#538 - Dead With No Head - Kingman, Kansas
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Hello 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 all aboard the murder train, pulling away from the station. We have a wild episode tonight. And again, it's going to be a lot of murder stuffed into a small amount of space. So it's good stuff. We'll get to it very quickly. First of all, head over to shutupandgivememurder.com.

There you go.

And we're wearing costumes, too. There you go. It's going to be great. And that's available for two weeks after we do it, too. So you can buy it later. You can buy it ahead of time. You can watch it 30 times. You can do whatever you want with it for two weeks. Enjoy it. Shut up and give me murder.com. Also, patreon.com.

slash crime in sports is where you get all of your bonus material. Everything. Anybody $5 a month or above, which is a damn value. It's a cup of coffee. You get hundreds of back episodes you've never heard before, a bonus stuff, and then new ones every other week too. One crime in sports, one small town murder, and you get it all. You can have your bit of it. Every bit of it this week for crime in sports. We're going to talk about that Vince McMahon documentary. Yeah. Not the wrestling part, the other parts. The...

The parts that I am perplexed about from the moment he said it to now. Then for Small Town Murder, we are going to finish up Ted Bundy's psychological assessment of 1976 to find out if Ted Bundy's a violent person. It's hilarious. It's possible, yeah.

Him doing those pictures and trying to analyze those pictures is hilarious to me. So we'll get into all that. Patreon.com slash crime in sports is where you get that. That said, I think it's time, everybody. No time to waste here. Let's all sit back, clear the lungs here, 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 go. We're going to Kansas. Yeah? Yeah. Still excited?

Yes, we're going to Kansas, everyone. We're going to South Central Kansas, the hardest part of Kansas. Right. In South Central. Watts, Kansas. Watts, Kansas. Compton, Kansas we're going to. It is 50 minutes to Wichita, so almost an hour. A lot of the people that live here commute to Wichita. That's the jobs here. Three hours to Edgerton, Kansas, which was our last Kansas episode.

Episode 489, Psycho Stepmom, one of my favorite of all time titles there. This is in Kingman County. It's Kingman and Kingman. And it is area code 620. A little bit of history here, quickly. Did we say that's the name of the town? What's the name of the town? Kingman. Kingman. I didn't say Kingman. It's Kingman, Kansas. Yeah. That's where we are here. Kingman. Kingman was laid out in 1874.

That's when they did. It was named, just like the county, for Samuel A. Kingman, who was a chief justice of the Kansas Supreme Court and, of course, a hero to all young boys. I mean, I had – when I was a kid, I had like your Michael Jordan poster and you got your – all that. You're like your He-Man figures when you're little and then you also, of course, have the –

Life-size Chief Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court, Samuel A. Kingman, coin bank that you keep in the corner of your room. With the Kung Fu grip on the gavel. It's important. It's important. That's the good model. Cheap parents didn't get the Kung Fu grip. You save five bucks, but I mean, really, you got to have the gavel grip in there. Gavel grip. Gavel grip. Kingman is known, apparently far and wide, they say on their website, as the town with plenty of soft spring water.

How about that? I just heard of it. It's been quoted. I guess they've talked about it since 1940, about how great their water is. In 1904, there was a vote of 276 to 37 to approve a proposition that gave $35,000 in bonds to build waterworks. So this guy named John Hoover dug—he just started digging—

Yeah. He got a shovel and just started fucking digging until he hit water pretty much. It was like, here is where it goes. And he dug the wells near the where the light plant is now where the electricity thing is and found good water at 35 feet. Apparently. Nice work. 35. Imagine digging 35 feet into the earth.

Yeah, but 35 feet is mad shallow. It is. Good water. But at 20 feet, I'm like, there's no water here. Keep going. This isn't working. You're over halfway, I swear. Nope. This is 20 feet's enough. I can't even get out of this fucking hole. You got to get a rope to get me out of here, I think. He dug 35 feet. 35 feet. Reviews of this town. Here we go. Four stars. There's no five-star reviews to this town, by the way. Okay. Four stars. Kingman is a small town with potential growth.

Is it really? It's a great place to raise a family. Downfall is there's not much available to entertain kids. So it's not a great place to raise a family. Wouldn't that be part of a place to raise a family? It's a great place to raise bored children. Yes, to raise children who stare at iPads. That's what this is.

Three stars. My hometown is not perfect. No places. And I have to give credit to this reviewer because we always make fun of terrible, over-the-top bad grammar. This person correctly used a semicolon. I'm impressed. Is that right? Good for you. We still have some problems like teen alcohol use and small-scale drug use, i.e. marijuana.

Oh, no. The kids are on the pot? Is that what you're telling me? Oh, no. A little bit of weed, a little bit of alcohol, underage, and that's the downfall? Wait, wait, not teenagers. No. Let me get this straight. Teenagers are drinking alcohol and smoking weed? No, I don't buy it. I can't imagine. I don't buy it for a moment. The town has little in means of entertainment, which leads to the issues previously mentioned. Yeah, they're bored. What are you going to do? It's a great place to start a family, raise small children, and retire.

So those are different things, though. What about the time after your kids aren't small, but before you retire? You know, that 40 years, what do you do then? What about that really hard part of your life? You know, that whole part of your life where you live your entire life and stuff? That part? What happens there? People are kind and helpful. Our school has community service days every year. Like all small towns, the older generations have a hard time letting go of older ideals and learning not to judge.

Them kids with their marijuana. I don't like it. Bastards. A large percentage of people my age want to travel and experience more than simple small town life, myself included. Despite all of this, I would come back and maybe raise my own children here. Make them just as bored as I am. That'd be great.

This place made me who I am. It's my home. It sure is. It made you who you are, someone who uses semicolons correctly. So this is probably a good school district, I'm going to say. Three stars here. Crime is not too high, but disturbing that most of the crimes committed are done by teens.

Is that disturbing? Is that disturbing? Get a bowling alley. What the fuck is wrong with you people? They're bored. Get them something. And how many teenagers have any forethought into what this behavior is going to do for them? They all fuck up in their teens. That's not the point of your teens. That's what you're there for. You're all hopped up on hormones. You have no idea what you're doing. It's a mess. You could see inside a 15-year-old's brain. It is like...

It's like a spirograph fucking picture. It's just a wow. That's a lot of swirls and lines you got going there, kid. Things to do here. The Kingman County Fair. OK, now they have a button contest. Oh, what kind of make a button for the fair? Yeah. And the winner of the 2024 button contest is Owen Archer. Congratulations to Owen. Hey, good for you, Owen.

Buttons are available for purchase at Kingman in Fisher Lumber, Ohio.

White's just whites. That's the name. That's the company. White's any white person at all around. I'll sell it to you. Yes. Citizens Bank of Kansas and another some other bank here. Also at cozy's pizza and some other shit place. Buttons are five dollars each. The button will allow you to participate in the medallion hunt barnyard Olympics and you can enjoy the cattleman's dinner and receive a reduced rate to the admission and admission to the bowl blowout at

Sounds like you're going to get fucked by a bull till your asshole falls out. Pretty sweet deal. All you got to do is buy a button. Buy a button. Yeah. And they have a 4H fashion review judging as part of this. I don't know what the hell. Fashion for cows? I don't know.

Their horses? Who knows? Maybe it's who's got the best wranglers. Maybe. There's a horse show, a dog show, a livestock exhibitors meeting. That sounds exciting. There's also a 4-H, oh, a rabbit and poultry check-in. You've got to have that. Treasure hunt begins. That's nice. That happens at noon. There's a sheep and goat weigh-in. Everybody wants to be there for that.

Bring your foam fingers and everything. A swine way in as well. And at 7 o'clock, which this sounds pretty good. I kind of want to watch this. The Barnyard Olympics. I don't know what that is, but I so want to watch a cow try to fucking do the uneven parallel bars. I want that so bad. There's nothing more I've wanted. Yeah, I want to see that chicken relay. Yeah, show me a big pig's floor routine. I want to see what it does. Well...

Just shits and walks around. There's also a pet show for some reason. Just bring your pets in. I guess that aren't like working animals or food or future food. There's also an open class woodworking contest. Oh, so there's that. You can whittle anything. I guess so. Yeah. Whittle what you want. And then there's also this. I had to get to the peewee bucket calf contest.

Show. Peewee bucket calf show. I don't know what a peewee bucket calf is. I assume it's small. Small, small cows. Small cows. That said, I think it's time to get to some murder here. Let's do this. Let's talk about some murder. Let's go to 2011. OK. OK. Not too far back. Everything is pretty much exactly the same.

You're looking at an iPhone, checking your Instagram. Exactly the same. So let's talk about a guy named Brett with two T's. Yep. Double T Brett. Brett Seacat is his last name. Stop. S-E-A-C-A-T. Seacat. So cool. That is a cool fucking name. He sounds like a recreational vehicle.

What is that, one of them new Seacats? Fuck yeah, baby. 200 horsepower. You fly over the water on these bitches, baby. It's a Seacat. Yeah. It's nimble. Fuckers got dual 525s. Oh, baby. Get me one of them. This cat rocks. One of them new Seacats, the Brett model.

So Brett Seacat is born in 1976. And one thing you'll notice if you follow us on social media and see the pictures of this stuff, he's a handsome son of a bitch, this Brett Seacat. He's handsome and he's got a cool name? He's got a cool name. God damn it. Brett Seacat. That sounds made up. That's like when Bart Simpson said, I'm changing my name to Joe Kickass. I'm changing my name to Brett Seacat. Fuck yeah.

That is so cool. He's a law enforcement trainer. He trains cops. That's what he does. He shows other people how to be cool. Yeah. Here's how you get a wrist behind someone's back easy. So he works for the Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center. He's a Kansas law dog? Kansas law dog. Ain't no law around here, law dog. Sea cat's a law dog? Sea cat's a Kansas law dog.

And he teaches police recruits from around the state. So he teaches academy guys. He had previously worked for the Sedgwick County Sheriff's Department, and now he's working for Kansas as a whole here. He starts dating a girl that he's known since high school, but well after high school, and I don't think they went to high school together. Okay. Her name is Vashti Forrest.

Fuck yeah. Okay. V-A-S-H. V-A-S-H. V-A-S-H. Make that sound, everybody. It's fine. V-A-S-H. V-A-S-H-T-I. That's exactly what it is. Vashti Forrest is her name. And so he starts dating her, I believe, around 2002 is what it seems like here. Starts dating her when they're both, you know, 25 or so. She works at Cox Communications in Wichita.

You son of a bitch. We're having Cox Communications problems. I'm so mad at them. When I said that, Jimmy's eyes like fire, lit with fire. Come over, Vashti. Where are you? Vashti, do you know anything about tech support? Is my modem fried or not, Vashti? She unfortunately is a human resources business partner, so isn't going to be able to fix shit.

She just decides whether or not somebody gets fired for saying different words. How exactly did you tell her that she looked nice in that dress today? You weren't holding your dick while you were doing it, were you? So in 2004, their relationship becomes very serious, so serious that they head on down to Belize to get married.

That's been a very popular place in the last 20 years. Yeah, because it's South America sort of, but it's closer than that. So it's like you can – because it's right at the top there. And real estate has gotten – well, it was affordable there. So like all these blue-collar guys bought like – invested in a home there and they're going to sell their place in America and move on down to Belize and stay there. Yeah.

Even though they've all seen the monster inside me things where something swims up their pee hole and then somebody's got their dick chopped off in Belize. Not only pee hole invaders, we're talking about fucking the storms they get there are otherworldly. Unbelievable. There was a 90 Day Fiance, there was a lady who was seeing a guy from Belize and she went down there and like,

She was stuck on some other island because the storm had knocked all the power out. No one could get a hold of anybody. And she was like, oh, my God, I hope he's not dead because a lot of houses collapsed from the wind. And I was like, this is crazy. This sounds nuts. They don't even have sturdy houses. This is insane. Like, what the fuck is happening? Then things swim up their pee hole. And then you got your pee hole being swam up by horrible things.

So they get married in Belize. I'm sure the pictures were lovely. Absolutely lovely. Gorgeous. They end up having two sons as well. And they should still be minors. So I'm going to go ahead and leave their names out of this because there's no need. Two sons. Who gives a shit? Anyway, so they, as the relationship progresses, a young marriage with two small kids, they have some issues. Some signs of trouble start to pop up.

But in November 2010, they began seeing a therapist together. Good move. A couple's therapist that sees both of them together and then each of them individually as well. Oh, that's nice. So they're working on it. That's good for them here. They see Connie Sunderman, who's a clinical social worker for marital counseling. And she met with them together and she met with Vashti individually and then a little less. She met with Brett individually as well.

When they first started this here, Vashti was expressing feelings of loneliness and isolation. And the therapist described this counseling as a last ditch effort for Vashti prior to her filing for divorce. She's ready to file for divorce. And she says, I'll try this before we.

Cash our chips in here. So I say I've done everything I can do. Yep. They said the therapist said to see whether or not things could change within the marriage. So according to this therapist, Vashti's mood was sad and symptomatic of depression when they began counseling in November.

And that's not like her. It's not like she has – some people are just depressive naturally from time to time or whatever. That's not her type of deal. This is – she's depressed because she's sad about something. You know what I mean? So these symptoms, according to the therapist, improved dramatically.

And by April of 2011, Vashti was saying that she felt better than she had in years. Oh, she feels better. So this therapist helped her, I guess, build herself back up. Yeah. She said Vashti's outlook became hopeful. She was making healthy life changes such as exercising, eating better and planning to move closer to her sister and to her place of employment, which is Wichita.

Vashti would speak about her sons all the time, about how much she loved them and how much she loved being a mother. And the only thing she has a problem with is her marriage is suffering. Everything else is fine. She also Vashti experience expressed fear to her therapist about having possibly been sexually abused as a child, even though she doesn't remember that ever happening.

That is that's tough stuff, which is tough because at some point I don't know. I'm not a therapist. I'm not a therapist or psychiatrist or psychologist. So I don't know how to handle that. But yeah, it's almost like you want to go. Well, if you can't remember it, then fuck it didn't happen. But at the same time, if it's fucking you up subconsciously and your brain's just blocked it out, then you might have to work through it. So I don't know how that works. Yeah. And I got a friend who's going with going through it because he he he found it in therapy. He didn't know that it was.

all there and then now he's got it and now he's trying to deal with it after finding it can you imagine yeah I didn't want that I came here to try to feel a little better and you're fucking bringing back diddle memories Jesus Christ god damn it this isn't fun I don't know if that's a good therapist or not no

So they questioned whether untreated abuse could cause psychological and behavioral problems later on in life. She was asking her. Vashti was asking the therapist, and she said it's possible if it affected you to the point where you had to block it out or if it's just pre your memory. And who knows? So she said in a response to a direct question, the therapist asked her directly,

Are you going to harm yourself when she was depressed? Do I have to worry about you for self-harm? And Vashti said she would never commit suicide because of her religious beliefs and because of her sons who are young. So she said, you don't have to worry about that. She also said that she was scared of old Brett Seacat not handling the prospect of a divorce well enough.

Yeah, if your name's Brett Seacat, you just expect shit to work out. You know what I mean? Yeah, there's that. And as a Brett Seacat, you don't have divorce filed on you. No, you do the filing. Yeah. It's basically whatever a Chuck Norris joke you want to have replaced with Brett Seacat. Yeah. It's the same fucking thing. A whole line of Brett Seacat jokes. Yeah. So also that she was worried just how that would work out.

She also so she's not depressed, though, by 2011, March, April. She's not depressed. She's doing better. She's, you know, just establishing a social life again of, you know, meeting other people. And she even makes a new friend. As a matter of fact, a new man friend.

No. Yeah. Her sister, Kathleen, says that just before filing for divorce, Vashti had, quote, become intimate with a friend. So she banged one of her friends is what she's saying here, which is you're an adult. You're breaking up with whatever. That's none of my fucking business. And further worried that her husband would find out. Yeah. Brett Seacat, don't take kindly to that at all. The man teaches other men how to be men. And he's not going to deal with.

He teaches domination is what he teaches. Yeah. He's not going to deal well with this. This is going to hurt. This is going to be interesting, but it's wild. But she was worried about that, but she was also hopeful with plans for the future. But she's like, I hope fucking Brett doesn't find out. He's going to be pissed.

So she really liked she talked about she liked her job at Cox. She liked her weekends and her evenings. She'd spend them with her boys and was always busy, like redecorating and doing shit and keeping herself busy around the house, too. Now, she had a journal. OK, a personal journal she kept on a table beside the bed. So bedside journal here.

In about March of 2011, Brett Seacat takes the journal to work and

and scans the pages and prints out numerous pages. Now he'll say later on that he did this at Vashti's request because she wanted an electronic copy of the journal as a keepsake. She wanted to also have like a digital file for, you know, she wanted it to be written, printed out and digital all every archive in case the Smithsonian wants it. Okay.

I'm sure she's like, get it to me in many forms, please. I don't think so. I write impeccably. Sotheby's is going to want to auction this. They're going to want this someday, right? So April 14th, 2011, Brett has a therapy session and he says that if Vashti divorced him, she was divorcing the entire sea cat family, even the children.

she's just writing it off. No, you don't make the rules of what she wants to not who she wants to spend time with. And it's just not you. The kids are fine. He said that he would take her, take the two boys and leave the country if he had to, to keep her from taking the kids away from him.

said, well, that's illegal. I have to tell you that. Right. As legally, I have to tell you. And he also thought it was better for the boys to have one parent and one household instead of two households. I

I'd rather have them with me in fucking Belize than going back and forth doing two Christmases. That's bullshit. If his dad has a car and I have a car and we're in the same house, then they just have two cars. But if we have two separate houses and I have somebody and he has somebody, then there's four cars. And that's a lot of cars. You know what? The boys are rich with vehicles. It's just too many cars.

It's just too much boat. So April 19th, 2011, Vashti has a session and she's particularly concerned today that Brett would not take the divorce well and that she mentioned a dream he told her about that startled her a bit. And I don't blame him at all. Here we go. The therapist said, quote, she told me he awakened her from sleep and told her he had a dream that he would kill her.

Why would he wake her up? Hey, baby, baby, I just had a dream where I strangled the life out of you. Okay, go back to sleep now. No, no, no, it's fine. Yeah, I saw how springy your fallopian tubes are. It's wild. I cut out your liver and I threw it in the front lawn. It was insane. Okay, no, go back to sleep. Go back to sleep. And he said it was a recurring dream as well. Oh, my God, he's doing this a lot. That's terrifying.

Yeah. She was worried about how he's going to react to the divorce. And when you couple that with dreams of killing her, she's very worried. She wanted to have someone with her and the children when he was served with the papers. He didn't want she wanted to be like just them in the house. She. So the therapist and Vashti arranged for a safety plan for Vashti's protection when she served him with divorce papers, a B plan in case things go bad here.

Now, April 21st, 2011, Vashti makes a reservation at a hotel in Old Town, Wichita. I didn't know that in Old Town, Wichita. It was a reservation for May 19th, the same night as the Tim McGraw concert in Wichita. So she's coming into Wichita to party it up.

And as we saw in San Diego, the people coming back from that concert, those battered souls, she's going to be walking back to that hotel room, cowboy boots in hand, limping with bleeding feet on May 19th. Lots of blisters with her brand new boots. Oh, God. Those people, man. It looked like they let people out of a cave that they were stuck in for five years when they got out of there, limping and shit. Yeah.

It was so weird. So April 29th, 2011, Brett drove to his office and opened an envelope containing divorce papers that she had given him. That afternoon, while still at work at the law enforcement training center, he located an overhead projector in storage and used it by himself for about an hour. Just fucking overhead projecting things for some reason. Right.

Now, then he asked a maintenance staff guy or a couple of guys. He's like, what's up, guys? You know how to fucking do things. What's the best way to dispose of computer hard drives? They said, our best would use a torch. He goes, otherwise, it's got to be all melted or else we'll be able to read shit. And so he goes, OK, cool. And then he used a torch, melted hard drives and threw them in a trash can. Then he threw out three old cell phones as well.

Because those. Well, no, no. You just throw those out because they hadn't been used in a long time. So he's like, I might as well get rid of these today. These and all my hard drives. I'll just throw out later that afternoon. He drove to a convenience store. He got gas, got some gas. There you go. OK. Bought some future purchased fuel. April 30th, the next day.

It is morning time or afternoon. I apologize. And police respond to a report of a fire and a possible shooting at the Seacat residence. They're called here when they arrived. The second story of the house is engulfed in flames. Shit's coming out of the windows. And Brett Seacat is standing in the backyard by the driveway holding his children. OK, now where's Vashti?

Yeah. The cop asked Brett, is there anyone else in the house right now? Yeah. And he responded, my wife is in there. And they said, oh, my God, where is she? And they were going to go in and try to get her. Yeah. And he said, quote, she's dead. She shot herself. Her fucking head is gone. That's what he said to the cop. Her fucking holding children. Well, he's holding toddlers or seven year olds or whatever the fuck. Yeah. Her fucking head is gone.

Oh, my God. Brett Seacats don't do emotion. Subtlety is right out the window. Brett Seacat tells it like it is is what's up. That's how Brett Seacats roll. She's dead. No head. Hey, boys. Yeah. No, it's okay, baby. It's good. Yeah.

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So Bretz, they come back and they go, what the fuck happened here? And he says, well, my wife was depressed and I was sleeping downstairs when this happened. I heard a noise. And a couple of minutes, a moment later, I heard my wife. She called me on my phone saying he should get the two boys and get them out of the house before they got hurt. So then he said right after that, he heard two pops coming.

And he said he went upstairs and saw flames. And he said he saw his wife in their bedroom and tried to get in and save her. But the fire was just too much and he couldn't get to her here. So, yeah, that's that's how it is, which is weird. She's in the house and she calls him on the phone and says this. So, yeah, he claimed he heard a loud bang and went upstairs and found her dead.

head fucking gone, fucking head gone and the house on fire. So he said he just grabbed their kids and ran outside and put the kids inside his wife's car for safety.

As any dad would do. Yeah, and against the weather and anything else here. So it's, you know, spring day and it's probably chilly in the morning or any time. So Brett said he then ran back upstairs, left the kids in the car. Sure. And you had the fucked up part is your wife's dead, the house is on fire, but you still have to tell the kids, hey, don't fuck with the directional thing. Don't like...

Don't press that button. Don't pull this thing into it. Don't put it in drive. Don't put it to any of these. Leave it. Yeah, you got to still tell them all that. Leave it in pee. Pee is good. So he then runs back upstairs, he says, while on the phone with 911 to try to rescue his wife. But the smoke and the fire were too strong, forcing him to retreat. No choice. Okay. Problem is, though, as the cops are looking at him, he has no soot on him at all.

It doesn't look like he's been in a fire. You know what I mean? And he has no blood on him either. So it doesn't look like he got anywhere near his wife. And he only has... His only wound is a small burn on his foot. That's it. The only wound he has. Tiny little burn. So they're like, that's weird. I mean, hey, glad you're okay, but... Great work. Fucking weird. So...

They said also when the cops got there, they said there wasn't something quite a little off about the way he was acting. Yeah. A little weird. One of the cops said, quote, his demeanor seemed to be out of place for the circumstances. There was no perspiration. There was no blood or ashes. And after rescuing the two children from a burning house and also discovering his wife's suicide, he just looked like he was pretty fresh, ready to go somewhere. Yeah.

You're not even sweaty. If you went in and you tried to fight the flames, you'd have covered in sweat. Ashes stuck to your sweat. You'd be like, I tried out of breath. Holy fuck. Couldn't do it. And I sprained my ankle. I fell down the stair, whatever. Choking a little. Yeah. Yeah. So the house has extensive fire damage, but it's not, it still stands because there's a lot of brick in it. So a lot of the brick is still standing. A brick chimney is still in perfect shape.

You know, they're made for fire. So after the fire department extinguished the fire, that's when her body is found. Vashti's body is found on a bed in the upstairs bedroom, on the master bedroom. And the investigator finds a Ruger Redhawk .44 caliber revolver

My God. That's why you said her fucking head is gone because that would do that to you. That is a dirty Harry gun. Yeah. Yeah. That's a fucking Wyatt Earp gun for Christ's sake. Peacekeeper peacemaker. I would say so. So it is a revolver and it's lying on the bed under her body with the barrel pointed down toward her legs.

A single gunshot wound through her head into her neck is the cause of death. And we'll go into the exacts there. And a five gallon gasoline container was lying in the middle of the bed right there next door. Now the injuries, the fatal gunshot wound to her neck and head went from right to left, slightly downward from front to back. So you can imagine what that is completely destroying her brain and her head. Yeah. So he also said there was no soot found in her lungs, uh,

And that she had a significant amount of urine in her bladder that would have felt like a urinary emergency, quote unquote. Oh, she had to pee right now. She had to pee right now. So she woke up.

Is what that is. She's saying she woke up and they're saying she would, if she would have woke up in the morning, she would have pissed before she did anything. It would have been like, Oh, I gotta go pee that morning. P thing. She woke up and was like, I'm burning it down right now before I pee. I'm going to kill myself. I have to pee so bad. I'll shoot myself in the head. That's how bad I have to pay. So that's weird. Uh, the coroner's report also indicates that she nearly instantaneously died from the bullet wound to her head. But she,

She had also sustained gunshot wounds to her torso, hip, and thigh. Those wounds were consistent with rounds cooking off from the heat of the fire. Oh, fuck. It was making the rounds go off and the gun was shooting her more.

Damn it. Yeah, that's crazy. No smoke inhalation either in her in her. Any of the tests, no ash or smoke. Blood and urine tests were negative for alcohol and, you know, every drug under the sun. The coroner had no conclusion as to whether it was a murder or suicide. Really? I have no idea. Big gunshot wound to the head. You guys figure it out by the scene, I guess.

So a neighbor who had been unable to sleep was awake and watching television that morning. She heard a sound which she described as sounding like a gunshot based on hearing gunshots in the past, she said. Rather than look into it or anything else, she got frightened and covered her head with her covers until she saw emergency vehicles arriving.

She hid under the covers like she's seven and the boogeyman is in the closet. Yeah, with a flashlight. What the fuck are you doing? Her and a flashlight under there going, I hope it goes away. Hope it goes away, man. I hope it goes away. Based on the timing of what was taking place on the TV show she was watching when she heard the gunshot, they concluded she heard the shot at 3.15 a.m.,

All right. Now, the fire pattern here, an agent determined from the burn patterns and patterns and different kinds of damage that the fire started in the hallway and moved south to north in the bedroom.

So outside the bedroom. Didn't start on the bed where the gas can is. It started outside in. Okay. Like, you know, if you were doing that, you'd... Trying to, yeah. Yeah. Trying to destroy the whole top. Now, something else that didn't burn in the fire, by the way, that someone probably wishes would have burned in the fire and I think was meant to burn in the fire. They find printed papers, printouts of like website pages. Uh-oh.

regarding how to kill someone and make it look like a suicide. What? Literally that. And they were sitting on the kitchen table of the house.

So right in place. That's a place where you'd go, well, that'll burn if the house burns. It's the kitchen. That's where all the fire goes. Oh, yeah. So searching throughout the house, they found them on the dining room table, water-soaked PowerPoint presentation that included information about suicide wounds and death investigations, specifically death investigations involving fires. Hello.

Hilarious. One of the pages discussed investigations distinguishing between homicides and suicides, and one page discussed reasons for suicides, including severe marital strife, recent emotionally damaging experiences, financial difficulties, humiliation, and revenge. But when they said, hey, bro, Brett, pray tell, what's up?

What up with that? The fuck, man. Like, what is this about? It's going down, clown. He said, oh, that was just discarded paper that I took home from work.

Oh, that's mine. So that was just, yeah, that's mine. But it wasn't. I took it home like as like a kindling. It wasn't, you know, for like a fireplace, a bonfire. He claimed it? Yeah, yeah. He said, well, because he said it came from work. I don't know. I didn't look what it was. I just grabbed a bunch of discarded paper from the recycle thing at work and I just took it home. It's weird that it happens to be all about how to kill your wife and make it look like a suicide in a fire. Very strange. Hey, Mr. Seacat, what's this? Wow.

Oh, that's not a good answer, Brett. See, Brett Seacat doesn't need logic. Brett Seacat plays by the seat of his pants here. Just saying, uh-oh in their face. That ain't the right answer, bud. I would say, oh yeah, no, those are mine. You failed. But I had no idea what they were or anything. Yeah.

So Brett talks to a coworker here and he says, yeah, I thought everything was fine. He tells a coworker, he said, my wife out of nowhere kissed me that morning or on the, yeah, that morning here, the day before she kissed me. And he said that evening we argued over custody of the kids. But he said, I went to sleep on a downstairs couch and, you know, and then he tells the coworker the same story and he was, you know, fire beat me back.

Then the police talked to Vashti's coworkers here. Okay. They talked to her coworkers, and three of her coworkers at Cox Communications said that they had conversations with her. Two of them mentioned threats from Brett. Oh.

Melissa Beasley and Scott Hankins testify later on that Vashti told them Brett threatened to kill her, burn down the house, and make it look like she was the one who did it. Very specific threat. Why did he say that? Then print papers out talking about it. What the fuck are you doing, dude? Wow. He's far too confident. This is... It is a...

How great must it be just to be a handsome guy named Seacat? You just get to say and do anything you want. Anything you want and the people will buy it. Yeah. Or he thinks they will. He doesn't expect to ever have consequences. Fuck no. He even told her, quote, he could get away with it because he was in law enforcement and knew about those sort of things. And, quote, firemen were idiots.

This is coming from a man who leaves an instruction manual on how to do exactly what he just did on his kitchen table. They're idiots. That is the consensus view of firemen, too, though. Well, yeah. I'm not saying he's wrong, but I think he's a moron, too, is what I'm getting at. It's very funny that he just screams the playbooks. Firemen are idiots. Firemen are idiots.

Vashti had also said Brett had threatened to kill himself or take the boys away and disappear.

So then they remember our therapist friend here. She gets what she called a very unusual phone call or a very unusual conversation with Brett Seacat about five hours after Vashti was found in the house. Yes, he call or she called him at about 930 a.m. after he'd already called her office and asked for advice on how to tell his children their mother had committed suicide. Not that she was dead. Yeah, we can worry about the house when they're older.

Yeah, the what's and such. We can just go, Mommy's not coming home. How do we break that news? You don't tell a four-year-old that Mommy committed suicide. Your mom's a weak bitch. Yeah, listen. What are you doing, man? Mommy couldn't take it anymore because she's weak. Fucking Dexter didn't even find out. Mommy's not here because she's not a sea cat. Nope. Dexter didn't find out his dad really killed himself until like season seven. He was like 42 when he finally found out. There was no reason to tell him.

when he was younger. He's not able... You can't capably process that information, Brett. No, but he's trying to set the narrative, though, of, oh, she committed suicide. Dad's a great dude. So this lady said that she was alarmed by that and told him not to tell their boys that the mother had committed suicide. Don't do that. Just say she was injured and not coming back, and then you can...

Close the loop from there over as time goes by. Sprinkle in pepper in a couple more details. Then he said, quote, I killed her. Vashti is dead and it's my fault.

Oh, my. So she said, OK, you know, tell me this. Why and when and where and how and tell me all of you think. Have you heard of the Menendez brothers? I'm fucking shut up. Jesus, you don't know who's in this office right now. He then said that. No, no, no. I told my wife that I was going to take the kids away.

That's why. And I didn't kill her myself, but I caused this. She said, quote, he told me that he knew she was dead because of the pool of blood. That's how he looked in and saw her.

She said she described him as quite calm when she spoke with him over the phone, and she felt the entire situation was very unusual since he had contacted her within two hours of this, of the death happening here. She said, he just told me matter of factly what was happening. Well, that's how sea cats roll, though, honestly. We don't have time for it. We don't have time for panic. Hey, I haven't got time for the pain. I don't know what to tell you.

We don't have time for a lot of things. Well, most people run out. I run in. That's all I'm saying. There it is. I'm a sea cat.

He she said he just told me matter of factly what was happening. She. Yeah. They asked her later, did he ever choke up when speaking with you? Like, did it ever emotionally hit him? She said, nope. He's acted very detached like he had during the six months that she'd counseled him. So it wasn't unusual behavior for him, but it's unusual behavior for normal nuance with this guy. But yeah.

Yeah. It's just normal for him. It's abnormal for everyone. For everyone else. Yeah. And him. But the blaze had been concentrated in the back of the home, which is where the master bedroom and Vashti's body were. The room itself was badly damaged. They said there was a lot of charring and Vashti's burned body was resting on the bed, which had been burned down to the metal springs. Jesus. Mattress gone. Metal springs. So she is burned up. You have to imagine. There's not much left to her.

No, and she was on a mattress that burned like that. That's not good. They said something at the scene, though, sparked some concern here. Underneath her left side was the pistol here with the barrel pointed downward. So the one cop said, how could the gun end up where it was located under her body if she had shot herself in the head with it?

How's that work? Yeah, that means her hand would have to drop and go straight. It would go sideways or up, right? Yeah, it would have to be in the front. My point is if you shoot yourself in the head and you fall. Think of where the kickback is. It's away from your body. Yeah.

Unless you put it under your chin. And that giant fucking gun. Oh, there's no way she's controlling that. No, her arm is going to be straight out next to her. Probably maybe with her finger still gripping the gun, but maybe not. Right. So, yeah, they said that was very odd. They said if she had shot herself while she's lying down, the gun would have fallen onto the floor. If she'd been sitting up and shot herself, the gun should have remained on the right side like we just did.

It just didn't make sense. Yeah, we just reenacted it exactly like you said. We didn't even need any training from Brett Seacat to do it. No, no. I fired a weapon before I know. Also, the trajectory of the shot to the head that killed her was odd, too.

This is a forensic pathologist said the trajectory of the bullet is really significant because if you're holding a gun in your hand and you're shooting yourself behind your right ear, normally the trajectory is pointed to the opposite side. But the autopsy report indicates that it's right to left is slightly downward and also lightly front to back. Due to that trajectory, you almost have to bend your arm around, which is very uncomfortable to do to yourself with a fucking 44 especially.

Sure. They said the lack of soot and carbon monoxide in her airways and bloodstream also triggers alarm bells. Before she started a fire? That's the thing they said. Even if she did it right after, there'd be something. There was nothing. No fuel, nothing in there. They speculated she was likely already dead and therefore unable to breathe, obviously, when the fire was set. Due to the inconsistencies between Brett's story and the condition of her body...

They're still unable to pinpoint the manner of death because she's too badly burned. Right. They end up two days after this. They have they don't they they are very suspicious of Brett, obviously. Of course. I mean, this is clear here, but they can't really arrest him right now because all they have is the fact that, you know, it's very suspicious. So they continue to investigate. And then they find in the driver's seat of Vashti's car.

was her journal. And the most recent entry seemed to be a suicide note. Oh, it said, Brett, I can't do this. I can't fight this out. Take care of our boys. Be sweet to, uh, that he, she names them. I won't name them, hold them both and tell them mommy loves them every night. I'm taking care of the house. Um,

I'm taking care of the house. Oh, okay. She then says to the one son, you are so wonderful, mommy, so proud of you. Be a good big brother. And then to the other one, stay strong and don't ever lose that smile. I love the two of you and will be watching over you from heaven.

Don't lose that smile as mommy kills herself. Lots of small children just smile away when their mommies die. That happens a lot. Smile through life as they're motherless because she committed suicide. Jesus. Then they figure out, once they talk to all the neighbors, that the gunshot happened. Remember, through what she was watching on TV and what was happening at that exact moment. 315 was the gunshot, which...

He didn't call 9-1-1 until 3.57 a.m. Wow. 4 a.m. That is almost 45 minutes. Yeah. In between when the gunshot occurred and when he called the cops. And she's dead and the fire's not started yet. What the fuck? What the fuck? So...

Very interesting. Then when they talked to all of her friends and coworkers and recalled that Vashti had asked them, do you think Brett is capable of killing me? Because he told me he would kill me and burn it down and make it look like a suicide. Anyway, they bring him in for an interrogation and he says one of the worst fucking things ever in an interrogation. This is a very guilty fucking statement. Quote, I'm smart enough. Number one, no, you're not.

I bet you're not. Printout, dude. Yeah. You left the playbook. Right there. Belbelichick, you left it on my counter. You couldn't have found all the info you wanted and then thrown that shit out in a dumpster at the McDonald's or something so no one would find it. You left it on the kitchen table, you lazy fuck. Wow. So he said, I'm smart enough that if I wanted to kill my wife, I could have come up with something better than this. This is what a crazy person does.

Oh, OK. Well, they say, well, hands behind your back, Mr. Crazy Seacat, because you're under arrest, chief. You've given us nothing to believe that you didn't do this. So then Vishni's family makes a statement and they say Brett liked to control every aspect of everything he did. I think that came out in the trial later on. He's controlling and manipulative. And by her filing for divorce, she had taken the power out of his hands and he couldn't deal with the loss of control.

Okay. And another person said this was the first time he had been served with papers. They talked about the problems in their marriage and they had always agreed to work on it. This time, her words to us were, how will I know that I'm through this time by what I say? How can I make it clear to him, basically? And he was a little territorial, if you will, possessive, not a Brett Seacat. And he wasn't going to allow her to leave him and take the two boys. So...

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Yeah. Her brother, Vashti's brother, said that on one occasion she poked her head in a co-worker's door and said, do you really think he could kill me, burn the house down and make it look like a suicide? Just very specific. How will I know that he's got the message? How will I know he'll leave us alone? How will I know that he won't kill me?

How will I know that he won't, that it's a suicide? Let's get Whitney involved in this mess. Yeah. She's got her own problem. I love an anthem, man. She's got her own fucking problems, I think. So, well, she's dead now, but she had her own problems. Plenty of problems. That's why she's dead shit. That's why she's dead. There's a movie, by the way, a biopic on her.

And it is hilarious. It came out? It's from like 2022. Oh, yeah. It's really fucking funny, though. It's real funny. And they don't like it. It changes. It's like 1984. And the next thing you know, she's hanging out with Bobby Brown. You're like, what happened? How did years go by? And they don't even tell you in this movie. It's a mess, this movie. So anyway, the brother said she was afraid.

And he said, no, despite the appearance that the marriage was perfect, it wasn't. Her sister, I think, said Vashti was very private about their marriage, didn't share a lot. That's just who she was. And it probably was a year before she told us she was going to file for divorce. She began sharing some of the threats he had made. And of course, the signs were there. He was becoming more and more controlling with her.

They said, what signs do you mean? And they said that Brett began to change in front of the family's eyes. She said the lack of social life with her friends, everything was geared around him. He didn't care to come to family functions and more and more. And first he would go to church with her. Then he stopped and he didn't come see the necessity of the necessity and doing things that normal people do. He was becoming more withdrawn and more critical of her. Yeah. The marriage is imploding.

Yeah. And he's fucking becoming a weirdo here. So Vashti's brother said he never imagined anything like this could happen to his sister. He said, I didn't see it coming because it's so hard for human nature to encompass that type of evil act.

Yeah, that's a big thing. So do you hear people threaten or you hear them allude to things? But at the end of the day, I think it's very hard for good people to really fathom that someone could perpetuate such an act like this. Sure, sure. Not for us. We fucking do this twice a week. I see it every week. Every week, babe. Two days a week, yeah. Brett's trial, he sought to say that she had attempted or contemplated suicide on five prior occasions.

Five times? Only thing is, he's the only one who knows about this.

She didn't tell her therapist. She didn't tell her friends. She didn't call the police. She didn't file some report anywhere. Nope, just five times. So the state filed a pretrial motion seeking exclusion of that testimony about the prior suicide attempts, and the district court held that the previous suicide incidents were too remote in time to be relevant to the defense. There you go. Because she was depressed three years ago and tried to kill herself doesn't mean that that's her state of mind then, which makes perfect sense. And we don't even know that's true. And it's also completely uncorroborated again. Yeah.

So the prosecutor in the opening here said that Brett was a manipulative man who used his law enforcement background to try to make it look like his wife shot herself. The defense just said, come on, it's a suicide. Even the coroner can't decide whether it was death or homicide, suicide or homicide. What? What the fuck?

Yeah. The coroner said, I don't know. She's a charred body. How the hell do I know what the fuck is going on? With a bullet wound in it. That's all I know. Three bullet wounds or four. Yeah. So then they talk about the suicide note. They get the prosecution gets a forensic for a document examiner for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. Yeah.

he said that there were certain incongruities in the last journal page that led him to conclude that the writing had been traced from other samples of her handwriting. Oh, what would you use to do something like that? To trace something?

You'd want it to be bigger than normal, really. You wouldn't want to do it on the page. Maybe a light. Oh, with a light behind it that you can do. Yeah. Wow, weird, right? That's helpful, yeah. That'd be real helpful to do that. They said the discrepancies included tremorous writing, so doing it slow and not fucking smooth. Not crisp. And smearing, which contrasted sharply with the fluid writing that was highly consistent in her known writing samples. Because when she's writing in her journal, she's not unsure of that shit. She's just writing. Right.

He pointed to features indicating the writing had been done slowly with added corrections to certain letters to make it look better. He noted Vashti's lowercase D was very consistent throughout many of samples of her handwriting, but it was formed using a different stroke in the last journal page. Didn't do it the same. These and other specific disparities led him to conclude that the suicide note was probably traced and was a spurious document.

And then they bring in the projector guy to say, yes. The co-worker said, yeah, he asked to use an overhead projector and was in there for like an hour. Yep. So that makes sense. Then they bring in the psychotherapist now. Let's bring the therapist in here.

And under questioning from Seacat's attorney, she acknowledged she had previously diagnosed Vashti with depression after she started counseling. But she found she said she found evidence of a depressive episode or that Vashti had been depressed in the past, but it wasn't consistent in her life.

She gets depressed by things, not just her general events. Yes. Not her brain chemistry. It's not like that. It's not just how she does it. There's environmental occasions that do this to her. Absolutely. So then a co-worker testifies saying about the he said he could get away with it because firemen were idiots.

Which is hilarious. It's fucking funny. Also said that Brett had threatened to kill her, take the boys away. Under cross-examination, all Brett's attorney did is repeatedly question him on whether he was fucking Vashti. And he said, absolutely not. So Brett's police chief friend comes in here. And this guy says that the instructor, Brett, had said that he bullied his wife the night before she was found shot to death in the couple's home. Oh.

Said that he this is Kingman chief Mark Holloway testifies that Brett Seacat's that Seacat convinced his wife to stay and to let him stay in the home for several months. Despite the problems by threatening to take the children to Mexico. He told this guy that his wife was was a pushover and wasn't a fighter so he could get her to do things.

They bring in a handwriting, quote unquote, expert for the defense here. Sure. And I use these quotes because this woman here, what's her name? Avis. Avis Odenbaugh. Avis. Like the rental company? Exactly like the rental company. She testified. She concluded the handwriting in the note matched the handwriting of the person who wrote in the journals.

Same thing. She was called on his behalf and said that the journal page was the product of natural writing and that the journal page in question was written by the same person who wrote the other entries in the journal. She ruled out tracing on the text based on apparent ink flow. She also testified differences in handwriting between the journal page and other samples of her handwriting could be explained because of mood or tension or other things. So the cross-examination here is,

She concedes that she is not currently certified by any forensic document examining organizations and is currently semi-retired. What are your credentials? Oh, I don't have them. I had some years ago, but I don't know. I don't keep up on shit.

So the prosecutors then displayed a board with another sample of Vashti's handwriting alongside the suicide note. The expert admitted that there are discrepancies between the two. So he had her completely go against her own testimony in front of the whole jury. See, now don't you see it right there?

Oh, yeah, yeah, I see it. Brett testifies. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. He's got to go up there. Hell, yeah. I'm telling you, this guy thinks he can pull off anything. He does, yeah. He said, I would never burn our house down.

Wow. Never. I wouldn't kill my wife. I would never expose my children to any situation like that. Okay. Oh, yeah. He also said he did feel guilt and the therapist wasn't lying. He felt guilt in the hours before she died. He had threatened to shame him if she left him. I don't know what that means. Shame him? What is it, the 1400s?

What are we talking about? What does that matter? Stand in the street and ring bells every time I walk by. What letter are you going to put on my sweater? What are we dealing with here? Yeah, you're a policeman. How many policemen are divorced, dude? Nobody gives a shit. Yeah, that's what I mean. He's such a fucking egotistical lunatic. Unbelievable. That would look bad on me if we got a divorce.

So that played into the – he also said – so he said that. That also plays into the defense argument that Vashti was unstable, possible use of her – he says that she was using a prescribed diet drug known as HCG whose side effects include depression. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

He then also says that while he felt responsible, he did not pull the trigger. He explained that during their argument, he told Vashti that if she insisted on a divorce, he would expose her alleged affairs with coworkers, knowing it could jeopardize both her job and parental custody rights.

Oh, she's a co-worker. Which, yeah, who else is she meeting? She comes home. She's got the kids. She doesn't go anywhere else. She's there for eight, nine hours a day. Yep. So the defense attorney said, why did you tell her, the therapist, that it was your fault? He said, because it was.

And then he bowed his head and appeared to choke up a little bit. Solemnly, yeah. He said, for 19 years, I was the one who protected Vashti. I finally pushed her into what I was protecting her from, so it was my fault. Okay. You know, that's what a man does, takes responsibility for when he drives his wife to kill herself. I'm metaphorically responsible for this. It's more of an abstract type of thing, but still.

Closing arguments here. The prosecutor said that Seacat was full of uncontrollable rage because his wife filed for divorce and was kicking him out of the house. It was very simple. She said he was like a burning fuse. That's why he was reckless, because he's a fucking reckless asshole. The jury deliberates for six hours on this. That's pretty quick. That's quick. Too long, I think.

On this one. This one seems like a pretty open shot. If I watched him testify and say that shit, I'd be laughing in the jury box. Like, is this motherfucker serious? There's no evidence that he's been more metaphoric or nuanced in his entire fucking life. Now all of a sudden he's all...

I, I'm responsible. No, it's good. In a roundabout way. Now he's abstract poetry. He's using the fuck out of here before he was like, I'll kill you and burn the house down and then say that you fucking killed yourself because firemen are idiots. Yeah. We know you're responsible because you went and bought gas. Yeah. That's the other thing. Now he's all subtext before he was all exposition and now it's all, uh,

He's just subtext. That's all it is. So six hours of deliberation, guilty of all charges, including arson and child endangerment and murder and all that good stuff here. So during sentencing, he gets up. Now, this is his time to say.

My bad, Your Honor. Be metaphorical again. You beg for forgiveness. My bad. Shit was awful. I snapped. Come up with something or say I respectfully whatever. I don't think I did it, but, you know, I understand the authority. When I said firemen are idiots, I meant me. Yeah. I'm the idiot. You weren't a volunteer fireman, were you, Your Honor? No? Okay, good. Instead, he says this.

The opposite of what he should be saying. He says, I teach about crimes. I know what covers up crimes and what doesn't. I know that a bullet hole has never been covered up by a fire. I know that a murder has never been concealed by means of fire. I wouldn't have lit a fire to try to cover this up. This is the kind of sentence you believe you'll need for a Kansas Supreme Court nomination.

You are going. It gets better. So he's saying you're corrupt, number one. Yeah. You're using me for career. You're using me to benefit yourself. And then he says, you are going to hell for what you've done in this case. He said that to the judge.

You're going to hell for what you did that then. He said he vowed that the evidence that you and the prosecutors colluded to suppress will one day be presented and I will be free. Oh, okay. What do you think of that, Your Honor? Yeah, what do you say? The judge says, well...

Stupid. Number one. Thank you for your input. Yeah. Appreciate you speaking. Number one, your guilt is overwhelming. Number one. Never even thought you weren't guilty for a second. I just did this because it's constitutional. You have to. Yeah. Let you do it. Evidence to support your defense of suicide was totally unbelievable and totally unsupported by any credible evidence.

Right. He said that your wife was not depressed or suicidal, but was looking forward to a future with her two sons after the divorce from your stupid ass was finalized. And dealing with you today, I don't think I fucking blame her, he should have said. Because I'd divorce you too. Now I see why.

He said that her family hit it on the head in their victim impact statements when they described Seacat as being self-controlling, self-centered, and narcissistic. He said, your statement this morning confirms to me that you live in some sort of bizarre alternate reality. Uh-oh.

You don't want to hear that. He also said that he considered the fact that you haven't admitted guilt and had an admitted responsibility or expressed any remorse. That's a big part of this sentence, by the way. It's a problem, yeah. He said you haven't admitted guilt, you haven't admitted responsibility, and you didn't this morning even express remorse that Vashti is no longer on this earth. One of the victim's family asked me to show you no mercy, and I don't intend to show you any mercy. Oh, no.

You didn't show Vashti any mercy on April 30th, 2011. You, sir, may fuck off life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years on the murder, as well as more than five more years for the aggravated arson conviction and seven months for each child on the endangerment conviction, all to run consecutively. Suck it. Suck it.

You're not going to be so handsome in 31 fucking years, are you, chief? Didn't think so. And then you have to go before the parole board. And beg. And you better fucking have some remorse by then or they're not going to let you out either. No way. If he goes in with this bullshit to the parole board, he'll be in there for the rest of his fucking life. You bet. And he deserves it. So Vishti's family said her mother's Vashti. Did I say Vishti? Yes, Vashti. Vashti's family. Yeah.

said that she had begged her daughter not to serve him with divorce papers, fearing it might set him off.

What is she supposed to do? She said, I begged her those last two months not to serve him papers, just to separate and let him get acclimated first and to move in with us one thing at a time. You know, like telling your kids their mother committed suicide one thing at a fucking time. You know, do that. And her words were, I don't want to endanger your lives. That's what she said. So Vashti. Yep. That is so fucking sad. Vashti's mother and brother said the verdict. Um,

brought a sense of relief to the family. She said it was a little surreal. I felt justice had been done and I felt like the boys were safe. So there was a Dateline episode here in 2013. This happened to us like right after it happened before any of the stuff I'm going to talk about here in a second. Yeah. It's called Burning Suspicion.

And they fucking, he just was convicted. Yeah. They're just now. And we want to talk about it. They're like, they had that one of those big tapes, you know, those big studio tapes. They had one like ready. Is it in yet? I'm going to put it in. It's in. We're showing it tonight. He's gone. He's guilty. That's what it feels like here.

So 2014, there's a custody battle between the face-off between the maternal and paternal families. His parents and her parents. Yeah. Well, since your kid killed my kid, we get these kids, right? I think we win. Yeah. You can visit them. And you raised a murderer, so you don't get to raise these kids now. Sorry. Your parenting is questionable. Yeah. You raised a real twat. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

It's a struggle between the mother and sister of Vashti Seacat. She was killed there. So the judge has set a two-day trial to decide who will be the legal guardian. And it's the same judge who provided over the trial, by the way. Oh, that's great. That's terrific. All we know is not him. Yeah. That's real good stuff. He appeals this case.

Wow. Yeah. The Supreme Court considered the admissibility of various out of court statements that Vashti had made when she told coworkers and her therapist that her husband threatened to kill her by burning down the house and making it look like a suicide. The court determined that out of court statements were properly admitted either because they were not hearsay or because they satisfied an exception to the hearsay rule.

So they did a great job. Yeah, it didn't fucking matter. You killed her. It doesn't matter if she's on anything.

The court also found no error in the admission of testimony by a witness referring to Brett Seacat's narcissistic personality. A non-professional witness. It was just a...

I mean, that's just something you could say if you know somebody. It's pretty inflammatory, but you can say it. You can say it. It's an opinion. It might be a stupid opinion, but it's an opinion, damn it. It's hyperbole for sure. Yeah. Justice Lee Johnson authored a concurrent opinion also signed by another judge that took issue with the majority's characterization of an out-of-court statement as not being hearsay and with the majority's holdings that evidence of either suicidal tendencies, earlier suicidal tendencies was not relevant. So...

A couple of judges disagreed about the one part.

about the out-of-court statements, but agreed with them about the other shit. So overall, they agreed. Everybody did. They affirmed the conviction, saying other evidence in the case was so strong, a jury would have convicted Seacat even if the excluded evidence had been allowed. We'll give it to you. We'll fucking... You can have it. We'll give you that bullshit. You're still not getting out, you punk motherfucker. He still shot her. He still burned it down. Still burned it down and lied like an asshole and then told the judge that he's going to hell for it. So...

Not working out. 2022, he filed another motion claiming ineffective assistance of counsel now.

Why? Yeah, saying that there was evidence that the defense failed to present that would clear him of the crime. What's that? Oh, boy. What would that be? Provide it now, man. Provide it now. You were at the house. You can't say someone else came in and did it. What the fuck? The motion was filed in 2020, and the Court of Appeals denied the civil motion, saying the courts and Seacat's attorney did not err in any way during his trial or the appeal that

followed. Keep on keeping on, Brett Seacat, you twat fuck. I mean, it would have had to have been a murder, and if it was a murder, why would she text you, I'm going to commit suicide, get the kids out of here so they don't get hurt? It's fucking crazy. What are you talking about, man? You don't know what you're talking about.

So there you go. He'll be in jail for a while now, at least 20, 40 something until he gets out. So that's good for everybody there. So check him out there. If you ever end up in a Kansas State prison, say hi, Heidi. Heidi Hodel, sea cat there.

And do that. Also head over to shut up and give me murder dot com. Get your tickets for virtual live show. October the 30th is when it's live. But you can watch it for two weeks after that. You can watch it that night and over and over again or whenever you want in those two weeks. You can buy it anytime in those two weeks. Enjoy it. Just like a regular live show, except we're going to be wearing costumes and you're going to be in your living room. So it's going to be fun stuff. Can't wait.

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What happens when a hacker uncovers hundreds of murder plots targeting people all over the world? Each of them posted on a Hitman for Hire site on the dark web, with their photos, habits and intimate details all used against them. What happens when they learn that the threat is coming from the person closest to them? Or what is the psychological profile of a father who would murder his own son and wife all to hide a drug addiction and years of embezzlement?

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