#539 - Human Snakes - New Florence, Missouri
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This week, in New Florence, Missouri, an exotic reptile dealer is found dead, and it's assumed that one of his enormous snakes is the culprit, until an investigation reveals the lies of some much slimier people in his life. Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay!

Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrogallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you folks so much for joining us today on another wild, crazy adventure known as Small Town Murder. We have a crazy story. If you listen to the intro, you know that. There's snakes and weird stuff going on. Very crazy story. Before we get to that, do want to say head over to ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com.

Yes. Get your tickets for live shows. Austin, you're up next in November. Austin, Texas. Phoenix is sold out, so that's not going to happen there. And Tarrytown, we understand that when you go to buy the tickets, it says they're sold out. There's like 100 tickets that they've been holding. We're going to release those, and then you can buy them, and that'll sell out. Because I know we've had a lot of people saying that. Let's get that going. And also, October 30th, virtual live show. Oh, yeah.

Oh, baby, just like a regular live show, except you are wherever you feel like being that has internet on this planet. And we will be in costumes because it's Halloween. So we're going to have a lot of fun. Can't wait for you to see these costumes. They are wild. So it's going to be good. It's a current event, we'll say. And it's fun. So we can't wait to show you all of that. That is shut up and give me murder dot com. You go there for everything. Patreon dot com.

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You get it all. That's right. And you should listen to Crime and Sports, by the way. Give that a shot. Give that a shot. Yeah, we've had some wild stuff lately. Really good one. So you should check it out. And also, we had an axe murderer. We had a guy known as the Lizzie Borden of baseball a couple weeks ago. And then for Small Town Murder, we are going to talk about the finish up, the 1976 Ted Bundy psychological examination to determine if he's a violent person or not.

I wonder. Spoiler alert, he is, just so you know. Check that all out. That is patreon.com slash crimeinsports. And you get a shout-out at the end of the show as well. Jimmy will mispronounce your name. He'd love to get it right, but it's probably not going to happen. Be nice. Yes. In addition to that, when you're listening to Crime and Sports, then when that's done, switch over to Your Stupid Opinions and give that a listen. We have a special Halloween edition here that's going to be very funny with a haunted house and all this good stuff. So can't wait for all of that. That said, disclaimer time.

You're listening to a comedy show, everybody. You are. Now, the murder part is 100% real. There's no anything, you know, no details being made up to make it funnier or anything like that. It's just we feel that a murder story is told a little easier with a few jokes mixed in there. That's all it is. Otherwise, it's a little too dark for us and it becomes a little weird. So, yeah, lighten the mood a little bit. Sure.

Sure. You've got to know what to make fun of, and we do. That's the thing. What you do is you never make fun of the victim or the victim's family. Why would you say that, James? Because we're assholes, but we're not scumbags. See? There you have it. That's how that works. Pretty easy. That sounds good. It's very easy to do. I don't know why people can't figure it out of how that works, but oh well. If that sounds good to you, you're going to hear one crazy-ass story. If you think true crime and comedy should never, ever, ever go together, I don't know what to tell you. Maybe you're in the wrong place.

Maybe give it a shot, though, because it might not be what you think. You don't know. What we're mainly saying is no complaining later. So there you go. That said, I think it's time, everybody, to sit back, let's all clear the lungs, and let's all shout. Shut up and give me.

Let's do this, everybody. Okay. Let's go on a trip, shall we? Let's do that. Let's do it. We are going, well, we just got back from there, but we're going back again to Missouri. Here we go. We just did a Kansas City live show. Thank you, Kansas City and Oklahoma City. You guys are so nice. Terrific people. Very wonderful audiences. And we just had a blast. Thank you guys so much for coming out and filling those theaters up. Thank you. Great stuff. We are going to New Florence, Missouri.

New Florence. Old Florence. Nobody wants that. That's in Italy. This is New Florence. Yeah, we know. East Central Missouri, where I assume people from the old Florence said, let's put a New Florence. Is there any room in East Central Missouri? Okay. Let's start it up here. It's about an hour 15 to St. Louis, about two hours and 40 minutes to Kansas City. So it's right in the middle of those two. We've driven that path.

Yeah. We've passed by the exit for this place, I'm sure. And it's about three hours and 45 minutes to Tallapoosa, Missouri, which is our last Missouri episode. Too many knots tied. That was a messed up episode. I don't even want to get into it because it'll take me forever. But it's a crazy episode. Check it out. This is in Montgomery County. Area code 573. The motto here is they're really digging deep for this one. The crossroads of East Central Missouri.

I didn't know we needed a crossroads for land that's the middle of nowhere.

It's the middle of nowhere. Yeah, there's a crossroads in the east and one in central. This is east central. East central was a very specific crossroads we got here. Really qualifying the motherfucker out of it. No, no, no. Go past that crossroads. You're going to find about three crossroads before you hit this crossroads that we're talking about here. East central Missouri. History of this town. It was first named Florence.

Not for the city in Italy, but for Florence Lewis, who was the daughter of the first settler.

Yeah, she's hot. He came in, she popped out, and he was like, I'm going to name a baby and my town Florence. Everybody's Florence now. I love it. The post office for New Florence has been in operation since 1858. So there's been people here for a long time. Matter of fact, they found evidence of human habitation here from 10,000 years ago. So...

People have been here for a long time. They did a big archaeological excavation at Graham Cave and the river down near there and found an ancient site. It's got to be close to the Missouri. Anything near the Missouri, I'm sure people have been there for thousands and thousands of years. The difference is, though, thousands and thousands of years ago, sometimes rivers and creeks have different paths. Oh, there were different places? Yeah, not like the Mississippi, but like smaller tributaries and stuff. Even the Mississippi. I'm sure there's turns that it made that...

It didn't make before. Yeah. I mean, just shit shifts and things like that. This area is commonly associated with German founded towns here. Yeah. Established by immigrants. They had a town called Rhineland. So Rhineland is, I mean, there couldn't be more on the nose than that. We're German is what that says. Yeah. Might as well be called a beerville. You know, it's like.

With an I. With an I. That's established by immigrants in the mid-19th century. But also, a lot of people came here from Kentucky and Virginia. Oh. Yes. This is like they're going on the Oregon Trail. We're heading west, everybody. And they're like, this is about far enough. East Central Missouri. I'm tired.

The wagon tongue done broke. We're here. That's it. We're out of food. Fuck. So the southern part of the county is more closely associated with the German immigrant type people, and the northern part is more associated with what they call Missouri's Little Dixie region. What is that? Earning Montgomery County the nickname Gateway to Little Dixie.

It means a little piece of the south right here in Missouri for you is what that means. Yeah, that's frightening. A little bit. Now, some reviews of this town. Here we go. There are no reviews of this town. It's a very small town. But the only thing in this town I did find a review of, and that's the Love's Travel Stop store.

Is that right? This is, if you don't know, if you're not from the United States, a big, giant truck stop store. Right. Where if you're on the highway. There's a Subway and a DQ there. We stopped at it and had a few cheeseburgers on Saturday. That is their chains that they marry together across that section of the country. Dairy Queen and Subway, hand in hand, like peanut butter and jelly. Americano.

So 4.3 stars it has here, this loves, which isn't bad, actually. It's on 482 Tree Farm Road in New Florence. Open 24-7. Gas price is pretty affordable right now. Premium's only $3.50, so not bad. So here is a review from Mom. Oh,

Oh, mom, tell me all. Four stars. Very clean and well-stocked. There's no easy way to open the bathroom door if you're in a wheelchair. Well, that's a problem. I'll bet that's the truth for all of them. For any bathroom door. Yeah. Dog park is small but sufficient. More than half of it is grass during our September trip. There will be shade in a few years when the tree grows more.

The tree. There's one small. The tree grows more. But a bench would be nice. Yeah, that would be nice. You can sit where your dog sits. Under the sapling. Right in the shade under the tree. The shade of the tree. Next up, five stars. These new loves are outstanding. This is a new one. A new one, apparently. Roomy and clean bathrooms. The whole place feels so open with their new layouts. Friendly staff, too.

They're just happy to see people. They're in the middle of nowhere. There's also a small fence dog park. The turnoff to the parking lot from the highway off-ramp is quick, so watch out for that. And then one star here from Whitney, highly irritated that every loves we have stopped at across Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri do not sell 12, 15, or 18 packs of soda. Okay.

They expect you to buy 20-ounce sodas. Get with the program, loves. You haven't found a Walmart in that track? I'm trying to put one of those helmets on and put two cans in it, and you guys are messing the whole damn thing up for me. Don't you know how these people roll? Yeah, they never passed a Walmart, Superstore, nothing like that. How many states did they say? Oklahoma? Three states. Yeah. They can't find a 12-pack of soda. Only 20-ounce bottles. You blinked and missed Topeka. You would have found it. I promise. That's it.

One star from April. Ever since this gas station has opened up, has opened, us residents that live off Highway 19 have had our properties damaged because the Loves refuses to put up directional signs into their gas station for car and semi-truck drivers to follow.

They pass up the entrance and quickly find any private driveway to turn around in. It's caused 18 wheelers. That's not great. It's causing so much damage to our properties. And today I was almost ran over by a foreigner truck driver on my own property. I wasn't even in his country. This has to stop.

Okay, we got too many dumb people. If you can't see the gas station, signs aren't helping. No, but some of them have the long kind of road off the highway. It's not just turn on into it. There's a long road, and apparently...

There's no signs telling you which lane to take, and you end up in a neighborhood, which I would think, why have an off-ramp going one way to the Love's parking lot, the next way to a neighborhood? That doesn't seem right, but I don't know. They say, because this has to stop, because of this gas station, it has caused several accidents on our highway. I wouldn't visit this gas station if it was the only gas station within 20 miles, and I was about to run out of gas.

I will walk for gas. I'll push my truck all the way to the next one. Holy shit. The bathrooms are disgusting and parking lots are just as dirty. If you live right there, why would you use that bathroom? Yeah, why have you used that? Why would you use a bathroom that's 50 feet from your house when you have a bathroom in your house? Okay, never mind that. Have you ever been in the bathroom at Stewart's?

No. You know why? Because I live down the goddamn street. I thought about it. I'm like, nope, been in there 700 times. Never once. I don't even know if they have a bathroom, to be honest with you, because I've never even asked. They must, but I don't know. I've never crossed my mind. If I had to pee, I'm like, I'm going to drive the quarter mile to my house and pee. So people in this town, 859.

Very small. It's a crossroads, and that's about it. More male than female, which is strange. It's about 52% male. Median age here is just above the national average, but not too far off. It's 41. The children, there's a lot of 0 to 4-year-olds and a lot of 60 to 64-year-olds. So people stay fertile a long time in Missouri. A lot of grandmas popping kids out here.

Apparently family here. It's a little more over the national average for marriage. It's about 53 percent married. Little few more people are single with children. But some of the stats are pretty normal for the rest of the country. Racial breakdown here. Ninety point eight percent white point seven percent black. One point one percent Asian. Six point six percent Hispanic. And let's see here. We have cost of living.

100 is regular in the rest of the country. Average here is 77 out of that. So that's not too bad here, I would say. Median home cost, $150,900. They're giving it away. Extremely affordable. Yes, that's the thing. But the problem is you have to use the bathroom at the loves. That's part of it. No bathrooms. Yeah.

So if we've convinced you, damn it, you want to live by a truck stop and not much else, we have for you the New Florence, Missouri Real Estate Report. The average two-bedroom rental here goes for $810, which is about a third under the national average. That's pretty cheap. This one here, it's on 0.27 acres of land.

There is an RV on the property that looks like it was parked there in 1972 and allowed to return to nature. That's just...

There's definitely animals in there. A quarter of an acre, and they've got an RV on the property too. They said there's a van on the property, and it just looks like a little meth van. That's where we cook our meth, and that's it. They say Pinnacle Lake, this is the ad here, Pinnacle Lake, wooded lot on a cul-de-sac street very close to the North Gate entrance. The property lays rolling slash sloping, would make a great camping lot.

In other words, it's going to be a pain in the ass to build a house here. You're going to have to level this motherfucker. Order older electric service on property, unsure of condition. Old camper, old camper of no value. So basically, we're going to sell you this with garbage on it that you need to clean off. We're going to sell you something that's going to cost you money to get rid of it. This whole thing, $8,500. $8,500.

Under nine grand. Yeah, yeah. And probably a grand to get rid of that fucking camper. Someone's got to haul it off, yeah. Then there's a four-bedroom, two-bath actual structure. 1,832 square feet. It's on 4.42 acres. So that's a pretty big lot here. Oh, yeah. That's a lot.

Big deck on the front. Real weird, though. It's yellow. The house is like a pale yellow with weird red accents on it. It's an ugly-ass house. Who would do that? You have really got to paint this house. It's a McDonald's. It's so ugly. But $269,900 for...

A big house on a big lot. That's not too bad. And a few five-gallon pails of paint. You're going to need that. Yeah, you're going to have to definitely hit up a Home Depot on that one here. So here is a five-bedroom, three-bath, 3,200 square feet. Now you're talking.

It's a nice house. It just looks like a nice house inside. Everything looks like it was done in about 2012, and everything's in very nice condition. It's on 17.90 acres. Holy, almost 18 acres. Big old property. $559,900. $559,900.

Not bad. Wow. Big house, big lot, not too shabby. That's pretty good stuff here. Things to do. Oh, baby. The Missouri Goat Festival is here. Oh, no. Finally. I've been wondering when it was.

I mean, we go every year. I don't know how we're going to... What the fuck do they do? The goat festival here. Oh, they diddle them, they pet them, they kiss them. It's pictures of people hugging goats and eating food is what it looks like. Hopefully not goats. Yeah, could you imagine?

He's a cute little guy. Let's eat him. Eating a gyro right in his face. Right. Take that. That's right. Exactly. You better watch your behavior here. Yeah. So experience the joy of spending a day with your goat at a unique fall festival. Do you have to bring your own goat? It sounds like BYOG. Is it BYOG activity we got going on here? They don't have goats provided. You can't rent a goat for the day to hang out with? No rent a goat.

You don't have that? Yeah. Enjoy live music, delicious food, and fun activities for both goats and humans. Okay. How the fuck do you tell if a goat's having fun? They seem to just eat cans and shit. I don't know. If they're jumping around. They always look like they're having a good time. They do. They really do. Activities, costume contests. I hope not for the goats. Yeah, there it is. Goat parades.

And more. Demonstrations of goat milking, cheese making, and soap making. This place is exciting. There is live entertainment, though. We have Vernon Colebush. K-O-H-L-B-U-S-C-H. Colebush. Vernon Colebush. We also have Posey Hill performing. And then by the looks of it, because there are pictures on here, I believe the headliner is Ruby Lee.

Okay. That just shows the back of her head with a super fringy, like, 70s Dolly Parton jacket that says Ruby Lee and stitching on the back. Oh, wow. Oh, yeah. She's got an embroider. It's embroidered as shit, and there's, like, little flowery things around it. It's super embroidered. She invested in some Etsy jacket. That's great. She definitely did. Either that or someone's very crafty in her family. There might be that. That's it. Then there's also the Montgomery County Fair.

77th year with the same theme, by the way, they said. What?

That is where small town charm meets big time fun. Big time fun. Big time fun. Not big town fun. Big time fun. Small town, big time. That's right. We have lots of amazing. There's entries in the quilt contest. You got to get those in. The household arts contest. Why not? I didn't know that was a thing. We have the summer games in the livestock arena. I think that is an animal Olympics, if I'm not mistaken. Oh, yeah.

We have a Little Mister and Miss contest. Of course, the queen of the fair. You've got to see who's the queen of the fair, obviously. Well, if we're going to judge the Lil' Tykes, we'll judge the gals that can take it, too. Dino encounters. Okay, that's possible. Apparently they have dinosaurs here. That's going to be interesting. A livestock judging contest. Sure. So that doesn't sound like the livestock are having the contest. It sounds like the judges are. All right.

Our livestock. No, yeah, like they're going to judge you on your livestock judging. You judge the livestock and then people judge your judging, I think is how that works. The goats tell you whether or not you did a good job. Bah, he doesn't like us, shit. The super farmer will be there at 8 o'clock. Oh. That's a band, I think, by the way. Oh, it's not just a guy in a cape that grows corn? Ah, I'm the best. He shows up with like an ear of corn the size of a goat.

There's also Mickey Scott will be performing at the beer tent stage. I bet I have an idea of what he's doing. There's a junior poultry show, a junior rabbit show, a junior goat show, a junior sheep show, a junior market steer show, a junior hog show, a bale throwing contest.

Yeah, see how far I can go. Some strong-ass farm people in there on that. A kid's foam party, which sounds like it's going to get out of control and horny and weird. I don't like that at all. The kids are going to have their dicks out after a while. That's no good. You don't want that. Mickey Scott's going to take the stage for a second night. Hell yeah. Get after him, Mickey. Third night, you got Chloe Hoker playing live music.

So once Chloe's in there, everything comes together, I feel like. And then Friday and Saturday, the weekend, obviously the big days here, the Sheep and Goat Open Show. You got to have that. That's a big one. They're going to have karaoke, laser tag.

This, there is nothing that this festival doesn't have. Basically everything from laser tag to goat petting. It's just, they don't give a shit. Karaoke. I like, you know, I want to watch children, uh, judge animals. There's a, there's a boy on like Instagram, whatever, that is really great at talking about, uh,

tractors and shit like he knows him so he's amazing i love that kid i'd watch him tell me all about goats i don't want to hear that fucking kid listen you little fucking train drone weirdo he's so so fucking boring he doesn't that kid's a creep i'm sorry that kid's a fucking creep he knows every deer man yeah he's gonna i don't trust that kid as far as i can throw him he's weird he's weird i don't like him i love listening to him talk about john deere's it's

It's the fucking weirdest thing to see him. I just want to free him. I want to free him. Stop being your little fucking dad's drone robot. Go get something for yourself. I want to give him a punk album or something. He needs to get the fuck out of the farm for one day just to expand his horizons.

In his mind, all there is in the world is tractors, and that is disturbing. All he is is a Xerox copy of the grown-up that shot his load in his mouth. That's it. That's all it is here. In this show, they have a diaper derby. How do you do that? That's following the baby show. I don't like that at all. Then we have Cricket Alley performing live music. Also, Mack Watts, Kaylee Green, and Caleb Austin performing.

Yeah. Performing. And Russo and Co. These are all your fans. Sure. Every last one of them do country. I can't imagine there's going to be a... There's nothing else. I'm honestly shocked that Ludacris isn't here because he's at every other county fair we've ever covered. Or Nelly. Or Nelly. One of the two here. You've got to have one of the two. Crime rate in this town. What we are interested in here. Property crime, slightly below the national average, but pretty close to it, actually. We're a town of 800 people. It seems a little...

A little out of control. And then violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and, of course, assault. The Mount Rushmore of crime is about one-third of the national average. So pretty low, though, two-thirds under the national average. So not bad there. But the property crime, I mean, when you see a goat, you just got to take it sometimes. I get it. I get it. They're so cute. They're so cute. You just want to pet their little heads.

I get it. Just like the fainting ones, get out of here. Oh, God, that's crazy. I'm going to have to take him home and nurse him back. That's fucking hilarious. So that said, let's talk about some murder. Here we go. Let's do this while my voice holds out. I am extremely ill and have been for a couple days, so I'm happy to be getting through this here. This is good. This area of the country. This is what got me. This is what ensickened me is this area of the country right here. So let's start out on June 8th, 2017.

Okay, June 8th, 2017. There's a young lady named Lindley. L-Y-N-L-E-Y.

Lee. Oh, yeah. Lynn Lee. Yeah, that's her name. Or two. Yeah, Lynn Lee. Okay. So, L-E-E. It's E-E. So, Lynn Lee here. Lynn Lee owns a spa, okay, where she does massage therapy and stuff like that. That's what she owns here. Waxing. All sorts of shit here. Now, it's getting to be late afternoon, and her husband's supposed to pick the kids up from school.

school or whatever from a babysitter or whatever it is here. So she gets a call at her, at her spa saying her husband never showed up to pick up the kids. So she's like, God damn it. You know what I mean? Now I got to leave. Where the hell is he? What's going on here? So she goes and picks up the kids. And then she went to where he works, which is his own business as well to look for him. And this is at about 6 36 PM. A nine one one call comes in and,

with Lindley hysterical on the phone saying that she just found her husband lying in a pool of blood in his place of business. Oh, at the shop. At the shop. Now, the Missouri State Highway Patrolman said we got the call that there was a man dead, and the dead man's brother arrives at the scene. His name is Sam. The dead man's name is Ben. Sam is the brother who shows up.

And is Lindley, is that her first and last name? No, it's Lindley is her first name. L-Y-N-L-E-E, first name. Her last name is Rennick right now. That's her married name. And this is her husband here, and his name is Ben Rennick on the ground. So Sam says, my brother's skull was crushed. Oh, no. In my wildest dreams, I would have never imagined someone would hurt Ben.

So with Lindley right there, Sam takes the phone and is talking to 911. And he says, quote, it must have been a snake.

Which even on this show, that's a strange thing to tell 911. But the reason he's saying that is because Ben's place of business is his reptile breeding center. Oh, it's not just a pet shop. No, he has thousands of exotic snakes. He has giant, huge pythons and boas that are fucking 10 feet long. And I mean, yeah, if you're looking for an exotic, crazy snake, this is your guy right here. Wow.

So with all these snakes, they figure a snake got him and crushed him. Beat the shit out of him. Must have coiled up on him and squeezed him until his head popped is basically what they're thinking. So-

Oh, my. He said it had to have been a snake. So the cops come. They're not real comfortable. It's bad enough. I mean, there's a dead body in there. Ew, gross. But there's a shitload of snakes, and they don't know which ones are out. And they're normal people. Which ones can get out. Yeah. These aren't snake people. So they're like, we're not fucking going in there with all these snakes on the loose. This is crazy shit.

Yeah. So one of the cops said it was suspected that it could have been a snake that's loose in the facility. And the facility had somewhere between three and four thousand snakes loose. They don't know. Maybe. Who knows how many are loose, whatever. He said, so it's a little unnerving not knowing what you're going to walk into. You don't know if there's going to be a giant pythons, you know, hanging from the rafters, hissing in your face. You have no idea what's going on.

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So on the body cam of the officers here, because it's 2017, you hear one officer say, quote, I don't care if it's a five inch long snake. If something tries to bite me, I'm going to light its ass up. I'm going to fucking shoot these things. This dude was like, I don't give a fuck if it's a garter snake the size of my pinky. I'm shooting. Yeah, there will be slugs fired in here.

So the other officer, then you hear this officer, same one looking around at the snakes. He just goes, holy shit. Like he's like, this is crazy. And the other officer said something got him. So watch your ass. They're going in like there's like 10 terrorists inside, like back to back with their guns out, like pointing them all around and shit. They're ready to buckshot all these motherfucking snakes in this motherfucking plane. I'm telling you right now they need Samuel to come help them.

So the first responders here, they're like, this is crazy. What are we – what the fuck, man? So the one officer says, who is he? And the second officer says, Ben Rennick. And the guy says, oh, okay. And the first officer, he's way more concerned about the snakes than a corpse at this point. Yeah.

He says, quote, can we make sure there's no snakes around the victim before we go over and take a look at him? That's what he says on the body cam. And the second officer says, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fine. So this is hilarious. The coroner shows up. They're standing there. They don't just have, Jimmy, they don't just have their service weapons out. They have shotguns out. They're standing there with shotties ready to just start fucking bucking guns.

bucking rounds off at whatever moves. Blasting spray shots at whatever. I know there's bird shot and buck shot. Y'all got any snake shot?

I can really use this. I know. I need some snake shot. We've come up with it before in the show. So the coroner says he walks in to this insane scene. This is Dave Colbert. And he says they're holding shotguns in their hands. There were guns out. You could just feel the anxiety amongst everyone there. Crazy. You can leave. I mean, every noise. They're like turning around, pointing guns at it like that. That's serious.

So they said, but no one knew whether this sick fucking killer could be lurking somewhere and pop out and get all three of them together and squeeze them. Who knows? And that's the thing about snakes, too, is that...

People think if it doesn't have a rattle, they are so quiet. They're super quiet. They're real quiet. They move real deliberately. Those are assassins, man. Also, they're sneaky. I don't know if you've noticed. That's a kind of a cliche at this point. That's their, yeah, snake in the grass. Snake in the grass. They hide. So let's find out about what the fuck we are dealing with in this insane scene. Because this is a wild scene, man. How's it set up?

Let's see. Let's find out everything. Let's talk about a young lady first. We'll talk about Lindley first here. Her name is Lindley Jo Gallatin. That's her. Lindley Jo. Lindley Jo, which is very Missouri. She's from a small town in Missouri. Incredibly country, yeah. The way she puts it, quote, in between two really small towns. That's what she said.

Which is Wellsville and Middletown, which are both very small. So she doesn't even live in her town. So much smaller. Making it not a town in between. You want to go to town and it's fucking Wellsville. That's going to town.

So she is Lindley Jo Gallatin. She's born. She's born in 1987. And she grew up with her mom, Brenda, and her dad, Lindell. And she has an older sister named April as well, growing up in Montgomery County. So around here in the same county, but not in New Florence here. She is a cheerleader in high school.

Lin Lee is? Lin Lee is. Lin Lee is a very attractive young lady, too. That's the other thing you got to say. She is a cheerleader in high school. At one point, I think it's her senior year or her junior year, she is an All-American cheerleader. I didn't know that. I knew they had All-American football players, but apparently the cheerleading squad gets it, too. Yeah, I mean, you can certainly let her in that shit. Yeah, so she got to go to Florida to perform at a college football halftime show.

Oh, wow. As part of the all-American cheerleader spectacle that they were putting together. She was very into cheerleading, so much so that she even had the requisite eating disorders and depression that comes along with it. Sure, sure. As well. Very into cheerleading is what I'm saying. She throws up for it. Yeah, it's...

She really puts it in there. So, no, she does. As a teenager, she has some eating disorders, some depression. And we're joking around, but, I mean, that happens to so many. But that's serious. I mean, depression for everybody, but eating disorders, especially for young women, that's a hard thing to overcome. You don't fit in that uniform. As I say, especially if you spend all of your, you know, not your waking hours, but what you do is in a tiny skirt.

Yeah, that might make you a little more, you know, whatever. So her senior year, she didn't even want to go to school her senior year. Her mom arranged it. So she only had because she only had to get two credits, I guess. So she only had to do two classes. So basically her senior year, her mom arranged that she could just come in after hours and do those two classes and not even have to go to like school proper. Yeah.

And everybody else goes home. She can pop by. She comes in and does like a one-on-one thing with the teachers and gets her homework and goes home and that's that. So she has a boyfriend in high school. Her boyfriend's in a band.

Of course he is. Of course he is, yeah. Now, Ben, who is the dead snake guy, she meets him in high school. Ben is in the same band with her boyfriend. Ben is the drummer in this band. Oh, yeah. But they didn't go out or anything like that. They just knew each other from the social circle of the band and all that kind of thing.

So she graduates from high school. She ends up doing massage therapy classes in 2006. That's what she wants to do for a living, okay, is massage therapy. During this time, she meets another man here named Michael Humphrey, and we'll talk about...

him in a minute here, but during massage class summer break, which I didn't know that this was like a freak. I don't know. It was like a full, I figured it would be a semester if nothing else, not a whole, you know, it was like a six course. Yeah. So she met that Michael Humphrey on a group outing with some friends and they go out for a little while on and off, but it doesn't really work out. So later on, she ends up meeting a man named Josh and,

And she hooks up with him. And in 2007, March of 2007, the day before her 19th birthday, she finds out she's pregnant. And at the same time, not only is it the day before her 19th birthday, it's also the day before she's supposed to take her state boards for massage therapy. She's got to go take her exams.

With a little bit of pressure. A little bit of pressure. So she said the night before when she's supposed to be studying, she was a little bit overwhelmed with the fact that she was pregnant. So it didn't really work out. She ends up failing the exams the next day. Oh, no. Comes close but failed here. But she tells Josh that she's pregnant and he was so excited that he was pulling out of a parking lot when she told him that he backed into a light pole. He was so excited. He didn't even realize what he was doing.

She didn't wait until that shit was in part. Come on now. She said, in reverse, or at least be driving at a steady pace. Yeah, be clipping down the road with a nice song on before you break that news. She said that was hilarious. And he laughed. He backed into a pole and laughed about it. So now Josh, in addition to not being a great parking lot driver, he's apparently not a great driver on the highway either, as we'll find out here. Oh.

While she's pregnant, Josh goes off on a Saturday afternoon with some friends to the Lake of the Ozarks there. Yeah. What are we doing there? Well, partying, definitely. Probably drinking. Well, on the way back home, Josh gets in a very bad car accident.

And severely injures several other people, including people in his car and people in another car that he got in an accident with. His fault. His fault. And apparently he must have been on something because he ends up going to prison for this. And I'm talking not for a year, for many years he's sent to prison. Ten years, yeah. So that's pretty much it. She has no further contact with him. He doesn't...

about how his child's going to do or anything. He just goes to prison and she just goes, well, that's that and it's over. See you around, Josh. That's it. If Josh wants to see his kid, he's going to have to file some paperwork, basically. And do his time. And do his time is the other thing. So early 2008, January, her son is born. So her son is born and 2009, she retakes her exams.

And she starts working as a massage therapist, which is all she wants to do. She starts working at a place called Natural Connections as a massage therapist. And she's starting to get her life together now, too, which is this is good. I mean, and she's only, what, 22 at this point? Yeah.

Young lady. 22, single mom, and she got a job doing what she wanted to do. She then gets her own apartment with her son. So she's gotten it together. 22, that's impressive. It's hard to take care of yourself at 22, never mind someone else too. And a child will hasten it, yeah. Oh, it'll make it rough. So she also starts seeing Michael Humphrey again. He is the guy that she saw pre-Josh. No, no, no, that's the high school guy. Michael Humphrey's a guy...

She met while in massage therapy school. Got it. Dated for a little bit and whatever. Now, they're going to date on and off again here. It's an on and off thing. They're both really into drugs together. They like doing pills together.

and Michael. Lindley at this point says she was very addicted to prescription painkillers. Loved them. And Michael was also really into prescription painkillers and it makes it really easy because guess what he does for a living? Is he a pharmacist? He sells prescription painkillers. Yeah, that'll do it. Just didn't go to school for it. He just...

He'll give them to you no matter what. In a parking lot, he doesn't give a fuck. He's a drug dealer is what he does for a living. So we got a drug dealer and a chick who loves pills. That's a match made in heaven is what that is. Oh, God. Match made in hell. Or hell. Either one. In this area of Missouri, that's called a match made in heaven, I believe, here. Yeah, that is a jackpot on Tinder.

So, holy shit. So they're really into it and they're doing pills together and they're on and off and fighting. And she said she would go back to him. And part of it was that he had a bunch of pills. So that was part of the fact they kept getting back together. 2010, she starts working at a new job in Columbia, Missouri. And she said one day.

She dropped her son off here. I won't give his name because I think he's still a minor, so I don't want to give that away. Or close to it anyway. Doesn't need us to break his balls. Anyway, leave the kid alone basically. So she dropped her son off at school or whatever she does in the morning, and she was working and doing a massage therapy appointment. She said at that moment she stopped for a second and realized that she couldn't remember getting to work today.

She doesn't remember dropping her kid off. She doesn't remember. So she's saying in her mind, she started to panic of what if I didn't take my kid to school? What if I just what if I forgot him somewhere? What if I left him at the grocery store? What if I gave him away? Loves. Yeah. Loves parking. Yeah. Yeah. We have no idea.

So she starts freaking out and says, holy shit, maybe I'm doing a little too many pills. Like, this is... Great. Okay. Self-awareness. She took that in as, holy shit, this is a wake-up call. I don't even know where my kid is today. This is fucked. So she said at that point, she went and picked her son up and she took her son to her father's house and asked her father if she could move back in with him.

And she breaks up with Michael. Yeah. Okay. And quits pills because she said she can't be the guy selling pills and get off pills. Right. She decides she's going to completely wipe herself of that at all. She said her dad went with her to the house to pick stuff up to make sure he couldn't talk her back into it or give her more drugs or whatever the fuck. That's terrific. Yep. She said she had a real rough week with the detoxing the pills, but then after that she was okay. She quit them and she was better. So-

Good for you, Lindley. Not bad. She's done a lot at 23 so far. No doubt. You know, like, this is a lot. She's already... 23 realized she had a problem and then took course in action to fix it. And kicked it and relationships and she's had a career and a lot of stuff going on here. In 2011, she is on Facebook. You know, Facebook, not so much now, but back then, 2011, 2012, Facebook.

People used to constantly post those like quizzes, basically favorite band, first concert. They'd have this long thing. Now it's only like 80 year old people that do it. But yeah. And back then everybody used to do it. Exactly. And that's exactly what they did back then. And that's what she did. And through this post, uh,

Remember Ben, the drummer from high school? Well, he saw this post and commented on it, and they went back and forth on a couple comments. And then next thing you know, he sent her a message, and they started talking to each other that way. Just how's your life? How's everything go? You have a kid. That's cool. And all that shit.

I wonder if that is what that post was geared for. Engagement. Yeah, it is. That's exactly what it's geared for. It's efficient for entertainment. Yeah, that's why people posted that shit. So people would then talk back to them and I guess that's engagement. I post things that I'm like, people won't respond to this. This is good. I'd like them to...

Just take what I'm saying and you don't have to fucking... You don't need a comment, really. You don't even have to like it, really. I don't care. If a joke is written and it's obviously a joke, I don't need you to fucking tag it or...

No. Try to make it better? I also don't need you to explain the thing that I'm saying I don't understand because that's not the point of a joke. I love that. Don't explain why this exaggeration is ridiculous because that's the point. That's how jokes work.

So, oh, that's annoying. So Ben, Ben Renick here, R-E-N-I-C-K, Renick. He's born same year, 1987, same age as her, same grade in school and everything. They start talking. They start dating.

She says Ben treated her really well. She felt comfortable with him. He was a nice, easygoing guy, gentle. They're into the same kind of music. They both like to read. They're both into horror movies. Yep. They're the same kind of nerd, which is what you're looking for. Whatever you're nerdy about, you want someone who's nerdy about that, too. This is an Ozvest couple.

Absolutely. So the other thing they were kind of connected with is they both had mothers that died from diseases young.

Oh, my God.

She said, I'm going to go read him a book. She said Ben set up the spare bedroom for him and had it all nice and had a bed set up for him. And so she said, I'm going to go read him a story and put him to bed. I'll be back. And she said Ben went in there and helped out with the reading and was sitting with him. And she said it was just very endearing to see that he had a caring side like that and a paternal side, basically. So she's super impressed here. Now, Ben, a little bit about him. He graduated Montgomery High School in 2006. He lived all his life on the same property.

It's a 72-acre farm, big block of property here that his dad owns. It's not a quarter-acre property. No, no, no. It's 70-something acres. Yeah, you get lost there. There's multiple houses on the property. Like, it's a big property. We'll talk about his dad. He's a very interesting guy. So anyway, this guy, the property abuts the Danville Conservation Area, which must mean that nothing can be built on it. So that's even more rural property there.

She describes Ben as career driven and very analytical. She said he's very into that. He's very good at socializing, but he doesn't prefer it. He's not into that. He prefers to be with the snakes, if anything. He likes to do his business. She said his relationships with other people are very transactional, like business stuff or whatever, but not a ton of friends that he hangs out with and talks to all the time and that kind of shit.

So she said he enjoyed playing the drums and liked collecting horror movie props. That's what he was into also. Now, a neighbor who lives here named Mike Scarlett, he said that he knew Ben from a very young age. He said he was a real good, friendly kid. Matter of fact, he's the only kid that grew up around here who wanted to help me. All these other little bastards. I said, can you help me shovel a driveway? What'd they do? They threw things at me. They yelled at me. They called me names. Ben picked up a shovel. He's a good kid.

They shoveled everything but the driveway, threw all that snow into the driveway. The other kids. And Ben would come, shovel it all off, and say he apologized. He's a good guy. Now, his parents are Frank and Kim, and his mom died from cancer. That's how this goes. Now, Frank is a character, Frank Rennick. Here we go. In 1992, one of the houses on their property exploded.

Yeah. And I'm talking fucking exploded like a goddamn action movie. Kaboom. Fucking roof flies off shit everywhere. Wow. They said that the neighbor said a washer and dryer and all kinds of junk crashed into his yard when the home exploded. Holy. These properties are not right next to each other. Right. So this is we're not talking about, like you said, quarter acre lots. This is this shit got distance.

They launched a fucking... You know how much power it has to be to launch a washer and dryer? You know how fucking heavy a dryer is? It's so heavy. It takes two guys. To lift it. Now imagine if you were going to toss it hundreds of feet into the air and like down the street. How the force that would take. That takes like a backhoe or a front end loader or some shit. Fuck. The newspaper that reported on this said,

said that insulation was still falling down an hour after the explosion. An hour? An hour. That's how high. I guess it went into orbit, for Christ's sake. How long would it take? I guess that shit comes down like feathers. Yeah, if it goes up 10,000 feet, I guess it would take a while to fall. That's all I could think.

An hour? An hour. It was still insulation raining down for an hour. Floating for an hour. Jesus. That is crazy. So the sheriff here, the chief deputy of the sheriff's office, Steve Myers, said he heard it from miles away. He was miles away at the sheriff's department and said, I thought it was an earthquake. That's how big of an explosion it is. Miles away, they felt the ground rumble. Gas leak, right? Well, yeah. We'll talk about it here. All right.

Now, no one was hurt in this thing and no one was arrested. The Rennick family had been staying in St. Louis that night. They were away from the house conveniently for them. He said the fire marshal determined gas plugs were taken out of the gas line. Really? Yeah. You know, like on purpose. Like they don't just come out. Someone has to take them out.

So that's very interesting, possibly an insurance thing. Right. But, you know, let's read it or something. Let's not suspect Frank yet. Let's Frank might be a real upstanding cat. You know what I mean? We don't know. Let's let's find out what he does. He opened Spectrum Pet Care in 1996 and it sold natural and organic pet foods and treats. The it was he formerly owned the Bow Wow Dog Food Company.

which was purchased by ConAgra.

Oh, he's doing great. He's got a game here where he starts small companies, sells them to bigger companies, starts another company. That's what he does. So he's a very smart guy and a good businessman. Right. Makes it a conglomerate. 2012, about Frank. Now, this is fucking wild. In June of 2011, Missouri securities regulators said that Frank Rennick, Ben's dad, had been selling unregistered securities for years.

Okay. And had misled investors and used Spectrum money for satellite TV services, vehicle payments, medical care, and at a cruise ship company.

So he's embezzling money from investors is what that is. That's what that's called. So Frank was president of Spectrum Pet Care, Inc., a manufactured pet food. And the indictment here, because Frank is going to be indicted, alleges that Frank sold over $7 million in investments in Spectrum, including stocks, bonds, and promissory notes to over 250 investors in Missouri and other states.

That is, wow. This is a crazy Ponzi scheme is what he's got going on. He just tells people, I'm selling you stocks. I'm selling you stock in my company. In my company, right. When other people invest, he can pay off some of that, like a dividend to that person, make them think everything's fine.

The indictment says that between 2006 and May 2011, Renick induced investors to invest substantial amounts of money in Spectrum by making false representations about Spectrum's financial condition and how the invested funds would be used. He also told investors that their investments would be used to purchase equipment and fund operations.

They said some of the funds were used for the business, but he used substantial portions to repay existing investors and to pay for his personal expenses completely unrelated to the business. You know, a Ponzi scheme. Exactly what it is. Bernie Madoff, same thing. Smaller scale Bernie Madoff. The indictment alleges that investors lost millions of dollars as a result of this scheme. So he's indicted by a federal grand jury on three felony counts of mail fraud.

Now, if convicted, each count of mail fraud carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. This is hardcore fuck-you white-collar crime here. And fines of up to $250,000. Fuck. In determining the actual sentences, a judge is required to consider these guidelines, which provide recommended sentencing ranges. The case was investigated by the Postal Inspection Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. So FBI and the post office.

And that's how it goes. So Frank, while this is all going down, he is fucked in a big way. And this isn't something you can talk your way out of. There's a paper trail. Yeah. FBI and mail fraud. You don't want these. These are the worst charges. Oh, investors have, you know, sheets that they've been sent that have just total bullshit on them. So it's not good. You can't lie to investors. So what Frank does here to get himself out of this is he shoots himself in the fucking head and dies.

Whoa. Done. He goes, I'm not going to. I won't go to prison. And he blew his fucking brains out. So now Ben has no parents. No parents. They're both gone. So Sam, who is Ben's brother, Ben's older brother, said Ben found him. He found his dad, too.

He fed him to a snake. It was crazy. He was like, it's almost time for the boa to get fed. That snake still hasn't eaten to this day. Oh, boy. He's still full. He said, Ben found him. He came and got me, and we went there together, and it was a tough day. He said, there's a lot of people that lost a lot of money due to my father, he said. And this is only like two years after the mother's death, too. So Ben's gone through it here, Ben and Sam. They've had it tough.

So at this point, somehow, I don't know why, but Ben ends up getting all the property.

Not even though they're brothers. Yeah. Makes no sense. Sam didn't get shit out of this, but Sam does live on the property in another house. So he got a little place to stay. He got a little bit. And so, um, they, they, uh, Ben builds a house on this property for him to live in and Lindley and her son move into this house on the property. He says, come move into this house. So now that's a little homestead they have here. Yeah. Our big one, I should say it's 70 something acres. Yeah.

So Sam would run the property basically after that. You know, he would kind of take care of everything here. One of the neighbors said both boys seem like good kids. Both have young families, nice kids. So that's what the neighbors said when they saw them. There you go. 2014, we have Lindley and Ben get married now.

Yeah, they're going to get married. Sam said, quote, they had a beautiful wedding. It was beautiful. A small family event. It was very special. OK, so now he's going to be a stepdad. He's going to be a stepdad and he's going to be a dad dad because pretty soon after that, they're going to have their first child. Oh, shit. So this is moving along, progressing. You know what I mean? This is doing great.

So here's what they do for work. As we know, Ben is into reptiles and has a pretty big business. And we'll talk about exactly how successful it was because it was very successful. Booming. He is super into snakes always, basically. He ran Rennick Reptiles out of a building near his home on the property. Not bad, yeah. He specialized in breeding designer pythons and sold them all over the place nationwide. Yeah.

Now, a video tour of the business that he put together for his own, like, advertising purposes shows him handling all kinds of snakes. No, he's not like, ew, okay, okay, just put it in my hand. Okay, ew, ew, ew, ew. He just picks it up. He's like, yeah, this guy here. He's grabbing him by the face. He's real comfortable with snakes. Super comfortable. Yeah, he's very well aware of what's poisonous and what's not, and he's good at this. Yeah, terrifying is what that is. Yeah.

He said, these things are just very, very amazing. He says about snakes on the video. These things are just very, very amazing. I feel like maybe he should have written something down before he went on. Perhaps, yeah. He's like, I'll go live and I'll have it. I'll just...

I'll do it on the day. Don't worry, is what he said. That's a lot of Riley. Now everybody thinks they can do it live. You didn't write it down, did you? You prepared nothing? I got it. I've got it. It's all right here. In my dome piece. I don't write it down. I keep it in my head like Jay-Z, and then I just spit my verse. That's how it works. It's more organic. Yeah, it comes out better that way.

So Ben converted the barn on the farm into the business. That's how it worked. And Sam said Ben had his first snake at a very young age, and that became somewhat of a passion for him. It became a hobby to build into a business, and he was very good at what he did. Another person says Lindley found Ben's passion interesting. She thought it was cool that he was into something.

I mean, shit, why not? I think it's attractive when someone's into anything. It's kind of cool. Yeah, yeah. Especially if they're good at it. Could be anything. When they know a lot about it. When they know what they're doing, whatever it is that they're doing, it's pretty interesting. I don't care what it is. It's just that they're something. She would work day and night helping Ben with his snakes, handling them, cleaning them, sorting them. So Lindley, she jumped in too. Sorting them.

Sorting the snakes. So she has to be very okay with snakes because she's going to be handling them quite a bit. One guy here, one of Ben's friends, said Ben was a successful snake breeder. He was kind of a pioneer in that whole industry. He was definitely very well known in the snake breeding community, like I would say worldwide. Yeah.

Pioneer in 2017. Are you thinking of Pioneer or anything? No. Except for podcasting maybe back then. Other than that, there wasn't much to Pioneer. Crypto or fucking inventing something. I don't know. Snake breeding? They've been breeding snakes since the fucking 20s. Beginning of time? Yeah. Since Egyptians? I mean, like, what are we talking about? Ridiculous.

So, yeah, but she says, this guy says he's like a worldwide rock star. There's so many niches out there that we have no fucking idea about. None whatsoever. Yeah, you could be a snake breeding rock star? Rock star is what he's called. And we've never heard of him or...

We just go, oh, snake breeder? Creepy. That's all we say. Weird, yeah. So they said the unique color combinations and patterns he produced, because he would crossbreed snakes and put snakes together that he thinks would fucking look cool or whatever. Articulated, yeah.

He said that that was a big deal. He created designer pets that could sell for upwards of $100,000 each. Did he create the golden doodle of snakes? I think that's what he's doing, basically. He's breeding snakes. He's a useless, hypoallergenic, weird dog. He's better over here.

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So she said, or his friend said, Ben was doing stuff nobody had ever seen before, and he had a lot of world's first over the years. Here's a snake with two dicks. Look at this. It's a snake with legs. Ain't that something? Here's a snake that can run. Then that's a lizard.

Ben, that's a bearded dragon and you know it. Don't. It is not. Look at the tail. It's a snake, I tell you. Just say I'm the first. I've seen an iguana before. Damn it. Why you got to always discourage me from doing things? It's a snake with fucking legs, god damn it. I made it. Look at it.

He's fast, too. Look at him go. God damn it, Ben. You're insulting my intelligence. I've read a book before. I watched. My grandmother gave me a subscription to Ranger Rick. Thing is, you don't know about snakes, though. See? Are you the snake rock star? I didn't think so. Me? Snake rock star. Trust me on this one. He's got legs, and I made him. There you go. All right. It's not an iguana.

God damn right it's not an iguana. I could sue you for libel for that. This is my livelihood right here. That's not a snake. That's a skink. Yeah. So Ben says in the video, welcome to the basement of renic reptiles. We keep particular pythons, blood pythons, white lip pythons, green anacondas.

What the fuck is a blood python? I don't know. I think it's red probably is what I would imagine. Okay, yeah. I don't think it – yeah. I don't think – it lusts for blood. That's what it is. Yeah. It only eats blood. You have to feed it blood. You have to take the rabbit blood out of the rabbit. Yeah, you got to drain it. And then you put it in one of those hamster feeders. And the snake will hit the little ball. You got to make a deal with a butcher shop to get their extra. It's a lot.

Yeah, I'll take two pounds of pig blood, please. I'd like a bucket of blood I could have, please.

Trying to work on either. So the butcher's like, are you working on a carry situation or do you have a python? Which one? Do you have a python or are you shooting a movie? I need to know which because really if it's a carry situation, there's a couple specific models of buckets you're going to want for this. It's going to work best. And also some paperwork. You're going to need that. Yeah. They even show him barehanded picking up a snapping turtle.

Yeah, that's brave. That's insanity. I won't go in any body of water if there's a rumor a snapping turtle might be in there. Bite your dick off. There's a southern chef on Instagram that goes into the bayou, James, and picks up like fucking 50-pound snappers.

That's crazy. I hope it takes your fucking leg off. I hope you pick it up backwards. They'll take a finger, those things. I hope you mistake a tail for a head. Pick that fucker up backwards. And it circumcises the motherfucker out of you, you son of a bitch. You lousy son of a bitch. Playing with turtles? Jesus Christ. So they say that one guy here who is Phil Goss, the president of the United States Association of Reptile Keepers, which...

Which exists, by the way. Yeah. People have paid money and paid their dues to do this. They get a lapel pin for that. He said, good cooks don't always make good restaurant owners. It's the same with animal lovers. But Ben, on the other hand, not only had a passion for snakes and how to care for them, he carried that into being a very good business person as well. So yeah, just liking snakes and being good at making them fuck doesn't mean that you know how to

put together a business. You know what I mean? That's just, you're into that could be totally different. So main with them doesn't make money. Yeah. We're good at this and terrible at business. We're good at making a show. We're terrible at the business side of it. That's how it works. Yeah. We're just like that. He said he was one of the most professional minds in the reptile community. He represented himself. Well, had an extremely healthy animals.

Very good. They said that Rennick really tapped into the growth of the reptile business popularity that's just blossoming. And they said 5% of U.S. households have reptiles as pets.

Five percent. Which isn't a lot. That's not a lot at all. Which he chalked up to anything from requiring less maintenance than dogs and cats to they're non-allergenic. So if you want a pet, you don't want to pick up shit. Well, 300 million people, 10% of 300 million would be 30, so 5% would be 15%.

15 million people? 15 million. And it's actually like 330 million. So we'll say like, say 18 million people have a rough time. And if you do it by household, averaging how many people in a household, probably about 6 million. There you go. Exactly. So 6 million houses would probably be about that. There we go. We figured it all out. Not bad math, James. We did that pretty quick for a couple of idiot comedians. It's not bad.

But he said that reptiles have become more domesticated and are bred mainly in captivity now. He said a lot of people are more open to having a bearded dragon or a ball python as a pet. I'm not having any pet that sounds like it goes after your balls, especially a giant snake. You tell all your friends, be careful, that's a ball python. Everybody walks in your house covering up their fucking dicks. Stay out of the other room. I'm telling you. That's what the dick python does. That's right.

I got an asshole boa in the back there. You don't want him coming anywhere near you. Asshole boa. So they actually ball up like that white snake fucking pendant cover. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what ball pythons do. They just go into a ball. They look like a big knot. It's a bizarre snake. I thought all snakes did that.

No, they coil, but those things like ball. Well, I guess I've seen like when you watch, I've seen garter snakes like in my yard breeding. Yeah, yeah, and they kind of ball up, right? They're in like a, yeah, they're in like a knotted, twisted, and it's like a big moving, twisted, knotted thing. It's fucking weird. Yeah, it's really weird. And they have two little hooks on the back of them, and they lock those together to fuck. It's the creepiest thing. Yeah, it's creepy. I guess it's better than a dog dick just stuck in something. Yeah, at least they hook together, and then you don't even see the snake dick.

Yeah. No, I didn't see any snake ticks at all. It gets in there. So he specialized in the ball pythons, which is one of the most common pet snakes. In the industry, it's considered a smaller species. A big ball python is about four and a half feet long. You know, small. Jesus Christ. Tiny.

And so fat, James. I've had two of them. Oh, yeah. They're huge and fat. Yeah. I thought you hated snakes. You're just, before the- I do. Why'd you have them? I got into them for a minute because- Oh, okay. For a minute because I thought that, I thought the women liked snakes and the women that like snakes, I don't like. That's what I learned. That's, I was just going to say, I- They scared the shit out of me. Those are frightening. Yeah.

those are a tougher breed of lady than you're looking for i think i'm not capable of taking to dinner no well no she's gonna whip a fucking an iguana out of her purse at some point or something you never know what she's gonna have packing she wants to go to a place that has bugs so she can ball bag up the crickets and feed her fucking snakes at home it's weird shit

He also had a type of albino green anaconda and retric and reticulated pythons, which very rarely exceed 20 feet. 20 feet. That is enormous. Enormous. That's a huge one. Very rarely. Fuck.

One guy here of central Florida, he lives in a guy named Brian Enslin, said he bought his first baby snake from Rennick in 2010. And since then, he bought about 10 more. He got real into snakes. 10 snakes. He's got 11 snakes altogether.

Holy. He said customer service goes a long way. So he keeps coming back to Ben because he's such a goddamn snake guy here. Bench with the snakes. He's a charmer, boy, a snake charmer. Yeah, he is. Hell yeah. So he said the snakes were shipped through an overnight mail service. He said still he had the chance to meet Rennick twice at a convention in Daytona, Florida. Rennick mentored him on how to help build up his own side business.

He said he helped me quite a bit along the way. If I had questions, he's one of the big names in the industry. He's dealt with a lot of people. Ben is like a big, literally the reptile industry he's known the world over. Ben Renick. Everybody knows who he is.

So that neighbor again, who said he's the only one that would help me with my shit there. Right. He said that this guy graded the Renick family's long driveway in the winter and fixed their lawn equipment in the summer. So he was like a handyman on this property, too. He said a few years ago, Ben finally persuaded him to step inside the snake house. This guy was not into snake. He was in Vietnam, but snakes scare him. Shoot at me all you want. I don't give a fuck.

Put me face down in a jungle, but don't come near a snake in a fish tank. I don't want to see it. I can be in a room with a snake, maybe two snakes. How about 3,000? No. Too many snakes. That can overtake you. Right. So this guy said he knew I didn't like snakes. I told him I'd go in and look one time, and that's all I did. Probably shit his pants in there, too.

This guy did say that Ben was organized, he worked hard, and that there seemed to be a regular stream of delivery trucks passing by, bringing him shit, taking snakes out. Oh, bringing him mice? Said the business seems to be thriving. Yeah. So in 2016 now, so she helped him get his business going. Lindley did with help with the snakes, and I assume to set that up has got to be a lot of work. Oh.

Now, she's been to massage school, obviously, and they have some money now. So she decides she's going to open up her own spa, massage parlor, whatever the fuck. She's going to do her own business here. Those gals can make some money, man. I'm telling you. So two people in this couple, both with their own businesses that are thriving. She opened a business called Essentia Spa in Columbia, Missouri.

And Ascensia. I have no idea. It's just one of those words. Her friend Ashley Shaw was the spa manager. She hires a friend of hers to do that. And Sam, Ben's brother, said, I know that when she started her spa business, it's just something that she had always wanted to do, you know, that empowered her quite a bit. Yeah. To have her own business, especially to have your own, like, building where you have. Right. Right.

It's one thing to run a business from your house or whatever, but to have a building where you have like tables set up and a sign up and people come in and sit and wait. There's a certain pride to the whole thing. You got a spare set of keys that are just business keys. Yeah, there's a certain something to that. So Ben's brother also, like I said, lives on the property, Sam. Sam said, we lived out there together and raised our kids out there together. He said, we went fishing on the weekends. You know, we were close.

So, yeah, I mean, him and his brother live on the same property, and why not? Doing country shit. Hell yeah. Doing country shit. By 2017, the business of reptiles is fucking booming, baby. Really? It is bumping. He is shipping snakes around the world to the UK, to Japan, to Europe.

traveling to reptile conventions all over the U.S. and when he walks in they're like oh shit that's Ben Reddick that's the I mean he makes yeah he makes all sorts of weird shit we never thought of it's like when Robert England shows up to Comic Con yeah oh man oh god Jesus yeah or when fucking Shatner would show up to one of those Trekkie things that they do Star Trek things

So it entered Dave Kaufman. And Dave, by the way, is D-A-V, but it said Dave. Stop it. Absolutely. That's some snake guy shit right there. That's the thing. See, to me, every guy who's super into snakes is like Dave Navarro. That's who I feel like. And so are the girls. Yes, exactly. They're all like Dave Navarro. Less attractive versions of Dave Navarro. We're like...

Because if Dave Navarro wasn't a real handsome guy, you'd go, Christ, he looks like he smells. Yeah. He's also kind of androgynous. I don't know. He could be. Yeah. You could be a gal that looks like Dave Navarro. You know what I mean? You could. But either way, you look dirty. You look like you've been sweating a lot and haven't really taken a shower and your leather pants have been on for days at a time. Can't tell if that's dyed hair or if it's just soot. It could be soot. Is your hair greasy or did you put product in it? I can't tell.

That's what Dave automatically when I think that's DAV, though. Dave. Okay. Dick, Dick, Dave. Okay, Dave Navarro. Want to be with your fucking snakes? Dave. No. Jesus Christ. Yeah.

Yeah. So they Dave Kaufman here. He talked to 48 hours, the TV show when they talked about this story. And he was showing the 48 hours correspondent. This picture, by the way, is fucking hilarious of this 48 hours correspondent. Peter Van Sant was like an older white haired guy. And at one point there's a shot of him.

standing there talking to this Dave with the 48 hours guy with a giant python like wrapped around his neck like eight times and he's like just having a normal conversation it's fucking ridiculous

So it's a reticulated python is what he's showing him. And Dave said, Ben loved these snakes because of how – because how can you not love these snakes? That's what he said. He loved these snakes because how could you not love them? He said, I mean, when it really comes down to it, they're big, they're beautiful, they're personable.

What? Personable. What the fuck? I mean, it could be. If you wanted to make it into one, choose a belt, whatever you want, I assume. Yeah, but I mean, is the next word sensible? What are you talking about? They're big, beautiful, and personable. Sounds like he likes fat girls. That's what he's into. He's like, I like a heavy girl. Let me tell you something. They're big. They're beautiful. They're more personable, honestly. You know what I mean? They want to talk to you. That's what he sounds like. I'm Dave. I'm Dave.

I'm Dave. Without an E. This is my brother Scott with one T. One T. It's S-K-O-T. That's how you spell his name. He's very cool. With a K and one T. What the fuck is that? So Dave said, she's going to go right over to your shoulder and try to go on the cage behind you. Let's see if I'm right. And then the snake kind of goes over the, starts going over the correspondent, but then wraps around his neck and he goes, nope, she's going to wrap around you.

I'd be like, nope, you're going to take this motherfucker off me right now or I'm going to beat it to death with my microphone. Get this fucking thing off my neck before I kill it. I'm going to cut it in half. I am going to take, swear to God, dude, I'm going to open this fucking thing. Do not.

Where's your friend Zach, Z-A-K, to come take this off of me? Jesus Christ. Get Peter with only one E to come over, please. E-T-R. Yeah, that's the one. Get him to come over. We need him.

So the correspondent said, it's my new scarf. And DAV says, there you go. I won't call him Dave anymore. He's DAV. Disable American veteran. So DAV Kaufman is also a snake breeder and a documentary filmmaker who travels the world tracking rare and exotic reptiles for his YouTube channel.

You know, a complete tool. Yeah, a shit bag. A complete fucking tool. A guy that goes and disturbs wildlife for fucking likes and views. Goes and fucks with them. Yeah, the crocodile hunter without the charm. The crocodile hunter without the concern for community. Yeah. It's just the excitement of an Australian is all it is. With no preservation of...

If he didn't walk up to animals and go, oh, look at it, people wouldn't have fucking cared about him. He was like, oh. He was so excited. People were like, this must be interesting. Look how jacked this guy is. He just grabbed a raccoon by the tail and drug it out of the woods. And then threw it at his four-year-old and said, catch, would you? Oh, this one's hungry. Give it a hug, guy. Watch out, guy. All right. R&R. R&R.

So Dave here, DAV, sorry. He says Ben was so successful he realized that if he sold off a portion of Rennick reptiles, he could make some real money, like take in a partner, but for a good amount of money. So this is like going public if it was stock, you know what I mean? Sure, yeah. So Sam, his brother, said Ben had planned on selling the majority of his ball python collection for, for my understanding, it was about $1.2 million. Wow.

He has a million dollars in fucking ball pythons? Not even 30 years old yet, this guy, too. Wow. About 30 at this time. He said, things were going to be very good for my brother and Lindley. They received at least their first payment that Sam knows about of $200,000 toward the full sale of all of his pythons. 800 to go, yeah. A portion of his pythons.

So June 8th, 2017 is the day that this is all leading up to 2017. Lynn's at her spa. Kids didn't get picked up. Fuck. She goes over there to look for him. Holy shit. He's on the ground in blood. She calls 911. She calls Sam. Sam gets there before the cops because he's on the property, obviously. And there they are. And he's saying...

you know, I, my brother's skull was crushed in my wildest dreams. I would never imagine anyone would hurt Ben and all the cops are scared. And then we're back to where we were. Okay. So, um, yeah, at one point they're there. And, uh, Lynn says, uh, cause they think something's a snake. And, uh, Lynn says, that's not a snake. What is it? And Sam says, that's a snake, honey, which is funny. It's a snake, honey, like patting her on the head. Meanwhile, she knows all sorts of snake shit more than Sam. Um,

So she says, that's not a snake. And it wasn't a snake. It was something else on the ground that looked like a snake. No, dummy, that's a pencil. So right away, death by snake is what they're thinking. They crushed his head and ran away? When they finally get a couple of cops in there with balls that are willing to fucking actually go near the body without being afraid of a snake...

They fucking pick the body up and they find shell casings underneath his body. Oh, that's not a snake. One thing they have a very hard time doing. I mean, I know he's a great snake breeder, but I doubt he bred any that have use of their hands and can fire a gun. Probably that would be very difficult for them to do, at least to aim. It would be tough.

So, one of the cops that was there said he'd been shot in the back several times and then ultimately shot in the back of the head. And that's why his skull looked all fucked up. They thought it was crushed by a snake, but it really... He was shot. He was shot. He had a big hole in the back of his head. And the county coroner here said someone being killed by a snake is not something that happens every day, especially in Missouri. And it didn't happen today either.

Nope. He said, when I saw that shell casing on the shelf just above his head, there was a one must have flown up. I knew this was not from a snake. This was something much more heinous. I knew that this was a homicide at that time. Yeah. So they take Ben away and determine that he was shot six times from behind.

With what? And once in the head. Shit, you shoot somebody six times, does it matter? Yeah. But it's not a shotgun? No, no, no, a handgun. With a handgun. A pistol, okay. A pistol. And they said likely died within two hours before the call. So sometime that morning this happened. Okay.

So they said one bullet was from a gun that was pressed against his head. It's a contact wound. I mean, a fucking right up against them, which is more like shot in the back six times. He falls. Boom. Let's make sure. Make sure. So Sam said, quote, he was shot in the back almost exclusively. I don't think he saw it coming at all. Ben had such a future ahead of him. You know, he was 29 years old. He was almost 30. A lot was lost. Ambushed.

Ambush, as that crazy fucking Restaurant Impossible guy says. That's the craziest show ever. First of all, that guy's nuts. He's like, I'm like Gordon Ramsay, but bigger. Look at me.

I mean her in bigger. Is he Scottish? No, he's like a British ex. He's a British guy too. And he's like an ex-British military guy. Oh, shit. And he's jacked. He has huge arms and huge pecs. And he's this big guy. And he comes in mean. And he's like, what are you doing over there? With this show, it got bad over the years. So then they did a season called Restaurant Impossible Ambush. Oh.

He just runs in and does it against their will? Yes, where other people would put them up to it. So they would hide in a parking lot like a quarter mile away and be like, here we are. And there's like a tent and all this production shit. And he's like, we're getting ready right now to go over and ambush these people and tell them that the restaurant's terrible. And then...

They show up like screeching in the park. You're like slamming on brakes, gravels flying everywhere. He jumps out, bursts through the door and he goes, ambush, ambush, ambush. And the people are like, what the fuck is going on? What's happening right now? They're like, what the fuck? He can't.

You can't run in a restaurant. Ambush. You can't run in any business. No. Maybe I'll just say this is a robbery. Especially if you're a gigantic, crazy foreigner. You can't run in a... Ambush. People are like, what the fuck is happening right now? It's the craziest show I've ever seen in my life. Imagine John Taffer just kicking in a restaurant door and going, shut it down. Shut it down. Before anything, ambush. And the people are like, what the fuck?

And he's like, do you want my help or not? And they're like, I didn't call you here. What are you talking about? I don't know who you are. It's the people. They do. They say, they go, why are you here? What's going on? Your friend told me your restaurant's terrible and I'm here to fix it. And they're like, why did my friend say my restaurant's terrible? Who said that? What's going on? It's the craziest show. And then he yells at them and browbeats them into finally going, well, I guess you can fix it if it's that bad. And so he'll go, make me food. And they bring it out and he goes,

He won't like Gordon Ramsay. He'll take a bite and go, no, that's not good. And blah, blah, blah. Texture is bad. Right. He'll take a bite and he'll go like that. And it'll like spinning. It's terrible. He'll make noises. He does ambush. And then it'll just start going crazy. Every like five minutes. I want him to just shout out of nowhere.

Anyway, so that's a big fucking tangent. Wow. I've never heard of it. I'm going to have to watch. Look it up. It's hilarious. Just one episode. It's so fun. Bar rescue against your will. Against your will. Forcible bar rescue. Bar rescue the bar that doesn't need it. Forcible kitchen nightmares is what it is. Yeah. He makes Gordon Ramsay seem like just a calm, chill, laid back, nice British man.

So who could have done this? Who? Who could have done it? Right away, Dave, DAV, I should say. DAV, I'm going to call him. DAV. Like the dog that they call DOJ. Yep, exactly. DAV, that's where it came from. He said, so the first question that I asked was how many snakes were missing. Oh, yeah. This could be a robbery. These are very valuable snakes. Yeah. Snake napping gone wrong is what this says.

He said a facility like Ben's attracts a lot of bad people. You know, snake people. They're weird. Well, at least you would have told me that before I invested in these guys. Before I got into this shit. Before I had six heat rocks in my bedroom. God damn it. I got fucking fish tanks everywhere. What am I supposed to do with this shit?

I got to eat lamps. My room's so hot. It's so hot in here. You have no idea. I keep my air conditioning on like 61 and it just does not keep up. It smells so weird. It's got like a pungent, musty smell. I don't like it. I'm finding skin everywhere. The shit's just strange. Snake piss stinks. Oh, it's bad. He said a lot of people see these snakes not as these beautiful, amazing creatures that they are, but they see them as dollar signs. Yeah. So the snake people help out the family.

An online auction to raise money for Lindley and the baby quickly raises $11,000 the day after he is found dead. Wow.

Yep. One guy chipped in $6,000 for a $5 auction item just to help out the family. Yep. They said, quote, this is someone who helped, said, quote, I think the world of Ben and his wife, Lindley. They've always been exceptional folks in our industry. I'm pretty devastated by the loss of Ben. That's a guy who runs Reptile Report, which is a news website and a reptile shipping service as well. The Reptile Report, everybody.

I know you check all your news. Do you make sure to check Reptile Report? Get the app on your phone so you can make sure to keep up with all the latest? Holy shit. Maybe snakes do have legs by now. We don't know. We're not on Reptile Report.

So investigators are looking into the theory that Ben's murder may have been a robbery gone bad, but they figure out based on his inventories and stuff, because he keeps meticulous records of everything. Of course, yeah. There's no snakes missing. Nothing got away. All the snakes are accounted for here, so they don't know. It didn't make sense, so one of the investigators said they had to start looking at the people close to Ben because it's not a robbery and he doesn't have any beef with strangers or anything. Right.

So the cops said, we definitely didn't want to exclude anybody from being a possible suspect. I didn't know if Sam was involved. Didn't know if Lindley was involved. They're the ones who called us. Maybe they're fucking each other. And we don't know. I mean, you never know with this shit. So police talk to Lindley and they sit her down. And this is from a video of this. They say, do you have any questions for us? And she said, well, what happened?

And they said, we don't know yet. And she said, what? I mean, what do I do? Which is a really fair question because you don't expect that. You don't know what to do. What do I do? Do I call a single mom of two now? This is the second time. Yeah.

Something tragic as fuck has happened and tore away with my baby daddy. And also, what do I do? Do I call a funeral director? Do I call a coroner? Who do I talk to? Do I need a lawyer or an undertaker? What do I need?

Or both. That's the other thing. So he said, what do I do? And the cop said, lean on your friends and family. And he said, could you see anybody you know being upset with Ben to the point where this may happen? And she said, no, he has no enemies. He's a fucking snake guy, for Christ's sake.

Lean on your friends and family. Not our problem, bitch. Answer these questions. I mean, I don't know. Whatever you got to do. Take some pills. I hear that helps. Kind of cold and callous answer. I don't know. Ask your family. Fuck. Friends and family. You know, people who give a shit about you. Not me.

I'm trying to solve a murder. Fuck off. I know. I can't help you here. So they talked to her. They described her as very forthcoming. Her, the main thing she talks about here, her only, they said, anybody you think could possibly do this? And she said, I'd look at my brother-in-law before I'd look at anybody else. Sam. Sam.

She said that, you know, it's it's I would look at him. She also agreed to do a gunshot residue test just to clear her out of the mix here. She said that Sam might might have a motive to kill his brother. She's like, I can't think of anyone else that would have a reason to. So they asked, was there any family family issues? And she said, I'm like between Sam and Ben. Yeah, there was issues. Yeah.

Yeah. Ben got everything. Sam got nothing. And that's what it was. She said that Ben's plan to possibly sell the property while they all where they all lived. He had talked about it. And she said that Sam was upset about it. She said when their dad shot himself, the way that everything was set up, Ben and I actually owned all the property.

She said that Sam kind of basically just went to Ben and he was like, you need to give me half of the property. And Ben was like, no, I can't jeopardize my family in this business. So, you know, he just said a lot of really hurtful things to Ben, which this is very normal for this to happen. I mean, it's complicated and weird.

If you're going to will things to people, fucking make it even or else you're going to torment these people forever. You're going to cause so many problems that will never go away. Yep. And you think you're doing someone a favor when in reality you're just causing issues. Also, if you get anything for free from a family member, take it and shut the fuck up. Because I've never gotten a goddamn thing. My whole family's dead. Yeah.

Sam, he didn't get anything, apparently. All he got was you can stay on this property that's not yours now, which is... Not so bad. I guess not, but if you own 70 acres and it was your dad's, why the fuck does Ben get it all? That's crazy. Why don't I get 35? Something, yeah. So one of the cops said Sam was a heavy suspect after hearing that. Sure. They said the seed was definitely planted early that he had something to do with it.

They said that another person here helped Lindley quickly. Lindley asked for help to deal with the property and everything like that. So they wanted to sell and downsize Ben's 3,000 reptile stock of animals, which included the pythons that could fetch more than a million dollars. So the police talked to Sam. Okay. They're going to talk to Sam here. Now, Sam has no idea that Lindley has said anything to the cops about any beef between him and Ben at all. Okay.

So Sam wondered, they said, do you know anybody that could be upset with Ben? And Sam said, honestly, I'm wondering if this might have been an act of revenge for somebody with my father.

Because he pissed off a lot of people. He said he stole millions of dollars from a shitload of people. So when you got a lot of people in there, one of them could have snapped and came and fucking killed my brother. You know what I mean? How dare you thrive on this property that I should have been able to sue your father for? And perhaps that guy doesn't know that the dad is dead and is coming back to get the dad and just shoots whoever comes near him. Who the hell knows? So...

that's what he said. Sam said, we were concerned, however, that, you know, someone could have been upset enough and waited and done something like this. And he said, maybe they waited. So it didn't look like it was them. I'll wait a couple of years and I'll do this. So Sam agreed that, um,

They said, were you upset that your dad didn't leave you any of the property? And Sam said, of course I was. Yeah, wouldn't you be? Jesus Christ. He said, you know, he left it just to my brother. He said, quote, it wasn't an equal inheritance, but it is what it is. Life's not fair. He said, I can't afford the farm. That's an expensive place to live. So he said, at the same time, I couldn't afford it anyway if he gave it to me. I would have had to sell it because I can't afford to keep it up and the taxes and everything else. So he said, yeah.

I guess, you know, it was for the best, basically. They're out on cliches. They said, are you willing to submit to a shotgun or not shotgun, a gunshot residue test? The cop fucked it up. And he said, yeah, anything you want, you got it, Sam said. Okay.

He said he understood why police would focus on him and Lindley because they're the closest to him. And he told the investigators, they said, what about Lindley? You think she could be involved? And he said, I can't imagine a scenario where Lindley would be involved in this. It makes no sense. Yeah. He said that that makes no sense whatsoever. Sam said, I didn't think that Lindley would have been would be capable of a murder like that. So Sam test negative for gunshot residue on his hands. Yeah.

And he said, I provided them, you know, everything I had, my cell phone, the shirt off my back, my alibi as to where I was when the murder happened. I gave him I gave a polygraph. I just did a cup. I did it all basically. So, you know, they confirm his alibi and all of his many myriad of fucking testing that he's up for. And they decide that he's not a suspect, Sam.

No, sir. Not a good suspect. Far too cooperative. No. So they said maybe the reptile community people. But the reptile community people are just helping. They're just doing nothing but helping. The one person here, they did an online auction after that of donated snakes and raised more than $40,000 for Lindley and the kids. What?

Wow. That's fucking great. And they said 48 hours asked D.A.V. Kaufman here. You guys banded together and you got thousands of dollars to Lindley to help her during her time of crisis. And he said tens of thousands. Yeah, we raised tens of thousands of dollars to help Lindley and the kids. So the police go, we don't know what to do here. So they start looking through like Ben's social media accounts and his computers. Maybe he.

Maybe he's having an affair and somebody's husband got pissed off and came and killed him. Something who the fuck knows. Yeah, because otherwise there's no way that the way everybody's describing their life. There's no one that would be willing to kill him. Nothing's been taken. It's not a robbery. It wasn't even made to look like a robbery. So it doesn't make any sense. So through Facebook messages, they found out that Ben had been writing messages to Lindley talking about her cheating on him.

Really? Lindley's been cheating, apparently. And he's confronting her via Facebook Messenger? Via Facebook Messenger, which is a strange place to do it. You live together, you guys. Hey, every couple does their different things. You know what I mean? Yeah. We like to sit out by the woods, have a glass of wine. They like to fucking yell at each other on Facebook. Who knows?

So 11 days after the murder, the cops are like, let's bring Lindley in again here. I mean, because they're not saying she did it, but maybe her boyfriend killed her. He might have said, I want Lindley all to myself. I'll kill the husband. It just opens up a whole other Pandora's box of shit here. Right. When you cheat on somebody, you bring another person in, and there's a new suspect. Pandora's got two boxes. There's Pandora's box and Pandora's box of shit. That's a totally different box that you don't want to open.

It's an ugly box. Yeah. So 11 days after the murder, she sits down, talks to him again. And the cop said, so have you been talking to anyone or did you have a relationship? And this is when she admits it because they know. And she says, Eric, A-R-I-C, Eric. Of course it is. Of course. He sounds like a man with snakes too, Eric. Yeah. Sounds like a nightmare. So they said, how often did you guys hook up? She said, maybe like once or twice a month.

Every two weeks. That's a lot. She admitted she'd been unfaithful and they said it was or was it just sex? And she said, yeah, it was just sex. And they said, did he think about it the same way? Did he think it was just sex or did he think you had a relationship going? She said, yeah, no, he knew it was just sex. This was a sexual relationship.

So they end up going, we'd love to have a chitchat with this fucking guy to make sure he's as casual as you are. So they do and they check his alibi and he was on a trip with friends at the time of the murder. Like eight people saw him and he wasn't even in the state. So impossible that he did it. So they're like, fuck, square one, shit. So then they look at there's problems with bills.

They learn through Facebook messages. Again, they communicate all of their major problems through Facebook Messenger, which is a strange. I guess that's how they hook back up again. So it's our format. That's all. It's our platform. We love it. I open that app and I just think of you. I just get you all warm and fuzzy.

So also they learned through these messages that Lindley was having trouble paying her business loans and owed thousands of dollars to people. Vendors, vendors and banks and things like that. Paul Mitchell, Vidal Sassoon. They're all coming for their. They're coming for your ass. That's the thing. You don't want to fuck with Vidal Sassoon. He will come for you. God damn. That's fucking kangaroo on the Aussie. They'll come for you.

He said, Ben was having a, Paul Mitchell, forget it. He's a bad man. He's a bad man, that Paul Mitchell. She said, Ben was having to front a lot of bills for Lindley Spa, and this created a really big wedge between the two, said one of the cops. Yeah.

So they said after we started to find out about this is a cop talking after we started to find out about boyfriends, the shape the spa was in, how much money she owed. It just started pushing Sam to the side as a suspect. Yeah. So then they find out the insurance agent that was handling the life insurance policy also contacted the police.

Really? After learning that Lindley was a suspect, they decided to pause paying the $1 million life insurance policy that he had. A million? A million he had on him. So the police, the agent told police that Lindley had begun trying to cash that policy within hours of the death. She was on the phone with... The same day. Hours.

The same day she was on the phone with the Sheds. When you got to bury somebody, you're going to need that money now. Fuck, dude. That's crazy, though. A million dollar life insurance policy and within hours? Within hours. You can't do that. So then they found out that Lynn Lee was also trying to sell the farm and Ben's reptile business the week of the murder. Really? Two days after the murder, she's got the farms for sale.

The fucking reptile business is up. Let's go. She's trying to cash the fuck out. Then they interview someone here. They're like, well, who the hell does she hang out with that might know anything about her? Well, how about that manager from the spa, from her spa? That's her friend, Ashley Shaw. Let's talk to her. She's an employee and a close friend, and maybe she's confided in Ashley some shit. So she does.

And Ashley says, I mean, this is in a police interview. I mean, I'm sure that, you know, she was having an affair and they say, uh-huh. And Ashley says a couple of affairs, actually. Oh, she's horny. She is a horny one here. So Ashley said that Lindley had been seeing another man named Brandon Blackwell, who she had met on a dating website. This isn't even right. She went on a fucking site to find other people to bang.

It's not even like they work together or they ran into each other through mutual friends. She was like, I need different penis. Let me look through this site. That's the only reason to look through a dating website. You're not. Yeah.

Since I've been with Sarah, I've never, honestly, I've never honestly ever before looked on a dating website anyway. But I've never, there'd be no reason for me to look at a dating website. I don't even know how they operate. No fucking clue. Ever. Thank fuck for that. That's all I have to say. Couldn't be happier that I sidestepped all of those. You know that over 60% of people now meet through dating apps? 60% of couples are together through dating apps.

Right now. 60%. It used to be up until 15 years ago. And for like a hundred years before that, it was 60% friends and family would meet, would introduce you, you know? Oh dude. Yeah. Yo, she's got a friend that's sick. Yeah. Yeah. You will get, it's all get together. We're having a party. Come on. That's how people used to meet and get together. And now they don't. Now they're like, yeah, you can't go up and talk to someone now. They're like, yeah,

What are you doing? You didn't even send me a fucking instant message first. This is crazy. What's wrong with you? You didn't DM me first? What the fuck? You didn't even request this yet. You just walked up. This is crazy. Yeah. So they talk about this, and she said she met him on a dating website. She said Lindley was hooking up with Brandon before Ben's murder.

She said, I know Brandon was like a really short time before that. You know, like the day before. Yeah. Then they find out about more affairs. They check Lindley's phone records to look for evidence of other shit. And they find a number belonging to Brandon Blackwell. That came up frequently. That's the one she was talking about. So they talked to Brandon Blackwell. Sure. Sit down, chief. And...

the cops said they had started a sexual affair and it turned out was just three days before the murder this happened they started an affair she slept with a man three days before her husband was murdered a new guy she was already fucking another guy just began banging for the first time three days before

Now, Blackwell has a rock solid alibi, though, during the time of the murder. That's the thing. But the weird part is while this investigation is going on and they're talking to Blackwell and they go, well, he's got a rock solid investigation. All of a sudden, Lindley goes public with her relationship with Blackwell and their boyfriend girlfriend now. Oh.

That got real fast. This happens. Everybody is aware of it now. Yeah, social media and everything. There are pictures of them together. Brand new. Yep. And Sam, Ben's brother, said, we started to see Lindley's social media accounts pop up with another man. And then very quickly after that, we found out she was pregnant. What? This Lindley is fertile. She is fertile.

She's so far. She's as we know that we know of. She's fucked four people and three of them have impregnated her. So that's crazy. She's just taking loads without any sort of caution. Wow. Caution to the wind here. My God. That's a tough game to be playing. That's a real tough game. So.

I don't know. This is going to be her third kid. She said Lindley entered into the relationship with Brandon Blackwell almost immediately after the time of the murder. Brandon was married and had two kids, by the way. So they're wrecking multiple homes here also. That's the other problem. Everybody's a fucking disaster here.

So then they look at more Facebook messages and they discover discover Facebook messages between the Ben and Lindley, those ones. And they said that the spa is losing money and all that. One Facebook message, by the way, one was sent to Lindley just hours before he was murdered. And that was this. This is the one he sent to her hours before that day. No more lying. No more keeping things from me. No more not paying people and thinking it's OK to pay later.

In other words, he caught her for all of her lies that she's been in. Yeah, yeah. Except for the affairs. But no more lying, no more keeping... This is all the business stuff they're talking about. Right, right, yeah. Never mind if he finds out she's banging a couple other people. He's really going to be upset. 72 hours ago, she was screaming some other guy's name. Fuck yeah. So, a stupid name, too. Yeah. So...

four months later, this is four months after the murder. They bring Lindley back in to talk to her again because they're like, we can't get past her. Everybody else clears except for her. So they said, will you take a polygraph? And she said, no problem. You got it. Take a polygraph. So in there, they said, how did you think after the polygraph? They said, how'd you think you did Lindley? And she said, Oh, I think I did well. And not quite. They said, quote, so the results of your polygraph show that you failed the test.

When I asked you, did you shoot that man? You were you were deceptive. That's kind of the only question we were real concerned about. Did you shoot him? Yeah, that's the one that we cared about. Yeah. And that's the only you fucked up on that one pretty bad. She said, I can't explain why I just failed that. But I didn't kill Ben.

I don't know why. I mean, in some people, when they say, did you shoot that person? Your shit might part rate might go through the roof because, you know, who knows? But she said, I can't explain it. So I don't know. I don't know. Then they ended up getting her phone records and saw text messages they found between her and Mike Humphrey. Remember Mike Humphrey, the pill dealer from back in the day? She's talking to him again.

Okay. Lindley told the cops that Mike was Mike Humphrey, a client she used to work on as well as an old boyfriend. The cops said, quote, they talked the whole day of the murder and they haven't talked since. What? He said, little bit of a red flag when we see that, when we see them then separate.

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to the dark sanctum. Listen to Dark Sanctum Season 2 exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. So they interviewed Michael Humphrey and he claimed that they reconnected because Ashley Shaw, the business manager, wanted some stereo work done and he could provide that service because he installed shit like that. So they asked Lindley about Mike Humphreys and they said, listen,

We know you've been talking to this guy. We know you've been talking to Michael Humphrey. By the way, we know he's your ex-boyfriend. By the way, we also know that he's fresh out of prison on drug charges as well. So we know all of this. You know, we know you texted and called him numerous times, including and well, really up to and including the day your husband was murdered and then not at all after that. So we'd like to talk to you about that. Lynn says, oh, he was coming in for massages.

Yeah, penis massages is what those are. Different kind of massage is what that is. You know, dick balls, that whole area I really massage. The Deshaun Watson massage. You know, that massage. Yeah, we call it the Travolta around here. Yeah, the Watson, Travolta, the Kraft, they're all the same. All the same shit.

So he was coming in for massages and the officer said, yeah, but the thing is that right there is very suspicious that you haven't talked to him since. She starts crying at that point. Oh, no. Breaks down crying. I thought that would look great. It looks bad? It looks bad. But she continued to deny her involvement, even though they broke her here. She said, I don't have anything to do with this. And they said, there's so much circumstantial evidence in this case against you. It's mind boggling is what they tell her.

And she said, I need to get my children. And she gets up. And they go, well, I'll walk you out. They don't have enough to arrest her.

So they have to let her leave. That's it. They'll just bully her all the way out. I'll walk you out. Yeah, you fucking bitch. That's right. Yeah. Go pick your kids up. Teach them what a fucking liar looks like and a murderer, you scumbag. You fucking hooah. Look at you. We don't believe a word of it. What do you got? Four or five more boyfriends out there, you fucking skank? That's right. And she's like, will you leave me alone? I'm a mother. I'm a mother.

So that's what she does. She leaves the office, and that's that. They move on. There's nothing more they can do at this point. Blackwell leaves his wife, Brandon Blackwell. Lynn Lee has a court battle against Sam because she wants to sell the farm, and Sam's like, you're not selling my family farm. My brother barely had it. Now you have it. She won, though. She won the court battle. She owns it. So the farm sold for $740,000. Yeah.

So she moved to Columbia, Missouri with Brandon Blackwell and all of their children. A whole Brady Bunch. Five of them? He's got two. She's got three. So it's damn near a Brady Bunch here. Sam said, I lost a farm that my family spent 40 years maintaining. We could have never imagined losing the farm in that way. Yeah, to some chick that your brother was married to for a couple years.

So they said that, you know, just I guess just weeks after the murder, her spa business was failing. Lindley sold the property, closed up shop in her in her spa business and fucking took off. They said, quote, OK, so she was there one day and the next day she left and then never came back.

Which is goddamn crazy. This is a woman named Beth Mayberry says that, who's described by 48 Hours as Beth Mayberry works at that same location, but she was just one more true crime buff in Columbia, Missouri, riveted to a case without a conclusion. And they ask her, how much is this Rennick case talked about around here? And she said, it's a lot. A lot. It's there today. There's 800 people here. We ain't got much else to talk about here. Yeah.

They say, and what do people say? What do they think? And Beth said, crazy. It's crazy. And people did start to wonder, maybe Lindley did it. Maybe she had someone do this. It became a question. I would fucking hope so. 2018 is when Lindley and Brandon's baby is born. Okay. Let's add another one to the mix here. So 2019, still no arrests. Two years later. What?

And Sam said, I wasn't sure what to think. I just didn't. He thought it would never be solved. Yeah. So they said he was just left completely uneasy. He said it was very, very tough knowing that someone was out there and that it essentially gotten away with murder. I was concerned for my own safety and without an arrest.

You know, everybody is concerned at this point. So D.A.V. Kaufman said, quote, so when the case goes cold, we would all connect with each other asking if anybody had some information on what was going on. They form like a phone tree, you know, like a snaking, you know, said it was frustrating. It was frustrating to have all this time pass and not have a culprit in custody.

He said, then he said the fucking creepiest snake person thing that could ever be said. Quote, humans do things other than what you would expect. Snakes do not.

What? Yeah. He's trying to say why snakes are better than people type of thing. It's not like dogs. Yeah. It's not that. No. We don't deserve snakes. We don't deserve snakes. It's a shame we outlive snakes. Is it a shame? Snake doesn't care about you at all and just wants to eat shit and move on. But still, you know, it's like a person.

So Lindley is acting weird, they say here. Sam said about Lindley's weirdness, quote, we wanted to be as understanding as possible. However, in time, when she refused to talk to us or allow the kids or even receive my brother's belongings, we knew something was wrong. Yeah. She said, I just want nothing to do with you people. 2019 here.

Shocking. Her and Brandon's relationship not going so well. Is it Rocky? Surprising here. She took out a restraining order against him.

And in 2020, he was, January 2020, he was arrested for violating the restraining order. Sure, of course. She alleged he'd become threatening and that they had broken up. She got an order of protection and he was then charged with violating that order and stalking her. And he denies the charges. Oh, he's a stalker. Okay. She said that Blackwell was threatening to accuse her of murder in the application for the order of protection.

That's what she said. Why did she say that? We'll find out. January 2020, he's in jail. And when people sit in jail, they really want to get out is the thing. They want out bad. Yeah, they tend to have some epiphanies in there, too. They'll grasp for straws and snakes and whatever else they can find to get the fuck out of somewhere. So they go to talk to him because he asked his father to call the cops and have them come talk to him. Oh, okay.

So they said, we're investigators with the highway patrol. I'm here. Cause he used to be dating Lindley. Your dad gave me a call today and said that you wanted to talk to us. And Brandon said, yeah, my main concern is getting out of that cell right now. He's straight up. He's like, how do I get the fuck out of here? Yeah.

So they said, now you're coming to us when you're in a pickle. So, and he said, right. So basically you need a whole lot of bargaining power because you're the one who's fucked, not us. You get it. You know. So he told investigators that Lindley's spa was in financial trouble. Ben knew his wife was withdrawing money, needed to keep it going and had the financial means to take her children away from her is what Brandon said. They said he described Lindley's confessions to him as,

Saying that when they would talk about it, she would put their phones in a separate room to make sure nobody was recording anything or eavesdropping or, you know, you accidentally said, Siri, call the fucking highway patrol or some shit. Siri, call homicide detectives anyway. So that is I hope that didn't fuck anything up with my phone. It's across the room. They don't want to be have homicide detectives on my phone after I just said that.

So he said about her that they would put the phones in the other room and then they would talk about it and he would ask her to tell it again. Apparently the plotting to kill Ben took place at the spa in the shopping plaza, in the Cherry Hill Shopping Plaza in Columbia, Missouri. He said that Lindley planned it with a co-worker and also called up Mike Humphrey, obviously, your scumbag pill dealer boyfriend, ex-boyfriend.

And he would come to the spa for a massage sometimes anyway. So this Brandon Blackwell says that Lindley told him the week before Ben was murdered that she'd tried and failed to kill him. This wasn't the first attempt to kill him. This is fucking crazy. Okay. According to this, according to Brandon, Ashley Shaw, the co-worker, spa manager, helped her obtain Percocets, which doesn't seem like with Mike around, you'd have to look too far for those. Right.

And come up with a plan to poison Ben. That was the original plan. They were going to overdose him with perks? Jesus Christ, what a brutal way to hurt somebody. He said that they whipped up what he called a toxic shake for him. He said, quote, he was given a protein drink one night that was laced full of enormous amounts of narcotics and somehow lived through it. But the plan was for that to be the last day of his life. And Lindley gave it to him and all that kind of shit.

She said, and they said, well, you, how do you know? Did you hear this from someone? And she, he said, my information is out of the horse's mouth. She fucking told me face to face. They said after they, they crushed up 15 Percocets and put it in a milkshake. Okay.

Or some kind of shake. That's not enough. People have fun with that. Well, not me. Yeah, people take 30 of those in a day. Yeah, but if you're not used to taking 30, that's a lot. 15 might, yeah. You could OD. That might be. And also depends on the strength of them. They could be small perks. They could be big perks. The other thing. God damn it, 15. So Blackwell tells police that Lindley reached out to Michael Humphrey and asked him for help. Mm-hmm.

OK, now, while they're doing this, by the way, they're trying to match this up with Lindley's phone and text records to make sure this all matches up. And Brandon's not just talking shit to get out of a jail cell. So when the pills failed, Lindley turned to Michael Humphrey. He said they drove to the farm. He had gloves. He had a firearm. The plan was for him to do it.

They get there and he hands her the gun and says he doesn't feel comfortable doing it. I barely know the guy. You know, killing is such a personal thing. You know what I'm saying? Who benefits from this? Yeah, I don't know why I'm doing this. There's a gun for you. He says he's uncomfortable. It's something that she's got to take care of. She walks in with the gun and just shoots him a bunch of times. Yeah.

And then, according to him, Ashley Shaw comes back into the picture now.

They said that Brandon told police that Ashley was in on it immediately from the start of the planning. She's been there on this conspiracy the whole time. Really? Whole time. Yep. So they obtain a search warrant for everybody's Facebook accounts and all that, and they confirm the story of the protein drink messages between all these people. Oh, my God. They also confirm that Ben knew of his wife's financial problems. On the day of the killing, Mike Humphrey picked Lynn Lee up at the spa and

And the employee, Ashley, sent her text messages from her phone, which remained behind. Okay, yeah. So it looked like if they checked the tower, she's still there, which is smart. That's a smart move. Genius, yeah. Which remained behind along with Humphrey's phone to cover their movements. So she would say he came in for a massage that day. That's what, look at our phones. We were both there. Yeah.

So the evidence at the scene indicated that Ben knew his killer because where he was found, how he was killed, nothing was stolen. He turned his back to someone in his own business and trusted them. So that makes perfect sense. They said it was initially, the plan initially was for Humphrey to kill Ben while basically Lindley was going to say that she brought Mike over there to look at the snake barn. Hey, check out how cool it is.

But then, you know, he was going to shoot her. Now, anyway, he also they also said that Mike had told Lindley that he didn't do it because if she changed her mind and regretted it later, she didn't he didn't want her to be mad at him later for shooting her husband. He watched her sometime. Maybe I will fuck her. He watched the killing, picked up a couple of the shell casings, missed more of them, though. They felt like three of them under his body and one on a shelf by his head. So very bad at picking up shell casings.

And then the two of them, Lindley and Mike, returned to the spa where she showered.

Get this gunshot residue off of her. And her coworker bagged up her clothes. Mike took them out and got rid of them and disposed of them. Holy shit. This is a fucking plot. Yeah. I mean, the mafia has less organized hits than this. She took a shower. She took a shower to get. This was planned down to we don't want our cell phones to be. Right. Like that's a big plan. So they arrest Mike Humphrey.

And they said that Lindley to Mike had they said, why did you do this? And Mike said, well, Lindley had spun this tale of domestic violence and domestic abuse. Ben's been beating her, raping her, all this shit. So I figured I would help. And this cop said, Michael, believe this. Michael wanted to help. He brought her the gun to to her spa in case she needed it. That was what it was. He was. And that's what Ashley said to like here in case your husband comes after you again.

Now, Mike's story here is that's his story. He said that, you know, that he told Lindley that police Lindley asked him to go with her to see Ben. And she said that she said that she was leaving him. This is what she told Mike. I'm leaving Ben and I want to pick up my stuff. So will you come with me to make sure I'm safe? OK. When they arrived at the snake facility, Lindley had the gun with her. He said he had previously brought it for her in case she needed it.

Humphrey, though, claimed Lindley tried to hand him the gun and he said, I'm not fucking I don't want the fucking gun. It's your husband. You want him dead? Shoot him. So when when Ben opened the door, he said that she you know, he turned around to walk back in and that's when she shot him right there.

Humphrey said, quote, I turned around as soon as the first shot rang. I ran out the door. I heard possibly another one, maybe two. And by that time, I'm standing by the car asking her what the fuck just happened. You know what I mean? And she's like, we got to go. We got to go. He left out at least four more shots, too, by the way.

So January 16th, 2020, Lindley is finally arrested. Really? They're going to arrest her. Yes. Now she claims she enlisted Humphrey to accompany her to the snake breeding facility where she planned to break up with Ben the day that he was killed. And Ben freaked out.

So, um, DAV Kaufman said that they asked him, what was this like for you to find out that it was her, this woman you've been trying to help for years and everything. He said, disbelief. I thought they got the wrong person. No way. And Sam said, it took us years to find out, find out that Lindley was lying and that she was living a double life sociopath. If you look that up, Lindley's picture will be sitting right there with it.

definition. I've heard that a lot. So should we look? I think we should. I don't think it's there. Sociopath. This will say. Image. And sociopath isn't really a,

A medical... It's not really a thing that exists either. It's more of a catch-all. It's a lot of... Not her? No, it's crazy. It's a lot of posters with... Not a strawberry blonde chick? No, no. Weird. Sociopath versus psychopath. That's a whole bunch of that. That's interesting, but not her. There's a strawberry blonde girl...

Patrice Patrick. Oh, game. Oh, it's a book. It's a little girl. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what this woman looks like, but I guarantee you that these are not her. Not her. Hyperbole, James. Hyperbole. Hyperbole. Hyperbole. See what happens?

So she said, Sam said, Lindley stood to gain millions from the death of my brother. Between the life insurance, the sale of the snakes, and the family farm she would inherit, it was significant. It took a lot of time just to process, you know, the lies that were given by Lindley. So Ashley gets arrested. Ashley Shaw from work gets arrested, too. She's been in a murder plot. And they said to Ashley, now is the time, Ashley.

She's a chick named Ashley up for murder. So they're like, listen, chick, which side do you want to be on? They said, you're either on Team Lindley or you're on Team Missouri. And Team Lindley is going to jail. They're going to prison for first-degree murder. So which side do you want to be on? And she said, I'd love to be on Team Missouri if possible, if you have an extra roster spot for me. Missouri seems to be recruiting pretty hard. I'm in. You seem to be good here. Yeah, I like the engineering department, you know.

So she said, but they do make a deal for her to get prosecutorial immunity, though. Okay. I want immunity before I'll say shit. And they go, well, she was the least culpable of anybody. So fine. She told the officer she agreed to help Lindley kill Ben because Lindley said she was in an abusive relationship. She said that she's the one who got the Percocet and helped find Michael Humphrey again.

Wow. So, yeah, she that's wild, man. She said, yes, we did make a fucking smoothie, a poison smoothie. And, you know, Ashley kept saying that Lindley kept telling her that Bennett abused her. She said, quote, she asked if I could get any, um,

thing any prescription pills or anything with the amount that could um help her kill him and so i got her um perk it was percocet i'm pretty sure that and then there was um i think 15 of them is what she said mashed him up in a blueberry smoothie and had him drink it and he had a great friday night he said asai asai is disgusting and he threw it away god why do people eat that shit

So when Lindley and Mike Humphrey were at the farm, she also helped to establish an alibi for Lindley, sending texts and correspondence on her phone to make it look like she was not only at the spa, but actively playing with her phone. Unbelievable. So dick with my phone while I'm gone. Yeah. Now, according to Ashley, after the shooting, Lindley claimed Michael Humphrey was the trigger man.

Yeah. That's interesting. But she says a few days later, Lindley changed her story and admitted she was the one who did the shooting. So Lindley...

No, Lindley told Brandon, Lindley told Ashley, and that's what Mike says, too. So I'm going to go ahead with Lindley did the shooting here. You know what I'm saying? That's fucked up, man. Yeah, real fucked up. It's one thing to get someone else to do it, but to shoot your own husband five, six times in the back and then go up to the head and boom. That's a fucking cold motherfucker right there. Well, a man that stood nearby.

Yep. That's fucking why he's scared. So Ashley said, and she said, oh no, once we got there, I was fine to do it. And so he handed me the gun and I did it. She was cold as fucking ice, which isn't good. She could do it. And then she was like, oh yeah, I can do it. I could do this. So I said, after the murder, was she ever remorseful at all? And Ashley said, never, not once. They said, she ever seemed sorry. And she said, never. No, never.

She was happy. Did she scare you? Thrilled. Why the fuck are you still hanging out with her? Yeah, this is, I'm not hanging out with you anymore, I think is the way this goes. My God. So Lindley's attorney says that they argue that the state's case isn't based on the truth, but based on the fearful, coerced testimony of Ashley Shaw. That's all it is. She was just scared. They said they told her, you're either on Team Lindley or you're on Team Missouri and Team Lindley's going to jail for first degree murder. Who the fuck wouldn't? That's a great point.

Yeah, so they said, you know, how would that affect her? And the attorney said, this is Lindley's attorney, said, well, if Ashley Shaw ever wants to leave that interview room for the rest of her life or for the indefinite future, she's going to change her story and tell them what they want to hear.

So the other defense attorney said it was only after that threat that she changed her story and implicated Lindley Renick. Well, yeah, when she found out she's in trouble. Well, why else would she tell them? She's in trouble and that we're going to give you no punishment for this. Yeah. I mean, we'll give you immunity. Well, fuck. Might as well. Right. Let's chat. Screw it. Yeah. Why not? So October 2021, Mike Humphrey is going to trial. He's the first one.

The prosecution says that Lindley fired the gun and Humphrey was in on the plan. Prosecutor said that he was in on the plotting, provided the weapon and helped knock off the husband. That was all that. The murder weapons never been recovered, by the way. Is that right? His defense argued that Humphrey had been lured to the snake farm by Lindley, who claimed she wanted protection when asking Ben for a divorce. Lindley had then surprised him, pulled out a gun, shot her husband.

So they said they painted him as kind of a, this is her lawyer said, they painted him as kind of a fawning suitor of this pretty blonde petite snake salesman. And so they painted him like this poor guy, doesn't know what he's doing. So there's, I mean, they have a lot of evidence on him because he admitted everything. He told, gave him a whole rundown of what he did and what happened. So they can either be convicted of first degree murder, second degree murder, whatever.

Even the prosecution says he didn't pull the trigger. It was Lindley. Okay, yeah. Okay. Jury deliberates for five hours to figure out what they're going to give him. That's quick, yeah. And they find him guilty, obviously, of first-degree murder. Yeah, I guess so, right? Yeah, well, sentencing comes around, and you, sir, may fuck off life without parole. He is life without parole.

I mean, I guess he's lucky it's not death in Missouri. Listen, if I'm getting life without, I want to get my money's worth. Like, I would want to hate the person and have fucking killed them myself. Right. To get life without for this is like, this is a ripoff. This is fucked. I could have cut his head off and went bowling with it, for Christ's sake, I would have got the same amount. Truly, yeah. This is crazy. I didn't even kill this motherfucker. So he gets that. Sam, the braggart.

the brother says Lindley is a manipulator. And I truly believe that that man was manipulated into where he is right now. He's like, I don't even blame him. That's her. So I fucking blame right afterwards though, after he's convicted and sentenced, his lawyers go to the prosecutors and says, he'd like to have a chat with you guys about something. So he agrees to cooperate with the state at this point, testify against Lindley and bring them the murder weapon. Oh,

If they redo his sentencing to something, make it second degree. I want second degree and a smaller sentence. And it's not like 10 years. They're talking about life with parole. He wants second degree in life with parole. I'll do 25 as long as I can get out at the end. As long as there's some light at the end of this fucking tunnel here. So he now admits with this, he admits that he provided the gun that Lindley used, like she said.

And he also tells them where they can find it, which is where his girlfriend's mother's attic. Get out of here. That's where the murder weapon's been this whole time. Not in a river. Yeah. Not in a field. Not buried somewhere. Not where it will break down somewhere. In an attic. Grandma's keeping all that forensics nice with the humidity in there really keeping it going. Nice and warm.

Nice and warm in there. Humphrey then helped police track down the weapon, and he agreed to testify against her at trial.

His conviction is lowered to a second degree murder and parole is now back on the table for him. So now he's second degree murder life with parole. So they said leading them to the weapon, giving the statements about Lindley, he'd get a lesser sentence instead of life without parole. He'd get life in prison with the option of parole and he gets second degree murder. So December 2021 is Lindley's trial. Now they got Mike to testify against her. This trial. What was he paid in this? Anything or just. No, anything. Nothing. Nothing.

Oh, my God. Happy ending. I don't know. This guy's a fucking idiot. He's an idiot. He had sex with her, you know, seven years ago. So now he's still doing it. Yeah. Fucking moron. This guy's an idiot. So December 2021 is her trial. Finally, the prosecutor said the defendant, Lindley Renick, shot her husband, Ben, eight times, killing him. We're going to come back and ask that you find her guilty.

The prosecution paints her as a cold-blooded. They paint her, as they say at one point, she's as cold-blooded as one of her husband's snakes. Right. You knew they were going to compare her to a snake approximately 7,000 times during this trial. She's a snake in the grass. She's a slitherer. That's it. Snuck up on her prey, all that shit. She's a killer who shot her husband, Ben, then went about her daily routine as if nothing happened.

That's what she did. You know. She said she goes to the school, picks up her two children, and drives them back to the place where she knows she's going to find their father's dead body because she killed them. She left it there. She left it there. Now, the defense here, they say that Lindley and Humphrey went to the snake farm to talk to Ben about divorcing his wife, and Lindley was taking the trash out. Yeah. And she heard several gunshots as she was taking the trash out. Oh, wow.

And they said that, yes, she did lie and cheat on Ben, but that doesn't make her a killer. I mean, come on. Her defense attorney says she is not planning a murder. She's planning a divorce. That's what this was all about. All this setup. You know what I mean? Obviously, you want to try to poison the person before you divorce them. And then they point the finger at Michael Humphrey. They say Michael Humphrey took it upon himself acting completely independently to take Ben's life. They're saying she...

Yep. He asked, can I go out there and look at this farm? And then, you know, boom, shot him up here. He said there's so many aspects of Ashley Shaw's story that are simply not credible also. And the defense attorney says Lindley Rennick has zero ability with a gun. She has no interest in guns. Doesn't know dick about guns. So how is she going to do this?

Ashley Shaw gets on the stand and the prosecutor says, you two actually attempted to kill Ben Renick. And she said, yeah, I do. I did. We did with the Percocet. They said, do you regret it? And she said, absolutely. It was the biggest mistake of my life. What's she going to say? No. Yeah. The only thing I regret is I didn't put enough fucking perks in that thing. He should have been dead. I regret that I could only afford 15. Yeah. That's all I had.

So the first plan, she tells the jury about the Percocet shake there. And she then said that they sought help from Michael Humphrey. And they said that he seemed promising because, quote, Lindley said he had a prior record of being in trouble. So she thought he had a history and that maybe he knew people that would take care of this for her. She knows he knows murderers and such.

Ashley said Michael was going to come to the spa and they were going to they were going to go together to her house to his business to kill him at home or at work. He's she says after the murder, Lindley returned to the spa to wash herself off and, you know, get all the gunpowder residue and shit. Kind of like Jason Williams in the crime and sports went for a dip in the pool afterwards. So the prosecutor said, so Lindley goes back there and she tells you to do what?

And Ashley says to give her a shower. She asked me to scrub her body and her hands really well. You can't scrub your own body. She went in there and was like, rub my tits, will you? Just scrub them. Rub me. Yes. No. Did Mike at least get to beat off to this? I was going to say, did Mike get to watch this at all? Because that would have been something anyway. This is terrific.

A post-murder fucking a post-murder girl on girl shower. That's there's got to be a porn where that's involved in it. Right. Certainly. If it's not porn, it's in a there's a horror movie. Something. Yeah. The guy just whacking it in the corner, just fucking talking. So then Ashley tells the jurors what Lindley told her about what really happened.

So she she confided in her. Ashley said she said that Michael got too nervous or didn't want to do it. And so he handed her the gun and she actually killed him. She said that she put the gun to his back, to the back, to his back and shot him several times. But they said that the defense says she made all that up to avoid prison. This is all made up.

Cross-examination, they said, how are you able to be so calm when you're being questioned about murders that you evidently claim to be so involved in? How is that, Ashley? Yeah. And she says, I don't know. I'm fucking cold, man. Yeah. They mean right now in court. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe she's just not afraid of public speaking. Ever think of that? This isn't a big deal to a lot of people.

I don't know, man. If you weren't there... She's got immunity, too, so why would she be nervous? I wasn't there. I didn't watch it. She told me about it, and I'm having no penalty for this. I'll tell you anything you want to know about this shit. Don't give a shit. Yep. And then they asked her...

You know why she and Lindley had talked about murder at the spa in a public place because they don't they're like you didn't actually do that. And they said as soon as someone hears you you guys could go to jail right. And she said I don't know. So all these aggressive questions. She literally just answers with I don't know. It just takes all the steam out of them.

So then they said, you don't know because you guys never tried to kill Ben. Isn't that right, Ashley? And she said, that's not true. Yeah, we did. Yeah, we definitely tried. They go, well, let's bring up Mike Humphrey here. They display a set of texts that Lindley had sent to Michael Humphrey, who had obviously already convicted, trying to corroborate that the two were orchestrating violence.

This whole murder plot. And the texts show that Lindley sent to Humphrey asking whether he was making a trip to Columbia that day. When he was delayed by car trouble, her text became more urgent. At the same time, she was texting her husband about routine household and personal matters.

While that was going on, she's asking Humphrey, are you on your way? Where are you? What's going on? And they keep going back and forth. Humphrey is testified that he met her at the business about 345 p.m. They drove out to the farm. His last text message to his wife, by the way, bends to Lindley was, do I need to get the kids now at 4 p.m.? A text message was returned to him telling him to pick up the kids and

Then an hour later, another text was sent to him saying, I'll meet you and the kids at home. But the school called Lindley at 545 to tell her no one had picked up the kids, and that's where this all started. So at that point, they hold up a gun, and they say, now what am I holding, Michael Humphrey? And he says, that's my gun. Yeah, it's a pistol. They said, that's what your gun is, right? They said, that's what your gun is? And he said, yes. What a weird question. That's what your gun is. This is your gun? Yes. Yes.

He says, I heard a shot come out, which is a weird way to put a shot come out. Yeah. So I kind of ducked a little bit and I looked through down. I looked down through through there and she was at the end of the corridor or whatever you want to call it. Posted up like this with the gun like pointing. Yeah.

So he said that he saw with his eyes Lindley fire shots at her husband in the snake facility as he was running to get outside away from her. He saw her shoot. Yeah, he's had a she had a gun out. He tried to take off and she shot him in the fucking back. That's wild. So they said, would it be fair to hear that you heard several after the initial shot? And he said, yes.

They said, what happens next? She runs around to the passenger side of the car and starts screaming at me to drive, drive, basically like a fucking getaway from a bank robbery. Yeah. Drive, drive, drive.

Holy shit. During cross-examination, they make a point to point out that Humphrey was under the influence of methamphetamines at the time of the murder. Let's throw some meth into this whole thing. And they noted that the gun appeared to be Humphrey's and remained in his possession, so what the fuck, basically. Right.

Lindley's friend and family, friends and family testify here. Brittany Bishop was one of her friends. And by the way, there's another woman named Rachel Hunt who worked at the spa who also knew about the plot who ended up getting immunity to in this case. She wasn't quite as involved as Ashley, but she told a bunch of people about this.

This isn't just one person she told and they're turning on her. This is everybody she told. What the fuck is she doing? She thought that everybody likes me and I'll have a bunch of money and they'll all just kiss my ass. That's what she thought. And she told them all that she was in this abusive relationship and they all bought it. They all bought it because, yeah, why not? I mean, maybe she – we don't know. Maybe it was her. I don't fucking know if there was any abuse there or whatever, but there's ways of going about it other than this is what we're saying.

So Bishop here, Brittany Bishop, a longtime friend, lifelong friend of Lindley, said that Lindley is a quiet and meek person who's more of a follower than a leader. And she's never seen Lindley handle firearms or be violent in any way, shape or form. She said that she called Lindley after hearing about the snake attack that happened to her poor husband there. And Lindley was hysterical when she answered. She said she was just in hysterics.

Going crazy. Bishop stayed with Lindley at the Rennick household in the days and weeks after the death to help take care of her and help, like, feed the kids and stuff because she's such a mess. And the snakes. There's so many snakes. So many snakes. She said, quote, she was a wreck. She acted as though her whole world had fallen apart and it just had. We were having a hard time getting her to eat and drink. We had to force it on her. Yeah.

Yeah. She's so depressed. They said that she never thought Lindley could have killed her husband. And she said that she was a person which Lindley could confide. And, you know, she didn't hear anything about it. She said, quote, this is Bishop. Yeah. He said, quote, you were wrong about her to Bishop. This is the prosecutor. She lied about all the affairs she was engaged in, which was true. She never told this girl about that. So.

April Shaw here, she's going to testify, obviously. And they're talking about, she's talking about how for Lindley, how Lindley was acting after the death, because they recall her to the stand. She said she was very distraught. She wasn't drinking, wasn't eating well. We were having a hard time getting her out of bed or doing much of anything, said April Shaw. And now Shaw is an infusion nurse specializing in patients with bleeding disorders who

Such as not, unfortunately, not being shot eight times. That's not one of the disorders she can handle. Such as hemophilia. That's how April met Lindley because Lindley's father was getting treatments for a genetic disorder that causes this. And that's how they met. So they became friends there, April and Lindley. Lindley never shared with April about her affairs, her presence at the snake breeding facility around the time of her husband's death or her or her spa's financial issues.

Under questioning, she said she was not expected to be the kind of friend for Lindley that knew more details, intimate details of her life. They said that the argument made it the defense attorney made an argument that a person not eating also could be stress induced, such as law enforcement investigations surrounding the circumstances of a spouse's death. This could be normal. So her dad testifies that his daughter is not a violent person.

And while does not have extensive experience with firearms, he has seen her shoot a gun before. She knows how to shoot a gun, knows how to operate it, knows how to aim it. He's done it with her. He said when she was young, he wanted his daughters to understand the weight of a gun. In this case, it was a .22 caliber rifle that he taught her with and that this did not inspire an interest in guns for Lindley, but she had handled guns a couple times. Wow.

He also testifies that Lindley was in complete shock the day of Ben's death and in the days and weeks after. Lindley was seen to briefly and quietly cry during her father's testimony. The father said, she was gone. I'd never seen shock so bad before, after the husband died. He described his daughter as a woman who just went through the motions of daily life after her husband died, sitting and staring on the porch for hours. Just catatonic.

So through questioning through him, they argued that Lindley has lied to her father, citing her extramarital affairs. They're like, you really don't know anything about your daughter, correct? Do you know that she was having a bunch of affairs? No. Do you know this? No. Do you know this? No. Then why would she tell you shit? You don't know anything.

He even said, these are things she keeps from you to the father. Lindley has to testify. She has no choice. What else are you going to do? She's got so many people saying that she's guilty. She's fucked at this point. So she testifies on her own behalf. By the way, if you want to see someone testify on their own behalf horribly, look up the Sarah Boone trial. That's the suitcase lady. That's amazing.

Her she's the worst testifier I've ever seen in my life. It's amazing. I am so terrible at happening right now. And you get to just watch it as it. Oh, it's amazing. So good live. It's amazing. So Lindley says that on her own behalf, I'm telling the jury, Michael Humphrey pulled the trigger, not her. Oh, that's what she says. Yeah.

They said, Lindley, was there any other ever any other occasion where an argument with Ben turned physical? And she said, oh, yes. Oh, all the time. She said Ben and I had been arguing at the house and he grabbed my arm and pushed me into the refrigerator and was like, I'm not done with this. We're going to finish it now. Oh, she tried to walk away and he was like, no, no, get the fuck back here. She never filed a police report about this alleged physical abuse, but she said it was all the time.

And Sam said abusive is not a word that I would use with Ben. He was very kind, very loving. Well, sometimes people who are kind and loving also can abuse their spouses. That happens too. Yeah, kind of. They think that they're being kind and loving while they're doing it too. Behind closed doors is a phrase for a reason. You know what I mean? Right, right, right. So then came her schnutt that I'm saying he did do it. I'm just saying that you can't. You're right. You wouldn't know. You don't know.

So then came her chance to explain why she asked Michael Humphrey to accompany her that fatal day. That's a good one. The defense attorney had Lynn run through her personal family history, education for massage therapy. And I watched all this and it was so funny. She started talking about her history and the prosecution's like, objection.

I watched the video. They're like, we don't this isn't this doesn't matter at all. Fuck. But it got it got overruled. And so then she just got to tell her whole story. And it was pretty fucking funny. So the defense attorney had to run through everything, like we said, and her marriage and all that. Talk about Humphrey. Lindley said she ended her relationship with Humphrey in late 2010, looked him back up again about a month ago, according to the testimony. And.

She, uh, Lindley said, quote, Hey, my marriage is falling apart. Will you please just go with me just to make sure like, you know, I'm safe and I can get some stuff and go. She also has a father, mind you. Yeah. And you know what I mean? So long. Yeah. Ask your dad. What the fuck are you doing? You're going to your boy, your drug dealer boyfriend from seven years ago, or he's going to, that he's the most reliable male figure you can come up with. Give me a fucking break. So,

By the time she had decided to broach the topic of divorce, she didn't know who to turn to, she said, because her father had divorced and he had strong opinions on divorce and extramarital affairs. Well, if he was really beating the shit out of you and raping you, I think you'd go to your dad and go, hey, my fucking husband's beating and raping me. Can you help me get out of the house? I doubt he'd go. No, you need to stick with that, sweetheart. I frown upon divorce. Yeah, I don't. I'm not into divorce. And you've been having affairs. You deserve it. Go back there and get beat.

No, he's not going to say that. So she said that she just wanted someone to support her when she went to talk to Ben. So the topic of old boyfriends came up and that led to her reconnecting with Humphrey because she figured he might be tough because he's been in prison.

So Ben had become more aggressive, she said, and argumentative. So Lindley said she wanted someone for moral support and physical support. And, you know, they'd been fighting alleged physical and sexual abuse and the stress associated with all of this. Lindley was worried what mood he'd be in when she broached the subject of divorce. So she said this is why she relied on Humphrey. She said, I wasn't at the facility to kill my husband, but to ask for a divorce. Oh, wow.

Yeah. And she served him with eight fucking shots is what she served rather than papers. They said, did you ask Michael to help kill your husband? And she said, no, he just made that up so he can get first degree murder charges. Why would he make that up? So they said, set the scene for me and the jury. So give it your all here. Yeah.

Lindley acknowledges that she took some trash from Ben to throw away. She entered the breeding facility where she saw Humphrey and Ben finishing up washing their hands. She couldn't really hear what they were saying to each other. And she said she was thinking more about what she would tell Ben, how she would tell him about the divorce. Lindley says, quote, I walked up right behind Michael and then said,

She does a big exhale, too. It's even in the transcript, her exhale. It's so big. She exhales. Michael turned around, and I saw a gun in his hands. And then I heard shots ring out. And I screamed, and I ran outside. And then I heard more shots go off, and everything just went numb. And I remember staring at the trees. Again, another transcripted exhale. Yeah.

And then Michael running out of the facility and pushing me toward the car and telling me we have to go, Lindley, get in the car. We have to go now. You know, the opposite of his story. She claimed to be in shock. They said, well, why didn't you tell you the truth to the investigator? She said, oh, I was in shock. That's why I didn't even know where I was. Yeah. She then said, this is fucking wild. I understand what that means and how this looks.

I just, I don't know how to fully express that I never wanted Ben dead. She described disassociating while on the return trip to the spa. She's totally disassociated, so completely detached when she got to the police. She alleges that her work friend there, Ashley, was the one that set up and bathed her, and she didn't even know what she was doing. She basically...

stripped her clothes off and just walked her catatonic corpse into the fucking shower and bathed her.

Come here. You look sad. Let me wash your tits. Come here. Ashley treated her like Joanie treated a horse in Deadwood. Yes, exactly. Rub it under her tits. Come here. Let me take care of you. Imagine if you walked into my house. I thought you looked sad, so I started stripping your clothes off and taking you to the shower to give you a good scrubbing for no reason. Dragging a sponge with us down the hall. Yeah. Don't worry. I got this, Westman. Don't worry, buddy. I got you covered, man. I know what you need.

I don't know what happened, but I know what you need. I don't know what the problem, but I know the remedy. I know how to fix it, though. She said, Lindley said she didn't want to believe what just happened happened. The reality set in when she returned to the breeding facility and located Ben's body. She then called Sam and

He came over. They checked for a pulse and to see if Ben was breathing, thinking he may still be alive. That's awfully wishful thinking with a fucking contact wound to the skull. Lindley's hands, like we said, were tested and they didn't come up with any gunpowder residue because she showered. Lindley said she regrets not telling the officers then and there that she'd been at the breeding facility when Humphrey died.

did this basically. She said, I should have told the cops this right now. She said about a month after Ben's death, she returned to the distraction of the men she had an affair with just to have a distraction from how, how sad she was about her dead husband. I needed to, I needed to get some strange just because I was so sad about my dead husband. I needed penis from someone else. Yeah. I needed a distraction.

Wow. She said, I hid behind the story that I never left the spa and I regret not telling the truth from the start. So she said, yeah, I eventually told my version of everything to Brandon Blackwell. She said, yeah, I was in a relationship with him. I had a child with him. The relationship went sour and I took out protection orders against him, which he violated multiple times. She said, I do regret lying. She said, I was just trying to run from the truth of what happened.

I regret lying. I just didn't want consequences for my actions. I just didn't want them. I just wanted nobody to know. I just wanted to spend the money and not go to jail. Does that make sense? Is that a thing that people do? And not have him in the house. She said, I lied a lot, and I understand how that looks. I stuck with that story and never let go of it.

So on cross-examination, the guy comes up and he goes, you were interviewed by a bunch of cops, correct? And she says, yes. And you lied to them every time. Yes. But deep down in that heart of yours and in that brain of yours, you know who killed him, correct? And she says, yes. They said, and then any time the police asked, she said, any time the police asked me who I thought, I just told them Sam.

because she was trying to get out of it then she starts crying and looks up to sam and says i'm so sorry i'm so sorry sam i killed your brother and made the cops think you did it sorry my bad oh that's so hard to frame you for your brother's murder no worries that happens it's like the third time someone tried to frame me for a family member's murder i get it i got caught sam

Wow. And the prosecutor says, why should these jurors believe you now? You want these 12 people to believe you, correct? And she says, yes. And the guy says, I bet you do. And that's all he has to say. I gotta go. So Sam's reaction to her testimony is this quote, her trying to apologize to me on the stand and garner sympathy with the jury didn't sit well with me. There's no low too low for that one. No kidding. She is. Wow. Just a mean person here.

Closing arguments, prosecutors here, they say all she's done is deflected lie throughout the investigation. After all the marital problems, financial issues, attempted poisoning led to this elaborate plan. He said this was preplanned. We know she offered Humphrey money and encouraged him. Even if she had done it all by herself, she'd still be guilty of murder in the first degree.

Yeah, I think she'd be more guilty then at that point. Yeah, oh shit.

Her story changed from the investigation to a different version, specifically the ones that you're hearing now. Why didn't she call 911 when she started to worry about not hearing from Ben? Well, you don't call 911 because your husband doesn't call you back. He might have dropped his phone and broke it. Don't call 911. No one does that. That would be crazy. Don't be fooled by what the defense wants you to believe. Believe the evidence. Okay. And then he starts singing the Doobie Brothers. What a fool believes. And then they make him stop, though.

They're like, that's enough out of you. We get it. So the defense attorney here in a moment says that in a moment of indescribable trauma, Lindley made bad decisions. This is really just about bad decisions. That's her decision to lie. She's not a violent person. And even prosecution, prosecution witnesses said that there was no plan for murder, just plans for divorce. You don't do favors for first degree murder.

It's like that guy would have had to get more than just a favor. Help me out with this. You do favors for helping plan a divorce. That's what you do. That's what it is here. It's like helping someone move, not killing someone. Lindley has no proficiency in using weapons. Well, it doesn't take a lot of proficiency to shoot somebody from six fucking inches away in their back. There's not a lot of proficiency needed. Anyone could do that. One of the snakes could almost do that. For sure. Yeah. Not quite, but almost. It might only take two.

Two of them. You hold it. I'll fucking pull the trigger. I don't know how they would rack it, though. That would be really hard. If it's a revolver, I could see this happening. You know what? Whole new fucking theory of the case now. I have come to a different conclusion. Yeah.

So they said that if the investigation into Lindley was so strong, why did investigators have to resort to threats of jail for her co-conspirators? Because that's what you do to co-conspirators. That's how it works, man. It's life. Have you ever seen an interrogation before, dummy? She's hoping the jurors have never seen one.

If they've ever, this is 2021. If they've ever watched an episode of the first 48, they go, yeah, that's how you get people to talk, dummy. Whole thing, yeah. Why did they believe the word of a boyfriend who has bits and pieces of the story, Brandon Blackwell, who's facing stalking charges in relation to Lindley?

He's just mad at her because she filed charges against him. That's what they're saying. People who want to know what the truth is would not do what these police officers did. Lindley Rennick did not know Ben was going to die that night. The lack of evidence has proved that. Okay. Jury goes to verdict. They deliberate for 12 hours.

Golly. I don't know what they're talking about for 12 hours. And again, it's first degree murder, second degree murder, blah, blah, blah, down the line. They find her guilty of second degree murder. Really? Yes. That poor bastard really got fucked, didn't he? He got fucked good on second. Oh, wait till you hear her sentence. Oh, man.

So they said this is fucking wild. The jurors decided that she was not she did not deliberately kill her husband with, quote, cool reflection. No, she tried to kill him once, then planned a better way, went there with a gun and shot him. You don't get any more preplanned than that and did it for money like that's as first degree as it gets. I don't really fascinating.

It is Sam during the sentencing said she really believed that she was going to get away with all this. And she really believed that she was going to get what she had, what she had planned after murdering my brother. In other words, all the money. So he says she put the children through this experience. Here I am covered in my brother's blood attempting to comfort the children despite them asking me if their daddy is dead. This poor son of a bitch. Poor Sam.

tears and blood and horrible there are a lot of victims in this case the web of devastation travels far and he asked that his brothers he also asked that his brother's remains be returned to their family i don't want her to have his fucking remains they're ours yeah

So he says, thank you for this opportunity and may Benjamin Rennick rest in peace. Now, life in prison is still an option on second degree murder. I think it's life with parole at that point, but it's still life. The judge says, and this is the jury's decision on the sentencing. The judge cannot override the sentence in any way, shape or form here. You, ma'am, may fuck off 13 years in prison for the murder.

And then armed criminal action, which is another charge, another three years. Consecutive. 16 years they give her. 16 years. The judge was noticeably livid about this shit. He was pissed. You guys, you did it wrong. Yes. If he could have, he would have taken that jury in a room and given them the fucking business. You people are useless. Let me tell you something. Wow. Wow.

Sam was real frustrated. You could see him be like, what the fuck? Get the fuck out of my life. And the judge said the same thing. The judge looked at her and said, quote, you're awfully lucky, ma'am. You just, wow, you snowed these fucking jurors somehow. How did you do that? You're going to get out in your 40s. And my 40s weren't too bad. So they're saying, like, you're not getting out when you're 90 and crusty. You're going to have a fine life. He said, I just hope that you don't kill again. That's it.

Good Christ. She will only have to serve 12 years in prison before she's eligible for parole. Oh my God. 12 fucking years from then. Um,

Sam said, I mean, we were happy that she was sentenced to the 16 years she was given. However, my brother's life was worth a lot more than 16 years. Those children, all the lives that were destroyed by this, by these actions. I begged the common person to watch the trial again and ask themselves if my brother's life was only worth 16 years. 16 years is why I'm here today.

The kids lost their father, my babies, and Ben's babies, and I'm here to take care of them for the rest of my life, he says. So you can. This is all online, too, the whole trial. Court TV has a thing where it's every day's breakdown, and you can watch just her testimony. I recommend watching her testimony because it's terrible. So what about old fucking DAV, the snake man here? Yeah, what happened to that fucking snake?

He said, what happened to Ben was a tragedy that absolutely did not have to happen. And yet, Ben Rennick lives on. In a way, he would surely have loved, celebrated with a new breed of snake named just for him. And Dave, I've done this, babe. I made a new snake and it's called the Rennick Ghost.

He made a new breed of snake, Dave. The ultimate snake man. Looking around for a breed that he could fuck another one with. And he made a new snake. How much do you want to bet this guy walks around with a big burlap sack with a snake in it like Jake the Snake Roberts? And like, that's...

I'm the snake man. What's it called? The Rennick ghost? The Rennick ghost is the snake. What the fuck is that? He said, and what ghost is, is a slight reduction of black's color. It gives the snake a ghosty appearance to it. So it's like, ooh, like lighter than it should be. And that is just such a testament to what Ben meant to this community. And he now has a mutation of a snake named after him.

him. Hey, everybody. I'm going to say this now because when you're dead, you don't have a chance to say this. If I drop dead under crazy circumstances or anything, please don't mutate a snake for me. Just don't even bother. I'm good. You don't have to. I'm looking one up, dude. I gotta see what it looks like. You don't have to. It's fucking frightening. They're all... What fucking... Python isn't frightening. They're all frightening. James, it's got like a fucking stripe that comes up between its eyes from the back and it's like...

It's like an albino ball python kind of thing. It is so scary. That is creepy looking, right? Boy, oh boy. So the 48 hours says you miss your friend, don't you? Yeah, I'm fucking snakes. What do you think?

He said every single expo that we would see each other at, there's a vacancy there that will never be filled again. Yeah. There's one less weirdo snake guy. Not that Ben was a weirdo, but there's less weirdos there. It's like an albino with yellow. It's crazy. That's fucking interesting. Wow.

What does Lindley do from jail? She sues Brandon Blackwell. Stop it. For what? I swear to God. You're going to shit when you hear this. For defamation. You're murdering Twat? What? Yeah. You're a fucking murdering fucking cunt. How's that? Sue us. There's no. You can't.

For defamation? That's hilarious because there's been defamation cases that have gone to court and people have said, you've done so much, there's no way anyone could defame you. That's where she's at. Who was it? It was a famous person. It was a famous person. They said, you're undefamable. You can't be defamed because you're such a fucking loser. Was it Lenny?

I can't remember who the hell it was. It was Lenny. It was Lenny. It was Lenny Dykstra. They said, you have been such a disaster. There's no way you can't be embarrassed because you've embarrassed yourself enough, which is a great discord decision, by the way. Lenny Dykstra, that was. So anyway, in the lawsuit, Renick accuses her ex-boyfriend, Brandon, of making false and malicious statements to law enforcement officers that implicated her and her husband's murder. Hilarious.

She's the only one who's not in prison, I guess, and doesn't have prosecutorial immunity. She's upset. Wow, that's fucking crazy. The lawsuit claims his statements were false and made maliciously for the purpose of causing injury to a reputation. Oh, my God. They were made for the purpose of getting him out of jail. Right. And if you get to stick it to your ex a little bit, I think that's probably just a cherry on top.

According to the lawsuit, they've subjected her to arrest and eventual incarceration, criminal prosecution, and the loss of custody of her children, all for a false statement he made. What about all the other people who made these statements? She's suing him for $25,000 for punitive damages and court costs. Yeah. Wow. The Columbia attorney who followed the suit said Renick is trying to hold Blackwell accountable through this legal action.

She said she wants to preserve her right to hold him accountable in some form since the state did not call him to testify at trial. So they have – this is crazy. And they also say this could have an impact on the child custody at one point, at some point in the future because they have a kid together, if you remember. Wow.

2022, they want Lindley barred from any inheritance from Ben's ship. Yeah, yeah. A court-appointed administrator of Rennick's belongings asked a judge to stop Lindley from getting any part of Ben's estate because she's trying to. Yeah.

They said they wrote that their daughter should be named to a sole heir of the estate, meaning Ben and Lindley's daughter. Doing so would put her one step closer to finally closing out the court's supervision of the estate. They're trying to get it over with. 2023, Mike Humphrey is going to appeal.

Really? I don't know what he's appealing. Yeah, he's appealing. Special public defender said that in only that his only point that Brandon Blackwell should not have been allowed to testify at Humphrey's trial because he testified at Humphrey's trial, but not Lindley's. Blackwell told Missouri State Highway Patrol investigators that Lindley Renick told him about the shooting when they were dating. Blackwell claimed that Lindley recruited Humphrey to help her get a gun and all that shit.

They said the courts can't allow statements made about a defendant's possible participation in a crime after the fact without that person being present when it's made.

hearsay is what they're saying, essentially. So they said Mr. Blackwell's testimony that Ms. Rennick told him everything that she and Mr. Humphrey did was inadmissible hearsay, and it was not in furtherance of the conspiracy, and there's no evidence that Mr. Humphrey was present when Ms. Rennick made it to Mr. Blackwell and acquiesced in its making. Even without trial counsel objecting to the testimony, the trial court should have recognized its inadmissible nature and taken action to correct it.

And they didn't. So they say, get the fuck out of here. Keep going. What are we talking about? This is crazy. Yeah. Then Lindley appeals, too. Oh, for fuck's sake, Lindley. She appeals. This was in 2023. She appeals. Somehow she filed a notice of appeal on November 2nd. And then by a month later, she asked that –

that they pull it back. They don't want it. She doesn't want it anymore. The Columbia attorney, Carol Jansen, declared that her client had asked for a voluntary dismissal of the appeal. I guess they're not ready for it yet is what that might mean. They need to save. We got shit we got to do first. If you got one bullet left, you can't just shoot it off willy-nilly. You got to fucking hold it. Yeah.

So there you go, everybody. That is New Florence, Missouri. She's a special kind of twat, man. Special kind of, like a twisty, snaky kind of twat. Terrible. Scaly. Yeah. Slithery. Kind of a twat. I hate her. I hate her so much. Like a kind of twat that just eats a whole rabbit and has it sit in their stomach and just look big and fat. Like that kind of twat. Yeah. Like a worm with a backbone. Yeah.

Oh, my God. Scary shit. So there you go. Hope you like that episode. If you did tell the world about it. Get on whatever app you're listening on. Give us five stars. It helps tremendously. Trust me on that one. You also want to definitely head over to shut up and give me murder dot com. Yeah, you do. Tickets for live shows. Austin, Texas. You are up next. Do it. Get in there. The other show, Phoenix Show, was sold out the first day they went on sale. So that's not going to work.

But Austin, you can come to that. And we're going to release. We didn't realize that Tarrytown has 100 tickets left for like the last four months. And we're like, how come no one's buying the last 100 tickets? And then you go on the website and it says sold out because we need to release those tickets. So we're going to go ahead and release those out to you guys. When do we do that? I don't know when we're going to release them, but you can keep checking. And Boston as well. Get your tickets there. Maybe by the time you hear this, they'll be released. We're not sure. Fair enough.

Fingers crossed. So do that. And also the October 30th virtual live show. Yes, sir. Whether you can't get to a live show or you want more live shows, we can do this. Anywhere in the world with internet, you can watch this. It's just like a regular live show. The story, the jokes, the screens, pictures, all that shit. Except it's

Halloween, so we're going to be wearing costumes and they're fucking hilarious. I'm sorry, they're hilarious. Best costume you're going to see. Then, on top of that, it's available for two weeks after that as well. So you can buy it beforehand, watch it for two weeks. You can buy it anytime during the two weeks. You can do anything you want with it. Watch it a hundred times. Shut up and give me murder.com. Do what you want. Stick it up your ass for all weekend.

We don't give a shit. Patreon.com slash crime in sports is where you get all the bonus material. We can't recommend this enough to you. Not only because it costs $5 and we get that money, but yes, anybody $5 a month or above, you get hundreds of episodes you've never heard before. Every bit we've ever made.

That's right. New ones every other week that you're going to get. One crime and sports, one small town murder. And they are fucking worth it. Patreon's hilarious. For crime and sports this week, we're going to talk about the Vince McMahon documentary, which is...

We're going to talk about some wild statements he made over the course of that. There was, you know, not too much wrestling. Then for small town murder, we are going to finish up Ted Bundy's psychological examination from 1976, the diagnostic unit in the Utah state prison, where they're going to decide if they think Ted Bundy is violent or not. What a crazy thing.

I don't know how you... We'll find out how they decided, but I think we knew the outcome ahead of time. It just feels like it, yeah. Absolutely. So get in there, patreon.com slash crimeandsports, and you get a shout-out at the end of the show, which happens right now. Jimmy, tell me the names of the people who would never, ever, ever murder us and pretend a snake killed us. Hit me with them right now. This week's executive producers are Meijan, Emilio, I think. I hope so. I hope. That would have been a good...

If you nailed it, great. Fingers crossed. Julie Delvecchio, Abigail Gathard, Gathard, Gathard.

Claude Cavallo. Claude, thank you so much. I hope you meant to do that. Uh, if not, please email, let us gladly send whatever back to you that you didn't mean to send. Thank you so much. Chelsea Morgan, uh, Faith Steveson, I believe, and Paul Roost. Paul, how have you been? Holy shit. All right. Thank you so much. Uh, also other producers this week, Liz Vasquez. Thank you, Liz. Good to see you this week. Uh,

Peyton Meadows, Gary Howard, Diane Helmendoller, Janice Hill, Sharon Jones. She just started Deadwood. You're going to love it. I'm jealous. Good for you. Help me with the fucking fall. Andrew Welmers. Andrew, how you been? I got that good. That was good that time. Pretty damn good. Who's going to help with the message? You can help me with my fucking fall.

BRB, I don't know. Be right back. Be right back, bitches. I hope you stick around. Lacey, Lacey, Lacey BP, Haley Robertson, Heidi Kalleher, Jesse Moline Johnson, Vicki C., Christina Reed, Lisa Koch, Orko, Chris Beck, Laylee Grant, Jasmine Kronbeck, Mary Albright's big alien dick, Jennifer Holtman. It's big, James. You got to...

It's gotta be massive. I mean, golly, it's crazy. It's, it looks like two, uh, two gen, uh, two fingers. Hokamoto, uh, Jennifer Holtman. I said that Amy Merritt, Alison Niebuhr, uh, Benjamin a Brady Simmons, Brent Benjamin hair. Also Brady Simmons. Oh, everybody's named fucking Benjamin now. Uh,

Damn it. Lindsay Scott, Robert George, Kyle Harris, Chris Fry, Aaron Welch, Caitlin H., Megan King, Danielle Lex, Catherine Greger, Nilou Rofson, Johnny Nilou, I missed you. Kirsten Van Ness, Jilly Bean, 6886-343-DENVER3. Wow. That's a lot of fucking numbers. Lori K., Erica with no last name, Jan or Jan, D. Roos.

Lynn. Okay. Lynn Armo. Ham. Ham's in season. He said, okay, let me, let me gird my lines for this name, boy. Cause it's going to be a rough one going into battle. Veronica Vasquez, Emily, uh, Emily, Emily, interesting way. Uh, Savannah, Savannah, again, can't, what is this? Cano canoe. It's a, it's a name. Thomas Phillips, uh, Colleen Larson, Tyler J. Travis Mount. Emma, Amy, Amy Barnes, Nikki Zaddy. Uh,

Cody V 96, Julie pace. Brady would know last name a, B and C, uh, Sarah Gusecki. Vicky would know last name. Skylar, Skylar Purcell, uh, Sharon McGregor, Nicole Mercado, Picardos. Oh, Picard's mistress. All right. Picard. Good for you. Poku, uh,

Ivan Richard, Ryan with no last name, Shannon Adams, Jacob Sigley, Matt Simone, Stephen Cole, Lisa Weiss, Jenna Ward, Cammie Salyer, Angie Pennington, Nicholas Mergu, Mergu? Mergu.

Mergo? What is that? Bo Glover, C and K. The letters C and K. John Yun, Mansfield. Tiffany Udingia. Udingia. Udingia. Udingia. Murda. Murda Tepura. Nick Reed. Elin L. L. Kern. Sandy Raymond. Antique Limited Edition. Doug Teague. Albert Avila. Tyler Kulik.

These are fucked names, man. You guys got fucked names, man. Get your shit together.

Lynn Machino, Brad Shanburn, Mandy H. Grant with no last name. Haley Jackson, Stephen with no last name. Jeremy Hayes, Loran, Luthi. What is that name? Sean Smith, Scott Veroni. Abs Gutters, what? Bikesh Garung, Michael Savaglio, Savaglio.

Fucking what? I like Savage Leo. That's great. Amanda, call Scott Roosling. Roosling. Jaquette. Jaquetta. Jaquetta Adewalo. What? Mamie Stansfield. Danita Scott. Jason Newhouse. Robin Purier. What the? Andrea Guzetta. What is these? What is that? Todd Becker. Deborah Heavlin. Heavlin. Heavlin.

Lisa Smoot. That's fucking easy. Bob with no last name. Jen with no last name. Emily Davis. Christy Phillips. Garrett Geise, I think. Steph with no last name. Jason Travis. David Speer. Jupe. Jupe? Is that a name? McKenna with no last name. Douglas Wyrick. Russ Mann. Tammy Knox. Maria Taylor. Danny Sotile.

Fucking Andrew Hegel, Heigl, Hegley, Samantha Timms, Brittany Parker, Elliot Natrika, I think, Abigail Walker, Lou Sassoli, Rhonda Herford, Courtney Ochoa, Audra Bodemer, Gloria D., Jane with no last name, Tracy Smith, Tina Helton, Kimberly Swartwood, Julia Barron's, I don't know, Stephanie Channel's,

Kyle with no last name. Tiffany Shaddy. Shady, perhaps. Robert Sweeney. Allison Ahrens. Angela with no last name. Summer Teed. Tyed. Theed. Thedeed. What the Christ? Brandly. Brandly Schmelter, I think. Monica with no last name. Schmelter, hardly know her. Tyler Hyatt. Tomoto. Tomoto Takashi. Takahashi. Tomoto...

Awesome. Tomoto Takahashi. Cool. That's cooler than anything. That sounds like he invented a Nintendo game. I love it. I can't even do it. Kurt Scheid, Sidney Engler, PAG, PAG2975, Chelsea Harrison, Josh with no last name, Adil Ali, Benita Rupe, Diz Hart, Alicona with no last name, I don't know, Robert Fiske, possibly Fisk, Carlton had the same name, and

Charles C.R., Hannah with no last name, all of our patrons, especially the easier names. You guys are the best. Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody, so much. You magnificent sons of bitches. We love you more than we can fucking tell. Thank you. Keep the show going.

That is wonderful that you do that. Thank you for the Patreon subscriptions. People ask all the time, how does the money work? Does you get that? Patreon is what we get 100% of. So if you want to support the show, that's a great way to fucking do it. Also, buy the shit from our sponsors. That helps too.

We only do sponsorship of shit that we think you might like. So do that. Hang out with us. Keep coming back and seeing us. You want to follow us on social media, it's all on the website. Shut up and give me murder.com. Follow us on social media as well. Hang out with us. And until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure. Bye.

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In November 1991, media tycoon Robert Maxwell mysteriously vanished from his luxury yacht in the Canary Islands. But it wasn't just his body that would come to the surface in the days that followed. It soon emerged that Robert's business was on the brink of collapse, and behind his facade of wealth and success was a litany of bad investments, mounting debt, and multi-million dollar fraud. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show Business Movers.

We tell the true stories of business leaders who risked it all, the critical moments that define their journey, and the ideas that transform the way we live our lives. In our latest series, a young refugee fleeing the Nazis arrives in Britain determined to make something of his life. Taking the name Robert Maxwell, he builds a publishing and newspaper empire that spans the globe. But ambition eventually curdles into desperation, and Robert's determination to succeed turns into a willingness to do anything to get ahead.

Follow Business Movers wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app.