Shownotes Transcript
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.
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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.
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Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express. Yay! 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, for joining us so much all aboard the murder train. Let's do this. Pulling away from the station, we have a wild story for you today about people that just don't like each other and just can't get along, and it is fun stuff.
We'll get to all that very quickly, though. Head over to ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com. Get your tickets. Live shows. Kansas City. October, you are up next, Kansas City. It's going to be huge. It's a big, giant show. One of our biggest that we'll ever have. So get in there and get your tickets. Oklahoma City is sold out the night before.
after, so can't go to that one. Get your tickets for the rest of the year, too, because they're almost gone. So get them. Also, get your tickets to the virtual live show. Oh, boy. It is apparently the night before Halloween. We thought it was on Halloween. That's what we've been advertising. It's apparently on the 30th, which is a Wednesday. Yeah.
We don't know why. Whatever. But there it is. That's what it is. So it's going to be great. We're going to be in costumes just like a regular live show. But you're in your living room wherever. And you can watch it on Halloween night if you want. Because you can watch it for two weeks afterwards as much as you want. So do whatever you want with it. Shut up and give me murder.com. Patreon.com.
slash crime in sports is where you get all the bonus material. Sure. All you have to be is $5 a month or above and you get so much shit. The price of a cup of coffee will get you hundreds of back episodes immediately upon subscription that you've never heard before. Bonus stuff. New ones every other week. One crime in sports, one small town murder this week, which you're going to get for crime and sports. You don't have to be a sports fan at all.
No. We're going to talk about hot air balloon disasters. Let's do it. God damn. It's the surprising thing. They really picked up once power lines became a thing. Weird, right? It's the least attractive mode of transportation on the planet. Seems like the most dangerous to me. I'd rather ride a hippo. I think that would be safer probably.
And then for Small Town Murder, we're going to talk about this documentary that has messed both of us up for over 10 years now. It's called There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane. And it is an unbelievably weird documentary. I'd also rather ride a hippo on roller skates than ride with Aunt Diane. Yes. What would you rather do, ride in a hot air balloon or with Aunt Diane?
That's the question. Both are a problem. We will solve it this week on Patreon. Patreon.com slash Crime and Sports. And you get a shout out at the end of the regular show. So do that. Listen to Crime and Sports, by the way. Also listen to your stupid opinions because it's goddamn hilarious. That said, I think it's time, everybody. Let's go. To sit back. Let's all clear the lungs. Take a deep breath. Arms to the sky. And let's all shout. Shut up and give me.
murder. Let's do this, everybody. Okay. Let's go on a trip, shall we? Let's do this. We are going to Crockery Township, Michigan.
Crockery. Crockery, like bowls and shit. Betty Crockery. Yeah, Crockery Township, Michigan, which is like one of those big towns. It's a township that has a bunch of little towns in it. Oh. And the town that we'll actually, the small, small town we'll be talking about is Nunica, N-U-N-I-C-A, which is in there. Beautiful. And Nunica only has about 350 people in it.
Jesus. Very small. This area is in western Michigan, about 30 minutes outside of Grand Rapids, and about an hour 10 to Kalamazoo Township, which was our last Michigan episode, sibling death rivalry. I remember that one. That was fun. This is in Ottawa County, Ottawa Lake, Canada. Population of the whole township is about 4,500 people, 4,581. So that's all small, and then Nunica is...
small too median household income here is eighty one thousand one hundred sixty one dollars which is above the national average that's great by over ten thousand median home cost very low in comparison to the rest of the country two hundred thirty five thousand eight hundred dollars so not bad you can live a decent life here um now the name nunica means pottery or earthenware
Sure. Which is interesting because then it's crockery township, which crockery is. Is this a native word? It's yeah. An Indian name. The Ottawa tribe was here. Um, so they, uh, I guess I,
At or near the mouth of the creek of the Nunica Creek there, there was a lot of quantities of Indian pottery were found there. That's why it became Crockery Township and all that, which caused it to be called Crockery Creek, not Crockery Creep. Here are Crockery Creep just fucking whacking it to bowls and plates and shit. Having a Nunica all the time. Yeah, oh, Nunica's.
Having a Nunica. So then they kept the word Nunica and they did that. So the first European settlers in the area were French Canadians. Sure. It was a father and a son, I guess, who passed through this area. Trappers.
I'm sure it's always trappers. Then they found zinc here in 1858. Hell yeah. Once you find zinc, forget about it. I don't even know what you use zinc for, but apparently it's something. Those pills. They put it in Centrum. From A to zinc. Yeah. Old people pills from commercials from the 80s.
All these old people need it, so we've got to mine it. Now, in 1872, Nunica was officially incorporated, which it says Nunica is taken from the Ottawa word for zinc on another website. So it's either – I don't know what it's the Ottawa word for. We have no idea. There was about 1,000 people in this area in 1880.
By 1924, no more zinc left. Everything's gone. We've got it all. We've exhausted our zinc. So there was a big influenza outbreak in 1927 in this area that killed almost 800 people from this town. If only they had more zinc. It was a lot. Yes, maybe that would have helped. Maybe they needed more zinc. I'm not sure. More zinc in their diet. Maybe Centrum could have solved this whole problem. We don't even know about it.
So after that, the population declined. The 1930 census showed there was about 5,000 people here. Then in 1935, about a third of Nunica was destroyed by a fire, which was the Great Nunica Fire, they called it. Oh, it's got a name. It's got a name because it burned down a lot of the town. That's a big fire. And so badly that people just left. They were just like, well. They didn't even come back. Town's all fucked. Just like the zinc, this town is all fucked up. We're going now.
So they said they speculated that it began when the Nunica train station caught on fire when it was struck by lightning. So either way, it doesn't matter because tons of shit was destroyed. Also, a bunch of farmland was destroyed. They never rebuilt the train station. They just went, well, I guess no more trains here. It was a curse. Don't do it. Just keep driving by now. No more stops.
And it never recovered from the fire and went into a free fall. By 1950, there was only 1,000 people there. Oh, my God. There was 5,000 in 1930. So this fire just destroyed. What the hell? People just left. They were like, well, this town sucks now. By 1957, the town was unincorporated.
Now they, they, they disincorporated themselves. It's all flammable. Currently there's about 350 people left there. So unreal. Yeah, it's, it's rough, man. So reviews of this town, there is no reviews of Nunica or crockery township. They don't want to talk about it. But I did find reviews of the Turks in, which is the restaurant there in Nunica. What do they got there? One, one, one, three, nine Cleveland Avenue in Nunica. Uh,
Here's five stars from Christine. Service and food were wonderful. Our drinks were never empty. Food was so good and portions were perfect. Highly recommend the bacon candy. The bacon candy melts in your mouth. A lot of people make these candied bacon things now. I live about two hours away, but definitely going to take a trip back just to eat here.
Oh, wow. You're going to go way out of their way here. Here's one star from Scott. Cold, crappy house made chips. Could dip, though. Angry, rude, unfriendly, unhelpful bar staff. Nice to the owner's son, though.
They are? Is this a British person? The french fries were chips? They're from San Francisco. No, good dip. So I think they're dip for chips. Chips and dip. But they're saying the cold chips. Like, who wants hot chips? Yeah, I don't know. I guess if they're fresh, I don't fucking know. I don't need hot. I'll take them out of a bag. I don't give a shit. Yeah. What if you ever had hot legs? You can make them three months ago and ship them in a giant truck across the country. Guess who's eating them? I'll love them.
Bartender was so unfriendly, I didn't order an entree. Lousy hospitality, lousy experience. And then Pat says, one star, this restaurant doesn't like people in wheelchairs. You come in, they turn you around, roll you right out the door. That's what it is.
You're coming in your chair and they're like, fuck you. Send me right down the hill outside of the joint. They have to a cheer, a chorus of booze. They have no accessible entrance or ramps. Completely illegal. Talk to the owners and managers. They always make some excuse.
of why they haven't you know they only made those laws like 40 years ago so i it's been a while guys you can 85 jesus you could probably put a piece of goddamn plywood up the one step there on the side and make a fucking ramp out of it put a couple of rails on it uh things to do here outdoor shit is number one that's the thing outdoor shit kayaking the creek sure outside shit the woods
Then official things. We have the Nunica picnic slash carnival, which is going to happen here. That's at the St. Luke Lutheran Church in Nunica. And it doesn't look like there are.
A lot going on. It says it's carnival time. On Facebook, 26 people were interested. And it happened already, so that tells you a lot. Feels like it was a bomb. Yeah. You're invited to a community picnic hosted by the St. Luke Lutheran Church. This free event is open to everyone. The theme is Carnival in all capital letters. Fill your plate with roasted pork, baked beans, potato salad, mac and cheese, rolls, drinks, and desserts. Well, I'm on board for that.
That sounds good. It's all your typical accoutrement of a picnic. Sounds good. Games, games, games. Kid-friendly activities. A duck pond, which they didn't... It's not for this event. They just have a pond with ducks in it. It's already there. And it's like a tree to climb. Like, yeah, you didn't put it there for the event. Bounce House will keep your little ones busy all afternoon. Have your face painted by a local artist. Awesome.
All are welcome. And then there's also the Beer, Wine, and Food Tasting fundraiser with Midwest Dueling Pianos.
No information except tickets are $40 a couple or $25 each. Good Christ. What? There better be a lot of fucking beer and wine and food tasting going on here for free for that kind of money. Those dueling pianos better be great. They better be fucking awesome. So that said, let's talk about some murder because this is wild, man. Okay. Let's talk about a lady, shall we? Lady. She is Sheila K. Luke Bong. B-O-N-G-E.
Really? Bunga, Bung. She's born, Sheila is born October 29th, 1958. Her parents are Charles and Lila, and she grew up kind of in this area, in this kind of the crockery township area. She graduated from Coopersville High School, which is nearby. At some point, she is married and divorced. That's where the Bung came from. Her birth name is Sheila K. Luke, and then the Bung comes in there. She'll have three kids.
here. They're adult kids by the time we talked about her. She's got grandkids. She's got great-grandkids at 59. Is that right? Which is early for great-grandkids. No kidding. Everybody's popping them out early there. She worked for a few years at Fountain View Estates as a certified nurse's aide. And then health problems made her have to stop working at the facility here. Oh, no.
She's had a couple of run-ins with the law, nothing serious. She has had like a misdemeanor marijuana charge in the fucking 90s. Who cares? Like alcohol shit, probably a DUI in 1991 or something.
Nothing crazy. She's, you know, whatever. But in 2005, Sheila moves into the neighborhood we're going to talk about. This neighborhood, it's got its own little road. Basically, there's a main road and then you go down this other road that isn't maintained by the city. Like the residents maintain this road and it's got some houses and everybody has like one acre parcels of land. They put a house on it.
They have houses where it's the two houses next to each other and they kind of share a driveway. Yeah. I mean, it's like there's not share, but the driveways are right next to each other type of thing in the middle of them, that kind of deal. So just to give you an idea, because it'll come up big time later. So she moves into a one acre parcel of land. It's three miles south of Nunica. And these are side by side home sites that are surrounded by farmland.
So that's how it works. So basically they said they have long graveled easements to their one story homes. Oh, yeah. So that's how this works. Now, this place is it snows feet here. It's near the lake. And it's this area is known for really heavy lake effect snow. I mean, it's constant all winter, too. Now, her fiance owns the property, but doesn't live here.
I don't get it. He's a long-haul trucker, her boyfriend. His name is Wayne Holman. And nobody really sees him much. It's just really her at the property. So I don't know if he's got another place he stays and keeps her here or whatever the fucking deal is. He's just on the road? He bought it in 2005, like in the assessor's office. He's the one who owns the joint, but she lives there. Now, above Sheila's front door, she's got a sign that reads, Home Sweet Country Home.
And then she's got bunting everywhere, like her team just made the playoffs. Those are the rounded arc flag things that you see hanging during playoff games. And another one, she has a wooden sign that says, this is an American home run Japanese style. What does that mean? Oh, take your fucking shoes off. Yes, please take off your shoes and stay a while. It's a poem. It's obviously a poem. Very nice.
So in 2009, Sheila gets a new neighbor, that next door neighbor. They're not going to get along very well, her and this guy and Sheila. Shoes on all the time. Look at him going in the house with his shoes on.
This is Wendell Earl Popejoy Jr. That is Popejoy. One word. One word. Popejoy. Joy of the Pope. He's about four years older than her. And he moves onto the adjacent property with his longtime girlfriend, Rhonda, here. And he's about a 5'8", 300-pound guy.
He's a little ball of a man, and he's known as being a very calm, real even-keeled, real helpful guy. Everybody in the neighborhood likes him. He helps you with things. He's a good guy. He's a former Air Force mechanic, and his current job was fixing anesthesia equipment at Grand Rapids Spectrum Hospital and also fixing motorized toys at the DeVos Children's Hospital as well.
Okay. So he's a maintenance guy at the hospital. Mechanically inclined. Yeah. Very good with a wrench. Absolutely, yeah. And you have to be very – to be an Air Force – I know a guy who ran an Air Force mechanics team, and you have to be so fucking anal to do that because – Oh, diligent. They have to get inside the jet engine basically, and they have to check every fan blade and go over it with a fucking tiny flashlight. It's crazy. Yeah.
So you have to really be on top of your shit. To be a big fella to do that is pretty impressive. He probably wasn't 300 pounds 30, 40 years ago when he was in the Air Force because he's in his late 50s now. I'm sure he put on a couple of pounds. Like a neighbor said, if he saw a neighbor bailing up
feed he would help them when he saw a neighbor hanging shutters he'd just come over and start helping you do it is that right so nice guy yeah just let me let me grab that for you that kind of guy whenever people were arguing with each other they said he's a mediator he's always the guy tries to be the intermediary of well there's got to be some common ground you guys can find a calm guy basically
Now, he's got a two-stall detached garage and all of that kind of thing next to it. You know, snow shovels out there. And his sign reads, an old toad lives here with his ladybug. Yeah. Those are fun. They all got these cutesy wooden country signs going on. An old crow and his cute chick live near that shit. So Wendell and Sheila don't get along. Sheila doesn't get along with anybody, first of all.
No? Nobody in this neighborhood anyway. The only people she seems to get along with are her mother and her siblings. Everybody else hates her. What's going on with Sheila? Tons of complaints. Dozens of police interactions because of neighbor disputes with Sheila. Oh, Jesus. All of them stemming from something to do with Sheila. Most of the time she calls. Other times people call on her. In 2016, there was at least 13...
interactions. More than one a month. That's fucking crazy. Every four weeks she's talking to the cops? And wanting them to come out. And it's always little things. One was, there are ducks trespassing on my property. Ducks. Mm.
You can't control ducks. They go where they go. Like, they're ducks. You don't give it five minutes. They're going to go. They'll go all the way to fucking Alabama in the winter. Like, they just take off. Yeah. I mean, it's crazy. That's crazy. Three of her chickens died, or three of somebody's chickens died, and it was questionable how they died. They thought they were poisoned. She thinks they're going to solve the chicken homicide? The chicken murders. I guess we're going to do a chicken autopsy. Okay.
To put them up on the slab, take them apart. Yeah. Oh, boy. You know, that'd be fun for the wishbone anyway. This one's missing its gizzard. Rabbit poaching. Somebody said they killed a rabbit. It's all of this type of shit. Most of these beefs, though, centered on the gravel driveway to their properties.
Okay, and who owns it? Who has access to it, who's on it, who's not on it, and also snowblowing. Who's snowblowing onto somebody else's shit? That's another big deal. So there's complaints. These are complaints that the cops were called for. Stakes were wrongly placed along the driveway.
Yeah. That's steak. They called the cops because someone put steaks in the wrong place in the driveway. The cops for that. Imagine getting there. It'd be like, I'm going to pull a steak out and I'm going to beat whoever the fuck doesn't just fix this and let me go away. I swear to God. I'm going to smack whoever called with this steak. You got about 10 seconds before I start hitting people with this shit. So that's what you got. This is why I'm not a cop.
Because I know I can't deal with people like that. That stupidity? Yeah. Why are you calling me? I'd be so mad. Why am I here?
I can't write a ticket to a chicken. No, or a rabbit or a duck. What am I supposed to do? Cuff the ducks and take them away? What's his ID number to write down? What are we doing? You can't let like you can leash them like they're dogs or something. Another one was about a semi truck obstructing the shared easement.
which I think that was her fiance was home and he parked, he just parked where no one could get into their driveway. He just parked in the gravel. Um, a handful of them enjoyed, uh, are, uh, involved Wendell and Rhonda and Sheila, but a lot of them were for other neighbors. There's tons of neighbors here that have problems. They have a lot of back and forth complaints with another couple at the end of the entrance, the driveways entrance, uh,
Some of these are videotaped, and I'm going to show you one of them, and people can hear a little bit of it because you can see exactly what these people are dealing with. Like a ring doorbell camera? No, no, no. A guy with a video camera out there filming her doing it and narrating it as he does it, which makes it even better. So she would snowblow her driveway and point the thing to shoot the snow into other people's driveways who were already shoveled and snowblowed, which...
I will fucking kill you for that. I will strangle you for that shit. Yeah, I'll put you through that blower. The worst feeling is when you shovel the end of the driveway and then the plow comes and puts another foot and a half of snow in front of your driveway. If that guy slowed down, he'd be dead as if I beat him to death with my shovel. And I'm not, you know, normally, hey, he's doing his job, whatever. I mean, you son of a bitch. And now I got to...
You saw me do it. You see me. And I feel like they're driving it with a big smile on their face. Whoop! Not done shoveling yet, are you, pal? All right, then. See you later. And he drives away. You son of a bitch! It's almost like he might as well go honk, honk afterwards just to... I hope he's got earbuds listening to this show while he does it. Oh, shit.
So Mark Muir, I guess his name is M-E-U-R-E-R. He's one of the neighbors, him and his wife. And they're fighting all the time. Mark has a civil suit pending in 2017 against Sheila and her boyfriend over the access to the easement.
And it was they actually in May of 2014, the mirrors sought a order of protection against Sheila. Wow. And the judge did not grant it, wouldn't grant it. The judge said this is a property dispute and wouldn't grant it.
So a year later, May 29th, 2015, another judge also rejected protection orders for Beth, for Beth, who is Mark's wife against Sheila, because Beth claimed that Sheila threatened that she was, quote, out for blood and told her, I have a gun.
OK, she said, I'm out for blood. I got a gun. She said, can I get an order of protection? They said, nah, property dispute, some neighbors shit here. And after one incident in 2014, Wendell Popejoy wrote to the judge calling Sheila as in in support of the other two, calling Sheila, quote, mean, nasty and socially unacceptable.
Which sounds like, you know, part of our show. He asked for her to be punished, and the judge did nothing. So let me show you. So here we go. I'm going to show you this video. Let's look. This is... Somebody did this with a handy cam? Yeah, this is Mark or their phone, whatever the fuck. This is Mark, and Mark is going to have Sheila on the property. Let me turn up the volume here. And...
you can kind of see how this goes here
See, she's on the hay line. I'm standing on one corner and I'm looking at the other. She is out in my field hassling and harassing me. Hassling and harassing me. She's getting ridiculous. She turns around and slaps her ass at him. She's still on my property. She's giving him the finger. Watch. This is crazy. She'll run out and dance into the field. I've done nothing except mow my hay.
There she goes out and... What is she doing? Why? She's dancing. Why? Giving him the finger. Just to piss him off, because... Is she coming back? Yeah. She sure is. And this is... This is getting ridiculous. This is getting ridiculous. It is, sir. I agree with you. I don't disagree. But she does that. Like, that's a... You can see there, there is...
Can't even mow my hay without being harassed, he says. But there's a clear differentiation of property lines there of where he mowed. And she's going out looking at him filming and dancing and giving him the finger and slapping her ass on his property just to go, fuck you. You can't do anything. I'll do whatever I want.
What is that? She's an asshole is what that's called. That's the technical medical term, I believe. Yeah. She's trespassing. She's a duck at this point. Yeah. Why is she doing that? I don't get it. To piss people off? Is it the noise of the mower that she doesn't like? No, she has to mow her shit too. Everybody has to do all this stuff. What caused her? Wow.
Wow. What causes her just to do that? She does shit all the time. Deputies on various occasions described Sheila as, quote, seething with anger. This is the cops when they arrive, when she calls them. Seething with anger, extremely hostile, and also irrational and hard to understand.
Hard to understand. She calls the cops. They show up. She starts going batshit crazy. They're like, we don't even know what the fuck she's talking about. She's just ranting and raving and being irrational. One deputy wrote about a November 3rd, 2015 incident. Not sure if she even remembers why she called 911. Meaning she's not sure that she remembers. She said, I don't know why I called, but I'm very mad and I hate these people. Something's wrong with her.
A little bit. A deputy wrote on March 22nd, 2016, that he was told by Sheila to, quote, fuck off. Yeah. Did he do it? And to, quote, get the fuck off my property. Terrific. And then the deputy wrote, this behavior from Sheila is common during police contact.
So it's not just the neighbors. It's even she calls the cops. They come out. They don't want to be there. And then she yells at them and tells them to fuck off and go away. It's worse than they don't want to be. There's nothing they can do. No. No law was broken. Nope. I mean, they have to answer a call. But, you know, after a while, I think you could be able to tell people, listen, if you call and you don't say that someone is dead or dying, I'm not coming. Yeah. Because this is crazy. Yeah. You're wasting resources. Yeah.
You're wolfing right now. Or start billing her. That would be the other thing. That's what we should do. Yeah. Is if you make, you know, calls that shouldn't be made. Erroneous. Yeah. Here's a fucking bill. There you go. Yeah. Because I'm not paying for that. Why do we have to pay for that? Right. Because this fucking lady's crazy. Why should that be?
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So September 2017, a complaint against Sheila was put into the court for a personal order of protection. Another one from another neighbor complaint by this is the mirrors here, not Pope Joy, not Wendell Post Joy listed examples of alleged harassment, including obscene language and gestures. The protection order was denied and they noted insufficient evidence of immediate and irreplaceable harm.
So you haven't proved that you're in harm's way, basically. Was that Wendell or Mark? This is Mark. Mark that made the video. That's Mark. Now, the judge said, quote, the judge can't order police to be nice. It can't order people to be respectful. What the court is particularly disinclined to do is to be the personal police officer for your neighborhood disputes. Exactly. They told that's what they told the person trying to get the order of protection against Sheila. Oh.
So basically, I'm not going to get involved in your neighborhood bullshit, which seems a bit irresponsible after this. November 2017, Donetta Gould, who's 81 years old at this time, by the way, nice little old lady. She drove. I guess Sheila drove past Donetta Gould while Gould was walking. She's 81 and takes a daily walk, you know, to keep the blood flowing so it doesn't stop and she just dies. Right.
Apparently, Sheila lowered her window and said, quote, quote, Hey, bitch, I hope you fall out and break your hip, which is both mean and hilarious at the same time. So Gould here, the 81 year old said she gave her the finger. She gave Sheila the finger. I would love to see an 81 year old woman be like, fuck you, Sheila. That's hilarious. Number one.
And Gould said it's even. And then Bong gave her two fingers back. So, you know, I'll give you both. All right. Danetta said, even now, it's hard to believe that she did that. That's just the way she was. She flipped people off all the time. Just buy one, get one. That's it. So Beth also, this is Beth Muir, Mark's wife.
He said she said this, quote, She was a horrible, mean person to me, saying that Sheila would routinely call her vile names and scream at her for unprovoked reasons. She said that the neighbors talked jokingly with the police about the possibility that maybe Sheila would, quote, yell herself into a heart attack.
And they all said, hopefully, that'd be good. Fingers crossed. Even the cops were like, I mean... That'd be great. Yeah. Jesus, we'd have to stop coming out here. That'd be terrific. For the 911's sake. So the easement is the big issue here. Yeah. The easement is... I mean, there's a million others, obviously. Fucking ducks. Sure. You don't want to have ducks walking around. You can't have that. Lost ducks. But there's... Common places. Those are tough. That's going to be difficult. So I was just...
watch this interrogation of this lady in Florida who, like condos, and there's a common area for the condos. Nobody owns it. Some of those people have a quad drive, too, where you've got a driveway for four people. This is a common grassy area at a condo. You own your doorstep, and that's it. Everything else you don't own. So these kids are playing, and this old lady would kept, not even that old, but she kept like
at these kids. It was three kids. They were like six to 12, the brothers and sisters. Oh,
And she would yell at them and call them fucking names and tell them to get off the prize. She'd call the cops on them. The cops would come out and go, you want me to what? Arrest children for playing in the grass? They go, well, they're just screaming. And they go, well, kids scream while they play. They're outside. Like, who cares? You know what I mean? Anyway, this lady at one point, one day she like snapped on these kids. She like called them the N word and took their iPad and threw it and broke it and then went in her apartment or went in her condo. So then the kid's mother comes and
Knocks on the door like three times and this lady just shot the mother through the door and killed her. Wow. Killed her. Mother of three, dead on the doorstep. Hate crime. And no, no, no. She said self-defense. I was terrified she was going to break the door down.
And the cop in the interrogation goes, you see her like outside, like, you know, bench pressing, lifting weights. Is she like a, you know, do you know she's like a, that's what I mean. Do you see her out there like, you know, training? And she's like, no. And then she goes, well, how do you expect her to come through a bolted door then? What are you talking about? Like, it was ridiculous, but it was a similar thing. It just went back and forth and escalated to the point where somebody decided they were going to quote, stand their ground. God.
You have problems. So apparently Mark and Beth here were suing Sheila to assert ownership of the driveway easement past the Pope Joy and Bong residences. OK, the rest of that.
They claim control, the Muir family there. Apparently the Muirs bought the acreage surrounding the homes and the easement in 2012. So they own it. Okay. The assessor's office will tell them they own it or whatever, but Sheila's not having any of that shit. So there has to be a big legal battle here.
Now, Wendell's fiance here, Pope Joy's fiance, Rhonda Clark, said, quote, she said, we better find another way to come into the driveway because she's going to own everything. That's what Sheila told them. And she said, quote, at one point she had an encounter with Sheila and Rhonda Clark said, I called the police. That's when she tried to hit me when I was putting up the rope. She's putting up a rope to like rope off her driveway. And Sheila came over and hit her.
Wow. So this is a lot here. The total sum total of neighborhood fuckery is in a matter of three years. The police were summoned 54 times to this for this for neighborhood disputes, which is insane. Obviously, it's so much. It's almost twice a month. That's ridiculous. Yeah.
Ridiculous. They said five times judges denied neighbors requests for personal protection orders against Sheila or Sheila against them because sometimes they would file against her and then she would file back. Yeah. And also prosecutors at least twice chose chose not to bring charges against Sheila for things that criminal activities that they were saying, hitting somebody, damaging property, something like that.
Christmas Eve 2017. So December 24th. Sheila has a gathering with family and friends and all that kind of thing. She talks to people. And the Pope Joy, Wendell Pope Joy and Rhonda on Christmas Eve, they have a gathering of family and friends. And he finds out that basically they get served with a subpoena to testify in a property dispute on Christmas Eve. They don't have to testify Christmas Eve, but they get the subpoena. Christmas Day goes by uneventfully.
December 26th, the day after Christmas, Sheila, no one can find Sheila anymore. She's gone. Apparently she had been contacted by phone about 2 p.m. on Christmas Day. So family members talked to her on Christmas Day and she was went to a family thing on Christmas Eve.
So she's been seen then. But after that, no one's seen her. She was at her home on Christmas Eve. They're saying she's five foot three, 115 pounds and missing. So it's a tiny little mean lady. Yeah. Tiny little mean lady. Yeah. That's what I mean. She's it's she is wacky. So now there's a reason she's missing and we'll find out what it is. Sheila apparently on December 26th was snow blowing the easement in front of the houses there.
Yeah. She's snowblowing the easement and, of course, blowing snow onto Pope Joy's driveway from this. So he's like, great. Now this is pissing me off. And snowblowing is her way of, like, claiming ownership over this easement. Like, I'll snowblow it because it's mine. So it's about 10 a.m. And Wendell Pope Joy is in his house having a cup of coffee when he sees Sheila out there snowblowing. Yeah. So he puts his coffee down. He goes into his bedroom, opens up a dresser drawer.
Removes a .22 pistol from the dresser drawer. Okay. Okay. He walks down the driveway, hides in some pine trees that are between the two front yards. And there's a lot of snow coming down. It's 10 degrees outside. Snowy and windy. Sheila's got a big parka hood up over her head. Sheila doesn't see Wendell in the trees. So he sneaks out of the trees, up through the snow, walks behind her, and shoots her in the back of the fucking head.
Wow. Just Wendell's had enough. He calmly put his coffee down and was like, well, go get my gun now. Hide in these trees and celebrated the birth of baby Jesus. And this year is over. Brain on the snow. There we go.
That's the last Christmas she'll fucking celebrate. Wow. Shoots her in the back of the head. Okay. It's a 22 caliber long bullet. Passes through, forward through the right side of Sheila's brain. Kills her. Dead. One shot. Wow. Back of the head. Boom. She just dies on the snowblower there. So after he kills her.
Now, there is no fucking way no neighbors saw this, by the way. It's 10 o'clock in the morning the day after Christmas, and it's snow, so everybody can see outside, and everybody can kind of see everybody's front from this area. There's no way the neighbors didn't see this at all. And also a gunshot going off. So what he does is...
He calmly puts her snowblower back where she keeps it. Yeah. He has a camouflage sled that he uses for hunting for animals. Sure. He loads her up onto the sled, drags her into the woods behind his house. There's a hill down there. Takes off all her clothes, burns them in a burn barrel, and leaves her in the woods. Wendell! Wendell! Yeah.
Fucking Wendell Popejoy. My God, sir. Yeah. That is a snap and a half, man. And left her in the woods. Mr. Wendell is a bad man. Go ahead, Mr. Wendell. Yeah.
So he leaves her out. He doesn't even bury her, just leaves her in the snow. And it's snowing so heavy within an hour, she's totally covered in snow anyway. Nobody, she's gone. She's in the snow, deep in the snow. So she burns all the clothes in a burn barrel and then just goes back in, I assume, and resumes his coffee. Maybe put it in the microwave for fucking 20 seconds, give it a little warm. He probably took a sip and was like, ah, cold. Yeah, we'll do 20 seconds. There we go. That should do it.
So the next day, people are looking for Sheila because the family is like, can't get a hold of Sheila since Christmas Day. What's going on here? So the detectives come and they ask all the neighbors about her because they know there's been a million beefs and maybe this has something to do with it. So they ask Wendell and Rhonda there about, do you know anything about
Right. Right.
So then they talk to him on the 27th. They have an interview with him. And while they're doing this, family members are searching all around, all over for her. So following this interview, they end up Sheila's brother. Jeff was searching an area with her son, Charlie, when they saw a body part underneath the snow. They saw her heel sticking out of the snow.
Oh, Jesus. And told the brother told the son to turn around and he said, why don't you go back now? Like, yeah, I want you to found this. It's a downhill wood lot. They said, oh, it's an opening to a farm pasture. That's where they found him. So where they found her. So, yeah, the brother realized that her son was accidentally standing on Sheila.
He was standing on top of her body in the snow. That's why the uncle looked down and saw the foot and was like, why don't you head back for now? Go warm up for a minute. We'll take care of this. He said, I didn't want him standing on top of his mother when he found her. Fair enough. They uncover her. She's nude except for earrings, a white metal necklace, a white hair tie, a lip ring, and she's got a rose tattoo. So they know it's her.
They also found buttons to her clothing in the burn barrel because the buttons didn't burn. So they found her buttons in there, but not her clothes. So they said, what the fuck? It's on Wendell's property. Yeah. Her shit's in Wendell's burn barrel. But he's got no criminal record whatsoever.
They're like, why would this guy who's been calm his whole life? Everybody likes this guy. Nice guy. No criminal record. Why would he kill this woman? Hide the body right there, like right behind his house. So it could be easily found. It's fucking nuts. So one of the detectives said it was a difficult scene. It was hard for our detectives and our officers piercing through the evidence as the snow comes down, covering up our scene that made it difficult.
Right. Yeah, everything just keeps getting covered. Every second, yeah. It's too much. You have to put like a tent over the whole thing and then keep knocking the snow off the top of it. Now, the cops did make an announcement to everyone in the area that, quote, there's no cause for concern for anyone in the area. At this point, it's an isolated incident. Is anybody out there a real asshole? Because otherwise, you're probably okay. There's no danger to the public. It's being resolved. Again, someone is currently in custody. There's no reason for alarm in the area.
No one's in custody yet. They just told him we have. Yeah, they said that before actually anything happened. So they talked to Wendell again since it's, you know, on his property. And the quote is this is Detective Sergeant Sparks said to Wendell. There's a dead lady behind your house here who I'm guessing is Sheila. And Wendell just didn't say anything. And he said, no idea how a dead lady ended up on your back property.
None. And Wendell just said, I have no idea. No clue. So then they talked to Wendell for a third time. They bring him into the office and sit him down. And they said, listen, we found evidence in your burn barrel as well as blood, human blood on your sled on your property. So, you know.
What are we talking about here? It's got to be you have to know something about this. And he said, no, I don't know anything. I don't know anything. And the police said, well, her family is very upset. And you're at the top of our list here because you're one of the people that didn't like her the most. And one of the detectives said, quote, you know what you did. Why? You just don't want to tell us.
So this goes on for six hours of, you know what you did? No, I didn't. No, I didn't. Blah, blah, blah. And then finally they said, did you or Rhonda hurt or Sheila or kill her? And he said no. And so they said, okay. They ask about a previous report that Sheila filed that claimed Rhonda fired a gun at her.
Oh. And so they asked what would happen there. And Wendell said it wasn't true. She said, quote, she wouldn't waste her bullets on her. Okay. Okay. Then after six hours, he says, you know what? It's 3.30 a.m. right now. Yeah. Fuck it. Fuck it. He said, quote. I just want some goddamn sleep. The detective said he asked for a pen and paper and said, let's finish this and what's done is done.
He said, That's his exact words.
Yeah.
Okay. So he grabbed a gun from his home, went out to the easement where Sheila was blowing the snow. He stated he went up behind Sheila and shot her in the back of the head and disposed of the body. He described it as, quote, like, picked her up, quote, like a sack of potatoes and put her on the sled. Wendell, that's still premeditated. That's not good, Wendell. I just picked her up like a sack of potatoes. You guys don't understand. She's a bitch. You don't understand.
She's been a real pain in the ass, though. You ever had like a real asshole around you, though? Wendell. Like Wendell. It's one thing if he went and shot her and then, oh, shit, and called the cops. But he burned her clothes, dude.
I'll even accept taking her in the woods, but to strip her? Once you have a nude corpse in front of you? You're a bad guy, Wendell. If I'm standing in front of a nude corpse, I'm going, I have made a wrong decision here somewhere, right? Well, would you look at this? I never thought I'd be doing this. This isn't right at all. I don't work for a mortuary. I should never encounter. Who the hell am I? What, a medical examiner?
So he said, I went out there. I went out there, got behind her and shot her. I guess it was a cold act. I'm not really sorry she's gone. He's not making it better. Nope. Then later on, he apologized and said, I'm sorry I did that. He said it was a snap decision. He said, if I had a plan, I guess it would have been a better plan.
He said, because that wasn't much of a plan. I just went out and shot her, and then the rest of it came to me. Like, I guess I got to get rid of her now. Did he think Mark was going to come over and go, thank you so much? Yeah. He's going to make HOA board president for this? Wait till you hear what the neighbors say. Oh, Jesus. It's fucking awesome, dude. It's awesome. It's like he killed the Kraken or something. It's fucking crazy. So it's wild shit.
So he said she went in backside up. I didn't cover her or nothing is what he told him. So he just threw her down on her face. Threw her on her chest. Ass in the air and let the snow dip. Let the snow do the rest.
Then he got in his car, drove to a bridge over the half-frozen Grand River, and threw the gun in the water. So this is a lot of cover-up. Now, at this point, publicly it comes out, because the cops before this had said the police had been out there about a dozen times in the last couple years. Then it comes out, once the press gets a hold of it and they can check the records, it comes out that from 2014 to 2017, the police had been there 54 times. Wow.
In three years. You got to do something. That's insane. And nobody did shit. Yeah.
So they did an autopsy. They confirmed shot in the head. Bullet went through her brain. That's that. The family, Sheila's family, is really pissed because apparently they loved her and she was a nice person to them. I mean, it's her family. It's their family. I don't know. She treated them differently. Her sister disputed the notion that her sister was a troublemaker. Well, I've seen multiple videos and I showed you one. She's a troublemaker. She's just smacking her ass. And giving the finger and dancing on someone else's property knowing that they don't want her there. She's being an agitator for sure.
She said every morning she talked to her sister who lives in Florida by telephone. They had their morning coffee together. She said she was a very selfless person. Her loss cannot be put into words. I'm sure. So family members...
released a statement to the local TV station, Wood TV, which is hilarious. At this time, we're in shock due to the heinous nature of this crime. We are deeply saddened by the fact that there's nothing we or anyone can do to bring our mother back. She was loved dearly by so many for her sweet and caring nature.
And hated by many for the opposite one. Wow. Yeah. She was selfishly and brutally taken from us far too soon. We are praying that she gets justice that she so desperately deserves. They said we'll never hear her smile or hear her laugh. All of this is gone because of a whim, as Wendell called it.
That's what they said. Then they start a GoFundMe for her funeral. Of course. My sister Sheila was tragically murdered over the holidays. She went missing on Christmas and they found her body a few days later. She was suddenly taken away from her family in such a cruel, senseless way. She was a mother, a grandma, a great grandma, aunt and a sister. She was loved very much and will be deeply missed. She was loved by many. I'm trying to raise money for her children to help with the funeral costs and burial costs.
And they ended up getting $1,320 raised, which will not. That won't bury anybody. It won't bury them, but she's cremated, so it will cremate you. It won't bury you. A fucking stone costs more than that. What's it cost to bury somebody?
All together, no, more than that. For my grandmother's, I want to say it was like nine grand. What? She got like a thing in the wall. You could probably get it a little cheaper, but a headstone is fucking expensive. I mean, that's really expensive. Plots are expensive. A coffin itself is two grand. I mean-
Are you done with this? I'm done with this. Let's start making that shit. That's what I mean. What are we doing? People are always going to die. Wow, yeah. It's like night shift. They got to die. Why can't they die for us? I mean, we're profiting both ways. Fuck it. Chuck and Bill Cemetery. He says, people got to die. Why can't they die for us?
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Chuck and Bill's. It sounds like a fucking sounds like a bar, like a sports bar, Chuck and Bill's Cemetery and sports bar. So Sheila's friend who I guess a friend of hers said that Sheila had told her about a recent run in with a neighbor, a neighbor over snow plowing and that she'd been having a really difficult time with her neighbors.
But it's she caused for the most part, it seems like. So Pope Joy Wendell has no criminal record, but he's going to be charged with felony murder and using a firearm in a felony. Sure. And he's held without bond. Neighbors react. Here is Andy Gronink. He says, it's sad that she got killed, but I feel for the guy who killed her. He's nobody ever says that. He said, quote, I wouldn't care if he got nothing because he wouldn't shoot you or me.
In other words, if you're not a complete fucking bitch to him for three years or six years, he ain't going to shoot you. So don't worry about Wendell. I've never heard that quote about anybody. No, he wouldn't shoot you or me. That's some Midwestern niceness that you have to read between the lines.
I wouldn't care if he got nothing. I wouldn't care if he got nothing. I wouldn't shoot him, you or me. You snowblow in his driveway, then you'll be all right. Probably not. So...
Oh, that's amazing. And Muir has some funny shit to say to Rhonda Clark. Now they're trying to say, was Rhonda in on this? The fiance, Wendell's fiance, because she was believed to be inside the home when the shooting happened. Police say when he confessed, Wendell confessed, he said that Rhonda, he told Rhonda about the killing.
But then when they talked to Rhonda, she said, I didn't know anything about it. I don't know what you're talking about. I wouldn't know anything either. She claimed Wendell never admitted the crime to her. And she also said she never heard a gunshot. She was asleep the whole time.
Good move. Yeah. I don't know nothing. I was sleeping. Yeah. But he had said multiple times that she would then later on. He said multiple times that she was sleeping at the time of the shooting. But he later told her about it. He said, yes, she wasn't awake knowing what I was doing. But I told her later, I shot the neighbor. You won't have to worry about her anymore. They said maybe that's where she said, what did you do? As he tried to remember the sequence of events. And Wendell said, I said, I took care of the problem.
Rhonda said that, that Wendell and she and Wendell lived in hell because of Sheila. He said she, he just snapped. She said anything we tried, everything was by the law. And this happens. I miss my Wendell cause he's in jail. So Sheila and Wendell's loved ones say authority should have done more to stop this to begin with. It's not like they didn't have 54 occasions to maybe fucking do something here. Um,
Rhonda Clark said the judge and the prosecutor, they knew this was going on. They knew it and didn't do anything about it. Then she said she was an evil woman.
And started playing ELO in the background. Yeah, take that. Smacking around. She said he's been out there in the garden while she belittled him and abused him and swore at him. She would just yell shit at people for no reason. She said that maybe if law enforcement had acted on the complaints against Sheila, this shit might be different because maybe she would have stopped. She believed that they had... This is Sheila...
believed that she had owned the easement even though she didn't and that's how that went. She said, Clark said, we were caught between a nightmare that was horrible and there are two sides to every story. Sure. But we've heard his side and it's just, I put my coffee down and shot her. Like, that's not a good side. It's not a good side. It's a terrible side. It'd be a better side if it wasn't, then I stripped her corpse nude and burned her clothes which that looks, anytime you, anytime you strip a murder victim it looks terrible at that point.
Looks like you jerked off on her, even if you didn't. You know what I mean? Yeah. When you're standing beside a body of water chucking a firearm into it, you know that you did something wrong. You know that you've done something. That isn't correct there. Nude corpse, gun in the river. I've done bad things. Shit.
Chucking a firearm into a body of water says, I'm going to jail if they find this. How often have you ever been around a nude corpse? Ever? Never. Not once. No, every corpse is clothed with its hands over its chest. Like in a suit or a dress with a fucking rosary in its hand. Yeah, the whole deal. In its proper place. A casket. The man of the cloth standing over it. Yeah.
Somber music and shit. Sheila's daughter, Jane, said, I think they could have paid attention that there was something more to this. Talking about the cops here. In a recorded phone call from jail, Wendell told Rhonda, quote, I just wanted to take care of the problem in the neighborhood. That was my thinking. I didn't want to be here. I just wanted to solve some shit.
So they took Wendell on a field trip from jail and he showed the police where he tossed the weapon, but divers couldn't find it. Nobody could find it. It must have got swept away. So they have the trial for him. And the prosecution said, because the prosecution's got evidence.
They have a little bit to overcome because they have to acknowledge that nobody likes this lady because other than her family, everybody else that's going to come up is going to go, this fucking lady was evil and she sucked and I hate her. So in the opening, the prosecutor says she will be described as a very unpleasant lady. The reports I saw were incidents that were really not chargeable. For example, kicking snow on someone's car. With hindsight, had anybody thought that he had potential for violence, that was not on anyone's radar.
is what they say. Then he added that just because she's an asshole does not give Wendell the right to kill her. Right. He said, murder is murder. I mean, that's true. It's impossible for me to imagine a more premeditated crime than what happened here. That's a little bit of an exaggeration. You've definitely seen much more premeditated. Yeah, I would say so. I think it's more postmeditated. Like, I'm going to, I shot her. Oh, fuck. Now I got to do some shit.
I got to think about it, but she's already dead. Now, the defense attorney said that he didn't disagree. He said, I don't disagree with much of what the prosecutor said. He did shoot her and she was a bitch. So just to let you know, he said she said the prosecutor or defense attorney said every time for the eight years Wendell lived in that home, she would intentionally crank the snowblower to close Wendell's driveway.
This is years and years of the same type of antagonistic behavior that he finally snapped. He finally had enough. That day was his breaking point. And he said, would charges have escalated this even more? Hell, I don't know how much more escalated you can be. Because the prosecutor said, maybe if somebody, if Sheila had been charged by the police for other things, it might have escalated the feud. And this guy went, how much more escalated can you be than getting shot in the back of the fucking head?
He said, so he said, yeah, he, he just snapped. He reached his wits end and he shot her. Then he realizes, my God, I shot her. He said he didn't plan it. He said it happened in the spur of the moment. No, no plans. It happens. And he said he asked the jury to find Wendell guilty, but not a first degree murder. It wasn't. Oh, he said it wasn't a premed. There's no defense to it as far as whether he did it or not. That's not. And it wasn't self-defense, but they're saying, listen,
Reasonable minds here. Let's not call it first degree murder. Let's make it something less than that. A manslaughter, a second degree, some shit. Now, the judge makes a decision that the jurors are not going to be told about 99 percent of the beefs that have happened over the years.
What? So they don't get to see the videos of Sheila giving the finger and slapping her ass and doing all this shit. They don't get to hear. They don't get to see all the police reports of Sheila being incoherent, screaming at the cops to get the fuck off and yelling at old ladies. They don't hear any of that shit.
All they're going to hear is he walked out of his house and shot her. The only things that are that they're going to hear are things that happen between Wendell and Sheila, which is a few things. But it's nothing compared to the her with the rest of the neighborhood, which is everybody at that point. So none of that. Now, Sheila's fiance, Wayne Homan, he testifies. He said he didn't believe that Sheila was mean to her neighbors and said Sheila told him that they antagonized her.
I'm sure she did. Which we've seen the videos. No, that's not true. He said she wasn't like that. They used to rile her up, harassing her all the time. And they said, well, what about all the other witnesses that say the opposite? And he said, they must be mistaken.
I know my Sheila. She's a rose. You know, I don't know. So it's my hummingbird. One neighbor here, Mark Muir, does get to testify. And he says that Sheila was a source of grief in the neighborhood. The source of grief. He said, we tried to obtain relief from Sheila in any way that we could. He testified about court action that him and his neighbors had taken against Sheila in a property dispute. They said Sheila wanted to claim the easement as her own.
When he was asked, when did all these hard feelings start? He said, I don't know if there was ever an opportunity for good feelings.
He said it was hard. He said the problem about Sheila is she was relentless. He said her relentlessness is what drove you fucking crazy. She'd abuse you for hours if you were outside. She never got bored. He said she would holler at him while he worked on his farm. And he said it went on and on and on. She just never stopped. So his wife would document every encounter. They'd call the cops and the cops would come and nothing would happen.
So he said this Muir guy, I love this guy. He said that he didn't like Sheila and didn't refuse to help her family members look for her when she was missing. Because he said, I didn't give a fuck where she was. Couldn't care less. Wow. He said that the police showed up after she was reported missing. Rescuers set up spotlights and he told an officer that he wasn't going to help in any search. And he said, I'm not helping shit. And the cop turned to him and said, we've heard that a lot. Yeah.
They said, I don't fucking care if she's missing is what people said. Good. Fuck her. I mean, you're going around house to house and they're going, yeah, I don't give a shit. Fuck you. It was only her family really looking for her in the cops. That was it. He said, quote, I had really no interest in helping at all.
So, during cross-examination, he was complimentary about Wendell, though. He said, Wendell will help you out even asking. He never did shit to anybody. He's a great guy. So, another neighbor talked about Wendell and said he's a very pleasant neighbor. Very pleasant. So, what do we do here? I mean...
It goes to the jury. The jury, 100% know what happened, but what do you find him guilty of? You got to find him guilty of something. You've got to. There's a shitload of options. Well, they find him guilty of first degree murder. Is that right? First degree fucking murder they find him guilty of. I mean, he went into the bedroom. What else would he have gotten that gun for? Yeah, but I mean, is that...
How quick does a snap have to be for it to be a snap? If you have 30 seconds to put your coffee down, go get your gun. Is that not snapping? Is that now? Is that a plan now? I think so. That's what I mean. Legally. I mean, technically, even if it happened, if he had his gun on him and they were standing face to face and it happened, it's not a snap.
to grab your gun and pull it out, that's premeditation, isn't it? Isn't anything premeditation unless you accidentally run someone over with your car? I guess in that regard, anybody that's carrying a gun, that's premeditated no matter what happens because you're holding the gun. A case could be made for it anyway. So, I mean, I don't know. It's hard. To me, it's the post-murder things that are the hard part. Yeah, it's the disposal and the standing next to a body of water and chucking a firearm. Yeah.
Those two things are hard to get over. But, I mean, like I said, if he shot her in the lawn and then immediately called the cops, I think we're getting a different verdict here. Yeah, maybe. So he is sentenced to, you, sir, may fuck off life without parole. Holy shit. Yeah, that is a lot. So...
As Pope Joy left the courtroom, a man yelled at him that he should look out for himself in prison. And then some other woman said, there's two sides to every story, asshole. And that's argued with each other, which is hilarious. That's great. I love it.
Oh, my God. Now, her family, Sheila's family said he won't get out, but that doesn't bring back my sister is what the sister said. They said the family is still struggling. They said the kids said no matter how old we are, we need to have a mother to call and her children no longer have her there, which is true. Her kids liked her. So Rhonda, she said about Wendell, he's a good man who didn't deserve to be locked up for the rest of his life. And, you know, this is crazy.
So May of 2020, Wendell appeals this whole thing.
He argues that the jurors should have been allowed to consider land manslaughter as a lesser offense. But they said Bong, this is what his thing said. Bong repeatedly harassed multiple neighbors by name calling, yelling, flipping the bird, trespassing, snow blowing snow onto her neighbor's driveways, driving on their grass, riling up the neighbor's animals and was even engaged in civil litigation with one set of neighbors over an easement at the time of her death.
She's driving on their grass? On purpose, yeah. Just driving on their grass. Polly Walnuts? Yeah, she's pulling a fucking donuts in the front yard.
So they said first degree murder is defined by and includes in relevant part a killing by means of poisoning, lying in wait or any other willful, deliberate and premeditated killing. That's first degree murder, which is a really broad spectrum. Yeah, but the hiding in the trees. Yeah. Fucking qualifies it. By means of poison, lying in wait or any other willful, deliberate and premeditated killing. All other murders are murder in the second degree.
The elements of which of which are death caused by a defendant's acts with malice and without justification. So it's not an accident. That's still you meant to kill them without justification. Voluntary manslaughter is killing without malice.
Didn't mean to fucking kill you, but you're dead. Voluntary manslaughter requires that a defendant be found to have had an intent to kill. And to this extent, the offense parallels the crime of murder, but is distinguished by murder from murder by an absence of malice.
Okay, they said to reduce a homicide to voluntary manslaughter, the fact finder must determine from an examination of all the circumstances surrounding the killing that malice was negated by provocation and the homicide was committed in the heat of passion. The word passion in context of voluntary manslaughter describes a state of mind incapable of cool reflection. They said there cannot be a lapse of time during which a reasonable person could control his passions.
I don't know if there was enough time just to go in the bedroom of a small house. I don't know. They said defendant Pope Joy argues that the jury should have been instructed to the lesser included offense of voluntary manslaughter because there was no overwhelming evidence presenting presented showing Sheila provoked defendant and that the defendant acted out of passion. Indeed, Sheila and Pope Joy had engaged in verbal altercations in the past and the overwhelming evidence at trial indicated that Sheila was a neighborhood nuisance. However, she's been adjudicated a nuisance and
However, defendant and Sheila had not even interacted with each other on the day she was killed. Defendant explained that he had watched her snowblowing on her property while drinking coffee in his kitchen, went to his bedroom, retrieved his gun, walked outside his house to some trees where he then snuck up on her and shot her once in the back of the head. Bong was facing the opposite direction and never saw the defendant coming.
A rational review of this evidence does not support a finding that the killing occurred in the heat of passion. Rather, the defendant had ample time to plan the killing. Thus, we conclude that the trial court's decision to not instruct the jury on the lesser included offense of voluntary manslaughter was not an abuse of discretion. They said that there's overwhelming evidence. A trial indicated that Bong was a nuisance, blah, blah, blah. OK, yeah. So they said, no, fuck off.
It's affirmed. So he'll be in jail forever. Yeah, he's not getting out. Not getting out. And Sheila's cremated. So that's that for her. And these people in this neighborhood at this point, everybody else is like, wow, this
What the hell? I mean, they both kind of took a bullet for us. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're sad to lose Wendell, but I mean, we're happy Sheila's gone. And I mean, someone else will move in there. It's fine. So the rest of the neighborhood's like, well, luckily I didn't have to do it.
This is crazy. They actually kill people. My point is when he did that, how many neighbors saw it and went, good, and fucking closed their blinds? Didn't see nothing. There's no way he did that without anybody seeing it. It wasn't in the backyard. He went right out in the front yard and shot her. I mean, it's...
I mean, fucking man, that's crazy. Unbelievable. There you go. There is crockery town shit, Michigan. There it is. There it is, everybody. Holy shit. Oh, my. That's some small town murder shit right there. You can't do that, no matter how much of a dick they are. They can't. People are huge assholes all the time. Oh, all the time. Can't do that. Can't do that. Hmm.
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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+. Check out Exhibit C in the Wondery app for all your true crime listening.
