Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hey, everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show and tell you a little bit more about one of our favorite things ever, Audible. Oh, audible.com or that app. The app is great, and I'm on the app constantly. Listening to Audible helps your imagination soar.
No.
There's more to imagine when you listen. And I'll tell you something that has set both Jimmy and I's imagination soaring. And that is the Lewis and Clark journals. We're both really into these right now. And as an Audible member, you can choose one title a month to keep from the entire catalog, including the latest bestsellers, the newest releases. New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash smalltownmurder or text
smalltownmurder to 500-500. That's audible.com slash smalltownmurder or text smalltownmurder to 500-500. Now back to the show. Music
Hey, everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you a little bit about Angie. Oh, Angie.com. A-N-G-I.com. Absolutely. Angie. Good stuff. Angie's List is now Angie, the nation's largest home services marketplace, and they're here to help homeowners get all their jobs done well.
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And now back to the show.
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Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express. Yay! 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, folks, so much for joining us today on another absolutely insane, bonkers edition of Small Town Murder Express. Again, this is 20 pounds of murder in a two-pound bag because it's just crazy, this story. It unfolds and it's an onion wrapped in a riddle. Or a gummy.
Put all inside of an enigma. It's wild stuff, so we'll get into all of that. Wrapped up into a little form of a swan. Oh, it's beautiful. Yeah, like you just got a leftover fancy dinner, like a tinfoil swan. Yeah, pull its tail. It'll dip its head and flop its wings. And lobster will come out, so...
That said, definitely head over to ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com. Tickets for live shows, especially September 20th, State Theater, Minneapolis. You can be our biggest show ever if you sell this bad boy out. Let's do it. Let's get those tickets right now. It's selling very well. So thank you guys for doing that. The Pabst is just – they only have single tickets left the next time. It's crazy. It's amazing. Thank you. Yeah, last time – you sold it out way quicker this time. You guys are amazing. Thank you for always –
hanging with us and always, always being there for us. Shut up and give me murder.com. Also listen to crime and sports. If you don't listen to that and listen to your stupid opinions, our other two shows, which are hilarious stuff. Check those out. And also obviously the regular small town murder show on Wednesdays. Listen to a quick show note.
Definitely, if you haven't done it, go into, if you listen on Apple Podcasts, upper right-hand corner on our little show page. You got to kick those little buttons. Dot, dot, dot. Automatic downloads. There you go. Every time they update it, they stop. They kick that off. Isn't that nice? Isn't that annoying? Isn't that nice of them? So turn it back on if you want the show to automatically download. So it's there. Patreon.com.
slash crimeinsports is where you get all the bonus material. Anybody $5 a month or above, you get everything. Hundreds of back bonus episodes. New ones every other week. One crime and sports. One small town murder. What do they get out of that? Eaps. Everything. All of it. You get both. You get it all this week, which you're going to get. For crime and sports, it's just going to be fun. Making fun of failure. We're going to talk about the most inept teams of all time. Terrific. Some of the biggest losers who have ever existed, and it's going to be a lot of fun. Police championship.
We're talking like bad seasons. Oh, yeah. You know, no wins, that sort of thing. Then for Small Town Murder, we're going to talk – let's get into the whole Lori Vallow, Chad Daybell mess. We're going to talk about what the crazy beliefs they were into. Yeah.
We're going to make fun of the brother for his comedy because we've done comedy in the same venues as him in Phoenix and all that. We got a lot of good inside stuff for that. We'll talk about it all there. That's patreon.com slash crime in sports. And you get a shout out at the end of the regular show. That said, I think it's time, everybody. Here we go. We got to dive right in because we got a lot of show here. So let's get into it. I think it's time. We all take a deep breath. Let's all do this. Arms to the sky. Yeah. Let's all shout.
Shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody. All right. Let's go on a trip, shall we? We shall. Let's do it. We're going to Iowa. Let's go. Let's go. That's one of those you say, we're going to Iowa, and people go, okay. Let's go.
All right, I guess. Is it shucking season? What are we doing down there? Is there only one show that's there? Is that why we're going? Is that why we're doing it? It's Agency Iowa we're going to. Agency. Agency spelled like, you know, an agency, like a talent agency. I, of course, had to look that up to make sure there wasn't some weird, it wasn't like a Genchi or some shit, some weird...
Local pronunciation, but it's agency. It's in southeastern Iowa. It's about an hour and 40 minutes to Des Moines and about two hours and 15 minutes to Davenport, which was our last Iowa episode, episode 465. Chainsaws, torsos, and murder tacos, which was – I give myself credit for that name. That's a good name for a show. Population of this town currently 473. 473.
Very small town. Yes. Very small town. My word. Some weird field of dream shit going on here. So very small. How do you? Median household income here is less than the national average. It's usually almost $70,000 here. It's $52,604. Well, those 437 people are doing great. Well, the median home price is $141,100. So-
There's no market. You can afford that. No, there's nobody there. It's 473 people, and you probably got your house from your parents. You know what I mean? Wow. It's one of those. They do have a motto here.
And we've heard, you know, there's Minnesota nice, they say. Which, by the way, is 100% factual. Those people are... Certainly, yeah. Goddamn nice. And they mean it. That's the thing that's messed up. Kind people. They absolutely mean it. It's not phony at all. There's also Iowa nice because Minnesota and Iowa are in a constant battle for some reason. Really? Oh, God. They're...
The two states that hate each other the most are Minnesota and Iowa. It's the weirdest. The nicest people in the world never have a bad word about anybody. You say, what about those people from Minnesota? Those cocksucking, non-corn-having asshole bastards. They go crazy. You're like, what's happened? The battle of bake you a pie. It's so weird. Yeah, I'm nicer. No, I am. No, fuck you. I'm nicer. And then they fight each other over who's nicer. Wow. Their motto here is agency nice.
So they're breaking it down into the town. That's what they say. And right on their website, they have a design with a little smiley face thing and everything. Oh, yeah. That'll be nice. History of this town. It's called Agency because an Indian agency was established here in 1838.
What is that? Is that not good? Yeah, they would put an Indian agency around, and that would be government people to basically keep an eye on the Indians at the time. That's what they would do. Yeah, I don't like that. And then they moved them all, all the local tribes to Kansas eventually. Wow. And they just called it agency. And this town was founded on the site where the agency was.
Real nice, guys. Yeah. In 1843. That's how it started. Agency nice. Get the fuck out. That's how it started.
Agency is the resting place for Chief Wapello, which is the name of the county here, I believe. I think it's Wapello County. And he was second in command of the Sac and Fox tribe. And Chief Wapello is buried next to his good friend, General Joseph M. Street and his family. They got buried together, which is very strange. In 2001, an F2 tornado ripped through agency. Oh.
screwed everything up, knocked all sorts of shit down, and killed two people. Just the two? Just the two, yeah. Wow. Definitely there's some tornadoes that come through here. Reviews of this town. That's just a nice breezy day in Arkansas. Oh, yeah. In Oklahoma, they're like, shit. Half two, shit. Put your belt around a pipe and ride it out. What's wrong with you people? We'll fly a kite and that shit. That's nothing. It's perfect for kite flying. We play football in that. What are you kidding me?
So reviews, this is – there's no reviews for agency but the town right next door that's the bigger town where like the school is where all the people from agency went to school and stuff. That's Ottumwa that's next door. O-T-T-U-M-W-A, Ottumwa. Yeah.
So here is some reviews for their five stars. I enjoy a Tomah, Idaho. This is the town, Iowa, not Idaho. This is the town where I grew up. There are not very many things to do, but the friendliness of the community makes up for it. There are great coffee shops, concerts and theater productions for all ages. I love this town! Exclamation point.
They love the town. Great concerts in Ottumwa. All right. It's wonderful. Five stars. I really like the cheeseburger selection in the Walmart frozen food section.
I also really enjoy walking around my house. I like frozen cheeseburgers. Five stars. I like the selection at Walmart. Five stars. They got the bubble ones. They got the other one. They got the White Castle, for Christ's sake. Here's four stars. I don't know if something got in the water and messed up these people's brains or what, but they don't understand the assignment. Here's a four star. Quote, I've worked at Applebee's for three years now. That's the whole review. Yeah.
I don't get it. And then maybe the weirdest review we've ever seen ever. One star, very shady town to live in. I've seen some weird things in a tumble, but the weirdest thing I saw by far was an officer pulling up under the market street bridge and dropping a large black trash bag off into the ditch. What? The officer then sat there staring at me for almost 20 minutes while I fished. Disgusting.
Just eyeballing him. Am I going to have to throw another bag or are you going to shut the fuck up? He is just eye fucking me from across the river here. Eventually, I left. I watched an officer dispose of somebody. Probably evidence or a person.
Eventually, I left because I knew I'd just seen something I wasn't supposed to. Welcome to Ottumwa, everyone. Okay, I'm worried. Ottumwa, where you see some shit you probably shouldn't. You didn't want to see. I didn't want to see either. I love the cop. The cop doesn't go, there's a person fishing. I won't do that. The cop just goes, I'm going to mad dog this guy for a minute. I'm going to throw it and then stare. They'll leave eventually. Look at the point. Who are you going to tell? You know what I mean?
Next things to do in this town, we have the Viva Atumwa International Festival. Yeah. In the whitest place that's ever existed. Let's mix two cultures together. That's good. It said with people coming from all over the world calling Atumwa home, it's a true cultural melting pot. Is it?
I don't think it is. We have everybody from super white people to, you know, a guy who might have like Greek a couple generations back maybe, something like that. We have a variety of white people. Come celebrate this diversity at the festival here. That's what it says. Viva, Thomas.
Viva Atumwa. It's a day filled with music, performances, food, children's activities, and community. And I have their schedule. Uh-oh. And they have, first of all, at 12.05, an invocation by Pastor Jocelyn Gordon.
We're going to start the day with some prayer? Start it off with some prayer. Some fellowship around here. Then the national anthem after that, of course. That, for some reason, takes 15 minutes, the national anthem. They're going to do it real slow. Second verse, same as the first. Well, they're going to do some R&B, like... Do like it's really going to draw it. We're going to stretch it. A couple of different...
You got like Christina Aguilera in there to sing it. It takes a while. They're going to let that girl from the All-Star game sing it twice. Then the mayoral proclamation at 1230. This is an exciting day, isn't it? What is going on? Then at 1235, new citizens recognition presented by the League of Women Voters. This is getting really exciting. This is very specific. I got to like cool down. This is getting too much here.
Then there is an Atumwa area community chorus. So that tells me old ladies singing. A ballet thing after that. Okay. Then the Akoli dancers. Yeah. The Chukese dancers and singers. Okay. Guardian Jiu-Jitsu and Judo at 4.30pm.
We're just going to fight a bit after that. We've got four hours and nothing's happened that's fun yet. Well, then 5 o'clock, Second Baptist Church. Okay? Okay. 515 Karen Youth Dancers.
530 Congolese singers. Okay. 545 son Peruchos. And then seven o'clock. Go the fuck home. It's over. It's a 7 p.m. And hard out on this one, like a kid's birthday party. Hard out. Get out.
Union employees, we leave. We paid for two hours at the trampoline center. Get the fuck out. That's it. I heard nothing fun. Nope. Sounds like a great time, doesn't it? That said, let's talk about some murder here. Some people who had an even less good time than people who went to that festival. Let's talk first about Seth here. Seth Tetchel. T-E-C-H-E-L. Or Tetchel. He's born in 1990. Mm-hmm.
And he comes from a good family in this town. His grandfather is the former mayor of Ottumwa. Grew up here. Grew up here. Oh, absolutely. Went to Ottumwa High. It doesn't grow up in agency. It grows up in Ottumwa and then ends up in agency. He's going to meet at a very young age here, like 15, 14. He's going to meet Lisa Caldwell.
Okay. She's born in 1989 and they are high school sweethearts. I mean, we're talking freshman, sophomore and through there, that couple that was together all through high school. And then they actually went and got married afterwards. Yeah. Which is key to the city. Man, I know. I remember those people that were just the long term relationship is like, how does that work in high school? You got someone for a month. You know what I mean? And you're like, I don't know. Whatever.
The one that I watched happen. I mean, you follow everybody from high school on social media for a while, and then eventually they start dropping off or you start on front, whatever. And I watched the meltdown. Don't do that. Don't marry that person. It's going to end bad. I watched it.
I watched it unfold. The one in my high school is a guy I still know and is a pretty successful comedian now, actually. Is that right? He married his? No, he didn't marry her. He didn't marry her. Thankfully, no, it's a different one. Just stayed with her for a long time. Whole high school, the entire fucking time. It was like, dude, everyone thought they were getting married, but no, that's good. So Lisa, by the way, in high school is a state champion bowler.
Really? Yes. And that's how they met. They met at the bowling alley where they both had part time jobs. OK. And that's how that Lisa and Seth met each other. She was on the high school bowling team in Ottumwa, which won three high school state bowling titles.
So she's like a... State. Badass bowler. Yeah. Oh, shit. You could take her and win some money with her and shit. Like, yeah, here's my girlfriend and have her just be like painting her nails going, I don't want to go bowling. And then be like, so, think you can beat us? Okay. Hustle people with her. I think the secret to that game is just having your own stuff because...
when you're bowling with the shoes and the ball, like I can't get my mind off of how much of other people's shit is in the... Yeah. I don't know if people can have a good time. Possible microbes and bacteria transferring into your skin, crawling under your nails at the moment. Take your hands away from your face. Disgusting, yeah. So she's pretty cool like that. Lisa, by the way, Seth's parents loved her, loved Lisa, and Lisa's parents loved Seth. So this was like...
Both families on board for this perfect little Midwestern couple. And even it's happening in the 2000s. This isn't like, you know, 1975 or something. This is, you know, 2005, 2006. They're all thrilled here. What do you want to bet their wedding vows had some bowling references? You know, yeah. Finding you is like hitting the 7-10 split of my heart.
You are my perfect game. You are my 300. I now pronounce you 300. Seth's mom said she was part of our family. And also, even Seth's close friends didn't mind Lisa hanging around because she was so cool and she could do all the shit that they did. She was a really good marksman, hell of a shot. Really?
So when they go out shooting or hunting, she'd be right there being the best shot of the group. Also really good at fishing. Her hand eye is crazy. Knew her outdoors shit. She was basically like a guy who you marry. Just another dude. Yeah. A guy with tits. Another dude with amazing breasts. This is not a bad thing at all. And she's pretty, too. She's a pretty young lady. 2010, 2011, they're trying to find careers here in their early 20s, basically. I think she found one already. No.
No, no. No, there's a lot of money, I'm sure, in bowling. But Seth becomes a volunteer firefighter and then he was set to begin working as a jailer in the Wapello County Jail. This is the same department where Lisa's father, Todd, is a sheriff's deputy.
A little nepotism, yeah. And Lisa gets a job as a jailer as well, and she is also a volunteer reserve deputy. They're both trying to get onto the police force, and this is how you do it. I wonder if she got that job. Yeah, weird, right? And him. Strange. Yeah.
The dad got them both the job here. She did go to Indian Hills Community College and Buena Vista University. She earned a degree in criminal justice with a minor in psychology. Those are helpful. She hustles. She served an internship with the Iowa Department of Corrections and was a correctional officer in Washington County, as well as served on the Wapello County Sheriff's Reserves. So Lisa's busy.
She's doing the thing. Yeah. She's like like Deb from Dexter, where she's like her dad's a cop and she wants to follow in the footsteps and she wants to be one of the guys. That's what she wants to be. You know, she wanted she wants to be her dad's favorite son is what she's going for to win it. She's doing it as a daughter and it's fine. So October 11th, 2011, Lisa and Seth get married.
I mean, they're 21 and 22 and they're getting married and couldn't wait till November and make it 11, 11 of 11. No, no, no. We're going October. That's when everyone was doing it. Jesus. It's free. Yeah, that was the most popular. But that and put up there, James, you think it was the chapel was that jammed? I think so. All well, you figure what? There's probably out of 450 people. You know, you got like a dozen dating couples. Maybe. I mean, there's a bum rush for it. You never know.
So they get married and they get a trailer on a piece of land outside agency. 21 years old. They're starting fresh. Mad meager, yeah. Trailer in the middle of nowhere is how they're starting because that's affordable, I'm sure. That's how you do it, yeah. That's how you do it. Lisa's dad, Todd, said of the couple, you have the all-American boy and the all-American girl and they get married and they're having a baby because eventually she's going to be pregnant here. And what?
And you just think, wow, nothing bad could ever happen. And then you turn on an episode of Small Town Murder and realize, no, no.
That's how these episodes always start. You know that it can. Jesus Christ. So January 2012, Lisa gets pregnant somewhere in here. And she'll find out in February. Yeah. Two months later. They really... Two months later. Consummated as fuck. Now, in this trailer, outside of this trailer, there's neighbors that are... There's open land, but...
But you do have neighbors. Yeah. And one particular neighbor they have a little bit of an issue with. His name is Brian Tate. He's 57 years old and he's a Vietnam veteran with some fucking mental issues. Really? Yes. He's got some history of some serious PTSD and he's been diagnosed as a schizophrenic as well.
Fantastic. So, yes, a schizophrenic PTSD having Vietnam veteran lives next door. Yeah, no shit. He lived with his mother and his brother in the next door property. Also, and this is obviously perfectly great, he's also huge gun guy as
As well, super into guns as you know, someone with mental illness and a penchant for flying off the handle should be paranoia is a good coupling with that. That's perfect. They go together like fucking peanut butter and jelly, don't they? They're perfect. So March and early April 2012 in this area, Brian Tate and Seth get into some disputes.
Some is over garbage here that ends up from Brian Tate's property, ends up on Seth and Lisa's property, and a deer hide thrown onto Brian Tate's property.
They said a deer hide was thrown on there. So Brian Tate. Disposed of a carcass, yeah. So Brian Tate threw it back and then he threw it back again. So it was like they went back and forth on it. Oh, shit. So Tate complained, actually. Brian Tate complained to law enforcement several times, including to Lisa's father, which I don't know how far that's going to get you. Yeah.
But apparently the two guys took turns throwing this carcass back and forth onto each other's property. Just volleying it back and forth. And then Brian finally reported that and other incidents as well. Brian Tate said, there's also rocks have been thrown at my home and feces as well. Oh, what the hell is going on? It's one thing to throw rocks, but once you're throwing poop, that's another story. Who says we'll throw poop at them? That'll get them. Who's poop? You know what I mean? Are there monkeys that live nearby anywhere or what?
An orangutan? Is this people poop? Yeah, no, it's poop. It's poop. No, it's like dog shit and animal shit, basically. You can't do that. No one shit in their hand and threw it over there. Yeah, they're just throwing dog shit at them? Just throwing shit at the house. And now Caldwell, Lisa's dad, responded to a call himself and urged Brian Tate, who had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and knew it. He said, listen, I know you're upset. Just let the authorities deal with it. We'll take care of it.
Todd Caldwell said, quote, he says he thinks these are acts of terrorism. That's what Brian's going. They're terrorists. This is an act. These are acts of terrorism. Yeah. And so Caldwell, the father said, kind of a bell goes off like terrorism is kind of a kind of a weird word to use. He says it's stream word to use. Like, yeah, this guy might not be all there is what he was figuring out. So while they talked.
The Lisa's father said that Brian Tate had a shotgun on the ground nearby and that unnerved him a little bit because it seemed like, well, why do you need to bring your shotgun to talk to a sheriff's deputy that you called? That's a little weird. So basically he said to all the other deputies, if you ever get called to his house, approach with fucking caution because he's going to have guns nearby and he's not stable. So watch out there. Now this goes on and on through April. They fight. They fight.
May a little bit too, they fight. May 26th, Seth, this is 2012 now, Seth says he got up and he took his dog out and he got in the shower. He said when he was in the shower, when he got back out of the shower, he said he saw an outside door open. He said he heard a loud boom while he was in the shower.
So he was like, what the hell is that? So he got out of the shower and he saw the door, like the front door open to the outside. And he said he grabbed his gun and ran after it. And there was nobody ran out there and there's nobody there. Yeah. So he calls 911 at 523 because after he checks the front door, he said he goes in the bedroom and sees his wife, Lisa, on the bed, bloody and nonresponsive. Oh, my God. With a large wound to her torso.
So he calls 911 at 523. He's sobbing. And you could hear him on the tape. My wife's been shot. My wife's been shot. Oh, my God. It's a five month pregnant woman. Yeah. Yeah. And any normal person go, oh, my God. And he's sobbing. She's been shot. She's been shot. She needs help. So the paramedic who arrived, the first one said that he was in a state of almost hysterics or panic. He was just as most people would be, I would think. Yeah.
Another deputy that arrived said he was doubled over, he was bent at the waist and appeared to be sobbing. Like there's actual pain in your gut from that, which that's visceral. I'd probably throw up, yeah. That's what I mean. You would probably be figuring out if you have to throw up. So the first deputy at the scene told the dispatchers to call Lisa's father because he's a deputy and –
That's like the last person you want there, right? That's exactly right. And the deputy said, in hindsight, I wish I wouldn't have done that. Yeah, don't do that. I saw a lot of things that morning. Now, because of me, I'm asking him to come out there. He's going to have to live with some of the images that I do. But it's worse for him because those are his daughter. Right. He doesn't need to see that. A, it's a conflict of interest. Don't have him investigating that. B, it's going to fuck that man up. His career's over. Right.
Not only that, his wife, Amy, who is Lisa's stepmother, is an emergency room nurse. So she hears about that. She rushes to the scene, too, to try to give medical aid to her as well. And Lisa's stepmom, Amy, said, I ran in there and you can tell that she was gone. I held her hand and rubbed her belly and just said, my Lisa, my Lisa. And nobody was able to save her. The paramedics said when they went to...
pull the covers off of her to try to give her CPR. They realized that she was torn apart. Yeah. There's nothing to compress, nothing to do, nothing you can. She's, she's obviously dead. She's full of holes. So Seth is on the porch. They said he was wearing a cargo shorts with a belt and underwear, no shirt or shoes. Uh,
And he remained outside while the emergency responders attempted to resuscitate Lisa. But obviously, no, Lisa and the unborn child are both killed in this. Yeah, because it's a shotgun wound to the torso. So Christ, not great. At that point, the deputy said he asked Seth what happened. And Seth said, this is the deputy said, quote, he told me he was in the shower, that he was getting ready for work and he heard a gun go off.
He ran to the bedroom, noticed Lisa was just lying there, grabbed his gun, ran to the front door of the trailer and noticed it was open and nobody was around.
Yeah, that's his story. Now, it's a single what they believe to be a shotgun blast that did this one close range shotgun blast, which you only need one of those if you if you do it at a close range. So they said they found no signs of forced entry or struggle at all. She was killed in her sleep. She never even knew it happened. She was sleeping and then dead. It was that quick.
Now, Seth provides the agents with a list of five guns he keeps in the house, two handguns and three rifles. And they're all accounted for. And none of them have been fired recently, you know, in the last, you know, whatever, few days or whatever. And he says that Lisa and he were married and they had no significant issues. They were happy together.
Everything was fine when they asked. They said, well, who may do you anybody who could have done this? Obviously, she's not the first person you think of as a target, a young pregnant woman.
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He said immediately, Tate, my crazy ass neighbor, because of the things he's been saying and doing to us. Honestly, this guy, he's off his rocker. Go get him. Go get him right now. He's telling him, go fucking arrest him. It's that it's him. It's him. Well, we can't do that. Yeah. He said that he said it was my crazy ass neighbor who thought we're, he thinks we're terrorists. It's that fucking lunatic.
And he said that we were going on this escalating dispute. There's a dead deer thrown back and forth in the middle of the night. We're doing this. And he said, Seth said, I bet he came over here because he's been on the property multiple times. He goes, I never witnessed it, but I can tell when things have been fucked with. And Seth claims that he and Lisa would, quote, come home at night and Tate would be sitting out there in the middle of his field on his four-wheeler pointed in their direction, just staring at them.
Sitting on a quad out there. Yeah. Apparently staring is a big thing. If you're a cop that dumps evidence, you just stare at someone. You do. You're just being weird. You just stare. No talking. No waving. Howdy. None of that shit. So much for nice. No shit. So Seth also said that it felt like Brian Tate had been standing right against their fence line. He said, though, again, he never saw him.
He said on one occasion they had called you guys to report that dog shit and rocks had been dumped on his property, which I didn't do that, obviously. So they said, okay, what did you do exactly today, Seth? Let's go over your day. He said, I woke up around 4.15 or 4.30. At the scene, he'll say 4.15. Later on, he'll say 4.30. So we're not sure.
Well, I mean, if you have your alarm set for 415, you got up at 430. You get up at 430. Yeah. We don't know if he got up at 415 or 430. That was the point. He takes his dog outside. He said that the dog didn't growl or bark while outside. And he believed the dog was looking, though, like something might have been outside or was acting like there was something fishy going on.
He's got a suspicious dog here. Real sketchy one. Real suspicious dog. He's like, I'm not going to bark yet, but you know what? My hair is up. Let's just say that. You know what I mean? It's a golden sketchy is what it is. Seth, do you feel that? It's weird out here, right?
Seth goes, yeah, buddy, it is. Redecent sketchback. You know, come on. So he said that's when he said that he thought maybe Brian Tate was hanging out along his fence line at that point. Maybe that's what the dog thought. So Seth went back inside, reset his alarm for 5 a.m. and laid back down. What's he going to get, 12 minutes of sleep now? What are you doing, man?
man you take once you take the dog out it's over get up you're lying yeah you're fooling yourself you either you either go back to sleep and you don't wake up till eight yeah i mean you're not gonna get 12 minutes oh god no so he the alarm goes off at five he gets up and he lets the dog back inside and he notes that he probably didn't lock the door at that time okay probably left it open just because the sun's coming up the sun's up the dog's out in and out who cares
So he said Seth got in the shower while Lisa stayed in bed. He said the bathroom window had no curtains, so he believes that anyone outside the home could have seen him inside and knew he was in the shower. Because you can see, like, his head. It's got one of those windows that's, like, up high in the bathroom. I don't like that. Why wouldn't you put a fucking curtain up there? Yeah.
Why are you displaying your upper- It's probably one of those long, skinny, tall ones that are way up high, but still. Still. I want privacy in the shower. Yeah. I want none of me exposed to the world. I pulled that fucking window out and put one of those frosted ones in. Yes, that's what you do. Because I don't want anybody seeing in there. Hi, guys. I'm in the shower. That's weird. So-
So he said approximately five minutes later, he heard a loud noise that took a moment to identify as a gunshot. Like he heard the noise like, what was that? That was loud. Was that a gunshot? What? Yeah. Gunshot is one. Boom. You go gunshot. What the fuck was that? An explosion. Loud. Yeah. Gunshot or explosion. Yeah. A transformer just pop right outside. What the fuck just happened?
So he said that he heard the noise and he got out of the shower, grabbed a towel, ran into the bedroom, turned on the light. The dog was in the bedroom closet. He said, scared and shaking. Not a good, not a very good guard dog, I would say at that point. Thanks. Thanks, puppy. Good job.
Geez, you have one fucking job. Thanks a lot. Yeah. And so he said that Lisa was lying on the bed. Seth went to Lisa, shook her and asked if she was OK. He said she moaned a little bit and he saw that there was a hole in the cover. So he pulled them back and saw a hole in Lisa's bra. What a weird thing to say. You notice a hole rather than blood. Yeah. Yeah.
He was sick because there was blood going to be spread out around the whole. So you go, oh, shit, blood. You barely see the bra. That's so weird. Then he said he heard a noise like a little thud coming from the living room. So he grabbed his gun from the nightstand, took it out of the holster, and ran down the hallway. He said no one was in the living room, but the front door was wide open. So he ran out on the porch, but he didn't see or hear anything.
So there's that. He said that he heard the gunshot five to ten minutes into his shower and on another time he said that he heard it no more than five minutes. So first interview five to ten minutes, 415. Next one, 430. No more than... And your memory changes over time, by the way. Especially if something traumatic happens. That can be normal. In an early account, he said Lisa wasn't breathing and in a later account he said she moaned also. So
Those are weird discrepancies. Yeah. He said he went back to the bedroom after the, he ran out in the living room. Uh, Lisa was unresponsive, not breathing, had no pulse. He called nine one one. He said he was going to perform CPR, but he couldn't because he froze. Uh,
Yeah, but he hadn't said a word about blood. That's what's so weird. You don't go. There's fucking blood all over the shotgun blast to the torso. It's going to leave it apart. Yeah, a lot of blood. He said instead of performing CPR, he put his underwear and shorts on, which were lying next to the bed laid out for him. And then he just waited for the emergency responders. He just didn't do anything to help her. He said he froze, but he put his shorts on and his belt and got that on.
What a wild response. So strange. But then again, in crazy stress situations, people do what you would hope a guy who's trying to become a cop and who's a fireman would have a better stress response than this. What if this guy's he's a fireman? What if someone's in the fire? I went to save him, but I just froze. I don't know. I couldn't do it. What if you pull up on a car accident? Yeah. Really awful. And you got to do some shit. That's especially in small towns. These firemen act as paramedics, too. They come and show up at car accidents and shit.
So the cops want to talk to the neighbor, Brian Tate, obviously. Brian welcomes the deputies into his front lawn, says, come on in, because he goes out and says, what the fuck's going on here? Even gets them some lawn chairs, tells them, have a seat. Cop a squat, fellas. He said he'd been home asleep at the time of the shooting. He said, quote, I was in bed.
And they said he was very cooperative, very polite. He said he was at home in bed at the time of the shooting, which both his mother and brother, who was his mother, was up at 5 a.m. Oh, mother and brother lived there with him. So they got. Yeah. And they said he was. But he lives out in the garage. So it would be hard to see. Brian lives out in the garage. It'd be difficult to see. But still, they said that they didn't hear him up or, you know, hear any commotion or anything. Yeah.
Tate then went into how he believes that the county sheriff's department had not fully followed up on his complaints about vandalism on the property. We got a dead woman. We got other shit going on right now. Later we'll deal with that. But for now, you know, well, yeah. He said that Seth was the one behind the incidents and he's complaining to the cops, this asshole next door. Then Tate said, it didn't seem to me like you were investigating much. It felt like, or I felt like you guys would have been more present in this area if you were.
What are they going to do, sit outside your house and wait for someone to throw dog shit at it? Perhaps if you guys had been here investigating dog shit throwing, she'd be alive. Yeah, stake him, join out, you know. So they asked Tate how he kept guard on his property. Basically, how do you keep your property safe? And he said he walked some, but mostly just watched to make sure no one was causing trouble. There's 400 people in this town, and you live on the outskirts of it. Who the fuck is coming through causing any trouble?
There's those Johnson brothers that come by once in a while, tear things up. So he said that when they asked if he knew if Seth owned guns, Tate said he wasn't sure, but he said that he has heard shooting from the property.
I mean, probably everybody out here should have. And he's trying to be a cop, too. So I would assume they also asked him about his own firearms, Brian Tate's. And he said he had guns, including two shotguns. And because they said, do you have shotguns? And he said, yeah. And he showed them some slugs he had on him, some shotgun slugs. And he said the guns were for defensive purposes only. Quote, I don't trust people anymore.
Oh, boy. So they said, did you have anything to do with Lisa's death? He said, no, I did not. He said, if I was sworn on a stack of Bibles in the court system, I would still say, no, I didn't do it. So he said, absolutely not. He did have these shotgun shells there. He also says, by the way, he's been taking his meds daily and his imbalance is doing well. So he's not off his rocker.
So they said that the shotgun shells appeared to be old with faded markings. The one he showed shows the cops here, but they were the same brand and color as those recovered later on. So involved in the murder. So that's interesting. They, they talked about how that they had gotten a call saying that they, at this point, some, a neighbor calls the police department saying that Tate had called him to talk about the
Yeah, that's a wild thing to be ready for.
Right. There's nobody around. Who do you think is attacking? That's what I mean. Who are they? They're bringing guns, evidently. And they're coming strong. Yeah. So they asked about his mom. His mom called Brian Tate a calm, quiet guy until this vandalism started. Oh. This has driven him nuts. Yeah. He said ever since then, he's just been like a different person.
paranoid and crazy and he brian says i was mr nice guy for a long time it it done me no good it done him no good jimmy being nice ain't agency nice don't do you no good done me no good he said people took advantage of me so i'm kind of taking a different approach to life right now
I'm a dick to everyone. I'm just, I'm loaded weapons and staring at people from four wheelers. When asked if he had anything to do and he said no, though, the cop who interviewed him said after we interviewed Tate, we were 100% confident it wasn't him. Really? That's a crazy thing to come away with from that conversation and go, obviously innocent. He didn't do it. Wild. So, but then they find a friend of Seth's who said that, yeah, we messed with Brian Tate.
We did it on purpose. We do it all. We go over and drink at a place and we're like, let's throw some dog shit at him. A guy named Tyler Batterson said that Seth asked him and three of Batterson's friends to, quote, mess with Tate. This guy says that he and others dumped five gallon buckets of dog shit on his porch and on top of his car. Five gallon buckets on the porch and on his car, all over the top of his car.
Where do you get five gallon buckets of dog shit? Yeah, what are you doing? How many dogs do you have?
So they sold told Seth what they did and Seth laughed. And then the following weekend, this guy and his two friends threw rocks at Tate's garage and shed and told Seth what they did. And he laughed too. So they start to look a little closer at Seth, the police officers, and he agrees to sit down for a formal interview, obviously. And he reiterated the story. He told nine one one. He'd been in the shower. You know, a guy came in. I suspect it's the neighbor and shot him.
So they said, OK, what about any other suspects? Did she have any problems with coworkers? And Seth said approximately four or five months earlier, Lisa received a text message from a coworker saying something to the effect of, hey, thanks for last night. And Seth called Lisa on it. And she told him she had given a coworker a ride home because he wasn't feeling very good. And that was it. And Seth said he wasn't angry about that.
Yeah. So because they were going into what kind of problems you had, anything. They also asked him how to rate he and Lisa's happiness on a scale of one to ten with ten being the happiest, which is a very give give your relationship a Yelp review, a postmortem Yelp review, would you please?
All right. He reported that he and Lisa had been an eight or a nine on the night before the shooting. He said at first they were at more of a 10. He's saying that probably more of a 10, but maybe an eight or a nine that night. So they said that it had been reported. They tell him it had been reported that he and Lisa had an argument that look that night. But he said Lisa had not been upset, but explained that she was kind of giving him shit because he had not wanted to listen to the fetal heart monitor.
Why would you not listen to the fetal heart monitor? No, I'm cool. No, just listen. It's your baby's heartbeat, man. Fuck that bitch. I don't want to listen to it. I don't want to be reminded that my life's about to be ruined. I don't want to. I don't want that motherfucker thinking he's too important right away. See, that's the thing. They find out it's a girl, too. She's having Jesus.
Didn't want to hear it. Seth claimed that Lisa wasn't serious about it, but was kind of confronting, but not really. Like she's breaking balls about it, which no pregnant woman's breaking balls about that. They're going, why don't you want to hear our baby's heartbeat? What's your fucking problem? What's your problem, weirdo? That's strange. Then this is less than 12 hours after the death. So it's not even fucking 5 p.m. yet. Okay. People are thinking about what they're going to have for dinner. Okay.
already, you know, at this point. And investigators speak with a friend of Seth's who reveals a huge piece of this puzzle. Seth's been having an affair with a co-worker. Oh, Seth. Named Rachel McFarland.
And a close friend here of this guy said that, yeah, this has been going on. Colton Millard is this guy's name. No, his name is Judas, you son of a bitch. He said, don't tell it. Well, he kept, he didn't tell the wife. He told the cops after, he held it till after the wife was dead. That's pretty good. Yeah.
I'm not going to lie to the cops for you about this shit. I'll lie to your wife, but not your cops. I'll keep your secret secrets right up until they're fucking murder. Right. Right up until I'm in a homicide office interrogation room. And then it's all bets are off at that point. So he said that this guy said that he disapproved and he told Seth he disapproved. He said, I told him that he was stupid and he needed to stop. And he knew he was stupid and he shook his head like I know.
So, yeah. He also said there's also, you guys, I don't know if you know about this, about Seth, but he's got a second phone. He's got a burner phone. Really? He's got a track phone here that he said, I know that because once he took it out of his pocket and showed me a topless picture of Rachel McFarlane. He's like, check out this chick I got on the side.
Not only is he cheating on his wife, he's a dickhead who shares the pictures. He's a dick who shows guys at work at the jail. Wow. Look at the riz I've got. I've still got it, man. Look at that, man. I can get nudies. Yeah. Meanwhile, he's 22. You know what I mean? He's 22, pulls 11-year-old pranks, throwing dog shit at people, too. Throwing dog shit and showing, look at these boobs. What an asshole. You want to see boobs? So when confronted...
uh about this by the police seth's story started to change a little bit and he said okay yeah i've been having an affair i've been involved with this mcfarland lady he said i told i told her i wasn't leaving lisa or he said i told her i was leaving lisa but it was a lie i wasn't really going to leave lisa i was just trying to fuck this broad you know what i mean
So he downplayed the relationship and insisted that although they had kissed, it had never been more physical than that. And he later admitted also that he may have led Rachel on by falsely claiming he planned to leave his wife. So,
They said, any other extramarital affairs? He said, no, no, I've just been texting Rachel around January 2012, around when his wife was pregnant, and said that he wasn't seeing her. It wasn't anything. Nothing was coming of it. That's what he said at first. And he said their interactions were limited to the exchange of text messages in the vein of, hey, how was your day? And hey, what's up?
Lisa found out about the messages, but Seth claimed that he let Lisa read the messages and stopped talking to Rachel and everything was fine now. She saw it wasn't a big deal and he said, you know, whatever. That's an interesting thing to say because that can't be corroborated. Exactly. She's dead. So over the course of the interview, he keeps...
Kind of amending what he's saying to reveal a little bit more and a little bit more. At first, he said it was limited to, hey, what's up? And later admitted that he had hugged and had kissed her on the cheek and once on the lips before eventually confessing that he had kissed her like a half dozen times, maybe a dozen. Boy, he denied that they ever had sex. He did admit that just two weeks before the shooting, he and Rachel had been together while Lisa was looking for him and his friend had to cover for him.
He said, I know I wasn't going to leave. I couldn't leave. And then he said that there was obviously more to this Rachel thing and that the agent would see on his phone that McFarnall was under the impression that Seth was leaving Lisa. But he denied it was his intention. He said, I wasn't. I couldn't. Lisa and I had arguments over it. You know, who doesn't? We've been together for seven years. We've been together since fucking freshman year of high school.
He also said admitted that Rachel was under the impression that Lisa was going to be packing up her stuff and leaving either the night before or that day. Seth claimed he wasn't going to leave Lisa and just plain and just planned to tell McFarlane it was over and saying he was. He said, I was going to tell her I married Lisa. I made a commitment. We're having a baby. And that's that. And then he abruptly ends the interview because that's enough. I'm done talking to you guys. I feel real bad right now.
Yeah, this is not good. Now, at the same time, they're searching Seth's vehicle and they're finding his phone and they're seeing it's way more than, hey, what's up? It's sexually explicit text messages. Wow. She's sending him pictures of her pussy. He's sending her pictures of his dick. Oh, no. It's all of this stuff going on. Yeah. You can't send the dick pic, man. You can't do it. He sent it. Lock, stock, and barrel. Oh, Jesus.
It's only 2011, maybe, or 12. Maybe he didn't know yet. I don't know. Well, he's learning now. Graphic language, pictures of private parts, mainly his private parts. I don't know if... We know that she had no shirt on, but I don't know if she sent...
pictures or what. We're not positive of that. Maybe she did. I don't know. Sometimes you leave that to mystery. I don't want to besmirch, you know, maybe she's, maybe she's a little more prude over text than we think. A little more modest. Yeah. He said in one text that he dreamed about her and he misses her and all this. Um,
So apparently they talked to Rachel and Rachel says that Lisa had called her at one point. Oh, shit. Very pissed off. I imagine. And asked her not to talk with her husband anymore. So after that, Seth bought a track phone and bought a burner and said basically to Rachel, would you talk to me if I got a burner? And she said, sure. So shit.
She and Seth met at the Pioneer Ridge Nature Center where they hugged and kissed each other. And at one point, Rachel asked him how he was going to end his marriage. This, by the way, she's living with a boyfriend at the time. She has a live-in boyfriend, Drew Ballard. Wild. But toward the end of April, she moves out, anticipating the next level with Seth. Yeah.
She moved out of that. So she actually got out of her relationship. She, at that point, right around the middle of May, struck up a relationship with another co-worker and said, well, Seth wasn't available right then. This other guy was. So if Seth became available, then I'd move back with him. But this guy was available for now. This is so messy.
It's so fucking 22. It's so 22. You know what I mean? So at one point, Seth told her, just give me two more weeks. This was in the middle of May. Two weeks, I'll fix everything. Because he was mad she was seeing another guy. Right. So he was pissed off. Yeah.
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So she McFarlane sex texted Seth and said that she and another guy had hung out and she was really starting to like him. And he told and McFarlane told Seth that it was unfair for her to be alone and felt that Seth should try to be with Lisa at least till the baby's born. May 24th, 2012, Rachel texted Seth and said, you're telling her tonight. And then he texted back with wish me luck.
That's May 24th. McFarlane texted Seth and told him her parents wanted her to stay away from him if he wasn't going to get a divorce. Oh, my God. Why do her parents know? They haven't even fucked yet, according to him. And there is. And she'll say it, too. They never had sex. Wow. And she's already saying, my parents are saying you should do this. We haven't even had sex yet. My parents said this is godless and that if you want to be at Christmas, you've got to be single.
Jesus. But she said she was excited for Seth that he was going to leave Lisa and she was expressed love for him. Later in the day, she expressed some doubts that Seth would actually talk to Lisa and told him maybe he should rethink it. He said, what the fuck? Why? And she said she felt like she was making the wrong like he was making the wrong decision and didn't want a divorce. And Seth countered saying he doesn't think divorcing Lisa was what Rachel wanted him to do. So she said she responded. Yes, it is. I keep looking at our pic and
She asked Seth if she asked Seth if he really wanted to be with her. And he responded forever and told her that he loved her and to wish him luck. So May 25th, they exchanged texts about Lisa coming home to gather her belongings. And she asked Seth to be there. He said that she asked Seth to be there with her while she packed.
the morning of the 26th of the murder, Rachel texted Seth and said she heard what happened to his wife and that she was there for him. And if she needs to talk, she's there. But she's also going to try to give him some space for a minute, you know, because it looks bad. Like a normal person would do with somebody with some guilt. Yeah, no shit. Because the day before, on May 25th,
Seth told her, well, we talked. I told her I wasn't happy. She got mad, then sad. Then I slept on the couch and all she wants is for me to be there tonight when she after work, when she packs, he said. So that's that. That's what he was going to do. The last message that he sent McFarlane sent to her from his track phone said, I love you. One 54 PM, May 25th. So then they get another friend of his, a friend and former roommate of Seth's tell the investigators that they
He'd left a Mossberg 500 shotgun in the couple's trailer when he moved out months earlier, but the gun wasn't on the list that Seth provided to law enforcement and they couldn't find it. He said, well, it's over there. I never got it back. The following day, they returned to the crime scene and searched more of the property where they discovered the Mossberg 500 lying in tall grass north of the trailer on the opposite side of Tate's house, by the way. So it wasn't like in case I need it for Brian Tate real quick.
You don't leave a shotgun in the grass. No, that's crazy. And they said it was dry, too, which was weird. It didn't have dew on it or anything. They said that they found out from the autopsy that Lisa was killed with a shotgun and the bullet fragments were consistent with a Mossberg, while none of Brian Tate's firearms were a match. Oh.
By the way, this before they found the shotgun, they staked out the shotgun because they knew where they knew where it was. They left it there. And a guy, a deputy was camouflaged and hidden in the bushes when he saw Seth and his and his father approached the area.
He said he heard the elder Teschel admonish his son and yell at him. And he said, yes, he responded that that's their job. He was telling his son that whenever they got near the tree, they sure seemed to walk around a bit. And they said, did Doug Teschel respond to that? And he said, yes, he responded, that's their job, buddy. That's what the cops do.
was supposed to investigate. He said, come on now, you know if you were on the other side of it, what you would do, if you were wearing that badge, what would you do? You'd do your job, right? So he was like walking around there. Lisa's wake comes up. As he leaves, Seth leaves Lisa's wake, they cuff him outside and arrest him. Oh, that's ugly. Yeah, outside the wake. Yep, and September 2012, by the way, Brian Tate dies in a sleep of heart failure a few months later.
So they're just going to say he did it and he's not there to defend himself now, which is tough. He can't do that. Can you do that? Is that a play you can make? I mean, yeah, you can say this guy that died. Do you? He said they said that the sister, Brian Tate's sister, said that her brother's reputation was ruined by these accusations and believes that he died of a broken heart.
She said Brian was a very loving person. Yes, he was mentally ill, but like he told his doctors, just because I'm mentally ill doesn't mean I'm a murderer.
It's a good point. That's a good point. So they said we wanted the jury to see Mr. Tate, the prosecutor said. It was bad for us and good for them. It was great for them. Now they have this ghost boogeyman. February 2013, Seth goes to trial on first-degree murder and nonconsensual termination of a human pregnancy.
which is that is one way to put shooting a woman, a pregnant woman in the stomach. Yeah. That's non-consensual fantasize. That's yeah. That is a, that's a non-voluntary abortion is what that's called. And it's not good. So they said the prosecution's case was largely circumstantial while the defense's whole case was Brian Tate, Brian Tate, Brian Tate, Brian Tate, Brian Tate. Just he's crazy. He's the next door neighbor. These two are a loving couple.
Who's more likely to do this? Yeah. So the defense wants to bring up everything, but the judge rules out a lot of what the defense hoped to introduce about the mental and physical health of the neighbor. So they the jury is not allowed to hear that he's a paranoid schizophrenic with PTSD and all that shit. They're only allowed to hear about some incidents that happen. The dog shit. He got mad. He called the cops, that kind of thing. That's it.
Deer carcass. Yeah. So the defense pointed out that neighbor that Tate is a suspect that they overlooked in a rush to charge Seth with this. So, yeah, they said a neighbor comes in and testifies and says that this is two different neighbors, Drusilla and Jack Chittering or Chickering. Drusilla Chickering is a person's name.
Wow. And they said that Tate was odd, but they never had any problems with him. Drusilla said, I thought he was weird. I'm sorry, but that was my impression of him. I just thought he was weird and very odd acting, but they never had an issue with him.
So they said after the murder, Lisa Caldwell, Jack reported after the murder of Lisa, Jack reported this. The other part of this couple, a phone conversation with Tate to police. He said his words were if the sheriff's department had done their job, none of this would have happened, which sounds like I wouldn't have to kill anybody. Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like a threat.
So on the stand, a coworker tells the jury that Seth was in love with another woman. This is another friend of his says that Seth didn't want to divorce because his wife, because he didn't want to pay child support. And he also didn't want to hurt his relationship with Lisa's father who kind of helped held his. Well, hopefully he's trying to get a job as a deputy and he needs this guy's help.
So he said that this co-worker said about a month before Lisa was killed, Seth told him, God, this whole my life would be easier if Lisa just died in a car wreck. Oh, my God. Which is not a good thing to say out loud and then have your wife die. They get Rachel McFarlane in there, which made Seth have to just drop his head off.
She said it went from just normal conversations to flirtatious text messages. It became more sexual, asking me to send pictures. Yeah. Are these your tits? Yeah. Are these your tits, ma'am? Apparently, McFarlane told the jury here that Seth used a fake email name, Rick Jones, by the way. This is alter ego here. Old Dickie J.
And got a prepaid cell phone to contact her. So her boyfriend at the time and his wife wouldn't find out about their affair. If you're hiding it from two separate people, maybe just forget it. It's more trouble than it's worth. According to Rachel, Seth was going to ask Lisa for a divorce. She said he wanted to be with me and his relationship with his wife wasn't working. She said just days before the murder, Rachel said that Seth told her that he didn't want her talking to other men.
She said he would just get angry and jealous. That's the point when he told me to just give him two more weeks. So the...
The defense team said that, no, he was starting a new job in two weeks. That's what that was all about, which makes no sense. Why would he say that to her? Why would he tell her to give me two weeks? So the defense also asked, you've never had your clothes off when you were with him? And she answered no. Wow. So this is sexless. Imagine doing all this without even knowing if the sex was any good.
Like, it's not even like, oh, my God, it's just I'm addicted to this crazy fucking animal sex I have with this woman. Not even that. No. Wow. It's just the idea of maybe it is so strange. She said the affair was physical. She said, quote, he, I mean, wanted to be with me. He kissed me. He touched me.
So this does not look good for Seth at all, this whole thing. No, this is super bad. So the verdict comes in, and it ends with hung jury. Get out of here. How? 11 to convict, 1 to acquit. Yeah, I guess so. One person was a holdout. That's it. And apparently at that point, the town kind of lost its fucking mind. It lost its agency nice status because the...
Basically, people were upset, so they started fucking sending the jurors Facebook threats. What? The jurors were on this jury. Eleven people voted to convict, and they're getting death threats like it was their fault. It's a hung jury. I tried, man. I gave my part. I voted guilty. What the fuck do you want from me? So October 2013, they try him again. Sure.
Now, this is the same lawyers all around. He has the same lawyer, same prosecutor, same judge. Everything's the same. Same place. One more time. But with this publicity, it's moved to Henry County, though. Okay. Because, you know, people are getting, nobody wants to be on a jury because if they, God forbid, find a menacing or hung jury, they're going to get death threats. So attorneys sparred over the significance of flirtatious and explicit email and text messages between Rachel and Seth.
And the prosecutor said that if you look at the text messages over the course of seven months, the messages read like a countdown to Lisa's death, just as the noose is tightening in this relationship. But the defense said those communications don't prove that he killed his wife. He said he even challenges the jury, quote, Are you mad at what an idiot this kid is?
Are you? That's hilarious. Your own lawyers like, obviously, my client's a complete moron. Clearly. Look at him sitting there. Look at the dumb look on his face. You want to go over to smack him, don't you? Sitting there thinking with his dry dick. Fucking dry, limp, soft dick. So are you mad at what an idiot this kid is? Are you mad? Are you mad enough to ignore the evidence, though? She says you can't convict him just for being an idiot.
and having an affair. So the defense attorney said that the police investigation excluded and ignored several key areas. The police didn't test Seth's hands for gunpowder. Why they didn't do that, I have no fucking idea. That's wild, yeah. That's crazy, because he said he hadn't fired a gun in a week. Yeah, but he's the only person in the house. I don't give a fuck when he says he fired a gun. I'll tell you if he fired it today. Everybody gets the test. That's so easy to do, too. That's so simple.
And so two weeks he said he hadn't fired a gun and they didn't fucking test his hands. So this one goes to verdict again here, goes to the jury and the jury comes back. Can't make a decision. Hung jury. This is unbelievable. How great. Nine three this time. Get closer. Nine to convict, three to acquit. So now there's three people getting fucking death threats probably. So the prosecutor said, quote, there was no question we would retry it.
Is that right? Liked him so nice, we did it thrice. Let's get into it. So new trial, three times July 2014. This has moved to Scott County now. We're in three trials, three different counties. He's on a tour. You might as well get like a fog hat and do county fairs while he's out there. It's like he's running for governor of Iowa. Yeah, he's doing a tour. Everybody vote for me. He's found guilty, but he is elected lieutenant governor of the state of Iowa. So it's a mixed bag.
Trial number three here. He's got a new defensive team. New defensive team, I just said. It's a defensive team. Hey, he's got a defensive team. It's a nice team. All for me, really. Nice men.
No, he apparently can't afford his attorneys anymore. No one will pay for two trials. There's a lot of trials. So he has a court-appointed attorney now and then a guy doing the guys that do like the court-appointed work who aren't public defenders. So he's got two lawyers and same exact prosecutors, though. And the judge, Daniel Wilson. Again, this is his third time with this fucking shit, too.
This is fucking wild. So his this legal team, the new defense team, is working on a different strategy instead of saying it's Brian Tate, which it worked twice. I'd stick with that forever. They are now saying shoddy police work is the problem. Shoddy police work is what got her shot. That's what did it. They said the prosecution also put on a more focused, streamlined case, stressing that the story about Tate just doesn't make sense about him coming in.
But the problem is it's hard to rule that out if you're a juror and you're going, this guy's sobbing on the 911 tape. The neighbor is a fucking nutcase who has weaponry. Who knows if he found that shotgun outside, took it, then threw it back on the lawn. There's no fingerprints on the shotgun, by the way. It's white clean. So it's interesting. New twist in trial number three. New information comes out.
Defense attorneys uncover that Lisa was having an affair of her own at a girl with a married fellow jailer named Jason Tins. T.I.N.N.E.S. Uh huh. They discovered the affair after investigating text messages on her phone saying a technician at the state crime lab had been directed not to do so earlier. They told him, don't go into Lisa's phone. Don't worry about it.
The defense lawyers say they learned that an investigator had spoken with a co-worker, Jason Tins, days after Lisa's death, but he denied an affair and they just left it at that. But now he admitted during a deposition, they got him under oath, and he admitted that having a seven-month sexual affair with Lisa that ended the month before her death. He said they didn't use contraception either and they were worried about whether he was the father. Oh my God, this is fucking...
So messy. This is fucked up, right? This is crazy. 20 pounds of murder in a two-pound bag. They're so nice. They'll fuck you and send you pictures of their tits. They'll raw dog you. Just kind people. Just kind people.
So this had not been in the first two trials and the attorney general's office said they didn't know about it until recently and they didn't believe the information was exculpatory. Well, I'd say another guy who may or may not have impregnated her is maybe he did it then. That's what I mean. There's that, but there's also, did he find out about that relationship? That's the other thing. If you knew about him, the investigation's way different from the beginning. You know what I mean? Um,
So the he testifies he admitted he lied about the affair because he didn't want his wife to know. She knows now, motherfucker. He also testified that Lisa and he ended their sexual relationship about two months before she was murdered because they both realized what they were doing was wrong. But he continued texting her until near the end of April there. He said might be his baby.
That's the other thing. It might be his baby. So they also play the 911 stuff. They show all the explicit text messages to the jury, of course. The defense is that the investigation was, quote, flat out incompetent. They never tested his clothes or hands for gunshot residue. They never examined Lisa's cell phone found near her body or excluded possible suspects.
Okay. This is even messier than the first two trials. Sure enough. When you throw him into the mix, it really throws it all up. So the jurors deliberate for four hours, find him guilty on all charges this time. It seems like this is his best case so far out of the three trials, right?
I would think this is a quiddle. For him, it's a winner. Lisa's dad here during sentencing, they make him sit there and they do the victim impact statements, obviously. And they say Lisa's dad says, you know how close Lisa and I was and you know what you took from me. Out of everybody in this room, you know and you sit there right there with no emotion on your face, none. And I don't know how you can do that.
Wow. Oh, shit.
I think she could take you in a fair fight, is what she just said. Which I wouldn't doubt. I wouldn't doubt it, based on everything I've heard. She's a hunter, a bowler, a fisher. He also seems like quite the coward that he won't even tell her that he's not fucking somebody.
He's a total pussy. Yeah, this guy's a total pussy. She said, I think of it only fair that if my daughter had an even brief moment of fear before you shot her, that you live the rest of your days in fear and misery. And I hope spending your life in prison at least guarantees that.
No mother should have to see her child or a pic of her child or granddaughter on an autopsy slab and not get answers. We deserve a pic. Yeah, she did. It's 2014. Yeah. Interesting choice of words. I see a pic. It sounds very casual. Yeah, it does. Like, I shouldn't have to go on Insta and see this shit. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's weird. Nobody should see an IG about their daughter. Yeah.
She said, we deserve the truth from day one, not all of the games that have been played. All I wanted to do was sit there and hold her hand and stroke her hair and let her know that I was there. I was with her when she took her first breath, and I only wanted her to know that I was there moments after she took her last.
That morning I arrived at your trailer. I knew Lisa was dead and all I could think about was comforting you and seeing how you were doing, making sure you were all right. I'm going to leave you with one final thought. I'm no longer your sister and I no longer love you. That's from the sister-in-law. Oh my God.
That's Lisa's sister. I no longer love you. I no longer love you. That's rough. Yeah. Then they asked Seth, anything you want to say to the court at all? Yeah. After all this? He said, not at this time. I'm going to think about it. All right, motherfucker. You, sir, may fuck off life without parole. Oh, Jesus. Plus 25 years. Oh, for the baby? Yeah.
For that, too. Yeah. Plus another 25. Despite the conviction, the sheriff said multiple families were destroyed. So, you know, conviction really doesn't help much. And yeah. During the trial, was that when he found out about the affair?
I know. I think possibly. Yeah. Yeah. He would have told his fucking lawyers before. They didn't know. Yeah. Nobody knew. Imagine. Could you imagine if that's when he found out? And what if it wasn't his? He wouldn't have even had to pay child support. He just did this as a what a monster. Imagine if he heard that in court. And as soon as it came out, he said, I'll kill that bitch. Wait, fuck. Wait, no, don't don't don't do that. Yeah.
Lisa's dad said, everybody's a loser. Nobody wins. But I will say this. I think Lisa knows somewhere that the system she wanted to be a part of worked for her. It was also on Dateline in 2014, like right after the trial. They did an episode called...
Before dawn. Way too fresh, right? It was like a month afterwards. They've been waiting for the trials to be over probably. This is interesting shit. And then new stuff came out in the third trial. They were like, oh, this is juicy. This is great. 2016 is an appeal and basically saying I didn't have information I should have had. And they said, get the fuck out of here, you asshole. No.
He is currently serving his time at the Anamosa State Penitentiary in Iowa. That is agency Iowa, everyone. Probably being traded for sex. One would hope so at this point. Yeah, if his wife could kick his ass, he's probably not doing great in jail. If you like that story, tell everyone about it. Get on whatever app you're on. Give us five stars. It helps so fucking much. Shut up and give me murder.com.
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