#518 - Conspiracy Of Fools - Keithville, Louisiana
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Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express. Yay and choo-choo! 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 on a... This is a crazy episode. We're going to talk, we always say, 10 pounds of murder in a two-pound bag. This is 20 pounds of murder in a one-pound bag, so we got to...

Here we go. We got a lot to get through. We'll get to it very quickly on the top here. ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com. Tickets to live shows. September the 20th, Minneapolis, Minnesota. State Theater. We're going to befoul that big, beautiful theater with dick jokes and murder stuff. So we can't wait. It will be the biggest show ever if you sell it out. The biggest Shut Up and Give Me Murder of all time. Unbelievable.

We're very excited for it. Cannot wait. Get your tickets for the rest of the year as well. Even at the end of the year, Boston and New York, they're almost sold out. So get them now if you want to go. And that's in December. So do that. Shut up and give me murder.com. Definitely listen to our other shows, Crime and Sports and Your Stupid Opinions. And if that's not enough of us for you, if you're still not annoyed with us, we have more for you here.

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This week, what we have for crime and sports, we are going to talk about the entire Duke lacrosse fiasco scandal that happened there. It has nothing to do with sports. It has to do with a frat party, strippers, and some accusations. Yeah, we'll talk all about the legal problems for not the people you expected. Then, for small-town murder, we're going to talk about this Brian Koberger asshole up in Idaho. They haven't had the trial yet. Yeah.

I haven't rarely been as angry as like he's Lori Vallow, Chad Daybell level of angry for me because they got like all this DNA and all this stuff. And he is just like, I don't know what you're talking about. And it's just like, wait a second. How could you? No, no, no. It's all a big misunderstanding. How dare you, sir? We'll talk all about that. That is Patreon.com slash crime in sports. And you get a shout out at the end of the regular show as well. Jimmy will screw your name up.

He'll try to get it right, but, you know, names are hard. So trust me, we'll get all into that. So that said, let's get right into this here. Let's do this. I think it's time to sit back. Let's all clear the lungs, arms to the sky, and let's all shout. Shut up and give me.

murder let's do this everybody let's go on a trip shall we let's go on a trip let's get in the car jimmy and let's go down to louisiana oh baby we are going to keithville louisiana like a man named keith has a town like toby like toby yep keithville louisiana it's in northwestern louisiana so opposite side of the state of new orleans it's out that does that butt up against texas uh

Yes, there's Texas there. What the fuck? Arkansas above it, Oklahoma to the northwest. It's that region of the country. That's so big. Yeah, this is outside of Shreveport. So this is 25 minutes outside of Shreveport. It's about 45 minutes to Cushata, which was our last Louisiana episode. It was about eight months ago. It was a while ago. That was episode 459, Serial Killing for Fun.

Louisiana never disappoints, by the way. There is wild stuff going on there, and you can rarely find murders that don't have something to do with a trailer park, so there's always fun to be had. Area code 318. Population here, 11,727 currently in this town. And this case didn't happen that long ago, so it's still in the ballpark of that. Yeah, it's a little.

median household income here is below the national average. It's about 50,000 here. It's 69 in the rest of the country, but median home price is way below the national average median home priced here. $175,500. Wow.

Holy. Wow. That is very cheap, let me just say. Incredibly affordable. So a little bit of history, and we'll go through this very quickly, the town stuff. It came into existence as a town because two railroads, the Southern Pacific and the Houston Shreveport, met, you know, connected there. Right there, yeah. So that becomes a town. It met on the properties of the Keith Brothers.

So they were, you know. The Keith fellows. Yeah, the Keith fellows there in the 1880s. And they said the Keith brothers, one of them was a state representative named Perry Polk Keith, and he served four terms as a state rep. And they donated land for the construction of what is now the Keithville United Methodist Church in Keithville as well. So that's how the town started. Two brothers were like, well, there's a railroad. I guess we should make a town.

Build a church here. Do it there. Both named Keith. Yeah. Reviews of this town. This is for the actual parish, not the town. The whole parish. Cato Parish. They got parishes and wards and Louisiana keeps it mad confusing. It's very confusing. You don't know where the fuck you're at. They do everything French style. That's why the Napoleonic law. There's all sorts of weird shit going on there. Yeah. This is C.A.D.D.O., which I believe is Cato Parish. Probably here. Here's five stars.

There's a sheriff's station nearby, and due to the close proximity to the high school, there's a constant police presence. I don't know if that's good or bad. I don't really want to be in the middle of a shift change. It's weird. Here's four stars. It is not any worse than where I used to live. I'm satisfied with the area I live in.

Or any better, man. It's not any worse. And satisfied is the bare minimum, right? Right. I'm not ready to burn the place down and start shooting people. We'll put it that way. Three stars. Here in Keithville, our neighborhood is really safe. However, there are places in Shreveport that aren't safe at all. I've heard that. Shreveport is a bad place. I'm sure. But you don't live there. You live in Keithville. You're close enough. Where?

Where you are. Three stars. I'm not sure what the majority of people are doing other than running around doing errands or sitting in a stuffy office all day or wasting time waiting on the rest of the world to get out of the way. That's the whole review. This guy sat in traffic for five minutes and was like, I don't know what the fuck these people are doing. Jerking off, wandering around.

That's an angry review right there. Waiting for us to get out of the way? Waiting for the rest of the world to get out of the way. Okay. Shit. They're ready to be frontrunners, James. They're just in the back of the pack at the moment. Apparently so. They're back there beeping the horn incessantly trying to get in the...

Trying to get on the shoulder of the road to get around this shit. Yeah, they're in there with an 800-horsepower car behind a bunch of fucking Priuses. Man. And finally, two stars. I like an international flavor, a cosmopolitan atmosphere. There isn't one here. I thought they were going to say, you know, I'm mixing old fucking French culture with this. Nope, there isn't one here. It's just...

I love what I love doesn't exist here and melting pots. And I'm going to go find one because I'm in the wrong place. Actually, never mind. I'm going to stop doing this review and look for a new house.

So things to do. Mad Bug Madness Festival in Shreveport on the edge of Shreveport here. It's a two day street festival and it's one of the largest Louisiana's largest and most popular Cajun festivals featuring country pop blues and the very best in what the fuck is this? Z-Y-D-E-C-O music.

zadeko music i don't know what that is never heard of it never heard of that so there's three days two stages 30 bands oh jesus there's a kids on the bayou children area kids on the bayou children's area we just put them out in the bayou on a raft store them there for you well they can't fuck around if they fall off they're gonna get eaten by a gator or something so we just put them out there

What the fuck is a mad bug? Beats me. I think that might be a crawfish reference because they call them mud bugs. Oh, do they? Yeah. So maybe that's part of it. Maybe it's a... Yeah, that's all I can imagine it is. Oh, it's the mud bug. I said mad bug. It's the mud bug madness. Mad bug.

I saw the mat and I transposed. Mud bug is a crawfish. That's a crawfish, yeah. And they're delicious, by the way. I had them a couple weeks ago. You like them, huh? Fuck yeah. I love that Cajun boil. Shit, yeah. It's a lot of fucking work, though. I love it. Pop the tail. You squeeze it. The tail meat pops out. You suck the shit. You throw it away. It's delicious. Love that shit.

Sounds like a lot of work for nothing. Oh, no, I love that shit. It's good stuff. It's good. You put them in there with some soft shell crabs and shit. All right. So they have here the Acadian Cajun band, Donnie Broussard and the Louisiana Stars playing

Dickie Doo and the Zadeko Crew. Dickie Doo and the crew. Dickie Doo and the Zadeko Crew. Is that Jizz? I think it is. Dickie Doo. D-I-K-I. I'm going to go with it. It could be Dyke-ier. I'm going Dickie. It's better than Dyke-y, right? That's Dickie Doo. That's Jizz. Curly Taylor and Zadeko Trouble.

That is a real thing, I guess. There is a men's crawfish eating contest and it lasts two hours. So I don't know how many crawfish these people are planning on eating, but a lot. I'd love to know what Zadeko is. Because Corey Lede and his Zadeko band will be there, too. There's a band called Cowboy Mouth that will be there. I've heard of them. I don't know. Have I heard of them?

Beats the shit out of me. I swear I've heard of them. Cowboy Mouth? I don't know. Sammy Kershaw will be there. Hell yeah. Then buckle on in for the women's crawfish eating contest. Let's see how many of these ladies can put away. Jamie Bergeron and the Kickin' Cajuns will be there. Don't know them. The Craig Wayne Boyd. That's just a band. And then finally, the Craig Wayne Boyd. And then Dwayne Dopsy.

D-O-P-S-I-E. Dwayne Dopsy. He's the closer, I think, too. Wow. That's your headliner. He's got top billing over Sammy Kershaw? Over Cowboy Mouth, which is really, I mean, you're pushing it at that point.

That said, let's talk about some murder, shall we? Okay. Okay. I have to give credit where credit is due. There is a great article that had a lot of details that were very hard to find other places on booksy.com, B-O-O-K-S-I-E.com, The Murder of Ernest Luttrell, and the article is by Harvey Scheyne, C-H-E-Y-N-E. So I have to give credit where credit is due because dude must have done a lot of research here. Sure, sure.

July 25th, 2010. Let's start out. Okay. We got a 70-year-old lady coming home from church. It's a Sunday. 70-year-old Loretta Luttrell. She goes by Bobby, everyone calls her. Her middle name is Bobby. I could see that.

Loretta, Bobby. So she returns from church to her home in Keithville. And yeah, they live on State Highway 169 with her husband, Ernest. They have a small farm and lived in a very nice log cabin with a horseshoe driveway. Pretty idyllic shit. He had retired and currently was hay farming. That's what he was doing.

He's a hay farmer. In his retirement, he's just out there just doing some hay, right? Doing some hay stuff, yep. So she walks into the house, and she sees Ernest on the floor by the front door. Not as if, yeah. No hay anywhere to be seen, which is a problem in this house. That's definitely a big deal, yeah. So she runs out of the house, calls 911. The sheriff's office receives the call as an unconscious man not breathing.

Now, the fire station is closer than the police station. So the firemen show up first. They step inside, take one look at Ernest and walk right back out the door and go, he's fucking dead. There's nothing we can do. If we touch it, it's going to fuck this. Yeah. At this point, we're in the middle of a crime scene. So, yeah, because there's blood everywhere, too, which is a problem. It's not just like an old man passed out. Let's help. You know, let's see if we can give him CPR. So at first, everybody said, oh, this might be a suicide.

There's a lot of blood. He owns guns. He's an older guy. As we'll find out, he's had health problems recently. And this is pretty common, especially in people who have a lot of guns. They blow their brains out more often because they have an easier way to do it. Yeah, they do say it's like 150% more likely.

Yeah, and that even sounds low because there's so many suicides by gun, you know? So they walk in, and once they see him, though, they go, oh, no, no, no, no. His hands are tied together. People usually don't do that before they kill themselves. Oh, wow. That's not good. And so they look around. He's bloody, and he also looks like he has more than one gunshot wound, which is a problem. So they decide that also...

There could be the murderer still in the house. Right. What do we do? So they have to lock down the house and do a sweep and everything. The first cop to get there was Robert Chapman, and he's a member of the SWAT team.

Oh, which is the perfect guy you need here. Yeah. The fireman said, look, this guy's just laying inside. He's got multiple gunshot wounds. You know, we're obviously too late. Hands tied. So then another guy comes in. This is a guy who used to play professional football named Mike King, another deputy. He's a humongous. He was like a defensive lineman or something. He's a huge guy. Yeah. So he comes in. NFL or just like I couldn't find it professional. So, I mean, who could be Canadian or who knows anything? Yeah.

So they said, okay, let's sweep the house. And they do it and they can't find anything. But they did say this in their report. While clearing the residence, I did see a white male laying on his back in what appeared to be a pool of blood. He appeared to have a gunshot wound to his left eye. Why is it always in the fucking eye? Jesus. And possibly stomach and hip. He appeared to be deceased. And they confirmed that it's a murder because his hands are tied. There's no forced entry into the house.

And so they start figuring out what the hell happened here.

Now, while this is going on, Loretta, Bobby, his wife, she's 70 years old, too. They put her outside in an ambulance. She's overwhelmed here. She walks in, sees her husband in a pool of blood. They keep her close to some medication in case she starts freaking out. And she's pretty frail, too. She's 70, but she's older. Her body is older than 70. Like an 82-year-old 70? Yeah, exactly. So basically, they said they knew she needed medical attention, but they had to ask her what was going on.

what was going on. So they asked her, she said she left for church at eight 30 that morning. Nothing seemed unusual. She said she came home ready to eat, but her tires were low. So she had, uh, one of the people that help out on the hay farm there. She got a couple of people. Uh, she had him, uh, Chris is his name by the way. Uh, he's got a girlfriend named Tina and they live in a trailer on the property. Obviously they're together. They're Christina. That's adorable. Tina.

So they I guess there's a shop there. They fill up the tires. And when she finished, she walked into her house and saw Ernest on the floor. She said she knew that he was dead the moment she saw him. And she said it must have been a robbery.

That's all she can think. So they said it was, you know, people are, they were worried about her. So they were trying to be gentle with her because she's an older lady. But they said she seemed very calm and recalled the incident clearly. She wasn't like all freaked out, hyperventilating oxygen up to her face. Yeah. You live to 70. You're bound to see some bad shit. You're bound to see some shit. Yeah. I'm a hay farming gal and I see some shit. You know what I mean? You don't know what happens when the hay gets out of control. You have to put it down, you know?

So while processing the crime scene, they find a gun cabinet that's clearly been ransacked. Okay. And they believe whoever killed him also stole the firearms, obviously. They told her, is anything else missing? And she said, yes, his dually is missing, his pickup truck. Oh, okay.

It's got a dually there. That's gone. What year is this? 2010. Oh, it's a nice truck. Yeah, so it's decent. Now, they also find a bloody footprint is what they find. It's a boot print, and it's a very distinctive pattern boot print they find in the blood. And so they go, okay, well, that's going to be something. Hang on to that boot print.

They put out a be on the lookout for the vehicle, obviously. They want to interview anybody that was close to Ernest, knew him and everything like that. But, yeah, she said that Loretta, they talked to her again and she said, yes, she went to church, but she left a little earlier than usual because it had been raining.

Okay. And everyone went, it didn't rain at all today anywhere in the area. So they were all a little bit, they didn't know if she was just a little loopy or whatever. A little bit, yeah. If she had a little, or also the trauma of everything, who knows if that fucks your head up. So one investigator here with the sheriff's office, he found an empty Smith & Wesson .44 caliber revolver. Oh, wow.

that a trace revealed that, that, uh, Ernest is the registered owner of the gun and that's the weapon they believe killed him. Okay. And it's empty and it's empty. So yeah, there's 44 Cal is a fucking, that's a big, it's a lot of gun. It's a big bullet. A lot of powder, a lot of gun, man. So let's find out who these people are quickly. Uh,

Ernest Luttrell, that is L-U-T-T-R-E-L-L, double T, double L. He is born September 11th, 1936, our deceased man. Him and his wife, they're not really married, actually. Loretta Bobby Moore Luttrell. She goes by Bobby, and she goes by Luttrell, even though they never actually got married, but they've been living together for 50 years. What? 50 years. 50. 50.

Didn't get around to it, huh? Moved in together about 1960 and never got around to it. They each have a child from a previous relationship, but they had no children together in 50 years. Didn't get around to the marriage of the kids. We've been busy having a great time. We got a lot going on. We were trying to start a business. That gets a hold of your life. The next thing you know, you're 73. We were doing all this time smiling and shit. We didn't want to fuck it up.

Now, Ernest had worked for the Borden Company, a dairy, for a long time. And he had retired about 10 years ago. And he was a paratrooper in the Korean War.

He's a badass. That's a badass. That's a cool man. That's a cool old man with some cool fucking stories probably too. Paratrooper that milked cows for 50 years and now he's just hay farming. Now he's hay farming. That's a cool man. After he retired, he built a log cabin that they live in. He built it himself out there on a small farm. He cut hay and did a little farm work and had a couple plants.

people on the property that did some work for them. Then when natural gas was discovered in North Louisiana, a lot of the homeowners would lease the rights to it, basically, so they can extract it from you and they pay you a fee for it. Now, Loretta Bobby, her daughter's name here is Linda Kate Keeney Passanti.

Or Passanini. Passaniti. I'm sorry. That's her married name. So Katie, she goes by. Everybody goes by their middle name. She's Loretta's daughter. She's about 40 years old. We'll talk about her. Now, a little bit about Katie's life. Her husband, Tony. Tony Passaniti over here. She found herself an eye tie in Louisiana, huh? That's one of the few places we are. We're in the Northeast. We're in the Northwest. Sure.

sure and we're in louis louisiana is the first port that italians came to in the 1800s so there's shreveport is not on the ocean that is no no but it's way the fuck up that river an hour and a half over there people will wander you know what i mean yeah they're not gonna all stay in new orleans it smells like shreveport's a fucking swamp though it's everywhere in louisiana what isn't a swamp in louisiana

It's just a wild place to find eye ties, I guess. We're there. I don't know. We're there with weird Cajun accents. Strange. Interesting. Yeah. So he received a military retirement and had been working as a physician's assistant. He was in the Air Force before that.

Her husband, Katie, had quit her job as a professor at a local college in San Antonio and adopted a four year old child. She lives in San Antonio, by the way. But she got her shit. Yeah. Yeah. That's they all they both like went to school for a long time. We'll find out they have all these degrees. She taught chemistry and mathematics at various universities.

Katie's a smart one. She has a bachelor's degree in chemistry as well as a master's and doctoral degrees in applied mathematics. Wow.

Okay. Whose daughter is she? She's Loretta's daughter. Yeah, Bobby's daughter. Yeah. So at one point here in the 2000s, Ernest sells the mineral rights to his 60-acre farm for $400,000. Wow. So it's a good amount of money. There must be gas under there. He then purchased a $300,000 annuity in his and his wife Loretta's name.

and some CDs for the rest of the money. Now, what he did here is basically the annuities in both their names, if one of them dies, the other one gets it. That's just the way it works. So he paid off the balance of a loan and deposited the remainder of the funds into accounts that he had with Loretta. That makes sense. So they prepared their wills, and like I said, they're each other's beneficiary. And if they died at the same time, Rosie Jones, who I believe is...

Ernest's daughter. She would inherit the land and Katie, Loretta's daughter, and Katie's daughter, Kimberly, who is involved in this too, they'll inherit the money. So one will get the land, one will get the money.

Now, that way they don't have to sell the land and split it up and all that kind of shit. They're not forced to do that. Now, they said Ernest also told Rosie and her husband that should anything happen to him and Loretta, they needed to go to the house as soon as possible to get the wills and secure them. Ernest gave them an alarm code to the house as well as the safe combination and the business card of the attorney who had prepared the wills.

He didn't trust, Ernest didn't, Katie and her husband Tony. Didn't trust him. I don't trust that greasy Italian there. I don't trust him. And advised Rosie not to talk to them about anything and not to trust either of them ever. So they think they're shady. Ever. Literally said don't ever trust anything they say. Katie is super mad about this Will situation. Yeah. Doesn't like it. When you find out that your mom's...

live-in husband slash boyfriend for 50 years doesn't trust me or my husband ever. She's mad that they're not getting everything because Rosie, by the way, I made a mistake. Rosie is not his daughter. Rosie is Loretta's half-sister. So it would be Katie's aunt.

Yeah. Essentially here. So she said, this is bullshit. I guess Katie called up Rosie about the sale of the mineral rights. And Katie asked Rosie if she could help Katie talk Ernest and Loretta out of the deal to selling the mineral rights. Oh, don't sell them. Let me sell them later. Yeah, I'll get I'll get the money for him. So according to Katie, they could make more money if they would wait.

So, you know, well, you know, if we wait past the initial thing, Ernest needs money to live, lady. So Rosie said that Katie was really angry, frustrated and upset about the sale of the mineral rights because she wanted the home and the land. And her daughter was also upset about the sale because she had been told she was getting Ernest's land and wanted to wanted it to include the mineral rights, you know.

Because that's worth a fortune and the land isn't. Because the average house here goes for $170,000 now. The crazier part is just like...

That's not even yours, you fucking asshole. It's so weird when kids start counting what their parents have when they're not even dead yet and they're like, well, you guys are going to die soon. They're like, hey, wait until I'm dead to start picking over my carcass, please. Jesus, at least vultures wait until you die. I worked my fucking life away to have this shit and now when I die, you want me to, you fucking jerk, are you bitching about it?

Calm down. I'm trying to live another 15 years here so you can all kiss my fucking ass. So Katie and Kimberly refused to talk to Loretta for a long time because of this, because she wouldn't do anything. Yeah. Like they wouldn't talk to the mom and grandma. I'm not going to talk to you until you give me all your shit. Until you give me all your shit someday when you die.

Now, in 2009, Katie lost her job and so did – or she quit her job to do something else and then Tony lost his job in 2009. So they had a lot of financial problems right now. So that's the thing. Now, I guess Ernest at one point said he wanted to help Kimberly, the granddaughter, Katie's granddaughter. Ernest promised, according to them, to pay off a $70,000 debt she accumulated in student loans.

Kimberly had a bachelor's degree in chemistry, a master's degree in chemical engineering, and was a second year law student at the University of Washington. She has done well. Tons of debt. Yes. Now, he apparently didn't follow through with this.

Kimberly said she wasn't mad about it, really, and she didn't think her mom was that mad about it either. But Rosie said that Loretta was aggravated about Ernest's refusal to pay off the student loans because she had promised it.

And now it wasn't happening. Maybe he doesn't have the money. Like maybe he thought he was going to be doing better. Well, this is the thing that pisses them off. Yeah. Maybe. I mean, he knew how much money he had, but I don't think Ernest said he was going to pay it off. I think Loretta said, oh, I'll we'll take care of that. And Ernest was like, I'm not giving your ne'er-do-well granddaughter shit. I'm not giving her $70,000.

Or she said, we'll take care of it. And he thought it was 1954. Yeah. It was like 70. I thought it was seven grand. Cost me three, four grand to go to college back in the day. I could see why she'd need it.

That's a zero more than I thought. How about no? Well, he said he wasn't going to pay it, but he did give her a check for $1,000, which enraged these two, Katie and Kimberly. Enraged them. We made one payment on our loan. God damn it. Fuck. Yeah, I can make my goddamn minimum payment here. Wonderful. I think that was the plot to an office problem.

One of the Office episodes was that Michael Scott promised these kids college tuition like 20 years ago, and then they never forgot. Oh, that's funny. I never watched The Office. I don't want to work in an office, so I sure as fuck don't want to watch people work in an office. He ended up giving them batteries to like a fucking –

A MacBook gave him a computer battery. He was like, nothing can get you prepared for college like a MacBook.

Here are batteries for them. So that's about the equivalent to $1,000 on a $70,000 thing. Now, two other people that live on the property. Okay. Tina and this fucking last name, Van Morka-Q. Van Morka-Q. It's French. Van Morka-Q. V-A-N-M-O-E-R-K-E-R-Q-U-E.

It's French, right? It's got to be. It's got to be. Hey, everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show and tell you a little bit more about SimpliSafe.

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And her boyfriend, Chris Tope, T-O-P-E. Thank fuck. Easy last name. They lived in a camper trailer behind the Luttrell's home, behind Ernest and Loretta. Always one of those people. Yep. Chris worked as the handyman and he did all sorts of, you know, whatever shit that Ernest couldn't physically do, he would do. And then Tina worked as a housekeeper and the personal assistant to Loretta. She handled all paperwork and anything like that.

So 2009, Ernest and Loretta visited a doctor to be tested for dementia, the two of them. This doctor was an expert in the field, and he said that they both had mild dementia, but Loretta's condition was significantly more pronounced than Ernest's.

Yeah, he prescribed a medication which slows the rate of dementia to earnest, but not to her, I guess. She was too gone for it. She thinks it's raining, man. She thinks it's raining when it's not. Well, I don't think she thinks it's raining. We'll talk about that. Oh, boy.

So Tina, the housekeeper, she said Loretta was responsible for giving Ernest his morning and evening medications. Let's. Okay. What? We have two people with dementia. One is farther gone than the other one. And one needs medication. Let's give the farther gone one the responsibility of giving twice a day medicine at certain times. Because that's going to be the most reliable person to do that, I feel like.

Wow. So Tina and Chris have lived here for about they moved in about 2005 ish 2004 2005. During that time Loretta's condition deteriorated physically she's not in great shape to the point where she was dependent upon Tina for pretty much everything here. Now early 2010 Tina steals from Ernest.

Wow.

And he said he had everything he needed to arrest her for felony theft. But when it came down to having her arrested, Ernest said, don't do it.

Really? He said, don't do it. He let Tina not only got a letter off the hook, but let her continue to live and work there and set up a payment plan for her to pay off the debt. What a guy. We'll take a little out of your paycheck every time. That is a really nice guy and a very dependent guy as well. He's like, they know how to do everything. I can't explain to somebody else.

Well, there's also perhaps he's one of those guys. It's like now I can get something for free out of her. Maybe. Yeah. Fucking labor. She's going to be beholden now. Yeah. Because I'm not having her arrested. And you could have her arrested anytime you want, I guess. If she fucked up again, you can call the guy up. I don't know what the statute of limitations is. Right up until that. Yeah. I mean, it's got to be five years or something. It can't be like six months.

So April 30th, 2010, David Ivey, who's a neighbor with whom Ernest had been arguing with over property boundaries. Sure. As they all these neighbors fighting over a foot of land. That doesn't matter. This guy received a call from Loretta who told him Ernest had taken his gun, one of his guns and gone to the back of their property after telling her that he was going to shoot David Ivey.

I'm going to go get that guy. Hey, just to let you know, don't go in the back of your property because my dementia riddled husband, I forgot to give him his medication this morning, by the way, because I forget some shit too. He's ready to blow your fucking brains out. Just to let you know. Heads up.

Oh, so I see a guy with a gun. It's just my husband. Just my husband. He's pissed at you. Oh, he is looking to kill you. So definitely stay out of his way. But so this guy called the sheriff's department to report the threat here. I guess Ernest had made a similar comment in the presence of one of the deputies previously. So this has been going on. Wow. So they took him to the hospital and put Ernest in the psychiatric ward. Yeah. Which is a big jump there.

He's committed now to the psychiatric ward. So Tina, Loretta, Katie, and a bunch of other people visit him. And he's moved around and he's checked into a secure Alzheimer's unit and everything like that.

Apparently, Tina thought that Katie wanted to put Ernest away so he couldn't give his money or property to his other sister, Mildred. Okay. Holy hell. So, yes, this is fucking crazy. May 5th, 2010, a staff member from the place he was at the facility, the case manager, had informed her. She had been informed that Ernest's wife and daughter wanted him transferred to a different facility. Okay.

So this woman at the one facility refused to release any information to the caller because no such release was authorized by the patient. Katie also told this woman that she wanted Ernest transferred to this other place. Now, also on May 5th, Betty Jones, a manager at Capital One, said,

said that Katie and Loretta visited her at the bank there, which is the same day that all this is going on, and presented a financial power of attorney allegedly executed by Ernest and dated March 10th, 2010. So Katie closed Ernest and Loretta's joint accounts, withdrew money from a CD, and transferred the money into accounts listing Loretta's name only.

And made Katie's San Antonio address the primary address for the account. So she gets everything. Loretta closed an account, withdrew the money. The $300,000 annuity wasn't fucked with at all. But $24,535.69 was transferred from an account under earnest control, which left him with a balance of $397.37. Nice.

Now, Loretta at this point is weak and fragile. People describe her as not getting around as well as she used to. And so they Katie is now in control of everything. And they said that since Ernest was go, it was in the hospital. You know, this was the best way to go about it. Tina also said that she and Loretta made ATM withdrawals of money from Ernest's account during and after his commitment.

So May 7th, 2010, Katie calls another doctor here in the whole, in this, you know, cabal of facilities. Facilities.

and told him that she had the health care power of attorney of Ernest and that she wanted Ernest to be placed in an Alzheimer's unit in a nursing home. The staff, however, found nothing significantly wrong with Ernest that warranted his transfer to a nursing home. He's like, I got hay farming to do in the morning. Like, this is crazy. So the same day, they discharged him and released him. Oh, wow.

Oh, like we got nothing to hold this. We can't just hold an old man just because he's an old man and people want him here. That's not how this works. She's trying to put him somewhere where if a lawyer came there to change anything, they can't get because he's in the Alzheimer's. So that's it. He's crazy. Loretta's mind is like the first words.

Oh, my God. This is fucking interesting. So this all goes on. Now, May 12th, 2010, Ernest writes a check and the check bounces. He thinks he has 25 grand in his checking account and he has $300. So May 13th, Loretta called the bank person and requested that the former accounts be restored. Can you put everything back the way it was?

Can you go get that other money? Remember that? Because so Ernest wouldn't know that she and Katie had done all this shit while he was in the hospital. Yeah. Now, spring of 2010, right after this, so it's mid-May here, Tina overhears Loretta talking on the phone to Katie. Yeah.

And this is they use the speakerphone all the time. This is how Loretta does her business. She said Loretta did it, did when I was there a lot. Talk on the speakerphone in the bedroom. She would move around a lot, you know, balance checks and stuff. She sat at a desk and she would hit speakerphone.

Now, what Tina gleaned from these conversations is Katie needed money because remember, they're both out of work, her and her husband. Katie stated that she wanted more money and instructed Loretta to change her will. Katie also stated that she wished Ernest was dead. And Katie told Loretta to increase Ernest's Lortab and take away his Aricept, which is the Alzheimer's medication, to, quote, drive him crazy or kill him. Either one.

Yeah, you can't just fuck with people's medication like that. And not old people like that. Old people, precarious fucking system. Jesus Christ. Jesus. So Katie said that Ernest would be better off dead. Look, it's for his own good. Oh, Katie. So during one of these conversations, Loretta told Katie that if Ernest were dead, she could pay off Kimberly's college expenses for her.

According to Tina, both Loretta and Katie were angry that Ernest had reneged on the promise to pay off the school loans. Katie told Loretta that if putting him in a nursing home doesn't work, then maybe she'll just tell Tina to get a hitman to kill Ernest. Maybe we could do that. So Tina said that Loretta said, OK, that sounds good.

So Loretta said, I'll talk to Tina about hiring someone to kill Ernest. Okay. Okay, sweetheart. I'll talk to you tomorrow. I got it. Good night. So Katie instructed Loretta that she needed to put more pressure on Tina the next time they talked to find a hitman. Have you talked to Tina? Does she know anybody? She seems like a scumbag, and she is too. Huge scumbags, these people that live in the back of the trailer. Christina? So Loretta told Tina to find someone who would kill Ernest for the princely sum of...

One thousand dollars. Oh, OK. You're not going to get a good hit man for a thousand dollars. That's here's the thing. No, I really want to spend the rest of my life. A thousand dollars. Can you do it for a grand? And she tells her if you don't find someone to kill him for a thousand dollars, we'll throw you off the property.

That's your budget. Handle it. And she also gave Tina a .44 caliber handgun and said, use this. Have whoever use this. Yeah. So June 2010, Rosie again here. She says Loretta called her to express concern about Mildred, who is Ernest's other sister.

Um, Loretta tells Rosie that Katie, Loretta and Kimberly were mad because they thought Ernest was going to give everything to Mildred and none of them, nothing to them. Yeah. So for that reason, Loretta tried to prevent Ernest from visiting his sister or his sister's son. No, Jesus Christ, man. This is fucking insane. So, uh, lots of stuff is going on about the wills here. Um, July 24th, 2010. Okay. Tina, uh,

Who is... Okay, she runs into her...

Her daughter's ex-boyfriend. Ah, Christ. At a McDonald's. Yeah. Okay. His name is Eric Crane. He's 26 years old. Crane is C-R-A-I-N. Yeah. What do you got there? Quarter pounder? Quarter pounder. Yeah. We should talk later. So they talked and exchanged phone numbers and made plans to hang out later that evening.

I'm going to hang out with my ex-girlfriend's mom, who's like 45 years old. And, you know, anyway, so they met and they were driving around and Tina asked him, hey, you want to make some quick money? Yeah.

And he said, I mean, I'm always looking for quick money. Yeah, what the fuck? We got to sell Avon? What am I doing here? What do we got here? Multi-level marketing shit? I hear that acai shit is going to be popular someday. Herd is banging for your immune system. She says, okay, I need you to kill my boss's husband.

She said that me and this guy are having a confrontation. And the guy was like, I don't know. I don't really want to kill anybody. And they said, if you do it, Tina says, Loretta will give you $1,000. And he said, oh, shit, there's money involved?

And he said, on board 1,000%. Are you kidding? 1,000%. He, by the way, lives in a camper trailer in a trailer park in Shreveport and gets fired from jobs every other week as like an auto body worker. He's just terrible at everything, this guy.

Five week salary. Yeah. So he was he was like on the fence before he heard about the thousand. And then he was like, oh, shit, there's money. I'll do it. A band. Hell, yeah. Let's fuck. Yeah. So Tina called the Reddit to tell her that she found someone to do the job. And then I'll call you in the morning.

So Crane over here, Eric Crane, said that his willingness to participate in the murder could have been based in part on the large amount of alcohol and drugs he had ingested during the course of that day and into the next one. So they end up, Dina and Eric, their daughter's boyfriend, end up going to a motel to hang out together.

Where they ordered pizza and then one thing led to another quote unquote and they had sex. Of course they did. Of course. Why wouldn't they have sex with each other? Of course. That's obviously they're going to have sex with each other. You know, with a belly full of McDonald's and pizza with your ex-girlfriend's trailer mom. This is all just too irresistible to anybody really. Wow.

So, yeah, they have sex and they drank more and took some more pills. He especially took a lot more pills during their time at the motel, too. And you wouldn't think they'd have time for us much else than pizza eating and fucking and pill taking and drinking. But.

She finds some time to give him a snub-nosed chrome .44 caliber Magnum revolver. And a snub-nosed. Jesus. And a snub-nosed. So that's the one that she was given to do the job. Trying to snap this kid's wrist.

She said it was hers to take my gun. She said, take it and here's the deal. Here's what I need from you. She said, it has to be done tomorrow. It's got to be done tomorrow. Now, meanwhile, it's three in the morning in a motel where they just fucked and ate pizza and did tons of pills. He's like, tomorrow? Jesus. Not only tomorrow, it has to be done tomorrow morning.

In three hours? Yeah. Unemployed, pizza-eating, girlfriend-mom-fucking-trailer-dwelling people normally aren't up that early on a Sunday. I got a belly full of trash and empty balls. It's going to be hard to muster the gumption to do this.

So she said, Loretta's going to church early. Yeah. She said, I'll drive you to the home and I'll drop you off there. Yeah. All right. You got to enter through the side gate of the home. Loretta would leave the side door unlocked and turn the house alarm off for him. Very nice. So you could just walk in. He said, Ernest would either be asleep or in his recliner watching TV.

One or the other. So you could find him in one of those two places. And your job here, make it look like a robbery, obviously. Geez, don't be a fucking, be an asshole about this whole thing. He's supposed to take Ernest's guns from the gun safe, his keys from a bowl on the kitchen counter, and steal his truck as well. So it looks like guns and truck, you know, easily negotiated properties here. All the things a real man needs. Yep. So Tina had to leave the hotel about 2 a.m. to deal with her boyfriend, who,

This is who we've talked about. Chris Tope. Yeah. Who is back and threatening to throw her out of their trailer. So she's like. Wait till she finds out. Wait till he finds out. He just. She just fucked a man. She just fucked her daughter's boyfriend in a motel after pizza. So this is Tina's life. I'm going to meet my daughter's boyfriend, eat McDonald's and pizza and fuck him and give him a gun and have him kill him. But then I got to get back to my boyfriend because domestic problems. Obviously, I got to fix my life.

She needs to fix a lot in her life. So Tina told him to take the truck since she was dropping him off. So there. Now, after he was finished, he's supposed to meet her. Where do you think they're supposed to meet up after this whole thing takes place? McDonald's.

The Walmart, obviously, on Pines Road. Okay? Yeah. So July 25th, the next morning, Tina said that morning she called Loretta to tell her they were on the way. Hey, we're on the way, so you got to get out of there. That's why Loretta left early, not because it was raining.

Oh, my God. Yeah. She said, OK, I'm about to leave to go to church, Loretta said. So she drove six miles to the Baptist Church on Sunday morning. Ernest wasn't in the church. He didn't like that shit. So he he never went with her. Yeah. He was like, that's fine for you, but I'm not doing that shit. My Sundays mean something to me. Yeah. I'm a work. I work all week and free Sunday is salvation. Yeah. Sunday without hay is my salvation.

So they said she was never punctual and usually late to the services. But this Sunday, she arrived an hour early. And they said she's an hour early and sat conspicuously in the middle of the auditorium while the musicians practiced for the service. Everybody to see me here. Yeah. Look at me sitting in the middle of the church. At 930, she went to Sunday school, which I didn't know was for adults. I remember that being for kids. Yeah. Because my stepmother used to teach Sunday school.

Yeah, as a grown adult with a patch full of bush, you're allowed in there. A 70-year-old woman. You can't do kid shit when you have dementia already. Maybe she forgot everything and is going back. She's like, I really want to learn that stuff again. So she was there at 9.30, went to Sunday school, but by the time it was over, she was tired and hungry and skipped the preaching and just went home. Skipped the sermon, apparently. She's Sunday. So...

Yeah, that morning, Tina and Eric Crane, her daughter's boyfriend and her sex partner, drove to the Latrell home. Tina and Eric talked through the scenario one more time. Tina drops him off at the mailbox at the driveway at the end, you know, to the residence there. Crane says that he entered the house and apparently shot and killed Ernest, stole the keys, four guns and a struck and took the fuck off.

So Loretta gets home and she thought her car was acting strange. So she pulled up to the mobile home behind her house where that's where Tina and Chris live. So they, I guess, you know, they pumped up her tires. Each tire only had 17 pounds of pressure in it for some reason. Off-roading. Which is like letting out half the air out of all your tires. It's out there rock crawling. She's like, I need to, yeah, I got to have grip. I got to be able to grip this shit. Yeah.

So most of the time, only one tire is low or sometimes two on the same side. But all four tires to be half full is a very weird thing. But they did it anyway. And so he finished airing up her tires. She pulled the car into the garage, went into the house. But then she saw Ernest in the pool of blood. Now, he died from six gunshot wounds. They emptied that fucking thing out. Dear Lord. Six 44s it ended up being killed with.

And I guess Eric said he just walked in. Ernest stood up and he just shot his ass. Shot him six times and then went and collected his stuff and took the fuck off. What about the tying of the hands? Well, he did that too. That was the other thing. Yeah, tied him up and did that. 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.

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So it was apparently said he's going to rob him and then he shot him, held him at gunpoint. And that's what happened. So it was pretty surprising. Everybody was a little freaked out. Everyone's like, this isn't normal around here. So they said that a car was parked in the gravel driveway while the cops are there investigating. The gravel road led to the trailer where Tina and Chris live. So there were two men standing outside the car and two women inside the car.

So the police officer told another cop that one of the women was Loretta, the victim's wife. So they approached a small man standing by the car whose face they said was very tanned by the sun. He's a weathered man. He works outside a lot. That's Chris. Yeah. That's Chris. Yeah.

Inside the car is Loretta, Chris's girlfriend Tina, obviously, and all of that. And Tina's son is there as well. He's an adult. So, yeah, there's Tina's son also, who's another guy who is an adult here. He's her son. That's it. We just know him as her son. Just a bystander in this. From God knows what relationship. Who the fuck knows? Yeah.

So again, they say that just Loretta saying that it was raining that morning when it wasn't doesn't necessarily make her guilty of anything because they know that she's a little off and has dementia. So the cops caught talk to Chris Tope here. That's Tina's boyfriend. And they talked to him. Now, Tina and Chris each denied knowing anything about the crime. Tina added that she'd been at a store and had a receipt to back it up. So

So she said, look, I got a time-stamped receipt here. Chris was the, you know, they were looking at him more than Tina anyway here. But Ernest had been real good to him. Chris said he paid me, you know, he paid me well and I work hard for him. And, you know, Chris even went in. Look at my face. Yeah. Look at me. I'm unweathered. I'm outside all the time. I'm working my fucking balls off.

Chris went in and got a picture of Ernest's truck for the cops as well. It was like, here's his truck. So they said, they asked Chris directly, who killed Ernest? And he said, I have no idea. No clue at all. They said, okay, well, we believe you. You're very believable, but you're still a suspect here. Okay.

Now Loretta tells her story again. And now in the middle of her story again, she starts saying that she has to get out of here because it's too hot. It's mid-July, late July in Louisiana. So it's stifling. And she said she's not healthy and needs to get out of the heat. So they were like, fuck, we really need to talk to you. But she wasn't really doing anything here to help anyway at this point.

So they go to Tina, and they said Tina was even more elusive than Loretta was here. They asked to speak to Tina, but she said, I'm busy fielding telephone calls.

Can't help you with your homicide investigation. I got a lot of phone calls to make. My house is like a call center. I'm so sorry. Jesus Christ. We're consolidating credit debt around here. That's how it works. So they talk to her son next, and he said he doesn't know anything. He said, though, that he had walked up to the Luttrell's house a few days earlier and sat down on a bench in the back porch for a while and then went home. He goes, other than that, I haven't talked to them or seen them or anything.

He also showed the cop the bottom of his shoes and told him, you might find my footprints near the house. But these are not the boot prints that match the interior there. So they said that it made him look more suspicious that he was trying to clear himself so much.

You're damned if you do. You're damned if you don't. For Christ's sake. That's the thing. Because they literally say there's a list in the Homicide David Simon book. He goes through a list that cops say of suspicious things, and it's no eye contact, too much eye contact, none of this, too much of this. It's all this either too little or too much of something. And it's everything, which would make you crazy if you're trying to. Innocent as fuck, you're like, oh, no, I'm looking too much. I got to look away for a minute. But not for too long.

I'm innocent, but I look guilty. I look guilty as fuck. So in the middle of all this, Katie shows up, the daughter. And she comes up to help her mom, she said. She said she came over from San Antonio, made a quick ride over from San Antonio to fix this whole thing up.

She said Loretta was upset. Loretta's battling dementia. And she is Katie's massively pissed with the cops for bothering her. You don't bother my mother. She's a sick old woman. Sick old woman. She also said that Ernest, her stepfather, had also been grappling with Alzheimer's. And the cops confirmed this with all of Ernest's friends, saying that they all said that he has been slipping lately mentally.

So they theorize that Ernest's Alzheimer's may have made him pray for a robbery and a murder, an easy target here. So they release Loretta into her daughter's care, and they start looking for the truck. They put it out on the news and everything, look for this truck. They ask neighbors door to door if they saw anything. No neighbors saw anything, they said. So they instead parked in the road and started stopping cars that were driving past the house.

Random car, random stoppages, yeah. They just had a roadblock in front of this house, basically. If you drive by this house, you've got to talk to them for a minute here. So one of the cars was driven by a lieutenant for the Shreveport Police Department who lived a few miles down the road. She said that she drove past the Littrells at 9 a.m. and noticed Ernest's two tractors in their usual spot, but his one-ton pickup truck was nowhere to be seen. A one-ton dually. Holy shit, that's a nice truck. Yeah.

It's a nice truck. So that meant that the truck was gone 30 to 45 minutes after Loretta left for church. So now they're theorizing maybe they were stalking the place waiting for Loretta to leave before they go in. But Loretta's the big, that's what you're, hey, once that tiny little dementia-ridden fragile old lady leaves, we'll have run of the place. You know what I mean? Like, that doesn't make much sense. Now, the next day, they talk to Mildred, Ernest's sister.

Mildred said she's brokenhearted over her brother's murder. She said she knew Loretta was not capable of shooting Ernest herself. She said she couldn't, her hand, she's so weak she can barely knit. There's no way she's pulling off the recoil of a .44 would knock her onto the floor. Like, there's no way. No shit.

Not going to happen. So they said, that's not like that. She said that their relationship had been strained, though, Loretta and Ernest. And she believed Loretta was taking advantage of her brother. And she also surprised the shit out of the detectives by telling them, you know they're not married, right? Stop calling her his wife. Yeah. It's not actually his wife. But after 50 years, I would say that's common law as fuck. 50 years? Yeah, there are places that it's not common law, but...

Fuck, that's may as well. Fuck, come on. You might as well. Everywhere is common law, right? If you if you say you're not gay and suck dick for 50 years, you're gay. That's it. You know what I mean? I don't care what you said. I think it's the same thing, right? You could say you're not married all you want. You're living in the same house paying bills at a joint bank accountantship for 50 years.

You're fucking married. Gobble and cock for 50 years. You are as gay as it gets, man. You're gay. I mean, that's fine. Gobble all cock you want. I'm not judging you. I don't care, but just don't say you're not gay. Yeah. So Mildred said Loretta despised Ernest and wanted him gone so she could get everything he owned and he had a bunch of stuff. So that's what she said. When Ernest had a dispute with a neighbor about a property line, the neighbor accused Ernest of trying to kill him. And Mildred said Loretta took that opportunity to try to have him committed.

Now, the cops said they heard all this and sounded like to them. It sounded like Mildred doesn't like Loretta and probably hasn't for years. And she's being vengeful is the way they looked at it. They talk of a dick. Yeah. Being kind of a dick. Yeah. You're being a little bit of a dick, Mildred. Listen, Mildred, you don't say that very often. Hey, listen, Mildred, you're being a bit of a dick. All right. Calm the fuck down because all the Mildred's are dead is why you don't hear that very often. Yeah. So they interview Loretta again and they said she seemed detached. Yeah.

I said her story was the same, but she very much looked emotionally detached from everything, which they didn't know if that was dementia, guilt. When dementia is in the picture, who knows? That's like if you get somebody in there and interrogated them when they're on acid. Like, who knows what the hell they're going to do? Anything's possible.

So the stories on the local news, they do that. And a guy named Andy Scoggins, one of the cops, got a phone call from a woman in Shreveport who told him she saw Ernest's truck in her friend's driveway earlier that day. Uh-oh. She gave the name and address. The cops go there. The truck is gone.

They knock on the door and the guy in the house, they brought him in, showed him a picture of the truck and he said, yeah, it was at his house this afternoon. My friend Eric Crane came by in that truck, but then he left a little while after.

So then they go to go see Eric Crane, who at this point, he lives in a Shreveport trailer park, in a fifth-wheel travel trailer, in a trailer park behind the Shreveport Regional Airport. So if you, a camper trailer in a trailer park in Shreveport, if you thought it couldn't get worse, now picture constant plane noise overhead as well. 737 noise above it. Wow. He's described as having no ambition and being unable to keep a job.

He does some auto body work here and there. And that's it. Yeah, that's what he does. Terrific. He's also had he's also had more than one DUI and some drug charges in the past few years. So more than one, more than one at 26. So he's doing great.

They said that they found the trailer, but they couldn't find the truck anywhere. They knocked on the door. Eric stuck his head out, saw a badge, and then slammed the door in the cop's face. Shit, that was fast. Not suspicious at all. So they kept knocking, telling him to come out, but he wouldn't come out, so they called the SWAT team.

They stood outside the house all night long outside his trailer, staring at a camper. Just tip it over and then collect him. You know what I mean? Tip the trailer over and then go pull him out. What are we talking about here? So then as the sun came up, the SWAT team fired a canister of tear gas into the trailer, which in a small travel trailer, that is going to get you out of there quick. He burst out of the door.

gasping for air going, what's going on? Why are you bothering me? We've been here all night. I was sleeping, you guys.

Jesus Christ. He would not fucking, he wouldn't listen to them at all, so they had to hogtie him and everything else, and they brought him to the interview room. So they search his residence. His truck is found within walking distance of the trailer, by the way, Ernest's truck. The vehicle is swabbed for DNA and fingerprints, which of course match him. He denied any involvement and offered up an alibi. He said he'd been working at an auto body shop

So they left the room to call the auto body shop to check his alibi. The owner said, not only is my shop closed on Sundays, but I fired that idiot two weeks ago. So he doesn't even work here. So that's how that's going. So they continued to push. They found out that he has a friend who lived behind the trailer with his mother. It's Tina's son, they find out. He's friends with Tina's son.

So I guess that's the guy who said he left the footprints. And so they thought that was suspicious, that he had a connection there and the truck was by his house. So they're trying to get him to confess. He won't. But then he says, well, no, I was at a friend's house. That's what it was. I wasn't working. I was at a friend's house. That's what happened. And they said, no, that's not true. He called your friend. They called him. He said you weren't there. So, no. He said, well, my friend...

Well, his friend said he came by my house, but not until lunchtime, which is well after the murder. So then they asked the friend, and the friend said, yeah, he was driving that dually pickup truck when he got here. He's driving a sick fucking truck. Now, he will not budge. Really? He will not budge. But a detective observes the unique pattern on the sole of his boots. Uh-oh.

So let's take a look at those, chief. So they do. They take a look at those. We'll get into that. So they go searching. They found his truck, like we said. They seize his boots, and they confirm these are the boots that left the bloody footprints at the home. Shouldn't have bought Justin's. No, just get some Docs, man. They're a common threat pattern. So he's arrested, obviously. While in jail, he called his boss, this guy that he used to work for,

And he doesn't realize this, but he's calling his boss who's talking to him on speakerphone with his boss as a news crew recording live on television. Oh, I love it. Okay. He didn't know this was happening. No. So he ends up saying, yeah, I killed him on the phone. Oh, no.

Broadcast to the entire Shreveport area. Oh, shit. Which is not good at all, obviously. He just ruined his case. I mean, he just admitted it, but he just tainted the shit out of this jury pool. He screwed it all up. And then his second call, they just let him make phone calls. Like, this guy's an idiot. Let him keep calling people. So then he called Tina up. Yeah. And they're like, this guy's awesome. He's just leaving breadcrumb trails everywhere.

So they go to the motel. They found out they were at the motel. They check the surveillance footage and they see, you know, Eric going in there with her and all that. And they're like, oh, OK. Yeah. Yeah. Just tossing a jizz filled condom into a bush.

So they bring in Tina and Chris. Yeah. Okay. They bring in Tina and Chris, and this is how she's described in that Booksy thing. Quote, a month earlier, she turned 44, but she looked much older. When Andy and Fox left the interview room, she was still talking and would continue to talk if someone had been listening. They also described her as, oh, God, I got to, oh, here it is. They described her as heavy set and with her teeth out. So she didn't bring her teeth. 44.

She didn't bring her teeth with her. 44 years old, doesn't have her own teeth. They said, we know you know Eric because you spent the night with him. And she said, not really, it was just a one-night stand. Oh, my God. And the cop said, oh, yeah, Tina, how many one-night stands have you had? She got super fucking mad and said, are you calling me a whore? No, we're calling you a murderer. We're wondering if your whoriness contributed to that, but we're not sure.

Why are your teeth out? Why are you put your teeth back in? Please. You left the house. Why did you leave them behind? Fucking ridiculous. So she said now she tried to blame it on Chris. She said that morning she woke up Chris and told him to go out to the shop and help Loretta. Then she realized she needed cigarettes. So she woke her son up and told him to go to the store with her. And she said, I did hear one gunshot before I left. One. A 44. You wouldn't investigate that?

So this is crazy. She said after she and Crane had sex, she offered him a proposition. If he'd kill Ernest, he'd be paid $1,000. So she cracks. Now they go to talk to Tina's son. This is fucking amazing. Okay. His name is Bubba Lewis, of course.

Bubba. Now, Bubba is standing outside the building next to Chris. Oh, no, Bubba's a different guy. I'm sorry. They're standing over a man on the ground when an ambulance pulls up. It's Tina's son, okay? The sergeant pulls in, and he knew nothing about all this shit, and he walked past the guy on the ground and asked Bubba Lewis what was up, and he said that Tina said that he's being interviewed, and it looks like her son had a seizure.

So anyway, once they get inside, the son jumps out a window. They brought him inside. He jumps out a window and punches Chris in the face. Then runs to the front door here while the cops are trying to grab him. And they're telling him to get on the ground. The son jerks away.

And tries to run away from the cops. Now, as he's running, he's looking back at the cops and doesn't see a giant oak tree in front of him that he literally slams his fucking head into at full speed and drops to the ground.

Half dead. Knocked out. No, but before they jump on top of him and then he comes to his senses and starts trying to fight again. And so they had to pin his legs and hog tie him and do the whole fucking thing here. While he's squirming and twisting, he's trying to bite the cops. Why? And speaking in what they described as, quote, an unknown tongue. He's going, he's doing like crazy shit. Why is he doing that? Yelling at them, trying to bite them. Because he's fucking nuts.

He's fucking nuts, man. So they, as they're handcuffing him, they slide down a slope into a drainage ditch together. And then they ended up lifting him up and locking him, you know, all up. And he's babbling unintelligibly, except the only English words they said he used was swear words. He'd be like, fucking, you motherfucker. Yeah.

Which then he turned. He was trying to spit at them and shit like that. One time he tried to spit at the sergeant, so the sergeant slapped him in the face, which is a fair deal. So the kid got pissed off and tried to slide his hands out of the cuffs, which were not double locked. Wow.

Because they just were trying to get him on him to begin with. So he almost got himself out. So they're trying to squeeze the cuffs on him tighter. The son tried to twist the handcuff chain around the cop's fingers. Oh, my God. To try to, like, break his fingers. But they ended up finally getting him. And they called an ambulance to take him to the medical center for evaluation. And the ambulance said, sorry, guys, we're not transporting this one. Not that guy. No. Call me back when he's speaking a human language and maybe. Yeah.

So then when he's all gets, he gets, he gets, they get him back to the station and he's fine. Now he gives up. He gives all his information. He's speaking in English. He's doing things. They say, Hey, who killed that man that lived in front of you? And he said, my mom. They're like, okay, terrific. Then they said the guy in front of you, Ernest. He said, yeah, my mom, I told you my fucking mom, my mother. What about all that shit earlier? Now we can't trust anything you say.

It's fucking crazy. There's phone calls with Loretta and Tina that are in jail. So it's fucking hilarious. She doesn't know that they're being recorded. She has no idea. She's an idiot. She doesn't even have teeth. She has no idea what's going on here. So they go at Ernest's funeral. They arrest Loretta. Yeah.

They arrest her right at the funeral. And Katie is on TV doing an interview saying Loretta couldn't have done anything. She's in advanced state of dementia. This is ridiculous. They're abusing an elderly woman. This is horrible. She says she knows nothing about the murder, Loretta.

And she's diagnosed with severe Alzheimer's disease, declared mentally incompetent to even be questioned, never mind testify or be put on trial, and is moved to a facility for Alzheimer's patients, never to reemerge. Loretta.

So it's fucking nuts. So there's a lot of talk about the wills and stuff, which we'll skip because we honestly don't have time for it here. But there's so much like paper trail of all this, all this shit. Now, through all of this, they figure out that Katie was the one pulling all the strings for everything. Yeah. And that's the problem. Yeah.

Yeah, no. No, that's Tina with no floss. Oh, wait. She's not. Tina's got no teeth. Katie's got teeth. Katie's been. She's like as a master's degree. She probably has teeth. She's got the toothless one underemployed. That's wild.

When they go to Katie's house to search it, they find a handwritten map of Ernest's home with information not listed to the public, including diagram of the home, items that were marked or identified. It's ridiculous. Yeah. Silly. Now, Eric Crane said he never saw that note, but it was written for somebody, obviously, here. Now, while in jail here, a cellmate of Katie says that...

The cellmate says that she basically gives it all up to her cellmate. Yeah. And she said, you know, he was dead so they could collect the profits. She's going to beat the murder charge because she was nowhere near Louisiana when the murder took place. Oh, shit. And they'll never be able to convict me. Can't. Not a jury in the land. Won't stick. So she confesses to her cellmate, Tawanda Daughtry. Mm-hmm.

And so this woman immediately fucking immediately did this. Yeah. They find out, by the way, later on that they had completely done a bunch of paperwork and faked his signature and had some notary they know do it. It's a whole lot of shit here. And also Tawanda said she had to be relocated to several correctional facilities because Katie threatened to kill her. Oh.

So Crane is going to plead guilty. Eric Crane pleads guilty to first degree murder with a sentence of you, sir, may fuck off life without parole. Yeah, you can't plead guilty to first degree. He did. You idiot. And agreed to testify against Katie. She's the one they want the most. They were going to kill him. She's the king. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yes.

And everybody else does it. Tina pleads guilty to second degree murder with life in prison as her sentence as well. And she has to testify to everyone's going to testify against Katie here. So they do. He crane testifies that about everything. And, you know, he says, though, the only names he heard regarding earnest murder were Tina and Loretta. He doesn't even know this, Katie.

But Katie had been in very frequent contact with Tina. And it's just, you know, you can't just cut yourself off like that. They find out all the forgeries. Yeah. Handwriting experts come in everything here. So finally here, the verdict comes in. Katie is found guilty. Obviously, she had everybody testifying against her in her own plot sentencing Katie.

Comes around. You, ma'am, may fuck off. Life sentence plus 60 years. Plus 60. She's lucky they didn't try to kill her. Exactly. It's probably just because you have less of a chance of getting that on someone like her, especially educated. An educated woman usually doesn't go to the death chamber. Doesn't happen a lot. Now, that's how that goes. She ends up in jail. So they're all in jail. Everybody's still in jail for this.

I think Dave ended up actually going. They didn't put him in jail. Tina's son. Tina's son. In the story, they don't use his real name because he was like 17 or something. So they use his fake name, which is Dave. That's what they say. So everybody's in there. Now, Loretta is going to spend the next couple years in this Alzheimer's facility, then die in 2014. Yeah, she dies at like 74. And that is Keithville, Louisiana. Wow.

And a crazy fucking story. Everybody got life in the whole shit. They all got life. Some without parole, some with it. But life plus 60, you're not getting out anytime soon. My God. Especially if you're a toothless 45-year-old. You're probably not going home. So you're telling me his sister got everything, huh? Yep, sister got it all. And in the end, nothing.

Mildred keeps all. She wins. This was all Mildred's plot all along. She's sitting on land and money. That fucking Mildred is diabolical, man. I'm telling you, she will do anything. So there you go. Hope you enjoyed that. If you did, take a second and go on whatever app you're listening on. Give us five stars because we can't tell you how much it helps out the show. It's really, really a great thing to do and it's free. You can also...

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It's not about lacrosse. It's about strippers and frat parties. We'll talk about that. Then for Small Town Murder, we're going to talk about this Idaho Coburger asshole and see what the fuck's going on there. I'm waiting for this trial. I want to see that guy eat some crow, man. So that's going to be a good time. It's going to be fun.

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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 who 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 Plus. Check out Exhibit C in the Wondery app for all your true crime listening.