my family. My wife has no business knowing how much money I make. He was heard shouting at his boss.

His boss, though, doesn't fire him because his boss is in the middle of selling the company and he doesn't want any disturbance or disruption. So he's like, I don't give a shit. Get it. Just tell the papers are signed. I don't care what the next boss worry about this. Yeah. He said he's the new guy's problem. I don't fucking give a shit here. Bill figured he was going to lose his job anyway. And so he was just.

going off. So Bill ended up going off and he figured that he'd get fired for this. So instead he takes off that day. And then the next day when the owner opens up the shop, he finds some tools and equipment have been stolen. So this guy goes, Hmm, let me just see where this is. Takes a ride over to Bill and Betty's house and finds all of the missing items in the garage. It's all sitting there. That's ridiculous. So,

The guy, though, he didn't want to make a stink because the sale was three days away from closing for the company. Oh, God. Yeah. So he just got his shit back and brushed it under the rug and said, good, Bill won't come back now and I don't need him. And he never calls the cops or anything like that. Hmm. Yeah. So Bill later on will tell everybody that he made a deal with this guy to buy the equipment, but the guy reneged. That's what happened. It wasn't his fault. He didn't steal it. It was just a, you know. Nothing to do with that.

Yeah. And he was telling Betty this and Betty felt terrible for him. Oh, man, this guy did us so wrong. You poor guy. Yeah. So Dan, the brother in law, Betty's brother, found out about the brother in law's burglary after that. And Dan had left his job and was killed.

basically not in the, he didn't work in construction anymore, so he hadn't heard much about Bill. He was planning to start his own heating and air conditioning business in California because there's a lot of construction going on in California at the time. So Bill said, please, please, please let me be your partner. I have cash to invest in it. Now Dan needed money to start the business up, so he grudgingly, begrudgingly let Bill

Invest. Invest and be a partner. So now he's partners with this guy. Oh, boy. So basically a room in Dan's house was used as the office. And Bill said he was going to do the office work.

But Dan said it was impossible to get him to actually do the work and stay there. He just wanted his paycheck. Dan's wife was going crazy. She had to be in the house with Bill there all day and she couldn't stand him. He would like send her to go get coffee and expect her to like cook or cook him lunch and shit. He'd be like, what are you making me for lunch? And she's like, pardon? I'm making you shit for lunch. And then she would like have to make him food. I don't work here. Yeah. Make your own. This is my house.

So then Dan argued, Bill said that he needed a secretary. Meanwhile, he's barely there. Dan said, we can't afford it. We don't need it. But Bill hired a secretary. The problem is it's the woman. He hires a woman. And it's the same woman that all the construction gossip said he's been fucking for months. So he hires his girlfriend, essentially. Yeah.

Dan then said, look, Bill, you can buy me out or I'm going to buy you out, but we're not going to be in the same business anymore. Yeah. Bill said, I'm glad to sell you the company, sell you my half and name some crazy price. And Dan says, I'm not going to do that. Sorry, not doing it. He said, you know, you don't have a contractor's license, Bill. What the fuck are you going to do with this business? Like I do. So I can just start another one. I don't need you. And that's kind of how it.

how it broke off. And Dan ended up buying Bill out for a much lower price. Dan just said, I just wanted him out of my life. I couldn't handle it anymore. Just, I needed to get rid of him here. And so the family now ends up moving to Fontana. Oh. Yes. They had, they had a house they were living in, Betty was, and they ended up losing the house. It was right near her parents. Oh, shit.

where they had the house in Crestline and ended up losing the house. But Bill convinced her that it was his idea to sell the house because he has a better idea. Oh, what's this idea? We're going to buy a worm farm.

What is it with worm farms? Dude, how often... This is the second time in two weeks a fucking worm farm has come up, and you didn't even know there was worm farms in existence when the first worm farm came up, and now it's all we're talking about. It should be called worm farm murder now.

It's all worm farms. I mean, that was, it's a ridiculous business venture. That's why it was Dumb and Dumber's business venture. Oh, that was the fireworks Patreon with the worm farm. Right. That was being used as an illegal fireworks factory. That was hilarious. And in Dumb and Dumber, that was what they were going to do was start a worm farm. A worm farm. But apparently it's not a terrible business. It's just a hard business, I guess. Yeah, of course. Because.

it's not lucrative. Yeah. Well, if you have enough of them, it is though. Yeah. So if you're running a bait shop near a lake, sure. Well, I guess around there, there's a lot of lakes and bait shops. So if you're in a place where there is a lot, I guess it's a good, it's a good thing. There are worm farms, so it has to be viable. Otherwise, why are people, they just like digging up worms. What are you people? What the fuck are you doing out there? People?

Why would they be doing? I hope that's not why. There's got to be a case study per market that a certain amount will work and then one too many and the whole thing falls. Oh, I thought you were going to say we need to study who's worm farming and the percentage of them that are actually doing this to make a profitable business and the other part that is just doing it because they like worms for some reason and they're real into them. That's

Or they're a front for illegal fireworks. Or that's the other thing here. Bill's a big-time fisherman, and he said he knows his worms. So they end up moving to Fontana, California, to raise worms.

That's what they're doing. It's a shitty place, a shitty house in a terrible fucking neighborhood, a terrible area. In Fontana, James. It sucks. Poor, rundown, crime-ridden shithole. Biker gangs like to hang out in Fontana. That was big back in the day. It's a bad place. Yeah. The house was small. It was a shithole. It was falling apart. There was a big shed out back that housed the dirt worm beds. That was in shit condition, too. Yeah. But...

Yeah, it was... Betty's tried to make the most of it. She told her friends that you don't need a fancy place to raise worms. Yeah. So it was very interesting. They somehow managed to get Sarah Lynn and Jeff into a private school. I don't know how...

Worm money. Or they borrowed it from the parents, one of the two. Bill loved it because he could hunt and fish more often now because he's just raising worms and not actually working. Betty, though, didn't like it because it was kind of shitty and dangerous and it's nothing like her old place with her parents living next door. Now, they said there's a lot of tackle and bait stores in the mountain roads up there because there's a ton of lakes and they're always looking for bait. So this is actually...

Bill set up a bunch of clients and had a daily delivery route that he would do. Sustainable. Yeah. So, you know, he would just do that. And the whole family would package and count and put them in little styrofoam containers. And those things breed like crazy, dude. Oh, they fuck like nuts. Yeah. I had no idea how many they make. They make so many. Yeah. Like I said, you cut a worm in half, you got two worms now. There you go. Yeah. That's the other thing. They close up. Yeah.

They're wild, man. He would do this and go along. It was pretty soon, though, he would start telling Betty, you need to learn the route, too, for these deliveries. I can't do this every day. I waited for worms to fuck. I mean, I'm tired. He was just lazy. So he's always lazy. And he would tell her, yeah, I don't feel good, like he did with his mom. So that's how it worked with her, too. Betty would make shitloads of worm deliveries. But...

She's out on these middle-of-nowhere mountain roads, and she does it every day. So anybody paying attention would know that by the end of the day, she's going to have a bunch of cash on her.

Oh, yeah. So she starts to get worried that she's going to get robbed on one of these mountain roads because she's like, one of these crazy fucking hill folk are going to rob me when I'm on this road. So Bill gave her a gun and taught her how to use it. That's the solution? So armed and day out. Not I'll do it. It's, hey, Betty, learn how to shoot this gun at the guy instead. Totally.

Take this six shooter, babe. Yep. And he's got a ton of guns. He's always been collecting guns and he's a really good shot too. Really good shot. He always taught his kids how to use guns. He's big on like firearm safety and all that kind of shit too, like teaching the kids all that stuff. 1971, he's got a lot of health problems here. Yeah. He's making the deliveries one day but hadn't come home for dinner.

And Betty's waiting for him. And, you know, she's this happens all the time, by the way, even though he's having health problems. She'd make dinner. He wouldn't come home. She'd sit there. He wouldn't come home till after midnight. Really? She'd be like, is he out drinking? Who knows? At one point, one of these nights, though, he doesn't come home till the middle of the night. And he says that he lost control of his truck dodging a coyote on a narrow road.

Yeah. And so that's what happened. So he's in the hospital for 16 days recovering from bruising and severe pain in his head, neck and back. And there was problem is, though, there's internal bleeding.

That causes his spleen and one kidney to be removed. He went septic. Yeah. And the remaining kidney was slightly damaged as well. Oh, no. So he's got one slightly damaged kidney. And they said that a couple months later, they said that further deterioration. And they couldn't assure Bill that his kidney wouldn't fail completely sometime in the future and he's going to die. Yeah.

So because if you're if it's working well, one kidney you can get along with just fine. But it'll grow. If it's fucked up, you can't. It's not going to work. So I and the insurance that they had paid all of Bill's medical expenses and replaced the truck. That's good. So he learned a little lesson about insurance that time. Holy shit. Insurance rocks. This fixes our life. So he said no more worm farming. I'll do to labor intensive. It is hard to watch worms. Fuck. You know.

I want to move somewhere else. It's very restless. I'm tired of all this worm porn on the background. Oh, man. I have to keep putting it on. It's like in a fucking bar, like in a shit bar. There's just a bunch of screens with worm porn playing. So he wants to move to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Oh, okay. That's where he wants to move. Back then, not an expensive place. At least he's got big dreams. Yeah, I'm sure it wasn't. It's not expensive back then. It was just a...

cowboy shithole in the middle of nowhere. Now it's one of the most expensive places on the face of the earth. Right. It's hard to get to. It's fucking out there, man. Yeah. And that's kind of, it's remote as the thing because it's for rich people and skiing and all that kind of shit. It's in the Teton mountains. Yep.

So they visited Jackson Hole and Betty wasn't quite sure about it because, you know, she's still within driving distance of her family in Fontana and she wants to be there. But they think maybe they need to. He's like, listen, we need to break the cycle. We need to do this. So.

Let's try it. They said, what the fuck? Why not? They said no matter how long they raise worms, they're never going to have shit to show for it. They're always going to barely get by. Jackson Hole House, that's for sure. No, you're not going to be a millionaire with worms. So she said, fine, she'll do it. Jeff didn't mind. The kid, he's 11. Their kid, he thought it would be cool. Sarah Lynn's a teenager. She's not real happy about it, but they're going to go. She's really pissed. They're going to do it, and Bill promises, give it two years. If you don't like it, we'll go back.

OK. Two years. Fair enough. Yeah. By the way, Bill has figured out how to get a loan, even though he has terrible credit. And he said, listen, if I as long as I can get some earnest money, some down payment, I'll get the loan. And she's like, how are you going to get a loan? And he figured it out. He just used his father's collateral and credit rating because they have the same name. So he just said he's his father.

Just used his social security number. Nobody asked a question. Yeah. Yep. He's got the same name. Probably got the, on the ID, just shows me ID, puts down his dad's social security number. It shows up, same name. Different middle name. Bingo, bingo. Got the money. They have a different middle name, but they don't, that's not on your ID all the time. And I get, I have gotten confused by, you know, agencies with my father. We have a different middle name, same shit. So they think they're dealing with William R. Gray and he's William L. Gray. Okay. Yeah.

And that was that. So he could do it and he's done it before and he'll do it again. So and Betty was like, why would anybody give us money? Yeah, exactly. But less than three months after this, he said they're moving there and he wants and he got this loan. I don't know where the worm shed burned to the ground.

Oh, everything. They lost it all. Bill woke Betty up in the middle of the night to tell her that he smelled smoke and they went out there together and discovered the shed was completely engulfed in flames. Oh, no, no. And Betty had been sleeping soundly and didn't know what Bill was doing before that. She assumed he was sleeping, too, but she didn't think he like, you know, burned the shed down or anything like that. Joanne, though, was like, your husband totally burnt your shit down to get insurance money to fucking put a down payment on this house.

Where else is he getting it from? And the sister said, from everything I heard, that farm wasn't worth much of anything except the insurance. They couldn't make a decent living with it because I know they were getting money from my parents and Bill's parents all the time. Then it burns down and it's well insured. I said, Betty, don't you think this is a bit too coincidental? You can't sell it. It's worth practically nothing, probably way less than what you owe on it. And one night, boom, it burns down. Now you've got the money to go to Wyoming. Don't you think that's a bit much? Like...

Good news, not a single worm was armed. All of them got out. We sold them all. They're done. So the Fontana Police Department, though, said they suspected arson and the only possible perpetrator is Bill. So who else would burn down a fucking worm shed? Who cares? Rival worm growers? I mean, I don't think that's a thing. Sending a worm message. Yeah. But they never were able to prove their suspicion, so the insurance company paid off.

The fire remains on the Fontana police records as an unsolved arson. So it's an arson on the file, but they were never able to prove it. So the payoff, since not only did it destroy the worm shed, so they get the money for the structure, but it's also their business. Right. So they get more money. So now Bill has all the money he needs to go to Jackson Hole. Wow.

And when he goes there, he goes, what is the one business scummy enough for a guy like me? A former worm farming, lazy asshole who's mean to his wife and scamming money from a system. Who the hell with a terrible immune system? What kind of a place could I do? I know what I'll be. I'll own a pawn shop. Is that right? Never been a more perfect person.

Perfect mix of fucking medium and content ever. Incredible. It's perfect. So they move there in 1978 and they find on Main Street, Jean's Pawn Shop.

And they renamed it Gray's Pawn Shop, and they bought it. And it would later be Gray's Pawn Shop Antiques and Bail Bonds as well. And they're doing bail bonds. Wow. And they're doing bail bonds. So, yeah, Sarah Lynn and Jeff helped out with the pawn shop, and Betty helped out too when the shop is busiest or when Bill is feeling lazy or, oh, I'm sorry, sick is what he says. Yeah.

This business will make you long for the days that you're flush with cash driving down a rural road all alone. No shit. This is dangerous. Delivering worms. Yeah. And firearms, very popular at pawn shops. Bill applied to the ATF for his federal firearms license so he could buy and sell guns, and he got the license. It allowed him to take in used firearms as pawn items, but also to sell new firearms as well.

Bill loved this shit, man. He loved it. Oh, man, because he could get guns for cheap and he liked having guns and playing with guns, but also he could add really cool ones to his personal collection now as well. It's awesome. He loves playing with guns. He loves it. That's what he's doing. He's looking at them and fucking dicking with them. He's got 100 guns. You're not shooting 100 guns all the time. You're playing with them. You know what I mean? Playing with 99, you got one. You got one, yeah.

So it outgrew the building. In 1982, they take out a second loan so they could move and expand the business. He convinced the bankers that he could make a large balloon payment in three years on this. Oh, Jesus. Business was good now. Better location, larger shop. And he thought he could really make it work. So he moves his business to 560 West Broadway on the main street of town, which is probably very high rent now. Probably.

Probably. And he added a fishing tackle department as well and a large line of camping equipment, a music department, and even more jewelry. He's a one-man Cabela's. He's everything and jewelry. That's one thing they don't sell at Cabela's are like gold chains. You don't think they got that? What do you want to bet they got a rainbow trout necklace?

Oh, Nick, I'm talking like bling shit, though. Like real stuff? No, they don't have that. Yeah, I can't get like a death row pendant at Cabela's, you know what I mean? But at a pawn shop, I just might be able to get one. Yeah.

That's what I'm saying. Gaudy shit. He also expands his gun department, which he felt was the most important part of the store, which it's tools and guns are your main heartbeat of fucking pawn shops. Those survive every fucking recession. People always need those, whereas jewelry, you know, ebb and flow here. Now they can actually afford a house.

For the first time, he could legitimately purchase a house without even using his father's bullshit. Incredible. They buy a brand new two-story home at 435 Stacy Lane, which is south of downtown. And now they're doing great. Betty's fucking proud of the home. Sure. It's just they couldn't be better here. They have friends, none of them like Bill.

She has friends. She has friends. Well, they have friends. And then once, once they realize that Bill's an asshole, then Betty has friends. Yeah.

She's so nice they don't lump her in with him. Yeah. So she makes a friend named Janice Roby and she has a daughter who's close to their daughter's age and all that kind of thing. Betty and Janice were best friends. They would talk to each other and do all that shit. In the early 80s, the couples would go out together for dinner and dancing. Even on cold nights, they'd just play cards together.

Sure. But the more they were around him, Janice's husband didn't want to hang out with Bill anymore. And that's the issue. It's like my fucking joke of being stuck in the backyard with the guy and go, you like sports? And it's all you know. What the fuck else are we going to talk about?

It's the same thing. Nice. And you hate baseball. Thanks for coming over. Great. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah, because I told the true story. One guy went through everything, and he goes, I like NASCAR. And I went, great. Perfect. I wanted to drink some more of my beer. We went through every sport, movies, TV, fucking books. I'm like, what is this guy into? It's just NASCAR. That's it. And I was like, I'm stuck with this man for the next three hours. I can't get away from this. Yeah. Fuck. Shit. Shit.

So the two ladies drink more of my beer and eat more of my food. Come on in. Yeah, no, no, I'm cooking. I'm putting more shit on the grill for you. You just stay right there away from the heat, though. Wouldn't want you to break a sweat. Don't worry. I'll cook for you. I got this guy. I'll never see again. We got all of this guy. I'm hopefully we'll never see again. I'm not absorbing your name. You fucking don't care anymore.

I don't care anymore. So, yeah, that's how it goes. The ladies become close friends. Bill owning the pawn shop gives you access to a lot of weird things. Yeah. Bill becomes a gaudy douchebag weirdo. Oh, he's one of those. I love that guy. Every person. Half the jewelry pawn there he's wearing at all times for safekeeping or some shit. He's that guy.

Yeah. Everything on his person is for sale as well. The guy that owned that big yellow one on 8th Street, that's who he was. I know exactly who you're talking about. It's the guy right there. He's got like three watches on.

He's like 58 wearing Janko jeans. I'm like, who is this asshole? Mr. T necklaces, just like a chest full of them. You're like, are those all the necklaces you bought tonight? Hat sideways, driving a Bentley. Like, who the fuck are you? I buy used guitars, man. Okay, great. What the fuck are we talking about? Oh, that guy's fucking crazy. So, and Bill becomes a bigger asshole, by the way. Of course. Now he's even more like pushy and intimidating with people because now he's got like a whole pawn shop. It's like his little kingdom. Yeah.

He even tells people that he's a bounty hunter. Okay. He would tell stories of tracking down bail jumpers and bringing them back at gunpoint and, you know, big conference. He didn't do any of this. He just told people that. Yeah. He'll be like, you like that gun? Yeah, it's a good price for it. Let me tell you what I did with it. Last week I brought a guy back at gunpoint on that thing. Yeah, it works out. He was real scared of it.

They said in this book, they say, by the way, I'll give you the name of the book. It's called, the book is called When Greed Turns Deadly by Dixie Murphy. I don't want to forget, so I'll just give it now. So-

The book says, quote, decked out in his gaudy pawn shop obtained gold and turquoise watch. It's huge, too. Yeah. Gold chains and bracelets. He never ceased to brag of his wealth and prosperity. Even that could be ignored by considering the source. But few people who spent much time around the grays were comfortable with the foul language Bill used. Oh, no. The more so his habit of always putting Betty down in front of them. Oh.

His nasty, mean, vulgar remarks struck at the very core of their sensitivities. Betty would try to laugh it off and make excuses for his behavior, but inwardly, they knew she was hurt. She's sad. Yeah. And it's not just Janice and her husband wondering what the fuck's going on and why you're letting this guy treat you like dirt. There's neighbors directly across the street, John and Dee Dee.

Mm-hmm.

If she came over for a cup of tea, you could see her driveway from where we had tea. And if she saw him come home, she would bolt and run for the door saying he's going to be mad at me. I don't have dinner on the table. Like Archie Bunker, basically. He walks in, he wants, where's dinner? Betty, he said sometimes Betty and Janice and the neighbor would go to the Elks Club to play bingo. That's what they do.

And if they wanted to stay for a drink afterwards, she would say, nope, can't do it. Bill's going to be angry if I'm not home when I should be. When I should be. Her friend said, sometimes I would think this woman is nuts. I'd never put up with a man like that. No kidding. Now, Bill does have a couple of friends or lackeys is a better way to put it. Yeah. He's got a guy named Jack Hurley, number one.

And Jack Hurley is, according to the book, a typical cowboy boot Levi wearing valley rancher at a small ranch in Bondurant, Wyoming, which is 35 miles away from Jackson. And so he's got like a small ranch and Bill would use him for certain things. Then he's got a guy named Lee Brown, who's a guy who's from Alabama. Yeah.

And he had worked on these different cattle ranches and got divorced, went to work for the U.S. Forest Service. He worked at the Snake River Campgrounds as a driver for float trips. And Lee and Bill met through the pawn shop and they became friends. And Lee is very good at fixing anything. So anything Bill has, he can take it to Lee and Lee will fix it. Then he can sell it for more.

Lee's a driver of a bus that drops off drunk people to go float on inner tubes. He's a scumbag. Well, here's the quote from the book. The general consensus of those who knew Lee was that he was a little slow mentally. That's what he is. He's a little slow. He could hardly read or write.

but he was a loner and Bill just kind of took him in. And so he's kind of his only friend. He'll do anything for you. Lee gets involved in some of Bill's bullshit. At one point when he's working for the parks department or some shit like that, uh, the forest service, a snow machine belonging to the forest service ended up in Bill's garage. Wonder how that happened. Uh,

Fucking snowmobile. It's a 400 pound machine. So yeah, those are so expensive. There's very, yeah. The forest us forest service had it. It's not for him. Then there's another time when bill had a Jeep and, uh, he claimed his Jeep was stolen, collected the insurance money when the Jeep was found stripped of all usable parts at the bottom of a cliff on Teton pass. Uh,

Lee had helped strip it, then followed it in another vehicle to the pass where they pushed it over the side. Right.

Yeah. Lee was the guy who knew how to strip it and he knew what was important out of there. So Lee basically was stuck with Bill at this point. Sarah Lynn, the daughter had suspicions that her father trashed the Jeep, even though he said he didn't. He said it was stolen. She said he wasn't upset when the Jeep got stolen. Normally he would have thrown a fit. Nobody dared to take anything from my dad. Then he made a remark that the insurance was worth more than the Jeep was.

At one point, his dad was telling Jeff overheard the son overheard his dad talking in the shop one day and basically told him told telling his friend what he did. So Bill made up some story about the insurance company being at fault. And actually, they owed me some money. And Jeff was like, what are you fucking? No, they owe you money. I'm not. What do you what do I look like, mom? I'm not. No, no.

You didn't pull me out of the house when I was 14. I'm no better. A float trip driver? I'm not dumb. I know. I can cipher. I'm lettered.

And Bill said, well, just don't tell your mother about that. And he was like, all right. I can transcribe this conversation, Dad. And Jeff's like 12, by the way, or 14. He might be older now. He's a teenager now. So then Bill gets more injuries, by the way. Oh? He said that, quote, I was getting ready for the hill climb on a real lively snowmobile and lost control. Oh, my God.

I ended up with a steel plate down here under my knee. I had compound fractures in, I believe, 11 or 13 places. I'm just chock full of nuts and bolts. 13 bones through the skin? That's impossible. That's compound fractures. Yeah, it's impossible.

Your leg would... They would have found it in a tree or something if that was the case. No way it would have stayed attached to you. 11 or 13. What a dummy. That's crazy. 11 or 13 means two. That's one. One, probably. So Betty helped out. She nursed him, tended to his every need. She'd open and close the pawn shop. She'd... You know, all of this shit. He had a huge extensive recovery period. And he...

He could have done shit from the pawn shop. You can do it from a chair, most of it. But he didn't want to. He just let her do everything and he'd hang out at home. Knees hurt sitting home. Bill's mother, again, she would come and visit Sarah and she would just like act like Betty was there to serve her. The book said she seldom bothered to get dressed and she lounged around watching soaps on television, expecting Betty to wait on her hands and foot.

She never touched a dish, made her own bed, nor offered the slightest help with food preparation or chores.

They said, the book said Sarah had a tendency to be a little on the lazy side like her son. But, you know, now Betty's working all the time, too. They said Bill, though, had... Make her own bed? Nothing. And Betty didn't complain about it, but Bill did. Bill, the book says he instructed his family to watch his mother for she had a tendency to take things from the house. She's a lazy thief. Yeah.

She's stealing from her own kid. Watch out, kids. Grandma might fucking take your fucking journey tape. Watch out. Be careful. Grandma Butterfingers is coming to this. Wow. Sticky Fingers. Never mind Butterfingers. Sticky Fingers. That's what I meant. Grandma Stickum's coming over. Watch out.

Jesus. On one occasion, after Sarah packed to leave, Bill instructed his children to go through her suitcase and remove the items that he knew his mother had stolen. Go get all our shit back from Nana. Yeah. Literally go into her suitcase and take all the shit out that she stole, please. Oh, my God. That's crazy. Then one night or one morning, 543 a.m., a half mile south of the hardware store, the Virginian Lodge bursts into flames. Oh.

By 7 a.m., the firemen had it under control...

However, about 150 motel units were completely destroyed. Oh, no. Then, at 6.50 a.m., Gray's Pawn Shop bursts into flames. Bill and Betty's Pawn Shop. There's a fucking flamethrower in town. Yeah, they're a half mile apart, so it didn't spread to there. Bill was in the pawn shop when the fire first broke out, according to Bill. According to the Jackson Hole Guide, which is the newspaper... Yeah.

It says Bill Gray narrowly escapes, read the headline, followed by a picture of the burned out building. And they said that luckily the Virginian Lodge fire had been contained enough to where the firefighters could turn their attention to the pawn shop. Although it's completely gutted, which with major damage to the building and only a small section of the pawn shop remains standing.

Okay. Now, it was originally, by the way, that was, yes, okay. So then that same morning, they found out that a hardware store had burnt down as well. Really? Yes. It was at 4.04 a.m.

Jackson Hole Hardware. So there's just fires all over the place that morning. Now, the pawn shop was the last of these three to start. It was 404, four something on the pawn shop.

I guess an hour – they heard about the fires. Jeff and Bill's father and son were going fishing that morning. They were getting ready to leave and heard the sirens. So out of curiosity, because it's a small place anyway, they went to see what was going on. And they found out that while they were out, Bill said he was going to stop at the pawn shop and get some extra tackle for their trip, some lures. Right.

He told Jeff to wait in the car. He'd only be a minute. Within a few minutes, he came running out of the shop just seconds ahead of the shop exploding. It's going to blow. Like Henry Hill running from the parking lot in the beginning of Goodfellas. Like, that's what happened here. Cadillacs exploding behind him. The pawn shop erupted in flames while they stood there and watched. So that was the last of it also.

They said it was possible a lot of these fires were started by book of matches or

With a match in it that's sideways so it burns down and then lights the whole thing. And there's a shitload of gasoline. This is good timing for Bill. Fortuitous. The balloon payment on their small business loan was due soon. Oh. And that would have ruined them because they didn't have the money for that. Thank God for this fire. So now within a couple hours of all these fires, the Ramada Snow King Resort and the Pioneer Cafe, somebody tried to light them on fire as well.

So they had some evidence here. They found a lit cigarette, a lighted cigarette burned down to set off a book of matches, which then ignited containers of gasoline. That's what they found at this site here. This gave, you know, obviously an arsonist a fuse they made here. Gives them time to get away before the fire explodes here. The cigarette burned out, though, before it could set the matches. Oops.

On the fire. So that's the problem. They found as much as or they felt as much as 30 to 50 gallons of fuel was used in the five fires. Holy shit. That's so much gas. 30 to 50 gallons. That's like filling your car up four fucking times, basically. That's six or ten five gallon. Wow. That's a lot.

That's so much, so much. They said that neither gas stations nor distributors checked in the entire valley remembered selling that amount of fuel to any one person at all. So and nor had any residents responded to like someone stealing fuel from their ranch or something. None of that shit. The fire chief said whoever did this was very angry. The person had thought out the method very carefully.

Everyone who investigated these arsons felt that Bill was responsible for at least his fire. But the fire chief said, I didn't think health wise he could have started the others.

Yeah, and he's so lazy. That's a lot of fires. That's what I mean. I would be mad at a guy if they were that lazy but then started five fires. I'd be like, you lazy fuck. Why don't you do this in an hour? Did all that in an hour? Come on. Ridiculous. And so there's no reason to check on his past or anything like that. They just go, okay, insurance company pays off, and the pawn shop rebuilt bigger and better, and they had money to spare. Wow. So it all worked out great.

Betty doesn't know that. The fun thing about pawn shops is you could claim there was anything in there. Anything. Like at a Baby's R Us, you can't say there was a... We had 14 AK-47s in there. And a very old Monet and some Fabergé eggs. Could be anything. We had Jimi Hendrix guitar in there from Woodstock. He signed it. Had his fingerprints on it. That's it. It was the National Anthem guitar. Priceless.

So, by the way, in the house, Bill is in his chair the whole time and Betty has to do everything. He starts to get real just angry. Like if Betty forgot to put the salt out, he would yell, where's the goddamn salt? Like he's an angry Jimmy Buffett fan or something. He's fucking pissed off.

So Betty would get it. He'd drink his milk and then he'd say, well, God damn it. If you can't, can't you see my glasses empty? Get me some more milk. He would yell at her. This is very, very weird. Very strange. One morning, Betty, I guess one of her friends confronted Betty after Bill left and said, my God, Betty, how do you put up with this? And Betty just laughed and said, you know, everybody tells me that even Bill's friends when they come over. I guess I'm used to it. I just don't even notice it anymore.

You know, everybody seems to ask me that. Weird. That's because it's fucking crazy that you're putting up with this shit. It's fucking nuts, man. So Bill has major kidney problems here. He has to go on dialysis in 1987. Oh, no, it's dying. It's not good. Yeah, he's got this bag that basically filters fluids in and out. He's carrying his piss. It's not the piss. It's something else, too. Yeah, they say that, well, here.

Oh, God.

His body wastes and excess fluids would pass from the blood through the solution residing in the stomach, cleansing and filtering the blood. So they were Jesus. It's its own kidney, basically. Yeah. And so after several hours, the bag would be lowered to blow his stomach so that gravity could then drain the waste filled dialysis solution back into the bag. When it was full, a new bag of solution was attached and it would start all over again.

So uncomfortable. That's a terrible description of life. Every time he had to do it, it was about every six hours. He would have to take 30 to 40 minutes to fill the cavity and then he could go do what he wanted to do for about six hours and he'd have to do it again. So it's four times a day, seven days a week. Cleanliness is the most important thing. No infections. He also loves Vegas. Yeah.

He has that happening, and he's going to Vegas. Oh, yeah. He doesn't give a shit. He loved it. He loves to gamble. In the book, they said Bill would deck himself out with all the jewelry he could wear, usually two gold neck chains, several gold bracelets, and an exceptionally large turquoise watch.

This is 87, 88. When Bill saw the picture of a man's spinner ring, we're talking like annoying rims from 2007, he had to have it at all costs. The ring was a gift to Dick from Joanne, the brother-in-law and sister of Betty, but Dick thought it was too gaudy and wouldn't wear it, so Joanne sent a picture to Bill asking if he could sell it at the pawn shop. He said, fuck yeah, you could sell it to me, bitch.

I'll wear it. It's an oval-shaped diamond that floated on the mounting, and with movement, the diamond would spin, and that would flash brilliant sparkles in all directions. It's the gaudiest thing ever. He's got a fucking disco ball on his hand. What the fuck are you doing? Wow. That is ridiculous. He thinks he's like a rapper, this guy. Oh, shit.

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So remember Larry Leroy Roy Levitt there? Yeah, I do. Yeah. Okay. Well, this was they meet him through Fanning Wholesale, which was an account of the pawn shops. Yeah. And as the pawn shop flourished, Roy Levitt was good friends with them because they were doing a lot of business together. He would call the pawn shop on a regular basis. Roy would. And over the years, he and Bill had a friendship, and they would go to lunch. They'd go fishing trips sometimes. Jesus Christ.

They took their wives to go wild asparagus picking. I don't know. That was an activity. That seems like work. Went on a float trip down the Snake River. Only fucking... Only well-off fucking white people would be like, farming is a...

Not farming as a living farm for fun. It's fun. I'll, I'll, let's do stoop labor for fun. That's hilarious. Only rich people do that shit. So they went on a trip down the snake river and all that kind of thing. But their friendship was based on the working relationship mainly here. Um,

Now, Roy said, I always thought he was abusive toward Betty. In my presence, he called her a bitch using four-letter words on several occasions. He would sometimes get irritable and ignorant with his customers, too, but sometimes he was really cheerful and pleasant. Guess it depended on how he felt any given day. So now we'll enter the other victim that we found in the beginning, Rita Lorraine Roundy.

So she's born in 1940. She worked for Fanning Wholesale. That's how they all met. She got a job there, and she worked for a sporting goods retailer before that. She is from Utah, and that's kind of her thing here. She has two older sisters. She's the youngest by like 15 years, though. Right, right.

which is weird. So she's always the baby and she's from a very poor family. Really? Yeah. A very poor family. She grew up, even though her grandmother lived a half a block away, she would basically live at her grandmother's most of the time. Her father was a miner who worked long hours and didn't make a lot of money. So they also raised rabbits and chickens for food and her mother canned vegetables and fruit given by neighbors who had extra to share. So they would have food in

In the 50s she was living like this? Yeah, in the 50s. It sounds like Charlie fucking Buckethead. 1839 shit. So they said more often than not to get meat, her dad would poach elk or deer. And, you know, when it wasn't in season or whatever. She said dad almost got caught when he was cleaning a couple of pheasants and the game warden stopped by. Thank goodness the warden was an old friend. I guess dad knew it was against the law, but without that food we would have been darn hungry because we didn't have any money.

So, yeah, everybody...

the older sisters get married to get the hell out of here. And Rita just hangs out with her dad and goes hunting and fishing all the time. She's also real good with a rifle or a gun. Excellent. And a good fisherman too. So, uh, she moved to Provo, Utah, got married in 1960, uh, got divorced in 1977. She had three kids and she moved to Tucson for some reason when she got remarried. Yeah. Got remarried, moved to Tucson. And, um,

You know, did that. They end up she ends up getting divorced again and then gets married again and divorced again in Denver. Good Lord. So, yeah, she's trying to figure it out here. According to the book, it says, quote, Rita was a large woman, big boned and on the heavy side, yet very attractive. You would hardly notice her weight because she had good taste in clothes and was always nicely dressed. Yeah, I've seen pictures of her. You don't go, look at this fucking fat broad. She just looks like a.

She's got a bigger head and bigger bones, and that's a good way to describe it. That's a fascinating way of writing that. You wouldn't notice it. Well, then why did you write it? Hardly notice her. Wait. Don't get it wrong. She's a fucking pig, but you would barely notice it. That's how it comes across, right? Yeah. That's why the line's in there. I could have said it a different way. Big fat. Jesus Christ. You wouldn't-

I thought it was written strangely. It's so bizarre to write it like that. Man, dark brown hair surrounded a narrow face with deep dimples on each cheek. Her smile was radiant and infectious. Of course it was, because she's dead. You know, chubby people can be fucking gorgeous. Why are you writing it like this? Nobody has better fucking smiles than chubby people. A chubby fucking happy person looks like they're full of fucking joy. And Snickers, but joy. Ralphie May was adorable. That's what I mean.

Joy. Yeah. So a lot of the employees at Fanning, she's one of the older employees there. A lot of them called her mom because they were like in their early 20s and she's in her 40s.

So Roy introduces Rita to the Grays and Betty and Rita become very good friends, obviously. Whenever Betty was in town to pick up merchandise for the pawn shop, they would go to lunch and they'd go shopping and, you know, all that kind of shit, basically. Bill and Betty had stayed overnight at Rita's home and Rita had spent weekends with the Grays in Jackson Hole. Early in their friendship, you know, Bill liked Rita. Rita liked Bill. Yeah.

She and Bill were friendly, a little bit distant because the girls are, you know, the ladies are friends, but whatever. But she didn't like Bill's attitude toward Betty. Demanding, foul-mouthed, yelling at her, controlling her, everything. It's just weird, man. It's just a fucking strange setup. You're like, why is she just taking this shit? For so long.

One time there's a visit and it becomes kind of gets out of control, I guess. Bill needed his thing cleaned, his catheter hole cleaned. So Betty would clean it. She would do all this shit for him. He had taught her how to cleanse it and care for it and everything like that. He announced it was time for her to wash out his wound and she accidentally picked up the wrong thing.

She put the right down to get the solution, but he lost it like she was going to hurt him. And he said, you dumb bitch, you dumb fucking cunt, you stupid bitch. What the fuck do you think you're doing? Good Lord, man. So Didi, the neighbor across the street, said, what the hell are you doing? God damn it, Bill. Don't talk to her that way. This woman's trying to take care of you. You can't do it yourself. You're lucky that she'll do it for you. Honestly.

So, again, Christmas 87, the dialysis was not sufficient to keep Bill's system clear of waste. His ankles are swelling. He's sleepy all the time. Now he's got to have supplemental dialysis on a machine. So he's got to go to the Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center in Idaho Falls twice a week. It's deteriorating, and they place him high up on the waiting list for a donor kidney. Really? He's going to get one? Now, in addition to everything else Betty's doing, she also has a cake business on the side.

Really? Early adopter of that, too. Yeah, like in shapes of things. Really? Yes. It's crazy. She does that. She's up till midnight baking cakes and five in the morning decorating them. She called it Betty's Cakes. And she created funny birthday cakes, beautiful wedding things and other bakery items. Her friend Janice said she'd make cakes in half and make it look like the Bible.

She'd make a Bible cake somehow. Everybody loved her cakes. She was a great artist. I believe it. This is her calling here, it sounds like. Yeah. So one day, Roy came into the shop on his regular Tuesday visits, and Roy mentioned he's headed to West Yellowstone to cover an account for a salesman. And Betty had been saying, man, I'd love to visit a place like that. That sounds beautiful.

So Roy said, why don't you come with me? And Bill actually said, why don't you take Betty with you today? She could use some time away from here. Yeah. So Roy was like, sure. I just called her a cunt. Yeah, I called her a cunt. So that's going to be ringing in her ears. She'll probably be quiet for about half the trip, but she'll come out of it.

And even Betty was like, oh, okay. She was like, this is weird. So she made him stop to take pictures when she saw, you know, any kind of cool shit and she's happy and they had a nice day. Betty then was in Idaho Falls to pick up merchandise from Fanning's, the store he works at, a few weeks later. And it was the lunch hour and Rita was gone, but Roy was there. So she said, why don't you take one of your best clients to lunch?

So he said she was left basically to run the whole nine yards. She was doing everything. She was keeping up her housework, doing her cake business, running the store and tending him, being a nurse to him. Yeah, and all that time he was running her down like how she didn't know how to do nothing. And when she started to cry, I put her arms around her and hugged her. I put my arms around her and hugged her. She said, oh, Roy. By the way, I haven't done a Roy. She looked at him and said, Roy. Yeah.

Oh, Roy, it's been so long since anyone has held me and comforted me. At least you seem to care. Uh-oh. She began to call me more often, and I was really beginning to care for her a lot and really look forward to Tuesday so I could see her. Oh, Roy. This isn't good, Roy. Roy. So by the fall of 87, it's a full-blown affair. Affair, yeah. They're trying to keep it secret from everybody. The only person on Earth that knows about it is Rita. Yeah.

Really? Rita. Later on, she'll tell Joanne, too, the sister, but Rita. And Rita said, I will, because that way Rita can cover if anything happens. Right, right.

Bill thinks she's up there and he calls and they're out. You know, whatever. She knows what's up. She won't say like, oh, yeah, she's with Roy. I don't know. They've been in the back room for a while now. I don't know what's going on. Oh, the door's locked. I don't know. She won't say that. Sounds like everything's fine, though. She keeps saying, oh, yes. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. And I believe maybe.

He's always trying to convert people to Christianity, and I heard her call God several times in there. She was shouting, oh, God, oh, God, yes. So that's usually I think maybe she was accepting Christ into her life at this point. I did knock on the door and ask her to come to the phone, and she did say, I'm coming. So hold on. She actually said it. I think she's going to be very fast because she said it like three. She said, I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming, like very fast and progressively louder. She'll be here in a sec. I'll just leave the phone off the hook.

She swore to God. She said, oh, God, I'm coming. So if she's told God she's coming, she'll definitely be at the door in a minute. So give it about two minutes. I'll put her on the line. Betty, 1988, she starts having a lot of bleeding and has to have a hysterectomy. Oh, no. Her and Bill are in the hospital at the same time for a while. What has Roy done? He rearranged her guts. He fucking took that shit apart. He broke her uterus. Long Dictor broke her ovary, as Ghostface Killer once said.

So once she gets healthy, she worries that Roy is going to find out because Roy about or I'm sorry that Bill's going to find out about Roy. Bill, by the way, can like their phone lines because if they're home and the bail bonds line rings, they need to answer it. Yeah. So it all gets connected together. So Bill can pick up a line at his house and listen to any phone call of any work. Yeah. From work, from anywhere. So that's what he does. And so she knows that he does that. And.

She's like, fuck, don't call me. She tells Roy, I'll call you. You don't call me. Roy said she'd send me notes and then she wanted an answer back. I told her I wasn't much of a note writer. You don't know how to have an affair, this guy. He's terrible at it. I'm not much of a note writer. Are you much of a fucking dick-sucking receiver? Is that part of it? Write a note, stupid. Yeah.

What do you want? You want her to suck your dick, but you don't want to write notes? You like the strings unattached pussy? Yeah, what are we talking about here? Buy a nice pen, fucker. Yeah, no birth control either. Hysterectomy. She's cleaned out in there. Yeah. You can shout in her vagina and get an echo back.

Sorry. He can drop worry-free nut. Just fucking buy yourself a sweet pen. Come on. Get some stationery. But it seemed to be important to her, so I'd pick up an I love you type card and send it up in the freight, like in the stuff. Yeah.

When I didn't get down to pick up a card, she would ask me to send her a note anyway, and I'd say, okay, I'll try to come up with something. You can't come up with I miss you. Jesus Christ. I never kept any of her notes and cards, but it didn't surprise me that she kept mine.

You know how women are sometimes. The littlest things mean a lot to them. You know how they are like children, is what he just said. You know how women are. Sentimental and shit. Sentimental and fucking dumb. You know what I mean. They got feelings and shit, these dumb bitches. Dumb gash. You know what I'm talking about, right? No? Fuck. Okay.

He said, she gave me her picture. I kept it in my wallet. And she told me she had kept one of me in her wallet. I think it was one of the ones she had taken when we went to West Yellowstone. And this was all X's and O's and all this type of shit. The problem is the marriage is going downhill here. Bill is getting meaner at her. Bill told her at one point, you sleep on the couch. Dobby, who's the dog, is a better companion than you, you fucking cunt, he told her. Yeah. What?

So wouldn't you just love to be in the room and be like, your boy Roy's tagging her, you dumb fuck. He destroyed my fucking uterus and ovaries to the point they needed to be removed. Your boy Roy gave her a hysterectomy. They just took the parts out. He basically treated me like a game of operation where my nose was never not lit up in red. She, you know, so that's a big problem here. Um,

Also, his sickness had curtailed their sexual activity because he wasn't really into it anymore here. Roy said, this is about his wife, I didn't want to hurt LaDana's feelings. That's his wife. He's married too. Oh, yeah. They were hanging out together as couples. Oh, my God. Plus, I did not want to hurt my boy's feelings because he's got...

like teenage children. And I wanted them to be more or less on their own before I left. I really dreaded the day I would have to do it, but we were talking about waiting a few years. So I kind of put telling them out of my mind. I thought I would wait until she got her divorce. Then I'd get mine. Yeah. And by the way, there's times though, at this point, she's gaining a bunch of weight.

Yeah. And so is Bill. Bill is only 5'7". He blows up to 230. Jesus. Which is big. And Betty ended up gaining a shitload of weight, too. So much she wanted to gain or she wanted to lose 60 pounds. She's always very thin.

And Roy said he didn't care. And she said, if you love me like this, this isn't Betty. This is a depressed woman living in a shell. I've never been this heavy. I'm going to show you what I really look like. I'm going to lose the weight. And she does. She gets down to 115 pounds again. Shit. Yeah. And now Bill, they describe him as...

he's wearing the same thing. They said he tries to cover his weight in the one piece coveralls he wears every day. The coveralls and men's sandals worn with socks were Bill's trademark and seldom would anyone see him wearing anything else. His hairline was rapidly receding on top, but he still had ample hair on the sides. This is directly from the book. This is not a shot at you at all. Quote, as, as with a lot of men that start losing their hair, he'd grown a full beard. Yeah.

Yeah, we do that. The dark brown beard also helped disguise the acne scars left when he was a teenager. Oh, no. Now in his upper 40s, the gray color of aging was beginning to appear in his hair. He ends up getting a kidney transplant. By the way, Betty volunteers to give him a kidney. Get the fuck out of here.

She doesn't get any nicer. She's like, I'll give you a kidney. Why not? But he ends up getting a donor who is a 19-year-old person who died. So he gets their kidney. And he doesn't even have to pay for it because he had applied for indigent county aid and they paid for all of it. So Betty's writing notes to Roy, signing them B-L-L, which is Betty Lou Levitt. Oh.

Yeah, because they're ready to get married as soon as they, you know, whatever. Bill bought Betty a brand new 1988 Subaru station wagon.

And Betty said it's the first thing she's ever had that's new and hers, so she likes it. Bill almost killed the pizza guy one night. Really? Yeah. He said,

Ran downstairs, flipped the light on, and told the dog to get him. There was nobody there. I couldn't see anybody. But what I found was a pizza deal on the doorknob. A fucking coupon! Two for fucking $11 medium pies, and he's freaking out. This guy left a fucking BOGO for me. This is ridiculous. He said, you know, like coupons. Well, I was furious because I went down there to protect my property and all. Was he furious he didn't get a chance to? I didn't even get a chance to kill anybody. It's just... I did order pizza, though.

He said, well, you would have gone to prison, I think. I would hope so. Yeah, I would hope so. He said, so I called the pizza place. I asked for the manager and told him what happened. I says, I says, I says, you people are nuts. You don't know how goddamn close you came to getting killed. The manager said that Bill threatened to, quote, fucking blow me away.

If his employee ever came back, he'd go down to the pizza place and shoot the manager. Wow. So that's what he does. He talks mad shit to everybody. That's like his, his whole thing here. Um,

Always. Like somebody said that their ex-wife was a lot of money and costing them a lot in alimony. And he told them, well, that would never happen to me. I'd hire a hitman for $1,500 and have her knocked off. $1,500? His friend said, don't say stuff like that. I don't even want to hear that stuff. $1,500 is not enough, by the way, as we know. That's cop prices. You're going to jail, bud. That's jail prices. So she went and visited her family, her sister, Betty does. And when she comes home, there's a lot of trouble.

Okay. Bill said, I approached her. We had relations the night before relations. And I snuggled up to her and said, how about a little, that's how he asked for sex. How about a little, a little, she withdrew. And I asked her what's wrong. And she said she wanted a divorce or that she thought she wanted a divorce. Um, we worked out that, or we worked that day and went out to dinner. And I asked her if we could talk, we talked a little about how we would handle it. And I said that I wouldn't quit trying. Um,

So that's what he said. She ends up, by the way, finding a love note from Roy on the floor in the bedroom. And she knows she...

File shit away very carefully. Oh, he found it all. He's like, he found it. Plus, this whole time, he's going through her wallet to find out how much money she has. He has like a ledger of yesterday she had $42 and today she has $38, but I didn't see a receipt for anything and she only bought. It's insane. It's not a relationship, man. Jesus. It's fucking crazy. It's goddamn crazy. One night, Bill caught Betty with a couple of boxes.

And he said, I noticed that things were missing. When she came home from work, she brought two empty boxes. She went directly downstairs. She filled the boxes.

So she starts to store stuff for leaving. She gets a safe deposit box where she's putting cash in there. And if she gets like a couple of loose diamonds from the pawn shop, she'll throw them in there. Anything worth money, coins, things like that, rare coins. Meanwhile, she's hanging out with Roy. Like she'll tell Bill, I'm going up to Idaho Falls to go camping with Rita. And Rita would be camping with her boyfriend somewhere away from them, and she'd be in the tent with Roy.

Got it. That's how it goes. So it's interesting. Bill said he was trying to win her back and treating her like a queen. It's too late. She's riding the Cuisinart, man. Yeah, she likes what happened to her insides. So Betty's doing all this. So July 1989, Betty heads to Idaho Falls to stay with Rita. And that's when July 24th, 1989, 7 a.m., Roy shows up.

All of this happens. Okay. And so she notices the car. He walks inside. He sees them. Calls 119. All that shit from the beginning. We know what we're talking about here. Satan loves you. Okay. Cops arrive.

Sheriff's deputy and a sergeant get there, and Roy comes rushing out of the house, flagging them down. They said he was extremely excited using rapid stuttering speech. I can't believe what he found. Took him into the house via the patio door, showed them the women, what happened to them. Mm-hmm.

They said they called the deputy, picked up the phone to tell the dispatcher, by the way, picking up a phone at a crime scene. Idiot. Perfect. Nice job. Fucking ready is the guy from the Nicole Simpson crime scene who picked up the fucking phone and called the station. Listen, we don't have radios around here. We've got to use the phones. It's unbelievable. So go to a neighbor's house. It's not a crime scene. You fucking morons.

So he picked up the phone to tell the dispatcher that we're here and advised the dispatcher said another ambulance is on the way. But the cop said that won't work. Ambulance is too late. And the dispatcher said, yeah, it didn't sound like it. Never mind. So there was that. They find a series of strange prints embedded in the carpet.

So therefore they go around these prints. Two officers secure the scene. Roy's pacing outside, going back and forth. They noticed a similar footprint in the gravel near the parking pad in the rear of Betty's car. Roy pointed it out. So one of the officers found a box in the garage and placed it over the print to protect it from people that are going to be coming, crime scene people and all that. So Levitt said that he'd see, he said, I feel like I've seen that type of shoe print before.

So the cop first notices the absence of any type of struggle or attempt to flee by the ladies. Neither woman had been given an opportunity to fight. The detective instantly felt that these were executions, very cold-blooded and very premeditated. He said whoever they were looking for had not killed in a moment of spontaneous anger, nor had they come to torture, abuse, or rob. It was a quiet, clean kill, both of them. Wow.

They said Roy shouted to the dispatcher that there was blood all over when he was on the call. But other than the likelihood of the words on the center Island, which he hadn't even talked about yet, the only, there's hardly any blood. It's kind of behind them in the bed. They're not in pools of blood. There's no like brain on the walls. None of that shit. Uh, they feel like she's, they've both been shot with a nine millimeter. They think it's right away. They say Rita's King size bed was located in the left center of her room against the North wall facing toward the door. The,

A lot of mirrors on the west wall. Investigators determined only one shot had been fired. The bullet entered above Rita's left ear, passed through her head, exiting in the right side above the ear. She was sleeping. Whole brain gone. Smashed into the mirrored wall, bounced off the mirrors, and was found under the bed.

Oh, found the bullet. Found the bullet. Several particles, which appeared to be bone fragments and flesh, were lodged in and surrounding the hole in the mirror from the bullet. The investigators could not find the expended shell casing in the death room, though. The wall heater located on the west wall was eventually totally dismantled and every inch of the room searched and the shell casing was never found. So it's either a revolver or he took it with him. Yep.

So they said Rita had been sitting up in bed when she was shot. Her legs crossed, her arms crossed at the wrist, resting on her lap. She was wearing a nylon short-sleeved nightgown. The bed covers were pulled up over her lap, as were some papers she'd been working on in prep for her business meeting the next day in Vegas that she had to go to. The blankets on the side of the bed nearest the mirror wall were pulled back as though someone had thrown the covers back and stepped out of bed.

You know, you'd pull them back. Yeah. When you take them off yourself. Rita's head was slammed back against the headboard, tilted slightly to her right, causing her throat to protrude grotesquely forward. The red bandana that Levitt thought he saw was actually blood that had settled around her mouth. All other blood had drained down the back of the headboard. There was no spattering of blood on the wall behind her head, nor was there blood all over the bed, indicating that she hadn't lived long enough to move and scatter the blood. She died quick.

Right, right, right. Right.

So they said the killer had the time and the patience to place the shot fairly close to her ear and at a rather straight angle. It wasn't a quick thing. It was measured. The room had not been disturbed. Nothing's been stolen. Dresser drawers are closed, ungone through. Okay. Wow. Betty was lying on her stomach, her head on the pillow, and her head turned to the right. Her right arm was extended upward across the pillow, her left arm straight down at her side. Wow.

She was nude from the waist up and wearing just underwear, which we'll find out that's how she sleeps always. Just underwear, which is pretty fucking awesome. That's hot shit. Okay. That's excellent. So the covers were tossed over her from the shoulders to just above the knees, leaving her head and legs uncovered.

The investigators feel the covers had been placed over her after she was shot. Really? Her feet were in a position unusual for someone sleeping on their stomach. Normally, if you're on your stomach, your legs would have been bent slightly in the direction of the head, one slightly ahead of the other, like you do. Seldom does one sleep on their stomach with their legs straight out.

But if they did, the feet would also be straight out and flat, somewhat separated. Her legs were straight, her heels were together, and her toes were pointed straight down. Yeah, that doesn't happen. It's like someone doing a ballet move. It's not natural.

So that's weird. So this indicated a great degree of tension. They weren't so certain she had been asleep when she died. Rita was more likely to have been shot first. Betty may have been awakened by the sound of the shot, forced to lie back down and then shot. Someone told her lie down like that and then shot. So the gun appeared to have been a fired from just inches from her head. Contact wound. Practically the bullet entered the back of her head and exited into her pillow.

There's a large concentration of blood under and around her head that trailed down the left side of her body. A portion of the blood alongside her body had been smeared outwardly as though something had been dragged or scraped through it. One shot fired, no shell casing. So there's that. Her suitcase, which was packed for a one-night stay with her friend, was lying open on the floor in front of the closet. Like in a hotel.

So they go through everything. Basically, they can't find shit for evidence in this house. Nothing. Yeah. No. The only fingerprints they found belong to Roy and the two women. Yeah. That's it. So they don't find shit. They find more footprints. We talk about these weird footprint patterns, that sort of deal. But the main thing they find is in the kitchen, the weird shit there. Right. The prints not complete. They're not great.

So the third series of prints was discovered on the throw rug in the hall bathroom. The toilet seat was in the up position as a man would normally leave it, indicating to the investigators the killer was male and he took a leak. Right. Also, they found a cigarette, an ashtray with nine cigarette butts in it, and neither of the women smoke. In the house? In the house. So each on the countertop, basically the island...

Each saucer, they had these saucers, each saucer contained red wax and a small base metal of burned-down candles.

Ew. What?

Wow. Stripped it into a bowl. What the fuck? And then doing that. Besides the writing, a connotation of six saucers with red candles in three rows was spelled out 666 also. So there's that. They said this is not satanic. This is the only thing satanic about the murders are this written here. This is bullshit. Yeah.

Yeah.

Then we would have believed it. He literally said if they used both and put a star on their foreheads, then we would have said satanic. Then we're in for sure. Then it's in. Or he would have put blood all over the place. Dismemberment or mutilation would have been another clue to Satanism, not just a hitman thing here. The mafia doesn't kill you over Satan. You know what I'm saying? Also, two partially filled liquor bottles, bottles of liquor and a glass saucer containing nine cigarette butts on the kitchen table.

And Roy said neither woman smoked. So a search of the basement yielded several of Rita's hunting rifles and an unlocked cabinet. All of her guns are there. None of them have been fired recently, so her gun wasn't used.

They interview Roy at the police station because they're like, oh, the guy that she's having an affair with that called up and acted weird. And found the bodies. And found the bodies, then acted super fucking weird. They said they'll get back to him later, though, because they just asked basically, how do you know these people? And have you had sexual relations with these women? And he said, no, not good. A married guy. That's what we do, I guess. No, no. I don't know anything about that. Yeah. Yeah.

When they go to Bill, they say, look, he always carries a gun and he's jumpy. So be cautious when you go to him. He almost shot an advertiser. He almost shot a pizza boy. Yeah. The cop said, we came in and told Bill we needed to talk to him. A couple of customers were about to leave and Bill went immediately to the door and locked them out and locked the front door and let them out and locked the front door. They talked in the back and Bill...

They said, sit down. He sat down. He was told Betty was dead. She and her friend had been murdered in Idaho Falls. And they said immediately he started wailing, a high-pitched wail. Oh, oh, no, no, oh, no, not Betty, not Betty. And the cops are like, that's wrong. That's a weird behavior. They said reactions to a notification vary so much, but the quickness of the reaction is suspicious. It takes people a few seconds or even minutes to register what the fuck you just said. And a lot of times they go...

Betty? What? No, no, no. Not Betty. My wife? No. No, no, no. But she's... No. And they do that kind of thing. Or they're like, wait a second. I don't understand. Where is she? Oh. She's supposed to be in Vegas. It takes a minute. Or they just deny it, deny it. They have to go, no, no, it's true. Then they get sad. So it's very weird for that to happen.

So then they said a relative of a homicide victim usually wants to know and needs to know, you know, what happened. Were they shot, stabbed, strangled? What the fuck happened? Bill didn't ask any of that shit. He didn't ask how? Shit. Instead, he said, oh, God, the only thing I've ever been proud of is my marriage and children. Why do these things keep happening to me? What's that old saying? If it wasn't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all. He said that? He said that to the cops.

Let me tell you about my worm farm. He's unbelievable. Why do bad things, why do these things keep happening to me? They're like, okay. He said, we're just so sad when we got, we were going to eventually sell this place and we were going to sit back and clip coupons and enjoy the time we had left. What? And then he said, I hope they catch them bastards. Oh, plural. Oh yeah. Yeah. He comes down to the station. Then they bring him down another time and.

Again, he's just said, I was home Sunday night, fell asleep by 10.45 or 11. He goes, woke up at 8.30 in the morning, drove to work. He said, I had to do some blood tests, and I drove to work. He said, I can't think of anyone who would want to kill either of these people. Well, Betty especially, but Rita did have a boyfriend who was married, and he thought Betty had mentioned that they'd been having some problems. So look at Rita's boyfriend.

Oh, Rita's got a boyfriend too. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely. Bill was cooperative and friendly and everything else. Took them to the pawn shop, let them take ammunition from the case, fingerprints, hair samples, whatever you need. So they talked to Roy again and they're like, Roy, what's up with that? And he said, I was just a listening post and I helped her with her problems. She told me how she was lonely and wanted to be held and that's when I fell in love with her.

And they, by the way, he said that I thought you met intimately. This is, they said, um, the last year or so I got to know her real close. And he said, by real close, you mean intimately? And he said, I don't know what you mean by intimately, but I would have to say, and the cop said, did you have sexual relations with her? Yeah. And he says, yes, I loved her very much. It wasn't intimate. I, it was pig sex. I was, I fucked her internal organs out of her.

They call me the fruit ninja. Oh, man, you know it. So he says he was going to get a divorce, actually. He was planning on it, and he said that he was going to do it, and Betty was going to get a divorce, and they had a plan, and he loves her. And he said the night before he was surprised to see Betty over there because she was supposed to come the next day, and we planned to go to lunch, but she was there Sunday night. He said, I sat on a kitchen chair, and Betty sat on my lap.

And then I had to go home, though, because I had to clean out some camper shit. They said, did you ever at any time suspect in your mind that Bill might suspect you of fucking his wife? And he said, no, never crossed my mind. They said, did you ever stop to think what would happen, what the consequences would be, how Bill would react if he should find out? And he said, the only thing I thought about was if it came to that situation, I'd lose an account. No, is everybody has no context of anything? No.

I figured he'd probably stop doing business with me. And he said, that's all? You'd lose an account? And he said, and lose, you know, a friend and everything. And they said, what do you think Bill would do now if he found out? And he said, I really don't know. I don't know. Shit, that's rough. No idea what this guy's capable of. Fascinating. Nothing. So they have no physical evidence, basically, except a Salem White cigarette package and an empty Mountain Dew can with the pull tab missing.

That's it. So he broke that off like some people do. Now, Rita's boyfriend is C.J. Walker, and he has threatened to kill Rita in the past. Oh, he's found. Yeah, he's located in Seaside, Oregon, and the sergeant said that he personally knew him, the Seaside police, and said that he'd be very surprised if Walker killed someone. He thought he could possibly kill on the spur of the moment, but he doubted he could form the intent to kill and follow through with it. Not a good planner. Yeah.

Yeah, he said he's a loud mouth and very opinionated and he drink too much all the time and came across like a tough guy, like to wear camouflage and combat boots and was always reading Soldier of Fortune magazine. Again, that pops up to where it's so crazy. Yeah.

He also, you know, he had told people he did mercenary work and all this shit. Yeah, real blowhard. But CJ passed a polygraph and had an alibi, so eliminated. And has done nothing in his life. Nothing. No, he never did any of that. Roy also passes a polygraph. Oh. Levitt passes a polygraph. Yep. There's Roy. There's LaDana, who is Roy's wife, who they also...

They polygraph her. She gets to know about this now. She passes. And also another one of Rita's men that she had been seeing on and off was Howard Wilson, and he also passes. Look at her. Her children have been eliminated because they were in Utah and had nothing to gain from their mother's death. Her insurance would barely cover her funeral. She didn't really have anything. So they said that Betty was the target.

And Roy has the worst alibi. Yeah, that's not good for Roy. And that's when they hear about Stephen Mackley, a security guard for the Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center in Idaho Falls, where he has to go every once in a while. This guy had learned about the double homicide on that Monday, and he said, hold on a second. I saw some shit this morning.

Okay. He said,

He said, what the hell is that? So he watched. The light came in the parking lot. He could see it was a bicycle. So he went around the building to see the rider pull up to a 1971. It's a Scout carry all. Yep. Or Scout International carry. International Scout. Yeah. International. It looks like it's a first SUV. Yeah. Yeah. That's all it is. Yeah. And he saw guys pull up to it on a bike, put the bike in the back and get in the front seat.

So but then it didn't leave right away. So he said he saw the guy lay down like with his legs extended out the driver's door.

So he said, maybe this guy's trying to hotwire and steal a car, stealing a scout. So he goes up and approaches him and the person sat up and closed the door. He said, roll the window down. And he did. The man slumped down in the seat and peered out over his glasses. He said he could see the man was sweating profusely and out of breath so much so that it prompted this guy to ask her if he was all right.

And he said he's okay, he's just been riding his bike a long way. So they asked for his name and he gave one, but Mackley didn't write it down and he can't remember it. So when asked for identification, the guy showed him a medical alert bracelet on his right wrist, but the light was too dim for him to read it.

So this Mackley describes the man to be in his late. And he had a key, so he wasn't hot wiring the thing. So he said, all right, I guess whatever. Late 40s, early 50s, pock marks on his face like acne scars. He said he could remember him having very little hair, although the only source was his flashlight, which he didn't shine directly on the person's head. He thought the man was wearing a dark colored jumpsuit or coveralls.

The vehicle is described as an older international type van with a big box windows lowered to the ground, gray or olive green. It wouldn't start on the first try on the second it started, but was running very rough. The vehicle had Wyoming plates. Oh. And they said that's what made this guy call the cops because this car had Wyoming plates. And the news said that this woman that was killed was from Wyoming. Yeah. So he said, I just didn't know if what I saw would be any help.

But a cop saw the same person. Oh, yes. A cop, Greg Black, a patrolman, said at 3.05 a.m., five minutes later, he'd checked out some kids in an area not far from the hospital. From there, he drove south on Channing Way toward the hospital where he noticed a man on a bicycle riding in the same direction. So it was five minutes earlier. Yeah.

He said that Channing Way had several streetlights. He observed the man in dark colored clothes with salt and pepper beard, wire rimmed glasses, about 50 years old with a middle-aged spread. It said, what does that mean?

What does that mean? His ass is big. He didn't remember seeing a light on the bike as he had looked straight across at the rider and as he passed. The man was sitting more upright than a person would be hunched over the curled handlebars of a 10-speed, so he thought it was an older style bike with what he thought would be, yeah, a chrome front and a dark back. He didn't notice anything else about the bike. He said, though, the rider could have a backpack, but he wasn't positive. But this substantiated...

Mac Lee's jury. Yeah, it's a it was first they thought maybe he was just making it up. But now they're like, oh, no, a cop saw him, too. So that's very, very interesting. The travel all, by the way, they found out an olive green 1971 international travel all was parked on the side of the pawn shop when a patrolman got there.

Oh, he's got a scout. No plates on the vehicle. So the officer returned to the station and notified the Idaho authorities of the fine. He took a camera and went back, took several photographs, and recorded the vehicle identification number. There had been no mention to this guy of a bicycle. He didn't even know about it, but when he went looking through the vehicle around it and the picture got developed, they said a bicycle could be seen in the windows of the travel hall. Oh.

So, yeah, seen through the windows of the travel wall, leaned up against the wall of the pawn shop right there outside of it. So they're like, this isn't great. So, yeah, he was like, oh, shit. Roy Levitt said, I didn't suspect anybody because in our world, it's just not done, you know. So I really didn't suspect anybody. But before the first night was over, I had to think it could have been Bill. I told the detectives those footprints look familiar. I told them, you know, I don't know.

I'd seen that up in Jackson. I said, it looks like Bill Gray. We went ice fishing and Bill was wearing these shoes and he kept slipping. And I said something like those shoes sure are slippery. And he lifted up his foot and showed me the knobby soul and said, yeah, when I bought them because of this knobby tread, I thought they'd be good in snow and ice, but they're not worth a damn. Exact. Still has them. Still has them. So they're investigating Bill. Obviously, um, they talked to him again. They read him his rights, you know, obviously. And, um,

He said, I know Rita, but I don't know Rita. If you know what I'm saying, I think Rita gets around a little bit.

So it could be anybody. She's a whore? Is that what you're saying? She's a bit of a skank, so she could have pissed off anybody. This is a 78-page interview that we're definitely not going to go into. They said any type of mannerisms, anything like that from Rita we should know about. Betty's depressed and all that. And he said she was on a diet. She was a pretty big gal. She got up there pretty big. Jesus. Got up there pretty big. Jesus.

They said, did you notice that she was losing weight? And he said, there was no secret about it. Thought it was great because she's been heavy before. She's always been very trim. When we lived in California, she got very heavy. She went on a diet and got down skinnier than when we were married. She stayed that way for years, and we moved here over a period of time. She started putting on weight, and it just kept coming and coming.

He said, I know she got up to like between 240 and possibly 260. Jesus. The most she ever weighed was 175, by the way. Yeah, he's an idiot. He doesn't know what a woman weighs. He's like 260. You know, like a heavyweight wrestler kind of, you know what I mean? 260. About Brock Lesnar size, something like that. She got down to 105, man. Yeah. To lose 155 pounds would be crazy. Yeah.

So, yeah, he said that he, you know, had went home and they said, do you own a bicycle? And he said, I had a bicycle. I haven't ridden a bicycle since I screwed my knees up about four years ago with the snow machine. He said, so I, you know, I don't have a bike. And so he said he got home three thirty Sunday night. He didn't go anywhere, sat in the recliner. He said he rocked up the heating pad as high as it would go. And that's it.

So anybody want to kill Rita and Betty? I have absolutely no idea. Betty never hurt anybody in her life until I found out she was screwing around. And the cop said, that hurt, didn't it? That cut you. And he said, you don't have to ask that, do you? And the cop said, I know. When you first found out, Bill, how did you feel? Rage, hurt? And the cop said, I didn't believe it. I told you. You were full of shit. Because he's saying that they told him about the affair. He didn't know.

And the guy said, not from me, from Janice. And Bill said, when I heard it from you, I was pissed at you. He fucked up there. Acted like he never heard it from Janice. The cop said, but I'm asking, how do you feel when it was actually told to you by someone else? And he said, I was infuriated. Not sad, not hurt. Infuriated. They said, you were pissed, right? You were angry. And he said, yes. As a matter of fact, when I talked to you, I think I told you I was done crying, but I wasn't. I don't think I ever will be. I loved her so goddamn much.

Yep. He said, there is a reason for me to go on, though, and that's my children. If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you. I'd be with Betty. Okay. They said he couldn't think of anybody that would do this. Nobody would ever hurt my wife. They said, did you kill her? And he said, does that deserve an answer? Nope. Wrong answer. Wrong answer.

How does he not know that that's a bad answer? So there's an FBI guy there, and he said, I expect one. Yeah, I'd like one. And Gray said, no, I did not, which is again, guys who say says, so I says to him this, they don't say I did not in normal conversation. They said, would you be willing to take a polygraph? He said, I think it's horse shit, but yeah, I just got to clear it through my doctor. Okay. So that's what they say about all of that. Yeah.

And it's fucking amazing. Then they ask him about it. Do you have a medical alert bracelet? And he goes, oh, yeah, I do. It's right here. I do. There's like 12 of those in the country in the 80s. That's what I mean. Have you fallen and you can't get up? They said, what do you think about the person who killed her? And she said and Bill said, lowlife, scum sucking son of a bitch, I guess. He said, what do you think ought to happen to him? And Bill said, I think he should be hung.

And they said, an eye for an eye, and he said, you're damn right. That's what it says in the Bible. Okay. Because he's so religious, this guy. He's really concerned what God feels about him. He called the woman a cunt last week. To a bunch of people here. So December 1990 comes up. No one, nothing has happened. No one's found. It's been a year and a half. Wow. They don't arrest him because they don't have proof. They don't arrest anybody else. So-

His kids, his own kids, sue him in a civil suit for wrongful death of their mother. Wow. Early. They switched over and believed that he did it. First, Sarah Lynn was defending him, and then she said, fuck this shit. So they sue him. And in the civil suit, the prosecutor said he only has to prove Bill's guilt by a preponderance of the evidence. It's not a shadow of a doubt. It's like 5149.

So he said, I don't think based on the evidence that I've seen that Bill Gray can ever be and that he ever will be charged with a crime. That's what the that's what the attorney said. So the children seek a total of two hundred seventy seven thousand five hundred sixteen dollars from four insurance policies issued between fifty nine and eighty seven dollars.

1959, 1987. It works. They get a preliminary injunction against it. Then in March 1992, they settle out of court. He settles. Wow.

That means he said, I killed her, if you settle. Yeah, right. There's no... Then they get the piece of evidence they needed here. What is it? They never found the travel all again. When they went back to the pawn shop, it was gone. Really? Yes. So they found out about Jack Hurley. Remember Jack Hurley? Yeah. His buddy, the rancher there? Well, they found out that he goes to his ranch about 35 miles away in Bondurant there. Mm-hmm.

And they say, if he's trying to stash something, that's where we'd look. So they took a light plane out there to the ranch and found it among the fucking farm equipment backed into shit. He buried it out there. Checked the VIN. Same one they'd taken the night before. The travel all was registered to a Ron Mitchell, which was just a made up name. What?

Yes, that's fucking crazy. And basically, Ron Mitchell's address on the registration was P.O. Box 3706 and the post office box was registered to Jackson Hole Security Patrol care of William L. Gray, his father, his father.

How about that? Where'd he go? Oh.

Well, where did he go? And he said, well, if I speak with him, I don't know where he is, but if I talk to him, I'll tell him he should probably turn himself in. But he said he's on vacation. And they said, the lawyer said, Gray has lived here for two years and eight months as a prime suspect. He didn't go anywhere. He's not a runner. He left the state many times and came back. Then when he finally gets exhausted and has to leave, they indict him. Right. You know how it goes.

So he's arrested in New Mexico. Where? He's fucking in New Mexico for some reason. Without incident and booked into the Bernalillo County, New Mexico detention center. Who the fuck vacations in New Mexico? Yep. A dozen officers descended upon him with weapons drawn as he sat in a motor home outside a Presbyterian hospital in Albuquerque. Jesus Christ.

And they said we had information that he would shoot it out if approached, so we observed him and then got right up to the vehicle, but he didn't resist.

So they don't keep him in jail, though. They put him in a private sanitized cell because of his medical thing. Because he's sick, yeah. Then they realize they can't keep a jail sanitary, so they literally send him home on house arrest to a private home in Idaho Falls, somebody he knows, with, of course, a bracelet, an anklet there. In 1993, they take him to trial. The prosecutors want the death penalty. Holy cow.

His defense is there's no fingerprints linking me, no other physical evidence. You have this carry-all, you saw a guy on a bike and all that kind of shit. His doctor opined that because of his poor medical condition, he couldn't have rode the bike. The bike ride was 3.6 miles in each direction.

Seven miles. 7.2 mile round trip. And Gray also explained that he bought the travel all for someone as part of his pawn shop business, although that person was never found. He also says someone else was the real killer. Most likely J.W. Dyer, who is Rita's previous boyfriend or Houston Riley, her current boyfriend or C.J. Walker passed the test. So not him.

The defense claims also that Betty and Rita were lesbian lovers. And that probably pissed off one of Rita's boyfriends, even though they were in separate beds. They were lesbian. Rita's incorrigible. She'll fuck anybody. Can't you do? She just humps like fence posts. You can't give a fuck, man. They said, while Satanists might practice astrology, that's the other thing. The defense introduces evidence that Rita was connected to satanic activities, he said.

Most notably an interest in astrology and tarot cards. Yeah, she's a crystal girl. Yeah, I'm a Leo, which means I'm into Satan.

They said the prosecution said, well, Satanists might practice astrology and other forms of divination. So do people who are not Satanists. Hence, the fact that the pope of the satanic church practices divination does not mean does not make it any more probable that a person who practices that is a Satanist. Then does the fact that John Paul II, Pope John Paul II skis doesn't make it any more probable that a skier is Catholic. Right.

So that's what they try to introduce here. And they said that was irrelevant. The judge also ruled conversations between Roundy and her married boyfriend, Houston Riley, which which she would tape Rita. She would tape these conversations.

They said it's unusual to tape such conversations because they would expose him to disgrace if his wife ever found out. But they could be circumstantial evidence that Rita was blackmailing the man and that might make him angry enough to kill her. And the evidence is not allowed into court.

Yeah. Oh, it is ruled admissible. I'm sorry. It is admissible. Wow. Statements not allowed into trial are Betty stated that Bill was looking over their telephone bills and checking the outgoing telephone numbers. Another one is Betty said that she was decided to divorce him because she had talked to his doctor and his doctor was upset because Bill was abusing a good kidney that he had received a transplant from. Yeah.

Oh, man. And another is getting his ass off now. Yep. And also statements by Rita that she was fearful of her ex-boyfriend, that he was a mercenary and that he followed her around and repeatedly telephoned her and threatened to kill her. Those are hearsay, not admissible.

So, okay. Also, a photo lineup. They say they only used five pictures instead of six pictures in photo lineups. Okay. Of Bill? Yeah, of Bill when the officer and the security guard picked him out.

So that's a thing. Also, the cops, the cop testifies the 18 saucers containing melted candles yielded three fingerprints, all belonging to Rita. The candles didn't match those seized in a search of Bill's house. So you got them somewhere. The sergeant who's trained in ritualistic crimes testified that there were elements lacking to make him believe the killings were part of a satanic ritual.

And they said none of, but they also said none of the prints belong to Gray. The cop said it was his opinion that someone wore gloves, probably surgical gloves, to not do any of this. And by the way, he keeps boxes of surgical gloves at his house. Yeah, of course, because he was doing that clean thing. But anybody could get those. You get those at the drugstore. But still, that's... Fucking Amazon. Yeah. So there's that. They said DNA couldn't be done on the hairs because they didn't have follicles, and it's 1993. Right.

They said it was possible but improbable that Betty or Reedy transferred those hairs. They say they're similar to Bill's. And they said, well, she came from the fucking house. She could have had his hairs on her, which is fair. That's a fair argument. Bill testifies for hours. It's like eight hours of testimony he testifies for. Oh, boy. We come to a verdict. It's a three-week trial. The jury has 20 hours of deliberation. That's pretty fast. Yeah.

It's that's that's a lot. It's not actually that slow or that fast. That's 20 hours. Yeah, that's a couple. That's a couple of days because they're not doing that all straight. Yeah, that's like three days of deliberations. And they find him guilty of murder and burglary based solely on the travel trailer of the travel all and the cops seeing him with the travel all and the bison. That's it. So there's no other evidence.

No other. What do you mean took? Oh, because he broke in. Oh, OK. Oh, got it. Yeah. It took their souls, I guess. I don't know. So during sentencing, they say Betty's murder was probably motivated by jealousy from a husband of her affair with a man. And they said that he had no personal reason to take Rita's life. He said Rita's mistake was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is the judge. It was a conscious, conscious killing of a human being.

called him a cold-blooded, pitiless slayer, and said your so-called good character do not outweigh your crimes. You, sir, may fuck off. Not the death penalty, but two life sentences without the chance of parole. Wow. Fucked.

In 1997, he appeals, and they're talking about it's all about the photos, the photo lineups, and the different statements that were allowed or weren't allowed. The photos, here's a quote from the appeal. Similarly, the difference in size and color composition of the photographs in and of themselves do not render an array unnecessarily suggestive. Mackley reported seeing a man who looked over his glasses and was red in the face, and only Gray's photo showed a ruddy complexion and reading glasses.

So they're saying that it's not fair. All the guys should have glasses. One guy had glasses on? Yeah. Also, failure to strike a juror for cause because one juror wrote in her questionnaire that she had formed an opinion regarding his guilt as a result of the information she received from the media. And they went, no problem. Get on the jury, which is wrong. That shouldn't be like that. But that's 1997. Court of Appeals upholds the murder. Okay. The whole thing. Okay. Okay.

February 2002, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. This is right before the Supreme Court here. They overturn his conviction here. By the way, in the newspaper, it says the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Gray's conviction for the 1989 killing of his wife, Betty, and her alleged lesbian lover, Rita Roundy. That's what it turned into. They weren't even fucking close to lesbian lovers. And 10 years later, that's just...

Alleged lesbian lover is how they are described. Just because somebody said it. Her whole life is broken down to being the alleged lesbian lover of this other lady. That's so fucked up. That's fucking sad. So they ruled that his rights were not violated when he could not present hearsay evidence because he wanted to present the evidence from Rita that she was scared of her boyfriend.

Idaho law allows the introduction of hearsay evidence before jurors. Generally, hearsay evidence is gossip or rumor. In Gray's case, the appellate court found that the trial judge allowed important hearsay for the prosecution but didn't do so for the defense. But later that year, December 2002, the United States Supreme Court strikes down the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and is told to fuck yourself right back off again. Yeah.

There you go. Bill is sent back to prison in November 16, 2010. Bill dies in prison at 77.

Well, son of a bitch. There's that. 2017, On the Case with Paula Zahn did a little documentary on this thing. Betty Lou is buried in Idaho Falls. I'm sorry, she was cremated. She's died in Idaho. She's cremated. Location of ashes unknown. Her family probably has it. And then Rita was buried in the Fairview, Utah. In Fairview, Utah. The Fairview Upper Cemetery, which is, she lived there for a while. I don't know if her kids lived there. No probo or whatever.

Or what? So there you go. That's Bill Gray. You know he did it, but the court case was weak. That's a terrible... How the fuck do they blow that? It's wild. I think he knew that Betty knew. And I think that was her crime. I think she knew for sure. And he was very well aware of that. And she was going to die...

Whether she was there or not. You know what I mean? He was going to get her too. That's right. He was there to get everybody, I think. He thought she was up there fucking her boyfriend. Yep. I'm going to go kill everybody. We'll see how that goes. I'm going to get all three of them. So anyway, there you go, everyone. That's Small Town Murder for this week. Crazy fucking story.

If you like that story or at least think it's interesting, it's a terrible story. But if you like it or like the way we told it, tell the world about it. Get on whatever app you're listening on and give a review. Also, shut up and give me murder.com. September 20th, Minneapolis State Theater. Get your asses in there. Make it our biggest show ever. Let's sell it out.

Can't fucking wait. And Minnesota is such a great crowd, too. It's going to be so much fucking fun. And then again, the Paps the next night. We are spoiled that weekend. Truly. At the Paps in Milwaukee that night. Couple tickets left. Also, OKC, Austin, Boston, Kansas City, Tarrytown, New York. Three tickets left there. Get your tickets now because they're going to go fast, especially coming up close to the date. So do that. Also, Patreon.com slash Crime in Sports is where you get all the bonus material. There you go.

This week is no different. This week we're going to talk about here for crime and sports. We're going to talk about you have access to this, by the way. Anybody $5 a month or above, you get every fucking thing we put out. We're going to talk about the two most penalized hockey games in history, which is a really fun subject.

It's hilarious. We're going to talk about that. Just all fights. We'll watch the videos and react to them. It's going to be so much fun. Then for small town murder, this is like a midsummer light era here, but they're funny, funny as fuck. Then for small town murder, we're going to do something we're going to call internet salad where we are going to go and do what we do when we're just hanging out, which is looking shit up going, did you hear that? Holy shit. Fuck that guy. Then we'll talk shit about it and make each other laugh.

Make each other laugh hysterically. Surf with us, everyone. Do it up. We'll meet you at the shore. So get in there. Patreon.com slash crime and sports. And you get a whole back catalog and a shout out coming up in one second. Follow on social media at Small Town Murder on Instagram, at Murder Small on Twitter, at Small Town Pod on Facebook.

Jimmy, hit me with the names of the most wonderful fucking people in the world who are loving their content and making us very, very happy people. Hit me with them right now. This week's executive producers are Jeanette Pemeleon. I don't know how to say it, but I always see her name. Yeah, she's wonderful. She's going through it. Anonymous Finger also. I don't know who that is, but that's very funny. Thank you.

Other producers this week are Lindsay Selig, Bo Hellstrom, Peyton Meadows, Emily Stein, Gary Howard, Sarah Eagley, Rebecca Hargreaves, Janice Hill,

Did I say that already? I feel like I said that already. I didn't say that. Sounds familiar, but maybe not now. It was somebody else? I don't know.

Beth Raines, Jimmy Z, like the clothing. Remember that shit? Oh, God, 90s Target clothes. That was a good time. God damn, that fucking Woody with the suit. Stussy and Mossimo. Hell yeah. Taryn Lackey, Sarah Mountain, Bjorn Gwarek-Magzino, Christina B., Mariana B., Patrick Walter, Phil Barresa,

Brian Call, Crawl, it's Crawl. Yep. Joanna Posige, Posige, what? Pisag, alright. BTS, probably not them, but that's the letters. Jody with no last name. Susan with no last name. Eric Gels, Gels maybe? P. Christ? No.

Okay, be crisp. Stormy Knoll, Gene Schultz, Carter Brock, Andrea with no last name, Relly, Relly Renova, Hannah Warnock, Jason Boat, Bree Taylor, Amber Hansen, Inigwe, Inigwe, Inigwe is...

That's a fun one. Tammy Roberts, Joshua Fuller, Maria Strom, Annie Altevers, Kate Dobbs, Kathy Infernery. Infernery? Yeah. Rich with no last name. Rebecca with no last name. Joshua Goodall, Julie Kaiser.

Not the Kaiser. Cameron May. Neil Bennett. Sandy C. Ashley Hewitt. Brian Yeagey. Cinnamon Bun Bun. Heidi Fitzgerald. Jessica Hayden. Dan Evans. Allison Roberts. Kayla Massengale. Massengale. Not the Gil. You get it. Oh,

Being 96. She got called that a lot. She did. Carol Watkins, L and the letter S, L-S. Amanda Petrie, Megan Duby, Duby.

Mamie? Mamie Darwin. Mamie Darwin, maybe. Cindy Spies? Maybe Spies. TJ and his puppy, April Hennis. Hayden Matos. Neil. Nellay. Vander. Vander Myron. Elin. Elin Tomren. Hogset? Hogset. Hogset. I don't know. It's fucking probably Swedish. What was Elin Nordegren? Whatever that lady was. That's probably what they are.

Norway. Oh, was she Norwegian? Norwegian, Danish. Nordic from Norway. Somewhere around there. Yeah, very blonde and hot. Yeah, Swedish.

Thomas Coertz. Dustin would know last name. Gabriel Lopez. Leanne Hudson. Kathy Jackson. Tish Goppel. Michelle Craig. Troy Gaylord. Pootie Tang. Susan Clark. Madeline B. Julie McClain. We got Pootie Tang on board. What a movie. Once you get Pootie Tang on board, the rest is great. It's all downhill from there. Brent would know last name. Beth Beaver. Sandy Smith. Noah Benjamin. Wow Jim 9GRK. Aaron Smith.

Tony with no last name. Lindsay Myard. Liz with no last name. Leanne Miles. Caitlin S. Brandy Sellers. Great, great, Grant. Grant Tracy. Michelle Miller. Michelle's back. She's terrific. The lady from up in Flagstaff. She's great. I remember her. Yeah, she goes out there. Oniz. Oniz. Owner. Megan Wilson. Bonnie Cortez. Aaron with no last name. Lois with no last name. Susan Deutsch. Nope, that's Sean Deutsch. Sorry, Sean.

Go by Susan from now on. That's your new name, Sean. Jerry W. Exxon Jr., Elizabeth Penny McClinton, Todd Runberg, Adelaide at Edgett, Edgett, maybe? Edgett. Tropism, Tropism, Kyle Keel, Batteny, Batanian,

G13, Mickey A, Fiji with no last name, Brandy Kelly, Colton Adams, Zachary Beach, Jason with no last name, Michael H, Sarah Jamie, Jason with no last name, Jennifer O'Malley, Allie W, Eric Turner, Juniper and Eric, Jeremy Osborne, Ashley Buchholz, Amy Kunzeman.

Kunzelman. Kunzelman. Nicole C. Benjamin Osborne. Osborne. Bridget. Bridget Kaiser. Another Kaiser. That's not right. We're going to Kaiser talk today. I know I want a sandwich on a roll. Ah.

Joel Rice, Stuart Reed, Teresa Costello, Jamie with no last name, Aaron Aguiar, Kristen Thomas, Kyle with no last name, Tucky's mom, Missy with no last name, Azazito loves, what is this? Azazito that loves his machita? I don't know what the fuck that means.

Joshua Ocheltree. Sharon with no last name. Leva Upmace Gravina. I don't know what that is. That's probably a fucking code. Matthias Brathane. Just admitted to a crime.

Braven. Damian Ivory. Ava Cockerham. Cockerham. Cock your own ham. Tucker Krukenberg. What the fuck? Zachary Downs. Chris Peebles. Dana Duker Williams. Elle with no last name. Sarah T. Sharon Clark. Ashley Minton. Wada Jean. Secret Sauce. Wanda Jean.

All right. Ken Reynolds, Lily. I've spent enough time on that. Lily Malik. I'm trying to figure that out. Lily Malik. John H. And also, every person that donates on Patreon or PayPal. You guys are amazing. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Bye.

Thank you so much. We are just blown away by the support. Thank you so much for everybody that does that. Or even if you've ever thought about it, we appreciate the fuck out of you. So thanks for doing all that kind of stuff. You want to follow us on social media, shut up and give me murder.com. Same place you get those tickets, drop down menus to all the links for everything like that. Follow us. Get the ticket, get the tickets first though. Hang out with us.

Keep coming back. We'd rather you get tickets than follow us, honestly. Honestly. So, yeah, do that and keep coming and hanging out with us. And until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure. Bye.

She struck him with her motor vehicle. She had been under the influence and then she left him there.

In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask.

Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia. Or a corrupt police cover-up. If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover-up to prevent one of their own from going down. Everyone had an opinion.

And after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision. To end in a mistrial, it's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen. You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.