My Bloody Valentine, Part One
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Happy February. My name is Kristen Sevey, and this is a special episode of Murder, She Told. For the Halloween season, I did a fun collab with 31 other podcasters to bring you a two-part special of spooky stories to get you in the Halloween mood. The collaboration was put together by my friend Shane at Foul Play Crime Series, and we're doing it again. Except this time it's a little bit shorter, and it's around a new theme, Valentine's Day.

This special two-part episode brings you different stories told by different podcasters, each one in their own voice, and my story you've never heard before on Murder, She Told. So check out the other podcasters, be sure to follow their show, grab a Valentine's treat, and enjoy. This is My Bloody Valentine, Part 1. Oh, hey. It's good to see you. I'm Shane Waters, the host of Foul Play Crime Series.

And tonight on this special Valentine's Day two-part episode, I'm going to ask you the age-old question: Will you be my Valentine? If you find it agreeable, we will explore the history behind this romantic day. And 14 podcaster friends of mine will be joining us throughout our trip to share crime stories of love gone wrong. So, what do you say? Welcome to My Bloody Valentine. Here, let's take a seat in this restaurant.

I had to make reservations way ahead of time to get us in. The atmosphere is really nice, the candle lighting and romantic music, while we wait for our food and my first friend to show up with our first story. I'll fill you in on some details about Valentine's Day. It of course occurs every February 14th, and candy, flowers, and gifts are often exchanged in the name of St. Valentine. Now I really want some candy chocolates. Oh hey Kristen.

Kristen is the host of Murder, She Told. I'll let you take it from here with our first story of the night. The box was perfectly delightful, wrapped in brown paper with the prettiest pink satin ribbon. Mary Dunning wondered who would send her such a gift in the mail. There was no return address. The only clue was the smudged ink of the postmark, San Francisco. Mary was across the country in Dover, Delaware, but she had lived in the Golden City in years past.

The pink satin slipped off and beneath the wrapping was a box of chocolates. Pretty little dark colored bonbons sitting on a brand new lace handkerchief. Somebody forgot to remove the tag and Mary couldn't help but notice it came from the luxury department store, City of Paris. Somebody wanted to spoil her. But who? Inside, there was a handwritten note that said simply, with love to yourself and baby, Mrs. C.,

Mary assumed it was most likely a thoughtful surprise from her friend, Mrs. Corbally, who knew Mary adored candy. But Mary curbed the urge to spoil her appetite with a treat and decided to bring them to a dinner gathering later that night at her sister's home.

Two days later, on August 11th, 1898, both Mary and her sister were dead and three others from the party followed. All five had suffered a slow and agonizing death, hallucinations and delirium, severe stomach pains, and violent sickness. Household remedies had no effect. The doctors thought it was food poisoning, but curiously, not everyone from the party got sick, just the five who fancied the chocolate.

Mary's father, who was a former congressman for Delaware, had a chemist analyze the chocolate and discovered that they contained a large amount of arsenic. Who poisoned the chocolates? Better yet, who sent them? And who was Mrs. C.?

The woman on the bench intrigued 32-year-old John Dunning. There was something magnetic about her. She was 41, a former vaudeville actress, and wasn't like the other women in San Francisco. She was fun, free, easy.

She liked to gamble, drink, and hang out with the boys at the brothel. Her name was Cordelia Botkin, and despite the buttoned-up society lady's disdain for promiscuity, she knew the power she had over men, and Cordelia wanted John Dunning. It didn't take long before John and Cordelia were tangled up with one another, literally and physically. Both were married.

Cordelia was separated from her husband, but John's wife, Mary, was oblivious to the affair. The adulterous duo commiserated over their partners and grew closer over late nights, booze, and gambling. John worked for the Associated Press as a seasoned reporter and often had assignments overseas. His long absences put stress on his marriage. Mary and John were only hanging on by a thread.

But around 1895, when Mary found out about Cordelia, she ended it. Humiliated that apparently all of San Francisco knew about this affair except her, she left him to be with her family in Delaware. With Mary out of the picture, John and Cordelia were free to do as they pleased. But John had picked up some new habits. Heavy drinking and gambling.

He had racked up a huge gambling debt, so he stole $4,000, which is about $144,000 today, from his employer to pay it off. When the AP found out, they fired him.

After about three years of love and lust, when the world was on the verge of the Spanish-American War, the AP hired him back. They needed a veteran reporter stationed in Cuba to cover it. This was John's wake-up call. He cut it off with Cordelia and told her that he wanted to get back with Mary after he returned. Cordelia was devastated. She begged him not to go, but he told her he would not be returning to San Francisco.

While John was stationed in Cuba, Mary had been receiving handwritten letters in the mail from San Francisco from an anonymous author. They detailed John's sordid affairs around town with, quote, an extremely attractive woman, and the mystery writer urged Mary not to take John back. The letter sat in a drawer until after Mary's death when her father discovered them during the investigation.

John had returned to Delaware after learning what happened, and Mary's father confronted him with the letters. John admitted to everything the letters said, and he also recognized the handwriting. It was Cordelia's. When he was shown the note inside the chocolate box, he was stunned. It matched Cordelia's handwriting. His mistress had murdered his wife, and the four other people who had also died were innocent bystanders.

Meanwhile, investigators in San Francisco identified the brown paper and pink ribbon as the signature wrapping of a local chocolatier, George Ha's Confectionary. They spoke with a clerk who remembered an odd encounter with a short, stout woman with dark hair. He sold her half a box of candy, and she claimed that she was filling the rest of it with her own homemade chocolates.

Police tracked down the post office clerk who accepted the package, the department store saleswoman who sold her the lace handkerchief, and finally, the drugstore clerk that sold her the arsenic. All four workers described a woman who looked like Cordelia. In her hotel room, police discovered leftover paper wrapping from the candy store, and Cordelia was arrested on murder charges.

There was a legal argument about who had jurisdiction in this strange case. The victims had died in Delaware, but Cordelia sent the poisoned chocolate from California. But it was settled that the trial would be held in California in December of 1898, four months after the crime was committed.

The media couldn't get enough of Cordelia Botkin and her scandalous lifestyle. This was the trial to end the century. She pled not guilty, and though she did admit to buying the arsenic, she insisted it was for cleaning purposes only. The jury disagreed, found her guilty, and sentenced her to life in prison.

A year or so later, the judge from her trial spotted Cordelia out and about in San Francisco. He launched an investigation and discovered that she may or may not have been trading favors for privileges with the guards. When word got back to her about the investigation, she claimed that it wasn't her, but a lookalike, and that the judge was mistaken.

While these shenanigans were unfolding, Cordelia's legal appeal, too, was playing out. The Supreme Court of California agreed with her attorneys that her trial judge had given improper jury instructions and overturned the ruling, sending it back to the DA if they wanted to try her again. After many delays, she was tried again and convicted again.

And though nine voted for her to be hanged, the jury had to be unanimous to impose the death penalty. So in 1904, she was sentenced once again to life in prison.

Though not culpable in any legal way, John was the one who brought Cordelia into their lives and invited her wrath. If anyone, it was he who deserved her ire. But he escaped justice. He even got his job back, at least until the trial ruined what little reputation he had left.

And what a tragedy it was that Mary's generosity with the chocolates condemned four others as well. Their deaths, too, were on John's head. Cordelia was an incorrigible hustler. She tap-danced throughout her life, twisting and warping narratives to bend people to her will. But the iron bars and cinder block walls of San Quentin State Prison could not be conjoled. And after 10 years of incarceration at the age of 56...

Cordelia Botkin drew her last breath. Carnivals are a popular place to go for a romantic getaway. Strolling down the aisles, playing the games to win prizes, and riding the rides. Like my all-time favorite, the zipper. I picked us up some cotton candy. Oh look, there's Cambo, buying a corndog. Cambo is the host of True Crime Island.

It's Valentine's Day 1994. Two women are found dead in a burning massage parlour in Sydney. Grab a beer and pull up a deck chair. So my Valentine's case is from 1994, Gladesville, Sydney, Australia. So usually Valentine's Day is where loving couples go and spend a load of cash, maybe book a fancy restaurant, give gifts or whatever. They usually don't order a hit on their significant other.

But we'll get to that later. Now, firemen are called to Four Flagstaff Street, Gladesville at around 7.30pm on Valentine's Day. This is the location of Kerry's Oasis, a massage therapy business owned and run by 36-year-old Kerry Pang and her de facto husband, 57-year-old Mark Lewis.

It wasn't the sort of place you'd go for a sports injury. It was more of a rub-and-tug, happy-ending massage parlour. Mark Lewis, he ran a similar place up the road at West Ride.

When the firemen gain entry to the burning building, they check one room and they find the dead body of a woman that would be identified as 25-year-old Fatima Ozanol, shot three times in the head. Further towards the back of the premises where the fire was burning was an office. Inside was a woman that they dragged out into the hallway thinking she may still be alive. But on closer inspection, she was already dead.

She would be identified as the owner, Kerry Pang, and she had suffered 18 stab wounds to her head, neck and body, had been shot in the eye and her throat had been slashed. The fire was extinguished and police called.

Mark Lewis, he arrives at the scene from his massage parlour in West Ryde and when he saw what was happening, he had to be restrained by police and firefighters from entering the building. He was screaming, oh Kerry, Kerry, and he ended up collapsing.

As is the procedure, Mark being a de facto would be interviewed by investigators about his movements that afternoon. Now he tells police he called Kerry to come to his massage place to pick him up as he wasn't feeling well. Kerry did go and get him, but they ended up driving back in separate cars back to Kerry's oasis.

When there, he said he was going to leave his .22 caliber rifle, which was in the back of his van, at Kerry Oasis's office. But as they both reached the front door, he changed his mind and he put it back in his van. Then he drove back to his massage parlor. He also mentioned to investigators how he had received a call earlier that afternoon from a caller that said he was going to kill Kerry.

Now, Lewis said he got back to his massage parlour at around 7pm. Now, police searched his car that he had on the night, the Tarago van, and indeed they found a .22 calibre rifle in a rifle bag. Inside the bag were a couple of blood spots as well as some on the outside of the bag. Now, Mark Lewis's clothes were taken and his shorts also had a blood spot on them.

Autopsy on the women showed they had been shot by .22 caliber rounds and empty shell casings found on the site were also .22 caliber. Lewis's rifle was tested but wasn't a match for the recovered rounds nor were any of his other seven rifles matched what was found at the scene. Now one strange piece of evidence found at the scene was a small nose piece from a pair of spectacles.

Now, when police checked out Mark's story, they found that most of it was probably true. The timeline, though, was out by about an hour, according to other witnesses and phone records. Now, this put him at the scene of the crime just before the firemen were called and when the women had probably been killed. But although the blood spots on the rifle bag and on Mark's shorts would match Kerry Pang's,

They lived and they worked together. So it really didn't hold that much weight. So the case sort of went cold. Even though they had suspicions about Mark Lewis, they didn't have enough evidence to charge him.

Then just over a couple of years later, Lindsay Rose, a small-time crook, was drinking in a pub with a mate and happened to mention how he killed these women on Valentine's Day and had killed others. Now, Rose called himself the Mechanic after the Charles Bronson 1972 movie where Charles plays the part of a hitman called the Mechanic who wants to retire, but some young guy wants to learn the trade and becomes his apprentice.

Lindsay Rose goes on to tell his mate he had an apprentice on the night called Donnie. Well, this mate at the pub was actually a police informant and tipped off investigators about what Rose had told him. Investigators found the apprentice Donnie, who immediately confessed and grasped out Rose.

Donnie's name was actually Ron Waters, an out-of-work tattoo artist. And his story was that Lindsay Rose had approached him at the pub and asked if he could help him out as he needed to talk to this woman at a massage joint. But if they saw him, they wouldn't let him in. Rose told him that all he had to do was knock on the door and when they opened it, he would step in and talk to this woman.

Rose offered Ron 500 bucks, which was big money back then, especially for an out-of-work tattoo artist.

Ron said he and Rose went to Kerry's Oasis at around 7pm. Ron knocked on the door as planned and it was opened by Fatima. Then Rose rushed in, silenced pistol in hand and manhandled Fatima into one of the massage rooms, telling her if she did what he asked, she'd be fine. Then Ron shouted out to Rose, alerting him to the fact that he could see two people approach the entrance.

As they were about to open the door, Rose put three rounds into Fatima's head and waited as the door opened. It was Kerry, and as she entered, Rose grabbed her and a struggle broke out. Kerry fighting as hard as she could, managing to hit Rose and break his spectacles, which landed on the ground. Behind her was Mark Lewis with a rifle. Now,

Ron saw the gun immediately and he lunged at Lewis, pinning him to the ground. Now, while still fighting with Kerry, Rose yells out to Ron, hey, that's the guy that's paying for the job.

Now, Kerry ended up breaking free of Lindsay and tried to escape by running out to the back office. But this was in vain. Lindsay caught up with her. He stabbed her 18 times, shot her in the eye and slashed her throat. He then set fire to the office and left with Ron in one car while Mark left to go back to his massage parlour in the van. Now, when police finally found Rose, they asked him about a 1984 double murder.

And he confessed straight away. They then asked him about the murder of Kerry and Fatima. And again, he confessed immediately. Investigators had also gone around to optometrists in the area and had found Rose had dropped a pair of spectacles in for repair just after Valentine's Day in 1994.

Now, Rose said that Mark Lewis had been on to him for months to kill Kerry, and when he finally upped the amount to $20,000, he agreed to it, so he would just shut up about it. Now, Mark Lewis also supplied the pistol.

So now the cops had the real story of what went on that Valentine's night and now they had enough evidence to charge Mark Lewis for murder. In the end, Lindsay got five sentences for five people he confessed to killing and his file was marked never to be released. Mark Lewis got 18 years for Fatima's murder and life for Kerry.

Now Ron, Ron Waters, well he got 18 months periodic detention as he really had no idea what was going to happen that night. He was tricked into it and he did confess as soon as he was arrested. So why did Mark Lewis arrange a hit on his de facto wife with five kids, one of them being his own? Well he didn't like her working at the massage parlour. He probably suspected her of boning some of the customers, so he had her killed.

Too gutless to do it himself, he got his hitman mate to do it for him. Fatima just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was the mother to a six-year-old girl. And why was Kerry so brutally murdered? 18 stab wounds, shot in the eye and a throat slashed? Usually this would be done by someone in a crime of passion.

Well, Rose had once been in a relationship with Kerry and they'd broken up on bad terms. Such a tragic Valentine's. Okay, so that was a very brief version of the case. And have a very happy Valentine's Day. Often, couples go on a meditation date together to relax and bond. And maybe for some of us, try not to fall asleep. You see, the trick is don't close your eyes all the way.

Here, try it with me. Close your eyes, but not all the way. Breathe in deeply and intently. Now, breathe out. Isn't that better? Did you feel all your life stress fall away? Now, let's hear another terrifying story about love gone wrong. This one is from my good friends, Jerry and Tracy from the Hillbilly Horror Stories. I have a very unique story.

Valentine's Day ghost story for us. Oh, cool. I like those. All right, so we're going to go back to midnight on Thursday, February 14th, 1867. There was two lovers that stood on the bridge in Sefton Park, Liverpool, England. Their names were William Roberts and Alice Harwood. They both knew, though, that very soon...

That they were going to have to go their own separate ways in life because William's stern middle-class parents had pressured him into an engagement with a wealthy heiress. So he wasn't feeling it then? No, he wasn't feeling it. But this is the 1860s, so you did that kind of stuff back then. So they're on this bridge. It's midnight. You can hear the clock in the background and it chimes the 12th hour.

William tearfully told Alice that their three-year affair would have to end for the sake of his future bride. She was heartbroken. Oh, I bet she was. Alice didn't say anything. She just kind of stared off at the reflections of her and William in the waters below, and then she suddenly turned and kissed him with tears streaming from her eyes. Before parting, though, Alice said in a trembling voice...

William, will you grant me one last favor? The only one that I'll ever ask of you on this earth. And William waited for her request. As he looked, she said, promise to meet me here 12 months from tonight at this exact same time, the same hour. William wasn't really big on that suggestion because, you know, he's getting married and stuff.

But somehow deep in his heart he knew that he had to see his first real love at least one more time. And so, in a broken voice, he replied, "I will come one year from today." Well, good. The year dragged by and exactly 12 months later William and Alice were reunited on that same bridge. But William told Alice that things were a little bit different now. He's married and he no longer cared for her in a romantic way.

Like he did beforehand. Well, despite William being as honest as he could with her, Alice was still deeply in love with him and before they left that night, she begged him for one more final reunion at the bridge in one year. Again, on February 14th at midnight. William said that that would be impossible. He certainly had no intentions of jeopardizing his loyal relationship that he had with his wife.

Even though he came to this one. Oh, well, that's true. He was okay with that. Well, but he promised her and then he didn't have no way of getting a hold of her and saying, hey, I can't make it. Right. They didn't have cell phones back then in the 1860s. No. So, yeah. Anyway, so Alice starts to cry and she reminds him that, you know, hey, we did it last year. Let's do it again. And William reluctantly said, okay, one more. Only one though. So they leave the bridge.

In February 1869, William was involved in a shooting accident and he had a really bad leg injury and he really was unable to walk except for the use of a crutch. So on the night that they were supposed to be meeting on Valentine's Day, William wondered if he was even going to be able to get to the bridge at all and was even going to be able to make his way out there. He even thought about postponing.

But again, no cell phone. Yeah, no cell phone. And, you know, I don't know if he had access to a carrier pigeon or anything. Morse code. And even so on that short notice. Oh, yeah. The carrier pigeon, you know. Yeah. But he was a man who kept his word and he decided to go to the Park Bridge anyway. Now, they had an old trusted servant of his family by the name of Bob. And Bob already kind of knew about the affair. So I guess they even had the bro code back then. Bob wouldn't go say nothing about it. Yeah. And he agreed that he would help William get to the Park Bridge. Yeah.

He and Bob arrive at the bridge. Now, Bob watched William walk unsteadily, I might add, on his crutches, until he reached the middle of the bridge. The young man sat there, and he was pretty impatient as he was waiting for Alice to arrive. William actually shouted back to Bob, What on earth am I doing here, standing on the middle of this damn bridge, in the freezing night, waiting for a girl that I don't even care for anymore? Well, Bob wisely stayed silent, because as the clock...

Because as the clock was chiming midnight in the back, there walked up Alice. And William kind of looked over. He could suddenly see her starting to appear. And he says, William says, well, it's about time. But as Alice started to reach William, she didn't show any kind of signs that she was getting ready to slow down or anything.

She looked like she was just going to start walking right past him. So William kind of figured, you know what? She's probably pissed off at the comments I just made. So he reached out and was going to try to grab her. As he put his arms out, though, his arms passed right through her. Oh, boy. Alice glanced back at an astonished William, I might add. And with a terrible look of sorrow in her eyes, she whispered, I will always love you.

William kind of trembled as he watched Alice continue to walk to the end of the bridge. And there she disappeared right in plain sight of old Bob that was standing there. On the following day, William visited Alice's family because he was really confused about this strange encounter. As William told her parents about this strange encounter, Alice's parents looked at each other and Miss Hardwood kind of broke down and started crying. And then the father went on to tell William,

that his daughter had died of a fever last night shortly before midnight. So William almost fainted when he heard this news. Then the nurse that had been in the house that had been helping take care of Alice, she even added something that made it even more disturbing to William. She said that on the girl's deathbed,

She kept constantly repeating the words, "Dead or alive, I must go to that bridge and see William. I must tell him that I love him." It is said that every year at midnight on February 14th, the lonely, loyal ghost of Alice Harwood is seen crossing that bridge in Selfton Park, still apparently hoping to meet her long-dead lover.

As recently as May of 2001, a park ranger saw a beautiful, young, outdated-looking woman strolling through the park with a parasaw. As she crossed the bridge, the lady vanished into thin air. So I guess the moral of the story is, even in death, love never dies. Very sweet. All right, well, happy Valentine's Day, Cass. Yeah, happy Valentine's Day, and that's a really sweet story. And I'm glad that she got to tell him.

That he, you know, she would always love him. And that's very sweet. Yeah. And that's, I'm glad that he showed up. That was very nice of him too. So. Can you imagine how pissed she would have been if he wouldn't have showed up and she shows up dead? So what's your excuse? I showed up dead. You can come, you've got a hurt leg. Yeah. So. Wuss. Anyway, thank you guys. And we appreciate you listening to us. Bye.

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That's knix.com promo code TRY15 for 15% off life-changing period underwear. That's K-N-I-X dot com. Another popular date night is a road trip, just taking a cruise. Maybe we're headed to our favorite spot, or maybe we have no destination in mind. A good drive always feels good, doesn't it? The trick is to find the scenic route, play some chill music you can sing to, and put the phones down.

Now we're talking. Our next story comes from Tapes from the Dark Side, from my friend Tyler.

There's an old urban legend I grew up with. You may have heard it too. It goes something like this. After sundown, a pair of high school kids fueled by hormones park their car on an isolated lover's lane. Just as they start to get down to business, the girl says she hears a strange sound coming from outside the car. The boy says he didn't hear anything, but the girl is spooked and she insists that she wants to go home.

The boy begrudgingly turns over the engine and with a hint of resentment, presses down hotly on the accelerator. The car lurches forward and they're on their way. Once back at the girl's house, she wastes no time in exiting the vehicle, now longing for the comfort and safety of her own home. As she reaches behind her to push close the car door, she sees it, hanging from the door handle, a metal hook.

the kind that would make for a rudimentary replacement for a hand, though this one has been sharpened to a menacing and deadly point. And thus our story concludes, a pithy little morality tale. Yet what many don't know is that it's partly based on a true story, the Texarkana Moonlight Murders of 1946.

It's a week after Valentine's Day and the 19 year old Mary and her 25 year old boyfriend Jimmy are out on a movie date. On the way home they take a detour to a secluded stretch of Bowie County Road, a place that was known as a local lover's lane.

Just as things are getting hot and heavy, the moment is interrupted by a bright flash of light coming from outside the driver's side window. At first, the couple thinks they've been caught by the police. If only it had been the cops. As they will soon learn, the reality of their situation was much worse. A man wearing a white cloth bag over his head approaches the car.

The strange garb resembles a pillowcase and has eyeholes cut out so the stranger can see. Before the man says anything, Jimmy mumbles under his breath, "Sorry guy, you have the wrong car." The man takes a step forward, confrontationally, and replies, "I don't want to kill you, so do what I say."

He orders them both out of the car and then tells Jimmy to take off his pants. Seeing that this guy isn't playing around, Jimmy does so quickly and that's when the man suddenly bashes him in the head twice with the broadside of his heavy flashlight. He struck Jimmy so hard as to cause multiple skull fractures and the sound of the flashlight hitting his skull was so intense that Mary said she thought that the man had actually shot Jimmy.

Jim falls to the ground instantly, unconscious, and that's when the man turns his attention to Mary. She tries to reason with him, offer him money, but this seemed to have the opposite effect. He lashes out at her, striking her with a flashlight, but not as hard as he hit Jimmy. This is more of a warning strike. She jumps back, and that's when he looks her in the eyes and says one single word. "Run."

Mary doesn't need to be told twice. She takes off in a full sprint. Some reports say she was still wearing her high heels at the time, so I imagine this was not a breakneck speed. Mary headed down Bowie County Road, desperate to find someone, anyone. But the couple had parked about 100 yards from the nearest house. She sees a car parked on the side of the road in the distance and runs towards it, but alas, finds it empty. And that's when the masked man suddenly reappears,

Why are you running? He asks quizzically. The question puzzles her. Because you told me to, she says. He screams out, a liar, and forces Mary to the ground, once again brandishing the pistol.

Mary is pinned under the weight of this well-built 6-foot tall man, and in this moment, which will haunt her for the rest of her life, she feels completely and utterly powerless. He begins to lift up her dress, sliding her underwear to the side and ramming the barrel of the gun into her. After the masked man finished sexually assaulting Mary, he took off on foot down Bowie County Road and disappeared into the woods.

Mary wandered aimlessly through the night for half a mile until finally approaching a random house. The couple who answered took her in and phoned the police. Thus ended the first of what would be four separate attacks in that year, 1946, by a man in a white hood who would come to be known as the Phantom Killer. This was no urban legend.

It was after the second double murders they started using the name "Phantom" in the local newspaper. No one felt like he or she was safe. And of course we had everything locked and we had our guns handy.

Jimmy and Mary both miraculously survived and it would be the only attack of the four in which no one was killed. The Phantom roamed the lanes of Texarkana after dark looking for couples who were parked on the side of the road. He killed five people over the course of ten short weeks that spring. A manhunt ensued, the likes of which had never been before seen in Texarkana, covering Miller County, Arkansas and Bowie County, Texas. But the killer was never caught.

The phantom killer is technically a serial killer, as he's killed more than two people with a cooling off period in between each kill. Now, the statistics tell us that serial killers are responsible for less than 1% of all murders, which is an insignificant portion. But if there are 15,000 murders annually in the US, that means that around 150 of those victims are likely the work of such killers.

And per FBI statistics, there are likely 25 to 50 active serial killers operating in this country at any given moment. So, dear listener, I would ask of you, if you happen to take a midnight ride with your lover this Valentine's Day, please be cautious. It's far from likely, but you wouldn't want to later find a hook on your car handle door or a masked man peeking through your window.

Texarkana today still looks pretty much the same. And if you should ask people here on the streets what they believe happened to the Phantom Killer, most would say that he is still living here and is walking free. I love movie theaters. I actually worked at one as one of my first jobs. There's nothing like seeing a movie on the big screen. And don't get me started on the popcorn. That smell and the taste. Ugh. Now I really want some movie theater popcorn.

The bagged microwave stuff just isn't the same. Meeting us here is Allison and Maggie from Coffee and Cases. It wasn't even supposed to be 19-year-old NC State freshman Jesse McBain's night with the car that he shared with his brother. But it was Friday, February 12th, 1971, two days before Valentine's Day.

and Patricia Mann, Jesse's girlfriend of three years, who was a 20-year-old nursing student at Watts Hospital in Durham, North Carolina, had a school dance that she thought she was going to have to miss. Does he surprise her? He does. He was a good boyfriend, and to her surprise, Jesse had actually made a deal with his brother to

to trade days with the car, and he was so excited to let Patricia know that he was soon to be on his way to her. He was so happy, in fact, that he jumped in the car to drive through the misty cold rain to get to her, and he did it so quickly that he forgot at home the candy that he had purchased to also bring to her as a surprise.

Oh, well, now he could just eat that later. That's right. That's a perk for him. Jesse and Patricia had a wonderful time at the dance. They were so obviously in love to everyone who saw the lovebirds. And there was even talk of an engagement in the not-so-distant future. Neither one of them wanted the night to end. So, given the chance to spend a little bit more time together, they took it.

When Patricia's school extended the curfew from midnight until 1 a.m., Patricia checked out of her dorm at 1130, and the two of them went to a nearby neighborhood that was known to be a local make-out spot.

Okay, very college-y. Oh, very. Yeah. They're just wanting to get a little bit more alone time. By the next morning, Saturday, February 13th, Patricia's friends were milling about the school, seeing how everyone's night had gone. And it was then that they noticed that Patricia had not returned to her dorm in the early morning hours. That was not like the responsible Patricia they knew. And Jesse was not the type to break rules either.

So they began calling local hospitals to make sure that the two hadn't been involved in an accident on their way back to the dorm. No hospitals had record of either Jesse or Patricia having been seen or admitted. So did the college not do anything about it?

When curfew passed and Patricia wasn't back? No, it wasn't until the next morning that people are starting to notice that she didn't come back. Without answers, yet knowing where the pair had likely gone with their extra time the night before, some of Patricia's co-workers from the hospital where she worked went looking for them. And that's when they saw the car, just not like how they had expected to find it.

At the end of one of the local cul-de-sacs was Jesse's car. Peering in, since the car was locked, they saw Patricia and Jesse's coats in the back seat, neatly placed, and no sign of a struggle. Okay, weird. Able to push open one of those triangular vent windows that are commonly found in older cars, a friend was able to get the car unlocked.

Inside, they also saw Patricia's pantyhose neatly folded in the passenger floorboard. But Jesse and Patricia, it seemed, had vanished. A lot of people began to wonder, could they possibly have decided to elope? But if so, why not take the car with them? Yeah, they need the car. Yeah. And...

If they didn't elope, why had they just left this perfectly performing car abandoned? And why had the car been wiped of fingerprints as they found when the police tested it? So until they knew answers, Durham County Police Department, who had been called to the scene, decided to treat this like a missing persons case. But as the days passed with no word,

The outlook for Jesse and Patricia's fate was becoming more and more grim. Then, on February 25th, 12 days after they were last seen, there was finally a development, just not the development that any family wants to hear.

A surveyor had been out working on a one-lane dirt road near the border between Durham and Orange County, North Carolina, when he saw something out of place. It looked like a human leg sticking out of a pile of leaves. When Orange County Sheriff's Office responded, they found an extremely disturbing scene indeed.

Jesse McBain and Patricia Mann had been tied to a tree with a thick rope. The rope was knotted around their hands and their necks. They had been strangled slowly. Major Tim Horn from the Orange County Sheriff's Office told Sarah Kruger of WRAL, quote,

It wasn't one continuous pulling tight of a rope around their necks to strangle them to death. It appeared to be a situation where the rope was tightened. Then they let it go, let them regain their breath, regain consciousness possibly, and then they were strangled again.

again. And oh my God, this is very vindictive, very personal. I feel very, yeah, this theory was consistent with the fact that there wasn't just one rope mark around the neck of each of the victims, but several strangle marks on each of them. So this had been a process that was repeated over and over and

The couple had also been stabbed, according to the medical examiner, though most likely post-mortem. Additionally, Patricia had suffered from an internal injury, a half-inch tear in her liver, consistent with being punched, stomped, or kicked in the stomach. So like you said, Maggie, whoever had done this...

had wanted the pair to suffer. It also seemed clear, like you said, that anger, revenge, or just a desire to torture were the motive since Jesse still wore his watch and his class ring and Patricia still wore her jewelry as well. So nothing was stolen. There also was not sexual assault. Rather, it is law enforcement's working theory that the couple had been approached on Lover's Lane

and forced into the trunk of the perpetrator's car before being driven to this remote location.

Horn argued in a separate WRAL article, quote, the suspect knew this area, knew this location. It's our opinion that this wasn't the first time he came down here. He felt comfortable torturing and murdering these two young people. And he felt comfortable enough that no one was going to come and that no one could hear them cry, scream, scream.

plead, what have you, end quote. So the perpetrator, according to law enforcement, was not a random stranger passing through. Instead, this was both local and

And personal. Unfortunately, even though many organizations, the Orange County Sheriff's Office, the Durham County Sheriff's Office, the Durham Police Department, the State Department of Investigation, the FBI, and the Department of License and Theft were involved, all of those agencies were

There was an obvious lack of collaboration among them, with each getting a small piece of the puzzle, but with no willingness to share findings with any other department. Well, that's frustrating. Despite the lack of camaraderie, there were several suspects for the crime, including one who topped everyone's list, a doctor.

at Watts Hospital where Patricia worked, who has refused to cooperate with law enforcement, consistently refused to provide DNA,

and who has an intimate knowledge of the wooded area where the bodies were found. More recently, a new DNA procedure called MVAC, able to extract DNA from places that were previously inaccessible, like the rope used to bind the pair, was used since the rope from the crime scene had been well-preserved over the years.

Unfortunately, Horn, nearing retirement in the summer of 2018 when he received the call, heard that the testing had provided no new leads. Now, it's a waiting game until even better DNA testing is available or until someone who has knowledge of the crime dies.

finally has the nerve to come forward. Anyone with information about the murders of Jesse McBain and Patricia Mann, dubbed the Valentine's Day murders, is asked to contact the Orange County Sheriff's Office at 919-644-3050.

Hey.

Ice skating and rollerblading is something couples enjoy learning to do on Valentine's Day.

Personally, I don't enjoy falling on my face or breaking a bone, but all to their own. I did go ice skating once in college. It wasn't for me. The room was too cold, in all honesty. Speaking of cold, my friend Vincent is here, from Gone Cold.

Perhaps no feeling elicits the compulsion for revenge as intensely as betrayal, an act of harm caused by a friend, family member, or lover. Trust is the required prerequisite to the experience of betrayal. Betrayal has a range of potential effects, from shock, sadness, and grief, to anger, obsession, and morbid preoccupation.

Most of us can either abstain from revenge entirely or go no further than performing subtle acts of passive aggression. However, some give in to their compulsion for revenge, whether the result of an extended period of obsession or an impulsive reaction caused by the immediate shock of the actions of the betrayer when caught in the act.

Clara Suarez came to the United States from Columbia in the late 1980s to obtain a master's degree in dentistry. After graduating the University of Texas School of Dentistry, Clara was crowned Miss Columbia Houston. In 1991, the 33-year-old dentist met orthodontist Dr. David Harris, same age, while working at the Castle Dental Center.

David and Clara hit it off, and their fast-moving romance culminated in a Valentine's Day 1992 wedding with a reception at the Hilton in Nassau Bay overlooking Clear Lake. It was less than a year after their first date that Clara Suarez became Dr. Clara Harris. With David came a young daughter from a previous marriage.

The year following the wedding, Clara opened up her own dental practice that eventually branched out to include several locations, followed shortly thereafter by David opening his place, Space Center Orthodontics, near NASA, Houston. During their outwardly appearing perfect life as husband and wife, in 1998, Clara gave birth to her and David's twin sons.

By all accounts, the couple was living the American dream come true. Love, successful businesses, a family, luxury cars, and a nice home in the mostly affluent town of Friendswood. But things were not as they appeared. At least, eventually, they were not.

In the fall of 2001, David Harris and his recently hired receptionist, Gail, began a whirlwind love affair. Gail, too, was married. It didn't take long for Clara to put together the pieces. Unexplained high-dollar purchases and five-star hotel bills on their bank statements and long hours at the office were fairly solid clues of her husband's betrayal.

In June of 2002, in fact, she could no longer sit idly by obsessing about David's suspected affair. Clara hired Houston-based private investigator firm Blue Moon Investigations. Upon confronting David with proof of his infidelity gathered by Blue Moon, Clara agreed that they could mend the marriage, but only if her husband called off the affair immediately.

There was one stipulation he needed to add, David Harris told his wife. Because he'd led his mistress to believe that he and Clara had an open relationship, David said, he needed one last dinner with Gail to call off the affair face-to-face, to explain and break it to her carefully and easily.

Clara agreed, but unbeknownst to David, had asked her private investigator to tail her husband to ensure he was doing what he promised. He apparently was not.

Rather than meeting up at a restaurant to put an end to the affair, it was later reported to Clara Harris, David and Gail were sharing a room at Nassau Bay Hilton, where Clara and David enjoyed their wedding reception ten years earlier alongside friends and family.

This was too much. The discovered betrayal, followed by David's promise to stop and work toward fixing what he'd done, and then another betrayal right after, Clara snapped. She immediately began speeding to Nassau Bay to confront her husband and his lover. Her stepdaughter, David Harris' 16-year-old daughter, was in the car.

Once at the Hilton, Clara saw the Lincoln Navigator that belonged to her husband's lover. She exited the car, walked up to the vehicle, and began vandalizing it, pulling the sharp end of her car keys across the paint forcefully and bending the windshield wipers. Clara and her stepdaughter entered the hotel, where they found David Harris and Gail in the lobby.

Seeing red, and perhaps blacked out by rage, Clara quickly approached. "'He's my husband,' she exclaimed, slapping Gale immediately after the words left her mouth. Clara's attention then turned to the guests and the workers who, in their shock, had either froze in a stare or had avoided looking altogether."

Pointing at her husband, Clara shouted, This is Dr. David Harris and he's f***ing this woman. David's daughter was traumatized. Angry at what she'd witnessed, she began hitting her father with her purse. She'd have forgiven him eventually, of course, had she been given the chance. Meanwhile, Clara focused on Gail, ripping the woman's blouse off as she pulled it and her hair beat her and even bit her.

David pushed his wife off of Gail, and she fell to the ground. Hotel security quickly moved in and escorted everyone out. In the short moment she waited in her Mercedes-Benz with her stepdaughter, Clara was stewing in rage and boiling with morbid preoccupation. When she saw Gail and David leave the hotel, heading toward her Lincoln, she sped toward them.

Her stepdaughter was horrified and begged her to stop. Clara's Mercedes clipped the Lincoln Navigator before hitting David Harris, who flew some 20 feet across the parking lot from the impact. His daughter opened the Mercedes door screaming, but before she could flee, Clara Harris stomped the accelerator.

While David laid crumpled and unconscious on the parking lot pavement, Clara drove over him again, the Mercedes violently rocking once when the front tires rolled over him, and again with the back. She continued to drive, U-turned, and ran over the man again, a third time. The Mercedes stopped, and suddenly everything seemed quiet.

Clara's stepdaughter bolted from the car, punched her stepmother in the face, and dropped as she cried inconsolably. Clara stepped out of the vehicle, wandered around some, and when the weight of what she'd done came crashing down on her, also began sobbing. When police arrived, she was holding her husband, repeating, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

immediately arrested and subsequently charged with and convicted of second-degree murder. Dr. Clara Harris was sentenced to 20 years in a Texas state penitentiary on February 14, 2003, Valentine's Day, and the 11th anniversary of her marriage to Dr. David Harris.

At 8:20 a.m. on Friday, May 18th, 2018, after she was previously denied parole twice before, Clara was released from prison early. David Harris died for his betrayal and for taking his life. Clara Harris lost 15 years of hers. Rock climbing is a new skill couples love to learn. You get to feel that sense of achievement together. It's fun and exciting.

If you're not afraid of heights, that is. I need to get down from here. So up next, we have Live Laugh Larceny with my friends Amanda and Trevon. - How do I even begin to describe the word love? Popular songs throughout the years have tried their best to do so, but all seem so bleak. According to Elvis, only fools rush in, but he still couldn't help but fall in love.

Soft Cell described the feeling of needing to "run away" from their tainted love. Even our queen Beyonce has been crazy in love, being quoted saying "uh oh, uh oh, uh oh, oh no no" about the subject. I'm sure love has its good moments, but there seem to be many warnings about it as well. The petty crime story I'll be telling you all today is about, you guessed it, love.

and the caution of keeping affection separate from transgression. 19-year-old Lei Yu and 18-year-old girlfriend Zhang Chu were deeply in love and living in the Chinese province Sichuan during 2015. With Valentine's Day approaching,

Lei wanted to do something special for Sheng. He wanted to give her a romantic experience along with a pricey gift, but his bank account just wasn't cooperating. "Your balance is still negative. Quit checking." That's when a brilliant idea popped into his head. Lei was going to spoil his Valentine rotten without spending a dime of his own money.

The couple's special date night began with Lei driving up to a dark building in a commercial area in town. "What are we doing here?" asked Zhang, confused. "I told you. It's a surprise. Come on." Lei reassured her, stepping out of the car. The couple walked hand in hand towards the front door of a closed jewelry shop when they came to a stop. "You may want to stand back," Lei lovingly warned.

He then kicked the store's door open with the passion of a man in love. "I wanted to get you something nice." Lei panted heavily. "But I wanted us to pick it out together." Zhang was speechless. No one had ever broken into a store for her before. She looked around the empty and barely lit shop, seeing jewelry and glass perfume bottles glistening in the moonlight.

she could have swooned right there. But instead, she grabbed Lei's hand and the couple rushed inside. Zhang excitedly picked out some jewelry and perfume and was ready to flee the scene of their criminal shopping spree. But Lei had one more surprise. He busted open the store's register and gathered the cash inside, forming a money bouquet of sorts for his date. You deserve the world, but for now,

"How does some extra cash sound?" Lay said in his best Prince Charming voice. The pair stared lovingly into each other's eyes as they crouched down behind the store's register. They both knew they should run away from the store, in fear authorities may be on the way. But the sexual tension overshadowed all logic.

Both of them leaned their bodies in closer and closer to one another, turned their faces, and exchanged a fiery kiss. Only once their makeout was complete did the couple flee the scene. Lei and Shang were blissfully unaware that a store camera had captured their affection and faces on CCTV.

Shortly after the theft, police analyzed and shared the CCTV footage, getting a tip from a social media user that led to their arrest. The store's owner Gong Chen said, "They were amateurs because apart from the cash, they did not take anything of value. There were cameras and laptop computers and smartphones, and they left it all behind because they were so busy kissing. That kiss was their undoing."

The love-struck larcenist made off with 2,100 won, approximately 301 US dollars, jewelry, and perfume. But according to local news reports, they were let off with no charges following a full confession. Perhaps this crime could have been avoided if this couple would have been listening to Can't Buy Me Love by the Beatles that night, but we will never know.

What I can say is that love is nearly impossible to explain. And even more unexplainable is the trouble it can get us all into. And the truth shall set you free. That's crazy. I know. A confession just gets you out of it. I don't know if the laws are different. I'm sure they are.

guarantee that they are all around the world. But if I knew that just a simple confession after a makeout sesh could get me off the hook for committing a crime, yeah, I think I would do that. Yeah. To be in that much love. They were in so much love. And I hope I explained it as well as I could in the story that really the only reason they were caught is because they shared that passionate kiss in the CCTV footage. And

And then once the police shared it online, because the way they turned their faces and the way they were acting, somebody was able to identify them online. Wow. So really?

This Valentine's Day, you really need to be cautious with your love. Yeah, for sure. Maybe don't do it while committing a crime. Definitely not. So if anybody has not heard of us or listened to our show before, we are Live Laugh Larceny and we are the show that takes petty crimes and tell them in a dramatic way. But the details may vary sometimes.

Yours seems pretty standard here. Is everything pretty much all the truth here? Yes, they did steal that exact amount of cash, the perfume and the jewelry. It was closed at the time. I don't know exactly how they busted in the front door. And I don't know if it was really all his idea and he was surprising her for a Valentine's Day experience slash gift.

That whole thing was just me, you know, setting the tone for the story. But everything about the crime itself, everything that the store owner said was her actual quote.

and how they were caught was the truth. Usually that's kind of how it goes with our show. We'll kind of create the story in our own minds. How did we get here? What would cause a person to do some of the ridiculous crimes that we cover? But we try to keep the actual facts of the crime as true as true can get. We just like to be a little dramatic and petty with it. Yeah, we like to be fun. And as I've always called it, we basically make the movie version of it. And with that story...

We will conclude the first night of this two-night special episode for My Bloody Valentine. As a quick reminder, all of the podcasts you heard can be found wherever you listen to podcasts. A complete list of the podcast names and links to them can be found in this episode's show notes. I'll be back tomorrow for the last half of this Bloody Valentine special highlighting love gone wrong. I'll see you then.