Episode 196 - Behind The Scenes - The Most Chilling Cases Covered In 2023
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The opinions expressed in the following episode do not necessarily reflect those of the Minds of Madness podcast. Listener discretion is advised. Hey everyone, as we wrap up another incredible year, I wanted to take a moment to express my heartfelt appreciation to our listeners for joining us this year as we covered some pretty unbelievable cases.

Over the past few months, we've explored the darkest corners of the human mind, shedding light on stories that often go untold. Like the case we covered recently about a man who built a secret underground bunker in the woods over the course of eight years. Or the case about a notorious serial killer from Austria who wound up in Los Angeles.

To wrap up 2023, we wanted to also bring you in on some other chilling cases you may have never heard about. So we asked some of our closest podcast friends to tell us about the one case they covered this year that stood out the most to them.

First up, we've got Justin and Aaron from Generation Y, two guys who started out as friends and then launched one of the longest standing and successful true crime podcasts of all time. Well, recently I got the chance to ask them which case from 2023 that they covered that impacted them the most. So Justin, tell me about what case you covered in 2023 that really made an impression on you.

For me, it was the Kalief Browder case.

Aaron had come to me and said he wanted to do a multi-part series and I had been reading up on the Kalief Browder case for, you know, following it for years. So I thought, well, this is a case that we probably can't tell in one part. So it would actually be more conducive, I guess, more appealing to try to cover it in a multi-part series because you have a teenager in New York and he gets

gets arrested based on some witness testimony, and then he is denied bail, and then he's put into Rikers Island for years. And then after Rikers, once he gets released, he has horrible mental health issues. And I think that hit every single thing that I find wrong with our system, whether it's the arrest or the bail system, or putting teenagers in an adult prison or jail.

And then what is the follow up after that and the impacts of incarcerating people and their mental health? And this Khalif story just covers all of those bases for me. So we kind of broke it up into parts with each episode covering one of those aspects of it. And it's heart wrenching because ultimately it ends with Khalif's demise.

And we were able to get Khalif's family lawyer on with us. He was very outspoken and he was quite an animated guy and he had just as much passion about it as anyone else.

It was just an honor being able to be so involved with a story in a case and get real inside information about it from the family's lawyer. It's not something that we do with every case when we're doing a weekly show. So it was really refreshing to dig in deep with that one. As we know, there's a lot of things on the internet that aren't always correct. There's a lot of misinformation and things that are misreported.

And whenever you have a family member or somebody close to the family, a lawyer, whatever, they can always clear all that up for you. And it's nice because I think in the age of social media and the news, everyone wants to be first and they'll report and regurgitate things that aren't true at all. So it's nice. So that is episodes 514 to 517, Kalief Browder.

Alright, Arad, which case did you guys cover in 23 that really left a mark on you? Well, for me, it was the case of Morgan Patton. That was one that was brought to my attention. It's not a case that's ever going to be prosecuted, most likely, even though she ended up dead.

The long and the short of it is that Morgan Patton was newly engaged to her boyfriend, Philip Brandon, who was a Marine. And so she took this incredibly long trip from New Hampshire to North Carolina to see him. But by the time she got there, it would be too late for him to meet up with her because he has to be on base. He can't leave past a certain time. So she decided that she would go get some food.

Now, her parents said, "Look, it's evening time. It's dark. You should probably just stay at the hotel." And she said, "I can see an Applebee's right across the parking lot. It's well lit. I'll be fine."

Well, she goes there and there are a couple of military police Marines there. They keep attempting to speak with her and eventually she agrees to have a drink with them. It just so happens that these Marines and her leave without paying the bill while the employees are not out there. They go in the back and while they're in the back, apparently she and these two Marines leave in a truck with

And then they end up in a horrible accident. Only one person survives, one of these military policemen survives. And his story is that they were going to go shoot at a shooting range. And well, all they had in the vehicle with them was a rifle and five bullets. And this shooting range was at the, it's like at a dead end. And all that's out there is the shooting range and then a forest.

This is where it gets tough. I'm not sure what time the wreck happened. I think it was around midnight. And so, it's very suspicious to me. A lot of people are writing this off saying, "Well, she wanted to go have fun with these two Marines." I mean, that's not who she was. And it's fine if people are like that, if they just meet some people, want to go hang out, have a good time, cool. But that doesn't appear to be what happened here, according to her family, because they know her. And so, it really got my attention. I spoke with her parents on a video call.

And you can just tell this is something that was criminal in their minds, but it's not something that anyone's willing to support them on because in their minds, they say, well, she went willingly with them. We don't know that. We don't know how she ended up in their vehicle, but there were some strange text messages from her to her family.

So if you want to know more, I would check out our episode on Morgan Patton. I personally have said, if you feel like you want to support the family, just send them some supportive message. I know we can't bring someone to justice probably in this case, but you can at least support the family in that way.

So Justin's episode for 2023 actually episodes were 514 to 517. Kalief Browder and Aaron is episode 521. Morgan Patton. So guys, thank you so much for joining us. And we wish you nothing but the best for 2024. And thanks again. Yeah. Best wishes for 2024, Tyler. Awesome. Happy holidays, man.

Next up, we have Heather Ashley from the podcast Big Mad True Crime. Heather and I recently covered a case together about a crooked cop named Drew Peterson, episode 180, Law and Disorder. That's a case that I've been obsessed with since I heard about it. Everybody kind of talks about their true crime origin moment. And that's probably one of the first cases I ever heard that got me into true crime because I always felt like there was...

so much more to it. So I was pretty pumped that we got to do that one together. Yeah, that was, it was absolutely fascinating. And I had never watched the movie with Rob Lowe. And although he didn't look anything like him, he did a really good job of playing him. So tell me about an episode in 2023 that you covered just had a crazy element to it that blew you away.

It's actually in Canada, and I don't get a ton of Canadian cases. I don't know how this case wound up getting in front of me, but it's the case of Elnaz Haj Tamiri. And there are so many twists and turns that if you made a movie about this case, people would complain that it seems too fake. When people say you can't make this up, this is the moment, this is the example that they're talking about.

So Elnaz went missing. She is from the Middle East. She was married to the love of her life. He was amazing. They were both really successful, educated people, but he got this mysterious illness. They actually both got it and she got better, but he died within a matter of days and she was just beside herself with grief. With the life insurance money, she actually built a fourth grade school for girls because where she lived, there was a school for girls.

third grade was about as high as you could ever go. And she was like, I'm not going to stay here, but I want things to be better for women in this village. So I'm going to create a fourth grade school for girls. And then she moved to Canada where her family lived. So she moves there. She gets a job at an import export shipping industry job. That's kind of elusive exactly what company it was. I couldn't even figure that out.

Maybe it's because there's something weird going on. So she goes missing, but she doesn't just go missing. She's at her family's house when three police officers come to the house, go inside, kidnap her, and drag her into a vehicle and take her away.

It was absolutely traumatic for everyone involved. And while the police officers were there, it occurred to everyone in the home, these guys aren't cops. One of them was wearing white sneakers. You're never going to see a cop serving a warrant dressed up as a cop wearing white sneakers. It's never going to happen. One of the family members was able to run away and get some help. But by the time police got there, she was long gone and no one has ever seen her since.

That is wild enough until you find out that previously, about a month prior, she had been in the parking garage of her condo when she was assaulted by two men with frying pans. They assaulted her with frying pans, a frying pan. And it was bad. She had so many stitches just across the top of her head and down her...

the front of her forehead. I mean, she was horribly injured. I mean, it was bad. And her family even posted online, like, if you see her, you'll know because she's still recovering and has this wound going down her head.

So you're like, you're telling me this woman was attacked in a parking garage by two men in a frying pan until a Samaritan heard all of the commotion and scared the assailants off? And now she's missing and has been abducted by three fake cops? What are you saying? After all of that, everybody's like, okay, somebody explain to me what is going on here. Make any of this make sense, but good luck because it's never going to make sense.

Turns out she had a boyfriend. His name was Mohamed Lilo. I guess he also worked in import, export. Again, I could not find an actual company that would have listed them as working for them, but I could find a lot of tech stuff and other strange, bigger, kind of smart companies he'd be involved in. But then you're wondering, why is he being brought up?

Turns out when they broke up, he would come to her house and she would be like, you need to leave. And he's like, nah, I'm good. And wound up having to like, police had to tell him like, you cannot come back here. And so that's the only suspicious person in her life at this point prior to the frying pan attack and the three fake cops kidnapping her. So all things start to kind of trickle back down to him. And he does wind up getting arrested, but it's not for kidnapping. It's not for murder.

But it is suspicious because generally, if someone is legitimately close to a victim and they're mourning what is happening right now and all the unknowns, police aren't going to make a bad day worse just because they can. If they hadn't pressed a charge prior, they're not going to do it at this moment. They're going to give you a minute.

But if he's getting charged now, even though it might not be connected to her kidnapping, it certainly feels like they're trying to put a pause on him for a minute for whatever reason. And Canada is more careful with the information that they release and when they release it than the U.S. is. So I'm used to going, like, it's full trash. Like, we know everything about you. We know what you ate for breakfast. Your friends are in the comments. Anything about Muhammad Lilo was mum. It was so quiet.

And then the two frying pan guys got arrested. So now it seems like there is definitely something going on with Mohammed at this point. More and more people get arrested, but it's never for murder or kidnapping. Eventually, they release the photos of the people that they say are responsible for her kidnapping, and you can't connect any of them.

I went down some deep rabbit holes of all of the people arrested. And I mean, it was just rabbit hole after rabbit hole. But just recently, last month, it was finally announced that Muhammad was charged with first degree murder. All of this is still a huge mystery. But finally, there's some justice coming. There's progress being made in the case and hopefully answers to come as well.

So just to remind you, if you want to hear Heather's episodes, they are number 219 and 220 of Big Mad True Crime.

And now I'm joined by Margo from Military Murder. You heard her voice in episode 156, Operation Miranda, the untold story of Sheryl O'Coro. She read some of the rules that were posted in Leonard Lake's bunker, and she's done episodes with us in the past. It's great to have you, Margo. Thank you so much, Tyler, for bringing me back on the show.

I wanted to know about a case that you covered this year that really made an impact on you. Did it have some kind of detail that you found interesting or something that stuck with you? The case that I covered that I found the most interesting this year was the case of Andrean McDonald. It was out of San Antonio, Texas. And the reason why I found it the most fascinating is one, the case actually began before I started my podcast.

I started my podcast in late 2019 and Andreen, she went missing in early 2019 and then her body was recovered in mid 2019. So I remember when I was coming up with my podcast, Military Murder, I was coming up with like a list of cases for the future that I could cover. And I remember her being on my list.

But it wasn't until 2023 that her case was fully wrapped up because her husband had been arrested and he never made a statement to police. So when the trial began in early 2023, it was fascinating because while perpetrators don't normally take the stand, in this particular case, Andrean's husband, Andre, who was a major in the United States Air Force at the time, he took the stand and

And he basically admitted to murdering her and then disposing of her body near their home. But because he said he did it in self-defense, he was acquitted of first-degree murder and subsequently convicted of manslaughter. So it was completely fascinating to just see the entire case play out in the courtroom and then just kind of figure out what the jury was thinking when they came up with their verdict.

Because the jury doesn't always hear everything that has happened in a case. There's so many motions that go on and so many things that don't come in. And then you never really know what someone's going to say if they take the stand. So him getting up there and taking the stand was just very interesting. He was a little bit cocky in my personal opinion, but the jury really ate it up.

The one thing that a defendant never wants to do when they take the stand is basically talk back to the prosecutor because then you just seem like you're defiant. In this particular case, he doubled down. So whenever the prosecutor had a question for him that was kind of not requiring an answer, he would basically give his yes or no answer and then give an explanation instead of waiting for his attorney to come up and ask for that explanation.

I think the twist is that before Andreen went missing, so she had been missing for various months, like a week before she went missing, she told her friend, because she was a business owner, but she told her friend, if I ever go missing, it's because my husband did something to me.

So then for her to make that statement and then for him to say, I killed her in self-defense, it just doesn't jive. And so that's why it was a little bit interesting. But the jury seemed to believe his version of events, even though the victim was not here to speak for herself. I think this particular case, what was interesting too, was because they harped on him being in the Air Force. I feel like if he was just...

a regular civilian without a military connection and without being a military officer, maybe they wouldn't have given him as much credibility or maybe he wouldn't have had as much credibility. But in this particular case, which kind of goes to my podcast, Military Murder, because they just kept harping on, oh, you're a major in the United States Air Force. Oh, and you've received this award and you've received this award.

So they basically bolstered his credibility on the stand. And so now you have a jury who's sitting here thinking, can a major in the United States Air Force really premeditate murder? Officer cases are very rare. And in this particular case, he took the stand and people believed him. So I definitely recommend you check out the episode Margot released on March 20th. And the title of the episode is San Antonio and Dreen McDonald.

And now we're joined by Jamie Rice from Murderish. She's been a great friend of mine, and you should remember her from episode 190 that we just released a little while ago. And it was Hollywood Horror, The Murder of Hervé Medellín. And yeah, Jamie, we have been talking about doing an episode for years. First of all, hello. It is so nice to see your face. You are truly my podcast bestie. And I hope you know that. Yes, thank you. I feel the same.

Yes, we have been talking about collabing for six years, as long as we've both been podcasting. And yet it took us that long to do it. But you know what? It was totally worth the wait. Yeah, yeah, that episode was fantastic. It's such a great case to cover because where you used to work, you could literally see the Hollywood sign right where it happened.

I got chills when I read the script you sent over because I was like, I used to drink my morning coffee and get settled into work each day and look at the Hollywood sign. And just to think about the fact that there was a head in a bag.

you know, on the hiking trail near the Hollywood sign right there where I would look over every day. It's just totally eerie. One of the really, I would say, most important elements of the episode in itself was that you actually got in touch with Lauren Kornberg, the dog walker whose dog she was walking discovered

her vey, or at least in this case, his head. But you got to talk to her. I was so shocked, first of all, that she even responded. I mean, I just found her on Facebook.

So I sent the message. I thought she's never going to respond, but of course it's worth it. And she responded pretty quickly, although she was traveling at the time. So she's like, you know what, let's talk when I get back. And I was like, okay, she's not going to do it. But shockingly, she agreed to it. She was a wonderful wealth of information. She said she really doesn't do interviews. She declines almost all interviews since she did her last one. So I felt like we kind of got lucky to talk to her.

Yeah, that was amazing that she got onto the show and it was great listening to her.

So we're looking back at 2023, and I want to know about a case that you covered this year that really left an impact on you, whether it was an element of the case that was super interesting, or if it's something you produced that just, you know, stuck with you after it was done. Yeah, you know, I already know which case I'm going to say, but like, you know, there's just to your point, there's certain cases that

that just leave a mark. They give you a different feeling that you can't describe. You know, I covered the case of Gabriel Fernandez years ago, and I will never, never, never forget that case. But the case that I covered this year is actually an episode that I just recorded a couple days ago after recovering from the flu, and it'll probably come out tomorrow, but that's the Tupac Shakur case. And the reason I say the Tupac case stood out the most is

is because it gave me that indescribable feeling as I recorded it, as I wrote the script, because his music was really the soundtrack to my life at very pivotal moments in my life when I was

A teenager, you know, turning into a young adult, trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my life, hanging out with friends, getting into trouble. Like, you know, I'm a 90s kid. I'm a Gen Xer. And so this case is one that I have followed since day one. I will always remember where I was when the news came out that he had been shot and killed. And I think a lot of people are like that. It's kind of like when you hear the OJ verdict. I don't know. For some reason, I always remember that.

where I was when I heard that as well. What you were doing. Yeah. I was at work. Yeah. So you remember that. And, you know, unfortunately the nine 11 attacks, I'll always remember where I was, you know, when that happened. So the Tupac case, you know, I got chills and I actually teared up at several moments because I just have such a deep, deep love for his music. And it makes me sad to think about, we missed out on so many decades of Tupac,

amazing music and artistry that could have come out of this guy, but he was killed at the age of 25. And I'm fully aware that he was a controversial figure and he was convicted of, you know, a heinous crime. So, you know, him as a person, he was controversial to say the least. But I will just say that his music is

touches me deeply this case definitely stood out to me and there's been some recent developments you know in 2023 an arrest was made and so that is what prompted me to cover the case

So what new information that you present in your episode that you really find interesting? So the Tupac case, you know, it's been ongoing. Well, it seems like it was kind of dead, you know, pretty quickly after it happened. Pardon the pun. But it picked up this year because there was an arrest that was made, an arrest of a man who was formerly a member of the gang, the Crips. His name's Dwayne Davis, but he goes by Keefy D.,

He was arrested this year. And a lot of people are like, well, why did it take so long? Why is it just now that the Las Vegas police have made this arrest? And this case is kind of picking up steam. But that's really what resonated with me is that there's actually movement after this.

This all happened in 1996. So it's been almost three decades since Tupac was murdered, and there's just now an arrest being made. And people who have been interested in this case for so long have been wondering what happened, who did this,

Also, the fact that the person who was arrested is somebody who's not unfamiliar to all of us who've been following this case. Keefie D has been on the radar since almost day one. And also, interestingly, Keefie D is the only person who's alive

or not in prison, well, now he's in jail. But he's the only person really to have survived out of the four person. There was a white Cadillac where the gunfire came from. Somebody pulled the trigger from a white Cadillac. And there were four people in that car. He's the only one who is alive to talk about this case today. Everybody else died in, I think, gang violence.

Well, I will definitely be listening to that because that is the case that I as well did follow. I mean, I think just about everybody from our generation, everybody knows Tupac's music. Yeah, absolutely. And his death was just so shocking. So we'll see. We'll see how it goes. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. And that's episode 150, Tupac Shakur, New Developments, Old Suspect.

Thank you so much for joining us and we wish you all the best for 2024. And I know we'll be talking again soon. Right back at you, Tyler. Thanks for having me on.

And now we're joined by Brandon from Music City 911. You may remember him from our Christmas episode last year, episode 145, The Nashville Bombing. He had talked to me about doing that collaboration for a while and we finally got around to it. And of course, it was the perfect case for Christmas. Wouldn't you agree? Absolutely. Yeah, it's Christmas morning. It happened right then. And I have to say that was probably the best choice for an episode for a Christmas episode if you're doing true crime because it was epic.

Absolutely madness. And nobody got hurt except for the perpetrator. Yeah, that's right.

The only person that really got, I mean, he got killed, but he was the only person that really got any serious injuries. There were some small things that happened to the police officers and a couple of people as far as, you know, loss of hearing, but past that, no injuries. And if you haven't listened to the episode, Brandon is a 911 operator in Nashville, and he was actually working that day when that event took place. Yeah, it was a great episode. Yeah.

So I want to know, tell me about a case that you produced this year that really, really left its mark on you. Well, one of the ones I've covered on my show this year that kind of did all the things you mentioned and put past that too was an incident, another one that I actually worked. It wasn't like your big time criminal cases where it was like a mass murder or anything like that. This was a carjacking. But the way that it all rolled out was really interesting.

911, what's the address of your emergency?

Hello? I'm at Project. The car is on the car. Send me the address where you're at. She's on the traffic line. I'm trying to find her. Can you hear? Ma'am, listen to me. Try to calm down, okay? Okay. I'm going to ask you some questions. What's the kind of car that was taken? A Dodge Challenger. What color? It's a gray. Okay. Which way did they go? Go.

Later on in the same day I was working, it was about five hours after the call came in, another person calls in and it's kind of hard to understand them because they had a broken English

But they had just called about a car that matched the description. It was a silver Dodge Challenger and had the same plate number and everything like that as the victim of the first one. They were wanting a key made. This person was calling in was a locksmith. They were wanting a key made for this car they had stolen.

The locksmith himself, he actually knew that there was something wrong with it because there were guns in the car. There were two license plates in the back seat. The person that called had their face masked up, and this was well after COVID. This actually took place in 2021 when it happened. So he was just trying to mask up.

mask his face up. So for me with that, as soon as I started hearing the details about it, I'm taking, I've taken both calls at this point. I just kind of sat straight up in my seat and knew exactly what was happening. And at that point, police had actually started going to the scene to where this, these suspects were, but they did not do a normal, just run in and try to catch them that way because they

suspected them in other crimes, other carjackings, things like that. They actually stayed kind of covertly, just barely off. It was in an apartment complex, keeping them within eyesight. And they brought in everybody. They brought in SWAT team. They brought in a canine unit. They had the helicopter up. I mean, it was...

huge event and I actually worked the radio portion of it as well. As soon as I saw what they were doing, I called a supervisor and said, hey, I'd love to work this because I've been involved in every step of the way. I want to finish it out.

towards the end of it they you know rushed in they got all the stuff to do there were three of them and you know that's one thing it's just that they got them for the carjacking they had a few other charges on them as well theft of motor vehicle over ten thousand dollars joy riding things like that they had a lot of that stuff but you know i've said on a couple of my episodes that the whole criminal lifestyle it's it's kind of like being a crab fisherman or a

or something like that, you know going in that you have a risk. There's a risk of injury or death, and it's the same way with being a criminal.

and one of these criminals that was the car, one of the carjackers, about a year later, he actually got killed himself. He was involved with a robbery where he beat this guy. And about a year after the fact, he was in a gas station just standing there. And the guy that he beat up and robbed walked in with a gun drawn and shot him. After he fell to the ground, he kept shooting and ended up killing him. Can you tell us the title of that episode? It's

It's called Our Beloved Cars. Do an entire episode about car-related crimes, and that was the end part of that episode. It's a pretty good episode to listen to. I highly suggest everyone listening to it. It's a lot of fun. And since you don't use episode numbers, when was the date it was released? November 9th, 2023. All right. So the episode is called Our Beloved Cars. Definitely check out Brandon's podcast if you haven't already. MusicCity911.com.

We did an episode together, 145, the Nashville bombing. If you haven't heard that, you got to listen to it. It is pretty crazy. Brandon, thank you so much for joining us. And we wish you the absolute best for 2024. And I'm sure we'll be working together again. Oh, absolutely. And thank you for having me on. Same to you guys too. And now we're going to talk to Shane and Wendy from Foul Play.

You might remember Shane from episode 129, The Redheaded Murders, where Shane talked about his work on covering a forgotten serial killer case from the early 80s. And Shane, that was probably one of our best received episodes. The work you did with the high school students and everything, you know, the passion that you brought to that investigation was not lost on our audience. And I got to tell you, it was amazing doing that episode with you. And

I'm not going to give away any spoilers, but you are involved in a series we are going to be doing in 2024, which we are very excited about. Yeah, Tyler, I'm really excited about it. You mentioned the redhead murders and even just here in front of me, I have one of the crosses that I put up for one of the women who I was able to help identify. So it's just a quick reminder of the type of work that we're doing as podcasters is quite important.

And yeah, so we are working together on a series for your show for next year. And just like in the Redhead murders, you have a woman who was murdered and largely forgotten about.

So I'm super excited for people to hear her story. Yeah. And it's two years in the making, this series is, which is absolutely crazy. When considering sometimes episodes are done in a couple of weeks and you just don't know what's going on in the background with other shows. And we all have these projects where we just put so much time and energy into and hopefully try to do the family's justice and the victim justice in these episodes. Yeah.

In fact, we're going to play a teaser for that right now. They could not get me out of that closet. I think I was in there for like three or four hours. And anytime they'd open the door, I would just scream at the top of my lungs because I was immobilized with fear. At first, it was just, my mom's gone. And then it became, you know, your mom was taken by a bad man. They found video of him killing women.

He buried these 11 women and kept going out there. He made a road going out there. The cops don't care or nothing to them.

dumped her like a piece of garbage, you know? I don't see anything that screams there's two people doing this. I never thought anything was going to come of this case, ever. We'll share some more details with you about that series a little later. But for now, let's get back to Shane and Wendy.

So tell me about one of the cases you covered in 2023 that really impacted you. The case that was most fascinating was also the most emotional. Not because I knew the victim behind the case, but because someone who was related to the victim is my best friend, Wendy, who is also my co-host of the podcast.

Wendy and I met at CrimeCon in Nashville, and we've become very good friends. And just talking about this case makes me very emotional.

Because Sharon Birchwood, who is at the center of the case, is by all means just like the person that Wendy is. She was a very bright woman. She was larger than life. She was loved. And she was colorful. And that is everything that I love about Wendy. So...

To know that someone hurt Sharon is, in my mind and in my heart, it feels like someone would hurt Wendy, and that hurts. And so this was a very emotional season, and it was also a very powerful season because it was a season that Wendy did herself as a family member of a victim herself.

Wendy was able to interview her relatives. We were able to present a season that puts forth the victim's family side of the story. So we're not just talking about one episode. You're talking about an entire season you did. Yeah. Foul Play, we present cases in only seasons. So this season was based on Sharon Birchwood's case.

Okay. And that's season 15? Yes. And we released it on the 15-year anniversary of her murder to the day.

So Sharon was murdered on the 4th of December 2007 in Surrey in England. We found out later that, well, she was strangled with an electrical cord that was found in her house. She was tied up and then she was left in her bedroom covered in clothes and all the heating was on, I think, to try and speed up decomposition.

She was found by her ex-husband three days later and he called the police. You can hear the 999 call on the episode. It later transpired that actually her ex-husband had hired a hitman. First of all, we didn't realise they were divorced, so that was a bit of a shock that they had been divorced 20 years. He had another family we knew nothing about. And then her ex-husband, who had made the 999 call, actually had hired a hitman to murder her.

And that hitman was an English guy who happened to be living in Thailand at the time of the murder. He was flown over and George, who is my aunt's ex-husband, actually put him up in his mother's house for the few days he was in England to murder Sharon. And then the police carried out an amazing investigation and we were lucky enough to get the interviews from the police.

So we were lucky enough to be able to get interviews from them about the case and what happened and how they investigated it. But basically it boiled down to the guy had stayed in the mother's house. He'd used a glass in the bathroom. He left some DNA. He happened to be on the police database. They tracked him down to Thailand and the UK government had to extradite him back to England.

We did eight episodes and it's kind of a combination of the police telling us about the investigation and then us as family saying what was happening to the family at the same time. Because I think that often gets forgotten of, you know, the police investigation is great, but what was actually happening to us alongside this. So it tells our story as well as the police telling us exactly what they did.

You can tell when you listen to the series, Wendy narrates it and you can hear her voice breaking in most of it. And even just listening to it when you don't know Wendy, I think it will make you feel emotional. I will add one more thing. When Sharon was found, she was also found with a stamp in her hand.

And the stamp helped them realize the time of death, around the time that she would have been murdered. And the stamp, it came from an envelope that her mom had sent her. It was from a Christmas card, I believe. And I just think that such a beautiful sentiment that the last thing that she would have seen was a Christmas card from her mom. But also how emotional would it be to be in that scenario?

But it also goes to show me that how humanizing is that moment in all of these moments. And as storytellers, Tyler, I think that that is something that we take away from all of our stories. And for Wendy, you know, she comes at these stories as a family member who has gone through this and we have not. But through those humanizing elements,

You know, we've all received beautiful Christmas cards from our moms and grandmas and our aunts. And every time I receive one now, I always think of Sharon Birchwood receiving one from her mom. And that was the last thing that she probably saw, you know? And just to remind you, that's season 15 of Foul Play, and it's titled My Aunt and the Hitman. Thank you, Shane and Wendy, for taking some time to talk to us.

And now I'm joined with Esther from the podcast Once Upon a Crime. Esther and I have been friends for ages. And we've been talking about doing a collab episode. And we finally got around to it this year. And we covered in episode 167, the Long Con, the murder of Mi-Kwin Chung. And an interesting thing about this episode was not only did we produce it together, but

But when we went to CrimeCon UK, we took this case and turned it into a live show. And we presented it at CrimeCon UK, which was my first live show I've ever done. Yeah, that was really cool. Like you said, we've been talking about it forever, kicking it around, you know. And then I think we just both get busy. And finally, we're like, OK, we're going to be at CrimeCon UK. Let's do something. So that worked out great. It was so much fun. And the audience loved it.

But we had a full, we had a pretty full house. It was really, really good. Really fun. It was fantastic. Great experience. And yeah, definitely would do it again in a heartbeat.

So I wanted to ask you about, you know, you've got another year of podcasting complete and tell me about an episode you did that you were really impacted by. Yeah. So I actually ended up releasing this episode, an episode 290 of my show, which we just did 300 episodes not too long ago. So that was amazing. Oh, wow. But 290, I was doing a series called Love Triangles. And these were all about love triangles that ended up in murder.

So this one, it's actually a story that I had known about for years and years and years as one of those ones that stuck with me. And I think it's because there was a TV movie made about it like in 1990. And it came out on television. It was called Killing in a Small Town.

And I always remembered the scene of this where the murder took place in this very small room. It was like a laundry room, kind of like, you know, in the back of the house, back of the kitchen where you have like these storage slash pantry slash laundry rooms. Or like a mudroom. Yeah, like a mudroom. Kind of came from the garage kind of thing. But it was a very small room and there was an axe murder that took place.

in this small room. And that always stuck with me because I thought, can you imagine being stuck in such a small space with somebody wielding an axe coming at you? Like, it was just brutal. So I remembered that scene from this movie and then it turns out it's a true crime story. And this was a story about the murderers

The murder of Betty Gore, who was a housewife in Wiley, Texas. And this happened in 1980. She was just church going, a mom of a young child. She was, I think she was planning to get pregnant again. Her husband worked outside the home. She was a stay at home mom and housewife. And this actually was a friend of hers and a person that she went to church with who was the murderer.

But the thing is, is nobody knew this for a while. Nobody knew who killed her. It was just like this horrible killing in this little town. Why would somebody do this?

So, of course, if you think about the title of the episode, which was called A Deadly Affair, you can kind of figure out why it happened. The reason this came back to me was, again, like I said, I remembered it. It was a case that just stuck with me. And also there was some things that recently came out about it in basic Hollywood versions of it.

There was actually two. And the first one I watched was on Hulu. It was a series called Candy. And this was basically from the point of view of the murderer. Her name was Candy Montgomery, was the murderer. Betty Gore was the victim. And this series came out on Hulu in 2022.

People were telling me, oh, you should watch it, you should watch it. And I'm like, oh, I know that. I know that story. Like you, probably, Tyler, I don't get much time to watch television. And when I do, I usually, I mean, I know this is going to shock people, but I don't watch a lot of true crime unless I get into a mood. We're right about the holiday time. And during the holiday time is when I binge watch all the true crime stuff everybody's been talking about all year. And then

Then I started watching it for whatever reason, and I just got hooked all over again by the story.

All that stuff rolled into it. It was a case I knew, a case I researched and talked about, a case I watched on true crime shows. So talk about being obsessed with something this year. It probably, I would have to say that because of the little bit of television I did watch, I watched everything about Candy Montgomery and, you know, the Betty Gore murder. It is a very interesting story. Even when she decided she wanted to have an affair,

on her husband and came up with all of her ground rules of how she was going to do it. Her whiteboard. Yeah. You have to watch the series and the Hulu series, I think, did it a lot more. I think they both did talk about what the defense presented at the trial as far as her motivation. And that to me is like soundbite.

Sounds like a stretch. You know what I mean? Like that could make her go off. But then again, really, what do we know about what triggers people? Could have been something like that. We don't know. I mean, I like cases that are resolved. And I know you do too, like the cases that are resolved. And we know what happened and we can talk about, you know, that. But even sometimes when they're resolved...

You still are grasping for the motivation because the way that it seemed with this woman, Candy Montgomery, she seemed like you said she came at this affair very methodical. She didn't seem like she was in love with this guy or, you know, like crazy about or crazy jealous or anything like that. It seemed very transactional. Yes, very transactional. That's that's a great way to put it.

And yet she goes off on the wife. You know, it's like, where did that come from? So they had to come up with some idea because she did not come across as a jealous woman who wanted her rival gone at all. She was married as well and had a very nice husband who she loved and wasn't trying to leave him or anything like that. So it's a very, very interesting case even afterwards to

to sit with your friends who like, you know, true crime and say, well, what do you think? Is that why she really did it? Or is there something else here that we're missing? It's an amazing story. And if you want to hear Esther's episode, Love Triangles, A Deadly Affair, it's episode 290 on her podcast, Once Upon a Crime.

Thanks again, Esther, for joining us and we wish you all the best and have a successful and fantastic 2024. Thank you so much for joining us.

I want to thank all my podcast friends for sharing with us and you the cases they covered this year that left their mark on them. I hope you'll check out the full coverage on their episodes. If you missed the names or episode numbers, don't worry. We'll put a link to all the episodes they covered in our show notes for you. But before we officially wrap up 2023, I want to remind you again about the groundbreaking series we'll be releasing in February 2024.

The three-part series is centered on a cold case from nearly 40 years ago that's never been covered by anyone. A case involving serial killers, a burial site where women's remains were found in the desert, exclusive interviews, and information we unlocked during our two-year investigation from hundreds of pages of police reports thought to have been destroyed in a fire. It's

It's by far one of the craziest cases the Minds of Madness has ever covered. Again, set to be released in February 2024. A three-part series you won't want to miss.

So from all of us at Team Madness, we want to wish you a happy, healthy, and safe 2024. We've been doing this for seven years now, and I really want to thank you for sticking around. So from all of us, to all of you, happy holidays, everyone.

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