21. Breakfast Chains: The IHOP Murders
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Welcome back, bingers, to another serving of Binge. Now, I want to say sorry for our little mishap last week. We had a technical difficulty and the file was corrupted. But here we are with our second episode. Now, you may remember two weeks ago that episode about massacres at Waffle Houses. And I didn't declare what our theme was.

was for this pair of episodes then. I thought, you know, it might be fun to wait until the second episode to reveal the theme. Now it's pretty obvious, I'm sure, given the title of this week's episode, what that theme is. Breakfast chains. I didn't want to pile on Waffle House as the Waffle House is the only breakfast chain in America with a murder attached to it.

Just like Waffle House, there are IHOP brawls aplenty, and probably just as many video uploads of Pancake House fights on YouTube. And although there are fewer murders connected to the restaurant formerly known as the International House of Pancakes, today's story might be the ultimate IHOP murder. And we had to travel back in time to find it.

Wayne Tidwell was what you might call an enterprising fellow. For a guy who lived in a community called Leisure City, Wayne was all about business. Like any smart entrepreneur, Wayne would identify a consumer need and then try and fill it. That's what good business folk do. And in the late 70s, in the humid subtropical sprawl of Miami, with its neighborly proximity to the Everglades,

Wayne Tidwell believed he'd identified a consumer need, pest control. Wayne invented an electric mousetrap, a shoebox-sized contraption designed to zap vermin with an electric shock, resulting in minimal suffering and minimal odor because the electrocution would basically leave the mouse mummified. Mummified mice.

Wayne promised of his electric mousetrap, it dehydrates them like a potato chip so it doesn't smell.

Wayne spent three years perfecting this invention, which he had actually dreamed up with his father two decades earlier. So this idea had been marinating for half of Wayne's life and his work on this mouse trap so consumed him that his wife almost left him twice. Whenever she wanted to go out in the evenings, all Wayne wanted to do was hang back and work on his mouse trap.

And once he perfected it, so the story goes. The story he told the Miami Herald in 1978. His wife was glad she had toughed it out. So impressive was this electric mousetrap of his, which also killed roaches, lizards, frogs, and even snakes. This is so he claimed.

And that's one heck of a mousetrap, I've got to say. Accordingly, Wayne named his product the best mousetrap. And he believed this mousetrap would make him and his family millionaires or at least hundred thousandaires.

But remarkable as this mousetrap was, he had zero financial backing and spent years struggling to find a buyer. Never mind that it was patented. Never mind that newspapers, television programs, and radio shows were hitting him up to talk about it. The only interest Wayne ended up drawing was from con men and fly-by-night enterprises looking to screw him over.

It became so overwhelming for him, sorting the flim-flam artists from the honest potential partners, that it left him wary and distrustful of everyone. He sank nearly $20,000 of his savings into trying to promote his electric mousetrap, but it ended up being just another sunken dream in swampy South Florida.

But luckily, Wayne had his backhoe business to fall back on. It was June 1983 when the phone rang at his office. It was a woman named Dee Castile. She said she wanted a hole dug in her yard, a very big hole. She explained it was for a trash pit and it needed to be 18 by 18 and four feet deep.

So Wayne went out to a house to meet with the woman named Dee Castile, and they negotiated a price arriving at $280 for the whole. The house where they met seemed sort of run down and as though maybe nobody was living there. There was also a powerful odor that hit Wayne's nose as soon as he arrived.

He wasn't sure what it was, but it was unlike anything he'd ever smelled before. And it wasn't something he ever wanted to smell again. Maybe, he thought, it's all that trash that was piling up over there. Good thing we'll be digging a pit for it, he thought. So Wayne put his backhoe into action and in five magical hours, DeCastille had her pit.

Then, a couple weeks later, the phone rang at Wayne Tidwell's backhoe business. It was Dee Castile again. She needed his services once more. He couldn't imagine what she wanted now. You want another hole, he asked. No, she said. That hole you dug me last time, well, now I need it filled.

She explained that she was going to be renting out the house to a family with small children and she was afraid the pit might pose a hazard to the kids. So Wayne returned to the property and filled the hole that was now filled with garbage. And he thought that this would be the last of it with this lady. And so it seemed. Life went on for Wayne Tidwell and the name D. Castile sort of disintegrated in his memory like a rat inside his electric mousetrap.

That was until eight months later when he got a visit from the Metro Dade police. Remember that hole you dug and filled down in South Dade for DeCastille? And Wayne was like, oh my gosh, this hole again? I'm haunted by this hole. Yeah, I remember the hole. What about it? Well, the cop on the other end said, we need you to come dig it up.

Now of all the backhoe businesses in all the towns in all the world, this woman's call came into his. But okay, he thought business is business. Tidwell showed up at the property again with that backhoe and he dug up the pit he had already dug and then covered up months ago. And by the end of the day, two dead human bodies were unearthed from that pit.

And what follows is this story of how they got there. A 44 year old single mother of three, Dee Castile was someone everybody seemed to love.

Like Callie Maitland, who lived a few doors down from her in South Florida. For Callie, Dee was one of the nicest people she'd ever met. While slogging through housework, Callie would often take a break and walk down to Dee's house to share coffee and cigarettes while shooting the breeze. But most of those who knew Dee didn't actually know her very well.

They didn't know her well enough to know that her life was being barely held together by a thread, and had been that way for most of her life. Like many hardcore alcoholics, Dee began drinking as a teenager. She had been born to a pair of alcoholics, both of whom had abandoned her when she was just a toddler, sending her to live with her grandmother, who herself was a neglectful guardian.

When Dee was just eight years old, this would have been in 1946, her father returned from the war and took custody of her, and she went and lived with him and her father's first wife, whom he left when he knocked up her mother. But the new household in which Dee was growing up was turbulent, with constant shouting from her rageful father. So she turned to booze at a young age to numb herself.

And you know, when someone's young and they drink, it's easy for their developing alcoholism to go unnoticed until it's too far gone. By the time Dee was 44 years old, which was in 1983, she was far gone. A hardcore alcoholic. And she had gone through so many jobs throughout her adult life, all of which she lost as a consequence of her out-of-control drinking.

Like when she was expelled from the police academy for showing up drunk. That was a whole career straight down the drain. Or when she was fired from the Miller Gas Company for embezzling thousands of dollars. Money she claimed she was only borrowing. But yeah, she was borrowing it for alcohol consumption. And she lost multiple jobs after that for drinking while at work.

And Dee's romantic life wasn't much brighter. She was drawn to men like her Navy veteran father, large abusive brutes who liked to drink. She fell into several failed marriages to abusive men, including one who pulled a gun on her. And by the time she had hit her 40s, Dee's looks and her desirability were fading.

wilted and vinegary like a pickled rose that's when as one sometimes does when one turns that corner she began working at IHOP and for Dee after a decades-long string of job terminations this waitressing job at IHOP in her 40s was her last ditch chance at keeping employment

And even though, like I'd mentioned, she had lost every previous job for drinking on the job, she was still drinking while at work waiting tables at IHOP. So it's not like her fear of being fired kept her from drinking on the job. She just tried to find new ways to be discreet about it. Because her alcoholism was so out of control, she was unable to work a shift without drinking. If she tried, her hands would begin trembling.

But it's also hard to conceal alcoholism that's as rampant and out of control as hers was. It's constantly on your breath, especially if your choice of drink is scotch whiskey like Dee's was. She would smuggle in her whiskey in a jumbo-sized jar of oregano and she'd keep it hidden inside her purse, which she kept by the restaurant's cash register.

Her manager was a man named James Allen Bryant, but everyone just called him Allen. He was openly gay and in a relationship with the IHOP franchise location's owner, a guy named Art Venetia. So you have Art, who owns this IHOP franchise, and then you have Allen, who is the manager, who's in a relationship with Art, and then you have Dee, who works under Allen.

And after a few months of working for IHOP, it became apparent to Dee that Alan was skimming the till. Like, liberally. He was robbing the restaurant blind. And the better Dee got to know Alan, the more she began to realize he was aware of her drinking on the job. So her manager knew she was constantly drinking while waiting tables. But he didn't care.

because he was stealing from the restaurant and using the money to finance drugs and relationships with other men. So he was cheating on his substantially older partner, Art, the restaurant's owner, as well as stealing from him. But Dee wasn't bothered by any of this because for one, it meant she could continue drinking while on the clock and probably not worry about losing her job because her manager was doing worse.

But also it gets even more complicated because Dee had a crush on Alan. Now, despite him being openly gay and flamboyant, not only did Alan not fit the general mold of men that Dee was drawn to, he wasn't a rugged, imposing man's man, but the likelihood of him reciprocating Dee's crush was practically zero. Maybe that's why she was drawn to him, because he was inaccessible?

Or maybe it was because he was a sociopath and she was a woman who was attracted to sociopaths. But here's the thing.

Now Dee's brain was kind of pickled by years of alcohol abuse. So she was kind of someone that a sociopath like Alan could easily manipulate. It's almost like she couldn't read the room. She didn't understand that this gay man who was 20 years younger than her might just be pretending to be into her to get things out of her.

He must have known this by the time he invited her on a car ride with him from the IHOP one night. During which, he first let her know that, yeah, he knew she drank on the job. I don't want you to worry about it, he told her. If Art knew, he'd fire you in a minute. But I understand, really. People like you and me, we've got to stick together. And in the next breath, he was pointing out a fancy restaurant.

the kind of restaurant Yelp would nowadays assign $4 signs. And he was telling Dee that the two of them should dine there. Dee felt like maybe Alan was just trying to woo her. And oh, about Art, his boyfriend slash owner of IHOP, he just had to make a break from Art, Alan told Dee. He's driving me crazy, he said, just absolutely stifling him. I've got to get away.

A little while later, Alan then cleared his throat and asked Dee, you know what someone told me once? What? She asked. It sounds crazy, Alan said. But somebody said, you know a guy who could take a contract. You know, murder for money? Who said that? Dee asked. I don't know, Alan answered. One of the waitresses. What's the difference?

Dee recognized that whoever it was must have been talking about Mike, her friend, Mike Irvine. Okay, you guys, let me guess. Your medicine cabinet is crammed with stuff that doesn't work. You still aren't sleeping. You still hurt and you're still stressed out.

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Mike was a guy Dee had met while she was working at a lounge. He worked at a gas station in Amoco up the street from the IHOP. So, said Alan, would he really do it? Not Mike, Dee said. That guy's a teddy bear, a sweetheart. So it's not true, Alan asked. He's not a hitman. Dee couldn't think why anyone would think that.

But then she remembered the time Mike had joked about killing her then-husband if she ever decided she wanted to leave him. But he was only joking, she told Alan. And Alan was like, okay, well, never mind then. And then the rest of the drive was awkwardly silent. But the words had been spoken. The seed had been planted. Alan was looking for a hitman, and Dee, who had a crush on Alan, might know a guy.

A few days later, Dee drove to Amoco gas station in Homestead to see Mike Irvine. Mike really looked up to Dee, maybe even liked her as more than a friend. He wanted to please her and was generally the kind of guy who always said yes to anyone who asked him for a favor. "You're always joking about knocking someone off for money," Dee said to Mike that day. "Would you really do it? Why?" Mike asked. See, that's the kind of answer that, well, it's not a no.

Dee explained that she knew someone who wanted someone killed. She wouldn't tell Mike who. Mike told Dee, I'm no killer, but I do have a friend who will do it. But we can't let your friend know who we are, so we'll have to deal through you. So already there's a whole chain of command taking shape. And what was once just a suggestion is now kind of turning into a conversation. We have Alan, who's using Dee, who's contacting Mike, who's enlisting a friend.

There's no way this can't go wrong, right? So Dee asked Mike to name a price. Well, that would depend on the difficulty, Mike told her. Would depend on who, on the circumstances. Dee said she'd see what she could do. When Dee next saw Alan at IHOP at work, she gave him the news. And then he gave her Art's passport photo, home address, and the makes and models of his vehicles.

everything a hitman would need to know. It looked like Alan was trying to hire a hitman to murder his older boyfriend, Art. Dee gave all of this to Mike, who said he'd relay the information to his friend. When Mike next saw Dee, it was at the IHOP. He slid into a booth in Dee's section, and when she approached him, he silently slid her a napkin with a dollar amount written on it. And what was that amount?

$1,250, the price of a human life to Mike Irvine. Dee then relayed this number to Alan, who recognized what a bargain it was. It's a go, he said. Dee, at least according to her version of events, the one she gave detectives after she was arrested, didn't believe any of this was going to be carried out. It all seemed like a charade to her booze-embalmed brain. They were just playing.

So it was jarring to Dee when, one afternoon, Alan suggested they take a ride up to Fort Lauderdale. And midway through the drive, Alan told her they were going to buy a gun. Dee wanted to know why. And Alan said, well, we'll need a gun to kill Art. Dee didn't like the we part of this. She didn't want to be an accomplice to murder, or so she later claimed.

It's a shame there was no one around to tell Dee that brokering a contract killing is, well, being an accomplice to murder. It's the same difference. "You're crazy," Dee told Alan. "Are you really thinking of killing him? I mean, what did she think was going on?" And Alan replied, "Well, of course I am. Did you think this was all a game?" That's a fair question, actually. Dee realized she was in it now. This was all for real.

So she knocked back a couple mouthfuls of scotch and got into the car with Alan and together they went and selected a .32 caliber gun. But when it came time to present identification, Alan felt around his pockets and realized or pretended to realize that he didn't have his ID on him. "We'll have to come back," he told Dee. "Well, I have my ID on me," Dee told him. So they bought the gun in Dee's name.

And then they went to QS to do some drinking. And the entire way, Alan spoke endlessly about another man named Henry. The man, according to him, he was truly in love with. The man whom he wanted to be free of art.

So now we have a motive coming here. Alan feels like he needs to get rid of art so he can freely be with Henry, his secret love. So after these initial arrangements were made, Alan began growing impatient. He was impatient to get rid of art once and for all. He began pushing Dee for a kill date, but Mike Irvine was reluctant to provide one because he didn't want anyone to know their plans in advance.

But despite that, Mike eventually called Dee and let her know that the work would be done on the weekend of June 10th, 1983. And with that, Alan Bryant arranged to be away so that he'd have an alibi and avoid suspicion falling on him, while Dee arranged to be drunk. But then on Monday, June 13th, this would be three days after the hit was supposed to happen, while Dee is working at IHOP,

Art strolled in, the owner, alive and well. And while he was there, Art got a call from the bank and he found out that Alan had been stealing money for the past three days, causing checks to bounce all over town. And this wasn't the first time Alan had stolen from Art. One time Alan even stole Art's car, sold it, and then reported it stolen.

Art had an established pattern of getting screwed over by his younger boyfriend, Alan, and then taking him back, ensuring repeats of increasing greed and cruelty from his young sociopathic lover. Instead of appreciating Art's generosity, Alan only became more spoiled and selfish year after year. That afternoon, Alan rolled into work and very quickly a shouting match with Art, his boss and lover, ensued in the upstairs office.

They were still fighting, in fact, when Dee's shift ended and she went home, confused as to how Art was still alive. And when Dee got home, she got a call from Art. And he told Dee that Alan claimed that the money he stole, $1,600, was actually a loan to Dee to help her get a divorce. Remember, Dee is married at this time.

And then Art breaks the news that Alan was in the hospital because he had tried to kill Art and then himself at the culmination of their fight. He tried to choke me, Art explained. He had his hands around my throat and he was squeezing. He said he hated me. I punched him. He slapped me and clawed at my face. We were spitting and kicking and screaming at each other.

When Alan saw the police cruiser pull up in front of the house, he ran into the bathroom and swallowed everything in the medicine cabinet. This is all according to Art. After the phone call, Art announced to the IHOP staff that Alan, their manager, was fired and banned from the restaurant. He knew, in fact, that Alan had been stealing from him for years. And now, Art didn't want him entering the building and certainly not getting near the cash register.

Allen was out as manager, out as everything, his boyfriend, out of his life for good. Meanwhile, it somehow didn't occur to Dee that Allen's suicide attempt was only a smokescreen because he'd gotten caught stealing and possibly panicked.

Instead of disgust, Dee had sympathy and concern for Alan. I mean, he had just almost died and lost his job and his boyfriend, who he wanted dead. So Dee wanted to go to Alan, wanted to take care of him. So she did. That night after her shift, she drove to the Amoco station to ask Mike about what had happened, but also to tell him that the hit is now off. Mike replied, it's just as well. Alan sounds like an effing loony.

Besides, Mike told her, he and his friend actually had gone out to do the murder on the 10th, but his friend had gotten scared and wanted to put it off for a while. And Dee, according to her, was relieved at this point. She thought maybe this mess was finally over and maybe she could stop drinking now. The next morning, Alan got Dee on the IHOP phone and told her he'd checked himself out of the hospital and into a motel near the restaurant. He asked her to come see him and bring supplies, including liquor for both of them.

She did so and then broke the news to Alan that Art obviously is not murdered and the hit is now off. And he was furious. He barked at her. You're supposed to be my friend. How could you stab me in the back like this?

But I talked to Art, Dee said. You and Art aren't together anymore. You and Henry can be together now. And live on what? Alan snapped back. You think I want to work as a waiter at some hojos on the Florida Turnpike? How could you do this to me? I needed the money. It wasn't your money. You had no right to stop it. Even though she had nothing to do with stopping it. Mike Irvine had stopped it.

So Alan just admitted that the motive wasn't just to get rid of him so he could be with Henry. It was also to get rid of him and take all of the money from IHOP. Together, Dee and Alan both drank more together in the motel room after Alan calmed down. And Alan expressed confidence that just because he tried to kill Art, it was probably definitely not over between them and they could still go through with the hit. We've had dozens of fights, he said. This doesn't mean anything.

Unfortunately, this turned out to be true. All Art's friends would later say he was talented, intelligent, and well-mannered, but he was obviously a dupe for this jerk taking long-term advantage of him. This was strange because Art was reported to have always been quiet and hesitant to get close to anyone because he didn't want it known he had money, even though he had earned it himself.

To trust James Allen Bryant was a rare leap of faith for art, and it was a leap that led to his death. So Mike Irvine's friend, whom he was enlisting as his accomplice, was a guy named Bill Rhodes, aka the Joker.

Bill worked part-time at the Amoco station with Mike. That's how they knew each other. And while it was hard to reconcile Dee Castile and Mike Irvine with a murder scenario, it fit Bill Rhodes like a bloody glove. Even though he got nervous and chickened out the first time he and Mike attempted to murder Art, Rhodes still had a police record and was the kind of guy who carried a razor knife on his person at all times. You can picture the type, right?

Bill also liked to spell his name B-I-L with just one L. The picture of Bill gets more and more vivid by the sentence. Bill spent four years in the Air Force, but he also spent time in prison.

Perhaps it won't surprise you to learn Bill Rhodes had an unhappy childhood. He and his six brothers and sisters were raised in a home that emphasized good Christian values and forbade smoking, drinking, and cursing, but did allow child abuse. He was the firstborn of his siblings and was expected to be perfect.

And if he wasn't, he was beaten severely or thrown downstairs. This kind of childhood rarely leads to good outcomes. And Bill, accepting his first job as a contractor killer, predicted a very poor outcome for him indeed. But with circumstances having changed, a new contract had to be negotiated. Mike and Bill wanted more money to kill Art or attempt to kill him the second time around.

On Wednesday, June 15th, Allen handed Dee an envelope containing $2,500, half the new contract price of $5,000. It was a down payment. Apparently because the earlier contract had been canceled, the first advance payment was like a non-refundable airline ticket. When Dee gave the money to Mike Irvine that night, he told her that Allen was expected to accompany them on the hit.

Me and my friend want him along for the ride, he explained. It will give us an edge. He knows the house. He can get us in without problems. So basically, Mike Irvine and Bill Rhodes are down to try the hit again, but this time they're demanding that Allen come along with them.

According to Dee's version of events, this helped her convince herself that there would still be no murder. That Mike and his friend just wanted Alan to show up in person because they figured he'd have the other half of the money and they could steal it from him without killing anyone or even driving to the Target's house. It'd be a ripoff, plain and simple, she told herself. As if saying it might make it so, might will it into truth. So eventually the night of the hit rolled around.

Dee and Alan waited at the IHOP chain smoking and making small talk, waiting for Mike and his friend to pick Alan up. It was a quarter to midnight when Mike Irvine walked in, grabbed Alan, took him back out to the car where Bill was waiting, and the three of them drove off. Dee again began to realize that this murder might really happen, and so she loaded up with more scotch to dull her conscience.

It crossed her mind to call the police at this point, but what could she say? There's going to be a murder and I'm involved? She didn't even know where Art Venetia lived. Feeling helpless, she continued drinking and waited at the IHOP. And then, just 40 minutes later, Mike Irvine's car returned to the parking lot and Alan got out.

Dee looked out toward them and thought it was a good sign that she couldn't see any blood on Alan, but he did seem dazed and limp like a zombie. And when he walked inside, he simply said, "It's over. They really did it." Dee put her hand up to her mouth. She didn't want to hear anymore. She didn't want to know the details. Having just stepped into the identity of accomplice to murder, Dee drunkenly drove home, trying not to imagine what had happened.

And only three people really knew what had happened to Art around midnight on June 18th. But of course, none of them would provide certainty for the record. Every story has three sides: your side, my side, and the truth. In this case, the three sides we have were comically distant from the fourth side, the side of truth. But it is clear that all parties share culpability.

In recounting how the hit went down, when they would later be interviewed by detectives, all three men described themselves as just thieves, at worst completely oblivious to the idea that a murder was meant to take place that night and befuddled as to how someone ended up dead.

Except that the teller personally was innocent and the whole ordeal was a whirlwind of confusion in which Art perhaps accidentally just tripped and fell on Bill Rhodes' razor knife. Throat first. In Mike Irvine's version, we was going out there to rip Bryant off, not to murder anybody. That's a direct quote, just to be clear.

Mike claimed he was basically just a driver and had no contact with Art and just stood in the living room, did nothing and ran back outside to the car while who knows what happened in the other room besides overhearing a guy say, "Don't hurt me." They couldn't even agree on who picked up who in the car and who sat where once in the car.

Bill "The Joker" Rhodes said, quote, "Mike Irvine and Allen Bryant picked me up at the service station when it was actually he and Mike that picked up Allen from the IHOP where he nervously waited with Dee for his ride to the hit." Okay, most beauty brands don't understand fine color treated hair, but Crows does. They have a formula that can address my specific type of hair needs, which makes sense because it's based on me.

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Let's get back into the episode. At the house, his version had Mike leading the way to Art's bedroom saying, come on, let's just get it done. Bill Rhodes said he took one step into the bedroom and was immediately attacked first, getting cut somehow. He claims he was only defending himself through a tussle in the dark when he got one hit in and quote, the guy just went down. Then I heard gurgling sounds, he said. Then he ran outside to the car.

He managed to make no mention of his razor knife or the gurgling sounds being the sound of a man with a cut throat. Bill then claims Mike told him Art was dead and it, quote, made him sick to his stomach.

But then James Allen Bryant's version was the most ridiculous. He claimed Dee called him at 1130 that night and asked him to meet her at IHOP and that he obliged despite knowing why and not asking. In reality, he and Dee had a set time to meet at IHOP and wait for Mike and Bill to pick him up. He claimed he met her outside the back door and she took him directly to a car that had two men in it.

The man in the back seat had a razor or a knife in his hands and they made me get into the car with them, he said. The two men didn't talk to me. They talked in, I don't know, street language, I guess you'd call it. Street language. As if Alan was at home in his study reading with his tea and monocle when two goons broke his door down and hijacked him at gunpoint.

The day after the murder, Allen told Dee, quote, This will stand in stark contrast to his official story after his arrest, where he was never in the bedroom at all, but only got fleeting glimpses of blood and Art's feet from where he stood innocently in the living room with Mike.

But this was all after the arrests and we haven't gotten there yet. I'm only trotting out their official stories now to underscore how ridiculous they are and how dumb these people were. So the next day after Art's murder, Alan took Dee to the murder scene at Art's house. They put Art's body in a wardrobe and then put the wardrobe in the garage. They cleaned up blood and then began to discuss what to ultimately do with the body.

Alan then informed Dee that, surprise, Art's mother, Bessie Fisher, actually lived right there on the property in a little trailer. And double surprise, they have to kill her because Alan was afraid she would find out what they did to her son, Art. Dee does not like this idea. She doesn't like the idea of being a party to the killing of an old lady.

While they discussed this, Dee and Alan moved the wardrobe containing Art's body from the garage to a metal barn on the property, figuring that Mrs. Fisher was much less likely to find him there while they worked out how to get rid of her permanently, or rather while Alan worked out the plan and Dee took care of her, hoping to stall her murder as long as possible, if not prevent it entirely.

Meanwhile, Allen told his employees at the IHOP that Art had gone to North Carolina on business and would not be coming back anytime soon. He also promoted Dee to assistant manager and told the employees she would be managing the day-to-day operations while he scaled back his presence at the Pancake House. So you have to understand, Art...

the owner was around often. So now Alan and Dee have all these employees at IHOP and they somehow have to avoid suspicion and explain Art's absence. And then on top of that, Alan promotes Dee, the one employee who comes to work drunk all of the time, to assistant manager. And so now Dee has found herself trying to find off corporate IHOP.

who were always phoning and asking where their money was for the month while Alan was just stealing it recklessly and disappearing for weeks at a time. Finally, living up to that motive, Alan went on a spending spree, buying a new house and fixings for his new lover, Henry. He was stealing all of the profit IHOP was making.

And all of this while he and Dee continued to disagree about killing Art's mom, who was starting to get suspicious as to where her son was. Alan told her they needed to tie up, quote, loose ends. And old Bessie, she was a loose end. And Dee was very against it. Murder is a big deal, she said. It's not even murder, Alan argued. She's 84. Meanwhile, back at the Pancake House, one of the day shift waitresses approached Dee and told her.

You know, it's none of my business, but I think you should know there's a rumor going around that you and Alan killed Art and dumped his body in a canal or something. Because suddenly, Carlos, the busboy, was driving Art's red pickup truck, which is something Art would have never allowed.

And the cook would later admit to police, oh, sure, it had occurred to me that maybe Alan had put an end to art and ditched his body somewhere, but not with Dee involved. No, nobody could imagine Dee involved in something like that. She was too fine of a lady.

Even though Alan actually did the murder, he was quite offended when Dee told him about the rumors going around at good old IHOP. So Alan called everyone together to sit down for a meeting. And while pacing back and forth like a pissed off football coach about to deliver a tough love pep talk, Alan barked at his staff.

Some of you don't think Art has gone to North Carolina. That's the same as calling me and Dee liars. Isn't that what you're saying? That we're liars? Who thinks we're liars, huh? Who? He then proceeded to call them gossips, ingrates, clucking hens, gutless little snoops who talked behind his back.

I'll tell you right now, Art is in North Carolina and he's left me in charge. I can't be here most of the time, so Dee is in charge. And anybody who doesn't like that can get out of here right now. We don't need you. Dee would later admit, Allen was a wonderful actor. He had them all on the defensive. They were ashamed of themselves, she said. After that performance, you could have brought Art's body in on a stretcher and they still would have believed he was alive in North Carolina.

But the silence of the staff was only that. Silence. And it didn't mean they were all swallowing the story just because Alan was being dramatic. The rumors continued, just more surreptitiously. And one of the cooks paid the price with his job when Alan fired him for spreading more rumors. Ironically, at this time, Alan was taking more money from the restaurant than ever before.

Dee was spiraling with alcohol and stress while Alan was having a blast liquidating Art's assets and spending the money on Henry, partying, and other boys.

Over dinner one night, Dee urged Alan to steal less money. This is going to come back to bite us, she said. But once Dee was good and loaded, Alan got down to the real reason for this particular dinner. Finally settling the issue of Art's lingering mother. It's not really murder, he said again. It's more like a mercy killing. She's so old.

She was so drunk at this point that Dee began to see his logic. Things were getting really bad for her personally. She was struggling in the duties as manager on account of her drinking, and she couldn't pay any of her own bills nor the restaurant's business bills because Alan was stealing everything.

it was around this time that d began making regular drunk phone calls to her adult daughter susan each time revealing more and more about the whole murder plot with alan susan tried to write it off as crazy sloshed ramblings of her mother that she's been listening to her whole entire life but eventually d repeated this story enough times and insisted with enough details that susan was forced to take her mother's claim seriously

Dee pleaded with her daughter, please don't hate me for this. So Dee made another trip to the Amoco gas station to arrange the second murder with Mike Irvine, the murder of Bessie. It was the first week of August 1983. Alan wants you and your friend to kill an old lady, Dee said. She continued, you left us with an awful mess last time. This time we want the body buried too.

Mike told her he can take care of that, but he'd have to get back to her on a price. When he finally did, he quoted a price of $2,500. Does that include burying her? Dee asked. Sure, said Mike. This is a full-service operation here. No extra charge for burying the body. The payment plan was the same as it was for Art's murder. Half up front and the rest when it's done.

When she updated Allen, he said, good girl, and put $1,250 in cash from the IHOP till into an envelope that Dee would deliver to Irvine. By this time, Art's body had been rotting in the barn for six weeks. Body fluids had been oozing through seams in the wooden wardrobe and producing a stench that made a more final solution urgent, especially since there was a second body coming.

They wanted to dig a grave behind the house, but Art's property had solid coral rock beneath the dirt that couldn't be budged with a handheld shovel. They also couldn't get a drill to deal with this because its noise could draw unwanted attention. So that's when they placed the call to Wayne Tidwell's backhoe service and talked to Wayne himself. You remember Wayne? He showed up, dug the pit, and broke a machine while doing so. He was smashing through bedrock.

And then he went on his way. From there, the next plan was for Mike and Bill to kill Art's mother Bessie Fisher on August 6th, exactly seven weeks after Art's murder. Dee explained that Bessie always kept her door locked so Dee would have to get the men in somehow, perhaps maybe by using a ruse. They decided they would drive to the property and claim to be roof repairmen hired by Dee to fix the leaking roof in her trailer.

I want it to be painless, she told Mike. I mean it. I don't want the old lady to suffer at all. The men said, sure, no problem. Bill is an expert in karate, said Mike. He knows just where to hit her so she won't feel nothing. It's a spot right on the back of the neck, ain't it, Bill? Bill nodded.

On Saturday at 5 o'clock, Dee put in an IHOP order for Bessie's last meal and drove to deliver it to her. As Bessie Fisher scooped up her peach cobbler, Dee told her she had hired some repairmen to come fix the roof leak and Bessie should let them in when they arrive. I don't like nobody here, said Bessie. Dee replied, I know, but the roof has to be patched and we don't want you getting a cold.

Bessie thanked Dee for thinking of her, and Dee wanted to get out of there and drink herself into oblivion as soon as possible. As she drove out of the driveway, Mike and Bill were driving in. She said nothing, and Mike winked at her. By the end of the day, Bessie Fisher would be dead. As with the first murder, the killers would later tell two completely different stories about the killing.

According to Bill, Mike Irvine invited him to come make some money doing a roofing job. Bill agreed since he had roofing experience. He didn't bring tools or tar because they were just going to do an estimate. The two men drove over there and passed Dee in her car on the way out as they're coming in. Bill met Bessie at her trailer and she directed him to a ladder so he could inspect where the roof holes are and how bad the damage is.

He went up while Mike held the ladder. He found three or four spots that needed tar and then came back down to explain about them to Bessie. She then mentioned something about the floor in her trailer and had him come inside to see if that could be fixed too. According to Bill, he began surveying the floor and all of a sudden he looked up and saw Mike Irvine behind Bessie and the old lady was gasping for breath and struggling. He allegedly said, "'Hey man, you're effing crazy. I'm getting out of here' and ran out of the door."

I didn't do anything because at the time this happened, I weighed exactly 119 pounds, Bill said. Michael weighed almost 200. I'm not proud of my running out of the trailer, but I knew I couldn't handle Mike. He was too big for me. I'm not the strongest man in the world or the most powerful, but I am smart enough to not get myself killed. I'm terribly ashamed of myself for what happened to that woman, but I am not the cause of her dying."

But then, in the Mike Irvine version of events, it was Bill that came to the gas station and invited Mike to help out on a roofing job. It was Mike himself chatting in a friendly manner with the old lady when Bill snuck up behind her and strangled her with a pair of pantyhose. It's Mike that froze, got out of there, and was afraid when Bill said to him, "You didn't see anything." They both claimed the place only slowly started to look familiar to them after they arrived.

Both men claimed to have not known they were returning to the same house where they had previously, quote, roughed up a guy. Roughed up a guy. On Monday morning, Dee and Alan stopped by the property to make sure Art's mother was buried and were both enraged to see that not only was Bessie still sitting in the kitchen table dead and unburied, but the valuable jewelry of hers was missing as well.

That just added a whole new layer of risk and complication. The next day, Dee went to the gas station to talk to these bumbling, bungling hitmen, but only Bill was there. She really let him have it about the body not being buried and the missing jewelry. But Bill said he never saw any jewelry and he didn't even know they had a second 1250 coming, as Mike had only told him they were splitting the first 1250. So

So it seemed like maybe Mike tried to rip off his partner in crime. Never a good idea. But Bill eventually agreed he would finish the job and bury Bessie. So Dee leaves him, at which point he was absolutely steaming about Mike saying, when I get my hands on that son of a B, I'll kill him. Back at the IHOP, Dee finally worked up the courage to tell Alan that the money situation is getting too dire. But instead of offering her a steady salary, he suggested that she and her family, her husband and sons,

move into Art's house. You know, the one that he and his mother were murdered in? At this point, it was too creepy for Alan to live there, so he and his lover Henry had bought a new house. You don't need more cash, he told Dee. Art's house is perfect for you. It's a great place to raise kids. And amazingly, instead of slapping Alan's head into next week, Dee actually moved herself and her three children into the dead man's house in September of 1983.

Meanwhile, Alan continued to drain IHOP money for gifts for Henry, dresses and scarves for Dee, cocaine, the dog, dinners for his entourage. Alan would soon turn 26 and would soon be, along with Mike, Dee, and Bill, behind bars. It was ultimately IHOP corporate stepping in to repossess the restaurant that set the ball rolling.

First, Dee's nightmare of being out of work came true, but by this point the rumors that had been swirling among the staff had made their way to Metro Dade Homicide Investigators. Can you imagine? Hey, there's a manager and assistant manager at IHOP that we think killed the owner. And once the bodies were unearthed, Dee, Alan, Mike, and Bill were under arrest.

Allen, consummate liar and sociopath, claimed that Henry's ex-boyfriend Felipe had hired a hitman to kill Allen and that he had been forced at knife point to accompany them to the murder scene. Ultimately, Dee, Allen, Mike, and Bill all faced trial together. And what a story it was.

Art was in love with Alan, who was in love with Henry, who himself had a secret boyfriend, Felipe, and cast off to the side like a prime number was Dee, who was in love with Alan, who was gay and a sociopath and was using Dee's friendship with Mike Irvine to find a hitman, Bill. The jury didn't have much sympathy for Dee. All four were found guilty and sentenced to death.

But those sentences were later vacated and each was retried in a separate trial resulting in life sentences. Dee Castille told Gary Provost, who wrote the book Without Mercy, that alcoholism was to blame for her poor decision. That and what she described as a blinding need for love. Dee Castille died in prison in October 2002 from natural causes at the age of 64. And that, ladies and Benjamin, is our story.

I have to say all this discussion of Waffle Houses and Pancake Houses has left me wanting a good old breakfast. And with that, I'll see you next week when we introduce a new topic for our next mini series. Bye.