Shownotes Transcript
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All right, welcome back to another episode of the Psychopedia podcast. I am your co-host, Hank Sinatra, here with my co-host... Investigators Slater. ...who tried to put on cat ears before we recorded today. No, sir, they are not cat ears. They are pit bull ears. Yeah, you said that, but they are very feline. And listen, when we start doing video, sure, you're going to wear the pit bull ears.
dress goth, whatever you want to do. Yeah. But for now, while it's audio only, I couldn't, there was just no chance of that happening. I mean, you're lost, man. Imagine if I was wearing cocker spaniel ears. I would probably enjoy this even more if that were possible. Dude, just real quick, there's an episode of I Think You Should Leave, a new season of it. One of the skits is him on a date and everyone's talking about how his hair looks like.
like dog years. The kicker is that he went to the barber and said, I want to look like this guy. But on the opposite page of the magazine, there was a cocker spaniel and a fucking barber. Yeah.
Made his hair look... I mean, I'm so happy there's a new season of that. That's my true crime. Why? What do you mean? It's your addiction? It's just absolute drugs. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Like, I didn't laugh once the entire viewing of the season. It's already infiltrating my subconscious and finding ways to make... Like a slow burn. It always is. The first...
First sketch of the first episode, and we're not doing a I think you should leave podcast, but that's what I always tell people. If you watch that and you don't laugh out loud hard like you've never laughed before, the show's not for you. The guy with the pull, push, door, no, I was here yesterday. Didn't you just say you didn't laugh? Yeah.
Yes, but that's the only time, like the only thing that I laughed on the first viewing. Okay. And I laughed a couple of times, but I watched it alone. So like I wanted to view it alone once. Like a person who does drugs wants to do them alone. Do they? Oh yeah, for the most part. Is that right? What if you have to share? I thought it was a social thing. Drugs? Yeah. Yeah, for normal people, possibly. Okay. Probably, definitely. But for like drug addicts, no. We just want to like go somewhere and be dead for a few hours. Yeah.
So much fun. Sad thought. Moving on. Back when I was partying, I still laugh when people say that. What do you mean partying, dude? You were fucking under your bed with bologna on your stomach. Oh, that actually sounds fun. No, you passed out trying to make a sandwich. So can we just get back to these pitbull ears for one second? I'm going to post a picture and do a poll on our stories and we'll see what people think about it. Sure. Guys, don't let me down.
Guys, please. Who do you like better? It must happen. Thanks, Sinatra. Investigate us later. It's equal. And we're not going to read a review this week just because I don't want to make it a whole thing, but I do want to say...
I'm ashamed to say how much they mean to me. Don't be ashamed. Own it. It feels really good, and we are so grateful to everyone who takes the time to write a beautiful review for us. We truly read every single one and talk about every single review. Screenshots, sending. Yep. I will tell you one thing, though. Since I started reading the reviews, the reviews themselves have gotten a lot more...
I love it. I think people are like, maybe because they know we read them and they might be read on air. Like no punctuation mistakes, perfect grammar. Can I tell you what I think it is? Poetic. I think that they're getting to know us a little bit better and they're feeling more comfortable letting their feelings out. Yeah. Let your feelings out. Let it go, guys. It's a safe place. You cannot scare us off. No. Obsessed is the best word to read in a review. Addiction, addiction.
Binge, all that. Investigators later is my goddess. All that. All fine to read. Thanks to not just the funniest person I've ever heard of in my entire life. So yeah, we like them and we read them, but I don't want to read them to you because then it's like you wrote them, but whatever, maybe we'll see. Let us know, you know? We don't have a plan. We're going to fly by the seat of our pants. Shoot us a DM on psychopediapod at Instagram or email us at psychopediapod at gmail.com.
So are you ready to talk about some true crime? Come on. What kind of question is that? It is time for true crime. Let's do it.
I'm generally of the opinion that the more perfect somebody appears to be on the outside, the more likely they are to have deep flaws hidden away on the inside. Facts. Facts. It's obviously a generalization and it's not necessarily a judgment. It's just more of an accurate observation that is right. Wholly accurate. Because human beings are flawed by nature. So to appear outwardly impeccable all of the time tends to reek of bullshit.
For example, and here is where I am stereotyping admittedly, but Pinterest moms. Yeah. Don't trust a fucking single one of them. No, you don't need to pin your whole life. I don't even know how Pinterest works and I'm a social media guru. Listen, if you have color-coded Tupperware, gluten-free homemade snacks, and a literacy corner in your feng shui living room, you're torturing animals in your backyard. I'm convinced. Or your kids are 100% neglected. Prove me wrong. Yeah.
Tonight, I'm going to tell you in painstaking detail about one mom who very scarily proves my theory right and whose shocking and depraved behavior towards her victims, which included three of her own daughters, was kept neatly hidden away behind an outward-facing facade of perfection. I don't like her already. Because behind closed doors, this mom gone wild... Pfft! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha!
starved, drugged, humiliated, and tortured in extremely cruel and unusual ways her many victims. And in some cases, she even killed them. This is the case of the mother of all manipulators, Shelley Notek, more famously known as Serial Killer Mom. Shelley Notek. Such a child.
Let's get into it. Okay. Okay. Michelle Shelley Lynn Watson Ravardo Long Notek. Why? Why? She was married a few times. Oh yeah. She kept tacking on the name. She didn't want to give up any of the names? No. And they're not hyphenated. Wait, say the whole thing one more time. Michelle goes by Shelley Lynn Watson Ravardo Long Notek. Too long. Yep. Too many.
was born on April 15th, 1954, and spent the first six years of her life living with her mother and two younger brothers in California. We actually don't know too much about these very early years, but we can surmise that they were tumultuous and unstable. As Shelly's mother, Sharon struggled with alcoholism and depression and had a series of very openly abusive relationships.
She often neglected Shelly and her two younger brothers, Chuck and Paul, and eventually turned Shelly and Chuck over to their dad in Washington state without ever looking back.
So she literally dropped Shelly and Chuck off at their father, who they had no relationship with. Never met him? I mean, they were... Barely. Exactly. Yeah. They were living in different states. They wouldn't know him if they ran into him. That man is a stranger. He's a stranger. And they showed up on his doorstep. And their mother, Sharon, turned her back, walked away, and they never saw her again.
So from ages 6 to 18, Shelly grew up in a small town with her dad. Oh, that was Shelly who got drunk. That was Shelly and her brother Chuck. And she grew up in a small town called Battleground, which is located in Washington State, about 25 miles from Portland, Oregon. Battleground was typical small-town America and maintained good schools, decent neighborhoods, working dads, and stay-at-home moms. Remember, it's now 1960.
Shelly's father, Les Watson, had literally gotten married to his new wife, Lara, 24 hours before Shelly and Chuck were dropped off at his doorstep and abandoned by their mother. That's some wedding gifts. Right? And here's the kicker. Lara, his new wife, was completely unaware that he even had children until they abruptly were thrown into her life and she was labeled stepmom. Jeez. Yeah.
So as you can imagine, this new living arrangement threw a monkey wrench into Lara and Les' plans as newlyweds in more ways than you can even realize at this point. Yeah. Because in addition to the normal challenges that one might expect to come along with this bizarre new situation, Les and Lara immediately noticed that a strange dynamic existed between six-year-old Shelly and three-year-old Chuck.
Shelly behaved very much like Chuck's puppet master and controlled and manipulated him into doing whatever she wanted. And Chuck, for reasons unclear to Les and Lara at the time, refused to speak one word and instead would defer to Shelly to communicate on his behalf.
This little arrangement, likely by design, allowed Shelly to maintain control over all communication between the children and the adults. And she only ever spoke in angry tirades and rants. Shelly told her stepmother, Lara, every single day that she hated her. She was wildly defiant, refused to go to school, refused to abide by rules, refused to do anything that wasn't explicitly on her terms.
Yeah. Yeah.
with virtual strangers, without explanation, without warning, without a say, and completely abandoned by the only parent figure she ever knew. Yeah, sure. Especially at that age, six, you said? Yeah. But Lara and Les noticed that Shelley's reactions were markedly off and not just in typical child rebellion kind of way or in a way that you might expect from a child who's going through a difficult time.
Shelly's knee-jerk response to almost every situation was DEFCON 5 rage, and she seemed fully incapable of demonstrating love or showing any warmth or kindness. As Shelly got older and entered into her young teenage years, her behavior that was once considered off escalated.
She was either flying off the handle or not reacting at all. So, for example, in the spring of 1967, when Shelly was just 13 years old, her dad received a call from the L.A. County Sheriff's Department indicating that Sharon, Shelly's birth mom, was murdered in a seedy motel room by a man she was in a relationship with. Oh, my God. He beat her to death.
And when Shelly was delicately told about the death of her mother, she couldn't even fake a reaction. She truly did not care. The bitch who dropped us off? Fuck her. Her personality and behaviors grew increasingly more concerning and deliberate as she continued to get older. She was sullen and angry and regularly pitched fits, started fights, and lied to get her way or to deflect attention off herself and redirect it negatively onto her siblings.
And by this point, her other brother, Paul, who didn't move to Washington State with them originally, he was an infant, so he actually stayed with the mother for a little while. By this point, she even dropped him off at the father's house. So now all three children are in Washington State together. And where did they live before that? California. Okay, I mean, that's quite a drive to...
Drop your kid off. I mean, if it's a one-shot deal, you drop off, you turn back, and you never, you know what I mean? Like, you never look back. No, I mean, it's like you have so much time to think about what you're doing. Oh, yeah. The drive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, Shelly's birth mother definitely was not well, and she struggled with drug addiction, so I'm not so sure she was thinking straightly at all. Probably not. Shelly's behavior transitioned from weird and disruptive and controlling to dark and twisted and vengeful.
She demanded all the attention in the room, always, and would employ brutal and sadistic tactics to ensure that all eyes remained solely on her. Pop quiz. Fuck. What did Shelly do as a preteen slash early teen? A, chop up bits of glass and place them in the bottom of her sibling's shoes.
B, masturbate to the most savage scenes of a new horror movie called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. C, lure stray cats into her yard and feed them powdered laundry detergent. So glass, Texas Chainsaw, or laundry detergent with cats. Are you concerned that I made up two of those?
Not anymore. No. Oh, that's so crazy. Yeah. You don't even feel it anymore. Lured cats into the backyard and fed them powdered laundry detergent? Nope. Great. Glass in the shoes? Yep. That's terrible. Yep. She broke up pieces of glass, put them inside of her siblings' shoes, watched as they slipped on the shoes, screamed in agony, and then...
Jesus. And then enjoyed the outcome. Oh my God. Yeah. And her behavior continued to escalate. Escalate? Yep. Oh honey, we are just getting started. That's a pretty bad start. Terrible. So Lara, Shelly's stepmom, compared Shelly to a nightshade berry. That is beautiful and lush on the outside, and she was beautiful, but toxic and lethal on the inside, which I kind of want that on my gravestone a little bit. Noted. Noted.
Apparently, though, the apple or nightshade berry didn't fall far from the tree. Or the bush. Or the bush. Sorry. No, you're correct. Fucking plant biologist over here. As Shelley's grandmother, Anna, who was Les' mother and the matriarch of the family, was a diabolical tyrant.
Anna was tall, big boned, muscular, broad shouldered, and had sinewy tendons running from her neck down to her collarbone. Was she a tuna? What the fuck does that mean? I don't know. What is she, Tank Sinatra? I always think of tuna as sinewy. Gross. Sorry. No, then I wouldn't have said that. Yeah.
She weighed an impressive 250 pounds. That's how much I weigh. That's why I drew the comparison. Wow. Dragged her left foot when she walked and always had to have the final say. So I feel like there just really wasn't too many pleasant things about her. No. She owned a chain of nursing homes, probably not the right field for her, and ruled her staff with an iron fist. Obviously. Anna's husband, George, was the opposite.
That was... He was her puppy? Yeah.
He was like Snoopy. Oh my God. Sleep outside, loser. She abused the shit out of her employees at the nursing home and would publicly punch and kick them, pull their hair and push their heads into toilets. What a bully. So this is the stock that Shelly comes from. Yeah. And perhaps unsurprisingly, Anna and Shelly got along swimmingly. Yeah. And Shelly often spent time with her grandmother after school.
Since making people miserable was Anna's favorite pastime, she and Shelly were two rotten peas in a pod. There existed a highly dysfunctional teacher-student relationship between grandmother and granddaughter. Though scarily enough, in the end, the student, Shelly, surpassed the teacher in terms of cruelty and perversion. Mm.
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LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. Not only did Shelly enjoy watching others suffer, which is the hallmark of sadism, but she also started to exhibit extremely manipulative characteristics as well. At just 15 years old, Shelly accused her father intentionally, publicly, of raping her in an effort to fuck with him. Jesus.
Now, of course, a physical exam was conducted after she made that terrible accusation, and it revealed that Shelly was never sexually interfered with in any way. Her body didn't indicate any signs of bruising or trauma, nor did it reveal any kind of sexual contact ever of any kind. Shelly was ultimately released from the hospital under the condition that she received psychological help. Unfortunately,
Oh, she liked it. Yeah.
She was kicked out of every school she was transferred to and fucked with every single person in her path, from relatives she was staying with for bits of time to the nuns at a Catholic school that ended up expelling her for sticking glass into her classmates' shoes. Wow. And she was fucking with nuns back in the 60s and 70s? When they were brutal. Yeah. Yep. Wow. Finally. Finally.
After what felt like a never-ending childhood filled with abandonment, unsuccessful counseling, worsening mental health, and sadistic pastimes, Shelly turned 18. And this is around the time when she met her first future husband, Randy Rivardo.
It was the summer of 1971, and Shelley indicated to Randy that her father, Les, would give him a job as a maintenance worker back in Battleground, Washington, and that he could live rent-free if he went back with her. Mm-hmm. So Randy snapped up this incredible offer. Incredible offer. I mean, free living and a job, you know? Yeah, I guess. And she was...
A little bit hot. She was hot. Yeah. That's probably. So I think that may have had maybe something to do with it. I don't know. I'm not a douchebag guy. So. Yeah. He didn't realize that he just made a deal with the devil. Yeah.
Because Shelly's real reason for luring him back to Battleground was to marry him and manipulate him into being someone who would provide her with anything she wanted whenever she wanted it. As a maintenance worker. I mean, that was the pretense to get him there. Yeah. She wanted him to be... Yeah, she wanted him to be her slave. Yeah. Pop quiz. At their wedding in February of 1973, what did Shelly force Randy to wear?
A, her lace garter beneath his pants. B, a shard of glass in his shoe to prove his loyalty. Oh my God. C, a pink tuxedo. I can't imagine it being a shard of glass in his shoe. So pink tuxedo or...
Pink tuxedo. I thought you were giving me your answer. No, that's good that I do that though because sometimes you let the cat out of the bag. Yeah, the pit bull out of the bag. Pink tuxedo. Yeah. She made him wear a pink tuxedo? And he complied because people just did not go against Shelly. She must have been terrifying. She was. The thing with her personality, which we're going to dive into in a little bit in the episode. Yeah. She is amazing.
A master manipulator. Yeah. And she learned from her grandmother. She learned from her grandmother. Absolutely. And she also had it. I mean, it's this nurture nature discussion, which is like,
Yeah. Yeah.
After the wedding, Shelly and Randy moved into a 40-foot trailer, rent-free, so she was true to her word, owned by Shelly's dad. And the idea was for both Shelly and Randy to work at the family-owned nursing home.
But Shelly was incapable of maintaining employment. She claimed she had extreme menstrual cramps every single day of the month that prohibited her from being able to work. Yeah. Listen, I'm going to give you one to two days on that as like legitimate. Yeah. No fucking joke. The cramps are real. Every month? Oh my God, every month. Yes, it's horrendous. Oh my God. I used to miss school in high school because of the pain. Wow. No joke. So I'm going to give her two days, not 30.
So understandably, Shelly was canned from her job. Unfortunately, she was incapable of being productive on the home front either. That was family owned, by the way? Yes. Remember, Anna and her husband George owned the nursing homes. Yeah. Wow. So Shelly couldn't cook. She wouldn't clean. Yet she still demanded to have this perfect life. She faked being raped one night in the trailer in order to convince Randy that they needed to move into a larger, safer home.
She left unpaid bills at grocery stores and gas stations and bounced check after check. She was as unstable and unpredictable as ever. Yeah. Then in 1974, Shelley announced that she was pregnant and her husband hoped, prayed. It was his. Maybe.
He hoped and prayed that the prospect of motherhood would somehow level out his very unhinged wife. Yeah, I know. And in February of 1975, the couple's daughter, Nikki, was born. And shock and awe, a newborn baby did not magically cure Shelly of her pervasive deep-seated psychological issues and sadistic tendencies. Sure.
So she continued to break Randy down emotionally and physically. And in spite of having a new daughter together, the marriage finally collapsed under the weight of Shelly's mental illness and outlandish behavior.
Shelly and Randy divorced, and Shelly disappeared without explanation, leaving baby Nikki with her stepmother, Lara. She apparently wanted to hit the reset button on her life. Poor Lara, she keeps getting babies. I know, you're right. She literally abandoned Nikki for an entire year, decided to become a waitress at a bar in Vancouver, and started living a completely new life.
But that only lasted a year, and then she ended up returning back to Battleground and scooping Nikki back up. Okay. After Shelly eventually circled back to Nikki, she got remarried to a man named Danny, abused Danny emotionally and physically, had another daughter with Danny, who she named Sammy, and then divorced Danny. Wow. So we see a little bit of a cycle happening here. A little pattern here, yeah. Right?
At this point, it's 1983, and Shelly has two daughters now from two different marriages. And this is a crucial time in her life and in this case because this is when she meets her third husband, Dave Notek, who would wind up becoming Shelly's partner in crime and very much complicit in all of the vile acts that soon followed their nuptials. Oh, that's bad. Pop quiz. What happened that prompted Shelly and Dave to actually tie the knot?
Because they dated for a few years. Yeah. A, Shelly told Dave that she had terminal cancer. B, Shelly told Dave that she was pregnant.
See, Shelly told Dave that she would slice open an artery with a shard of glass in his sleep if he didn't marry her. His artery? Mm-hmm. Oh, my God. I think that she pretended to have cancer. Yes. Yes. She fucked up. Yeah, she told him that she had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Wow, specific. I know. Oh, it gets really, really, really detailed. She sees it to the end. She goes to fake doctor's appointments. Yeah.
She lives with this lie for a while. Wow.
On December 28th, 1987, the couple got married. And almost immediately, Nikki, who was already 12 by this point, recalls seeing her new stepfather, Dave, sitting on the front porch of their home, shaking and crying with a shotgun held in, quote, suicide position. Oh my God. He had just been verbally berated by Shelly for not making enough money, not being man enough to take care of the family, and for not loving her enough.
Shelly regularly degraded Dave and reduced him to tears with her vitriol and insults. He too was forced to sleep outside in his truck, would drown his sorrows in whiskey, was even overheard saying, Lord, this isn't right. This isn't normal. This isn't how a family operates. I know it. Help me. So he would just walk around saying that out loud. He lost it. Yeah.
But then when he would go back inside of his house to Shelly, it's like she knew she had to flip the switch and she had to manipulate Dave into thinking that everything was fine so that he wouldn't leave her. So she'd act gentle. She'd speak in like a sugary sweet voice and she would dote on him with affection and attention. It's like a very sort of standard abusive relationship. Yeah, sure. And I don't think a lot of people realize that men can be abused as well. Like in an abusive relationship, it can go the other way.
Now, inevitably, this honeymoon phase wouldn't last, the other shoe would drop, and the cycle of verbal violence would repeat itself. Unsurprisingly, Shelley's behavior escalated into the vicious realm of physical abuse. And now she began directing her brutality towards her two young daughters, Nikki and Sammy. And this is when the case takes a very violent turn. Yeah.
Oh my God. Oh.
The girl's legs were regularly covered in cuts and bruises, so much so that Nikki would have to wear opaque tights underneath her shorts so that no one would see the markings. Oh, my God. I mean... I'm thinking about the nail on the head. It's heartbreaking.
And Shelly counted on Nikki concealing the abuse because Nikki was very shy and she avoided attention and she never wanted anyone to think that she was weird or to know that her family was violent. And appearances were paramount to Shelly. She took thousands of photographs of the girls, forcing them to plaster on these gigantic smiles of,
so that other people would think that her daughters were living this wholesome, happy life. It's like the 1980s version of Facebook. Yeah. Right? Real life. Exactly. But the reality behind the facade would always rear its ugly head. Now, one of Shelly's favorite ways to abuse her children, specifically Nikki, was something she called wallowing, which was an act involving extreme humiliation.
Pop quiz. No. What is wallowing? A.
A nighttime endeavor that involved being dragged outside in the freezing cold, stripped down naked and hosed. B, a before school endeavor that involved rolling around a small barn in the backyard so that the kids would have an extra stench before going to school. Wow. C, a weekend endeavor that involved being dragged into public areas and forced to beg for money.
Jesus Christ. They were forced to roll around in a barn? No. Beg for money? Nope. Cold? Yep.
I hate to say it, that doesn't sound as bad as the other two. Okay, well, let me tell you exactly what wallowing entailed. Okay. Shelly would flip on the bedroom lights in the middle of the night to startle Nikki awake while screaming, get up, close off, get the fuck downstairs, you worthless piece of shit. That sounds terrible already. As soon as the light came on, I was... Yeah, very jarring.
I remember Nikki was little. She was little. This is pre-teenage years even. Tears would immediately start pouring down Nikki's terrified face as she'd cry out, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, even though she did nothing wrong. Yeah, sorry for what? But her mother's only response was to order her to shut the fuck up, undress entirely, get outside, and squat down in the mud naked.
Then, Nikki's father, who remained eerily silent during the whole ordeal, would spray Nikki down with the freezing cold hose. Her mother would watch the torturous spectacle from a few yards away and instruct her husband on what to do. So Shelly would tell Dave, make her wallow. She's a pig, Dave. Teach her a lesson. And she would scream, wallow, Nikki, wallow.
So Nikki, with chattering teeth and a shivering body, would make a public display of repeatedly saying, I'm sorry, Dad. Yeah, I mean, anytime we do a case that involves kids, I just want to stop recording and go hug my kids. I know, I know. It's just next level heartbreaking. It also makes me feel like a great dad. Yeah. I mean, I am a good dad anyway, but...
compared even though I don't like comparing I'm just a little bit unrealistic with myself sometimes as far as what kind of dad I should be I mean I have mom guilt constantly I never think I'm doing enough I never think I'm good enough but you're right then I read a case like this and I'm like gold star you should have the listen to this case next time they complain I'm just kidding this case is not for children nope 18 and over
So the abuse would persist regardless of the weather or how much Nikki begged and screamed for the torture to end. So sad. She was convinced that she was going to die of pneumonia on several occasions after feeling ice shards on the ground beneath where she was squatting naked. Dying, she thought, is the only way out of what is happening to me. Yeah, it's pretty extreme. God, it's so fucking tragic. After the wallowing session would end...
Shelly would drag Nikki back inside and then force her to take a scorching hot bath that literally had no cold water in it. So while Nikki washed the mud off of her aching body through tears, Shelly would continue to berate her and call her a pig.
Shelly's goal was to make the abuse of her children as intense and as shocking as possible. And the thrill she got from seeing the surprise and terror in the eyes of her children when she inflicted her violence provided an unparalleled sense of pleasure. Shelly referred to her daughters as losers and fucking idiots and told them that they made her sick, that they were worthless, and that they were undeserving of love.
I mean, her words are almost as brutal as her acts. Yeah, I mean, combined, though, they're... Traumatizing. Yeah. Shelly took immeasurable amounts of pleasure in concocting new and horrific ways in which to make her daughter suffer, psychologically, emotionally, and physically. She wouldn't allow them to shower or to use the bathroom and enjoyed the shame they would feel going to school each day, filthy and smelly.
That's so fucked up. Nikki seemed to have borne the brunt of Shelly's abuse. Nikki's the older daughter. Yeah. And the theory behind that is because Nikki would often fight back. Oh, good for her. And that incited Shelly. Whereas Sammy, the other daughter, would typically acquiesce.
So that didn't do it enough. And that's true of sadism, right? You need to see the person feeling the pain and torturing and letting it be known that they're uncomfortable and unhappy. Otherwise, the gratification is far less. I get it.
I guess. Nikki was regularly locked in her bedroom or a small windowless closet for days and days. And Shelly would wedge a butcher's knife into the doorframe to prevent Nikki from being able to get out. She'd have to use a bucket as a toilet during those periods of confinement.
And Sammy, Nikki's sister, in an effort to let Nikki know that she wasn't alone, this is so sad, she would stand outside throwing pine cones up at the window just to let Nikki know that she was there. Wow.
Yeah. I feel like that crushes me, that thought. When we used to have fire drills in school, I used to... And, you know, obviously, like, most of the time, it's obviously just a drill, but sometimes you didn't know if it was a drill or if there was actually something, like a problem somewhere in the building. I would always hightail it out of my classroom to find my twin sister. Always. There was a bomb threat one year. Didn't fucking care about rules. Didn't care. Just ran through the crowd looking for my sister. Yeah. Side note.
Sad, sad note. Yeah. On one occasion, Shelly threw Nikki through the glass kitchen door, shattering the glass and slicing Nikki all over her face and body. Yeah, sure. After Nikki went into shock from her injuries, Shelly looked at Nikki and said, look what you made me do. Yeah. What a sicko. Yeah. All right. So...
Now we're going to hear about some additional victims. The year is 1988, and Shelly's 13-year-old nephew, Shane Watson, arrived at her house after his father, Paul, which is Shelly's brother, disappeared. So Paul was in and out of jail constantly, and Shane's mother was pretty much out of the picture. She also struggled with substance abuse issues, and she never stuck around for long.
So Shane lived a very difficult itinerant life surrounded by violence, drugs, and instability. Yeah. Yet he was really described as being a very optimistic young boy who didn't show any signs of being beaten down by life. He was always smiling. He was very silly. And when he showed up at Shelly's home, they took him in. Yeah, good. And initially they like love bombed him, Shelly and her husband, Dave. And he started calling them mom and dad within days. Like it was a very...
sweet situation initially. Yeah. But within weeks, Shelly started treating Shane like a slave and forcing him to spend all of his time doing chores around the house.
Shelley eventually took away his pillows, blankets, and bed and forced Shane to sleep on the cold, hard basement floor. And here's the thing. I feel like with Shane, it was almost like that expression, like putting a frog in a boiling pot of water. Yeah. Like if you do it very, very, very, very slowly, it's sort of like not clear initially that you're in trouble. Yeah. So initially, as I said, they love bombed him and then slowly they started implementing all these chores and they started taking things away from him. And before you know it, he was in dire straits. Yeah.
Shane, like Nikki and Sammy, he was not allowed to shower. He was not allowed to use the bathroom. He had to ask permission to eat. He had to ask permission to leave. It was, I mean, worse than a prison. Yeah. Pop quiz. What became Shelly's favorite form of punishment for Shane and Nikki? A, mutual wallowing, followed by drinking the filthy bath water. Punishment she called wallow and swallow.
B, forcing the kids to race each other wearing glass-filled sneakers. C, forcing the kids to undress and then slow dance together fully naked. This is all fucking horrible. Again, the worst part is that two of these are not real. Yeah. Oh my God. Okay, so let's say that she made them undress and slow dance. Correct. Yeah.
You didn't think it could be Wallow and Swallow? I did, but Wallow and Swallow was like too much. It was like too perfect. Okay. Damn it. Seam and Demon. Seam and Demon.
Got it, got it. I got to be a little more rough around the edges. But that sounds awful. And the fact that you came up with it is absolutely disgusting. I know. I know it. I am not even going to apologize. And the other one just seemed too obvious. Sorry. Okay. No, I'm just... See, the problem was... I said that to hurt you because I'm a sadist. No, the one that caught me was making them undress and slow dance because that is just...
so fucking weird to do to two cousins, right? Mm-hmm. It seemed like it would be something that would be right up her alley at that point. Correct. Well, you nailed it. Yeah. The thing is, though, you're breaking down for me your psychology with picking your answers, which is going to help me in future pop quizzes. Okay. Noted. Giving away the secrets. Right. The secret sauce. Now, what seems like the height of Shelley's depravity, right, is...
It gets worse because another individual took up residence in the no tech house of horrors. Who keeps sending their kids to this fucking house? This time it's not a child, but it's somebody who's vulnerable. Yeah. Okay. So enter Kathy Loreno, Shelly's friend slash hairdresser. Kathy had fallen on hard times and she needed a place to stay. And what perfect timing Shelly thought as Shelly had just found out that she was pregnant.
Kathy attended to all of Shelly's prenatal appointments and took her to her fake chemo appointments. Because remember, Shelly did not actually have cancer, but she told her husband that she did. And she followed through on the lie. So she had her friend Kathy, in exchange for living with her, take her to these fake chemo appointments. Kathy would sit in the hospital waiting room for eight hours.
Kathy knew they were fake too? No. Oh my God. What was she doing in the hospital? She thought that her friend was undergoing chemo, so she was waiting patiently like a good friend would. And where would she go? Who the fuck knows? Maybe she was in the cafeteria, Shelly. Maybe she was roaming the halls. Maybe she was jacking medication. So much time and effort. Right. Shelly went so far as to shave her eyebrows, and she pulled out clumps of her hair to make it look like she was suffering the effects of chemotherapy. Okay.
I mean, she is a committed individual. Yeah. Here's the thing. She really was pregnant, though. Oh, obviously. But you can't get pregnant if you have cancer, right? No, I'm not sure if that's true. I don't know that you can undergo chemotherapy if you're pregnant. Probably not. You can't even have fucking clams. What? You can't even have oysters if you're pregnant. Is that right? Yeah, you're not supposed to have shellfish if you're pregnant. Oh, I didn't know that. Excuse me. You're looking at me like a palt. Well, you probably don't eat shellfish anyway, right? Because I'm Jewish? I don't know.
I don't know. Because you didn't know that you can't have shellfish when you're pregnant. You've been pregnant twice. I'm joking with you. I eat shellfish, by the way. But not when you're pregnant. No.
No, and I didn't have cold cuts when I was pregnant. Yeah, there's like... Okay, I see. Okay. Yeah, you definitely can't have chemo when you're pregnant. Fucking radiate the baby, comes out with three arms. What an awful predicament that must be for... I don't even think it's a predicament. I think it's absolutely not possible. No, no, I understand. But now the woman who's pregnant can't get treatment. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Again, I think if you have cancer, I'm fucking totally making this up just based on the little knowledge that I have of the human body. I can't imagine a body that's fighting off cancer would make way for a baby to... I don't think that's true. Gestate. I don't think that's true. I think women in all different... Like if you look at women who don't have healthcare and maybe they don't have proper nutrition, they're malnourished, they're abused...
Look at the Cleveland kidnapping case, Tank. Oh, yeah. Well, she didn't have cancer. She was under stress. She didn't have cancer, but her body went through a tremendous amount of stress, and she got pregnant five times. Wow. Yeah, that's true. Anyway, in June of 1989...
Shelly gave birth to baby Tori, a girl. And every single night, the entire household would be woken up by Shelly screaming after allegedly finding her newborn baby unresponsive and not breathing in her crib. It wasn't until Nikki walked in on Shelly one night before the screaming began that she saw Shelly holding a pillow over baby Tori's face. Yeah.
So baby Tori was not breathing every single night, but it wasn't random. It was because Shelly was holding a pillow over her face. What a dumbass.
Before long, Shelly had her friend Kathy, who was now living with them, taking care of the baby, doing all of the cleaning and the cooking, and she would endure regular physical beatings from Shelly as well. Shelly also started to psychologically mess with Kathy as well and would claim that she saw Kathy sleepwalking naked into the children's rooms and, quote, sleep eating all the food in the kitchen, which...
I only know one person who sleep eats. Me. Yep. Yeah. Exactly. And I think you're awake and you love it. I'm half awake. Yeah. Yeah. Shelly even planted half eaten food into Kathy's room to back up her made up story. What a fucking nut job. She as punishment, uh,
would take away Kathy's privileges and would confiscate her personal items like pictures and music records, underwear, bras, and knitting supplies.
Kathy was not allowed to use the bathroom unless granted explicit permission, like Shane, like Nikki, like Sammy, and was forced to bathe with bleach outside, completely naked in front of everyone using the garden hose. Why are these people... Like, okay, the kids, yes. Fucking, you just do what your parents say. You don't know any different. Why is this woman allowing her to tell her she has to bathe in bleach? There's a lot of ways in which...
I can respond to that. Yeah. So first of all, Kathy was very vulnerable. She was down and out. She had no place to go. How vulnerable? I understand. Listen, I understand. The other thing of it is this. It's like the slow boil. Yeah.
I keep going back to that analogy. I think when things slowly happen and then she peppers in her good moments in between, it's like a typical abusive relationship. You hang on to those good times. You know, Shelly always blamed everybody else for all of the shit that was going on. She was never the bad guy. Yeah. And you have to understand she was a master manipulator.
Was there something wrong with Kathy besides being down and out? No. Once she was subjected to the torture and the humiliation, she started getting beaten down. And it's like what cult leaders will do to their followers. They will deprive them of food, which eliminates their ability to comprehend what's going on. It eliminates their ability to fight back. You literally wear them down into like this moldable piece of clay so that you can do with them what you want. Bathe in bleach. Yeah.
Outside. Right. In front of everybody. She was even forced, Kathy, to travel in the trunk of the car if ever the entire family would go anywhere. No. She was also forced to eat cupfuls of salt whenever Shelly demanded it. Oh my God. Then Shelly began to force the children into physically abusing Kathy. Nikki and Sammy were forced to snap rubber bands at Kathy and Shane was forced to kick and punch her.
And if anyone refused, they'd be duct taped to the wall naked or wallowed. She's running a frat, basically. I mean, kind of.
But in a frat, you sign up for it. She just wants to make sure these people are her real friends. That's what's going on. They're proving their loyalty. Exactly. Okay. They want to wear those Greek letters. Fucking crazy. Now, the tactic of pitting victims against each other, which I'm going to bring up our Cleveland kidnapper case, right? Like with Ariel Castro, the perpetrator in the Cleveland kidnapping case.
It's a very effective way of preventing rebellion amongst victims of abuse. Yeah. Because should the victims ever unite, there's the risk of them rising up against their abuser.
So Shelly thrived in pitting them against each other or segregating them entirely. Yeah. So for a while, the children were segregated from Kathy and she would keep the father away from the children, the children away from the father, the children away from Kathy. By doing this, she basically was able to control and manipulate each one of them individually.
individually, right? A puppet master with a full cast. Yeah. Now, Kathy began losing a tremendous amount of weight. I read that she lost up to 100 pounds and her bruised skin began to hang from her body in soft red folds. Ew. Her once beautiful hair. Remember, she was a hairdresser. Not body shaming, but that sounds pretty gross. Well, I mean, it bore the brunt of some serious abuse, so...
Her once beautiful hair was chopped into a frenzied mess by Shelly, who took scissors one day and just butchered her hair.
The kids noticed that Kathy had more than just visible injuries. They could sense that she was also internally struggling as well. And after snooping around Shelly's room, they discovered a shit ton of prescription pill bottles, including anxiety medications, medications that were used to treat chest pains and blood pressure. She was basically sedating Kathy. So another answer to your previous question, why did she have drugged? Right. She was drugged. Yeah.
So it's about 1992 at this point in the case. I'm 12. You're 12. I'm 12. No, I'm 10. And this is when Kathy endures one of the worst forms of punishment yet. Fuck. After Shelly came home to find that Kathy had defecated into a Tupperware container in the kitchen. Weird. She wasn't allowed to use the bathroom. Okay, true. Shelly had her husband, Dave...
duct tape Kathy's naked body face down onto a piece of plywood. Then he wrapped her body in the duct tape. Think of like a naked mummy. How much fucking duct tape do they have? These people, you know what I just learned? What duct tape was invented to tape like air ducts. Yeah. And ironically now duct tape is used for everything else but that it's not used for that. No. Oh wow. Yeah. It's not interesting. Anyway, it's duct tape. Correct. Okay. Like,
Like to tape ducts. Yeah. And piping. I thought it was duct tape until I was like 12. No. Until right around the time this... Until right now. Yeah, 1992. So after they taped her face down completely naked to a piece of plywood, they then placed a bucket of water at one end of the board.
Forcing all the children to watch, Shelly lifted Kathy's head up by her hair, forcing it down into the bucket of water for long periods of time while screaming, you're worthless. You're a no good piece of shit. So she was literally waterboarded. Yeah. Then one day after that incident, after continuous physical abuse and drugging and humiliation, she
The family heard guttural sounds coming from the laundry room. By that point, Kathy was a waif. She was covered in bruises and sores, welts, cuts, scratches, hanging skin, botched hair. She was done. She looked great. Yeah.
Kathy lied in the laundry room on that fateful day, vomiting with her eyes rolling back into their sockets. Then she stopped breathing. Oh. And this is when Kathy Loreno's beaten down and drugged body had finally given out. And she died that day alone on the floor in the laundry room. Wow. So tragic.
No one called the police. No one gave her a funeral. Instead, Dave and Shane carried her body outside, covered her with wood, and set it alight. Wow. And five hours later, Kathy's body was reduced to ash and bone. Jesus. Then her now-cooled remains were transferred into large Home Depot buckets and driven out to Washaway Beach where Dave dumped them into the ocean. Was that her final wishes? No.
Put me in Home Depot buckets. That is fucking horrible. Yeah. And then Shelly forced the children to sift through the burn pile of Kathy. For what? Jewelry? To make sure that all of Kathy had been disposed of. Oh my God. What else did Shelly force the children to do? Specifically Nikki following Kathy's death. Pop quiz? Pop quiz.
A, she required that Nikki cut her hair short like Kathy, put on Kathy's clothing, and then occasionally walk around the neighborhood with her head down. Oh my God. B, tell her teachers at school about all the fun things that she and her Aunt Kathy were getting into, just to maintain the pretense that Kathy was still alive. Uh-huh. C, to write letters to Kathy's family, forging Kathy's signature, saying that she had run away with a man. Um...
She made her tell her teachers about Aunt Kathy? Nope. She made her write letters? Yep.
Yes. So she made Nikki in Kathy's handwriting and signature send letters to her entire family saying that all was great, all was fine. How's Nikki doing? Nikki, not well. Now, I mean... In life? Yeah. You'll hear. Okay. You'll hear about that. And we're getting close to the end of this terrible, terrible case. Okay. So as time went on, Shelly got increasingly more paranoid about someone finding out about what happened to Nikki.
to Kathy. Moreover, she was convinced that Shane was going to disclose the truth to law enforcement because he was having a very, very difficult time with what happened. Shelly became fixated on this notion that Shane was going to tell the police. And so she told Dave, her husband, we got to do something about Shane.
Now, Dave said, he's fine. We don't have to worry about him. But Shelly would not let it go. So Shelly, the ultimate manipulator, said to herself, I've got to do something to get Dave to get rid of Shane in some way or another. So here's what she did. She told Dave...
that she found a pair of their daughter Tori's underwear in Shane's room and that the underwear was bloody, insinuating, obviously, that Shane was sexually abusing Tori. Yeah. So once Dave heard that, he couldn't ignore it. He beat the shit out of Shane that night. And the next morning, Shane was gone. Yeah. So it seemed to the family that Shane had enough and ran away or that they kicked him out.
Now, eventually, both Nikki and Sammy managed to escape. At 18 years old, Nikki went to live with her aunt in Canada. And during Sammy's senior year of high school, she managed to get out of her house, hide in her boyfriend's place for a few days, and hitch a ride to Lara's house. Okay. The grandmother. Yeah, yeah. All right. So at this point now, Nikki and Sammy have escaped. But Shelly's stepmom. That's correct. And Shane is gone. And Shane is gone. Yeah. Yeah.
At this point, only Tori remained in the house, and she, up until that point, was spared abuse. Shelly directed all of the abuse towards the older girls, but Tori is now entering her early teen years, and it made her a ripe new target for Shelly. Tori endured much of the same abuse as her older sisters did before her. She was physically abused, insulted, and humiliated.
Tori was forced to parade naked in front of Shelly once a month so that Shelly could check on her developmental progress.
She even forced, this is fucked up, she even forced Tori to cut a piece of her pubic hair so that she could save it in the same way that she saved Tori's first lock of hair as a baby. So weird. When Tori emerged from the bathroom in tears after cutting a piece of her pubic hair, she was humiliated, she was crying, holding a piece of the hair in her hand. Shelly laughed and said, I just wanted to see if I could make you do it. Wow. Ugh.
As time went on, Nikki maintained a relationship with Lara. And in July 2001, she finally decided to tell Lara about the fact that Shelly murdered Kathy. Oh, wow.
Nikki faxed a written statement over to the Pacific County Sheriff's deputy, a man named Jim Bergstrom. She detailed everything that happened to Kathy from the abuse to her death in the laundry room to her father burning the corpse in a fire pit on their property. And guess what happened?
Nothing. Nothing. Yeah. Wow. You've heard a few of these cases, huh? No body, no crime. That's right. Absolutely nothing happened. By the way, amazing Taylor Swift song. No body, no crime. I'm thinking of the show Blackbird. I don't know it. Oh, you got to watch it. Is it dark and creepy and horrific? Oh, dude. This guy, real quick, a guy gets arrested on gun and drug charges.
goes to a minimum security prison. He's got a 10-year sentence, which is way longer than he thought it was going to be. At the same time, there's a guy who's killing girls all over the Midwest, right? So...
The guy who gets a 10-year sentence says, we'll let you out immediately if you transfer to a maximum security prison specializing in the criminally insane and get a confession from this guy so that we can find the body and tie him to it. Fucking unbelievable. And it's a true story. Oh, wow. Yeah. And the actor, Taron Egerton, who plays Jimmy Keen. Oh, I love him. He's so hot. He's so fucking hot. Oh, my God. And his singing voice is...
is amazing. I'm actually watching it again with Jessica right now and I mean, I would be gay for this man for sure. 100%. Just as friends. Not like really like, I'm not interested in like the whole... To see what it would be like. I just want to touch his face. I mean, it's a gorgeous fucking face.
And his voice. So he does the voice of Johnny in Sing and Sing 2. Yeah. Even just hearing this gorilla singing with his voice, I'm like, whoo. He's ripped. Yeah. He's ripped and his face. And he's so talented. Yeah, he's really good. Holy shit. He's now my new favorite actor. So I'm watching Blackbird twice. He's not more favorite than Ryan Gosling. I know what you're thinking. I was just going to say, pop quiz. No, no, no. Who does Tank choose to you?
Play around with first. There's a new sheriff in town. Oh, baby. I like this one. I don't like Ryan Gosling, but I'm with you on this one. Yeah. Now, Nikki faxes a written statement to the police and she tells them details about the murder and they ignore it. Wow. And what's really unfortunate about that, aside from the lack of justice or even the pursuit of justice on behalf of Kathy Loreno, was that Shelly went on to kill another victim. Ooh. A man in his 50s named Robb.
Ronald Woodworth, who was a resident of the area, moved in with the Notex in 2001 after falling on hard times following a breakup with his longtime boyfriend. He'd recently been evicted. He was desperate for a place to stay. And of course, Shelly invited him in, set her sights on him, and...
And fucked with him. Yeah. Now, similar to Kathy Loreno from a decade earlier. So we're now a decade past Kathy's death. Yeah. Ron started out by being forced to do chores, right? Then he was forced to do those chores naked. Then he had to shower and use the bathroom only when allowed. Then he was starved. Then he was subjected to intense physical abuse. He was forced to sleep outside. Yeah.
And this whole cycle of abuse went on for years. Wow. Shelley forced Ron to drink his own urine and to repeatedly jump from the second story roof onto the hard gravel without wearing any shoes, which would result in broken bones and deep cuts. Yeah, of course. And he would do it.
She would also pour boiling water and bleach onto Ron's wounded feet until the skin began to peel off. Is she like a witch or something? She's worse, man. She's a human. No, I mean, like, how are you even getting the people to do this stuff? Listen, I'm familiar with manipulative people and, like, sure, getting people to do things, but...
If she's making you sleep outside anyway, and she's not feeding you, you're basically homeless. Just go be homeless in a place where they're, you know what I mean? Yeah. No, listen, I hear you. I do. I think I have a little bit more insight into abusive relationships because of what I do for a living. And I understand how debilitating it can be. Yeah. And it really is not as easy as that, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah.
But to somebody who's not familiar with it, of course, it seems like the obvious solution is... No, it's so easy to obviously say what should be done from the outside looking in. I remember being in relationships that were bad for me and feeling like I can't wait till this spell is lifted because I felt like I was under a spell. Yeah. Like a spell of chemicals in my brain or situations or whatever. Tell me to stay in my lane if I'm not correct in this, but...
I'm not, I don't struggle with addiction. Oh, stay in your lane. Don't even start talking about addiction investigators later. I'm just kidding. Like I, when you tell me stories about how you would drink to a point where you would black out, you could not stop yourself. And now you cannot even have a taste of it because it could bring you back into that like downward spiral. Yeah. So for somebody who doesn't struggle with addiction, I look at you and I'm like, just have one drink.
Just have one and then stop. I mean, not really. I'm not really saying that to you, but do you know what I mean? It's the same mentality of like, why can't you figure out how to do this right? Because you can't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you can't. I know. It's just so extreme. I understand. Yeah. Again, like I'm saying, I feel bad for the people that are in this situation.
But what I'm saying is like, yeah, I guess I'm coming across a little bit. No, no, you're speaking viscerally. Like you're not coming across as anything. I'm just responding. I feel like I'm coming across with a lack of understanding, but I also just want this woman to stop in her mind winning. Right. Well, spoiler, she does stop winning. Yeah. So I'm going to move along here with Ron.
On July 22nd, 2003, Ron finally died. Shelly wrapped his body in sleeping bags and stuffed him into a large freezer. I thought you were going to say he left. No, I'm sorry to disappoint. I wish. Wow. Dave then dug a four foot hole on the property, covered Ron in tarp and buried him.
So Tori, who's now 14, was distraught. She'd grown very close to Ron, whom she referred to as Uncle Ron. And so Tori disclosed to her sister, Sammy, her feeling that Shelly did something to Ron. Yeah. She had no hard proof, but she didn't need it. She knew. Yeah. Sammy then phoned Nikki to tell her everything that Tori told her, from the abuse that Tori was now experiencing firsthand...
to her suspicion about Ron's death. Yeah. Nikki wanted to immediately call the authorities, but Sammy had reservations. Pop quiz. Okay. What did Nikki tell Sammy that made her realize the gravity of their situation and the necessity to involve the police?
A, that Shelly was starting to drug Tori. Mm-hmm. B, that Shane, the 19-year-old cousin who presumably left, didn't leave. Rather, he was murdered. Oh. C, that Nikki once discovered her parents plotting to kill her. Or D, all of the above.
All of the above? Oh, so Shane's dead? Yeah, yes. I'm sorry. It turns out that Dave put a shotgun behind Shane's head that very night and blew his brains out. Wow. Yeah. These people are fucking... Beyond.
So seeing it as a rescue operation now for Tori, Sammy agreed to report their mother to the police. Yeah. So all three sisters banded together and decided to take Shelly down. Good. Fuck yeah. Sammy and Nikki went to the Pacific County Sheriff's Office to make an official statement. And this time they refused to leave until their voices were heard. Good.
Nikki was not about to let history repeat itself. Members from the prosecutor's office, as well as investigators, sat down with the sisters, heard their harrowing accounts of abuse and torture loud and clear, and took action. The next morning, CPS rescued Tori from the house. They didn't have enough evidence at that point to arrest Shelly for any of the murders or even for child abuse.
But then Dave broke down in tears and quite literally told the police where the bodies were buried and everything that she had done and all of the ways in which he helped. He was probably relieved. The way I read it, I agree with you. He was relieved. I mean, to break down in tears, they weren't even probing him. Yeah. He just let it out. Yeah. And the day on which Shelly and Dave were arrested happened to have been Kathy Loreno's birthday. Just a little ironic fact. Yeah, sure.
In February 2004, six months after his arrest, Dave Notek pleaded guilty to second-degree murder of Shane Watson and guilty to unlawful disposal of human remains and rendering criminal assistance. He was sentenced to a little bit under 15 years in prison and was actually released in 2016. So he's out.
Dave currently works at a seafood processing plant on the Washington coast and says he feels remorse for his role in everything that happened. Ten months after her arrest, Shelley entered what's called an Alford plea, which allows the defendant to plead guilty yet assert innocence at the same time.
So what this does is this allows somebody to accept guilt, but to circumvent a trial. So the state likes an Alford plea because it saves them money. Yeah. And you also, as the perpetrator, avoid a lengthy trial and potentially a worse sentence at the end of it. And you also don't have to admit to the crime? No, you have to admit to guilt, but you don't have to go through the trial and go through the details of it. Isn't that just a regular plea?
Or is that what everyone, do they shorten Alford pleas to regular pleas? Do they just say that? Oh, no, no. Did you say that they didn't admit guilt? Yeah. That's correct. Yeah, yeah. So when you enter on Alford plea, you do not technically admit guilt, but you acknowledge that a jury would likely find you guilty. I know what this looks like. Right.
But I contend that I didn't do it. Right. It's like, I think you should leave with the guy in the hot dog suit when he crashes into the clothing store with the hot dog car. You'll have to look it up. I will. We're all looking for the guy who did this. He's wearing a hot dog suit.
So she puts in this Alford plea on the charges of second degree murder and manslaughter in the torturous deaths of Kathy Loreno and Ronald Woodworth. And so she was convicted accordingly and she was initially sentenced to 17 years in prison until the judge added on more years amounting to more than 25 years behind bars. Good, not great because in 2022, uh,
Shelley Notak was released at age 68 after only serving 22 years at the Washington Correction Center for Women.
So she's out and she is clearly a danger to society and she has been a danger since childhood. Her daughters have referred to her as a ticking time bomb and have warned the public about their dangerous mother prior to her release. They were advocating that she not be released. Yeah, of course. They're probably terrified. Right. Oh my God, they must be so fucking scared. Yeah. So that is the case.
In summary, Shelley used her beauty, the pretense of concern for all of these people who were down and out, and highly honed manipulative behavior to lure innocent people inside her home so that she could subject them to sadistic torture.
She enjoyed and took pride in the suffering of those in her perceived care, including, of course, her own daughters, and used a variety of tactics to repeatedly prey upon her victims. I just looked her up. She's not fucking hot. It was back in the day. There were no filters. I don't know. I mean, she looks like the Charlize Theron in Monster. Oh, yeah.
I mean, Charlize Theron anywhere is gorgeous, but... Not in Monster. Okay. Have you ever seen Monster? No, no, but I've seen... I know what she looked like in it. Oh, yeah. I haven't seen it either, but I've seen the pictures. Yeah, she's not... I mean, she just must be really... Charismatic, manipulative. Yeah, she must be a witch is what I'm saying. She displayed superficial emotional attachments to truth and moral behavior and like a true psychopathic predator...
She trained herself to imitate trustworthy behaviors like honesty and compassion so that she could more easily exploit those caught in her poisonous web. Yeah, she also displayed supernatural abilities. Right, and I want to say one thing. Okay, she's a witch, we get it.
You almost brushed right by that. She's a witch. We get it. One of our listeners who happened to have messaged us on Instagram requesting that we cover this case, I was already neck deep in doing this case, which is so funny that she requested it, but she's a psychotherapist. So I asked her after I came to my conclusions in my totally unprofessional opinion, like my diagnoses of Shelly Nutech, and I asked our listener what she would diagnose Shelly with. And she said,
And based, of course, on what she read, she didn't know Shelly firsthand, obviously. She didn't examine her. But she said, quote, and I'm pulling this from our DM, Michelle is for sure a malignant narcissist. I think there's some borderline personality disorder mixed in there too. Yeah. And as much as this case centers around a very, very sick and twisted woman, it also highlights the extraordinary power of sisterly love
And the light that such an impenetrable bond can provide during the darkest days imaginable. Somebody DM'd us and said that you did not appreciate my joke when I said peach of shit. Do you remember when I said peach of shit? Oh, vaguely. That was a real peach. And I said, yeah, real peach of shit. And I blew past it? Oh, right past it. And he's like, dude, that was so good. I'm like, thank you for acknowledging me. I'm trying to figure out what episode it was on. I feel like it was maybe Kobe Cannibal.
I'm sorry. Listen, I get really into these cases. Yeah, it's all right. Nice, are we? Fine.
So this is what I'm leaving off on, okay? Yeah. The Notek sisters text each other and they talk all the time to this day. They get together a few times a year at Nikki's place in Seattle. And in 2019, they all sat down together with an author named Greg Olson to tell their story in a really, really good book that I read while covering this case. The book is called If You Tell. Okay.
And I would like to leave off in the words of Greg Olson, the author, regarding these incredibly strong women, Nikki, Sammy, and Tori. He says, sisters forever, victims no more.
And that's it. That's pretty good. I love it. I like that. That's a good way to end. It is. All right. Well, yeah, this was a horrific case. I was going to say disgusting, but that's not really the right word. It's more, I feel sad for everyone involved. Everyone that crossed paths with Shelly Notek was affected negatively. And I'm just glad that she was so exceptionally manipulative that she's on a podcast about it.
It's not like this is a common occurrence that people are out there doing this to this level. Right. Manipulation, narcissism. But, you know, to reach the level of having a podcast about you. If you make it on Psychopedia, you are an outlier. You are an outlier for sure. You're in the top 0.01% of the 1%. Right. And we salute you. Just kidding. We hate you. Just kidding. Thank you for being a shitty person because otherwise...
We'd have nothing to talk about. Yeah. If you made it to the end, thank you for listening. We're so glad that you're here and we'll see you next week. Thank you. Bye.