What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been - Part 2
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Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers, creator and host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie. Every Monday, me and my best friend Britt break down a new case, but not in the way you've heard before, and not the cases you've heard before. You'll hear stories on Crime Junkie that haven't been told anywhere else. I'll tell you what you can do to help victims and their families get justice.

Join us for new episodes of Crime Junkie every Monday, already waiting for you by searching for Crime Junkie wherever you listen to podcasts. I picked up the phone and I said, I'm a prosecutor from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. I'm going to tell you some information about

I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff.

I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder. Last week, we covered the story of Mary Jane Marquardt. Looking forward to getting back into this one. You're right, Anastasia, but it's got so many great twists and turns. We really believe it takes two full episodes to tell this story.

Let's go back to March of 2000, March 13th to be exact. Just after 4 o'clock in the afternoon, Alfred Marquardt walked into his home, into his garage, and had found his wife, Mary Jane, unresponsive. Mary Jane was shot and stabbed. Their son, Bill Marquardt, was not living at the home, had not been seen for a while before the homicide, and actually, days later, they still weren't able to determine his location yet.

They realize that he's not just missing, but he's their prime suspect. Then they get notified when he drives back into town in his green Thunderbird car. There is lots of evidence found pretty quickly. There is blood to his mother on his shoes and in his car. They get the knife, one of the two murder weapons. And it doesn't take long before a case is built, and then ultimately he went to trial. They felt they had a really strong case, and when I spoke to John Tyson—

He talked about that and how he felt going into the courtroom and how he felt by the time the jury finally, four days later, rendered their verdict. I don't think this thing is going poorly for us. I would call myself, as that young prosecutor, a bit blinded by the truth.

During the trial, the defense used a letter written by an inmate named Jason Fitz. They used it to indicate that somebody didn't like Bill Paul Marquardt and might have been the kind of person to show up at his house and then might have been the kind of person who would murder Mary Jane Marquardt. Jason Fitz, at the time of the trial, was deceased.

They offered, after the jury went out, to plea guilty but not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. I rejected that offer, feeling confident that we had a conviction. The jury came back and acquitted Bill Paul Marquardt in the homicide of his mother. Scott, when you first heard that, how shocked were you? Were you shocked by that? Surprised, yes. Shocked, not really. And here's why.

Right after his arrest, police executed a search warrant at Bill's cabin, knowing a 9mm weapon was used in the crime. And I'm sure that was at the top of their list, but no gun was located. Then a second search on another day, same results. Then a third search, police decide to move the refrigerator and find a 9mm handgun hidden underneath. Now, do I think jurors had a hard time with that? Absolutely.

You know, it's funny. The first time I heard about it, I was pretty shocked because, again, having done this for a long time, I felt that with all the evidence John Tyson had, the blood on the shoes, the knife, the car, getting the murder weapon. And sure, it took multiple searches, but I thought that that could have been explained and digested by the jury. So I was really surprised. But then the more that I've looked at it and the more that I've actually talked to John Tyson and learned about this case...

I really do see it from the jury's perspective and really the hurdles that John Tyson faced because more than just those things that the defense was able to throw, they really kind of threw this, it was somebody else. And it had legs.

Because they had this letter from this guy, Jason Fitz. And while he had passed away before the trial, the defense was able to put those letters in front of the jury and use it to say, hey, this guy is actually threatening Bill Marquardt. He very likely may have hired a hitman to either get Bill or who got his mother instead out.

And what a tough thing. I mean, I can't even imagine a scenario where those letters would actually be entered into court when you didn't have the person behind it. I mean, Jason Fitz was dead. There was no way to combat the defense. It's an incredible wall to climb as a prosecutor, I'm sure, Anna Seega, to be able to defend something that you can't cross-examine. He can't cross-examine the dead. And that's basically what he would have had to do.

You know, Anaseek, in all the conversations that you and I have had with John Tyson about the decision, you know, the defeat, feeling deflated. After handling my professional responsibilities, I can almost feel the drain as the adrenaline from the trial leaves my body. You start thinking about your life. Am I cut out for this? I'm an elected official.

And often you have the family of your victim and you see it in their faces. And here, that was a little different because Mary Jane's family was also the defendant Bill Marquardt's family. So they were actually quite relieved with this verdict. But again, John Tyson isn't doing it for them. He's trying that case for Mary Jane. And so absolutely, when he heard that verdict...

I can only imagine, but I certainly can relate to that feeling of, you know, everything is riding on you. And he took it very personally that he had somehow failed. But in the end, it's about the evidence and how a jury of 12 sees it. I get back to my hometown. People are loving and supportive. But it's kind of like that thing in the room nobody talks about. So I'm dealing with the pressures of the media, the dissent. The fact is, I lost a homicide.

Put our listeners in those shoes, Anasiga. Tell me what it feels like, that pressure, when a jury comes back in a different way.

Every prosecutor knows or can certainly be in the shoes of understanding the pressure and the impact of getting news like that. Because, you know, you think about it, you lose the case like this and, you know, you put it all on yourself. And while that isn't in actuality what it's about, you know, you are the one charged with going into that courtroom and explaining it to the jury. So from his perspective and as a prosecutor, you really, you got to let it sink in and

If there were any mistakes or anything happened unexpected, learn from it, absorb it, but then move on. Because in the end, there's unfortunately always so many more cases that need your full attention. And that's exactly what happened with John. I go out for a run one afternoon. In the middle of the run, I run into my former track coach. And I say, I'm sorry I let you down. And he says, you didn't let us down. Just go back and you keep doing your job. We have trust in you.

But, you know, when you heard about this, Scott, in your mind, what did you think about the possibility that maybe Bill Marquardt didn't actually commit this crime? You know, I never really had that feeling during all of my research and covering this case from the beginning. I just felt like the pattern that he had lived, the life he had lived in the weeks leading up to the murder, really pointed towards somebody who was capable of committing murder.

I mean, even though the jury had rendered their decision of a not guilty, there was still unanswered questions about the evidence that was collected from Bill Marquardt. And one of those was a knife found in his pocket that had three sections of DNA on it. One was DNA that was from Bill Marquardt and his mom, and there were two other sections of DNA that was unidentified. Those answers never really came out during trial. So I believe...

Walking away from this not guilty verdict, I think John Tyson accepted the defeat, but he did not accept those unanswered questions. And the DNA, it's really interesting here because there were more than just two other unknowns. They already knew that they were familially related and female. Basically, it's going to be a mother and daughter or two sisters. So you have to start to question in your own mind, well, what could explain that DNA? Yeah.

When I think about it, Scott, you know, I'm thinking about like, well, what else could that be? Of course, we being you, law enforcement, me, prosecutor, would think, oh, there's more victims out there. But again, we can't even get tunnel vision. So it's like, can you come up with any innocent explanations? That doesn't mean that Bill Marquardt had something to do with it. And the only ones that I could really think about, and I don't know about you, is like, I don't know, did someone else use this knife other than Bill Marquardt? So maybe they're victims, but they're not his. I also think about like when we're kids, like,

This thing that they used to talk about being blood brothers or blood sisters, and you make this, like, tiny little cut on yourself, and as gross as it was, like, you'd put the blood with your friend's blood or something, and is it something as innocent as that? And I don't know. It doesn't seem likely, but you do have to think that there are potentially explanations out there that aren't related to Bill Marquardt, at least perhaps. There was a clear connection between recovering the knife from Bill Marquardt

And there was also a clear connection that that DNA was located with Bill Marquardt's DNA and with Mary J. Marquardt's DNA. So you'd have to think they were collected within the same time frame. So you have to believe that. So in some sense, it's got to be connected to him. We think that in our world, but is it? Because remember, the one thing with DNA is there's no timestamp. It can be there for, you know, weeks, days, years, and we just don't know.

But, you know, for John Tyson, as is probably abundantly clear to all by now, he was devastated by this acquittal. And he really just wanted to push it away as quickly as he could. But then he got a phone call. I'm sitting in my office. I get a call. It's John Fitz. Jason Fitz's father is on the phone, wants to talk to me. This is within days of the loss, and I can't handle it.

Let's remind everyone, Scott, who Jason Fitz is. Now, Jason Fitz was a friend of Bill Marquardt, who, before the murder, had reached out to Bill, asking him to smuggle drugs into the jail where Fitz was housed. The next time, Marquardt paid him a visit.

Bill Marquardt did not go along with that, and Fitz was angry, and he made it clear in a letter from jail, which was entered into evidence and became Bill Marquardt's defense team's leading theory that Jason Fitz could have committed the murder as a revenge plot. But as it turned out, before anyone could question Fitz about that theory, Jason Fitz died by suicide, and now his father wanted to talk to Tyson.

And so while John Tyson understandably didn't want to take that call, that call was ultimately going to give him something that a prosecutor rarely has, a second chance.

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So DA John Tyson has a phone message from John Fitz, who's the father of Jason Fitz, and he asks an assistant to return the call. But then John Fitz calls again.

A week later, it's John Fitz again. This time I had taken much more personal responsibility. I'm the elected official. I got to face the music here. Send the call in. I start the phone call by saying, Mr. Fitz, I want you to know that not I nor any of the investigators in this case believe that your son was whatsoever involved. That was concocted by the defense to distract.

John Fitz was so angry, you know, his son is dead and he wanted his son's name vindicated. And he said, but you know what, this Bill Marquardt, let me tell you something about him. Mr. Fitz was very pleasant and just wanted to make sure that I knew that his son was not involved. To that end, he added something. He said, and oh, by the way, that Bill Paul Marquardt, he's a killer.

I mean, think about that, Scott. What would you imagine is going through John Tyson's head when he hears that? In first hearing it, Anastasia, I thought, you know, here's an angry guy who's just sort of talking about something he may have heard thirdhand or, you know, from somebody else who...

is so angry about not only the death of his son, but the fact that Marquardt was found not guilty. And how could he keep the focus on Marquardt and take the focus off anyone believing that his son committed a murder? I don't know. Like, I hear it and I think about...

Yeah, but you know, he just wants his son's name cleared. He's not thinking about the other evidence in the case. I started thinking about the knife and the unknown DNA that was located on the knife. And my reaction was to think, why is it that we've never been able to find who was the source of that other DNA?

Now John Tyson finds himself hyper-focused on that burning question, the two unknown samples of DNA on Bill Marquardt's knife. John Tyson's on a mission to answer that question. Is there an unsolved double murder that fits a time frame and other markers that could tie back to Bill Marquardt?

But that really is almost insurmountable because at the end, they don't know when that DNA was put on there. So if what this father's saying is true, and again...

He's talking about what his son told him. It's not even coming directly from Bill Marquardt himself to John Fitz. But if he committed homicides in Georgia or Florida, you know, unfortunately for Georgia and Florida, like so many other states, a double homicide is not that uncommon. There is lots of unsolved ones out there. And John Tyson is up in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. I mean, you don't know who the victims are. You don't know the actual location. You have no idea about dates or when they occurred.

I just can't even imagine where you go with that. I mean, we do have one path, Anastasia, right? We do know that these two pieces of DNA are familiarly related people that are within the same family. So now we're looking for a double homicide of two family members that are connected through DNA.

I knew that law enforcement had looked into this possibility. They'd gone to Texas once, they'd gone to Florida, they had traced the highways, and they had never been able to locate two familially related women. I was just compelled at that point to say, "There's gotta be an answer." It may not be the exact thing we're looking for, but there's gotta be an answer.

You know, as much as he wanted to put those bad feelings away about the acquittal in this case, he decided that it was going to be his mission to at least find out whose DNA was on that knife and just see where it led.

I just started searching sites. I probably started out with unsolved homicides, continued on to unsolved crimes. I probably spent a couple hours. Anything that seemed to me to maybe be a possible connection, I would print out. That is like looking for a needle in a haystack. I mean, I could just see him, Manasiga, sitting in his room with his computer and a map of

and trying to figure out the distance between Chippewa Falls and these locations, any of the unsolved homicides on those locations. Did you ever see Beautiful Mind? I haven't seen it in a movie. More than once. Love it. It reminds me of that. That he's almost sitting there in the room with these, you know, the strings going and the lines from one article to the other, just trying to figure it out, like maybe, you know, the guy who has more issues than just trying to find a killer going on. Absolutely. That's the thought.

And every time I think of that scene, it's just so incredible to me. Even using the internet to do that, because it's such a large landscape that he's looking at, both literally and figuratively. I mean, I think about myself, and certainly Scott, you know this, and I'll tell the rest of you too. I am not the most technologically advanced. So having to go about this in a way that is methodical and you cover all your bases, I certainly wouldn't be confident in my abilities.

But to be fair, John Tyson isn't your homegrown regular lawyer or prosecutor guy. He has got a special skill, a special skill that he had for many, many years. He had a degree in library science. I thought I should be working with children, and library science is an area where you can work with children. I applied and got a full ride to go to library school.

But now let's go sideways for a second, because I really think that it's his background that to me is fascinating. I mean, I never even heard of someone studying this before. Do you even think that most people know what that is? Because I sure didn't. I didn't either, Anastasia. I didn't even know that was a required course in becoming a prosecutor. It's not. That's why I didn't know what it is. That's right. Luckily for me, it is not.

But it certainly is much more than the Dewey Decimal System. It's more than someone behind a desk checking out books. I mean, it is a degree above your bachelor's that really is very specialized in

There are people with this degree that ultimately work with doctors or nurses that they give them everything they need. And, you know, for those of you that think about your paycheck, if you end up with this degree and work for the CIA, for example, you can earn up to six figures working in this library. And for someone who is in government as a prosecutor for a long time, certainly a lot more than I ever made doing that.

You know, but for John Tyson, if he's putting Bill Marquardt in his sights again for a second time because he got that lead, he is narrowing these things down and really focusing and, you know, putting his glasses on and really getting into those searches to try to determine if all these factors can line up. And ultimately, there was a printout that he took one of many that he couldn't keep his eyes away from.

And I printed one out from central Florida, Sumter County. There were two women on it. They weren't identified as a mother-daughter and they had different last names. I kept working on the research and went back, but somehow that one sheet of paper had positioned itself so that I could see the photograph of Margarita Ruiz. At some point, it became clear that her eyes were staring at me.

It was a poster of an unsolved double murder of two women in Sumter County, Florida. And it didn't give a whole lot of information. It gave their names, Margarita Ruiz and Esperanza, who was called Hope Wells. It said the suspect was a black man and that they were shot with a 9mm. And it gave the date, March 15th, 2000. Now, I will say that that date was interesting to me. Because...

That's the date that Bill Marquardt's whereabouts were unknown. It was two days after the murder of his mother, and it was on that date that police executed their first search warrant at Bill Marquardt's cabin.

And while certain things fit like that date, obviously, there's other things that didn't. I mean, look at the suspect right there, the race. Bill Marquardt is as fair as fair can be. It talks about these victims as being shot rather than shot and stabbed like his mother, Mary Jane. But even more importantly, I mean, these women, they have different last names. And the one thing that they did already know about the DNA was that the DNA of the women on that knife were familially related. ♪

He decided to pick up the phone and make that call. I picked up the phone and called Sumter County Sheriff's Department. I am mostly feeling like a fool in making this phone call. I said, "Detective Brannon, I'm a prosecutor from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin."

So I say to him, "I'm looking at an announcement from an unsolved homicide from Sumter County, Florida. I'm going to tell you some information. You're going to tell me I'm wrong. I'm going to say thank you, and we're never going to talk again." I said, "You have identified these two victims. They have different last names. Were they familially related?" Detective Brandon just shoots back,

You had this prosecutor in Wisconsin who was really looking for that needle in the haystack. But within minutes, he finds out that there was much more to those two murders in Florida than that piece of paper gave. I said, your announcement is looking for a black man.

Is there a chance that it was not a black man? He says, oh, that's been corrected. That was a false report years ago. No, it's not a black man as a suspect. I said, your announcement indicates that your victims were shot with a 9mm. I'm tracing this because I have a knife with DNA on it.

A chance where they also stabbed Detective Brandish was back immediately. Yes, repeatedly in or about the head. Well, that was the complete M.O. of Mary Jane Marquardt laying in her garage.

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Just think about it from John Tice's perspective as he starts to walk down that path during that call when he's getting that information from the person on the other end. This is his second chance, potentially.

I said to Detective Brandon, "I am not an investigator. I need to connect you with my investigative team." The adrenaline, that sense of hope, or maybe even relief, you know, that he is now potentially going to be able to make right what he had felt had gone very wrong. Florida had been holding DNA. We had DNA. Within 24 hours, the crime labs had connected.

And let's just talk about who these women were, because every homicide is terrible and wrong for so many ways. But who they were makes it all the more so. You know, Marguerite Ruiz, she was the real matriarch of this family. So 72-year-old Marguerite Ruiz was living with an extended family, which included her daughter, Hope Wells, who was

41 years old. They called her Hope, but her actual first name was Esperanza Wells. And these are hardworking people. They all came into this country and they worked the fields. They worked in agriculture. They worked in the stores. And all of them, you know, worked day in and day out. And she was the person raising all these kids.

And her daughter Hope was the only one, albeit married, who didn't have kids of her own, but she was the aunt that all the kids looked to. And she would come and spend her extra time with these grandchildren. And they lived, you know, really, it's like in the middle of nowhere. It's just land and they have this very small cracker box house. They clearly didn't have much monetarily, but it is so clear from all these people that there was lots of love inside that home. A suspect walked up unannounced,

Knocked on the door. Margarita answered the door. And just as Margarita answered the door, the suspect raised a weapon and shot right through the screen door, hitting Margarita. As she backed up, he fired another shot and then followed Margarita inside the house. As Margarita stumbled back after being shot, the killer followed her inside the house, shot her as she ran towards the bedroom. Hope Wells was inside that same bedroom.

and she was also shot multiple times point blank range. Both women were then post-mortem stabbed. - There's no sexual assault. There was no robbery. I mean, these women had no enemies. They're living out in the middle of nowhere. This happened in the middle of the day while they were watching two small children

There's things about this that are very similar to Mary Jane Marquardt. And one of those two is just a complete lack of motive, like no sense of understanding why these women were killed or the way that they were killed. And the unusual portion of that, Anastasia, is shot and stabbed. You don't see a lot of those cases where both of those acts are done to a victim at the same time.

It's very specific, and if you can link the crimes together, it really starts to form what we, in this context,

profession called MO, you know, modus operandi. It starts to form almost a pattern of a killer, things that you can try to figure out identity based on the way they commit these crimes. You know, another thing that sticks out to me in this case is just there was two young kids in the house when these women were slaughtered. You know, one was four years old. It was a granddaughter of Margarita, a niece of Hope's, and the other was her young brother. I think he was not even two, if I remember correctly.

And they hid under a table while he came in and shot and stabbed their grandmother, their aunt, all the while just under a table cowering. And they watched this dark male figure, dark because his pants were dark, not his skin, drive away in a green car. See, now we're getting the connective tissues here.

Remember, the car that Bill Marquardt had been seen in and was arrested standing next to was a green Ford Thunderbird. And John Tyson learning all this, he puts the investigators from both jurisdictions in touch. And very quickly, they looked at the DNA from the Sumter County homicides and compared it to what they had up there in Chippewas Falls.

The investigators from Florida took a look at the DNA on our knife and it came back to Esperanza Wells and Margarita Ruiz. These were the two women of their unsolved murder and it was the two women on my announcement that I'd located. Want to connect with more family and friends and their native language is in English?

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Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers, creator and host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie. Every Monday, me and my best friend Britt break down a new case, but not in the way you've heard before and not the cases you've heard before. You'll hear stories on Crime Junkie that haven't been told anywhere else. I'll tell you what you can do to help victims and their families get justice.

Join us for new episodes of Crime Junkie every Monday, already waiting for you by searching for Crime Junkie wherever you listen to podcasts.

So now investigators in Sumner County had other evidence from the homicide in their area to be able to compare the DNA. They knew Bill Marquardt's DNA. They knew there was a match to their two victims on Bill Marquardt's knife. But now they had to match it to other pieces of evidence found in the home. Fingerprints, shell casings, whatever they could use to try to further their case against Bill Marquardt, they were going to do. And they were successful.

I remember the Florida prosecutor in this case saying that by the time he went to trial against Bill Marquardt for these two murders, that it was the strongest forensic evidence case not only that he'd ever had, but he'd ever seen. Because ultimately they had Bill Marquardt's DNA matching the DNA to the Ruiz home. They had blood from his shoes matching the

from inside his car, also matching to Hope Wells. They also had the gun from inside Bill Marquardt's cabin matching to the shell casing, the nine millimeters found in the Ruiz home. So almost every which way they looked, it was like link, link, link, link. When you look at this evidence, Scott, as opposed to what John Tyson had when he went to trial against Bill Marquardt for the murder of his mother, where do you look at it in terms of the strength of the evidence this time around?

Well, I think it's a hugely strong circumstantial case built with a great amount of evidence. But we also do know from receipts found inside Bill Marquardt's Green Thunderbird that he had been in the area of Florida. So it was feasible that he could have been, not just because of the DNA set, but you're adding to the strength of the DNA is putting him in the area at the time of the homicide. I think it's an extremely strong case, but you have to think, could lightning strike twice?

But it's that piece of paper that I think about is maybe my favorite piece, right? Because you have this receipt. It's just a receipt that puts him in Florida, which, okay, great. Could he have done it? Maybe, maybe. But now you have all the DNA, every which way you look, everything match, match, match, match, match.

But it's that piece of paper that what are the odds that this guy from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, just happened to be down there right in the general vicinity at the same time these two women were killed? I don't even know how you get away from it this time. However, that's not enough because we all know that you can't bank on it until the jury tells you you've gotten it done. I think it's slim to none and none just left town.

You still have to try someone in another state, which means they physically have to get Bill Marquardt's body to the state of Florida. And more than that, most of the evidence for the Florida case comes from the state of Wisconsin. Florida would not take him because they figured if he was committed in Wisconsin, they don't want an inmate. There was actually basically a dispute between the two governors as to who was going to pay for all this. You have to get all those investigators. And while the

people are really the easiest. You just put them on a plane. You have to get all this evidence and chain of custody becomes a bigger deal here because you know the defense is going to question everything they can, including, well, how do we know that the evidence from up there is the same evidence we have down here? So they really had to be very careful the way they got all those moving parts down there.

But they did it. And let's remember, everyone thought that there was a strong case going in against Bill Marquardt the first time around. And we know that way that ended with an acquittal. So really the question is, like you said, Scott, was lightning going to strike twice? October 12th, 2011, we all got an answer. Bill Paul Marquardt was prosecuted by the state of Florida for double capital homicide. They had an excellent, experienced prosecutor.

Ultimately, Bill Paul Marquardt was sentenced to die for both cases. And the family this time had a very different reaction than Bill Marquardt's family when he was acquitted the first time around. I mean, for this family, it was such relief and closure. You know, the pain will always be there for the death of Marguerite Ruiz and Esperanza Hope Wells. But now they had an answer and they felt that they had a system that worked for them.

And that this random person who they didn't know, this John Tyson from the state of Wisconsin, cared enough to really try to get answers. In the end, it gave their family justice. And I can only imagine the impact on them. And we certainly know from speaking with John Tyson, the impact it had on him. It would be unfathomable that I would be able to predict how this case would come together.

But by just continuing that commitment to work for justice, I mean, ultimately, I feel like I have heartfelt support and love from a family in Florida that was seeking justice on behalf of two completely wonderful, innocent people. And I also have the knowledge that a guy who walked on a homicide case here in Wisconsin will never walk out again.

And you always talk about that justice. It's not always a straight line. And this one was, you know, crooked and made bizarre angles in all different ways. But in the end, they got there. And I just love hearing about his relationship to the Ruiz and Wells family. The situation has resulted in me feeling like I have not just a connection, but almost a family in Florida. When Paige Ruiz graduated from high school,

He has spoken to them. He's met them. For this family, that meant everything. This family is a working family who has struggled to educate these kids. And this moment of pride, they wanted to share it with him. And as a prosecutor, I mean, honestly, I have chills even just thinking about it when I'm talking about it now.

Because that says everything. It tells John Tyson that while he had a very rough road in the beginning with his own case up in Wisconsin, that what he did for this family keeps him almost as one of their own. What John Tyson did is incredible. I had the opportunity four years ago

to go down to Florida and get an interview and sit down with Bill Marquardt because I had personally so many unanswered questions. And you know, Scott, that I never really want to focus on the killers. For me, it's all about remembering the victims. But admittedly, I mean, as a person, of course, I'm curious. I mean, what was Bill Marquardt like?

You know, he really wanted to spend the entire conversation with me talking about the fact that he was an innocent man in the Florida case. Would never really talk about his mom outside of the fact of what a good son he was. And in the 25, 30 minutes that we spent together, I really got the feeling that he was a tormented soul, Anasika. That he really was living within himself to a point where he realized that he was a good son.

He would never be able to see the light of day. He would probably end up dying in this prison and without, in his mind, being able to convince people that he would never or could never kill his mom. It was a bizarre interview. And this case is bizarre in many ways. The path is like no other that I've ever heard about.

You know, I hope that everyone takes away from this that determination, dedication, they really can rule the day. And even when you're feeling hopeless, don't give up. If you keep your goals, your morals, your convictions straightforward, honest, and believe in them, you have bad days. But ultimately, you are fulfilling what you really are supposed to do, and that's work for justice. ♪

Tune in next Wednesday when we'll dissect another new case on Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original, a Weinberger Media and Forseti Media production. Sumit David is executive producer.

Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers, creator and host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie. Every Monday, me and my best friend Britt break down a new case, but not in the way you've heard before, and not the cases you've heard before. You'll hear stories on Crime Junkie that haven't been told anywhere else. I'll tell you what you can do to help victims and their families get justice.

Join us for new episodes of Crime Junkie every Monday. Already waiting for you by searching for Crime Junkie wherever you listen to podcasts.