#515 - Against The Wind - Stephenville, Texas
02:50:33 Share

Hey, everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you about one of my favorite things in the world, Audible. Oh, audible.com or that app. Oh, I give that app a workout. Let me tell you something. Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar. You can listen to anything. There's so many genres on there. There's more to imagine when you listen. And let me tell you something that makes my imagination soar in a terrible way. I've been listening to Secrets in the Cellar. Oh, boy.

Which is by John Glatt, and it's about Joseph Fritzl and locking his daughter in the basement for decades. And it is... You want to talk about imagination of who's the devil in a human skin? That's the guy. So check that out, or a whole bunch of them. As an Audible member, you can choose one title a month to keep from the entire catalog, including the latest bestsellers and new releases.

Audible's the best. Let's be honest here. 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.

Hey, Small Town Murder listeners, have you heard? You can listen to your favorite gripping investigations ad-free. Good news! With Amazon Music, you have access to the largest catalog of ad-free top podcasts included with your Prime membership. To start listening, download the Amazon Music app for free or go to amazon.com slash ad-free true crime. That's amazon.com slash ad-free true crime to catch up on the latest episodes without the ad.

Hey, everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you a little more about Philo. We've noticed, and I think everyone on Earth has noticed, TV's really complicated to try to watch now. Yeah.

Thankfully, Philo has changed all of that for us. One service, all the stuff we need. And it's great. Philo's got current seasons of shows that you don't want to miss on live networks like A&E, MTV, Discovery, TLC, classics like The Office, Martin, and Friends that I never got sick of and you won't either. And all of the incredible originals on AMC Plus from Mad Men to Orphan Black.

And don't forget their library of more than 75,000 movies and shows, all of which we can save and rewatch anytime for a whole year. Never miss a minute of shows like Love After Lockup, you know that one, Married to Evil, and Death by Fame, and many, many more. Best of all, with Philo, you get all of this for just $28 a month. No contracts, no hassles, just one subscription and a world of entertainment. Mm-hmm.

Get in there and do it. Philo's amazing. So go to philo.tv slash smalltownmurder and check it out for a free seven-day trial. That's philo.tv slash smalltownmurder to start watching. Now back to the show.

This week in Stephenville, Texas, a sprawling mystery unfolds over the particularly brutal murder of a young woman causing the town to believe that one man was a monster when the real monster was hiding in plain sight the whole time. Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yes.

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 insane episode of Small Town Murder. And this is one crazy ass episode. Lives are shattered. Things are messed up. People are dead.

Small town police force is dropping the ball left and right. It's one of those type of things. Can't wait for it. Before we get to that quickly, head over to shut up and give me murder.com. Get your tickets. September 20th, Minnesota, Minneapolis state theater. It's going to be our biggest show ever. If you guys sell us out and,

I have confidence that you will because no one's ever let us down before. So thank you. And thank you to everyone who's bought tickets. Let's sell that bad boy out. Let's get the loudest shut up and give me murder we've ever had. Let's do it. The next night is about sold out in Milwaukee. There's a couple like individual tickets, but that's it. Thank you for doing that as well. Everybody get those shut up and give me murder.com as well as the rest of the year too. We got tickets and they're selling out quick. Oklahoma city's about gone.

Get there, Austin, Kansas City, Boston, New York. Do your thing there. Come and see us. Patreon.com slash Crime in Sports is where you get all of your bonus material. Let's say you listen to this show and you like it. You listen to Crime in Sports and you like it. You listen to your stupid opinions, which you should be doing, and you like it. You're like, I need more. We got it all for you right here. Yeah.

We have it. Anybody, $5 a month or above, a mere cup of coffee. Skip one cup of coffee and you're going to get so much. We're going to fill your plate with hundreds of bonus episodes you've never heard before that you'll get immediately. New ones every other week. One crime and sports, one small town murder. This week is no different. This week what we're going to do for crime and sports, we're going to talk about the worst teams of all time.

The most inept teams of all time. Losers and failure. It's so much fun. Can't wait to laugh at that for an hour. And then for small town murder, we are going to go into some of the weirder points of the Lori Vallow, Chad Daybell murder spectacular. Because that is a mess, man. What a life ruined. If you want to talk about people losing their minds, that's the one to do it on. It's crazy.

Whole family. Even the weirdo comedian brother that we've performed at the same places at, scarily enough, in Phoenix. We'll talk all about it. Patreon.com slash Crime in Sports is where you get all of that and more. And you get a shout out at the end of the show, too. Jimmy is definitely going to mispronounce your name, but he wants to get it correct. That said, disclaimer time. It's a comedy show, everybody. It is.

comedy show. We're comedians. And unfortunately, though, the stories are a thousand percent real. You've got nothing is made up for comedic, you know, enhancement or anything like that because you don't have to. These stories are insane. And what we do is, though, is these people go, hey, you do true crime and comedy together.

How do you mix murder and comedy? Well, you do it tastefully is how you do it. Thing is, there's nothing funny about the actual killing of a person. That's not fun. The fun comes when the police then screw up the investigation and let a murderer go free because they're bumbling or little things from a small town or lots of stuff because, you know, it's funny out there. So what we do, though, is we never make fun of the victims or the victims' families.

Why is that, James? Because we're assholes. Yeah, but? But we're not scumbags. There you have it. That's how that works. So if you think that sounds good, you're going to hear a wild story. If you think true crime and comedy never, ever, ever should, paths should cross, then maybe we're not for you. Get out of my way. Who knows? Get out of the way. We're passing on the left. Let's get to it, though. But for the rest of you, I think it's time to sit back. Let's all take a deep breath. What do you say? Here, arms to the sky. Let's all shout. Shut up and give in.

murder let's do this let's go on a trip shall we get after it let's do it come on jimmy we're going to texas baby oh no oh we're not going in a car because we'll definitely get pulled over and get speeding tickets that we didn't earn i was excited nope we uh we're still angry about getting that ticket that we were 100 not fucking people fly and buy us they pull us over and give us a ticket

We're going the speed limit on cruise control. Unbelievable. Impossible. This is in Stephenville, Texas. That's P-H, Stephen with a P-H. Yeah. It's in central Texas. It's right up in the middle of...

of the state here. It is about two hours to Dallas. If you go kind of northeast to Dallas, and then it's about two hours and 45 minutes to Austin there. So it's in the middle of nowhere is what that says. It's about five and a half hours to our last Texas episode. That was Panhandle, Texas, which we were amazed that there's a town called that. That episode is called Friday the 13th. If you want to go back and check that out, that was a creepy one.

This is in, I know I'm going to say it wrong. I don't know if it's Erath or Erath County. Irrational? Irrational Ticket County. E-R-A-T-H. So Erath, I'm sure they say there. I don't know. Erath, Erath, I'm not sure. Area code 254. It doesn't really matter. No. Motto here. You're going to love this. The cowboy capital of the world. Hell yeah. Of the world. The world.

Didn't we have recently a place claiming to be the cowboy capital of the world too? I feel like we did in the last month. So this goes around. A little bit of history. But we also did a Patreon episode, which lets you know that cowboy is not... That's a bad thing to be called. It's not good. It was always a negative term. And then like...

In the early 20th century. The piece of shit capital of the world? You don't want to be that. And then when TV came out and we started having Westerns, then cowboys were good all of a sudden. Right. When you voted for cowboys against the Indians, which should make you feel like a piece of garbage too. Well, cowboy was synonymous with criminal. That's what that meant. Fucking livestock stealer, woman murderer, things like that. You're not a frontiersman. You're a cowboy. Yeah. It was considered bad. You pussy. Yeah. Yeah.

So a little bit of history. This town was named after John M. Stephen.

who settled there in 1854 and donated the land for the town site. And it was laid out by George B. Arath or whatever. So that's how you got the county and the town. The first two years of the settlement, people started coming here. Population got up to 776. Wow. Not too bad. Then it declined in 1871 because the town site was in Comanche territory.

Oh. Yeah. So there was raids always from the Comanches into town. And also this was just after the Civil War, so things were tough also. So a lot of citizens ended up leaving and moving away after they just moved there. So then it became agricultural and livestock around here. They found coal. Oh, boy. So coal mining became important to the area. This was in like the 1800s. Wow.

That lasted about 30 years, and then that was that for coal because there's only a finite amount of coal here. There is a college in this town, which will account for kind of the number of people because it doesn't feel like there's that many people here. It's just in the college. There's Tarleton State University, which I've never heard of in my life. T-A-R-L-E.

E-T-O-N? Yes. Yeah, I've heard of it. I just don't know what they do there. I don't think they make the tournament very often. I haven't heard of those guys, no. Oh, no. That's how they spell toilet for hillbillies. Yeah, it's a tarlet. That's how it goes. Reviews of this town. Let's find out what other people think because we're not going to go there because obviously we'll get a ticket. So we're going to go here. I don't get behind the wheel here anymore. Five stars. Although the roads in Stephenville aren't perfect. I love this town and everything it has to offer.

It is a beautiful town with wonderful people and many churches. Stephenville doesn't have many things to do around town. There are farmers markets, sports games, tennis courts, and any miniature golf course. That's the whole review. Outdoors is shit. Just go do shit. Yeah. Three stars. It is a town, but better than a small town for amenities, grocery stores and restaurants and a four year university.

They're saying the four year you get in the benefits of a city in a small town. So can't be anything better here. Two stars. Not everyone here is nice. That's Texas. We assume that. And the college students tend to be very annoying. Again, we could have saw that from the outside. That's just science, man. Wait a second. College kids are annoying and people in Texas are mean. Hold on a second. My mind is blown. Hold on. This is breaking news. This is too much. I can't take it all in.

I can't take it all in. I can't. Next thing you know, you're going to be telling me lizard alien greys are running the whole universe and government and everything else. This is so big. I'll be just as shocked. Breaking the lid off of it.

One star here. This is a very specific review of an experience this person had. Okay. If you are an expecting parent or have kids, this is one of the worst town to be in. Town, singular, to be in. Worst town. The justice of the county will rip your family apart and not even blink an eye. Sounds like just for fun he's doing it, coming over. Look, there's a pregnant bitch. Let's ruin her life. He starts following her around, wait until she has the kid.

My family and many more were ripped apart because their justice system. The police are not there for the community. They're there for the money. If you have the money, they got your time. If you're not, you're on your own and you lose everything. I do not recommend this town to anyone. I need to know so much more. I need to know a whole lot. It sounds like somebody took your kids away for an unknown reason that

Could possibly be your fault. You're not going into the whole thing at all. Or if they're to be believed, this place is just stealing kids. It's stealing whole families, ripping them apart just for the fun of it. Just to go, ha, ha, ha. Just for giggles. The Joneses can suck my dick. They're all done now. They ain't got kids no more. Man.

People in this town, 20,504. That's a lot. A lot of them are college kids. That's how this works. Oh, okay. Yeah. Where kind of the people live outside. It's bigger properties and that sort of thing. A few more females and males. It's almost 53% female because there's more females in college. That's just the way it is. 25.5 is the median age, which is way under the national average. Yeah.

And that is mostly because more like half the population are kids. It's a little high for a college kid. Yep. It's a little 20. Well, you figure if everybody else is not a college kid. Yeah. So family here, about 39 or 38 percent married because of all the college kids. It drives it down. So there's less divorce. There is more people that are single with children, though, because college kids fuck.

That's good. A lot of times when you're drunk, you forget. You forget a lot of stuff. I forgot a whole bunch of stuff here. Race in this town, 74.7% white, 2.8% black, 0.4% Asian, 20.2% Hispanic here. And the unemployment rate here is about 5.5%, which is a little above the national average at this point.

Median household income, $50,552 a year, well below the almost $70,000 in the rest of the country. Not bad for college kids. Not bad. Well, yeah, that's the thing. And cost of living here is a little lower than everywhere else. Everywhere else, $100,000 is average. Here, it's $82,000.

So not too bad. Median home cost here, $251,700, which is well below the national average at this point. So maybe you have decided, damn it, you want to see a UFO. We have for you, you want to be a cowboy fighting aliens, we have for you the Stephenville, Texas real estate report.

The average two-bedroom rental here goes for $1,070. So that's below the national average. That's pretty good. That's not bad. And I assume there's a lot of rentals because there's a lot of college kids. So they don't usually buy homes in their college town. Why not? They're indebted enough. Right? Why not? Why not add to it? Here's a two-bedroom, one-bath, 1,056-square-foot house. Wow.

From the outside, it looks like it's weathered. It looks like it's like a house that you'd ride up on a horse after being... Hell yeah. Dusty plains. Yeah, you're sweaty and you're like, I hope they have water for the horses there. Like, that's what it looks like. But inside, it's not that bad. It's a little outdated, but it's clean and well-kept. They have a sign that says, Many have eaten here, few have died.

which I think Sarah has that sign too. I'm almost positive of it. That's somewhere in my house as well. It is. Don't worry. It's pretty safe. Not everyone dies from my cooking. That's $150,000 for that. Not bad. It's a tiny little lot too.

Next up, four-bedroom, three-bath, 2,690 square feet. This is on 7.57 acres, so quite a big lot. The house is a hideous new stone house.

You know, stone and stucco, brand new. Not a lot of charm. No charm whatsoever. Big star over the garage because, you know, I want everyone to know that I support the flag. That's all. Everybody here gets their star on their house somewhere. That's it. And inside is just, it's done to be sold. It's HGTV'd.

You know, very plain, that sort of thing. $695,000 for that. Jesus, fuck. But it's seven acres. It's seven and a half acres. It's not bad. Then there's a five-bedroom, three-bath, 2,606-square-foot house, so almost the same size house. This is on 10.5 acres, which is pretty big. But this is the deal here. It has a fucking... There's a rodeo stadium out back there.

Not just a thing. There's bleachers and shit. I mean, you could have, you could hold, you could give a belt buckle away in this place. There's an actual arena. There's an actual rodeo arena, like four, there's like a scoreboard and shit. Like it's, it's not just like to practice on. It's literally to have events. It's not just Jim Bob counting to eight when you get out that chute. We got a man up there pressing buttons. Wild, man. It's wild. So the inside of the house, who gives a shit? There's a rodeo fucking arena. That's crazy. Awesome.

A lot of land, $1,150,000 for that, though. It's a pretty good deal. I guess, if you're into rodeo. I mean, if you want to start a Friday night rodeo. Now we've got the Venn diagram of people who want to have their own rodeo and people who have a million dollars to spend on a house. I don't know where that intersects, but maybe. There's also another circle up there of people who like UFOs. That's a good place for UFO gazing, also. Yeah.

Things to do here, the Moo-La Fest. This is M-O-O-L-A, Moo-La. Cowboys, you got to stop. It's a salute to our community's rich dairy heritage. Everybody just stomachache happening, lots of gas. Yeah, lots of fart shots. We all get together and fart on each other.

and features fun for the whole family at the park here. So what we have is there's a carnival that goes on. There's a Move It, which is the 5K. Move It. Oh, that's not a dance? No. There's also live music by Scott Kirby and the Bellamy Brothers. I guess Bill and his brothers are going to come. Oh, the Bellamy Brothers? Yeah. Hell yeah. Ralph and Bill, they're all going to be there. Yeah.

It's not those. Those are definitely not brothers either. That's a very old white guy. No, no, no. And a black guy from the 90s. Those are very different people. That had fantastic catchphrases. Oh, yeah, yeah. Remember when the world bent to Bill Bellamy's will? Remember that? Oh.

What the hell? What a weird time in America that was. It was like, let's just do whatever Bill Bellamy says. Yeah. Fucking strange world. He's a charming, disarming black man with a great smile. Oh, great smile. He's reasonably funny. Do whatever you want. It's weird. I mean, he could do no wrong for like three years. Did he just say damn like funny? Wasn't that what he did? I don't know. He was just, I don't even remember really.

I just remember. Damn. I remember for three years you couldn't flick three channels without coming across him. I saw it was a three-year period. You couldn't get down the cable fucking shit without it popping up. You're going to find Phil Bellamy. He's there. Whether it's MTV or BET or somewhere, he's going to be on that shit. I think he went to VH1 eventually. Oh, he did. I loved him. Fuck, I loved him so much. He aged out after three years. He had to go there.

We have the next day axe throwing. We have the Texas Farm Bureau Learning Barn. I know I'll be there. Axe throwing has become so popular. So big. It's crazy. The Rodeo Zone Motor Ponies, which is hilarious. I think that's a demolition derby where your car is a pony. Rodeo Zone. Then the next day, more axe throwing, more Rodeo Zone shit. The Mobile Dairy Classroom will be going on.

There's all cows in trailers. They're dragging them around and you can milk them. You go check them out there. They have music by Scott Kirby and then Gary P. Nunn. Don't don't know either. Don't know them. Now, on the Saturday, it says 12 p.m. OK, it starts at 12. The alcohol sales. All right. Then there is a mechanical bull also that'll be there, of course. And Bahram, you Bahram, you mutton busting.

Yeah. Bah Ram U mutton busting is what it's called. Also tethered hot air balloons and a butt sketch artist. I don't know what that is. They draw sketches of your butt as you walk away. I don't get it. And also Scott Kirby is going to come back that night, too. Oh, he's going to get the second set in. And Django Walker and Jerry Jeff Walker tribute band also is going to be there.

And there's also the Cowboy Capital of the World Pro Rodeo that's there as well, where they give out all sorts of spurs and buckles and they're bragging about everything that you have here. Oh, yeah. Crime rate. Call this thing Rodeo, James. Oh, boy. Crime rate in this town, what we are interested in here, property crime just below the national average, just sneaks in under it here. Then violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and, of course, assault. The Mount Rushmore of crime is about half the national average.

That's pretty good. So, yeah, you'd expect property crime to be up near the average because you got college kids. So there's going to be some some pissing outside, some breaking of windows and dumb shit like that. Disorderly conduct. But the violent stuff, though, about half that's pretty safe. Keeping it pretty safe. That said, let's talk about some murder because let's do it. Wow. Do we have a fucked up murder here? OK. Got to give credit where credit is due to Texas Monthly dot com.

who did just a tremendous, really amazing performance.

a long-form piece on this entire case where they got all the facts from everywhere and were by far the most complete source of all information. I mean, the sources are all over the place, but a lot of it comes from this Texas monthly. All the nitty-gritty. It's really good. They did great. Just like the Dirt Bands. Just like it, baby. Now, I'm going to read for you from this article, this couple of paragraphs here, about Stephenville in the 80s. This is when some of this takes place, in the 1980s.

Dairy sprawled across the surrounding countryside. The smell of manure hung in the air some evenings. A fiberglass statue of a dairy cow dubbed Moolah dominated the town square beside the courthouse. They have a giant cow. The county was dry. You couldn't even buy a beer.

Dry County. In the 80s. In the 80s, yeah. There's still dry counties now. Children's activities were defined by 4-H, rodeo, and on Friday evenings in the fall, high school football. You know, my nightmare. All of that shit. You know, Texas. Yeah, that's why I would be like, bah! Come on.

God damn it. Saturday nights, teenagers cruised Washington Street between the Dairy Queens on each side of town. They go from one Dairy Queen to the other. They've got two, though. They've got two, one on each side of town. There's a start and a finish line, Dairy Queen. People who did that together, the kids that would do that, they were known as drag buddies, which has a much different connotation now.

Did they not realize that they were saying that about them? This is my drag buddy. That means you run up and down the drag. We're dressed together. Yeah, exactly.

But this reminds me a lot of Dazed and Confused, which was about Texas in the 70s, and it was the same thing. They just went back and forth from the one drive-in to the other drive-in, back and forth, and driving up and down, seeing who you run into. On Sundays, just about everything was closed. Everyone was in church. If you were a man and drove anything other than a pickup, well, someone might glance at you funny. Outsiders got noticed. Really? That's the town we're in here. So, yeah, unless you're...

Unless you're a college kid, you are expected to have a pickup truck and a cowboy hat and fucking shut the fuck up. Pearl Snapshirt. Hank Williams playing out of the goddamn window and that's that. Yeah. So let's talk about some people. Let's first talk about Susan Jeanette Atkins.

Susan Atkins. Susan Atkins, exactly. That's why I made sure to put the Jeanette in there as well, hoping you'd notice that. Oh, boy. Yeah, she got an unlucky name. She was born in 1957, though, so they had no idea. Oh, she was a tad. Yeah, they had no idea that that was going to ruin her entire fucking identity forever. Her whole teenage years were fucked. When she gets married, she happily changes her name, I'm sure. Yes, absolutely, yeah. Her parents are Joe and Irma Atkins.

She's got a brother named Ronald Joe. So Ronnie Joe in Texas speak there. Oh, boy. She's got a best friend also growing up named Cindy. And they don't become friends until high school when when she's in high school, Susan. And they're both in the clarinet section of the band.

And Cindy's two years older. She's a junior when Susan's a freshman, but they get along so well. And yeah, she says this. Cindy Hayes is her name. She says Susan was the sweetest person God ever breathed life into. We met in band during high school and both played the clarinet.

So they have the same birthday as well, April 6th. Wow. April 6th is their birthday, both of them. So they got along swimmingly despite being two years apart in age, which, you know, that doesn't really matter. Yeah, exactly two years apart. Now Susan, known as pretty quiet and shy.

Shy young lady. She's 5'7", so a taller girl here. She's got brown hair and very happy. She seems like a happy young lady. She graduates in 1975 from Stephenville High. And when she's 18, her life's going to start. She goes into the workforce.

into a real exciting job. And this is, this is what like kids who are like, I don't know if I should go to college, you know, like, well, we didn't say, I don't know if I should go to college. We were like college. That's fucking college said, we don't know if you should do that. I had a guy guidance counselor actually go, you don't want to go to college. Like, so I get it, but she got a real taste of the real world here.

Right out of the gate. Right out of the gate when she gets a job at a sandpaper factory that she's going to hold for years. What is that? That's one of those things where you hear it and you go, fuck, I mean, I guess they have to manufacture sandpaper. It doesn't come out of the ground. But at the same time, you go, I never thought of a whole building made just to make sandpaper. Yeah.

And they make rolls of it. They make pads of it that are cut to certain tools. They get the Velcro now, but it used to be fucking tape. You just peel the 3M tape off the back and stick it. Then you got to peel that shit off.

Yeah, I guess that's somebody's job. I don't even know how you do that. I don't know. I don't know what she does there, but she works for years coming up in the sandpaper factory. That's her gig for, you know, like that was going to be her career. It seemed like for a while here anyway.

So late 1970s, everybody said, too, she's not a rebellious type. She's not that. She's not the one that's going to go out and drinking with her friends, sneaking out of the window when she was a teenager. None of that shit. She goes to church every Sunday. She's pretty shy. She only has a few close friends. She doesn't really date in high school very much. Her friend said with her, it was Thelma and Louise. We could finish each other's sentences. We were best buddies. She's one in a million.

So they said that, you know, Saturday breathed life directly into her directly like CPR style. Yeah, I really got down low fingers on the nose and really pinched the door. It is what it is. She's a great kid. And they said that they used to Saturday night. They'd go cruising in Stephenville. It was called cruising the drag again, which is great. All the kids, she said, just drive from one Dairy Queen to the other and you'd stop at parking lots and wait for people you knew to pull in and talk to.

Again, you know, loiter, you know, loitering, you know, pissing off merchants. You know, that goes, but that's making bill at the water shop. Despise all of us. And this is what people did before cell phones. Yeah. You didn't know. They're doing it again. They're doing it near, near my place. People, the kids are doing it again. Like their crew, the circle K near my home.

If I go there at 10 o'clock at night on a Friday night, there's 10 trucks there with boys in the back and girls all over the place. It's teenage kids. But they're just there to take videos of each other for social media, though. They're not even hanging out anymore. They're like, is this good? What should I do? They're all like social media consultants now. They're not having fun. They're not fucking. They're not doing drugs. Yeah.

I'd pop up there to grab, I don't know, a black and mild or some cigarettes or whatever. And the guy behind the register got fired because he would go out there and swear at him. That's funny. That's fucking funny.

But this is like a dazed and confused thing again, though, because they're stopping because you can't get a hold of anybody. Those kids can be like, hey, are you here? I'll meet you at QT. And you go meet up. Then it was right. You had to sit in the tasty freeze parking lot and wait for a car you recognize to pass by. Hey, there's Johnny. Johnny.

So they're licking on your chocolate depth. Wait, that's it. I wonder where the beer party is tonight. That's what it was. So Susan and Cindy were always doing that together. Um, one of her friends says she was driving the drag one day and she's literally crossing the railroad tracks, meaning Susan is, and she looks down like an album cover. And she said, she sees, this is funny. She looks down in like an album cover. Like they said, that's what she looked like, like in the sun. Um,

And she sees this long-haired guy coming out of the sun like he's on an album cover. So she pulls over. She was in a car, but she saw this guy. Hey, hot man.

And she was like, yes, that's the one, man. And her friend said Susan had a tie, and it was kind of a rough bad boy type. And they were older than her and a very much macho man type. That was her type. A 21-year-old guy. Yeah, that's what she liked. She liked as clean cut as she was. She liked someone that looked like maybe dad wouldn't like him so much type of deal. Yeah.

Hey, everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show and tell you a little bit more about SimpliSafe. Oh, SimpliSafe.com. S-I-M-P-L-I-S-A-F-E.com. That's right. And maybe you felt this. You ever felt a sense of unease when you leave your home? Wondering if everything's going to be okay if you're away. Maybe you'll be out of town for a while. Did I close the garage? Yeah, we have. I do it when we go out of town. Every day. But it wasn't until I had my house broken into and a man destroyed my plumbing that

That I realized security is needed here. Need a security system. Paramount. And SimpliSafe, thankfully, is there to help. And they are amazing. We did. And I'm a research guy. You know that. So I did all the research. And SimpliSafe is the best. And we've loved, both of us, having SimpliSafe protect our homes and our studios for years. We've had it for years now. It's been like six years we've had SimpliSafe. And the security and the service is amazing.

They're great. They're better than you could ever expect for, honestly. Protect your home with 50% off a new SimpliSafe system plus free indoor security camera when you sign up for Fast Protect monitoring. Just visit simplisafe.com slash small. That's simplisafe.com slash small. S-I-M-P-L-I safe.com slash small. There's no safe like SimpliSafe. Now back to the show.

This show, Small Town Murder, is sponsored by BetterHelp. It's the season of fear. Maybe you have some fears. Maybe you're not Halloween-based. Maybe you're not scared of Dracula. You're scared of real-life things like us. Like, we're both terrified of flying, and we have to fly all the time. So things like that can help with therapy. Honestly, you need it. You're going to hold yourself back with that stuff. So if you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try.

We recommend it. It's entirely online. It's designed to be, and it is, very convenient, flexible, and especially, this is the important part, suited to your schedule. There it is. It's great. You just fill out a brief questionnaire. Couldn't be any easier. They match you up with a licensed therapist, and you can switch therapists at any time. No additional charge. No.

They want you to get help. That's what's the important part here. So you should do it. Overcome your fears with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash SmallTownMurder today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, BetterH-E-L-P dot com slash SmallTownMurder. Now back to the show.

Which, I mean, that's just outside of what you're used to. That's why you're like, hey, different, cool. You don't know anybody like that. You don't know what's a leather jacket. Basically, he was like exotic in this town. He's like a long-haired guy with like a leather jacket, no denim, no cowboy hat, no boots, no truck, none of that shit. Piece of shit. He drives a motorcycle, plays the guitar, and has long hair. You know. You know.

What every girl likes. Yeah. That's it. And in the late 70s, too. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, that was pretty cool, like mainstream, whereas everybody else, if you had the Wranglers and the hat, that was just like small town, what your parents like. That's fucking boring to kids. I don't want that. So this is his name is Michael R. Woods. So Mike Woods here.

And Mike, a little bit of background on him. He's born in Indianapolis, Indiana, which will make sense later on why he goes back there. And he moved to El Paso in the second grade with his family. Oh, you poor bastard. Honestly, that's a pretty lateral move from Indianapolis because Indianapolis is fucking awful too. I don't know. Those are... I can't think of... If you got into my head, where would you rather have to live? I'd say pull the fucking trigger because I can't decide. They're both terrible. I mean, at least it's not...

130 fucking degrees in Indianapolis. That's a good point. No, it's minus 15 instead. I'd take it. I don't give a fuck about the weather. Either way, it's flat. Yeah, and there's nothing to do. Hideous. Yeah, it's rough, man. Yeah. So his mother, basically, when they moved to El Paso, it was because of his mother fleeing a marriage.

that she had to get away from. He'll never find me here. Never find me here. Apparently, no one will look here. And apparently that happened a lot. There was a series of these. So, yeah, this was not... Some bad ones. Yep. He said that basically his upbringing was a lot of abuse, a lot of moving around, a lot of shit like that. They were poor, single mother with some kids here. Basically, he said there was always one of his mother's boyfriends was in the mix with...

Always just, you know, living with them or they're living with him or there's something going on. He said about his mother, quote, she was a little hellion about his mom. She liked to party and have kids, which is fucking hilarious. I've never heard those two things put together in one sentence. Yeah, but those are not the same. She likes to party and have kids. Well, I guess she likes to party and get knocked up is what he was mainly saying.

She liked to party and fuck people, and then she was all about keeping it. She loves cream pies, my mom. So he ended up with seven siblings because of this. Holy shit. From a variety of different fathers. My God. So when he was 15, his mother remarried again, and the family moved to Virginia.

And at that point, this is when he started kind of running away for months at a time, Michael. Because it seemed like nobody really noticed if he was there or not anyway. Yeah, what's the difference? Both are probably about the same on the predictable scale. Exactly. Who knows? Yeah, if you're a kid and you can do that. So he's 15. He's doing all that. He learned to play the guitar. He really loved it. Now, keep in mind, this is the mid-70s. He's really, really into Marshall Tucker Band. Fucking yeah. And Skinnered.

Southern rock shit. Allman Brothers and fucking Bad Company shit probably. Put a candle in the window. 38 Special and all that, I'm sure. So yeah, he would do that. He would play on street corners.

And like around, he would go to like Washington or Baltimore or go to cities where he thinks he could play on the corners. This is Jackson Brown. That's it. And basically, whoever he would sleep on couches where he found them. And basically, he was like a homeless guy, but he was like a handsome dude with a guitar. So he'll always find a couch to sleep on or a bed to sleep in, depending on how lucky. That's the difference between homeless and homeless.

sleeping on chicks couches is having a guitar and knowing how to play a few chords and being handsome even if you're just long hair and know how to play the guitar well enough though Billy Joel married Christy Brinkley that's a piano not the guitar but what I'm saying is learn a song I love it scored pretty high guys not doing so well with the ladies learn a fucking song you'll be exponentially more attractive to these young women you have three chords there's a lot of songs you can play with those three chords that's all it is

So when he was about 20, a friend in El Paso was moving to Stephenville and asked him to drive a truck there. So he arrived in Stephenville. Michael does. And the friend needed some more help to do stuff. So Michael stayed on and he was like, maybe I'll just stay here. Sure. He graduated from high school. And yeah, Susan told her friends that she just spotted this guy on the drag. And Michael recalls they met while he was playing pinball in a convenience store.

The one friend says she saw him like an album cover coming out of the sun across the railroad tracks, like the Lost Almond Brother. Yeah. A little different. Yeah. And he says he was playing pinball in a fucking 7-Eleven and she walked.

Way different. It's all personal, James. It's up to interpretation depending on who experienced it. And maybe she saw the sunshine around the pinball machine. You never know. That's how much she liked him. She liked him, though. She thought he was cute. She liked his hair. She's told everybody, my new boyfriend, I like him a lot. He looks just like Bob Seger.

So handsome. Dave, that's not good. It's the 70s, though, when people are like, oh, I want to fuck Bob Seger. Yeah.

Because then by the 80s, he was like old man. You know what I mean? When I grew up, that was like dad rock. And it's great. I love Bob Seger. Fuck, he's a master. He seemed like a guy who'd be hanging out with your dad. You know what I mean? Maybe fixing under the hood of a car. Him and Steve Earle are on a race to see who ages worse. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I think Seger was...

He was like cooler though back in the day. Seeger was like a mainstream rock star. Yeah, because he smoked. And he was like, yeah, he was super fucking cool. He was cool. And yeah, I mean, Steve Earle's awesome too. But those cigarettes ruined his breath. He can't breathe. His breath. I mean, his voice. I don't know about his breath. That made him though. Maybe.

That voice is what made him. That's what made him. But now he can't sing. Oh, well, he shouldn't be singing. He's 75 fucking years old. Good. Everybody out there, you're a great singer. Smoke four packs a day because I don't want to see you on stage when you're 80. I really fucking don't. I don't want to see it. You don't want to see Bob Dylan today? Nope. I don't want to see Bob Dylan ever. I hate Bob Dylan.

I'd watch him. Fuck, I hate Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan, I've never liked Bob Dylan. Really? No, he's fucking terrible. He can't sing. He can't fucking sing. That's it. He rode along the watchtower. I know he did. Great writer. Guess what he can't do? Fucking sing. His song writing, terrific.

Singing can't fucking do it. Him, Neil Young, both of them get in a fucking boat and start rowing out together because you both can't sing for shit. It's inspirational, James. It makes a guy that can't sing feel like he can sing. It's like watching Spud Webb play in the NBA back in the day. You're like, if he can do it at 5'6", maybe I can do it. If I can do it, I can do it. God damn it.

Now, her friends were like, so you want to fuck Bob Seger? They didn't get it. They were like. It's wild. I don't know. Cindy, her friend, said, I thought he was very immature, meaning Mike here. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Susan was already working long hours at a nursing home and he always wanted to have fun, have a good time. You know, like a 19 year old who's free and clear, doesn't have kids like his mom, like his mom, like what it's a party and has kids. Yeah. Fuck it.

Although he doesn't have that many kids, though. That's the thing. I guess the only... Cindy said the only fight Susan and she ever had with each other was over Susan's decision to date this guy. Is that right? She's been shy around guys, doesn't date a lot. She finds someone she likes, and then her friend's like, don't date him. Not that one. Hey, what?

this is who I like. All right. I didn't date anyone out of my way. None of these people are my type. I found someone that's, I'm not going to fucking get mad at you cause you want to fuck a cowboy. Go ahead. Knock yourself out. Also, I stepped out of my comfort zone, chose to talk to somebody. Let me be, let me be a person here. Jesus Christ. So they, when Michael goes to meet Susan's parents and they are like, Oh,

Old timey. Yeah. They're Texas through and through. They expect the boy when they're picking their daughter up to come to the door dressed by sets. And yeah. Oh, yeah. As nice as boots on and shit like that. Michael said, quote, I showed up on her doorstep. It was about 90 degrees outside. I was wearing a pair of cutoffs and sandals and nothing else. He came in cut off sandals to the doors. I'm here for your daughter.

Like rock. Oh, like rock. They were like, I don't know, man.

I was hoping your daughter would accompany me. You know what I mean? I'm here to put some not moves on your daughter, if at all possible. What do you say? And they were like, I don't know about that. Unreal. Her mother opened up the door and was like, what the fuck? He's wearing short shorts and no shirt. And that's what she said. She said her mother opened the door and about fell on the floor. How disgusting. A man walking around with no shirt and short shorts. So right from the beginning, her family didn't care for me one bit.

Incredible. And with the long hair and everything, bad first impression here. Yeah. Bad first impression. Now, Joe, her dad, Susan's dad, Joe Atkins, he said at one time, quote, he had a, I think it was a .357. This is Michael talking about Joe. He had, I think it was a .357. But he showed me the pistol he had in his closet. He said, if you ever hurt my daughter, I'm going to shoot you.

which is not even subtle. He's not cleaning the shotgun going, you kids have fun tonight. Get her home by nine, okay? It wasn't even that. It was, I will shoot you in the face if you hurt my daughter. Here's my gun, just in case. Has the cylinder out just dry firing and running the action? No, it just, see,

See that gun? I'm going to fucking use it on you. That's what he said. Okay. I'm going to go home and put a shirt on and never come back, I think, if that's how this works. I'm going to put five through you. Hang on to the last one. Just see if you twitch. Yeah. Well, I do the Wyatt Earp thing. I keep one chamber empty so it don't go off by accident.

Unbelievable. So Michael has a hard time getting going in this town. People don't like him. They just see him and they don't like him in this town. And it makes sense. I mean, you know. It's a small town. They're going to be a little judgy. That's how it is. Have you ever seen a movie? I mean, it's...

So he says that a few people, he couldn't get people to hire him and or really anybody who had long hair back then. This was still in the 70s. Have you tried putting a shirt on? This is probably shows up in short shorts with one ball hanging out of the side with sandals on going, y'all got any work for me? And they're like, no.

There's nothing here for you. Guys like that, no, we can't do it. Texas in the 70s, long hair was not okay. That was, I mean, you had to have crew cut and a cowboy hat. Yeah, that's what it is. So he also said that he was a musician by nature and a night owl, so he hated nine-to-five jobs anyway, which more sympathetic I could not be. That's my problem, minus the long hair.

and the music. But he said he worked in a hay field at one point. I don't know what you do in a hay, gather hay, I suppose. Bail it? Run wire around what's already bailed? I guess. He worked at Sonic at one point. Yikes. Which is nice. I could see him on roller skates. No shirt, short shorts, roller skates. I got your burger. Flowing behind him. Burger in one hand, shaking the other. Sorry about all the hair in it. It's so much. He shakes his head and

Here you are. He worked at an auto parts factory at one point. A factory? A factory where they made auto parts, not sold auto parts. And for a place that made cattle feeders.

Another factory. I don't know. What was that? Sawing 50-gallon buckets in half? I don't know what that is. Isn't that just a big trough? Yeah. I don't know. So he said, Michael said, I just did whatever I could until they got tired of me or I got tired of them. Yeah. Namelessly wandering paycheck. Turn the page. There it is, brother. Turn the page. All the way to the end. Yeah.

He said, I had a bit of an attitude problem because when people would try to say stuff like, hey, hey, fur face, get over here. Because he had a beard at one point. Oh, he's not a shaver. All right. I would not react well to that. And in Stephenville during that time period, big guys like to push their weight around. And that just didn't work with me. I figured if you're going to push me around, I just pop you in the mouth. I didn't get along real well.

He wasn't going to take this shit. Just because you're Hicks, I'm not going to fucking take your bullshit. Like, I get it. I get it. I understand. Throwing punches for Furface seems a bit out of line, though. I guess. But if the person's trying to get a rise out of you, why let it escalate? Yeah, I guess you got a point. You'd like it to end up here? I'm going to cut out all the middle bullshit and just all the stuff where I go, what are you talking about? Well, you ain't from around here, are you? And all that shit. And I'll just punch you and we'll fight. All right. I could see that. I'm not going to fucking deal with it.

I don't blame him. I almost hit that guy for asking me for directions that one day. Yeah, that was pretty funny. How dare you?

So 1980, Michael is with Susan. They've been together for a couple years. He talks her into coming with him to El Paso, which he must be a hell of a talker because what would it take to convince you to move to El Paso? A lot. A lot. Well, an uncle promised him a job there, and they arrive, and soon after they get there, they get married. They get hitched, man. Oh.

Wow. He said it this way, quote, what she said to me is my parents are going to disown me if, you know, I'm living with a man out of wedlock. So can we get married?

So this is what happens when you tell kids not to live with people at a wedlock. They marry fucking people when they're 20. That's what I used to don't. Don't put constraints on your children because they're going to they're going to fuck that up. Yeah. Don't moral judgments. So Michael said, quote, and I said, well, OK, I can take the day off tomorrow.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Let's just get mine as well, I guess. I mean, if we're going to do it. So they went to a justice of the peace and got married there. Her parents were not happy about this at all, by the way. I can't imagine. She thought like, oh, they'll be happy with this now. We're living together, but we're married. They were like, you did what? What the fuck? His job never panned out. It wasn't there. It didn't exist. So they started pawning their shit, Michael and Susan.

Susan wrote a letter to Cindy and complained that she was subsisting on, and I've never heard of this as an option, bacon bit sandwiches. Bacon bits? Yes. That's exactly. Sandwiches? Like you shake, instead of putting it on a salad, that's what they have, and she makes sandwiches out of it.

Which is very strange. Dry freeze or do you think they're soft ones? I would hope they're the – bacon bits, probably real bacon bits down there. You think so? Yeah, they're not – soy is for, you know, whatever. Yeah, but I mean like are they like half done bacon bits or are they bakos? Because, you know what I mean, like bakos are like dry freeze crisp – are they soy? Yeah, bakos aren't real bacon. They're made of soy.

Oh. Yeah. And they're delicious. You'd never know it, but they're made of fucking soy. But then they have actual bacon bits, which are like little weird wet chunks of bacon that stick together. Yeah, they're wet and soft. It's no good. It's not good. Bacon's are the way to go there. Yeah. For sure. That's soy. No shit. Oh, yeah. I want bacon's now. That sounds fucking good. I want a salad. I want a handful of them. Yeah, I want a handful. Then I want a salad with bacon's on it. They're like fucking...

Pop rocks, but salty ones. That's what they are. Salty, smoky. They melt in your mouth. They're so goddamn good. So good. They make a salad wrap. Oh, we are absolutely going to the store when we're done here. I'm getting the biggest thing. I'm going to eat them like cereal. We're going to be eating handfuls of bacon bits in the car on the way home from the store. Do you know that, right? Just shaking them into my mouth like fucking sunflower seeds. Hey, hit me off. Give me some.

Like when we had that road trip to Austin, we had the Bugles and we were doing that same thing. We'll replace Bugles with Bakos. So Michael hated all of this, basically. Yeah. They ended up having to move back to Stephenville, which he hated. Oh, boy. Didn't want to go there. Yep. Exactly. So Susan wanted to make him happy, but found that.

She didn't want to be anywhere else but Stephenville. That's where she wanted to be. So once at one point they moved to Indianapolis for a minute to be near Michael's brother. But then they came right back. So it just never worked out. Susan's friend Gloria said two or three times they'd get settled in, get a place, get it fixed up, buy their appliances. Then Mike would get itchy feet. We're going. We're going. She'd quit her job.

move away, sell all their stuff, stay a month, starve to death, come back, and they'd start all over again. I've never heard of itchy feet. Itchy feet. That's so funny. He's got itchy feet. In, like, football, a quarterback doing that, it's called happy feet, not itchy feet. He's got itchy feet. And I've heard of cold feet, but not itchy feet. Cold and happy, but never itchy. Very funny. That is definitely a local expression. Only way to scratch them is to keep on walking, James. Yeah.

Well, you'd say like he had like an itch to move, but he had itchy feet is a weird way to put it. I don't think that John Madden says you spray tenactin on that and it stops. Stop acting tenactin will do it. So Michael in Stevensville, I don't blame him for Stephenville. I don't blame him for not liking it here because he is not. No, it's not Stephenville at all. No. And they say in this Texas Monthly article, they say it was, you know, future farmers of America jackets, cowboy hats and crew cuts were common.

He wore a leather jacket, engineer boots. Engineer boots, leather jacket, and tight blue jeans. He's in a Billy Joel song. What are engineer boots? They're like motorcycle boots. Okay. The ones everybody wore in the 50s. Combat boot style. Yeah, exactly. Not Doc Martens. Just a little lower probably. Yeah. Engineer boots, they called them back in the... It's a Billy Joel song. Some caterpillars or some docs. It's from an Italian restaurant. Yeah. We're going to only sing you songs from the 70s today.

He had a brown beard, shoulder-length hair, bit of an attitude, drove a motorcycle, which made him an outcast, got into fistfights with people all the time. He's a sick boy. He's so badass. Didn't have a steady job. Yeah, he sounds like a Bob Seger song. He sounds like a Bob Seger song. If Bob Seger knew he existed, he'd probably just take him on the road with him and go, like that fucking guy. Yeah.

You just follow him around and sing about him. That's it. Just see what he does and sketch it down. So he's going, pinball at the convenience store. We got tonight. Man, I got a tilt. We got tonight. I broke a flipper. I couldn't hit the ball.

So Susan's the breadwinner of the house here because he can't hold a job. He called himself a musician that didn't make money making music. You're not a musician. Cindy, the friend, had a different title for him. She called him a, quote, bum was a different way to put it. She's the breadwinner. He's the bread eater. He's definitely the bread eater. Everybody around town said that he also sold weed.

Now, Michael said he never sold weed, but everybody said he sold weed. Multiple people said, I bought my first weed from that guy.

Yeah. He may not be a weed dealer, but he's certainly selling a little weed. He gets an ounce, he keeps half, and he sells half to pay for it, and then he smokes for free probably. Sure. That's all. I'm not a motorcycle parts salesman, but I've sold some motorcycle parts off my bike. That's what I mean. So they say, this is from that article, quote, many days Michael could be seen lying shirtless in their yard, sometimes lifting barbells, a Harley beside him in the driveway. Yeah.

It's like every prisoner's idea of freedom. He's the boyfriend from fucking Berkovich. What was her name? Yes. Aaron Brockovich. Aaron Brockovich. I was like, not Berkovich.

Yeah, he's every time you want to cut to, you want to show, you want to signify this house is trashy, have a guy in the front yard shirtless lifting weights. You got it. That's it. We understand. The whole house is shitty, but the motorcycle gleams and sparkles. Beautiful. Yeah, this is like... The world is shining. Sounds like a scene out of Hell's Angels by Hunter Thompson. That's really what it does. So...

They said everyone could tell he wasn't there. No one ever saw him at a rodeo or a football game or a church or anything. So he's an outcast. He's a normal guy. Somebody I would rather hang out with. They always would share rental houses with roommates so they could make do. In about 1985, Susan found a bungalow on McNeil Street near downtown Stephenville. They move in there.

This is where Michael would be hanging around the yard, lifting weights with his shirt off there. Doing the dumb shit. This he began getting in fights with neighbors all the time now, which is strange. He had a disagreement with one neighbor and the neighbor accused him of pouring sugar in her gas tank. Yeah, very mature. He also said that the Stephenville police would stop him for no reason all the time.

And all of her friends were like, why don't you just fucking divorce this guy? Yeah, let go. We hate him. The cops hate him. He's pouring sugar and gas. Pouring sugar and gas tanks, lifting weights in the. And I pictured no grass, dead grass, just dirt in the front yard. Oh, it's not. Yeah, he didn't do that in grass. No, he didn't mow first and then lift weights shirtless. Shit, no. So they said, please. And Susan, every day she would come out home from work, she'd make him dinner.

They love to make Cornish game hens, apparently. That was her favorite to make. Really? Yeah. I remember in the 80s, though, there was a lot of Cornish game hens in the grocery store. They were cheap, too. I remember it being a thing that people would say that they were making. In the 80s. It was a total 80s dish. I see them there, and it just looks like so much fucking work. Tiny little frozen chickens now, that's all it is. Tiny bit of nothing. Tiny bit. Tiny, tiny. I'm not making all that for nothing. So?

So at one point here, he told her about his desire to start flipping houses.

That's what he's going to do. He's going to start buying houses and flipping them now. In the 80s? Yeah. He was well ahead of the curve on that one. Susan said, no, all the money we make, I make, and I don't want to invest in houses that I know you're not going to actually fix up. Don't want to do that. So Michael said, well, you're smothering me and you're emasculating me. I'm trying to be a man here and have a business for our future, and you're telling me that you have all the money. This is bullshit. Right.

So then in the summer of 1986, he said, I can't take Texas anymore. And he told a friend said he he more or less gave her an ultimatum, Texas or me.

And she chose Texas. I'll take the Longhorns. I will take this. So Michael goes to Indianapolis. But then they talk on the phone. They send letters back and forth. And he agrees to come back that winter. And this would be they'd give it their last shot.

You know what I mean? They give it their last shot. By February 1987, not quite the end of the winter, it's the end of the relationship. Done. Michael leaves. He's done. He's out. He wants out of here. Now, he left and he took their car when he left, by the way. That's nice of him. Thanks a lot. So now she has a problem getting to work now. He not only took the car, he left behind...

All sorts of weird things in the house. He left behind cassette tape recordings in which he was basically yelling at Susan for a half hour. He just recorded that one of you on a tape and then he left the tape. One of the friends said it was just 30 minutes of what a bitch she was and how it was all her fault.

That he was leaving and that the marriage didn't work. He didn't like scream that into a microphone with her not there. He's saying that to her. No, no, no. Like got a machine recording. He tape recorded that ahead of time left and left the tapes behind for her to listen to about what a bitch she was. Oh, my God. Yeah. He's a chicken shit. That's it. That's her. That's his dear. John is a fucking dear bitch. He wrote a dear bitch letter to her.

Dear bitch, I'm leaving because you're such a bitch. I need to do this in a recording session. Yeah, that's what it was. Maybe he sang it to the tune of Like a Rock. I'm not sure. You're a cunt. You're a bitch. Oh, you're a bitch. Cindy remembers him saying that her parents were horrible and they never gave him a chance. It feels like

People in town might have not given him a chance, but his wife gave him a... They've been together for like nine fucking years. He can't even have a steady job by now, like at some point. And she gave you space as much as half the fucking country. That's what I'm saying, man. And Michael, in addition to the tapes, he also hid handwritten notes saying the exact same things. By the way, you're a bitch. Your parents are assholes. They don't like me. Hidden all over the house. Totally.

Tuck that in the Betsy Crocker. Yeah. Betty Crocker. Not on the kitchen table. Things like in cabinets. Like she'd be like, where's my oatmeal? Oh, yeah. In her coat pockets. So she'd get, you know, months later, put on a coat and take. And what's this in here? Oh, it's a letter from Michael saying I'm a bitch. Yeah. They said she found it for weeks and weeks. She was finding more notes. God damn it.

And Cindy's mother asked her to move into their spare bedroom at their house. Don't live there by yourself. And Susan said, no, no, I'm fine. I'm going to stay here by myself in this house. I can afford it and I like it. So Cindy slept on her couch for a time, her friend Cindy. And Roy, who is Cindy's boyfriend, her husband later, nailed the window shut and lent her a pistol.

In case... Because she's there alone now. So they're like, windows nailed shut, which that's fun on a nice spring night when you want some air. And a pistol. Yeah. Where's my claw hammer? It's on here. It's fucking... I'm going to pry my windows open.

So Susan in 1987, she's 30 years old. She's living alone. She has her birthday's in April. And, you know, she's waiting for the divorce to go through. She's lonely, a little bit sad. And she's 30 trying to put things in order, which is, you know, back then that was a tough thing. She expected to get married and have kids and have a life. And she's lucky they didn't have three kids or anything. No, you know.

So Michael, he leaves Texas for Indiana. He slept in a tent that he pitched outside of a shitty house that his brother bought for little money that they're going to remodel.

So literally he lives outside while they remodel a building. Wow. Yeah. That's what he chose instead of being married and having a house. That's what he chose. He did that. They eventually made this house into four apartments and Michael took one of them. So he got to have himself a place to live. Got out of the tent. Now she is still working at the sandpaper factory. Yeah. Called Norton Industries, which now she's like lonely, just got left in a sandpaper. This sounds like a Dolly Parton movie now. Yeah.

Yeah. Right after 9 to 5, this one came out. So she also doesn't have as many friends as she used to, you know, because she didn't go out as much. She had a husband, and that's what she was doing. He took their car, which was an old yellow Mustang, and he took it.

And she basically worked six days a week after he left so she could afford to buy another car because she didn't have one. So she would on Sundays. That was her only day off. She just do laundry and buy groceries. And, you know, she had a couple of friends she hung out with. And that was about it. And that was her life was really, really small at this point. But she starts getting it together. She did file for divorce. And her friends noticed that after a few months, her attitude started to lighten up a little bit.

Started to get over it. Started to get a little over it. Yeah, she bought a car and she, as we'll talk about, starts hooking up with a bartender, as we'll get to that a little bit later. Roy, Cindy's boyfriend and future husband, said she was kind of like what you'd read in a book, a person who has turned a chapter. She was the happiest I've seen her in a long time. This was good here.

Hey, everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you a little bit more about Rocket Money. And I have experienced the glory of Rocket Money by having a subscription that I paid for for multiple years.

And I was very upset about be taken off. I was not happy with this at all, having to pay this. And Rocket Money finally helped me out here. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so that you can grow the savings. It's great. Right.

Right. Rocket Money will even try to negotiate lower bills for you by up to 20%. All you have to do is submit a picture of your bill and Rocket Money takes care of the rest. They'll deal with customer service for you. They're going to wait on hold. They're going to talk to people. They're going to ask for a manager. They're going to do all that stuff for you. Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when they're using all of the app's features.

Stop wasting money on things you don't use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash smalltownmurder. That's rocketmoney.com slash smalltownmurder, rocketmoney.com slash smalltownmurder. Now back to the show.

Hey, everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you a little bit more about our friends at Quince. Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com. Absolutely. We're excited. New season coming up. We're going to have fall and winter and trade in these short sleeves. Yeah. Pop on some nice sweater. Get you some flannel. Yeah. That's right. Get me some cashmere maybe. Maybe I'll step it up and upgrade. Maybe a nice leather jacket. Something like that. But I'm going to get it from Quince. That I do know. Because Quince offers...

Yeah.

I'm looking in the leather jacket range now. Get some warm stuff. Get some fall stuff. And I'm going to be on Quince and I'm going to hit it up. And I'll tell you that right now. And you can do it too. Upgrade your wardrobe with pieces made to last with Quince. Go to quince.com slash smalltownmurder for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

That's 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.

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.

Angie, yes, they've helped over 150 million homeowners care for their homes. Whenever the project, big, small, indoor, outdoor, come to Angie, you understand, we both own homes and projects are difficult. And they pile up. They pile up and Angie makes tackling the project simple from start to finish. Get started on the app or you can go to Angie.com. That is A-N-G-I dot com. Get your job done well with Angie today. And now back to the show.

show. One night in July on a Friday night, Roy and Cindy took Susan to a carnival and afterwards they went to a Dairy Queen and ordered hot fudge sundaes. It's just what you do there. That Dairy Queen must be just heaving with business in this place. Whoever owns that is the biggest house in town. It's the Dairy Queen, everyone. Look at her castle. When they were done, Susan got a second hot fudge sundae.

She's sad. Dude, have you ever gone to Stairy Queen, ate a whole hot fudge sundae and said, so nice, I like it twice, one more time? Never. Run it back. Let's go. Point to the empty containers and go, do this again. Keep them coming. Keep them coming.

Cindy said she... I did do that with peanut buster parfaits. Remember those? Those things were fucking amazing. This is a hot fudge sundae with peanuts in it. It was fucking great. But it was so good. Well, because they put chocolate, too, like layered into it. It was on the bottom, in the middle, and then on the top, and the peanuts were layered, and so you dig through it all. It wasn't just like a top with the stuff and then a big thing of ice cream. Right, it wasn't just topping. It was like a blizzard without blending it. It was so good. I loved a peanut buster parfait there.

So her friend said, Cindy, though, she said never once seen her do that before. She said she was doing it not because she was sad, because she was happy. She was having a good time. Celebrating. Yeah. She said she was happy-go-lucky that night, just having fun. So July 28th comes around. This is about a week after she goes out on the town and has her big Dairy Queen outing here. Yeah, yeah. July 28th, 1987. Yeah.

She, by the way, never calls into work. She's never sick. She doesn't come in reliable as fuck. She's worked at the same sandpaper factory for 10 years now. So she's super reliable. She doesn't show up to work for two straight days without calling two days to no call, no shows in a row.

And her boss after the first day was like, we'll see how tomorrow goes. That's what is such a, that's how good of an employee she was after the first day. They weren't like, where the fuck is Susan? They were like, she must've had, there must be something crazy going on. We'll find out tomorrow when she shows up. And then she didn't. So her fellow employees, because it's a small town, they all know her parents and stuff. So they call up her parents and say, Hey, your daughter didn't show up for a couple of days. Is everything okay? You know, is she like sick or something? Um,

So her father said, I haven't heard anything about her being sick or anything like that. So he went to check on her. He goes to the house and he said that he, Joe Atkins, the dad said he immediately knew something was wrong. And he drove to the house that she rented and the house was dark. He said, you know, it was nighttime when he showed up. It was dark out. There was just no, no sounds, no nothing on the porch. He found the door was unlocked.

And she's like, why would she leave her door unlocked? She has her windows nailed shut and has a pistol. Why would she leave her door unlocked? Seems like, you know, I'll try the door first probably if I'm an intruder, you know? So he ends up heading through everything, the house, looking for her, not in the kitchen, not in the living room. Ends up going into a bathroom and is near the rear bedroom. He finds her in the bathroom. She is...

leaning over the side of the tub with her head in the water. Oh, water is in the tub. Water is gross looking, dark colored, not looking good. And she is with her head in the water. Clearly not breathing. He called the, he ran out to the living room, dad. And this is not how you want to, dad's the last person you want to find this, you know, dad or mom. Yeah. So he calls the police from the living room, runs out in the yard and waits for them to drive up.

Sergeant pulls up here about nine o'clock and he hadn't been told anything about it. He just told there's a go there. There's a dead body. So he went there and he was surprised to see Joe because he knows Joe because everyone fucking knows everyone in this town. And he does. He said he knew him as a volunteer at the municipal golf course. So he said, I said, Joe, what are you doing here? And Joe said, Donnie, they killed her. And he said, killed who, Joe? And he said, they killed my daughter.

And he said that it looked like Joe was in shock, basically. He was just wandering back and forth. So they huddled and said a prayer.

The two of them? Yes. How about, okay, I'm busy. Go look, doggy. What are you doing? I have a job to do. Prayers are later. Yeah. We don't do prayers in the middle of a crime scene, okay? That's not part of this. And it's nothing against prayers. It's just prayers, eating Skittles, doing anything that's not figuring out crime scene and death stuff is out of the fucking question at this point. But he knows the guy and he's trying to

comfort him basically so that's nice and then he urges joe to go home he said go home there's nothing you can do get out of here yeah go home he said you got to go tell your family about this because there's no cell phones yeah go break the news go break the news to your family cindy comes by susan's best friend really happened to drive up with roy her boyfriend there and neighbors said they could hear her screaming two blocks away that susan yeah

So inside the house, officers are inside taking photos of everything, trying to figure this out. Susan has been this is horrible, too. She's been raped and sodomized. Good Lord. And they said there's a very, you know, a very nasty looking red line across her throat that looks like somebody tried to strangle her.

And there is like a tank top in the mix, too. It looks like maybe that's that's it's down around her hand. So they're wondering about that. So they examine her bedroom where there appears to have been a struggle.

There's shit everywhere. The covers are thrown over here. Pillows are over there. It looks like either an eight-year-old started jumping on the bed or people were struggling. They said the mattress was off center. It had been moved. Wow. That's a big struggle. Yeah. They said a white electrical cord, perhaps used in a strangulation attempt, laid across the bed, plug end on the floor. So somebody tried to get her there, maybe couldn't get her. She was still fighting because that's what people don't realize too. When they go to strangle somebody, they don't realize it takes a really fucking long time.

It takes way too long. People struggle while you're doing it. They generally don't want to be strangled to death. That's kind of the point, yeah. It's not an easy way to do it at all. Because you don't get a cord around their neck and then they pass out and wait to be strangled. Yeah, they go, ah, and they just pass out. Because that's what I feel like people think. Yeah. They think, oh, just 10 seconds of strangling and they'll just die. And it's like, no, no, no, that takes me.

Sometimes five, yeah. And they're going to be fighting the whole fucking time. And they said robbery is not a motive in the killing because there's not a thing missing from the fucking house. All our shit's still here. All our shit's still there. They find something very disturbing here. It was a pillowcase stained with mascara. As the detective studied it, he realized he could see the outlines of the face on it.

And they say you can see. Like the Shroud of Turkin or whatever it is. Yeah, Turin, yes. Turkin. Turkin. The Shroud of the Turducken. Also, but this is real is the other thing. Yeah, that's so crazy. It's not a sham. Well, it's a sham. They did carbon dating on it from like the 1400s. It's not real. But he can see her face in it. But he could see her face. Or somebody's face.

He said, I could see where her eyes had been for years. I mean, all I could see was that eerie mascara. That's creepy. It's really creepy. They sent the body to the Southwest Institute of Forensic Science in Dallas for an autopsy, which in the 80s is basically a bunch of guys with magnifying glasses looking at her. They don't know what the fuck they're doing. There's no hell they're going to do.

DNA is in its infancy infancy at this point. This is just when they're starting. Just figuring it out at this point in the mid 80s. So in the bathroom, they find two good sense sets of fingerprints and palm prints. Terrific. Which is great. And they're like on there's palm print on either side of her. Like, oh, that's not her. No. So it was like they were holding her and they were, you know, obviously.

So the problem is, though, DNA analysis is years away and fingerprint databases were not yet available in Texas. So they have fingerprints. So unless they have a person to compare it against, they have nothing. They have no system to run it through.

So they had a bunch of physical evidence, but all they could do is wait for a suspect to compare prints with. And that's it. They knocked on doors all the way up and down the street. No one had seen anything weird going on. So they didn't know what to do. The next day, by the way, in the Abilene Reporter News, the obituary for her says that she was found dead, probably murdered. That's what it says. I don't think that's a suicide.

Wow. I mean, Jesus Christ. Big accident. Yeah, a little bit of a big accident there. So the investigation, the next day at the police department, a lieutenant named Ken Maltby, he says that no other detectives are going to be working on this case. It's mine. I'm taking it alone. This is me against this murderer. That's it. I'm not letting everybody fuck this up. So all the other cops were like...

Like, why? Why is that? Like, why? This seems like you'd want all hands on deck for this shit. Not one guy. Maybe two heads are better than one. But one of his detectives said, quote, he wanted to be a hero. That was it. He wanted to be the guy that did it all.

Now, they asked the parents, do you know anything? Anyone who hated your daughter had an end for your daughter. It had to be wasn't robbery. So something had to be going on. Joe Atkins. Immediately, the father said, I have three suspects that I can think of. Michael, Michael and Michael.

Oh, all of them are him. All of them are him, basically. Michael, a guy that plays guitar and a guy that has long hair. And a guy that rides a motorcycle. And also, I would talk to Bob Seger. Just a hunch. I'm not saying that's possible, but it's possible. Holler at Bob Seger and all the rest are Michael. So everybody said, agreed. Everyone's like, yeah, it's fucking Michael, obviously. No one else in this town would do this. He's the long hair. It's obviously him.

Yeah. All these notes in the couch are fucked up. Yeah. And you're a bitch on tape and all this shit. So cops, he's in Indiana. So one day he said he was standing outside when a couple of Indianapolis state Indianapolis police officers drove up and to talk to him in Indiana. He and his brother had been arguing with neighbors about a parking situation. Always arguing with neighbors. This guy.

And Michael agreed to go to the station house, believing that it was to deal with another complaint about the neighbors. Yeah. They said, will you come with us? We got to talk to you. And he was like, yeah, I'll fucking. Yeah, I'm getting. Yeah. I'm going to tell him everything about these. Once there, though, they start asking about Texas. And he's like, well, you ask me this shit for what's going on here and about Susan and whether he had gone back to Texas and just got back.

So Michael said just off the wall questions that didn't make any sense to me. And they then they stopped and said, well, you're lying. We know you killed her. She's dead and you killed her. He said that's how he learned of her death. He said he didn't even know she was dead. He said he ran to the bathroom and threw up when he heard that.

When he got back, Michael says, quote, they just said, well, you did it. We know you did it. We'll get you a mental hospital if you'll just admit it. Basically, we'll just admit it. We'll say you're crazy. And I'm like, dudes, I have nothing to do with this. Dudes, don't call multiple homicide detectives dudes while they're interrogating you about killing your ex-wife. That's a crazy thing to do.

They then asked him to sign a statement. They typed it up and said, sign it, saying you did it. And he said no. And then he demanded a lawyer. And then they let him go because he demanded a lawyer and they don't have any proof of anything. So the cops are all over him, though. He said within right after that, within the next few days, he said the harassment started. He said cops started acting in Indianapolis the way they had been acting in Stephenville just before.

pull over and talk to me for no reason. I got arrested a couple times for being drunk in public when I hadn't been drinking. They just let me go in the morning and say, oh, no, you're fine. There's no court. There's nothing. They just arrest me and throw me in the cell with a bunch of rough dudes and let me out the next morning. What the hell? Fucking with them. Yeah. Open a little crack here. So Maltby, the lieutenant, the guy who says it's all me, babe, he goes to he's going to visit Indiana, too.

And Mike says, Michael says he remembers these two officers coming. It was Ken Malby and a Texas Ranger he brought with him. Oh, man. Just for the uniform, I guess. Yeah. He said Michael was standing in his yard. He said, so they pulled up and told me, get in the car. We're going to the airport.

And he was like, huh? And Michael said he began carrying a gun because he feared this type of thing. He said when he declined to get in the car, they insisted. He claims he pulled his shirt up to show him the .357 jammed in his belt. And quote, I said, nope, we can have a gun battle right here. Go for it. Quote, see if you clear leather. Michael.

Jesus, Denny said that's an old Texas term. Yes. We know. Fucking Wyatt Earp said that maybe. What are you talking about? Why don't you tell him to skin the smoke wagon, Mike? Skin that smoke wagon. Yeah, what the fuck are you doing? Oh, that's fucking hilarious, but that's what he says. Where you going with that shot, guy? Madcap. Madcap. That's fucking amazing.

Wow. So that's what he says. He says, that's what he said. And they went away. They were like, I mean, we can't see if you draw leather. See if you clear leather. Clearing leather is the name of this episode. That's incredible. So he was then wary. He said he was wary of Stevensville police and Texas police in general. But he said this incident cemented it and they didn't have any. They couldn't compel him to fly to Texas.

Right. That's a really fucked up thing to do. Just like pull up in front of somebody and say, get in the plane with us. Why would I? That's what a lot of people because most people will say, OK, they don't know. They don't know. That's what I mean. They don't know. I win. I win. Or they just don't know. They're not allowed to say no. You know, he might know that he can say no here. He said that this incident was really cemented the whole thing. His lawyer told him not to cooperate at all.

As the lawyer said, they're trying to railroad you. Don't cooperate. Even to the point that Michael withheld potentially exculpatory information because he wouldn't cooperate at all. I don't want to talk –

At all. Yeah, even if he had an alibi, he wouldn't give it to him. So he eventually gets together, Michael does, a dozen statements from people who swore in affidavits that they'd seen him in Indianapolis at or around the time Susan was killed, at least that day. That's not good to them. No, the lawyer advised him to keep these from police, though. Do not give them to police because he said if you give them to them, the cops are going to try to undermine all of these accounts and try to get these people to say they're lying, and that'll fuck you.

So the case progresses here. Maltby is investigating for the next couple months with very little progress, getting nothing. In October, we'll talk about here, he steps aside.

Maltby steps aside to take control of the narcotics unit. Oh, for a different job. For a different job, yeah. So there's another guy, Hensley. He said he's another detective. He was going to take on the investigation in his spare time. And he said the weird thing was he tried to look over what the guy had. There was no written reports. The guy didn't do anything. He just went and talked to people. He didn't write anything down. You're supposed to have...

Like if you look at like a murder trial, they have what's called a murder book. And it's everything that has to do with the trial in one book. Anything that has to do with the case. Statements. You can't have the whole case up here and just have it in your noggin. Like that's not good for courts. No.

That's a small town cop that's not used to dealing with shit like this. And that's exactly what it is. So Hensley said he remembered, quote, I looked, but I couldn't find no damn notes. I didn't know what people had said to him. So he has no witness statements. He has nothing. Now, is this Hensley any more fucking competent? Let's find out. Here we go. Because this guy won't be wasted a couple of months jerking off.

So this guy's trying to revive the case. He said that Susan's remains were badly decomposed because she'd been in a tub for two days. Her upper body appeared to have spent two days in bath water. They said it was still unclear whether she'd been smothered, strangled, or drowned. They still couldn't even tell that yet. Oh, my God. So Hensley said there were basically two possible scenarios is what he said. Susan either was killed by a stranger or by someone she knew, which...

No shit. Really? That was a quote he said. It's either a stranger or someone she knew. Really? That's just good police work. Wow. I mean, you want to break it down to its most simplistic form. That's it right there. So he said there was no sign of forced entry, which made him think that it was the latter. It was someone she knew. So Hensley studied the crime scene photos and he suspected that Susan had known her killer.

The biggest thing about this is the living room table is the one. There's an open can of Coke and an ashtray containing six cigarette butts. Oh, God, that's a fucking goldmine today. That is all you need today. That's it. We got it.

Now, Susan is not. She smokes once in a while if she goes out with her friends and drinks, but she doesn't sit in her living room and smoke six cigarettes. Not happening. And she didn't drink Coke because she didn't drink caffeine either. Oh, my God. So, yeah, they said one friend said she drank nothing but water. That's all she drank. So the table suggested she'd hosted somebody who was there long enough to have a Coke and six cigarettes, which is a lot. It's a long time.

So they started reinterviewing her friends and family, and he realized that not a lot of people would have been invited into her house by talking to her friends and family. Like, who was she hanging out with? They were like, you know, Cindy was like, me? My boyfriend? Like, hardly anybody. So the father, Joe Atkins, doesn't understand why they're even bothering with all this shit when Mike is right there in Indianapolis. Go get him.

Transcriptions of several of Hensley's interviews here. In every one, Hensley asked who could have done this because he asked all our friends, our family, everybody. And in every single case, everybody says Michael Woods did it. It's Michael Woods. That's who did it. So Hensley said everything keeps going back to Michael Woods. And every time I talked to Joe, it was just, no, Michael did it. Go get Michael. So Hensley wants Mike's prints.

Yeah. Let's get this over with. So they could not get his fingerprints. He tried. Yeah. He said that, um,

They tried, but they didn't get it. Court records confirm that Michael said he had no problem handing them over, but he wouldn't come to Texas. He'll do it in Indiana. But I'm not coming to Texas. He's afraid what's going to happen to him. He said, this is what Michael said, they insisted it be done in Texas where the cops have full reign. I felt like if I went to Texas, I'd for sure get shot and the police would claim it was an escape attempt.

Oh, not a bad, yeah. He doesn't trust him. But Hensley needs the prints and he's got no other suspects so he's like, we at least gotta compare them. We have to. That's when another thing

Thing pops up and that is the bartender that she was seeing. He said, let me let me know how much he was. She was actually seeing him. And his name is J.C. Bowman. OK, or Bowman. According to the notes, a friend from work named Deborah Hardy told the cop of a troubling call from Susan a few weeks before her death. And Debbie said she was real upset. She said, Debbie, I've got to talk to somebody. And I went down there and she was crying.

She had some dark marks on her neck, hickey-looking marks, and she said she didn't know how or why she let it happen, and she was afraid of what everyone else would think.

She's 30 years old. Who cares if you have a hickey? But she's so I don't want everyone to think I'm like, you know, making out out of wedlock. It's so sad. So Susan wouldn't say much more, wouldn't even say who had done it to her. She was just scared. She had these on her neck. So her friend Cindy, though, said the hickeys were the work of a bartender in Granbury named J.C. Bauman, who she'd seen a few times. It's always a dirt bag.

It's always the bartender. Yeah. Cindy said, I said, what happened? And she said, JC had got a little fresh and a little carried away. Now, JC recalls meeting Susan. And he said, I was bartending at Norfolk and Granbury. This cute little lady came in one night. Cute little lady. And she's wearing this shirt. Einstein sticking his tongue out.

And I had the poster of that at the time and she was wearing this. And I said, I like that shirt. And that's how we broke the ice. And the next time she came in, she gave me that shirt.

She brought him her shirt. Here you go. Yep. And this wasn't like they weren't planning on getting married. This was just ports in a storm. You know what I mean? They're both lonely people. Put some hickeys on me. Let's call it a night. Yeah. And he would start coming by her house at night and all that. Yep. He says, J.C. says, neither of us wanted a serious relationship. We just wanted friends with privileges.

She would call me when she was in the mood to have company. We'd sit there and watch a movie and snuggle and all of that. We both liked Tarzan. They watched old black and white movies. Yeah. We both liked Tarzan, original Johnny Weissmiller one, Tarzan movies. I drank my Coca-Colas and she'd drink a beer. The police learned that J.C. from him had made one of the visits to Susan's house just days before she was murdered. Uh-huh. He says, that's what he says...

He says, quote, She and I had taken a bath in the bathtub together. My fingerprints were all over the place and they were already on file for possession of marijuana. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I had no alibi for where I was that night. I was at home alone watching TV by myself.

That's the night of the murder. Yeah. Yeah. So this Hensley drives over to see JC who said, yes, we had an affair. And, you know, I met Susan with some work friends and, you know, they had that night that a few nights before the murder that he had cuddled with her on the couch. And, you know, they had had sex. They only had sex the one time, he said, which doesn't make sense because they took baths together. So, OK, yeah.

So the lead detective brings him in for a lie detector test and fingerprints because they didn't have the other town's fingerprints on this file. Okay.

So they said, can you remember precisely what she was doing on Sunday, July 26th? And he said, no, I sure can't, not to lie to you. The guy said, I realize you're a suspect and you're going to be a suspect. Can I resolve the fact that you're not a suspect is what they asked him. Yeah. How do you do that? He said that he, you know, I don't know. How do I do that? How do I figure out how to not be a suspect? And the cop said, well, that's between you and your God. That's why I don't want to be there.

I don't want to be this. So Susan had ended it after the hickey affair, apparently. Hensley said J.C. seemed like a decent guy. He passed the polygraph test, too. And his prints didn't match any found at the house. Well, J.C.'s God's a loving, kind and loving God. On and off. Yep, there you go. So then...

Then neighbors, they start saying that that night I did see a large guy in the neighborhood, maybe near Susan's house that I didn't really see very often. It was in a red pickup truck. And they said a guy, a large frame man, probably at nine or 10 or 11 o'clock at night was seen leaving near her house and got in a truck and took off. Hmm.

So they said based on the description and the vehicle description, they found the guy they thought it was. And that's Roy Hayes, Cindy's boyfriend. Oh, yes. So Roy Hayes here, he said it was a hunch, but it made sense. He described Roy as a big, gentle young man who would help Susan around the house, gave her a gun, nailed her window shut and all that kind of shit. His fingerprints are all over the fucking house. Oh, yeah. Which, yeah, makes sense. He's very tough.

Susan was by herself there, you know, all this, and she would fear for her safety. And so he would, they'd come hang out and all that. He said, my fingerprints were all over the house because I'd nailed all the windows shut. So, I mean, that's pretty much a given. And they said, you know, what was your relationship like? And he says, I knew her. I, you know, I sat down there, I've drank a couple of beers with her. Um, you know, that sort of thing, but I don't, you know, whatever they said, you don't think she'd be comfortable sitting on a couch with you.

And they asked him and he said, I guess. I don't know. I fucking never thought about it that way. Real weird questions. They said, did you did she drink? You drank Coke. And he said, yes, I drink Coke. And they said she definitely wouldn't have drank Coke. So they're like, OK, we got a Coke drinker. Yeah.

And the thing is, talking to them a little more, they figured out Roy played Dungeons and Dragons. Is that right? Shot him right to the top of the list of suspects now. Is that right? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's right. Hensley said it's a game where you have a bunch of characters, elves and mystics and things. And in a Bible, fear in a place like Stephenville, it did in the Bible Belt, fear in a place like Stephenville, it did bear a whiff of the satanic. That's what they thought. For heaven's sake.

Yep. So Hensley interviewed him, didn't find anything suspicious, but said, let's go ahead and polygraph you. Not a fan of that D&D shit. Not a fan of that stuff. So they administer the test at the Texas Rangers office in Waco. And Roy says, Donnie meets me right at the door. And as I come out, he says, Roy, you failed. You might as well confess. Oh. And I'm like, there's no way I didn't have nothing to do with this.

And he said, Hensley said, there is no way this is wrong. You did it. And then the polygraph technician came out and said, you passed. And he was like, what the fuck? And then they cleared him. That was it. Royce cleared because he passed the polygraph.

Back to Mike now. This is some weird police work, man. It's terrible police work. It's fucking awful small town police work. It's terrible. It's just intimidation trying to get a confession. That's all it is. That's all they have. They can't find it. It's crazy. So by Christmas, now five months later, Hensley sees that he's getting fucking nowhere. And everyone said, why are you doing this? Just go arrest Mike. It'll work itself out.

So April 1988, he found himself in Indianapolis in an unmarked police surveillance van watching Michael's house through a fucking through a periscope popping out of the top of the vehicle like Cheech and Chong up in smoke, literally. And shoot the moon. Somebody might as well be yelling. And he watched one day as Michael and his brother and sister began laying out items for what appeared to be a yard sale. They stared in this van for days on end watching this guy.

Now, Susan's family had made a big deal of the fact that Michael had not only taken the yellow Mustang, but also a fur coat and a series of crystal figurines that they said belonged to Susan. Now, Hensley saw some of the figurines on the table, Mike putting them out for sale. So he said, if I can arrest him for the theft of the figurines, I can get his fingerprints. Okay.

Or you could have just followed him around, waited for him to discard literally anything and then grab it and take it to the fucking station. You idiot. So instead they did all of this and they had a search warrant drawn up and then a crew of Indianapolis police officers and Henley raided their house.

Michael says they tore it apart and took everything I owned with the exception of my guitars and the clothes on my back. They took my cassette tapes. They took my underwear. They took my clothing. They took everything that was mine. Then they found after their exhaustive search a marijuana roach in my sister-in-law's purse. So they arrested me and my brother for that roach, put us in jail and let us out the next day. Never went to court on it. And no charges were ever filed on any of this shit.

Write a song about it, man. That sounds like a hit to me. Tell Bob Seger about it. Putting out figurines for a yard sale. Sounds like some Hollywood nights, man. That's no shit. So they did get the Prince, though.

And on the flight back to Texas, he was like, fuck yeah, got the prints. It's all going to come together. He starts drawing up the extradition request on the flight back to Texas. Really? Because he's like, now I got the proof. So then he gets back to Texas. Fucking let's get those prints together, baby. Extradition fucking thing ready. And...

He said, quote, this is Hensley, they didn't match. No. Fucking didn't match, he said. It's not the guy, man. Not the guy. Wow. So Hensley doesn't know what to do with himself. Yeah. He said in his bones. He owes a man a flight back to India is what he's got to do. Well, no, no, he's back there still. He's still in India. Okay, all right. He just got the prints from him. Oh, so he just got the prints and took them back to compare them. Didn't take the guy with him. No, he couldn't yet. He didn't have an extradition order, so.

He said he felt it in his bones that Michael is guilty. Yeah. Fingerprints be damned. He said everyone knew that. He said, but there's no way to tie him to the crime. He's got a spare set of hands. That's what he's got. He used his feet. So Hensley attends an FBI profiler's class to try to figure this out. Yeah. After another attendee asked if he had considered the idea of autoeroticism.

They said, did you ever consider auto-eroticism? Maybe she did it to herself? Are you fucking kidding me? Women strangle themselves and put their heads in the tub while they diddle themselves. That happens. Don't you know that, Jimmy? What an asshole said it. I want to punch him. Well, they said even if it wasn't by herself, maybe she had died during some kind of sex game and it was an accident. So Hensley looked into it, but then he dismissed the notion as far-fetched because it's fucking ridiculous. That's crazy.

Yeah, he mentioned this to his superior and the superior officer said, listen, why don't we just use this as a theory to close the case?

He said, why don't we just say that's what happened? She died accidentally. That way the case is closed and we don't look like assholes. You understand, mom and dad, your daughter was into some kinky shit. Let me explain what happened. Yeah. So Hensley said he tried to go after the cop for saying that he tried to go after his boss. He said, if another officer hadn't stopped me in the hallway, I'd have killed the guy.

And soon after that, he's reassigned to patrol duty. Because, you know, attempting to physically assault your boss usually will get you reassigned. So you get out there and write some tickets. Yep.

1989 comes around. Oh, my God. The Atkinsons now, Susan had a life insurance policy and Michael was due the death benefit of $11,000 from that policy. Boy, oh, boy. So the family sued Michael claiming he was responsible for her death and doesn't deserve the life insurance. Okay.

Okay, now it's a civil hearing, and they said that also they are trying to compel Michael to give samples of blood and saliva for DNA testing.

Because at the time of her death, DNA testing wasn't available. And they said the action had been filed by the parents to force Woods to court to testify of his whereabouts at the time of the daughter's death. Basically what they did with OJ, get him in a deposition where he's under oath. So they did that. They have the hearing. It's apparently that he wouldn't come here for it. He would not come to Texas for this hearing. So the judge, because he's not there, awards the family $11,000. Oh.

But then also gives them a judgment of $700,000 that Michael now owes them. What? For like a wrongful death lawsuit. What the fuck? Based on we know he did it.

I can't believe this. The court order also ordered him to undergo DNA testing by November 27th to determine if the DNA was correct. But he basically his lawyer said, as long as you don't come to Texas, they can't do shit to you. This is Texas. So stay there.

They talked to Michael, and he, at this point, just sank into a depression. I can't imagine. He said it was paranoia. He said every day he thought this would be the day that the Texas cops were going to kick his door in and drag him away, kicking and screaming. He said that he never even thought they were going to get divorced. He said when this all happened, he still loved Susan, and he felt certain that she still loved him. He said, at the time, I thought she'll probably date a couple cowboys and then remember why she loves me. So I thought we were going to end up back together. Yeah.

Now, the case goes cold, obviously, clearly. And he owes them $700,000 in 1989 money. That's crazy. That's ridiculous. I can't wrap my head around that. That poor fuck. He's fucked. And they're basically not, no one's even pursuing the case anymore. It's just a cold case. And Hensley, the guy who was originally, worked at Second there, said that this thing haunted me for years.

He ended up resigning from the Stephenville force in 1993 and went to work for an arm of the United Nations. And at one point he was helping investigate atrocities after the war in Kosovo. Oh my God. And he said, Kosovo didn't haunt me. Susan did. I mean, I'm sorry, but every time I talked to Joe Atkins, my heart broke and I'm a tough old cop. I mean, I thought I was Kosovo. Doesn't bother me. This shit does. People being exploded. Doesn't bother me, but yeah,

Now, everybody keeps on saying and Joe Atkins will tell anybody in town that will listen and the cops and everybody else. Fucking Mike did this. Cindy and Roy. It's all Mike. Yeah, that's it. They said it was just an article of faith for years. Michael Woods was a murderer and the police department somehow let him go. That's what Hensley said. So Michael, while he's in Indianapolis, he's tried. He installs burglar alarms for a while. He took a few colleges, college courses at a technical college.

Dropped out, wasn't into it. He said that he wanted to be a musician. That's what he wanted to be. It's in his blood, man. It's in my blood. So his lawyer said, yeah, but if you travel outside Indiana, your arrest risk is going to go way up. And so he and his brother would do local gigs, small clubs and private parties and all that. They would bill themselves as the Hamilton Brothers.

named for their birth father. Both of them, they shared a father and they'd split the $35 they'd make for each gig. That was their, their, which is, which is funny because that was in the nineties. And, um, when we were opening in clubs 10 years ago, uh, they only paid us $50 to do it. So fuck you comedy clubs. So he's doing pretty good. It's doing great. So the paper then ran an article about the case in Indianapolis, uh,

And he said, fuck, it followed me here. He then said, I had people come to the stage and say, aren't you the guy that killed his wife in Texas? Oh, God. Kind of puts a damper on the rest of your evening when they do that.

And he said he went into a full-blown depression. He said, Yeah.

They said that I had an identity crisis and needed to learn how to be without my wife, which at the time I wasn't me without her because I always figured we'd get back together. Then he started figuring they're going to come and get me and blame me for this. I'm going to end up going to prison. I better get ready for this.

He said, I'm a small guy, so I started working out like a madman. Oh. So he'd be strong in prison to fight people. I thought he was going to start gaping. Yeah, no, no. It's like I had to get my asshole stretched out. I got to get big. I started putting like a three liter bottle of Pepsi up there. Like I figured if I could do that, nothing could hurt me, right? Road cone. Every day I'd go about a quarter inch deeper. Yeah.

So Susan's birthday would come every April and he would get sadder and sadder, he said. And then the anniversary of July would come around and he'd be upset. He worked construction and ended up being a carpenter. He dated some people, but he said he never found anyone he liked as much as Susan ever. By 2000, he's not doing great at all. He stopped writing songs. He stopped practicing guitar. He's just depressed. He said he attempted suicide at one point.

He said, I took a whole bottle of tranquilizers and figured I'll just go to sleep and not wake up. But what I did was I slept for three days and I woke up and I was still depressed. I woke up refreshed and still sad. Tell you what, I am. Boy, three days. Circles under my eyes are gone, but shit.

So summer of 2005, he's performing with his brother at a birthday party. And it was right around the time of the 18th anniversary of Susan's death. He said, I got finished playing and left the stage and went around behind the house and broke down and I was crying.

The host, who was a lady he knew named Barbara, followed him and said, are you okay? And he told her about the murder and explained that it remained unsolved and said, everybody blames me for it and says I did it. And this lady thought it was terrible, and she decided to try to help. So she sent an email to the Stephenville Police Department. Okay. Now, there's a new cop on the case by now named Don Miller. All right. Now, Stephenville had three unsolved murders, including Susan's.

Which is fucking ridiculous that a small town, small town like this should have zero unsolved murders. I'm sorry. Like, figure it out. Unless it's like some drifter. So Miller thought out of all of them that Susan's case was the most promising of the three to solve. But he said he couldn't do anything with it. He said now there's DNA testing, obviously. So he sent the six cigarette butts found in the living room in for testing. But the result came back unidentified male.

And so they don't have any DNA in the system of his, which didn't help a lot. So he's working another one of these cases of the three unsolved in July 2005 when he heard about this email that came in from Barbara Gary. He called this lady and Gary said the situation was killing Michael and his family and she wanted to know where the case stood.

That's pushy for a friend. Well, there's that. But there's also as a cop, you're like, why is it haunting him so much? Yeah. If he didn't do nothing. Exactly. What's going on? Why does he want to know the status of the case so bad? Because that's what they do. Murders a lot of times will check in because they want to see if they're close.

So this guy, the cop said, Miller said that if he wants closure, he should come talk to me. And Miller said he didn't hear anything for five months. So he called this lady back and eventually managed to get Michael on the phone. Connected with him. So Miller basically asked to he said, I'm going to come to Indianapolis and get your DNA. OK, let's get this over with.

Michael was hesitant. First he agreed, and then he said, well, I don't know about that. Maybe not. And then he canceled after Miller and his partner already bought plane tickets to Indiana. Michael canceled. So the two cops decided, fuck it, we'll go anyway. Let's go. Let's see. It's winter in Indiana. Who doesn't want to be there for that? Let's go. Yeah, it's beautiful this time of year.

So, yeah, they said all they had was like summer jackets, like Texas winter jackets. Some windbreakers? Hauled up to shit. Yeah.

So they drove to his address, knocked on the door. They said he cracked open the door and I told him who I was. And he said, Miller, I told you I wasn't going to cooperate. And Miller says, I just started talking. He explained how the cigarette butts were the only way to establish his innocence. And if you don't give me your DNA, if you don't cooperate with me, then I'm going to turn around and I'm going to leave. In this case is going to go nowhere. You got to help me.

It's going to be cold as Indianapolis in fucking January. Yeah, no shit, and a windbreaker. So Michael eventually said, okay, fine, fine. Now, the problem is, this is wild, they're on his front porch. Yeah.

Neither of these cops have ever used a DNA kit before. Perfect. And have no idea how to do this. Yeah. So they're reading the instructions. They unfolded all this little piece of paper. Like it's a COVID test. Yeah, trying to figure it out. And they read the instructions and they eventually figure it out. And they get it done here. So that must have been a funny scene. How does this thing work? So I'll put this up your ass.

Miller wasn't really around when this first started, when everybody was so concrete that Michael did it. So he never had that idea. He said, yeah, he's a suspect, but who knows? He said, though, but given that his fingerprints weren't at the scene, he said, I didn't really know. I didn't think it was him that much. He said, I know that the DNA is not going to match the cigarette butts. I know that for a fact. But he needed to clear him. So he does it. He said, you know, if it was another suspect, he said it could have been risky sex. It could have been this. It could have been that. Yeah.

So he needed somebody to do this. And so he needed somebody, he said, who could testify that she had no history of wanting to be choked. And Michael's the only guy who can fucking do that. And we're not going to get him on board until we clear him. Otherwise, he's not going to help us. So he returned to Texas, sent the samples in, and they do not match. Of course. It's not him. Not him.

Poor fucking bastard. This is for 20 years this is going on. Jesus Christ. You know? He's breaking down in the backyard of a shit gig. Of a shit birthday party. Without a stage even, probably. So Miller said, so I called and said, Michael, you are 100% cleared from the case. Your fingerprints don't match. The DNA doesn't match. You're no longer a suspect.

And he said Michael began to cry. And that's what Miller said. Thank you. And hung up because you could hear him sobbing on the other end. So you I got to go. Stop crying. Great for Michael. Bad for them. They're back to square one. It's 1987. Might as well be January 28th, 1987. They have zero fucking suspects. At least then they had suspects. So they said the only hope here was that the prints lifted from the bathroom mirror and tub.

Maybe that's it. So in 1999, the FBI unveiled an electronic national fingerprint database and a department could submit unidentified original prints and have them compared against everything they have. But Miller's request to take the prints to Washington was denied. Really? And he said he couldn't risk mailing them because if he mailed them and they got lost in the mail, that's all there is. They're fucked now. And they literally wouldn't pay for him to go to Washington to do this.

So he heard that the Texas Department of Public Safety had gained access to the FBI database. They make it sound like they had to hack into it for Christ's sake. All the cops should have access to this. In May of 2006, Miller drove to Austin and he handed the prints over to a DPS officer. And in a few days later, the officer called back and said, hey, we got a match on those prints. Oh, who'd they come back to?

Roy, this one, that one. Joseph Scott Hatley. H-A-T-L-E-Y. Miller says, never fucking heard of him. Who the fuck is that? Who's that? The officer said, no idea, but we do know. We have files here. He's been arrested in 1988 for a robbery in Nevada.

So then they called the county prosecutor here, John Terrell, who said, do we know of a Joseph Scott Hatley? And Terrell said, yes, local kid, quote, raped a girl. Grand jury declined to indict. I'll get the file for you. Hey, everybody, just going to take a quick break from the show and tell you a little bit more about Simply Safe.

Oh, SimpliSafe.com. S-I-M-P-L-I-S-A-F-E.com. That's right. And maybe you felt this. You ever felt a sense of unease when you leave your home? Wondering if everything's going to be okay if you're away. Maybe you'll be out of town for a while. Did I close the garage? Yeah, we have. I do it when we go out of town. Every day. But it wasn't until I had my house broken into and a man destroyed my plumbing that I was able to get out of town.

that I realized security is needed here. Need a security system. Paramount. And SimpliSafe, thankfully, is there to help, and they are amazing. We did, and I'm a research guy, you know that, so I did all the research, and SimpliSafe is the best, and we've loved, both of us, having SimpliSafe protect our homes and our studios for years. We've had it for years now. It's been like six years we've had SimpliSafe, and the security and the service are...

They're great. They're better than you could ever expect for, honestly. Protect your home with 50% off a new SimpliSafe system plus free indoor security camera when you sign up for Fast Protect monitoring. Just visit simplisafe.com slash small. That's simplisafe.com slash small. S-I-M-P-L-I safe.com slash small. There's no safe like SimpliSafe. Now back to the show.

Explaining football to the friend who's just there for the nachos? Hard. Tailgating from home like a pro with snacks and drinks everyone will love? An easy win. And with Instacart helping deliver the Snack Time MVPs to your door, you're ready for the game in as fast as 30 minutes. So you never miss a play or lose your seat on the couch or have

to go head-to-head for the last chicken wing. Shop Game Day Faves on Instacart and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three grocery orders. Offer valid for a limited time. Other fees and terms apply. Local rapist Joseph Scott Hadley born in 1965 goes by Scott by the way not Joe. Miller reads the file and he goes holy shit this is a rape of a 16 year old girl in 1988 a year after Susan's murder and it sounded pretty brutal.

He said Hatley came from a family that everybody knew in town in Stephenville. His father had operated a Texaco station in town and a wholesale ice business and also a diesel repair shop. So everybody knew the father. And the mother, Celia, was a homemaker. He's the youngest of three children.

They said that kind of seemed to be standard small town Texas life. They're hardworking people. They attend a church every Sunday. His mother and sister still live in Stephenville. His father's dead. They said at a glance, there's nothing that connects him to Stephen Woods or to Susan Woods, even to be to know her, except for the fact that Hatley is Cindy, her best Cindy's first cousin. Oh, what? So he knows Susan Woods. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

So they and they asked they asked Bob about the Roy, Cindy's boyfriend, and said that Woods and Hatley weren't friends, but they were acquaintances. They'd seen each other. Yeah. He said, yeah. Roy said, quote, Hatley was like my brother. We were close growing up. Oh, no, this is Cindy. I'm sorry. Hatley was like my brother. We were close growing up. He was quiet and shy and never had any friends when he was young, but he wasn't a mean kid.

So they're looking at the rape, his rape charge. It happened in a roadside park south of town. At one point, after the girl had already been raped, she got up and ran. Hatley ran after her and chased her. Then told her, she said, quote, this is from the report, he laid on top of me and told me if I didn't mind him, he would kill me. Then told her, quote, I'd done it before. Oh, boy. So Miller, once he read that, his quote was,

Some bitch did it. Some bitch, he did it. Some bitch. So Scott, everybody calls him Scotty, his fans, his friends. His fans and friends. Friends and fans. I was going to say friends and family, and I got fans out. They said that, you know...

he's an angry guy always. He claims his mother was abusive and beat him up all the time and she would deny that. But he said that the abuse enraged him and he just kept it inside. He said he was bullied like his sister Regina who was three years older. They were both heavy and they were both teased about their weight all the time. Sure.

So serious anger, he said, that he can remember here is he heard his sister crying in bed one night after she'd been teased and it made him very mad. So by this is at eight years old and this is in 1973, he started to fantasize about getting revenge about people who hurt him and his sister. He found he had a fantasy that he was going to shoot both his parents and then go to school and shoot all the kids.

Boy, oh boy, that's early. It's ahead of his time. So that used to happen. It just wasn't that publicized. It was just a sad thing that happened. And everybody would say, oh, God, that's horrible. That's fucked up. Yeah. So they said that he found much of life perplexing. He had questions about sex. His parents wouldn't discuss it. He didn't know what to do. Even as news stories of sexual violence stirred in him feelings he couldn't explain. God, he was into that.

His family was religious. They debate scripture at the dinner table. Yeah. So that's, that's a lot better. Yeah. Yeah. Um, he said that he never quite got into religion and couldn't understand it when he was around 12, his favorite choir leader was fired. So he quit church and never went back. And yeah, he said that he was plagued by confusion and violent musings. We know this cause there's some writings that were, we'll talk about later. So we know a lot about him cause he wrote a lot about himself and,

He said that, you know, he grew up in the 70s, too. He had a bowl cut, obviously. Had the 77 Pete Rose there. A little fat boy with a bowl cut? Uh-oh. Yeah, played baseball, basketball, and football. That's the other thing, too. He plays sports. It's not like he's like a nerd. He's just a little bit fat, so they make fun of him. Just got a slow metabolism. That's it. Don't worry. You'll own the Raiders one day.

Yeah, get a bad haircut, Neil, on the Raiders. He was a Cub Scout. He loved the Dallas Cowboys. His sister's friend Gloria recalled him as a beaver cleaver type. Okay. Said just a nerdy little guy, kind of chubby, and didn't look like he was particularly popular in school.

So at Stephenville High, he was quiet and just kind of didn't do anything. He would, you know, arrange his classes so he could leave early, get out early so he could help his father at work. That's all he did.

But at home amongst the family, he was outspoken and pushy. Cindy said it was his first cousin. Their mothers were sisters, by the way, and they spent Thanksgiving's and Christmas's together. These two. Okay. Roy Hayes, who Cindy's boyfriend said, Cindy always felt Scott was the bullet was a bully in the family. He often talked down to other family members like they were slow.

kicked them about, kidded them about being dumb. And he often would pick on siblings and cousins. And as he got bigger, knowing his mom would not let the family stand up to that, to the, knowing his mom would not let the family stand up to the baby. He thought he was smarter than everybody. So Roy, Cindy's boyfriend, said she could see his dark side a little bit. When Cindy urged Roy to bond with her cousin, hey, you guys both like to read a lot. You guys should...

hang out. Roy was put off, put off by some of Hatley's preferred reading material, which was a lot of true crime that he liked. Really? Yeah. I thought he was a real creep for that. Hmm. Wow. Everybody out there take notice. What a bunch of dirt bags. It was fucking Jesus. Especially he especially liked serial killer stories such as son of Sam.

Yeah. So does everyone else who's in the church. Happens to be fascinating as fuck. Yeah. What the fuck? Anyone who wants to think beyond the shit that's right in front of them and just go, what, what would make a person do? That's why it's interesting. Yeah. So Roy said even back then he was drawn to darker stuff.

By age 13, he started tagging along with his sister, who was 16, when she would cruise the drag there, back and forth the Dairy Queen. When one of them handed him a beer, he said he found his first true love, booze. It's so good. That's what he wrote. He's like, yep.

He said, my mind that always worked too fast slowed down and I could focus for the first time in my life. From the first buzz, I knew that alcohol is what I craved, what I needed, what I had to have. Wow. What?

He chased it like heroin? That's a lot of people when they get their first taste of something, they go, that's the thing I've been missing right there. But booze? Loved it. At 13. Yeah, that's wild, man. That's wild. I love getting drunk. I love just a buzz, but I don't need it like that.

I have to have it. What I had to have. What a bizarre choice of phrasing for that. Now, his other fixation and his other obsession, in addition to getting drunk, was pornography. He loved a lot. Loved his porn, which is normal for a kid who just learned to whack off, probably. A kid that just got drunk and jerked off? Those are two feelings that you can't rival in this world. He found what he's going to do for the next 70 years. He just found it.

Oh, boy. Well, now that's what I can't live without. That's the next few decades of my life. Well, Budweiser just became number two. That's it. So he loved porn. Back then, you'd get porn in magazines. We're talking late 70s. There was like reel-to-reel porn films you could get with not a 13-year-old. Yeah.

He would hide his magazines and his vodka in the same place. That was his little stash that he would hide. His little dirt bag box. His little scum box. Don't look in there, Ma. Don't look in there. There's bad stuff. He called himself a fat antisocial kid and said that he hated that he never had a girlfriend at the time. He said, I have often wondered how my life might have turned out if I had learned about relationships at an early age, how to love, care, and share with a woman.

Rather than my parents not telling me anything, basically. So whenever he would ask about anything, his mother would hit him in the head, they said. They would smack him. He said when he got hit in the head hard, his ears would ring. And every time he got mad, then his ears would ring after that. Whoa. He wrote, at one point, I grabbed my mom, wrapped my hands around her throat, and whispered to her, I'm going to kill you. I saw it in her eyes. Fear. I had found a new drug. Fear. Fear.

And then I came booze, porn fear. Wow. Wow. And then he came. So, yep. He said that the, his mother slapping him in the head is what triggered the whole thing. He said, that just got me into it. So after they graduated, um,

Basically, he would be drinking and smoking and drinking and hanging out. And he said that he'd hang out out on the drag, smoking and drinking beer. He said, I felt like a rock star. Yeah. He said, though, he craved he he wanted to always be drunk. And he said it was, you know, he said all of his crimes that he did, though, were with a clear mind and a sober mind.

So he said that everything I ever did, I thought about doing when I was sober. He just needed the booze to carry through with it like Dahmer. Right, right. So 19...

1984, he joined the Air Force Reserve during his senior year of high school and was training at Carswell Air Force Base to become a munitions specialist. After graduation, he did reservist training in San Antonio before transferring to Colorado for technical school. And at the dorm, he met a woman from Ohio that he liked. Hell yeah. He had never even kissed a girl at this point. Whoa.

And he called it love at first sight. He said, late one night, they slow dance to Prince's Purple Rain. Purple Rain. Purple Rain. That's what she's... I'm singing to Bob Seger for it. Purple Rain. Purple Rain.

Purple rain. I wonder if he's ever covered it. If he didn't, he blew it. That would have been great. That's good shit. So on the weekends, they would make love in a cheap motel. Really? He said it was the happiest time in his life. Yeah, he's singing fucking, he's singing a Bob Seger song. He's singing Night Moves is what he's just singing. If you think for a second they were quote unquote making love, he was pig fucking her in there. He was fucking, I'm finally doing it. In a shithole, yeah. Pig fucking in a shithole is different than making love.

So neither their commanding officers nor his parents like this because after this they get married. They get married. Once training ended, he opted not to enlist in the Air Force. But his wife did enlist in the Air Force.

So she was a, yeah, she was assigned to a base on Guam and the Island there. And after a few months he ended up going there too. Oh. And he said though, from the moment they were reunited, he knew something was wrong. He said, it seemed like that the fire that had burned so hot in us had just cooled a little bit. Yeah. She's out in Guam hanging out with guys. Fucking. I think that's an actual Bob Seger song. I think it's called fire within or fire inside. I'm probably is. Yes. I think you're right. As a matter of fact,

That's so funny. Jesus, Bob Seger just has his stamp all over this shit. Bob Seger stink all over this bad boy. Bob Seger's stink is on this as much as this guy's DNA. All over it, as much as the DNA is on cigarette butts, Bob Seger's stink is on. Did they test Bob Seger's DNA? I don't think they did. So he said it seemed like the fire that had burned so hot just cooled a bit. There was a story in her eyes that I could not read.

That's what he wrote. She's got another. She rented a small apartment and at first things went well. They're both heavy drinkers, which was fun. You know, I mean, drinking fuck. When she went skydiving with her friends, he would wait on the ground with a machete slashing through the foliage. When one of them would land in the jungle, he'd have it all get a path for him. Yeah. He got a job. I'm like a fucking chicken. Fucking idiot. Yeah.

He got a job at an insurance agency selling shit. Then everything was kind of gone. So as the weeks wore on, she was a little bit distant. They'd fight all the time. They're not fucking anymore, no matter how drunk they are. So he started to pray for the first time in years. And when things didn't improve, he said, God damn this shit. I am going to pledge my life to Satan. I've been fucking praying God did shit for me. What? What?

He said there was just one problem in this whole thing. He wanted to pledge his life to Satan, but he realized once you think about the logistics of it, he said, how do you get in contact with the devil? Yeah. I can't get a hold of the motherfucker. I don't even know how to tell him I'm on his side. Anybody got his number? He said he realized he actually didn't know how to contact the devil. That's what he said. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So he drank more and more and more. His sales commission shrank at work. He started doing like shit. He basically, when he needed money now, he would basically use an office copy machine to forge company checks and just run them off and forge shit. Wow.

Meanwhile, his wife's going out alone at night now and he thinks she's having an affair. And he said that this was the moment that changed his life. He said, this was the fuel that I used to destroy my life. I just did not have the maturity or experience to overcome this kind of thing. So he moved back to Texas. Yeah. Divorce? Getting divorced. Okay. He said he stumbled off the plane so drunk I could barely walk.

Yep. And he said everything was the same back there. He said, but I wasn't the same person. Now I was broken. He went back to work for his father and eventually rented a small apartment. He asked people to start calling him by his first name. He's trying to reinvent himself. So he said, call me Joseph now. Yeah. Rather than Scott. But nobody called him that. They just called him Scott.

So he said he couldn't put Guam out of his mind. And it was he said, it's just everything. His embezzlement was discovered. Of course, his boss threatened to bring criminal charges and get unless he repaid what he stole. So he basically took out a bank loan in Texas to pay back that. And then he had a bank loan. Now, when he wasn't at work, this is this. He has a unique drink that he likes all to himself. What is it? He likes to drink and he likes to drink vodka.

Usually right after breakfast, by the way. Really? Just straight vodka? No, no, no. It's a cocktail. We'll talk about it. He starts right after breakfast on non-work days. And he said he knew he was losing control of it, but he didn't give a fuck. He was just fine. He said he would have blackouts and all that kind of thing. He said after he got a cold and took cough syrup, he realized that he liked the cough syrup buzz a lot. So he said, what if I made a vodka cough syrup cocktail?

He's making hillbilly syrup. He's making fucking hillbilly lean here. Oh, my God. And he fucking he's mixing it up. He called it V syrup. He had a he had a fucking name. He made him. He made his own cocktail vodka syrup. Vodka's a V syrup. He called it.

It became his daily drink. He just that's what he made on. That was his like fucking cocktail of choice. Like martini, dear. When you come home, you make yourself a V syrup. Some scissor. Then after a while, he said, you know, this would really put a lot of pep in it. If I maybe if I put a can of Pepsi in this, I could really take it to the next level. So he'd have one of those 44 ounce foam sonic cups and mix it all up in there.

And then he would sip it during long drives in his pickup truck. Wow. Which is fucking terrifying. That's got to taste disgusting. It's got to be. It's got to taste. It probably tastes like and I like that. Don't get me wrong here. I love Dr. Pepper, but

It probably tastes a little bit like Dr. Pepper, like Coke and cough syrup. That's kind of Dr. Pepper. I don't know. Mix vodka in it. The vodka in there has got to change that flavor, man. Jesus Christ, yeah. Cola, vodka, nobody does that. No, it's insanity. I've never heard of that before. And cough syrup. Can I have a popov and Pepsi, please? What? Nobody asked for that. What the fuck are you doing?

So he would cruise around for hours being pissed off, cranking up the Motley crew. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's right. Shout, babe. Fucking girls, girls, girls. Where are they all? The devil won't talk to me. Maybe it's because I haven't shouted at him. That's the thing. Maybe Motley can help me. I like candles. Maybe Nikki Sixx can make this happen for me.

Now, his social life, he doesn't have much of it. It all revolves around his sister Regina and her friends, who are all a little bit older in their 20s. Many nights, he would hang out with Roy and Cindy, Susan's best friend, and four or five others, and they would drink and play cards around his sister Regina's circular kitchen table. They began calling themselves the members of the round table. So...

He started sleeping with one of the group, a married woman. Oh. And he dismisses that as two lonely people trying to feel loved.

But he would talk to these people openly about his impending divorce, and the others would worry about him a little bit, but, you know, not too much. Cindy said, I could tell the drinking was getting more and more. He was heavier, getting heavier each time we saw him. Oh, he's getting fatter. All he's doing is drinking Pepsi and vodka and fucking cough syrup. The amount of empty calories he's just throwing down. Good Christ, man. Not exercising. Yeah.

Then on one night in July of 1987, someone new came to the round table. Uh-oh. Card gathering. Susan Woods. Yeah. Yeah.

Cindy's best friend. Susan Atkins. Susan Atkins. Woods at the time. She's Susan Woods. Yeah. So she is eight years older than him. But Hadley says Scotty said he knew Susan and Michael for years. Right. He says that the first marijuana he ever bought was from Michael. How about that? Michael says that's not true. Now, in his sister's kitchen, he says, Hadley writes that he was drunk and thought Susan was flirting with him.

He remembers flirting back and that that interaction stuck with him. He said they flirted with each other. So the following Sunday night, he writes in his shit here that he took another drunken drive and decided to swing by Susan's house unannounced. He said, you must understand that I did not set out that night to hurt anyone.

She welcomed him in because she knew him. Yeah. In his telling, he says that they listened to records and smoked a few joints, but it's cigarettes. There's no weed in the house. At some point, he writes, quote, I overstepped my bounds and Susan slapped me. And he said what happened next was a blur.

He said, by the time I came out of the fog, I had brutalized her. At first, she said she was going to tell what I had done to her. Then she then said that she would not tell anyone if I just let her go. I found it interesting that she thought any of that mattered. As I asked her if she believed in God, she said she did. I told her, well, you better start praying. Oh, my God. That's terrifying. That is cold shit.

He said, all these years later, I still do not know why I said that. I honestly do not know if I was mocking God or if I still had a little humanity left in me. It sounds like you were trying to terrify her. Yeah. That's what it sounds like. You know who else said that shit? The fucking Iceman. That's what I mean. Yeah. I'll give you three minutes. I'll give you a half hour. Yeah. If he comes and saves you, great. Yeah. Do you have any regrets? Yeah, I probably shouldn't have done that. That was some cold shit. Yeah. He said that wasn't necessary is what he said. I didn't need to do that. I didn't need to do that.

Wow. He said, all I know with certainty is that the last minutes of Susan's life were spent in prayer. That night I took the life of a kind, sweet, loving woman who never did anything to me but show me kindness. My God, I had become a monster. Yeah. That's the quote he has. He then drove home.

The police station's on his way home. He said he paused at the stop sign and considered pulling into the station and turning himself in and saying what he just did. And then he just rolled through. Instead, he kept driving. Four days later, the murder appeared in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. And he said, I wish with all my heart that I could tell you that I mourned for what I had done, but that would be a lie. Reading about it in the paper was a high like I had never felt before.

He jerked off to that man. Oh, my God. He used the right word. He's a monster. He's a fucking. This is the type of guy that Dexter would hunt on the fucking TV show. That's a dangerous human being. Yeah. Horrible. He went to the funeral. What? He signed the guest book. He noticed the loitering police officers, said he didn't feel anything, no fear, didn't feel bad. When his group gathered in his sister's kitchen for the first of a series of

roundtable discussions where they would drink and they would all debate who killed Susan. He was always in the conversation. What about this guy? What about that guy? Oh, boy. Roy, Susan's boyfriend, said he was drinking heavily and making jokes. He'd call the cops the Keystone cops. He said if you wanted to find a cop, you needed to go to the donut shop. Maybe the murderer would wander in there, too. Ha ha ha. He's even hacky.

And that's what he says. In his writing, he says this. And this is – I actually agree with him. Quote, a basic investigation would have identified me in only a few days. Indeed. Yeah, indeed. Yep. For sure. He said he termed –

The police Hicks and Rubes in another part. He said, I could not believe that they never once interviewed me a week before Susan was partying with us at the round table. My God, how could they have missed that? Instead, the detectives had it had decided that it had to be the ex-husband. They homed in on him and never let up. Yet another one of my victims, he says, the ex-husband. OK, by the way, there's a girl named Shannon Myers. Talk about her quick.

She was a younger girl, a teenager who hung out at Regina's house and would drink vodka and smoke in the backyard with them. Jesus Christ. Next door neighbor of Regina. She's 15 at the time, and he noticed her there next door. He's 20 or whatever, 18, and she's rebellious, and her family had just moved here from Arkansas.

She spent a lot of her time, even though she was 15, partying at the university at Tarleton State there at a frat house as she goes to Jesus. Her mother had given up trying to get her to stop doing shit. She just did whatever she wanted. Right. So she befriended Hatley's cousin, Melissa, in the summer of 1987, who babysat Regina's two kids.

Shannon started hanging out at the house. She remembers her first meeting with Hatley, who was seven years older than her. She said he walked in and we kind of made eye contact and he just started paying attention to me. No one ever took the time to sit down and really talk to me. I was like, this is nice. They struck up a friendship. Just good old porch conversation. Good old porch conversation. I saw the I saw a more more of the sweeter caring side of Scott than most did. Then one night he kissed her.

She said, and we just started having a relationship right there. And the next day he had, they had sex at the sister's house at Regina's house. Then they fell into a routine. Shannon would go out partying most nights. And then after she would park her, she drove, she's 15. She would drive and park her. Nobody, they drink and drive. They drive in their 15 parks, her, her car back home. She would smell cigarette smoke and hear the clinking of ice in a glass, like fucking Julian from the trailer park boys. Yeah.

And no, that's my mating call. Yeah, that is the that's the Arath County mating call or whatever the fuck it is. And that was signs that he was in the backyard waiting for her. So she would wander over. They would have sex often in one of Regina's bathrooms. She said that was the big deal. She said, looking back on it now, he was very controlling. When I'd leave, he'd ask, hey, where are you going? And I would tell him. And it was what time are you going to be home?

Controlling he also wants to know when he's getting pussy, I think, is his thing. I've got to schedule some. When am I going to molest this teenager? When am I going to molest this sophomore? Scheduling up that statutory rape. Yep. And Shannon had been sexually abused earlier. That's why she's doing all this, obviously, and acting out. She said, I needed to be loved, and Scott played on that. After sex, she said, he kept telling me that I'm special. I'm the special one. And that still today sends shivers through my spine.

Now, after a few weeks, Shannon's mom finds out she wants to send something else through his spine. Probably a fucking 44 caliber bullet. I would imagine the mother. This is I would say this is an understatement. But Shannon said she didn't like the age difference. No shit. Yeah.

So Shannon's mother confronted Hatley in a Kmart parking lot. Oh, yeah. Think about the trashiness of this. We're going to confront you about fucking my 15-year-old daughter in a Kmart parking lot while you're drinking Pepsi, vodka, and cough syrup together. This whole thing is just what the hell is going on here. And if you don't know what Kmart is because it doesn't fucking exist anymore, it's one step below Walmart. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

No shit. Walmart, but couldn't hack it in business. Right. It's out of business, Walmart. Yeah. He promised to end the relationship, and Shannon did as well, but they didn't. Patley started renting an apartment, and he and Shannon began just meeting at the apartment. One night in September, Shannon took her white poodle, Dee Dee, to the apartment. She had sensed that Scott was under some kind of stress, and she speculates that it might have had to do with Susan's murder, and she didn't know that at the time.

But then out of nowhere, the whole thing weird happened. They began to have sex and he seemed more forceful and aggressive. She said she kind of backed away and was like, hey, stop, you're hurting me. And she remembers, quote, and well, as soon as I said stop, all hell broke loose. In his eyes was a coldness. And I was like, OK, what the heck's happening? He took a knife out and held it to my throat. Oh, my God. She said she didn't object out of concern that he might hurt the dog.

who had started to growl because she was putting up a fight. And he's being aggressive. Yeah, and she said, me, 15-year-old me, I was worried about my dog. And then I finally pushed him off of me. I grabbed my dog and I ran out. So she starts power walking home when he pulls up alongside her in his pickup truck. He says, let me give you a ride. She said no. So he apologizes. Look, I'm really sorry. I don't know what got into me, blah, blah, blah. She said, and so I looked at him and I didn't see the anger in his face anymore. And so she got in the vehicle.

In her driveway, she said, he looked at me and put his hand on my face and said, I'm sorry, I love you. And I said, love you back. Then she told her mother about the assault and her mother insisted on going to the police while being interviewed at the station. At the station, Shannon sensed the officer's skepticism once she heard that they had an ongoing consensual relationship, even though she's 15 and he's 22. That should be enough right there.

She said that her reputation is being like a wild child around town. That's what they were treating her like. She's 15. She said they just viewed it as I was the crazy one. Unreal. But according to Hatley's journals, the police gave so little credence to Shannon's story that he didn't even he didn't even have to contest the accusation. A police officer came to him and to visit him. He thought it was because he's being linked to the murder.

And it didn't. He says in his writings, that did not happen. What happened was the officer told me that there was this screwed up little girl, so I should stay away from her. Incredible.

It was like, yo, bro to bro. Like, what are you kidding me? Stay away from that little trollop. She's going to ruin your life. Holy fuck. That's wild. So they, she, the police department wouldn't prosecute because the grand jury refused to indict. So Shannon cut off contact with Scott, though. She continued to visit his cousin, his cousin next door during the daylight hours when he was gone.

Once she hadn't realized that he was in the house and she overheard him arguing with his sister. She said they were having a conversation about about, quote, well, you shouldn't have messed with her. And he goes, yes, but I love her. And she goes, but she's 15. You know, it's illegal, dog.

So the police visit, meanwhile, left Scotty paranoid that he's going to be arrested soon. He lived near the station and every day just watched the cop cars pull out and pull in and drive by his apartment and waiting for them to come to his house. He said he dreamed of taking Shannon on a cross-country crime spree a la Bonnie and Clyde.

We'll just do this together. And he said in his writing that she was initially receptive to this plan. Shannon. She says that's not true. According to Shannon, their only communication was a barrage of phone calls and letters. She said that he basically stalked me and she ignored him. Nine months go by after that. She tried dating boys her own age, but...

Didn't work out, so after a difficult breakup with one of her young boyfriends, she agrees to see Scott again. Good Lord. It was in July of 88, a year after Susan died. She said, I was over at Regina's house, and he was already there. And he goes, hey, can I talk to you? I miss you. And I'm like, oh, I miss you too. She said, I didn't really trust him. I feared him a little bit. Which, when you're a kid, that's a weird...

So it's a rush, man. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's why she's a kid. An adult shouldn't take advantage of that and fuck them. That's gross. So Hattie called her at home one night. He kept saying, Shannon, I really want to see you tonight. I need to explain why I did to you, why I did that to you. And she said, the 16 year old me wanted answers. You know, if you love me so much, why did you hurt me? So they meet in a laundromat parking lot. She gets, she said, the moment I climbed into his truck, I immediately knew I made a mistake.

We drove off and he locked the door and goes, come over here and sit beside me. Oh, God. He said just the way he was talking to me was totally different. He had aggression in his voice. That's also how couples drive and pick up trucks in Texas if you've seen Urban Cowboy. So he had he had aggression in his voice and he was doing exactly what he told me. I was doing exactly what he told me because I was afraid.

As they kept driving, he kept telling her they were destined to be together. And then she started to warm to him. And maybe he's just maybe he just doesn't know how to express his feelings. So she said, I just wanted to be I'm just wanting to be loved and accepted, she said. So they pulled up to a roadside park south of town where he parked out of sight of the road. As soon as they got there, she said everything changed. He turned back to that night when he raped me with a knife and the look in his eyes and everything. I knew I was in trouble.

Oh, boy. Oh, boy.

Then thinking he would kill her and hide her body, she began tossing her things all around so the cops would find them. A hairpin, her bra. She had a beret on that she tossed, hoping that the police might find them later. She just wanted to leave a trail. She said, I fought for my life there. Do you have berets? Not a beret. She was wearing a beret. Really? Yeah, on her head.

Like a raspberry one? Like that kind of beret? Yeah, like a beret. Well, they danced to Perpinal. But it's the 80s. The kids were wearing berets for some reason. Yeah, I don't know why. That was like, I don't know who the fuck knows. Maybe kids in college were doing it. I'm not sure. So she said, I remember going in and out of consciousness and thinking, I'm not going to get out of here alive. She said there was this little tiny spring, and because it rained a few days before, it was a little muddy.

She said he took me by the water. Scott had a fascination with water and having sex in the bathroom. Does this sound familiar? Yeah. That's where he wanted to have sex every time at Regina's. He pushed her face into the little spring as he raped her again. Same thing. Yeah. Same exact thing. She said it went on like this for six hours. Oh, my God.

she said i knew i had to turn the tables on him in order to survive i knew i had to convince him that i loved him so eventually they got back into the truck she sat as far away from him as she could

And he goes, no, I want you over here by me. And that was probably one of the scariest minutes of my life. Do I breathe? Do I don't breathe? I was scared to make a sound and scared to show my face because if I showed my face, he's going to see the damage that he did to me. And if he saw the blood and bruises and realized the severity of what he'd done, she was scared that he wouldn't let her go. He wouldn't let her go. He'd go, well, they're not going to sweep it under the rug this time. I beat the shit out of you.

So she said, so I looked down real fast and he couldn't see the bruises. He couldn't see the swelling. And he was caressing the side of my face. And he goes, are you OK? And I'm like, yeah, I'm OK. And I said, I just want to start my life with you. And he goes, I'm sorry for what I did. And I said, it's OK. I love you. I just need to listen to you. And I remember saying that to him. And he goes, don't you turn me in. And I said, I'm not going to say anything. And he believed me.

He reached under the dashboard and turned on the ignition, drove her to the laundromat parking lot, and left her just before the sun rose. She said, I've never ran so fast in my life. She got home, ran to her stepfather, and they rushed her to the hospital. Now they're taking her story seriously, the cops. Gee, if they would have taken them seriously the first time. The nurses administer a rape kit. By the way, none of them had ever done that before. So no one knew what they were fucking doing. They're reading instructions. God damn it.

How about just everybody practice your kits that you have on hand? Take one kit and waste it and just practice. Maybe when you have one and the person in charge, they get a training course on it. That's all. Whoever's going to use this. Yeah, I'm sure they don't go, fuck, what do we do? Get the instructions. He's not breathing. I don't think that's what they do. How do you turn it on? There's none of that.

Holy shit. So sheriff's deputies arrive and he because it's outside of town proper. It's so the sheriff's department comes. Shannon tells them everything. The next morning, Scott is awoken by a awakened by a knock on his door. He sees the deputy sheriff there. He says he took a big swig of vodka and fetched his pistol. Oh, boy. He was going to shoot the deputy as soon as he entered the apartment. But the officer just left when no one came to the door.

He assumed they'd return in force, so he packed a bag, threw in his pistol, drove to the bank and drained his bank account. Headed west. Didn't know where he was going.

He drank beer in an El Paso motel that night, staring at Mexico going, should I go there? The next day he said, maybe I'll go see what the ocean's like in California. Let's go check that out. But then he saw billboards for Vegas and just went to Vegas instead. That place is so much cooler. Whenever you go, why do they have billboards? Do these work? Apparently so. Evidently.

So he had no plan. So he would drink during the day, wander around Fremont Street at night, which is the old strip. He would drink more, think about killing himself, which you would do if you're sitting in a Binion's hotel room. Your stupid opinions, we did that. It's not good.

So he said more than once he put a gun in his mouth and thought about it but then didn't do it. But then he said he was running low on money so he started robbing. He walked into a strip mall shoe store, tried on a pair of shoes, then pointed his gun at the saleswoman, walked out with the shoes and money and he said a powerful adrenaline rush that made him feel good. Then he tried to rob a hotel clerk but the guy didn't speak any English. Yeah.

So the guy just started shoveling handfuls of coins toward him, they said. He was just shoveling coins at him. Take these quarters. They're yours. That's what we have, quarters. Just take the quarters. So he was like, fuck. He was getting mad, and he said he was about to shoot him, but then someone approached the outside door, so he just took off. The next day, he was scouting targets, and he noticed a motorcycle cop behind him and then three patrol cars behind them.

He drew his gun to his lap, he said. Oh, God. A helicopter is now hovering. Oh, boy. He said the patrol cars hit their lights. He heard a voice on the loudspeaker telling him to pull over. He pulled into a Denny's parking lot. He said for a second he thought about going down shooting. He goes, let's start a gunfight. Instead, he crawled out, laid on the pavement, and got arrested. For the robberies. That's it. And he is taken back to... He said he was...

thrown in the holding tank, he was waiting for the Stephenville police to come and take him to Texas to answer for the rape and probably murder. And no one ever came for him. Because they're still spinning their wheels on Mike. That's it. So in the courtroom, Scotty was convicted of two counts of armed robbery and faced a 30-year sentence for each. But the judge said he's a young guy without a bad criminal record.

So you, sir, may fuck off 120 days in a youthful offender program. Oh, my God. 60 years or 120 days?

Four months? Yeah. So he did like a month and then they let him go. Oh, Jesus. And his parents drove him home. So he was like, fuck, what was I doing? He said once he got back there, he realized, why did I leave? There's no reason to flee. A grand jury already declined to indict him for rape for some reason, even though she had that whole story and proof and bruises and rape kits.

His parents had fought it in his absence. They went to bat for him. Wow. Don Miller, the cop, said his mother went to the church and got all the members of the congregation to sign a letter about what a great boy he was.

And they also hired a private investigator who, quote, did a hatchet job on Shannon. Yeah, said everything horrible about this poor girl. Found every college guy she ever drank with and gave a handjob to. And then obviously she can't be raped because she jerked off a frat boy one time. It's fucking ridiculous. She's irrapeable.

Irrapable. So ridiculous. So Miller, the cop, said at that time, if you could prove the victim was promiscuous, the charge would more than likely be dismissed. That's so wild. He said, and Hatley was clean cut. He was a Stephenville kid. One of us, you know. Shannon, well, she did not enjoy that reputation. She's a newcomer and considered a young harlot, basically. Yeah.

So Shannon thought that Hatley would be jailed for years in Nevada, so she thought he was gone. Yeah. And then all of a sudden she saw him back in town and was like, what the fuck? Why is he here? Yeah. So she told cops that he's here too. The cops didn't know either. They thought he'd be in jail for years too. Mm-hmm.

So, you know, she said, oh, the sheriff's rape and rape investigation will put him away. And then she said a letter came in the mail. She said, I was reading it. And I'm like, what does this mean? Not indicting him. What does this mean? Lack of evidence. She went to the neighbors who helped her make sense of it. And she said she's trying to find the words. And she goes, they should have indicted him. I was confused. I was hurt. Felt like I was raped all over again. She said she doesn't know. She doesn't know what happened inside the grand jury. But that's what happened.

Afterwards, she noticed that Scott would just turn up places she was visiting. One would be his sister's house, which I would stay away from his sister's house if I was her. He showed up at a frat party she was at. Oh, boy. He doesn't go to college. No. And the skating rink, too. He would show up there. She said he was following me. It was almost like the grand jury had emboldened him. That's called stalking. It's stalking. Yeah.

So after seeing him at the rink, she told a friend, she took a friend with her and drove home, and his truck was already in the driveway next door when they left. She said, I called him out. I'm like, Scott, you need to come out now. He refused. I'm like, quit being a chicken shit and come out and face me like a man. There's a high school junior out there calling you a chicken shit. Get out there, pussy. A high school junior who's been horribly raped by you. Yeah, he's going, hey, chicken shit. And she's like, come here, pussy. Get out on the lawn, fucking pussy boy. Let's go.

She said, I stood up to him that night. We had words out in the front yard and I told him to stop. I'm like, you know what you did to me. He quit harassing her after that. But then her mother and stepfather moved away. She stayed with an uncle. This is like a year later. She's 16. Then she got married to a local boy. Oh, boy. Just looking for something. That lasted a month and a half. Sure.

And then she would lean on her friends for support, one of her friends, but then he was killed in a motorcycle accident. So she said she thought of killing herself as well. I bet she did. And instead she fled and moved to Pasadena. Yeah. Outside of Houston, by the way, not Pasadena, California. It's a different Pasadena. Southeast of Houston, very different Pasadena. Somehow sadder Pasadena. Correct.

With her mother when she was 19. She did seek out professional counseling for years after that. She was in therapy and she told herself that she's still alive. She's a survivor. She got the fuck out of Stephenville and she can make it. And so she's doing much better now. I heard she posted. Yeah. She goes to her high school reunion and claims it.

So Detective Miller, he says, hindsight, heck yeah, we should have known about Hatley. But in all the statements and all the reports we did, none of Susan Woods' friends ever mentioned he was in her circle. Okay.

Because he would go there and he was like in between circles. He was a floater. Yeah, he just bounced around. The only red flag would have been if somebody in the sheriff's office would have listened to what Shannon was saying and really listened to her and correlated it over to Stephen Woods. He put me in fucking water and raped me. Head dunked in water and raped me. But to my knowledge, no one ever did that. No one knew that they had ever met. I had no idea and Donnie didn't either. So...

Hatley's back living with his parents, thinks he's gotten away with everything. But he does think there's like an imminent arrest coming, but they don't know about it. He moves to Nashville in 93, gets married. Him and his wife have two children. Oh, my God. Yeah. He becomes a truck driver like his older brother. So now he's settled family man driving a truck. This scary rapist fuck is driving a truck. What does that say to you? Yeah.

That's dangerous, man. He's everywhere from here to fucking Kathmandu for years. He does. Yeah. Yeah. Literally here to Guam. There's going to be bodies. So he said that he drove long hours. He said he worked very hard. He said his dispatcher once asked him, why do you work so much? What are you running from? And he said, myself. Wow. Running from myself. That's some Bob Seger shit there.

He said that out alone on the road, he said, I honed my skills at picking up broken women, mostly in roadside bars. He never gets arrested. He would take pills to stay awake on the road and ended up rear-ending another truck in Dallas, which led to his firing. He then took a job in Nashville at a grocery warehouse. It paid well, but his past was still there. He said he was never able to get the murder out of his mind. He drank every night and at all hours on the weekends.

His daughter was injured in a car accident and required extended bouts of physical therapy. His wife was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and ends up in a wheelchair.

So a tornado then damages their apartment complex. Yeah, you're cursed, motherfucker. This motherfucker deserves everything. All of this shit. The people around him don't. Not the poor people around him. That sucks. But he's doing this to everyone. It's trying to hit you. Rock and roll never forgets, motherfucker. Yeah, that's what it is. That's what it is, man. So...

Then they move into a duplex only to have it destroyed when a drunk driver drives into the house and destroys it.

I'm telling you, he's fucking cursed. Absolutely. He began to believe it was all God's punishment for what he'd done. Yeah. I'm an atheist and I'm starting to believe that. This is amazing. So late 1990s comes around. Years have passed. Ten years have passed. His life calmed down, like we said. He's doing all this shit. He's promoted to helping him run a warehouse in Round Rock.

He said he hated going to Texas, felt like a serious risk. He said, So him and his family moved back to Texas.

They found a poolside apartment, but his drinking was fucking everything up, and him and his wife fought violently. I don't know how you fight violently from a wheelchair, but she does. Poor lady with MS. She later alleged that he beat her violently all the time. And by 2006, he's working nights and sleeping days, which is what he was doing in 2006 when he –

Miller had read the file on Shannon's rape and then tracked Hatley down in Round Rock. June 6th, 2006. Oh, my God. Yeah. 19 years. They're driving the cops from Stephenville to Round Rock. Don Miller turned to his partner and said, make no mistake. The day is six six of oh six. And we're about to meet the devil himself. How about it?

He asked police in Brown Rock to bring him in for questioning. And they said the guy who popped in in the interrogation room was a 40-year-old warehouse supervisor, 300 pounds, short hair, matching mustache. They told him why he'd come, why they'd come. And they said he seemed bored by it. He didn't seem concerned.

They said he comes in and tries to act calm, cool, and collected, nonchalant, which to me is a big red flag. Innocent people tend to heatedly deny false accusations. They're mad that you're accusing them. All right, let's get this over with. That's not what he did. He just said, I didn't have anything to do with it. Maybe I might have had sex with her. I don't remember, but I don't think so.

They wanted a confession, even though they didn't need one because they have physical evidence. And he agreed to provide his DNA, which was dumb as fuck for him. Yeah. It obviously matched to all the materials found at the scene. And they said, oh, that's easy. So they figured they don't need them to confess. So they didn't push. When he was asked why your fingerprints were found at Susan's, he said, I don't know. He said members of the round table. I don't know. We used to go from place to place. We probably were there a couple of times.

Oh, for the abuse. Yeah.

She said it's a vicious attack, and she even notes it on her calendar for that night. It reads, Scott beat the hell out of me. Nosebleed, black eye, could barely breathe. And she claims he did this on a number of occasions. Oh, boy. Now, the next day, they re-interview him. I don't know why they didn't arrest him on the spot, but they did. Yeah, why did he get to go home?

But this time he claims that he had a kinky affair with Susan. Remember, they said that was going to happen. Yeah. And an assertion that they know was a lie. And meanwhile, Hatley's wife filed charges against him. And that night, Hatley took his family, his wife and two kids out to an IHOP in Round Rock and

And the police rushed the place. She told the cops that's where they were going to be. And they arrest him. The results come back on the DNA matching the cigarette butts. It's this guy.

Before the arrest was announced, Miller said he wanted to tell Susan's father before it was announced publicly. Yeah. So he found him on the golf course. Miller said, we found the man who murdered your daughter. Yeah. And he said, bullshit, it's Michael Woods. You're wrong. Joe, what the fuck, man? Joe, we love you, Joe, and we get your feelings, but D-N-fucking-A, that guy's cleared.

The guy's a monster, Joe. Miller said, nobody believed me. They wouldn't believe me. Yeah. Roy and Cindy Hayes didn't believe me even. Wow. Nobody. They said it was still as ridiculous. Roy said he was pissed off by his treatment by the police. Rumors of his involvement had cost him a career in law enforcement. And even one other job he ended up losing because of it. You didn't know it was your own cousin, man. You shouldn't be a cop.

He thinks now that Scott is being wronged in the same way. They did this to me. They tried to railroad me. Now they're railroading him. This is bullshit. Why doesn't anyone arrest Michael Woods? So this is fucking crazy. And then finally, once Miller got to get with Roy and Cindy and explain everything to them, then they went, oh, okay. Oh, shit. Which...

Caused a big rift in the family. Roy remembers Hatley's mother telling them, we need to circle the wagons. It's our family against the cops. And Cindy said it tore our family completely apart. Oh, my God. Miller said, I always knew the case was solvable, but Hatley was never even on our radar. Unreal.

Now, they end up, and we'll tell you how, but in his writings later on, they end up finding how she was killed. It wasn't death by drowning in a bathtub. He suffocated her with the pillow. He did. He did. That's how he killed her. He said this, quote, I did not cry. I did not grieve. I was without any doubt evil to my core. Wow. Wow.

Now, Michael was at a college class when Miller called him. And he'd already been cleared, but he said he still never felt safe. He said they were still going to come for him. He said he got the call, went outside. He said he broke down. He hadn't had a cigarette in a year, but his professor came out and gave him one. And he said, I needed it. I cried. He said it finally happened. Shannon felt safe.

vindicated by this. Like, I fucking told you about you people. She said, when Miller called me, oh lordy, I was mad. I was relieved. Now you're finally listening, she said. He kept telling me, I believe you, I believe you, and that's what I needed to hear. Oh,

So she said, because I truly believe there are other victims out there. He was a trucker. Remember, I can't be the only one. It's got to be hundreds, right? I agree. Yep. The district attorney, when they arrest him, this clears woods, obviously, and all that. And they said, quote, this was a shock to everybody. The district attorney said it was notorious because it happened in a quiet community and was unsolved for so long.

He cuts a deal to plead guilty. You have to. No trial. No nothing. No anything. They cut a deal with the time and everything. You, sir, may fuck off 30 years, he gets. Not enough. Somehow that doesn't seem like, no. Nope, not enough. Hard 30?

No. We'll find out. Susan's parents said they wanted to avoid the attention of the trial, actually. And Hatley agreed to testify against one of his cellmates, too. So they gave him the deal. That's how it worked. He was sent to Huntsville, where he claimed to have discovered religion again. I don't give a fuck.

And wrote his manifesto. Oh, by the way, 2016 Lieutenant Ken Maltby dies. And I'm not sad about that. It's a fucking moron. This whole thing is his fault. Hope he took his shit work ethic with him. Great. 2017 Scott is diagnosed with bladder cancer. Wonderful. In jail. That goes into remission. Yeah. He's going to stick around with it.

Then in 2018, he is released on good behavior. 11 years he did. What? Good behavior and cancer. They release him. Oh, my God. That's fucking wild. Hatley's son said he sent an email one day before his father was set free. In his email, he wrote that he's unsure why his father's getting another chance and that the community should be made aware of his release. He notified the press. Yeah.

Tell the AP, fuck. Yeah, and they said that Lieutenant Don Miller said it's not uncommon for long prison sentences to be greatly reduced due to prison overcrowding. How about let the murderers out last? Yeah, is there a guy that got caught in some weed? Anybody here not a rapist murderer? Anybody? An armed fucking robber? Fine, I'm done.

Whatever you got. Maybe a guy rolling through town in a Cadillac with Pennsylvania plates. Let that guy out first. Two fucking comedians, not even speeding. Fuck. So Cindy says she was shocked to learn her cousin was responsible for this because she had talked to him the whole time and hung out. She said it was mind numbing. I just couldn't believe it.

And she says that she also nowadays thinks that there's additional victims out there. Yeah. She said, I think he's a monster. The public needs to be aware that he's out of prison. So he enters a halfway house in Midland, finds a job repairing oil field trucks. And then after being laid off at the beginning of COVID, that's how new this is. Oh, my God. He moves into an RV park outside of Abilene to be near one of his daughters, Amanda. He was sober for a bit, and then that didn't last long.

Amanda said, I don't know what happened, but I'm pretty sure he started drinking again. He distanced himself from us. He didn't come around for months at a time, and then he'd just pop up at the door. I told him he needed to call, and we'd have a big fight. Got a hold of that new lean. That's right, baby. Then Halloween 2021, he told her that his cancer had returned and spread to his spine. Uh-oh. And December 9th, 2021, he's dead.

Yeah. Wow. Dead as shit. Amanda, the daughter, said all those things he did, the rape, the violence, he did those same things to my mom. So it didn't surprise me. I don't know what to tell you. My dad is just a really bad guy. He's found dead in the RV, by the way. Drunk himself to death or just cancer? Cancer and everything else. He was scheduled to start chemo the day he was found. Ha ha ha.

And that's when they find all of his writings, which is hundreds of pages. And that's where all these descriptions came from. They didn't know the truth about it till 2021. Everything awful.

So this was kind of a biography. It was hundreds of pages. It's fucking wild. All the reasons to hate him. Jesus, he sucks so much. He really. Now I'm going to end this with the craziest obituary of all time. God, what did they say? We just told you all the horrible shit he did. This is his obituary. And I'll quote Joseph Scott Hatley, 55, passed away on December 9th, 2021. He was born December 20th, 1965 in Hiko, Texas, a small in a small country hospital.

Joseph grew up in Stephenville, Texas, helping his parents with their businesses and playing with his two great friends, Jay and Brad, and being third wheel to his sister. He was a middle child through and through. Joseph graduated from Stephenville High School and soon after joined the Air Force.

He would soon find out the Air Force wasn't for him and would soon find himself with many jobs with the winner being a truck driver. As a truck driver, Joseph saw the world. He saw every state and every sunset and sunrise. He saw the beauty and magic in this world. On one of his many visits to his trucker bars, it would land him...

Uh, meeting Susan Hatley. They later, he married a woman named Susan, by the way, get the fuck out of here. Yeah. They later married and had two children. Joseph loved them so much that eventually he decided to quit the hustle and bustle of truck driving for a nine to five. But in Joseph's case, it became a 10 to seven. Joseph worked night shift at Cisco foods for years where he worked himself up to night manager.

He took incredible pride in his work. He battled addiction behind closed doors. Addiction beyond words with alcohol. He didn't know when to stop. This would soon land him in legal trouble and eventually in prison. No. What did? What did? Joseph served 12 years for a crime he committed in 1987. For murder. Rape and murder. Oh my God.

Joseph was released in 2018 and began to try to mend things and move on, trying to put the pieces of the broken family together, especially when it was half the family was harder than they, especially when it was half the family was harder than they ever dreamt. Amanda watched her father change within the walls of a prison cell and then got to watch him love her daughter. The alcoholic she once knew was now a follower of Jesus and wore a cross and prayed. And boy, boy, did Joseph love his Kaylee. He took so much pride in his title as Papa.

He received the diagnosis of stage four spinal cancer in November 2021 after only three years of being out of prison. In his pain, he chose to give Kaylee his last great memories. He attended her birthday, took her to see Christmas lights, and spent his last Thanksgiving with her. Their relationship was a phenomenal one. On the day of his passing, Kaylee said, Mama, he isn't suffering anymore. He's with Jesus. He's not the safe one. You're the safe one. Well, yeah. Holy.

Holy shit. He survived by blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There will be no funeral service. He will be cremated at his request. Joseph fought cancer so long for Kaylee. There's no doubt. You don't have to fight this world or your cancer anymore, dad. Fly high. Oh my God. Sink low to the fire below.

Then the daughter has this long thing about this. My daddy lived a life very few people could fathom for a long time. It was filled with secrecy and lies. Writes this whole thing about him losing my dad to cancer. And then at the end said cancer stole my daddy. Cancer stole my daughter's grandfather. Cancer stole a great man who wanted to change this world after living and doing what he did. A great man?

Cancer's the great equalizer in this case, my love. Jesus, Lord. Something he regretted with every being in him. I will lead his change with a fire. I will make my daddy proud. I love you, daddy. Unbelievable. Holy shit. That's Stephenville, Texas, everybody, and some wild shit. Out of the...

I mean, I guess everybody gets loved, but how do you look beyond all that to be able to love somebody so much? You were hating him because he was my head. I can't form words. I have no words. You raped your mom, lady. You said that repeatedly and violently. It's fucking crazy. I love you, daddy. Fucking what? Oh, boy.

So anyway, there you go. That is Stephenville, Texas. If you like the show, get on whatever app you're on. Give us five stars. It really, really helps to leave a review and say something nice. I don't know why, but it does. So please do that. Get on there. Also, head over to shut up and give me murder dot com. September 20th. Get your tickets for Minneapolis State Theater. Biggest show ever. Everybody. Let's have the loudest shut up and give me murder of all fucking time. Shuts up at shut up and give me murder dot com.

Then you should also follow us on social media at Small Town Murder on Instagram, Small Town Pod on Facebook, Murder Small on Twitter. You should definitely get Patreon. Patreon.com slash crime in sports. Anybody $5 a month or above, you get everything. Hundreds of back episodes of bonus stuff. New ones every other week. One crime in sports, one small town murder. This week we're going to talk about most inept teams of all time.

Losers that we get to laugh at. That's fun. And then for small town murder, all the crazy shit involved in the Chad Daybell, Lori Vallow crazy. It's a lot.

all what they believe in. We'll get into tons of that batshit stuff, so that's going to be a lot of fun. Patreon.com slash Crime in Sports, and you get a shout-out at the end of the show, which is right fucking now. Jimmy, give me the names of the people who would never, ever, ever forgive us for raping and murdering people because they have common sense. Hit me with them right fucking now. This week's executive producers are Gary Howard, Laura Turner, and Taylor Areola.

And her father, Stu Pedasso, James, if you can believe that. That's his name, Stu Pedasso. Stu Pedasso and Areola, I'm sure, is the real name, too. Taylor Areola, right. Yeah, great people. Taylor Nipples. Bastards. All right, Janice Hill and Liz Vasquez, thank you so much for everything you guys do. Thank you. You're amazing. Other producers this week are Zeneb Bezalem.

Benzura, Jason Millich, Dylan with no last name, Kelly Honan, Ezra Reimborn, Beanborn, Beanborn, Beinborn. Is that the Swedish chef? Ezra, yeah. Also, Jessica Tippel, Rob with no last name, Derek Higson, Irish Yankee, Cheddar, Cheddar42, Mason Michelin, Adam and Evil, Marnice Willist, Karina Alonzo, Rebecca Erickson, Funk

Jew. All right. Funk Jew. Daniel DiPietro. Hey. Yeah. Jess Vickers. Chris Sutley. Vicky with no last name. Sherry Hubble. Paul Torme. Torme, maybe. Not so silent, Bob. Brian with no last name. Samantha Connelly. Valeria Sigala-Miguetto. Also Colton Miguetto.

Valeria. That's a tough one. Caitlin Sharasky. Sounds like you got something. Yeah, it's not good. I've got to get a shot for my Valeria, okay? Look. Thank you. Yeah. It's dripping all over the place. Shelly Brevik. Crystal with no last name. Gravestones 2. Jay Gozik. Go-chick.

Robin L. Neal, Hayden Delano, Delano, Kristen Bryant, Noor Beckwith, Pamela Pergerson, Kimberly H., Brooke McMillan, Matt Dirk, Kenny Martin, Andrew Fjerk, LMC, Kyle Moser, maybe Moser, Arby Jr., Gabrielle Moser, Heath Peters, Masaki Blossom, Ted with no last name, Holly J., Cameron Garber, Sophia Palais,

Rachel P., Katie VanderWood, Hannah Sullivan, Katie Hogni, Jennifer Watts, Kay Sinclair, Victoria Worthen, Granny Rachel, Phil with no last name, Kim Bailey, Cat Parts Pants. Oh, it's Cat Pants. Better than Cat Pants, I suppose. Yeah, that's, yeah. Okay.

Although try to put pants on a cat. Good luck. It's not easy. Sam Cannon, Nathaniel Osment, Jessica Hoffler, Trent Hickson, Brittany Cornell. Cornell. That's what it is. Tabitha Howard, Anthony with no last name. No with a last name. That's what it is. Aiden Donoghue, Donna Hugh, maybe sick boy, six, six, six. Rachel Papa, maybe Popa. It's just one P. Debbie Deluxe, Sue Johnson, Hunter C., Brad Sullivan.

Gordon Duncan. Chris would know the last name. Andrea Kirkendall. Jared Aldi. Teresa Pritchett. Don would know the last name. Annika's blog. Bethany Vium. Kate Logam. Michael Mandela. Becky Barriger. Avia Stone. Jamie. I like the shoes. Jeremy. Richard Ramirez's shoes. His favorite pairing with his pants. Yeah.

Hot Wife CPL on the coast. I don't know what that is. Purple Hot Wife. Della Nelson. Those Hot Wives. They're terrific. Jeremy with no last name. She's right. Anne-Marie Fitzgerald. Gemini Pantajola. Pantoja. Pantoja. Pantoja, maybe. Chad Dautreve Malak. Dautreve. What a great name. That's cool. I love that name so much. It was a character on King of the Hill, right? Bill Dautreve. That's correct. Yeah.

Haylen Roberts, Kaj, maybe Kaj, Tarly, Run Bun, Barbara Kavakova. Barbara Kavakova. There we go. It's just an O rather than an A. Sarah O'Connell, Jordan...

Wise, Thews, Tews, Lynette with no last name, Rebecca with no last name, Amy Herndon, Gretchen Pilgreen, Siobhan O'Donovan, Bot Stevo. Bot Stevo? Yeah, I guess so. Chrissy Wilson and all of our patrons. You guys are fantastic. Thank you. Thank you so much, everybody, for all that you do for us. Honestly, we're just blown away. We can't thank you enough. So thank you for what you do for us. Keep coming back. Tell all your friends.

Post on social media. Do your shit. Keep doing that. You want to follow us? Shut up and give me murder.com has our social media there. Do that. So from us and Bob Seger, of course, and the entire silver bullet band, we will see you next week, everybody.

If you like Small Town Murder, you can listen early and ad-free now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

In a quiet suburb, a community is shattered by the death of a beloved wife and mother. But this tragic loss of life quickly turns into something even darker. Her husband had tried to hire a hitman on the dark web to kill her, and she wasn't the only target. Because buried in the depths of the internet is The Kill List, a cache of chilling documents containing names, photos, addresses, and specific instructions for people's murders.

This podcast is the true story of how I ended up in a race against time to warn those whose lives were in danger. And it turns out convincing a total stranger someone wants them dead is not easy. Follow Kill List on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Kill List and more Exhibit C True Crime shows like Morbid early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+. Check out Exhibit C in the Wondery app for all your true crime listening.