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Hey, everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show and tell you a little bit more about one of our favorite things ever, Audible. Oh, audible.com or that app. The app is great, and I'm on the app constantly. Listening to Audible helps your imagination soar.
No.
There's more to imagine when you listen. And I'll tell you something that has set both Jimmy and I's imagination soaring. And that is the Lewis and Clark journals. We're both really into these right now. And as an Audible member, you can choose one title a month to keep from the entire catalog, including the latest bestsellers, the newest releases. New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash smalltownmurder or text
smalltownmurder to 500-500. That's audible.com slash smalltownmurder or text smalltownmurder to 500-500. Now back to the show. Music
Hey, everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you a little bit about Angie. Oh, Angie.com. A-N-G-I.com. Absolutely. Angie. Good stuff. Angie's List is now Angie, the nation's largest home services marketplace, and they're here to help homeowners get all their jobs done well.
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This week, in Amity, Maine, when the absolute slaughter of three people is discovered in a blood-smeared trailer, it leads to a clean-cut suspect with seemingly no motive. But then things get really weird. Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder! Yeah!
Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrogallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you folks so much for joining us today on a... Hell yeah. ...absolute crazy adventure here. This is a... Let's do it again. ...wild story and a
brutal case and a weird just a weird dude responsible for it all. We'll talk about all of it. We will get into that. Before we do though, you need to head over to shutupandgivememurder.com What is that? Well, first of all
Merch is there. Tons of merch. But tickets to live shows, a place to wear the merch and take your whatever you do there. Live shows throughout the year here. Already a couple are sold out. So get your tickets right now. Minneapolis, you can be our biggest show ever.
I've heard tell. That's right. You can beat Chicago and be our biggest show ever, and we'll be proud to tell everyone. Minneapolis is our biggest show ever if you guys sell us out. Great place. I mean, these shows are going fast. Boston and New York in December are going fast and almost gone. So get your tickets now for wherever you want to go. Thank you. We have...
Sacramento, April 5th, and San Francisco, April 6th. You're up first. You're on deck. It's going to be great. Let's do it. So come out and see us. And if you can't make it to a live show, you can make it to a virtual live show. Oh, you bet. Because it doesn't matter wherever you are in the world, you can make it to a virtual live show. If you have an internet connection, you are there.
And just like a regular live show, but we're bringing it to you in your living room or your back porch or wherever the hell you want to listen to the show. And watch the show. You'll see all the visuals. The 420 virtual live show is for sale right now. So get that. We can't wait. April the 20th. We're excited. We're going to have costumes. Hell yeah.
all sorts of different smoking apparatus to scare the shit out of Jimmy. It's going to be good stuff. Shut up and give me murder.com is where you get it all. Uh, patrion.com slash crime in sports is where you get all of your bonus materials.
$5 a month or above. A mere cup of coffee will get you... So affordable. We will overflow your coffee cup with content and you'll get a couple hundred back episodes running over right away. And then new episodes every other week. One crime and sports, one small town murder, and you get it all this week, which you're going to get for crime and sports. You don't have to like sports or anything else. No. It's going to be personal ads.
where we read how you used to, how did you find love in 1988? In the newspaper. That's how. You put an ad out for yourself and they are hilarious and we're going to talk all about those and read tons of them. Those are so much fun. Back by popular demand. Then for Small Town Murder, very weird tale of the Collier brothers.
a pair of very strange brothers who turned into recluses in their brownstone apartment in New York City. And eventually, in the city, walls had to be cut out to remove them. And the hoarding that went on in there was wild. And it's crazy. We'll talk all about that. Patreon.com slash Crime and Sports is where you get all that. And you get a shout-out at the end of the show. Oh, yeah. Jimmy will mispronounce your name. Quickly, the disclaimer, it's a comedy show, everybody. It is.
We're comedians. The story is, unfortunately, all too real. It's very, very real. So nothing's made up for comic effect or any of that. You don't have to with these stories. They're crazy enough. The jokes, though, for us, I feel like it softens it a little bit.
In terms of, yeah, it just, you know, it makes it a little lighter around the edges. There's nothing funny about a murder, but there's a shitload of funny things that go on around a murder of, I think I can get away with this. No, you can't. No, you can't. Probably not, especially if you're an idiot and you're on this show. So we'll talk all about that. But what we won't do, what we'll go out of our way not to do, is we won't make fun of the victims or the victim's family.
Why, James? Because we're assholes. Yeah, but? But we're not scumbags. That's how that works. So if that sounds good to you, we have a crazy show for you. If not, if you think true crime and comedy never, ever, ever go together, maybe you won't like the show. I don't know. I don't know. Either way, you've been warned. So you're in on it, too. No bitching later. That said, I think it's time, everybody, to sit back. Sure. Arms to the sky. What do you say? Let's all take a deep breath and let's all shout. Shut up!
Give me murder. Let's do this. What do you say, everybody? Feels good, yeah. Let's go on a trip, Jimmy. Let's go here. We're going on up to a place we like very much. Yeah, yeah. We're going to Maine this week. It's terrific. Ah, it's beautiful up there. It's nice. They got the ocean and lobsters. How far north are we? This is north to where it's not...
Ocean, Maine. Canada's on the other side of it. Uh-oh. And it's east, too. It's very east. It's one of the farthest east places you could get in the United States. So it's in like northern Maine on that east coast, on the eastern side of it, on that tip up there. It's Amity, Maine, it's called, instead of Amityville. This is just Amity. It's about two hours to Bangor, so that's...
It's a while. It's a while. It's way up there, this place. About four hours down to Portland, Maine, which is down by Massachusetts. And then four hours also to Scarborough, Maine, episode 418, our last Maine episode, The Stranger and the Psychopath, which was a good episode. They're oftentimes the same. The Maine ones are always...
Just a touch of Stephen King to him. There's always something. I mean, it did birth him. Yeah. Yeah. There's always, you wonder why he's setting all these stories in Maine. Why is he such a creep? Yeah. Then you go, no, I think it's Maine, I think is the issue here. It's awesome. Yeah. He was just absorbing what was going on around him.
Because this state, whenever we do it, it's always just a little creepy for some reason. A little weird, a little off, a little something. It seems like the ocean is inviting until you get that far north. And then it'll fucking kill you. Yeah, it's beautiful, though. It is. I love it. It's in Aroostook County, I guess. I'm just going to spell it. A-R-O-O-S-T-O-O-K.
So a roostook, it has to be. Or I'm saying it wrong, and I'm sure the good people of Maine will hit me up on social media and correct me. Yeah, go ahead. Knock yourselves out. I don't care anymore. I'm taking it. You know what? I used to say shut up about it. Now I'm like, you know what? Tell me how you say it. I don't even care. I don't care anymore. I don't give a fuck. Tell me, at James Petrigal, how do you say it? I don't care. Tell me how you say it. Don't care. Real Phil Collins approach to this. Don't give a shit. Yeah. I don't care anymore. I don't care anymore.
I don't care what you say. I don't care. I don't care anymore. Let it fly. That's the song that's going to be our lead in on the road this year. That is. That's exactly what it's going to be. I'm telling you, it'll be that before. I don't care anymore. Before No Woman, No Cry, it's going to be that. I don't care anymore. We're going to hear it. Boom, boom, boom.
If you're sitting in your seat wondering, when does this show start? If you hear Phil Collins say, I don't care anymore. It's us. We'll be out in about seven minutes. We got that and something else. Here it comes. I don't care anymore. Give me whatever your weird local pronunciation. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care anymore.
Anyway, so area code 207. Motto here is Amity matters because friends and neighbors matter.
Yeah. Okay, that's a nice one. Do they, though? Yeah, it's a long-winded motto, I'll say. It's hard to put that on a sign. Probably trim that down. Can't put that on a flag, really, probably. So history of this town. It was first settled in 1826 and incorporated in 1836 from a township that was originally called T10R1WELS.
Yeah, and that's not like a license plate. No. They put those numbers in there to make a word. And there's spaces. T10, space R1, space W-E-L-S, all caps. I don't know. It doesn't roll off the tongue. No, it's got to be a map coordinates of some sort, like a range and townships. It's got to be. Or some sort of whatever military quadrants they put things into to, you know, who knows. Hmm.
So some people said the town was named for the 1794 Treaty of Amity Commerce and Navigation between England and the United States, which aimed to end the boundary dispute between Maine and New Brunswick, which is Canada up there.
Right. So, yeah. And then in 18, there was a boundary dispute. Yes. All up there. Vermont. There was wars in Vermont on the border. Yeah. New Hampshire. There's a lot of little skirmishes. Canada wanted it all. Well, there's people that had this is my land. Oh, no. Well, this is not even your land. It's not your country. So then they would fight. And then, you know, more people would come to help one side and the other turn into a fight.
In 1839, after the so-called, and I say so-called because they say so-called because that's just kind of the name they call it, and also I'm sure I'm mispronouncing it. So, so-called Aroostook War ended with the signing of a treaty that gave Maine this town, because this is right on the border of Canada, this town. I mean, yeah, you walk east fucking five miles and you're in Canada in this town. Wow.
It's there. They gave Maine the town, and the ownership had been disputed, so surveyors placed a monument in Monument Brook right on the border. So there's Monument 1 and Monument 2, and that's the borders. Marking, okay. You know where we are. The most people that this town has ever had in its history was in 1880. The most. Since then, it went down a lot. Yeah, in 1880, they had 432 people.
That's the most ever? That's the most they've ever had in this town. That's great. And it got down at one point. In 1970, they had 156 people. That's their low. Holy shit. That I can see. So, yeah, it got there. Reviews of this town. There are no reviews of this town.
Really? Zero reviews. It's very small. But I did find a review of the county. Here is an Aroostook County review. It's a three-star review, so not really telling us much. They say, the town I live in is very small and everyone knows each other and outsiders are kind of left out. We are on the border of Canada and the university is two towns over and has brought many diverse cultures together. I am happy to live here to earn my degree. There's no punctuation, so I think they need to go back to class.
High school. You didn't beat that yet. Yeah. And then I have a couple reviews of Monument. This is Monument 1 here.
That's what it looks like? It's just a tall metal thing. It's kind of like a Washington Monument almost. It's like a monolith. Yeah, but small. It says Boundary, August 9th, 1842 on it. And here's a review. One says, five stars, remote place to visit, interesting piece of history. Visit during dry weather and wear high rubber boots if you want any chance to walk around.
out to it. Access can be gained from the Canadian side by going out the monument road and using a GPS to navigate through logging roads. That sounds so complicated. During the dry weather, bring galoshes. Yeah, go during the dry season and prepare for mud. That's a weird thing to say. Prepare for the wettest shit you've ever seen. Holy shit. And then somebody gives it one star and says, quote, it's not Canadian. One star.
They wanted it to be, I don't know, Wayne Gretzky there. I was hoping that it would just have Mario Lemieux standing next to it. I don't even know if he's Canadian, but I just assumed so because he's a great hockey player. Sounds French-Canadian. Yeah, it's totally Montreal or Quebec or some shit there. So, yeah, those are the reviews. One other person says five stars. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, as in I'm not walking through the woods again to get there.
I'm never doing that again. It's not happening ever again. Listen to your stupid opinions, by the way, our other show, because you get a lot of this kind of stuff there. It sounds like there aren't reviews for this, because if somebody has a review, they just tell the people they know who live there. Guys right there, I'll just tell them. The population here, 217. So you just tell the other 216 people. I'll tell them. You'll run into them at some point.
What you saw and how bad it was. Why am I going to tell somebody in Kansas what sucks around here? I'll just tell the guy that's in charge of it. Maybe we can all come together and fix it. Maybe we can fix it. What do you say? So there's 53% male here, 47% female, which is way off. It's usually a few more females, so I don't get that. Median age here is... This is some...
Pepperidge Farm remembers people over here. Yeah, 55.2 is the average. That's your median age. The average age is a retirement community. 55.2. Yeah, it's normally 37 in the rest of the country. Wow. That's a lot of porch whittling up there. Yeah, sure enough. 64% of the people are married.
There isn't even reviews of this town. There's not exactly a booming single scene where you're going to go out and pick up chicks. A lot of people divorced here, higher than the average. It's usually about 20% here. It's 34%. 25% are single with children. So they're either married or have kids, one of the two, or both. Yeah.
Race of this town, 84.8% white, 3.4% black, which is honestly more black people than I'd imagine would be way out there, rural main town. 0.0% Asian, 0.0% Hispanic, and 12% say two or more races. So who knows? Oh, okay. Religion, 46%, a little below the average. And the highest percentage of anybody obviously around here are the Catholics because as we know, Catholics are what, Jimmy? Catholics.
Baptists of that north. The Baptists of the north. That's exactly right. So 0.0% Jewish as well. The unemployment rate here, think about the unemployment rate in the United States as we speak is 3.6%, which is an insanely low number, and it has been for a long time. It's been for years and years now. It's been pretty damn low. The unemployment rate in Amity is 14.8%.
Really? Yeah, there's just not a lot up there. There's not a lot of jobs to be had. Is that people that are of working age? Well, yeah, that's how it counts. Sounds like nobody has any jobs. That's a lot of what it sounds like. Sounds like a lot of people on Social Security, and there aren't a lot of jobs to be had, I don't think, up there. The median household income here, okay? Oh, boy. Rest of the country, $69,021. Here it is, $28,594. Wow.
So that is quite low. So it's not easy to make money here. It's interesting how you can make it here, though, because this place is just, I wouldn't even call it affordable. It's downright cheap. Well, that's the thing here. The cost of living, 100 is average. Here it's 75. But that's the low thing here is the home cost. Median home cost here, 96,900 bucks. Wow.
Isn't that insane? That's insane. Not a lot available, though. And we'll tell you what is available if you have to find out here. We have the Amity, Maine real estate report. Average two bedroom rental here. I don't know if there's any rentals available because there's very little available to buy is seven hundred ninety dollars. So it's cheap. That seems high still, right? It seems like it. Here's one in Linneus. This is a nearby bordering town here. They're all little towns, so they're not not a lot of area.
This is a no bedroom, no bath. Studio? 288 square foot. What? It's on 11 acres. Oh. It's a shack. It's a fucking Ted Kaczynski Unabomber shack. How many square feet? 288.
Okay. It's a tiny house. It's a tiny shack. 10 by 20? Yeah. It's a tiny little place. It's a tiny shack where you can write your manifesto. I feel like this is a manifesto shack, really, for you people out there looking to write one. Very small. Tiny home. It is definitely a shack. Next, there's Halton. This is in Halton, which is also close here. This is a four-bedroom, two-bath, 2,640 square feet.
Wow. Not a lot of land, a small lot, but it's a nice, big, old, white house. It looks like a nice New England house. Very nice. It's from the 1840s. It was built. It's got a big, nice front porch. The kitchen looks very 1960s. Like, it needs a fucking half-century update here. At least a visit to Lowe's. Yeah, could use a freshening up here, but still not bad for $219,900. Wow.
Almost 3,000 square feet of four bedrooms, two baths. That's nice. Fuck yeah. Now, the next house is awesome. It's just awesome. It's in Amity. It's the only one for sale in Amity. Five bedroom, one bath, which is weird. I'm assuming probably one and a half, one full, and then one regular. There's got to be somewhere to wash your hands. Yeah, it's a 3,500 square foot regular house. It's on 20 acres. Holy shit. It's a decent house. It's an old farmhouse with a red...
red metal roof on top so it's it's decent but the inside is nice a lot of hardwood a lot of good stuff looks like it was put together but beside all of that there's shops and other outbuildings yes sir one is a shop that sold grow supplies for weed and then another one is a fucking grow house and they have like a storefront in this in the supply thing with like bongs and shit and
Yeah, this is northern Maine at its finest. This is great. They have pictures of the bee drying. Like, look what you can grow here. And it tells you, like, they get this many pounds per month. I think it's 20 pounds a month out of this fucking place and all this type of shit. It's awesome. It's a combination compound grow house. Grow house. 950 grand. Oh, my God. That's incredible. 20 acres. Yeah.
It's fucking wild. If you don't hear from me for a while, I have figured that somebody gave me a mortgage and I'm on it. So that's what happened. Oh, shit. Things to do in this town. The Harvest Festival. Number one. This is in Halton, by the way, nearby and says celebrate our farmers and the harvest of Maine.
Yay. They all harvest. Well, they have all sorts of stuff here. They have bountiful farmers and their market and the bountiful farmers and their harvest in our area. Old fashioned games. I don't know what the fuck that consists of. Ball in a cup. Beat the nearest child. I feel like.
Beat the nearest shot. I don't know what it is. Yeah. Great food and samples. Bustline Market. What's a bustline market? Bustline? Did they misspell bustling and say bustline? Gotta be. Gotta be. Did their autocorrect do that and they never fixed it? Confusing people and now people are up there like, where's the tit market? I don't see no bustlines here at all. Y'all told me there's going to be titties. Not a single titty. Nothing.
The Halton Potato Feast Days. Oh. That's another thing to do. That sounds great. All the different ways you can have them. I'm in. Tots, mash, whatever. I like all forms of potato. It's awesome. So it says, family fun filled event is sure to please our community with a craft and art fair, potato bar, lobster dinner,
Doll parade? What the fuck is that? I don't like that. That sounds like the creepiest thing I've ever heard of.
A silent parade of marching dolls is terrifying to me. And you better specify what dolls are permitted because somebody's bringing a fuck doll. A life-size one they just got from Japan for like eight grand. Yeah, one of those in a wheelchair or something. A blow-up one somebody just tucks under their arm. One of the real good ones. Is that Jennifer Lopez? Oh, no, that's a fuck doll. Never mind.
It's eyes blinking shit. Oh, yeah. Also, a touch a truck. Its mouth is just trying to grasp for something. It's trying to suction on something. A sucky motion. Yeah, it's always trying to grab onto something. Or a fish mouth. Yeah. There's also a touch a truck, which kids can go. Yeah, that's cool. Go touch a dump truck. Go see a front end loader. People like shit. Kids love that shit. The lobster dinner, you can either take it home or eat it in the park.
Okay. I'll be going home. August 18th at 5 p.m. is the Doll Parade and Wagon Wranglers. I don't understand any of those words and why they're in the same sentence together. You could say Wagon Parade with Doll Wranglers and I'd say, great. That makes just as much sense, right? Yeah, those words could go any way. Any way you want. And then there's a candy drop that'll follow from there.
Okay. So they describe it as approximately 3,000 people will show up for this event featuring all this shit. You're getting everybody in town and 2,700 from surrounding areas? Yes. From where? I have no idea where they're from. Canada? They're coming over the border in hordes. Is this a big deal? Speaking French. A pie and ice cream social, live music, which they don't really tell you who's going to be playing, the Nostalgic Doll and Wagon Wrangler Parade.
There it is. Creepy again. And the big touch a truck and candy drop. They go on to say the doll parade is historic. Is it? It's been going on since the 1940s. They decorate their doll carriages or wagons.
They wheel dolls around. This is so creepy. Still doesn't make any goddamn sense. It's creepier now. That's even creepier now. I don't like this at all. I want this lobster feast, though. It's one to 1.25 pound whole lobster, corn, and baked potato.
There's a place in Phoenix that just opened called, I don't know, somebody's Lobster. And it's like lobster sandwiches and stuff. And the price, they don't have any prices on the menu because they change all the time because of the price of main lobster. It's fucking awesome. And it's a little drive-thru joint. I mean, some days you pay...
An absurd amount of money in a drive-thru. Especially in a desert 3,000 miles away from where it came from. Three people just spent $42 in the drive-thru. I'm just shaking my head like, how the fuck are we going to? Well, here you can get a two lobster feast thing, like me and you wanted to go, for $35. We could both eat lobsters. That's better than the lobster roll place. Yeah. Holy shit. Because it comes from, they just drive it there. And it's right there. They don't have to worry about it.
It doesn't need a plane ticket that I've got to pay for. They're like, Frank caught this earlier. You want to eat it? Yeah. Okay. Sure do. Yeah. So that's how that goes. There's also a quilt show. So at Dirt in this, mix that in with the whole thing. Eat your lobster. Stare at a quilt. Oh.
Something to do. Crime rate in this town, what we're interested in here. How is it safe? What is it? Property crime is about one-third below the national average. One-third below? It should be a third of. You'd think it'd be more. Well, violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and, of course, assault, the Mount Rushmore of crime is one-third of the national average. So two-thirds low. Because, I mean, there's so few people. You should know who did anything. So speaking of that, let's talk about some horrific murder that happened.
Oh, boy. Not just a murder. This is one of the worst, and I believe it was called by the judge at the time, the worst massacre in the history of Maine. History of Maine. History of the state of Maine, including all of Stephen King's shit. So think about that. He was inspired. This is worse than thinner. He was inspired for decades of murders because this happened in 2010. So decades he was inspired of lesser murders.
You're worse than Pennywise. Yeah. Oh, this is fucking horrible. This is a hard one. Oh, boy. Let's talk about some people first off. We're going to start out, just jump right into 2010, so not very long ago. Oh, boy. I mean, smartphones and a year before Instagram. Right. Facebook is happening and taking pictures on your phone and texting and all that shit. So just to give you an idea of where we're at here, let's talk about Jeffrey Ryan.
And Jeff, he goes by Jeff Ryan. He's 55 in 2010. Okay. Yeah. He's lived in the Amity area for about 12 years. Uh, he served in the Vietnam war. Oh boy. And he's a disabled veteran at this point. He's got some, he's got some physical problems. Um,
And he's 55, too. He's aging. Now, he has a prescription for drugs, for painkillers, for his injuries here. Do we know which ones he's taken? It's various. That's the thing. Oh. The stuff around, anything around prescription drugs is going to be very nebulous here. It's all a little mushy. Okay. Because it goes from people saying that he just takes the responsible medically prescribed
amount of these for his pain management to people saying that he's a full blown prescription drug addict and you know always on pills and pilled out to people saying that he sells pills oh he's either that's a vast yeah he either just takes a couple when his pain really acts up or he's just distributing them to the entire fucking Canadian border area yeah one or the other
Slinging them like Maine lobsters all around this bitch. We're not sure. So that's how it goes. Now, his ex-wife we'll talk about here. He was married. He's been married twice, actually. Got kids from both marriages. His ex-wife of the most recent marriage, her name is Jamie Merrill, and they got a divorce in about 2007. And it was based on, according to the documents, irreconcilable differences.
They've been married since 98. They have one son named Jesse.
He is, he was born in 2000. He's 10 years old in 2010. In 2000, a Vietnam vet is having children. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he was at that time, uh, 45, right? He was 45. That's not so bad. Yeah. So yeah, you have a new marriage and all that. This was his like second family. Basically this was his start over family. And, um, so they got divorced. Like I said, they'd been married since September, 1998. Um, according to the divorce records, uh,
It showed that they share custody of their son, but that Jesse had resided primarily with his father in a trailer in Amity.
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Okay. Okay. Now, this is what Jamie Merrill says. This is just her, you know, talking. She says she left Ryan after seven years of marriage. She said she sought refuge from his abuse in a string of shelters for battered women before settling into another town in New Hampshire about three years before this. Holy. So that's her story. And she says that he's a drug addict and sells prescription drugs and has a lot of enemies.
Okay. Oh, and he's got enemies. This is great. Because he sells drugs. So he's got enemies and a lot of people don't like him and he's fucked people over. Well, if he's beating her into battered women's shelters, you can't tell me all the rest of his dealings with people are wonderful.
I'm sure he's a very shrewd businessman. Yeah, that's what I mean. Like, I'm sure he's probably not a very popular guy, according to her. No, that's just according to her. Now, they have, like I said, a son named Jesse who's 10. So Jeff is the father, Jesse the son. Now, Jeff also has another ex-wife. Right. From before that, they have a 16-year-old daughter. Okay. And that woman, his ex-wife, her name is Tamara Strout.
S-T-R-O-U-T. Like trout with an S. Strout. Now, like I said, so they've been divorced and they have a 16-year-old daughter. But recently, in the last year or so, from 2009-ish, they have started speaking again, Jeff and Tamara, and have rekindled their romance. And in 2010, he apparently proposed to her again.
Getting back with Tammy. Imagine if you're a kid and your parents get divorced when you're little, and then you're 16 and they're going to get remarried. And you got another brother. Yeah. Is that like it's finally coming true, or is that like you fucking assholes couldn't work this out throughout my entire childhood? Thanks a lot. Now you're coming back now that I'm super fucked up over this? Yeah, thanks. Something else to talk to my therapist about. Great. Thanks a lot.
You're not going to believe this. Now he walked out, he's back. He's back. They're all back now. Now, according to his second ex-wife, Jamie Merrill, not the one he's hooking back up with, Jamie says that he has been threatened, Jeff has, by, quote, quite a few people over the years.
Sure. Due to his behavior and drug dealing ways. Sure. So as of 2010, he lives in a mobile home on Route 1. Well, that's not great. Yeah, it's not great. That's bad. That's not wonderful. He has a best friend, too, that lives down the road named Jason DeHaan. Down Route 1? Down Route 1. Down old Route 1 there. He lives down the route is what he lives, not down the road. Okay.
Couple mile markers down is where he's at. There's a monument. There's a big monument for it. Don't worry about it. Get your galoshes and your GPS and you should be able to find old Jason's house no problem. This is a place where when you ask for directions, there's a lot of like where the old barn used to be and shit like that. Make a left where, you know, where it was down the route. Yeah, it was down the route. Right down the route.
Oh, man. Jason DeHaan is D-E-H-A-H-N. He's 30, so he's 25 years younger than Jeff, but they're best friends, apparently.
Not a lot of people around, I feel like. Yeah, but also it's usually substances that bring those people together. I was going to say, yeah, that long of distance. Substance or interests. One way or another, it's an interest. That's the thing. They both like beer. They both like to drink beer. They both like to hang out. I mean, if you got nobody around and you might just go, I don't care how old he is. He drinks beer and watches football. You legal to drink? Come on over. We'll watch that.
Also, then, like you said, drugs bring disparate groups of people to hang out at the same place. I've seen very different people hanging out together doing drugs. Why are you with that? Oh, that's why. Oh, that's why. There's always, like, there's pages you can follow that have, like, old Studio 54 pictures.
Check out who's with who and you go, why would those two be together? Oh, yeah. That's right. Okay. That's the only fucking reason that these two people would be in a tree. Oh, yeah. Cocaine was huge. Yeah, that's why. Now I get it. Clearly.
So Jason, people say that Jason visited Jeff pretty much every day. He'd come over and hang out at Jeff's trailer. I don't know why Jason's trailer wasn't the big hangout, but it's kind of how things go with people. Some people's houses are more accommodating. Now, Jason, this is probably why the hanging out goes on over here, because Jason has a wife and three kids. Yeah, I don't want to hang out around them. No, yeah, you come over here and just hang out with me and my 10-year-old, and it's all good.
So who knows? Now, Jamie, the ex-wife, at this point, it's not like...
she's saying all these things about him, but it's not like she's trying to get back together with him or something like that. She has a fiance and is six months pregnant as well at this point. Oh, wow. Yeah, the whole thing is... And elsewhere. And elsewhere. She moved to New Hampshire. Lewis to New Hampshire. So she's... Right. Oh, she's way down there. She's a while away anyway. Yeah, up in the White Mountains, that's a nice area too, James. Yeah, not bad. So Father's Day comes around, 2010. Mm-hmm. And Jeff, apparently, he was supposed to pick up
Jesse and do so they were supposed to do some kind of trip but then he called to say he would have to delay the trip and didn't explain why oh but then he went and picked Jesse up anyway in Lewiston and
And to take him back to Amity for Father's Day to spend the weekend together. And they were going to go fishing and, you know, spend time together. And it's late June, so school's over. This is, you know, hang out at dad's house and do some fishing and all that kind of shit. Now, he hadn't seen his son since the end of February. Oh, yeah. Jesse, the son, had moved out of the Amity home and moved back into his mother's house.
Okay. Then before that he was living with Jeff. The son was Jesse. And then he moves out in February, moves back with his mom and dad hasn't seen him in four months. Hmm. So this is a big pickup here for father's day. It's a, you know, sure. Yeah. Here, uh, Jesse just finished the fourth grade. So the school year. Oh yeah. And, uh, yeah. So that's how that goes. Jamie Merrill. Now, after a few days, um, she's calling her son, uh,
here and trying to get a hold of him she talked to him on Tuesday night that week at about 8 30 p.m. and then she tried him all day Wednesday trying to call you know Jeff's phone to get a hold of Jesse but it just rang and rang so she thought maybe they're fishing and you know who knows if the phone rings out by the lake or you know whatever so she said it was weird though because she had talked to Jesse at least once every day and he would also send her text messages so
Now just communication cut off on this Wednesday. So they're like, that's weird. And it's very strange. He's going into fifth grade. He's turning into a real man now. Yeah, it's the Wednesday after Father's Day. So he's, yeah, fifth grade. You don't talk to your mom anymore. No. Yeah. You tell her, just give me the meal through a slot in the door and leave me alone.
Worry about yourself, bitch. I'm fine. Don't worry about what I'm doing in here. Got things going on. So no one can get a hold of them. And also Jason DeHaan, the best friend who's over there all the time. Down the road piece, yeah. He doesn't come home one day either and nobody can find him. So no one knows where anybody is here. These three that all hang out together. All three of these just fucked off together. Fucked off somewhere. So Jason DeHaan's brother...
No, here's that. He goes to Jeff Ryan's all the time. So he goes over to Jeff Ryan's house to try to find his brother. He goes there several times to try to locate Jason and he never, nobody answers the door, knocks on the door. There's no activity. There's no anything going on, no noises, nothing. So, you know, he comes back, he goes once, he goes twice on the third visit. He has a flashlight with him and he shines it through the window into the trailer.
To see if he can see anything. Yeah. What he sees is a gigantic fucking bloodbath worth of blood in there.
In the house? There's blood everywhere. That's what he can see with the flashlight. So you know how dark it is up in Maine in this area? Oh, boy, it's dark. There isn't a city. Bangor is not a big city, and that's the closest big city, and that's two hours away. Forget about if it's a new moon. If there's no moon, it's over for you. Dark. I mean, dark. So when you're coming up to this trailer with a flashlight, this is dark, and it's the wilderness, and you shh.
shine a flashlight through a dark window in a fucking woods trailer and you see blood everywhere you gotta shit your pants right that's a that's a lot of that's a lot of trout guts yeah right now there's somebody out there writing a screenplay writing that down going oh that's fucking good
You can picture that scene step by step of how horrifying that is. A POV shot of the person. Yeah. That blood doesn't even look like blood. It looks it's black. Yeah. Yeah. Just spread on the walls, though, and everywhere else. He freaks out, runs away and calls his father.
who's also Jason's father, obviously, and says, Jesus fucking Christ, get down here. There's blood. I don't know what to do. What do I do? I don't know whose it is. Yeah. Doesn't call 911. Calls his father. Calls his dad. Calls his dad, which I don't know what you're thinking on that one. Well, I guess that tells me it's so remote. Dad's faster than the police. Faster. Yeah. But still, I want to get that on record that I, you know, hey. Get this started. Yeah. Yeah. Let's get this. I didn't do it. Let's get this going. You call 911. Then you call your dad.
Just want to let you guys know I didn't produce all this. There's a whole bunch of it. I'm going to call my dad. A lot of it. I'm going to see what my dad has to say. Goodbye. When your dad gets there, when you call your dad, he should hear sirens on your end of the phone as they come closer to your house. Yeah. There should be a flicker of the lights off your house. Do you think maybe he thought he was crazy for a second? Like maybe I need a second pair of eyes to verify this? Maybe.
read a lot of Stephen King. I'm not, yeah, I believe in this. It is Maine. Creepy shit goes on, you know, I saw needful things. You never know. Like it could be a, it could be an old man behind this whole deal with a little shop and you never know. I'm just saying. Yeah. So he, they enter the residence. Dad comes along, Robert, uh, DeHaan, he comes in, they enter the residence, they push the door open and get it open. What? To the trailer. Cause they,
Because they see all this blood. So they force their way into the trail. Why would they do that? Why would you? That's what I'm saying. Why would you put yourself into a bloodbath? Ever. Well, number one, yeah, you look at that and you go, that could be a crime scene, A. And number two, when police investigate, they need to see what position doors were in. Right. Was this locked, fucked with, and tampered with? Fingerprints on things. You just busted through the door now. Yeah. Now.
Now, at the same time, if you think your relative might be in there injured and in need of attention, you might say, I don't give a fuck. I'm busting in. See, we're thinking of it as, but it's been a couple days and there's a bloodbath and it's all dark. I'd think the worst and call the cops. I wouldn't. Yeah.
I don't know. That's a judgment call. I don't know how much blood you can lose, but I've seen how much comes out when you donate. It's not enough to show a bloodbath. To draw attention like that. If there's like six, eight of those spread around, I'm not going in. No. There can't be many more left in somebody. And we do this show, so that's the other thing. So we know, oh God, that's the other thing. I think we're...
If you're just living in a small town in Maine and you're like, where's my brother at? And you look through and you're like, holy shit, Jesus Christ. It might just be a different story. I don't know. Honestly.
We don't even want to take a walk because we're like, there'll be a body. Right. We go for a walk there. We're just going to find a body. The whole day is going to be ruined now. So, no. You're not going to believe this, Jay. I had this old little dirt bike in my garage that I hadn't been using. So, I listed it on Facebook Marketplace. And I traded it for a Peloton so I never have to go for a ride ever again. Good. There. Because I don't want to find bodies. That's a good idea. See, you're never going to find bodies like we said. Never. Peloton. In your liver.
You better use this, Peloton, and you better fucking give us credit and most of all money for this idea. Maybe a check. This is a great idea. Obviously, maybe not for national television, but for niche markets. Jesus Christ, Peloton, guaranteed not to find a body is a great thing. Or you could put in the videos a body that you find as you go down the road, and that makes it...
You could have a whole like true crime. Yeah. Like mix it, like team up with one of those hunter killer. Like remember we did that team up with that to have like a mystery then. There's an option. Do you call the cops? Do you keep on riding? Yeah.
Is there more restraint because you've got to pedal faster to get away from this fucking scene? Do you unzip the duffel bag, yes or no? You know what I mean? Shit like that. We can make it a make-your-own-adventure peloton. Jesus Christ. It's the best idea we've ever had. But I got one because I have a bike and I don't want to find a body. No, you're smart. I live in an area far enough away that I'll find a fucking body out there. Find desert and there will be a body eventually. Can't help it.
So they enter this residence now. Yeah. Crazy. And they look around with a flashlight. There's nothing in the living room. They see blood everywhere, and they don't see any people. No source. No source of this blood. So they investigate the rest of the trailer. It's a trailer, so it's not that big. They go down to a bedroom, and they find...
A horrific discovery. They find the body of 10-year-old Jesse. Oh, no. Just bloody and clearly been through the ringer here. Yeah, stab wounds and a lot of holes in him, put it that way, and a lot of blood. A lot of blood everywhere. So at that point, they went, holy shit, ran out of the fucking house.
Yeah. And call the cops, obviously. Oh, my God. We found a child's body in here. There's a madman out there. This is fucking crazy. Yeah. And they're scared, too, at that point, too, because they're like, if someone would do this to a 10-year-old, we got to get the fuck out of here. We got zero chance. Like a horror movie, you're expecting to be looking at the body and then turn around and run and the guy's standing in the hallway with an ax. You know what I mean? He's right there. Oh, God. That's how that works.
So they also say that the police arrive and the father here, Robert DeHaan, also says there's a Jeff's truck isn't here. Jeff's truck is missing. So his son is dead inside. No, no truck. We haven't found our son, Jason. Yeah. And we don't see Jeff's truck. So at that point, everyone's thinking, did he kill his fucking kid and take off with his friend in the truck?
That's all they can imagine at this point. His truck is gone. They don't know. So it's a 1989 Ford F-150 is what's missing. So they're, you know, freaking out, obviously, about everything. They do a search of the property and investigators look around. There's a small shed next to the trailer.
And I have a picture of the whole trailer and everything next to it that I'll post on social media for you guys so you can see. So they find this small trailer, a small shed next to the trailer, and the investigators enter and they find Jeff Ryan dead in the small shed.
Oh, no. Similarly attacked lots of apparently stab wounds. What the fuck, DeHaan? Dead in there. So, yeah. Jeff and Jesse both dead. Yeah, Jeff and Jesse both dead. Father and son dead. Jeff's truck gone. 55 and 10. Truck gone. Can't find Jason. So people are a little...
Suspicious here of where the hell Jason is. They can't find Jason. So as they're spreading out from the house, they just they're searching for evidence. They have these two bodies and they're searching for evidence. And as they do out in front of the house down the way a little bit in a ditch, they find Jason DeHaan also dead.
And he's even worse than the other two. He has been brutally stabbed everywhere and has had his throat, his head's nearly off, basically. He's nearly been decapitated by having his throat cut to that extent. This is a baffler. This is a fucking, it's a mess. I mean, this is a bloodbath butcher. Everybody's been slaughtered. It's horrible. It's horrible.
And anger with with with absolute malice, just furious anger. Yeah. And strength. These are these are grown men. I mean, we got a war veteran and a 30 year old guy in there, you know, to overpower them and to be able to almost take somebody's head off.
Right. With a knife and a slashing motion. That's why they were saying that in the OJ trial that OJ is so goddamn strong. And you'd have to be to almost sever Nicole Brown's head. It's the same thing. You have to be very strong. And to be...
An enormous piece of shit willing to murder a 10-year-old in that fashion. That's crazy. A 10-year-old. Because what did the 10-year-old do to you? Right. I mean... Is this bloodlust? Cuddle a duty head? Yeah. What are we talking about? Fucking beat you in a game of Madden? Like, what could he have done? Did he sing diarrhea too many times? One too many times. I know! My pants are full of foam! I don't know. Yes! I drive a Chevy. Leave me alone. Fuck. It's...
It's scary, though. He's a 10-year-old kid. He's an innocent kid. It's horrific. A 10-year-old can't do enough to you to make you kill them. I'm sorry. Not like that. Not like that. Because you can just take a 10-year-old and physically just put them somewhere. Right. You don't have to kill them. You can locate them. Yeah. You can just relocate them to a place you like better and tell them to stay there and make them. Don't leave from here. I don't like you. And then just tell them to do homework randomly and they'll have to do it. So it's very good. Write sentences. Here's the sentence. There's the sentence.
So this is a bloodbath, like we said, and they're...
They're looking around trying to find any bit of evidence they can. It took an hour and a half before they found Jason DeHaan out in the ditch, by the way. So for an hour and a half, all the investigators are kind of looking like, I think we probably have our suspect already. Three people are here. Now two of them are dead and the truck's gone. I don't know. But they were like, why would he do that? He lives up the road and they're friends. So that wouldn't make any fucking sense. Up the route, sorry. And they're friends.
So it didn't make a lot of sense. And the way his body was, it was just kind of like in the bushes near a ditch too. Just kind of tossed. Tossed or that's, they don't know. Where he fell. Yeah. They're trying to figure out the sequence of events and they're like, was he killed outside, out front? And then who was killed? And then got him in the shed. And then everybody's in three different places. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's really weird. So,
They said that all the chief medical examiner said all three died as a result of multiple sharp force injuries. And Jason DeHaan is almost decapitated as well. All knife play. Yeah. Jesus. So the theory of this, because they they kind of go through the whole thing here and they the theory is they think that.
Jeff Ryan obviously was outside. They're thinking maybe he was killed first.
Because he would be the guy that anybody, because he's the resident. So you think if somebody wanted to kill him, that would be probably the first. He'd be the lightning rod of murder probably in the house. With him being the target, then you've accomplished it. Now leave. But they went further. Witnesses. Witnesses also, if there's nobody in there now, we may ransack the place and take things. Take things also. So they think that.
So Young Jesse and Jason DeHaan, Jesus, Jeff, Jason, and Jesse is confusing. Yeah, it's a lot of Js. It's a lot of Js. So they think that Jason DeHaan, the friend, and Young Jesse, the 10-year-old, based on what's set up in the living room, they think they were inside playing video games.
Wow. Jason was playing video games with the kid when someone came in. That's that's what it looks like. And they think that they they feel like they Jason DeHaan's blood is in the house, too.
Okay. And he's in a ditch dead, but there's blood in the house. There was an attack inside, for sure. They attacked him inside, they think, and then he tried to get away, obviously, and maybe he was tracked down outside. Yeah. Or he was dragged out there. They can't really tell, but there's no drags, but there are drops as far as blood marks go. No blood drags, but there are blood drops. So he ran away, for sure. He tried to run away, and...
Then they think that the boy was chased into the back bedroom. He was a 10-year-old was stabbed in the back. Oh, come on. How dickless do you have to be to stab a 10-year-old in the back? You don't even have the balls to face them. That's fucking disgusting. The boy, they said, was stabbed as he cowered in fear.
He fucking went to the group. Yeah. He fetus up and you jab him there? You fucking. Yeah. His body was on its hands and knees when it was discovered. Oh, good grief. Fucking horrific, man. It's horrific. And by the way, these bodies have been here for longer than a day when they finally. Yeah. In June in a trailer. Yikes. So this is horrifying.
So they said that, yeah, DeHaan must have managed to get outside where his head was nearly taken off and he was stabbed countlessly in the back, just repeatedly, and his throat was slashed multiple times. The state medical examiner said that they'd all died of multiple stab wounds and all of them appeared to be trying to elude the killer. Really? Yeah, a lot of their wounds. Sometimes the first wound is in the back and then the rest of them are trying to get away, trying to fight.
So this is a, when I say this, they said this is the worst mass murder in the history of Maine. That's real. This is fucking horrifying. An absolute horrifying mess.
So state police crime scene people and they get canines in here and everything else just scouring for any kind of evidence. They have a big tarp that covers up the door and the evidence markers everywhere. And, you know, it goes from being this in a peaceful trailer and in the woods to, you know, Route 1 is hopping now. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's an above ground pool and stuff like that. You know, trying to make a go of it here.
They talk about, they catalog that they have an ATV and a bunch of like, you know, outdoor toys. Outdoor equipment, yeah. Stuff that they play with. And the kid has bicycles there. And he built them, the dad built them a treehouse. What? He had a treehouse and a bicycle. They had a trampoline and an ATV. Treehouse, bicycle, trampoline, ATV. Great dad. That's fucking fun. What a dad. What a fun time. What 10-year-old wouldn't want to go there? I would. I would.
We get to go rip through the woods. When I'm tired of that shit, I'll jump on the trampoline. I'm going to sleep on this trampoline tonight. I don't give a shit. Or up in my tree house. Yeah. Maybe I'll go sleep up there. If it rains, I'll be in there. Yeah. A bunch of toys. Great. Yeah. Above ground pool to jump into if you're hot from your trampolining. So they collect several pieces of evidence that
from a tan car owned by Jeff Ryan that's outside of the trailer. And several pieces, they said, from the driver's side floor.
They also collect from the scene cigarette butts and beer bottles that they find around on the ground, outside, inside. And they take all of that in for DNA testing. Oh, thank God for 2010. Yeah, this is 2010. So we're going to get all this shit. So they get a DNA profile. They end up getting on a beer bottle. They get a full DNA profile on a beer bottle. Whole thing. Whole thing of an unknown male. He's not in the system. Yeah.
And a cigarette butt found at the home go to the same unknown male. It's the same sequence. Smoker and a drinker. He's a smoker and a drinker, and he was there long enough to have a beer and a cigarette. You bet. So that they know.
So people up and down the route freak out like, how could you not? I mean, there is fucking people just walking in circles. Pepper Chavon remembers. Pepper Chavon remembers. They don't know what to do with themselves. Never going to forget. This is too much. No, they can't eat their lobster that night. They're so ill. Gross. They called it from an article. They say the killing shocked residents of the quiet wooded community.
One of the closest neighbors to the mobile home, Dale Foley, who lives in the town of Orient, which is like a mile and a half away. Not Dave, Dale. He said they knocked on his door. The press went around trying to talk to neighbors. So they said, Dale Foley, who lives in Orient about two miles away, answered the door Thursday morning with a shotgun in his hand. What do you want? What do you want? That's friendly.
That's right neighborly. That'll make you go, oh, I better be brief with my statement, I feel like. Never mind. That's the answer, I think. We'll be leaving now. Bob live here? No? Okay. We're going to leave now. I was looking for Bob. Wrong address. He said that he was answering the door with the weapon in his hand because of the killing. So this isn't just how they normally greet people in Maine.
You know, this is he's just now racking a moss bird. Yeah. Because of the killer. You never know. Y'all could be the murderers. I mean, it's one of those. Hello. Click. Clack. What? Wow. All right. We're leaving. They go out of the article to say after putting the gun down, he said he gets good. At least he didn't do the whole interview like that. He said his son rode the school bus with Jesse Ryan during the school year.
And Foley said, I was up until 2 a.m. and never heard any noise. Nothing like this ever happens here. This is tragic. Another lady named Tara Jay, who lives just up the route from the family there. She said she didn't hear anything suspicious on Wednesday or Wednesday evening. She said she had seen the family before but didn't know them well. She said, though, everyone I talked to is really concerned and scared. It's so shocking.
So Jeff has an adult son, Jeff Ryan, who's 35 years old. So he's older than his guy he was hanging out with in Dahan. Right. He lives in Texas, so he's not a part of this. But his name is Shannon Ryan, and he lives in Texas. And they talked to him. And his evaluation is several people had to have killed all three of them. This couldn't have been one person probably.
Great point, Shannon. Based on the fact that there's... He said, number one, Jeff Ryan has two Rottweilers that aren't going to let strangers just fucking... Some one stranger do this. And that Ryan and DeHaan wouldn't let a stranger into their home. So between the dogs and these two, they're not going to let a guy in. Not to mention, they said that...
there's guns in the house. They have guns. This guy, he's a, you know, he was a war veteran. He knows how to use guns. They're both like tough guys too. They're both considered, neither of them are considered, you know, meek little pussies. Like they'll fight you and they're,
It's considered big, strong, strapping, tough dudes. Another fun point is that they went in where the 10-year-old and DeHaan are at. One's going after each or multiples after. In multiple directions. Right. That's how they look at it. So he says that also this guy says state police told the family that nothing has appeared to have been stolen except the truck, too.
And live. That's crazy. Interesting. So Shannon, the son, said, quote, no way one person could overpower two guys. My dad told me that if you did not know the dogs, they would bark and sound pretty aggressive. Oh. You couldn't just walk past them. They were like Frankie. They were like my dog Frankie. Yeah. They got to know you. You come to the house, you got to be introduced to Frankie or else you're not going to have a good day. Sure.
She's going to fucking scare the shit out of you. She's going to let you know you're not welcome. Real quick. You couldn't just walk past them. If they didn't know you, he would have to go out there and walk you by them. Exactly. Oh, wow. I have to walk people into my house with Frankie. He said that's the only way. He said also he's pissed off about Jamie, the ex-wife, saying things about him in the media.
Oh, he says that it's bullshit. My father was not selling and using prescription drugs. He said that's bullshit. He said he was a doting father who won the custody of Jesse after a bitter fight with Jamie.
And he said that's a great point, too. He said that he wouldn't have won custody if he had been the terrible guy that his ex-wife describes. Right. But at the same time, they shared custody, though, legally. But he did. He got him physically was living with him, though. Yeah. And a criminal record check in the state court revealed only one conviction against Jeff Ryan having nothing to do with drugs just for disorderly conduct in 1992, where he was fined one hundred dollars.
So not even anything that is abusive of her. 18 years ago, he got drunk and had a shoving fight in the street with some guy at a bar. That's what happened probably, more than likely. I wonder why she's saying that he beat her into shelters and shit. No, they said DeHaan also was convicted in 2004 of a DUI, or OUI, whatever, and was jailed for seven days. So, I mean, neither of these two are like...
you know criminal fucking masterminds here or anything i think it's an owi which is owi yeah operating without influence this is this is yeah that's how they get you up there yeah that's how they get your beer at son y'all had like a like a local like a micro brew or anything no
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That's cvs.com slash stories. CVS, making healthier happen together. At least gargle some whiskey, boy. Jesus. Get it on your breath is what I'm saying. How are you going to get any traction without it? I mean, I'll give you a detector. It'll be like an O2 or something. Don't worry. It'll be fine. I got a nip of shots and schnapps. Schnapps, shots, schnapps.
I got shots and schnapps. Come over here, boy. I got shots of schnapps. Who wants them? Who wants shots of schnapps? By the way, license and register, you know what it is, the thing with your address on it and stuff. It's your name and stuff. It's got numbers, and you know where it is. So Shannon said, the biggest thing I've been dealing with is all these negative things about my father. My father had two things in life, his home and his son.
So that's the story from Shannon. He describes his father as a practical joker who loved to hunt and fish and grow his own vegetables. He said he spoke to his dad about every week on the phone and said that his father sounded fine during their last conversation. He described DeHaan, the friend, Jason DeHaan, as a close friend of his dad who lived a mile down the route. And he said they were friends for about 11 years. They were like brothers.
So friends from the time he was 19 and you were 44 –
Weird brothers. That seems like he's using... It's father and son. It's not brothers. Yes. If the other one's... Shannon's been in Texas this whole time. He could be substituting this kid for Shannon. Absolutely. And looking out for him. Yeah. And being a pal. Being an older brother type. In this case, a father type. Yes. So do the police have any ideas or clues or...
What the fucks at this point? Anything. They say that they don't want to comment on any motive. The Maine State Police spokesperson said, we're aware of what the ex-wife has said and some of the same information she has shared with us. I love that she's just called the ex-wife in the newspaper, by the way. The ex-wife. The ex-wife told us this. All right.
I don't know. Do you believe her? Who the fuck knows? You know what I'm saying? You can't trust nobody's ex. You know what I mean? Not the ex-wife. Who knows? So the locals go crazy, though. Here's a guy named Larry Hamilton from Amity, and he says, you have to be pretty cold to stab a kid. Yeah. They said that all the residents were calling each other that morning. He said, quote, the phone was ringing early this morning. This is a small town, and people are calling each other on the phone talking that way.
Yeah, you have to be pretty shitty to do that, I would say. Joy Strout here, who, if you know. That is, what's her name's mom? That is Tamara Strout, Jeff's ex-wife and mother of one of his kids, a 16-year-old daughter. New fiance? That's her mother, Joy.
Okay. Okay. Now, they say that Tamara and the daughter came into town, and she says, Tamara says, we were together for nine years, and we were going to get back together. They arrived at the property because they let his 16-year-old daughter take the cat from the property.
Oh, that's nice. It's her cat, I guess. Yeah, that's sad. That's fucking sad. She's going to come get the cat that was in the house during this shit? Holy my. That cat has seen some... I don't know if I trust that cat. You might have given it lessons now on what to do. So Joy Strout says she's shocked by the murders and it was the last thing she ever expected to happen on a nice route like this. She said...
We live here because we thought this type of thing didn't happen here. Unfortunately, this show didn't come out for seven more years and she would have known better. We could have told you a long time ago. Oh, God. This happens so often, so often that we'll never run out of shows. Not even worried about it. Not even sweating it.
So much so often that we even started another one because of it. We do this twice a week. Every fucking Friday. Check it out. And guess what? There were six or eight more this week. Yeah, there's even more. We know of even more.
So the truck is the key here for the cops. They got to find the truck because hopefully there's some evidence of who the killers are in the truck. So they're looking, they're asking for the public's help in locating the truck. And they're saying it's a blue and silver 1989 F-150 with the license plate 4155RY, which was the original name of the town, as we know. Yeah. From the earlier in the episode. Yeah.
And they said, the vehicle's very important to us. We feel it plays a very important role in the case. They say it has white wheels and white wheels in the front and silver in the back and has orange running lights on top of the cab just above the windshield. One of those. Yeah. Oh. So, yeah. It's a rare F-150. A lot of those don't have that. No, no. It seems like something he customized. The marker lights are for Poland. That's... Yeah. Oh, yeah. Indicates that you're coming down the road...
There's going to be a trailer behind this big fucker. With some shit behind you. Yeah. Yeah. You live out here. It seems like you tow a trailer once in a while. Yeah. Yeah, probably. You know, with a boat on it or a fucking ATV on it or some kind of shit. So they do that. They post a photo of the truck and said, anyone who sees it, call 911, please. And they said they've received a few calls, but none have led to the right truck.
Anybody's just seeing an F-150 and doing it. But they have everybody, the National Crime Information Center, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the U.S.-Canada border crossing officials. Everybody's involved in this, looking for the truck here. So he said, we've had about 25 calls in with descriptions of the vehicle, but nothing has led us to it.
So there's detectives everywhere. They said it might appear to the public that the investigation is moving very slowly. This is two days later. They really don't have any answers. But there are, in fact, very comprehensive cases. And the fact of the matter is that it's very early on in the investigation. And this is one. It's not like if you watch the first 48, you're going to talk to this one. You're going to talk to that one.
There's nobody to talk to. There's nobody to talk to. Right. There's no one around. There's no witnesses. They talked and said, Jason came over here, and they knew he came over there, and now he's dead. Outside of that, they got wats on this whole thing. Show me the fucking truck, and if you can't find it in the first 48 hours-
You still got a chance to close this, but you got to find that goddamn truck. You got to find it. And they said, though, we are asking people to pay attention to their own safety and lock their doors and vehicles. So they're, in other words, panic. Go ahead and panic, everybody. Load your weapons, lock your fucking doors, and sit in your living room in a sweaty panic until daybreak from now on. That's what you do. Yeah.
So there's a man singing, give me the loot. Give me the loot coming through. And he wants your F-150. He wants it bad. So they talk about Jamie Merrill. And when they notified her of this and, you know, they came to her house and knocked on her door to tell her fucking kids been slaughtered, which is horrific. They told her Jesse's dead. And she said, what the hell are you talking about?
She was like, what do you mean? And so she said, do you mean my husband, not my son? And they said, well, he's dead too.
Yeah, that guy also. Yeah, him. We were getting to that. We figured we'd want to bury the lead of your son. We didn't think you'd care about that one. Yeah. To be honest with you. When you're all done crying out about your kid, we'd be like, oh, by the way, that guy, too. What you asked about it. He didn't do it. Yeah. She asked what happened to them, but they wouldn't tell her right away. She thought they'd been in a car accident was her idea.
They probably went out fishing and maybe slid off the road, hit a tree or something. So she said that she asked whether someone had done something to her son and ex-husband, and the officers looked at each other and then back at her and didn't say anything.
Oh, Jesus Christ. The torture. They wouldn't tell her. Yeah, you can't. The problem is things have leaked out already because it's 2010. So she said rather than talk to them, she went online, looked on her phone, and found more details immediately. She said, quote, I didn't even know my son was stabbed.
Police told her to sit tight, she said. She said, quote, if that was your son who died in the worst possible way you could imagine, would you want to just sit tight and sit there? No. She said she couldn't believe the person hasn't been caught. She said, this is ridiculous. It doesn't make sense. So I would say not. Yeah.
she's sitting there crying with her new fiance and all this type of thing. And she's six months pregnant. She fainted during this. They had to call an ambulance and take her to the hospital and fucking, you know, cause she fainted and all this, which I mean, Christ almighty, your body's in enough uproar already. So much stress. She just, she is creating so much blood right now. Absolutely. So they talked to her and her fiance and her fiance said that,
Jeff must have known his assailant. And she agreed and said there must have been more than one person. So that's another. Everybody they talked to is like, not one person killed both of them. He's not going down without a fight type of guy. And she said, quote, I know in my heart that he would have never let anybody hurt Jesse. If he could stop it, there's no way. So that's another thing. You would protect your child. So you figure.
figure you know that they said he had several guns in the house and she said they need to catch the people who did this I just don't know how somebody could do this to a kid and walk around without a conscience fair fair so three days after they find the bodies they find the burned remains of a pickup truck that they believe is Jeff Ryan's oh no yes it's located about 15 miles from the home where it was taken okay yeah
Witnesses told investigators that a witness said that he and his girlfriend were traveling on Bancroft Road in Weston and saw a maroon four-wheel drive Dodge extended cab pickup stopped at the entrance to a road leading to where Jeff Ryan's burned truck would later be found.
Was there a tornado nearby? Yeah, anything. Well, no, there's a different truck at the entrance. Right. Yeah, but the burgundy truck from Twister was... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where was Helen Hunt in regards to this situation? Was Helen Hunt in a wife beater nearby? Is Philip Seymour Hoffman chasing you? And being so handsome. And being...
Super weird as usual. So funny, charming. Yeah. Creepy, weird, funny, charming, strange. Fode. Different. Fode. Different him. Weird man. They say they saw a male get out of the truck and head into the woods, reportedly carrying a container out in front of him with two hands.
So something heavy enough that needed to be carried with two hands out in front of you. And she said it appeared that the top of the container had been cut off and that the male was walking as if he was trying not to spill the contents of the container.
If you're walking like something, something liquid, which the truck is burned, so that would make a lot of sense. Yeah, gasoline. They said that the witness looked like they said they the witness witness said they've seen this truck before. The maroon Dodge Dodge looked like a truck owned by a guy they know named Robert Strout.
I know that last name. Yeah, that is Tamara's father, Robert Strout. That is Joy's husband. That is an interesting thing here. So yeah, if you don't know, that's Jeff's ex-father-in-law is Robert Strout. And maybe future. And maybe future father-in-law. You never know. Future ex-father-in-law. So they said they saw the truck head toward Danforth leaving that male behind as he walked up the field road toward where the truck was eventually found.
So they're saying Robert Strout and some dude carrying some liquid shit now. So they on June 27th, they go to Robert Strout's house. Let's talk to the Strouts and see what they have to say. And they see footwear impressions in the dirt path leading to the residence doorway. These are the similar footwear impressions to what they found next to Ryan's burned out truck.
So they're like, this is the same shoe and the same size. So they note that and take pictures and all that kind of shit. Robert Strout, 63, by the way, he told police that he went to Sanford by himself on June 25th, two days after the murders, and returned the next day.
And they also interview Tanya Strout and this Strout and all the Strouts here. So they then figure out that they have to talk to somebody else who's been staying around here in the house with them. And that is a guy named Thayne Ormsby. Thayne with a Y. T-H-A-Y-N-E. Ormsby. O-R-M-S-B-Y. Thayne is 20 years old.
What's happening with this guy? Well, they find out that he exists from one of Strout's daughters that tells them, oh, there's this other guy that's been kind of hanging out at the house living here now. They learn that Thane has been staying at Robert Strout's residence for several weeks. Strout said that he had taken Ormsby to stay with his son, Robert Strout Jr., here in Dover, New Hampshire, but that he...
He had come back or whatever. So, yeah, that's how that goes. Now, interesting. Ormsby, by the way, they are what's Athene Ormsby is the son of a woman named Maria Ormsby, who's a longtime friend of Jeff Ryan's ex-wife, Tamara Stout. So that's how they know him.
He's friends of the family. So put it this way. They've known each other a long time. Like, if they were Italian, he would call her Aunt fucking whatever. Like, just because their mother's been friends for so long. So they go to Strout's house, and they're talking to him. He...
And that's the story he gives. I went by myself. I don't know what you're talking about. But then they find out about Thane Ormsby from The Daughters, and then they go back to Robert Strout, and now he's got a different story. Oh. He says that it was about Tuesday or Wednesday, June 22nd or 23rd, he was sitting on his porch when Ormsby came through the woods with his bike and went out behind the house. He then saw Ormsby's shirt, pants, and shoes were covered in blood.
Oh, bad sign. Yes. So Ormsby told Strout that he killed Jeff Ryan and then just before walking away said, I killed them all and just walked away. Mr. Strout. Strout then tells police that he was threatened, that Ormsby threatened him, telling him that if he didn't help him, he would kill not only Robert, but Robert's whole family.
I'll kill everybody. All they had to do was say, we heard about Thane, and then he just opens up with all this? He just came with all this, yeah. So he says that Ormsby says that, or Strout says Ormsby told him that he had gone to Ryan's home because Ormsby's father, Thane's father, told him that Ryan owed him money. He said Jeff Ryan owed his father $10,000 on a drug deal and that his father wanted to collect it.
That's what he told him. Now, Strout also says that Ormsby told him that he took Jeff Ryan's truck and that he had to get rid of it. So Strout followed Ormsby in Jeff Ryan's truck to Tamara Strout's house on Springer Road. And they believe that Ormsby parked Ryan's truck behind Tamara's residence and went into her home still wearing blood-soaked clothing.
Okay. Of her ex-husband and soon-to-be future husband. Yes. She would have to be very well aware of what happened. Strout tells the cops he left Thane there and just went back to his house, went back home. Roberts said he later returned to the residence and saw Armsby leave the home wearing nothing but his underwear.
Just leave in the house and his underwear in the woods, which is stripped down. Yeah. Uh, they said Ormsby Thane reportedly burned his bloody clothing in the furnace of Tamara Strout's residence. Wow. Yes. Uh, Strout, why they said drove his own vehicle. Uh, Robert, that is drove his vehicle, followed, uh, Ormsby and Ryan's vehicle to the field road on Bancroft road, where the witness saw them doing that, uh,
Ormsby burned the truck, according to this, and came running back and told Robert Strout it's done. So it's presumably gasoline he was carrying or some kind of flammable liquid. Ormsby then told Robert Strout that he had to dispose of the knife that he used.
It's a big fucking Rambo combat knife, by the way. Sure it is. It's a big, nasty, non-serrated though. Oh, very smooth, huh? But a big, nasty combat knife, they said. So apparently Robert Strout drove him to a bog on U.S. Route 1 and Dane threw the knife into the water of a bog, which there's an ocean. I would have gone there.
But those bogs will eat everything. Maybe, maybe. But they're also like six inches deep. Yeah, that's true. But anything with some weight to it will go at least six inches deep. Yeah. Metal detector, though. You're pretty fucked. Yeah, they'll find that. You can go in knee deep and just metal detect and find that shit.
So Thane also told Robert Strout that after he killed Jeff Ryan, he went back into the residence and saw DeHaan and Jesse Ryan sitting on the couch. So he says he killed Jeff Ryan first, went into the house and saw DeHaan and Jesse Ryan, Jason and Jesse sitting on the couch. Yeah.
Thane had told Strout that he, that Dahan ran outside and Thane chased after him. He said he punched Jason Dahan and stabbed him with the knife and punched him before he knifed him again and then drug his body to the brook.
Okay. That's what he says, which is the bushes he got found in. This little 20-year-old did all this. He then says he went back inside. This is what Strout is saying that he was told, that Dane went back inside where Jesse Ryan was running around. What, in circles? He's 10, not fucking, he's not a hamster. Like a puppy. Yeah. And he said he stabbed him in the back bedroom of the mobile home.
And they said, well, did he tell you why he did any of this? And he said, no, just that $10,000 thing. That was it. Ten grand. Ten grand. So Joy Strout, she, by the way, had talked to the Bangor Daily News one day after the bodies were discovered. And she spoke of how her daughter had a child with Jeff Ryan. And while this interview is going on,
Thane is sitting at the table smoking cigarettes, just listening to them talk. Right next to her. Right next to her while she's talking about this guy and the news is, oh, God, it's a tragedy. And he's just sitting there smoking cigarettes. He knows all about it. Listening to the whole fucking thing. Jason's brother, Jake, who's one of the guys, one who went over and found them. He said that he had never seen Ormsby before.
Later on, when they find out who he is, he said he's obviously an out of towner here. That's that was his quest. That was his answer to the whole thing. He's obviously an out of towner. Nobody here would do that. But he did say it could not have just been him to commit the homicides. There's no way he could have overpowered my brother or a Vietnam vet. They are so strong.
Yeah, that and the two guys are both strong Woods main guys. I mean, they do shit outside. They're strong guys. This man separates Wood. He's not, a 20-year-old will not stab him. Probably not. So that's all they have is Robert Stroud's work.
word on this. Yeah. Like no one else has said anything. They don't have evidence of anything in there. So they're just looking into Thane at this point. They find a Facebook profile belonging to Thane listed Ellsworth is his hometown. He went to Ellsworth high. Many of his friends were from Ellsworth high. And he even had Tamara Strout and Mariah Ryan listed as friends, who is the 16 year old daughter of Jeff Ryan. So that the one who was, who took the cat and,
His quote on his page is, quote, I have but two passions, love and war. Okay, that's a quote, right? Yeah, that's a quote. No, that's from somebody else. What 17-year-old goes, I have but two passions. Come on now. So Donald Hiltz.
He says now that he ran into Thayne Ormsby. He comes a few days later and goes to the police and said, I ran into that 20-year-old Thayne Ormsby while Ormsby was staying with a friend at an apartment in Dover. This was a few days after the murders.
And he said that he struck up a conversation with Thane in the parking lot. During the conversation, Donald Hiltz says that Ormsby started, quote, talking about how he was an alcoholic and he gets very vicious when he drinks. Okay. Okay. So they're like, we have a lot of...
The cops are like, we have a lot of shit that doesn't add up and a lot of, and a lot of shit to follow up on. A whole lot of stuff. Lots of questions to ask. Yeah. We got more questions than answers. That's what I was. Yeah. So we have this Robert Stroud guy with a story. He's the only one who said like a story of how the murder might've happened. So yeah, let's bring in this Thane Ormsby and see what he has to say. Maybe he's being set up by this or who knows. So June 29th, 2010, they bring him into the dough. He's in New Hampshire at this point. Uh,
Like they said, he was hanging out at a friend's apartment. And so they go interview him in Dover, New Hampshire. He tells detectives he came to Orient to stay at the Strout residence just after Memorial Day and left when Robert Strout drove him to New Hampshire. He's like, yeah, I don't know. He said that he planned to move up to Tamara Strout's residence in Weston, fix it up, and live there with Strout and Mariah, who is Jeff Ryan's daughter, his ex-wife and his daughter he's going to go live with. Beautiful.
Thane told detectives he met Jeff Ryan once and that the only time he ever went to Jeff Ryan's house was two or three weeks before the murders. He said while he was there, he drank a bottle of beer and left the bottle on the kitchen sink. You know, like where you put recyclables. That's where he left it.
So they said that this interview with him, they didn't read him as Miranda rights, which they should have. Yeah. They're not just talking to him because he might have been a witness. They're talking to him because someone told them that this guy said he did the murder. Right.
So if he's that level of they absolutely should have read him as fucking right. If he's that interesting as a person and a suspect and a person of interest at minimum. Yes. Let them know. You got to do that. But they said they didn't. They told him he wasn't under arrest. They didn't read him as Miranda rights. They said it was real murder.
They kept it real loosey-goosey, which makes people think that it's not serious. But if he's not under arrest, should they be reading him as right? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah? If you look at any interrogation, look on YouTube, any murder interrogation,
None of those people are under arrest yet for the most part. A lot of times they're being brought in for questions. Some of them are once in a while, but a lot of times it's like, oh, yeah, your wife was murdered this afternoon. Isn't that horrible? Let's see if you know anybody. The first thing they do is read the rights. Okay. Number one fucking A1 thing you do. Because otherwise, let's say they make a crazy confession in there. Yeah, yeah. Let's say you're asking them, so you ate what for breakfast? And he's like, I stabbed my wife in the face. Yeah.
I stabbed her in the face. I couldn't help it. You're fucked now. Useless. Yeah. That might not be, you know, admissible. So he, during this interview there, they did all of that. They asked him, well, would you, um, would you submit a DNA and fingerprint samples for us too? And he said, absolutely. Dane said, no problem. Really? Yeah. They said, have you ever met Jason DeHaan or Jesse Ryan? And he said, not at all. No, I've never met either one of them. I've just met Jeff the one time.
And I know of him through his ex-wife and his daughter and, you know, the whole family there. And here's my fingerprints and my DNA. And they said, also, do you smoke? And he said, yes, I do. They said, all right, thank you for answering questions. You go have a good one. Yeah. Okay. Three days later.
They get the results back of all the DNA. That was fast. And they find out that Ormsby's fingerprints matched the latent print from a beer bottle that was collected from the kitchen counter in the residence. Right. Now, how good of a housekeeper is Jeff Ryan? How long has it been there? Who fucking knows? Maybe. Who knows?
So then, though, the next day, the lab determines that Ormsby's DNA matches the unknown male DNA profile collected from that bottle as well and a cigarette butt in the ashtray of the kitchen table. How long? How long? Again, we go to housekeeping at this point. So they travel back to New Hampshire to interview Thane again now that they have this information. They're not going to tell him this at first, though. Right.
No, they sit him down or they bring him. Actually, he's at an apartment and he agrees to be interviewed again. This time, though, they read him as Miranda writes immediately and several other times when they first make contact with them, when they get to the station and then when they start questioning again. So he gets read like three times. He never asked for a lawyer. They told him he's not under arrest. You know, you don't have to ask to answer questions.
When he was still at his apartment or his friend's apartment, when they go to bring him in, he was so cooperative. As soon as they said, do you come down to the station? He started emptying his pockets.
Like right now? Like right now, right now. Yeah. Like you do at the station. And they said, no, no, no, you're not under arrest. You can bring whatever you want with you. You're fine. Whatever shit's in your pockets, let's just go. They said, you don't even have to meet with us if you don't want to. We're just asking you to. So he said, oh, all right, cool. And he went. So they go to police headquarters and they go into the interview room. And so...
And they have this all on video, which you can find, by the way, on YouTube. And the video is also part of all the records of everything in court later and all sorts of shit like that. So as the interview began, he sits next to the door, which was left ajar several inches throughout the interview. Oh. This is on purpose. Most of the time you want to keep a guy closed in and feel like that. They feel like they might get more out of this guy if he feels like he's got an out.
He feels like he can lead. And like he's free. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They might get more out of him this way. It depends on who you're interviewing of what you – it's a gut feeling and I'm sure experience if you do 100 homicide interviews. You can't ask them. Yeah. What would make you less comfortable if we did this or that?
You got to know. It's part of the job. So he's just sat in the chair, and they get close to him. They're present. One guy is sitting. He's kind of sitting in the corner, Thane is. And one guy is sitting like right here, leaned into him. Like just, I mean, closer than I am to you right now. Just fucking right in his face. And the other guy is kind of the second guy. He's the guy who's leaned back, taking more notes, and not adding as much to the thing, which is what they usually do. They get one guy kind of be the...
the chill back detective. And then the other detective is the, I'm in your face asking you questions, detective. So they both had plain clothes and all kinds of shit like that. Um, you know, none of the, not in uniform or anything. Um,
So the first 15 minutes of the interview, he engaged them in a wide-ranging, often lighthearted discussion of various topics, according to court documents here. And they told Thayne that he was not under arrest, he's free to leave at any time. And Thayne said that he would be shocked if he were under arrest because he didn't do anything and that, quote, I'm here to cooperate.
I'm just here to help you guys. I don't know shit about nothing. So they read him as Miranda writes again, and he said he understood everything. And Ornsby explained to them that he said, right to remain silent. Does that mean plead the fifth?
And he said, do I need a lawyer? And they said, that's up to you, which is always the question. I don't know. Do you? Fuck, do I? I'm not you. These are your rights, not my rights. Yeah, not my rights. This is on you. You interpret them your way. Yeah, what do I look like, your fucking guidance counselor? I have no idea. I'm not your lawyer, dog. So they say everybody looks relaxed, and he's offered food and given food breaks and drink breaks. And he sticks to his original story here. Okay.
originally and um they do all of this and uh until they say by the way we have your DNA on shit around there oh then it's kind of a different story also somebody saw you running away from the car with like a gasoline thing and all that sort of deal um
So he actually wants to remain silent and sort of says stuff that he wants a lawyer a couple of times. He alludes to maybe I should have a lawyer. Well, that's not asking for one. That's not asking for one. I want a lawyer. They have people...
you are responsible for yourself in there. Yeah. And they do, especially if people of our lower intelligence or something like that, they take advantage of that a lot in these confessions. Don't get me wrong. And they even get false confessions that way. But if you're an adult who's of average intelligence, uh,
It's you have to know what you're doing in there. No one's there to help you. This is your life, man. Yeah. Those people are not there to help you. No, they're there to do their job. Now your job is to take care of yourself. So you need to figure out whether you need a fucking lawyer or not and assert that shit. So he says, Thane, I want the truth is what the one detective says. Thane says, I know you want the truth, but I'm going to have to plead the fifth at this point. Now is that I want to remain silent or is he just saying, I don't want to answer that question.
That's that's just the question, right? That's that's the meaning of it. But does he know that's the meaning of it? And this is where legal shit gets very complicated later on. So they said the detective said, OK, all right. Does that mean you want to stop talking or and Thane says for a minute?
So he just wants a break. Yeah. That's not saying I don't want to talk and I want an attorney, though. That is. That's just give me a sec. Give me a sec to breathe. Yeah. Thane says, I don't want my name released to the press. Well, sorry, Thane. I don't want two comedians to make fun of me for two and a half hours is what I'm trying to avoid here. He doesn't want me to know it. Well, guess what? We know. So too late. And they said, oh, OK, OK. One step at a time.
Then they said, you're responsible for this, right? Like, just flat out, that's the question. So you did this, right? So yeah, you did this, right? Just to get that out of the way. Like, we know we're both on the same page. Thane said, I won't say.
So they said, okay, why don't you go have some... We'll get a cigarette break, okay? And then he says to the other detective, okay, you'll go out and have a little cigarette. And, you know, we'll all take a breath and, you know, then come back in and relax here. And the other cop says, coffee, maybe? You know, you want coffee? And then they said, and then we'll talk some more. And Thane says, possible. Like, well, I'll have coffee and a cigarette and go from there. All right. Maybe. So...
Thane said when they get back, he said, you know, I'm glad at this point. So I'd be willing to tell you everything you want to know. You got the cigarette and the coffee was good to him. It was real good to him. And he was just like, you know what? Fuck it. I'll tell you what you want to know. Caught the detective so off guard. He said, I'm sorry. What? Say again? He didn't. Normally they're like, okay. And they wouldn't miss a beat, but he was so out of left field. Like what was that? Sorry. And then he says, perhaps I do need a lawyer.
And the detective says, well, go have a smoke and we'll come back and finish it up. So he just leaves it hanging. Perhaps I do need a lawyer, which still the perhaps is the problem. That's the problem. Yeah. And he didn't say I need a lawyer. He said, perhaps I need a lawyer. Perhaps. If he said I do need a lawyer. End of story. Perhaps I do need a lawyer is still maybe I'm thinking about it. So they go, well, I'll just have a smoke and we'll think they tried to keep it real casual.
So during the break, Thane asked the one detective about what sort of punishment he might be facing for these crimes. Oh. And he also, yeah, what kind of punishment? And then he also said, well, I guess your search for your killer is over. This is why he smoked while he's smoking outside. Like, he's just casually doing that. So then they get back inside and he says, quote, out of free will, I will give you what you want.
Or I will give you what I want, he says. At a free will, I will give you what I want. And they said, really? And he said, why the hell not? Why the hell not?
Yeah. And then he said, why the hell not again? Because the detective said, you don't have to write down anything. You can just say it's all being videotaped. And he said, why the hell not? Let me write it down, too. I'm having fun. He doesn't. This is weird. So then he says, all right, one of the guys who got murdered was a drug dealer who caused pain in his life and the life of others. And he said the other two were perfectly innocent, is the way he put it.
So he said the detective said, well, now we have a problem. He said your DNA and your fingerprints were on recently used items at the crime scene. Therefore, your statement that you had only been there two weeks before the murders was not credible, obviously. And they say also at this point later on, it'll be very much debated whether
Whether they forced him to talk now, they said that although Keegan, Detective Keegan, did not display anger, hostility, or aggression toward Ormsby, he did adopt a more direct manner. As Ormsby began to make concessions in response to Keegan's questions, he told Keegan, you know more than I do, to which Keegan replied, I know everything, and soon you're going to know that I know that you know. Which is...
And then he said, quote, it's a little dance we're doing, but you know that I know, which is Homicide Detective 101. Yeah. I know way more than I'm even asking. I'm not going to tell you. Yeah. Yeah. Some people want to talk, so you go in acting like you don't know anything. And sometimes you go, I know everything. And you know I know.
And by the time we're finished talking, you're going to hear some things that allude to you that I know that you don't want me to know something. But it doesn't matter because I already know it. I know you know that I know. So, you know? Exactly. So you're in trouble is what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. You're fucked. Yep. That was right before the cigarette break here. Mm-hmm. So, yeah.
Later on, they said that he was saying that Jeff was a bad person and a drug dealer. So they said, you hated Jeff because he was a drug dealer? And Thane said, I mean, yeah, I smoke weed, but I don't believe in drugs. Which...
I love when people say they don't believe in something. That always makes me laugh because I just think like it exists. I don't believe in that. Like it doesn't exist. Well, it exists. I hate to tell you. I hate to tell you. Sorry. Go to Manchester, New Hampshire. There's a lot of drugs there. Drugs exist. They exist. So the cop said, so you decided to take care of that, a vigilante type thing.
And he says, Thane, quote, my plan was to kill Jeff Ryan and leave no witnesses or evidence. They were bad people and they hurt people. And I thought I was it was some means of justification. I thought something good could grow from taking them away.
By the way, most murderers on our show don't say some means of justification. They also don't say taking them away when the one person that they're justifying is bad. That's what's weird. Them? You son of a bitch. So they said you went out in the shed with Jeff Ryan and the cop said he was out there to show you some nails or something. And Thane said, that's it. Yeah, because he had asked him if he had a certain type of nail. Thane had asked Jeff.
The cop said, and he bent over to get you the nails. And what happened? And Thane said, I killed him. Cop said, you killed Jeff. And how'd you do that? And Thane said, with a knife. He said, I knew I couldn't just leave him there with two people who just saw me. So I go back in. I stabbed Jason.
So he walks in. The kid and the friend are on the couch. He stabs Jason first, which makes a lot of sense. Jason wouldn't run away while you stabbed a kid. You know what I mean? He'd probably go, hey, stop stabbing that kid. Probably try to stop you. Assuming so. Or at least go try to find Jesse or Jeff, I mean. So he said, I go back in. I stab Jason. Jesse ran into the back room. So he left Jason for dead in the living room.
And then went after Jesse in the back room. So I chased Jesse. He was the quickest. That's gross. He was 10. That's why he's the quickest. Yeah. Fucking gross. He just said he was scared. And then there's a pause and he goes, the families don't need to know that, right? Like, that's probably a detail they don't want to know. That's too much. Don't tell them that part. The cop said, no, but we do.
Yeah, we need to know everything. They said, how many times do you think you stabbed him? Meaning Jesse. And Thane said, well, I heard on the news five, so I'm assuming it was five.
I didn't remember. That's not the answer. No, but a lot of people don't remember how many stabs or how many gunshots they let off. It happens all the time. It's a very common thing. Gunshots, really? Oh, all the time. There's only a certain amount that are in that gun, unless you reloaded, you know what I mean? Yeah, but I mean, they'll talk to cops that have been in like a shootout situation, and not even where they're in trouble or anything, where they have reason to lie. And they'll go, what'd you show? And he goes, I squeezed off two rounds, and all of their fucking, they're empty.
They squeezed off six. And they were like, I squeezed six? Really? I thought it was two. It's just your brain does not let you fucking file certain things. But with a revolver, too, if you've got a small amount in there, six goes so fast. Oh, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, over. You can empty a .38 in a minute.
And it feels like you've got some left. And it's just click clicky. And it's no good. You just don't people forget. You just throw this gun. Fucking. Hopefully it's heavy enough. Yeah. So he said, I'm assuming it was five.
Okay. So the detective said, so then you come back out to check on Jason and he's gone? Uh-huh. Because he was. And Thane says, and he's gone. He disappeared. Yeah. Which is, imagine if you're him coming out covered in blood with a knife and you're like, oh, fuck, I lost one. Exhausted, too. Oh, yeah. You're stabbing the shit out of people chasing a 10-year-old through a trailer. Mm-hmm.
He said he disappeared. He ran down the road, and I chased him down the road. That's why you found him in a ditch. He didn't understand because obviously I had just met him, and there was no reason for me to be doing this. It was really the first time I met him. And the cop said, did you do something else besides stab him? And Thane said, I cut his throat. And he said, you cut his throat? How many times did you cut his throat? And he said, two, maybe three slashes. He knows too much. Oh, it's crazy. So...
He said he didn't plan to kill Jason or the boy. He said, I didn't want to kill them, but I didn't want to get caught for murder. True. So, you know. Well, here we are. He described stabbing Jeffrey Ryan multiple times in the back when he turned away to show him some nails in the woodshed. It's just that he was just stabbing the shit out of people, basically. Good Lord.
So police asked him what they should do next. What should we do next? And Ormsby said, quote, you need to arrest me first for starters. Yeah, obviously. Jail cell guys. Why do you want me to tell you how to do your job? Yeah, well, you need to arrest me first for starters. Like, yeah, before we get anything going, you probably need to process me a little bit. Get some.
Some shit like that. Those charges are going nowhere without me, so lock me up, guys. That's fucking weird. So, yeah, they said DNA evidence, fingerprint evidence, and confession. Now they have. And they have the witness tying him to the truck and Robert Strout, and they have all these different things. Problem is Robert Strout has not told the truth completely yet at all. Oh? And lied a couple of different times, and so...
There's a problem there where that's not all wrapped up in a neat little bow. They think he might have had more to do with this than possible. Classmate, the press talked to his former classmates because he's only 20, fame. They say, what the fuck? Has he always been a nut or what's going on here? And people said, no, no. In his last month, he posted life is good on his Facebook page. So he's been a douche. He's been a tool. He wasn't like leaning on a cool car at least. He just said life is good.
Did he also post things like, it is what it is? It is what it is, man. And then like a Fred Durst is the one who said it or somebody stupid like that. He said his friend said, this makes me sad. How did things change so much in just over two months? He made the Facebook entry on April 22nd. So, yeah.
Like, that's ridiculous. They said friends said they remembered him as a friendly teenager, meaning Thane. Some said he had a dark side and he had changed before he left high school. From what I understand, piecing together his background here, it's a tough thing to piece together. He lived with his uncle from 12 to 17 from the time he was 12 to 17. What happened to this kid? Well, he was removed from his mother's home by the Department of Health and Human Services because of physical abuse.
Oh. So he was, yeah, literally the state took him out of her home. Bad stuff. So he lived with an uncle.
He attended Ellsworth High School within the last several years where he was a member of the track and wrestling teams. Okay. So he's a strong kid that knows how to fucking scrap, too, which is another thing I thought about. He's a big, tall, blonde kid, too. But he's also a smart kid that's qualifying for extracurriculars. That's crazy. Yeah, you've got to pass everything. Just a few years later, he's a piece of shit. He was on the honor roll in high school but didn't graduate. Dropped out during his senior year.
We get support from Dove. Hey y'all, it's your girl Kiki Palmer, host of the Wondery Podcast. Baby, this is Kiki Palmer. Let me cut to the chase. Did you know that in many states across the U.S., it's still not illegal to discriminate against people based on the way their hair grows out of their head? To deny black folks from jobs and opportunities because they have braids, locks, twists, or bantu knots? That's messed up.
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In January 2022, local woman Karen Reid was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask.
Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia. Or a corrupt police cover-up. If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover-up to prevent one of their own from going down. Everyone had an opinion.
And after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision. To end in a mistrial, it's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen.
You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. The principal of the school said he was a student here and no problems with him.
They said that friends said that they knew he had a troubled home life and came from a bad background, but that he was a friendly, nice guy. One classmate said, it's so shocking. I don't know anyone who didn't think he was a good guy. Another one said, when I knew him, he was a Sunday through Wednesday churchgoer and he went to Bible study groups on Thursdays.
So he has gone way around the block here. One friend, though, said he had his dark side and they were both. This person met him when they were members of this school cross country cross country track team. And he said he was a good kid back then. He had a different group of friends, but he was well liked by everyone from there. They said he had a tough childhood, a tough life from the start, his friend said.
We knew he was like an American Viking and could probably stay out in the woods forever. But I never would have predicted anything like this happening. So they were like, we expect them to maybe do some weird shit and like go like be like the guy on that fucking garden documentary. And like,
We expected that out of him probably, but not just like learning how to spear a fish while he's nude. Right. He's an outdoor capable person. I wouldn't see butchering a family and their family friend. Probably not. Then they found out that there was apparently two people he wanted to kill, and Jeff Ryan was just number one. He had a list at home with kill this guy and kill this guy.
And the second person on the list had not been physically harmed and they kept the name secret. So how are all these fucking murderers so fucked in the head but so organized enough to make lists of people they have to kill? Yeah, that's – man, I can't even keep track of whether or not I have bread in the house. I can't keep track of these shows and what state we did. Oh, God, forget it. It's so hard. This guy is like, got to kill him. Okay, let me write that down. I'm jealous of their organizational skills. Yeah.
So people said that, yeah, one person described him as unfailingly polite, and another person two minutes later described him as a walking monster. So these are both people that knew him in high school. Depends on who you are and the interaction you had with this man. One person that knows him very well here is a guy named John Frary. Frary? Frary? F-R-A-R-Y.
Tough name. Ferrari. Apparently, Ferrari, John, was a former college professor, and he tried to make a run at a House of Representatives congressional seat here. He tried to unseat U.S. Rep. Mike McQuad during the 2008 election.
Mushadi? Mushad, maybe. Mushad. He tried to unseat him. This guy's running as a Republican. He said, John Frary said that Thane was a tall, blonde young man. He was hardworking, unfailingly polite, knowledgeable, but at the same time immature and unmotivated. You know, like a 19-year-old. Right. Yeah, capable sometimes, if they feel like it. That's how it works. Generally, no.
He just dropped out of high school a year ago. He's not accountable. No, but Thane joins John Frary's campaign. Sure, yeah. Frary has like, he like takes homeless people and brings them into his house and makes them work on his campaign or has them work on his campaign. Yeah, because they probably are grateful for 12 bucks. It's very strange what he's doing here. So this was when he was 18, this John Frary knew Thane.
He said that he took him in for a short time in 2009, then he left, and then Thane came back and left again. And he said that it's strange, quote, as the Thane Ormsby accused of murder is a stranger to me. During the time I knew Thane, I never saw any violence in him, nor did I even hear him speak of violence. Mm-hmm.
This guy, Frary, said that he gives shelter in his Farmington home to a number of people over the years. He said that Thayne had been kicked out of some apartment and had nowhere to go, and he gave Thayne room and board and a small salary in exchange for working on his campaign. Yeah.
So he said, I've given shelter to a number of strays over the years, not all feline. Some had pretty exotic personalities. All the same, I was surprised to learn last week that an individual I've sheltered under my roof is charged by police with having butchered two men and a 10-year-old boy. Yeah, one of my cats is bad.
Bad cat. Bad kitty. Got to declaw her, boy. So she said, during my campaign for Congress, I acquired three live-in aides. That's not normal, by the way. Acquired. Acquired. He said, all of whom qualified as homeless.
One is Adam had been a cop in Prince George County, Maryland, until he left to escape chronic depression. Anyone who has watched The Wire on TV will understand this. He couldn't watch the series because it was too reminiscent of his experience in uniform. He had taken a construction job in Baltimore, but found the promiscuous use of the N-word by his redneck colleagues intolerable.
His mother, who was visiting me at the time, suggested he quit and come to Maine for the campaign. So he abandoned his apartment in inner city Baltimore, turned his meager possessions over to a girlfriend, and found shelter in one of my spare bedrooms between August and November 2008. Jesus Christ. Another one here is Chris had been sleeping on the kitchen floor of his sister's apartment when his father suggested he might be interested in my campaign. He gave me a call. I had him checked out and then added him to my household.
Jesus. Added him to my... It's fascinating. And who does he think he is with his wire references? You? That's not fair. Yeah. Yeah. Shut up about the wire, sir. Shut up about that. Who do you think you are? Us? He said, the lad was practically anthropomorphic computer peripheral and spent most of his life in cyberspace. Ooh.
Jesus Christ. He's basically half man, half computer, I think is what he just said. Who's he, lawnmower man? Fuck. He said when he was given a concrete assignment, he performed brilliantly and was capable of working 10 hours straight.
Then he said there was Thane Ormsby. He said, quote, being an old guy, senile and confused, I can't remember exactly how he came into the picture. He had been living with some people over an industry until he had a falling out because he was way behind on his rent. He had a home of sorts in Ellsworth, but it was not a happy one. He spoke. I sometimes spoke with disdain of his, quote, two mommies. So I don't know what that's about. I'm a lesbian.
Or don't know. Or is he mean? He's got a mom and a stepmom. Well, the other one was the Tamara was right. But that was his dad's old wife. So that's like a reverse stepmom. What the fuck is happening? Not his dad's wife. Is that was. No, that wasn't a stepmom. What are we talking about? No, it's just a friend of a friend. Yeah. Holy shit. Wow. His mom's got to be a lesbian, right? Maybe. Or I don't know. Who knows? They said their fondness for the bottle, their chaotic style of life and their friends all seem to disgust him.
Yet when I visited their household, there seemed to be ties of genuine affection."
Apparently, yeah, two mommies. Anyway, he qualified as fully homeless, no money, no job, no home. I provided him with room, board, and a little pocket money. He, in return, performed his campaign duties willingly and skillfully, handing out literature, introducing the candidate, driving me around without incident or accident. He took orders readily, bore a certain amount of sarcastic correction calmly, and got along with the other two aides without friction."
He, Frary went on to say, he told me that the, uh, this was the first time he had ever slept in sheets was at my home. Wow. Never had sheets before. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One of those. So they said that he, um, Frary said Thane drove him all around the state to campaign and that the teenager introduced him at events and handed out campaign literature. And he said that he was polite to the point of obsequiousness. So, uh,
really being over the top should have should have won he's he's got all the words man well he's got all the words but he also has a crew of fucking homeless people he recruited who live in his house and haven't run a fucking political campaign anymore so maybe that's why he didn't win they've never seen sheets man fuck politics yeah just never mind that shit they don't know how this works so he said he read a lot and was pretty smart smarter than most people his age and
He did a job skillfully, and he was very good at talking with people. He said people who came to know him through me were amazed. He was very smooth. He said his only addiction seemed to be cigarettes. He said, I don't believe he was doing drugs when I knew him. He didn't have a money or a vehicle to go out and get them. I never smelled marijuana smoke in my home.
So he said that after his campaign kind of went away, that's when Thane's life kind of fell apart, too. He said during the campaign, he had tasks to do. He had a direction in his life. After it ended, he had nothing. That's for people who work in politics, too. After it ends, it's a big come down from that shit. So he continued to live with Ferrari after the campaign ended. One thing was he said he wanted to join the Marine Corps.
So Frary drove him to a local recruiting office one day and it was closed. So he said after that, for arms be decided, he didn't want to join anymore. It must have been a sign. It's closed. Yeah. Funny thing is out of the other aides, Adam moved to Kentucky to get his college education and ended up graduating. Chris moved home to enroll in college and Thane just wandered around.
Meaning this guy's brother. Meaning Thane.
Frary said Ormsby seemed depressed about his life and his prospects for the future. Ormsby did not speak well of his family, according to Frary. But when Frary visited, he said that they talked and teased cheerfully and seemed to love one another. Frary said that he never talked about his father or any connection to Amity or Orient or anywhere near there in Maine.
He was just polite and all that kind of thing. He said he mostly did what he was told without objection. Got along well with my cats. Oh, that's important. I took him along to State Stephen's traditional Anglican Church. He even officiated as an acolyte on several occasions.
What the fuck? Some women described him as downright chivalrous. Oh, an angel. An angel. I detected no homicidal tendencies. Whenever he said something weird... I detected none, Jim. I didn't think he was going to kill everybody. It's just weird.
Whenever he said something weird, I attributed it to natural goofiness of the adolescent male entering manhood. I have no therapeutic talent or ambition. Angst bores me. When you are readily advancing on age 70, a realistic view of your future features senile decay and death. This guy is a breath of fucking fresh air. Sure enough. Real ray of sunshine, this guy. No wonder you lost. I'm going to take him with me to all my doctor's appointments and we're just going to have a good time.
Tell me the bad side. So when he spoke despairingly of his present and future, I felt to point out that his possibilities were far greater than mine. Like, well, I'll be dead in 10 years. So be happy. He said that he was in good health and had an excellent physique, meaning Thane. And he called him, quote, absurdly good looking.
Are you getting the vibe here from this guy that he brings men into his home? Why do you wrangle in desperate men and then compliment...
Yeah, interesting.
Really? That's how this all came to a head here. He washed his sheets too much? Too much. He brooded over this for some hours, then confronted me in my study, demanding to know whether I wanted him around. Silly question. Why would I want to have an 18-year-old around? Naturally, I said no. He mistook my frankness for a decree of expulsion and departed huffily.
"'His absence was no great loss. "'His presence had been no great burden, "'if only he had learned not to overload the damn washing machine. "'In truth, I found him less annoying than most adolescents.'
He said, perhaps if I were more empathetic and emotionally warmer, things would have taken a different turn. But that is empty speculation. My personality took shape years ago. Empathy, when it does come, always catches me by surprise. Well, he sounds like a real joy, this guy. Sure enough. I'm glad he didn't get elected. Some guy who says empathy catches me by surprise. Let's not have him fucking making laws. That shit is a real. Wow.
He needed a better friend than I, and he had two. Both worked harder to straighten him out, and both had clearer sense of the dark undercurrents. I had little more to offer than shelter and cold logic. As to the former, he gave about as well as he got, worked hard on the campaign, and did heavy lifting around the house. I've spoken to some others who knew him since I wrote the account above. Two independently of each other pointed out some parallels with the talented Mr. Ripley.
This comes up a lot. The prosecutor will bring this up as well. You know the talented Mr. Ripley, the story? Is that? Oh, that's Lemony Snicket. I don't know. It's Jude Law was in the movie. Jude Law. Matt Damon. And basically a guy, he's a con man, and he goes around and he inserts himself into this guy's life.
And he convinces this guy that he went to college. He learns just enough about him. He's a con man. So he learns and by talking to him, learns more just enough about his life to convince him that he went to college with him. I was there with you. We were there together. So you've known me for years.
And also then we're the same because we went to the same college and we're in the same class and all that kind of shit. Alumni. Yeah. So he ends up basically single white femaling him almost by this whole thing. He becomes, you know, he's a condom. Yeah. And then at the end, they're in a rowboat and he fucking kills this guy with a fucking or he beats him to death with an oar. And.
And becomes him? No, but he just beats him to death with an oar because this guy knows who he is now. His secret's out. He found out who he was and he found out what's going on and now he can't deal with it so he kills the guy.
He's a con man. What the fuck? He's a con man that can put himself into any sort of thing. If you want this guy, and he's saying he's the same way. He can last on the street. He can go into this and act like he's a nice guy in a political campaign. He can go into a church and blend with those people. Yeah, what's the benefit of being...
of pretending to have gone to college with Jude Law or Matt Damon or whoever's who. To become part of this thing. And there's business. Is there money? Yeah, there's business gain to gain and all this type of shit. Yeah, because you're in a high circle now. Yeah. Okay. And so these con men, they don't want their bubble to get burst. Yeah. They don't want their secret to get out. And I think that's the point of what they're trying to say here. Wow. He had the same type of thing as talented Mr. Ripley. He could do the...
You know, he could go into whatever group and act like he was part of that group and people would accept him. Wow. And he could latch on to it. So that's a... Good for him. That's also a talent you get when you have to move a lot as a kid. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because that's... And you could either take it and become a comedian or you can be a con man. Yeah. All right. Because that's...
You know, that was every week. Yeah. Every day. I had that. I had that skill just bouncing around a lot as a kid. Yeah. Kid, you have the skill of being able to figure out where to where to fucking get yourself in there.
So he says, quote, he's finishing The Talented Mr. Ripley. I had to think about that a bit before it made sense to me. Thane once told me that his first experience of sleeping between sheets is at my house. Even discounting for self-dramatization, this fit with other bits and pieces he disclosed about his upbringing. Yet he mingled easily with UMF students and educated, affluent middle class people and displayed excellent manners.
This is the same thing that Ripley did. What about this motherfucker's felt sheets?
Yeah, he's felt sheets, but... He's a lying son of a bitch. He makes this guy feel like he's a big, great, you know, charitable guy. Yeah, because he's got sheets. He knows how to play the role. This ready adaptation to the people around him is the Ripley parallel. I begin to wonder that if cold matter-of-fact confession Janet Mills told me about was not a new persona he was trying out with the police, which makes sense. He said, I have no knowledge at all about the crowd he got up
into in the county, the confused story emerging from that place suggests pretty sinister influences. The story coming out of Aroostook gets weirder and wilder. There's talk of a drug connection. I can supply a little testimony on that. There was never any weed smoke around my house. He didn't have the time, the money, or the mobility to acquire narcotics while he was under my roof.
If he developed any kind of addiction, it could have only been after we parted. The other details leave me completely baffled. The fact that I found Thane so manageable makes me wonder if there wasn't some third-party management involved. But I can only wonder. So, yeah, this is the...
It's interesting. He said, Frary said he had talked to him a few weeks before the homicides. He talked to Thane over Facebook. They reconnected. Okay. And Frary said, he told me he was living in Orient and I asked him how he got there. He answered me and I corrected his spelling in the message and that was it. I never heard from him again. What? So did correcting his spelling in a Facebook message cause this kid to snap?
Maybe. He was like, fuck you. You know what it was, too, that he said that the spelling was on? Zeus. What is it? The spelling of the word Zeus. He mixed up the U and the E. The U and the E. Wow. And he said that. He corrected him on it. Never heard from him again. Next thing he knows, he's a murderer. So don't fuck with Zeus is the...
The moral of the story here. Wow. So he said that Ormsby just seemed impressionable, but he had a chameleon-like ability. Yeah. And yeah, he said, when I think of that film now, that is what Ormsby seemed like. He said that he did not come from wealth, but he had no trouble mingling with the affluent. He acquired their speech, their mannerisms. He did that very easily and very quickly.
Yeah. He said that if he is indeed guilty, I see no grounds for clemency. He didn't make a mistake or make a bad decision. He reportedly murdered two men in cold blood, then hunted a frightened 10 year old down in his hiding place and slaughtered him. God damn it. Yeah. He said, I've heard from our attorney that our attorney general, that his confession was cool. And matter of fact, Oh, it is. It's it's cool as a cucumber. He's acting like I stole a Twix bar. Okay, fine.
You got me. Yeah. He said if remorse overtakes him, then he will have to recognize that a life sentence will be just for him. Given the average American life sentence, he now faces 25 years of constant direction. He will eat, sleep, exercise, consort with a bunch of low lives and fend off unwanted advances. The latter may involve mayhem of some kind.
suicide is a possibility. The only productive purposes in the, in his empty existence in the making of remaking of Thane Ormsby, he can read, think, and perhaps, right. I expect I'll send him some books.
Wow. Fend off advances. That's fucked up. Fend off advances is a way to put it. Another guy, Reverend Louis Glidden, he said when Ormsby left Frary's residence, this guy offered him help. This Reverend Louis Glidden of St. Stephen the Martyr Anglican Church in Oakland. Glidden told the newspaper that he met Ormsby through Frary and he let Ormsby stay at his home.
He said he seemed to be having a hard time. He didn't have a job or any money, so I let him stay with me. Ormsby did some work at his home and at the church and took care of this guy's pets when the man traveled to China in January 2010. So he trusted him to oversee his house. He said that when he was in China, though, he received some disturbing phone calls from the parishioners.
What was that? Quote, they told me Thane was having mood swings. He was going from one extreme to the other, and the ladies who came in contact with him were afraid of him and what he would do. Jesus, he scared the ladies. Scared all the church ladies. Yeah. I also learned that Thane had taken my car out without permission and traveled to Ellsworth and spent the week there.
So by that time, this Glidden said he had already become afraid of Thane, so he had him removed from the property. That was February of this year, the year of the murder. He said that when he first got to know Ormsby, he seemed like a nice kid. But when Glidden said that he soon saw Ormsby, he seemed to have two personalities, one that was manipulative and deceitful and the other that seemed helpless and in need of support. Sure. He's a con man. He's a fucking con man. Yep.
He said that while Ormsby was living with him, he tried to get him a job. He even set up an antique shop in New Sharon for Ormsby to operate, filling the store with some of his own property and that of others. He opened a business for him. Run this. Sell this shit for me. Yeah. The business soon folded because Ormsby wouldn't show up for work half the time. He wouldn't even open the shop?
Wasn't even open. Opened his own shop. Wow. Yep. At one time, he took the whole month of December off. Well, I mean, yeah, you do. You do. Because that's what you do. That's what you do when you sell things that someone might get as a gift. You just close down for all of the month where we buy the most shit. It's cold. I don't know. I don't want to go outside. I'll go back in January. I don't know. I'll see you in January. We'll see about it. I'll think about it. Oh, my God. It might be colder. Fuck. I'm doing a Santa gig. I got it. It's all month.
Glidden said he tried to convince Ormsby to return to school and get his diploma, telling him that he could continue to stay with him rent-free while he got his diploma. Wow. He said every time he would suggest that Thane do something he didn't want to, Ormsby became furious. He said money also started to go missing from his home. Uh-oh. And Glidden believes that Thane also took a small amount of money that was set out in the church kitchen as well. You son of a bitch.
Glidden said he also felt Ormsby was doing drugs. Glidden said, I was afraid of him. He got angry over little things, like if you suggested things he didn't want to hear, his eyes would go cold as ice. It would send chills up my spine. It was in China that I decided that I had done as much as I could for him and that the church had done all they could do for him. I hated to do it, but I put him out in the street. I wonder sometimes if I could have prevented these killings if I had just tried a little harder.
Well, if you can't been a little bit more what, Jimmy? Reverend Glidden. Christlike. A little bit more is all I'm saying. A little bit more. Yeah. Fucking not blaming this guy. It's not his fault. Maybe if empathy didn't catch you by surprise. So, yeah, that was this. That was the politician. Oh, all right. This is a different guy. But I'm sure empathy is a is a foreign emotion. Possibly. I don't know anything about this guy.
So Glidden said that Ormsby became distraught and angry when a girlfriend broke up with him and moved on to another man. Yeah, we do that. As 19-year-olds do. Yeah, that's...
None of that has anything to do with this. Did he drink and punch a hole in the drywall too? Oh, no. Yeah, it's normal. Did he happen to break that little bone next to his pinky before? Yeah, I bet he did. He said, it was during times like those that I tried to get him to take steps to make his life better, but he just wouldn't help himself. I started to realize that he didn't have control over himself or his anger. Others in the church saw it too, but none of us could believe it when we really found out what he was capable of.
He says he now believes that Thane is a walking monster. Yeah. He said, I do intend to go see him as a priest when he returns to Maine. I am only doing so because I don't think he's capable of understanding what he's done. It is not the criminal justice system that's going to hold him accountable. I want to help him see that it is God who will ultimately hold him accountable. Is that right? Yeah. So the family...
Of the victims here, especially the DeHaan family, still thinks he's not the only killer. They still say it was more than one. For sure. The father, Robert, said that they asked him, do you believe that Thane acted alone? And he said, that's a tough question for me to answer right now. Is it possible that the way that he was the only person? Yes, but it's hard to believe that my son was so strong. He was such a strong, rugged boy. I know that Ormsby took him by surprise, but it's still hard to believe.
It's really not the way it went down. And if there was any blame to deflect, he'd fucking deflect it. Sure, sure. That's the other thing. So I do believe him. And the way he described it, if he walked in and...
Just caught this guy playing a video game. Yeah. Stabbed him with a big knife. Doesn't matter how rugged or strong he is. He stabbed him with a big knife. He was distracted by whatever the fuck Call of Duty he was into. It's hard to Halo, whatever. It's hard to fucking snap out of that. And GTA 4 was out. You can't stop. Yeah, he's driving through NYC, man. What are you supposed to do? What do you want? And then it's a knife? Oh, boy.
It's over for you. And plus, he was a strong, rugged boy. That's how he was able to get out of the living room and make it all the way to the fucking road. Right. Honestly, it was because he's so strong. But still, he's getting attacked by a knife, for Christ's sake. It's a lot. They said that Jake, the brother, said that he didn't believe that Jason ever knew him before.
He said Jeff and he also said Jeff would have said something about a visit by Ormsby, meaning Jeff Ryan. He said, I don't think he's ever been here ever. He said, so no, he said, because Jeff Ryan told him he had gotten into a verbal altercation with Ormsby in June and that Ryan didn't want Ormsby around his daughter.
Oh. So that's probably the real reason why. There it is. Yeah. There it is. Because we know he gets when he's told that he overloaded the washing machine. Yeah. He broods on it for hours and then comes back fucking angry. And when you tell a man who gets upset about women that you can't be around her, that's her choice, not yours.
This one likes me. God damn it. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck. Yeah. Uh, they also said they have a hard time believing Robert Strout and that he was threatened by Thane. Uh,
This guy said, that doesn't make sense. If he felt so threatened, why did he get in a truck with this kid and drive him all the way to New Hampshire? Yeah, no shit. That's another good point. Drive him to the police station if you're so fucking scared of him. Here you go. Kill me in the police station parking lot, stupid. Dare you. Yeah. Get out and run, dummy. So Ornsby told the police that it was Strout who told him that he had to get out of the state after the slayings.
The DeHaan relative said, Bob knew this guy just killed three people, and yet he took the kid to his own son's home? No way. I don't believe he felt threatened by that guy at all. Now, they find the knife. Oh, where is it? They found the knife. In the bog? In the bog. They fucking found it pretty easily, too. They metal detected it. Yep. They probably did real easy. And then they had another knife, too, that they found under the front seat of Robert Strout's truck as well.
But that one had red-brown stains on the knife that were consistent with blood. But unlike the murder weapon, this one was a serrated edge. Okay. So they were just showing these knives. So...
He is charged with Strout is now going to be arrested in September 2010 and charged with hindering apprehension, arson in connection with the truck burning, too. He admits that he can help to conceal evidence in the killings. He pleads not guilty and makes bail on that.
Father's Day 2011 comes around and yeah, it's a tough time for the whole family here. They're talking about one of the relatives of the Ryans said, I don't want to be anywhere near that guy right now. Talking about Thane Ormsby. I don't even want to look at him. I can't take it.
Sure. They don't even want to deal with fucking court stuff right now. They just don't want anything to do with this guy. And they said, we have 300 people from as far away as Hawaii that are going to release them already. These they have these balloons. They're putting these getting a big memorial and they're getting these balloons with notes attached to them with expressions of love pinned inside plastic bags to the balloons flying up to them. Yeah.
They said, we have more than 300 people from as far away as Hawaii that are going to release them already. Jesse's baby brother, who is nine months old, is going to release a red heart balloon. Oh. Yeah, he never met that kid.
That's so fucked up. That's sad as fuck. That's very sad. So attorneys for Thane, first thing they got to do is try to get those damn pesky statements suppressed that they made. Those will be damning. That's detrimental. Difficult. There's a lot of D words about those fucking statements. DNA, speaking of D words, is bad.
Yeah. But DNA is that there's not as blood at the scene. They don't find their blood at other scenes. Right. The victims, the DNA, you could talk it out saying that I stopped by and had a cigarette and a beer. Yeah. That can go away. If the confession's not in. Right. If the confession's in saying I had those there. Because basically he showed up, hung out with Jeff Ryan for a minute, smoked a beer, had a cigarette, said, oh, these nails, do you have them? Smoked a beer. Oh, yeah. Smoked a beer, drank a cigarette. Yeah.
Went into the shed. Got these nails going there and... And then stabbed him up. Stabbed him up, yep. So, yeah. They said that their client's statements to police should not be admitted as evidence during the murder trial. All that, that's not evidence.
What he said he did on videotape? It's very evident, yeah. To police officers, that's not evidence. Come on, guys. It's as evident as it gets. Yeah, come on now. Through his attorneys here, he filed paperwork seeking to suppress the statements he made, saying his Miranda rights were violated.
How so? Because he kept saying- Perhaps I need a lawyer now. Yeah, right. Because he said the word lawyer? We see this so often in these. So often that if the person said the word lawyer, they'll say, oh, well, I asked for a fucking lawyer. I said lawyer. I mean- Yeah. No.
No shit. And police, they said, had not really revealed information on the weapon used in the killings or whether they had recovered it before they pulled it out in court and were like, boom. I mean, they knew this discovery. The other side knew, but not the public here. Um, so Maine state police detectives said all three people were stabbed with this combat style knife. This is the same knife, by the way, that everyone who knew Thane Ormsby said he always carried with him 100% of the time, his fucking knife. Um,
Yeah. Jesus Christ. So they want it all thrown out, though. Get it all out of there. They said that Ormsby's attorney focused on points in the confession where he said he would have to plead the fifth to some questions and at one point said, perhaps I do need a lawyer.
And they said, that's what it was. But the prosecution saying he never said, I want a fucking lawyer. Stop interviewing me. Right. They also question a chief forensic psychologist with the state forensic service who did psychological testing on Ormsby. She characterized him as bright but emotionally immature due to his traumatic and chaotic upbringing. She said he was impulsive and appeared to suffer from episodic depression and despair and generalized anxiety.
She told the attorney that someone who was impulsive could blurt out information when interrogated and that depression could cause someone to be fatalistic. So throw out the confession because he's a little sad. He's got depression. Yeah. Sometimes when you're depressed, you just admit to shit. You admit to shit. And that's not fair. That's not fair to him. Wow. You just admit to shit you didn't do. The fucking clunes on these people. Get the fuck out of here.
So, Robert Strout, during all this, he's going to plead guilty, the guy there. Yes, he first pled not guilty, then was released on bail. Then in June 2010, he was arrested. That was in June 2010. Then in August 2010, he was arrested on a drug offense.
Uh-oh. So now he's got a drug offense and these, and so now he's going to plead guilty to everything. Okay. He entered pleas in the Superior Court, and under the plea agreement, he will serve at least two years in prison under these charges, but not more than four years. So, yeah, they were very happy, his family, that he wasn't going to prison forever.
So the trial comes around. Confession is going to be in for the Thane Ormsby trial. The prosecutor describes how a 10-year-old boy cowered in fear and a 30-year-old man who lived down the road were stabbed because they happened to be there in the way of this guy's intended victim. They said they were killed. It's a quiet farming logging town with about 200 people at this place. They ruined it. This young man has sullied the entire region.
So they said the Bangor Daily News reported that Ormsby's lawyers told the jurors here that he'll seek to put the events into context during the trial. Please do.
Put his full confession into context because I watched the words come out of his mouth. So put it in my context at least here. I'd love to know. So they said that he killed the one man in the woodshed, the two inside while they were playing video games, stabbed DeHaan in the chest before chasing a terrified boy down the hall and into his bedroom where he was stabbed in the back while he cowered in fear.
He said that DeHaan managed to get outside where he was nearly decapitated when Ormsby slashed his throat and stabbed him repeatedly in the back. So the jury is set and they're all ready to go here. The jurors, by the way, they have an interesting run during this trial. Defense makes a motion for a mistrial saying the jury was tainted during the trial. On Tuesday during this trial, a relative of one of the victims,
told a juror to hang Ormsby. Okay? But the juror was allowed to remain. So then an alternate juror was dismissed the next day after trying to shake the prosecutor's hand and tell him he was doing a good job.
You can't do that in the middle of a fucking trial. Great job, sir. You're doing a good job. I'm on your side already. Maybe that's just a guy that's like, I love prosecutors and I've always wanted to be one. I'm very impressed by your work. Either that or he's a little league coach and he just wants to tell everybody. Just giving everybody. Good eye. Way to go after it. Nice hustle. You know what I mean? He's got a. Yeah. Way to be. Way to be. Yeah.
Way to be, baby. Way to be. Way to be out there. That's right. That's right. I like your attack. I like it. Well done, babe. Nice thrusting with the knife. That's a good job. So Ormsby's attorney said those cases underscore her contention that Ormsby can't get a fair trial here and we should have a mistrial. The judge questioned all the jurors before denying the motion for mistrial and allowing the videotaped confession to be shown to the jury. Okay. Now, while this is happening...
The Albert Gaudet of Standish, he is a relative of one of the victims. And he's the guy who yelled, I hope you hang the bastard at a juror. Well done. He is charged with jury tampering.
Oh, you can't do that. You can't say that says shut the fuck up and don't. Yeah. People think it's court is like this fucking joke. Like it's a warning. Just don't. There's a there's a fucking guy up there with a bangy thing that his will can throw you in jail. Right. Just about anything for anything in that room. Yeah. Shut the fuck up in there. You can't say I hope they hang that bastard. No, no, no, no. You didn't say I hope they hang. He there was a juror when he caught the juror coming out and said, oh,
You hang the bastard to the juror. Oh, you can't do that. That's a little light. It's a little light for jury tampering.
If you got him in the guy's front yard while he was watering his flowers and walked up on him creepily and was like, you better hang the bastard, that's jury tampering. What they did in The Sopranos, walking up to the guy during Junior's trial and paying for his fucking stuff and going, good to have a nice guy like you on there that's going to do the right thing. That's jury tampering. This is an angry relative yelling some shit out, I feel like. In the courtroom, yeah. If you're there and just... If you're not like winking...
I hope you hang the bastard, you know what I mean? It's not like that. It's just an angry person screaming angry shit. And the juror who didn't want any signs of any bad shit going on here, he said that he went right to the...
Oh, disclosed it right away. Right to the court and said, this guy said this and that. The trial was delayed to allow both attorneys time to question the juror. The juror said he could remain impartial just because some guy yelled at him. He's like, I figured the families of the victims probably wanted this guy to...
They might be a little upset. Yeah. Nothing new here. It's not like the judge said that. I doubt it's even 50-50 whether or not they're upset. Yeah, they're probably 100% pissed off at this point. 90 to 100, somewhere in there.
Oh, man. So this Gaudette is DeHaan's cousin, and he charged him with a felony punishable by as much as 10 years in prison. Jesus. It's the first time in recent memory that anyone's been charged with jury tampering during a state homicide trial, they said. He was freed on bail, and who knows there. So that's wild. Defense, their case is they called no witnesses. Really? Really.
No, they cross-examined all the prosecution and said defense rests. You didn't prove it. No, I think, yep, we say they didn't prove it. So the closings, the prosecutor said that the evidence matches his confession perfectly. How would he know these things otherwise? How would he know that the guy was out in a ditch? He said, I did this. That's why you found him in a ditch.
But he did read the media accounts first because he said the media said five stabs, so I guess it was five. Right. So that is one thing. They said what he told the detectives and what you heard him say is totally consistent with the evidence. The defendant thought he had silenced all the victims, but now, almost two years later, the evidence speaks for Jeffrey Ryan, Jesse Ryan, and Jason DeHaan. The prosecutor described the crime as, quote, "...so shocking in its violence and brutality that it almost takes your breath away."
It really is horrific. It's as bad a scene as you're going to fucking find. And the defense attorney, though, suggested that Robert Strout here was the man responsible for the crime. Really? Really.
Strout was supposed to be called by the prosecution, but then didn't get called by the prosecution. Because we don't need him. We've got a confession. Yeah, and there's a lot of gray area. Once you put him in there and he made false statements and lied. So the defense says you may have cause to question Mr. Robert Strout's role in this case. Like, what about him? She reminded the jury that two knives had been admitted into evidence and that one of them was found in Strout's car. So he's like, what about that? Even
even though it's serrated and couldn't have been the murder weapon. I still would have been. As a prosecutor, I might close saying, I don't know, they can suppose anybody they want, but they didn't call that person and accuse him. Exactly. I know who did this. There's a reason I didn't call him. It's because he didn't do it. This guy did. Yeah, you could say that, yeah. And the defense could have called Robert Stroud as a witness. Right, that's my point. The prosecutors said, yeah. They didn't call him. I didn't call him because I don't need him. They needed him.
him. They asked the defense asked the jurors to quote take into account what influences and pressure may have been brought to bear on Mr. Ormsby. Yeah. You killed a 10 year old. I don't care. You're fucking talking about if he if he's like a drug dealers and some big drug dealer you know talk them into killing a rival drug dealer you go. Yeah. He's just a pawn in this game. You slaughtered a 10 year old bro. Fuck you. You know. Yeah.
So the prosecution, during their final statement, held up the second knife, the one that they're saying could have been the murder weapon. And the prosecutor said, they want you to believe this is the knife. Don't you think if Dr. DeWitt had seen something that was a telltale sign of this serrated edge, she would have mentioned it? It's all a distraction, people. Uh-huh.
So the verdict comes in. It is a seven-man, five-woman jury. And he is charged with three counts of murder, one count of arson. Here is Thane. And he is found guilty of everything.
Guilty of it all. He doesn't react at all while it was read. But then he did ask corrections officers to remove him from the courtroom seconds after the jury walk out. He doesn't want to stay. Yeah, the statements. I'm not interested. I'm out. I want to go. The prosecutor said the confession appeared to have been very important to the jury. Well, no shit. Yeah.
It's all the evidence you have. Yeah. A guy said I did it. That's surprising that they weighed that pretty heavily. And it matched up perfectly with the evidence and the DNA and everything else. Because, yeah, like we said, the DNA wasn't a slam dunk for he's the murderer. He could have just been a guy who had a beer there the day before or had a beer there left and a murderer came. Yeah. Who knows? So for sentencing...
He's trying to say he's crazy, insane to be legal about the whole thing. The jury is going to hear evidence as to his state of mind at the time of the crime and jurors will then be asked to determine whether he was criminally responsible for his actions. So he's found guilty, but he still could be found insane and sent to a mental institution rather than sentenced to prison.
So he could be sent to the Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta for an undetermined amount of time if they find him to be insane. If they find him guilty and sane, he could face a sentence between 25 years and life in prison on each of the murder charges. Also, he could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted of arson.
By the way, yeah, judges are allowed to impose life sentences in Maine under specific circumstances. Maine is a no-parole state. Oh.
They have no parole there. Really? So you just got to do your time. Life is reserved for serious. You can't just kill one person and get life. It's multiple murderers, kids. These are the things you get life for. And one of these you can get life for is multiple murderers, which he did. So we'll see what happens. The state says that he's not even remotely psychotic. Not even remotely. Yeah, I wouldn't say psychotic. I would say fucking...
Just dangerous. Yeah. It's dangerous and, I mean, psychotic-
He seems psychotic, but not insane. I wouldn't say insane. Exactly. That's what I mean. He's an asshole. He's a con man asshole. He's a dangerous person. He's probably crazy, but he's not insane. There it is. Yeah. He's aware of what he's doing. Oh, all too well. He ran after a kid. I did this because I didn't want this and this to happen. There you go. Not insane. That separates right and wrong right there. Insane is I did this so the Dragon King wouldn't be mad at me. That's insane. Yeah.
I did it so the Dragon King wouldn't eat them. He was going to get them. Yeah, he was going to put fire on their house. Now he missed three meals thanks to me. I'm a hero. Jesus. Dr. Catherine Thomas testified on behalf of the defense saying that he's crazy. She said that he was out of touch with reality, thinking he was ridding the world of a bad man and somehow boosting his resume as an assassin.
Who told him that he's a bad man? Totally delusional. Nobody did. The guy got in a fucking argument and told him not to see his fucking kid anymore. Right. Stay away from my daughter. You're 20, she's 16, and I think you're a scumbag. Stay away from my fucking daughter. Get the fuck out of here. Yeah. If he could sit and brood about a washing machine comment for hours and then come back pissed off, that tells me that he will sit and he'll bubble and he'll fucking boil. Yeah.
So, the attorney general, though, said that Ormsby didn't have any type of mental defect or disease, pointing out that he did not suffer from hallucinations, didn't hear voices, and his methodical actions after the murder supported the belief that he was sane as fuck, I believe is the legal term for it.
They said he knew that he could, you know, the two in the house could turn him into authorities. He had the presence of mind to clean up the crime scene by removing some items that had his fingerprints on them. He also burned his bloody clothing and threw the knife he used into the bog. Quote, he was not even remotely psychotic. But, yeah, you know, they're saying the other one. The defense says he was abused as a boy, which made him delusional.
The deputy attorney general said that Ormsby was fascinated with killing and decided to kill Jeff Ryan because he thought Ryan was a bad man. Quote, he didn't think Jeff Ryan was too nice of a guy, so he put his thoughts into action. He said that his actions may not have been rational, but they didn't meet the legal requirement for an insanity defense. That's the thing. Any murder you can look at and you go, well, that's not rational, obviously. It's not normal. 471 cases of irrationality, you know.
Indeed, and really just bonkers behavior. Yeah. Bonkers. Crazy behavior. Hard to explain. Yeah. But if you just certainly not out of the realm of what humans are capable of doing for reasons of plenty of retribution. If you take anybody and have somebody watch somebody murder something and go, do you think that person's crazy? They'd go, fuck yeah, that person's crazy as balls. Did you see him? That was crazy. He's snapping the shit out of that person. That was crazy. Yeah.
But then if they go, here, hide this knife for me and start collecting evidence, then they're not so crazy anymore. They weren't just like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's crazy. I don't care. I don't give a shit. I'll wear this person's head on my fucking hat, on my head as a hat and walk into the police station to complain that I got a ticket last week. I don't care anymore. I don't care anymore.
With a bear head hat. That's crazy. That's crazy. Holy shit. So they ask for, they request that he be sentenced to life in prison for the murders and 30 years on the arson charges. So max out. Totally.
Totally. He tells the judge, quote, this was such a waste of human life. A 10-year-old child butchered with two adults who were minding their own business. We can only imagine the horror that Jesse Ryan felt as he ran into that back bedroom in a futile attempt to hide. The defendant decided he wanted to kill someone, and he set out on that path, and he didn't want to stop. You bet. Yeah, no fucking shit, man. Maria Ormsby, he has somebody speak for him, and it's his mom. Wow.
Thane's got mom out there. What is she going to say? Removed from her home at 12 due to physical abuse. Yeah. What the fuck can she possibly say to redeem this? Well, she talked about how happy she was when he remembered to send her a note on Mother's Day this year. Oh, lady. That's nice. His grandmother, Janice Wilbur, said that he was a good kid growing up and that she was proud he recently received his high school diploma while in jail on murder charges.
His uncle. I mean, your grandma's going to find something. They dig deep for pride. Yeah, they'll find it. They're looking for something. Look, I found a nugget of pride. It's right here. He got his diploma. Let me polish it off quick. It's covered in shit right now. I got to polish it. Hold on. Let me knock that off of there.
His uncle, Stephen, also took the stand and asked the judge not to sentence him to life in prison. His grandmother said, quote, we still have hope for him. Oh, yeah. Right. They asked Thane, you got anything to say for yourself? Which you should say something at this point. Please say something. He said, I'm good. Thanks.
He said those three words? No, no. He just said no. But that was the general meaning. If he said I'm good, thanks. That would have been terrible. Drag him out by his shoestrings. Fuck you, man. I'd have thrown that in a quote if he did. So the judge says, well, I sure got a lot to say.
I'm going to be exhausted with what I had to say. He said, yes, you were denied social justice in that you were subjected to physical abuse and deprivation in your childhood. That is true. But...
Those circumstances are not enough to mitigate the severity of killing three people, including a small child, innocent as can be. So he said that the killer had gone to the Ryan home that night with the intent to kill Jeff Ryan and that when he saw two other people there, he didn't abort his plan. He simply expanded it. Yeah, he could have said, I'll kill him tomorrow when no one's here. I'll come back and check again. Instead, he said, I'll kill everybody. Fuck it.
Right. He said that he had no doubt that all three victims experienced conscious pain and suffering before their deaths. He also took into account Jesse Ryan's age and the fact that Thane has shown unwavering
Fucking who gots in the way of remorse for his crime? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Not a bit. He noted that he had done some research and found that only one person in Maine has killed more people in the state. And that is convicted murderer Christian Nielsen, who we did. Newer remain. That is an episode we did in 2006. So we've done the worst Maine has to offer twice, twice.
He said, quote, Mr. Ormsby is tied for second place in the annals of mass murder in Maine. That's not good.
Oof.
and was deeply disturbed. Lorenz also said that Ormsby was psychologically immature at the time of the murders, even though he was 20 years old. But the judge says, all that said, quote, I must hold him accountable. You, sir, may fuck off. Life in prison times three. Oh, boy.
Oh, to 30? With 15 years for arson as well. Burning the truck, you son of a bitch. Till you die, for sure, and then 15 on top of that. Maine's parole system was abolished in 1976, so Thane Holmesby will spend from 20 to eternity in prison. Oh my God. He could do 70 years in the joint. He fucked up. He fucked up bad.
And if he makes any money in prison, anything at all, it all goes to the funeral expenses of the victims and to pay to the victim's compensation fund. So he can't even make his life even remotely bearable over the next fucking 80 years of car. He can't use it to be sustainable or lucrative for anybody. He can't get honey buns. No, he can't buy a goddamn thing. He can't buy ramen noodles. It is all state-funded garbage forever. Man, forever. He's going to die in his fifties.
Probably. Jail food for 30 years? 30 years of that? That can't be good. And jail health care? Forget it. Yeah, he's got to go. Yeah, he's going to die, probably. No teeth. No teeth. Definitely not. Robert DeHaan said that, that's Jason's father here, the victim. He said that it felt like a knife had been driven through his own heart when a son he loved deeply was killed. Why did they do that? Yeah.
He said, if given a choice, I know. Well, he meant it on purpose. He meant it that way, yeah. He felt like he stabbed me instead of him. But normally they would just say, feels like a knife through the heart, this decision. Sir, you can't, don't, no. That's our normal thing. But no, he was being very specific. He said, my own heart when I heard my son was killed that way. He said, if he was given a choice, he would want to see Ormsby put to death. But he said Ormsby would only, but he would,
one day get what he deserves. Then he said, quote, may God not have mercy on his soul. Which is, I've never heard anyone say that before. That sounds like the end of a horror movie after they kill Jason and someone goes, may God not have mercy on his soul.
May God have no mercy. Wow, that's hardcore, man. Jason's 12-year-old daughter also spoke after her mother spoke and talked about how the kid still has nightmares about her father's death. Of course. Has to sleep with the lights on now. Jesus Christ. That she had to watch as her daughter cried on the night of the father-daughter dance at school because her father wasn't alive to take her.
Jesus fucking Christ, man. She said, I cry because that means the weekend is coming and I always spent the weekends with my father. That is fucking terrible.
So he appeals, Thayne. In 2013, he appeals his conviction with the Maine Supreme Court, saying that it should be overturned based on several factors, including his rights to an attorney and to remain silent or violated by police. And he was denied a change of venue despite prejudicial pretrial publicity, the three Ps. And they said, keep on fucking. You got about 60, 70 more years left.
Second appeal here, his new attorney claims that Ormsby's clearly established Fifth Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution were violated by the interrogation of police and trial court and the Supreme Court when they all erred in not suppressing the statements that he made. And they said, nope, fuck off still. Go ahead. Still not good enough.
Also that they didn't present Robert Strout as an alternate suspect. We don't need to. He's dead now to Robert Strout. So it doesn't matter. Yeah, he's dead since then. Yeah. Fuck that guy. In 2020, the third time he appealed, his latest appeal in federal court said that at the time of his arrest, he was interviewed by detectives even after he asked for a lawyer. His current attorney said those interviews went on for three hours. Oh, no, not three hours. Talk to fucking...
Talk to making a murderer there. Talk to Brendan Dassey. Several days, right? 18 hours later. Yeah. Armsby also contends his original lawyers did not do their jobs correctly when they failed to present Robert Stroud as an alternative suspect. And they said times three, once, twice, three times a fuck face. Take a hike. I don't care anymore. You're out of there. Fuck it. You're out of there.
So that, everybody, is Amity, Maine, and one fucking hell of a wild twisted tale. What a brutal slaughter this was, man. This is awful. That guy this past summer, the shooting must be... He did more, right? I mean, he's dead, too, but... Yeah, yeah, yeah. He killed himself in a fucking tractor trailer, but I think he killed more people than three, but...
So that's so many fucking people in three instances, man. Three. Yeah. They were just saying this was this may have been the worst of all because the kids involved and it was all a knife and someone's head was hanging off his body in a ditch. Like, it's gross. It's all attacks from behind. Gruesome. Horrible horror movie shit here. Chicken shit stuff. Chicken shit bullshit from a guy named Thane.
So we apologize. Whenever we make fun of a name, we'll get 100 messages from people. My name's Thane. My kid's name's Thane. He's not a bad guy. There's nobody named Thane. We get it. We say that just like there wasn't anybody named Kyler. We have a lot of listeners named Kyler. We didn't realize that. Fascinating. And people with kids named Kyler. There's not a single one. No Thanes in the world except for this one in jail in Maine. Thane for Maine. That's right. The Thane for Maine will remain mainly...
In the prison planes. In the penitentiary. Yeah, exactly. If you like these shows, get on whatever app you're listening on and write a review for it. Give us five stars. Write a damn review. It helps out a lot. It does. I would like to know what condiments you put on a hot dog. That's what you can say in your review. I like the show, and I like mustard and relish on my hot dog, or whatever the fuck you like. I don't care. You say ketchup.
So do that. Figure it out. Don't put mayonnaise on anything, number one. That's just terrible. I've learned that ketchup doesn't go on a hot dog.
It's not the ideal thing. It's not good. In certain circumstances, you can do it, but it's not the purest thing here. Mustard is where it goes. It's onions and mustard. That's what goes on it. You can do that, but if you do a mixture of ketchup and mustard, you can make it work. Or if you do a mixture of onions and mustard. I don't want to crunch on an onion. That's a different consistency. Oh, God, I love it. I'll take sauerkraut, though, I love. Tomatoes? Different thing. No, I don't want a salad. You're describing onions and tomatoes now. That's not a hot dog anymore.
I put onions, tomatoes, and pickles and mustard. That's called a salad, Jimmy. Have a salad, cut off pieces of hot dog and sprinkle it over it. I love a Nathan salad. Sprinkle the hot dog salad over it. Yeah, in Chicago they do that. Here's this and some celery salt. I love it. Cool. Cool.
Take all that shit off of there so I can see if your hot dog's any fucking good. You put shit on there to hide a shit hot dog. It's a solid point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The best sauces at chicken places are because your chicken sucks. That's why. That's why you got great sauce. Because your chicken's shit. That's exactly right. Yeah. You get a sabrette. You just need a little mustard. Boom. Delicious. But the Vienna beefs in Chicago are delicious, too. Not bad. Keep all the shit off of them. It's got to be a good one. Yeah. So give us a review on there. Do that.
Head over to Shut Up and Give Me Murder. That was for review. Yeah, do it. ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com will get you, number one, merch, everything that's up there, new stuff up all the time, including also tickets to live shows this year, huge slate of live shows all laid out for you. A couple of them are sold out. They're going fast. If you want tickets, get there now. Minneapolis, sell this bad boy out, and you'll be our biggest show ever. So thank you, Minneapolis, for being fucking awesome. Hopefully you will sell that out. Virtual live show, 420-
Get your tickets available right now at shutupandgivememurder.com. 420 virtual live show, just like a regular live show, but in your living room, anywhere in the world. And we're going to do the whole thing with the pictures and the thing and be just like a live show. So that's shutupandgivememurder.com. Patreon.com slash crimeinsports. That's where you get all the bonus material. We pump it out like crazy. I'll tell you that too. Anybody $5 a month or above, a cup of coffee, the
Best value in podcasting. You're going to get two new episodes. First of all, a whole big back catalog, hundreds of episodes. Then two new ones every other week. One crime and sports, one small town murder. You get it all. You get it all.
And they're all interesting. Trust me. This week for crime and sports, back by popular demand, shit to do with sports, personal ads from the newspapers from the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. The View Journal? We'll find out. We'll find out. People trying to sell themselves for love in the newspaper like they were a fucking 87 Pontiac Grand Prix. It's amazing. Like they got a dash match for a buck. Yeah. Limited miles, new tires. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.
So check that out. Then for Small Town Murder, we're going to talk about the Collier brothers, who are these very weird brothers who hold up as recluses in this brownstone in Manhattan. And eventually they had to cut out half the wall to remove them and all of their weird hoarded things. We'll talk all about that. Patreon.com slash Crime and Sports. Also, listen to our other two shows, Crime in Sports and Your Stupid Opinions. Your Stupid Opinions is an hour long and...
We're into the comedy within 30 seconds in that show. There's zero excuse to not give it a shot. Zero. If you like us at all, if you've ever fucking gotten two seconds of entertainment out of us, you will like this show. Trust us. Fucking God, we do all this for you. Trust us. I don't care anymore.
That said, Jimmy, hit me with the names of the people who are so fucking wonderful and do care a lot and help us out so much. I want to hear their names right goddamn now. This week's executive producer is Sarah Bejoyi Kimose. Kimose? Kimose. I don't know. It's Kimose maybe? Kathleen Hyden, thank you so much. That was nice. Shelly Roberts and the gals from...
Gun Barrel, Texas, thank you so much. You're terrific. Franny in Australia, thank you. I miss you too much. Kyle Norwig, you're such a doll. I can't wait to meet you. You're not one of the bad Kyles, Norwig. Stan and Diana, I think it's Diana, it may be Day-ana in the UK. Thank you guys all so much for participating, being a part of this, and buying me nice things for my birthday.
Other producers this week are Angela's Cat Sprinkles, who was murdered by Dwight. Andy Zoff, Bigfoot historian Bob Titmuss. Do you know who that is? I don't know who that is. Is that a person? Are we supposed to know who that is? I don't know if it's a reference to something. We're not getting there. Andy Zoff is a reference to something else. I don't know. But I do know that Angela's Cat is from The Office. Andy might be from The Office also. Who knows?
Peyton Meadows, Mo Gibbs, Janice Hill, Scarlett Horbis III and her brother Rusty, Alicia Renee, Ace Handlin. You got to talk about her. She's wonderful. Sandy Beck, Kim with no last name. The calls, they calls me Teddy Burr. Elena Darter, Jessica Ogden, Rachel Whitehead, Alec Abelman, Abel Mayan, Lady Amalthea, Amalthea
Amalthea. That's what it is. Amy Scott, Julie Porsche, Porsche SVB, Amanda three, Katie Hayes, Marty Cof, Colefield. Yep. Uh, Emily Lang, Matt with no last name, Delta Dawn, uh, Christopher Phillips, Porsche, Porsche, Wolford, Wolford. Uh,
Chris with no last name. Peyton Nolan. Carly Abbott. Raymond Bluebell. Kelly Denton. Donna with no last name. Tilar with no last name. No, it's Tilar. Tilar. Tyler. It might be Tyler. T-I-L-A-R. That's not Tyler, is it? Fuck it. Tilar. T-I-L-A-R.
It could be Tyler. What's Pilar is with a P, right? Yeah. Tilar, I guess. If it's Tyler, beat your mother to death. Or your father, whoever fucking decided on that. Whoever did that to you. LB Nartfjerker. What is this? Nartfjerker. Nartfjerker. Nartfjerker.
Kendall Osbourne, Kyle F. There's another good Kyle. Rebecca McElhenney. Oh, like the Tabasco sauce. The obstinate McElhenney. Yes. Is that how it's called? Oh, and Rob Mack. That's right. But isn't that the makers of Tabasco? McElhenney? McElhenney? McElhenney. McElhenney.
Beats the shit out of me. I think that's the owners of Tabasco. Sure. The obstinate daughter. Obstinate. Obstinate. Yeah. Give us that Tabasco money. Maria Jones. Noel De La Forret. Ava Erlia. Nicole Hennessy. Corey with no last name. Brett Ross. Steve Tidwell. Travis.
Thomas, George One Ball Wonder Blake, Cindy English, Rebecca Buchanan, Shannon McKinley, Scott Elbert, Stephen Cook, Ashley Proctor, Amanda Sikorsky, Courtney Schultz, Devin Brashear, Chad Litzinger, Grace Poffley-Ephil, I don't know, Don Abramo, Heidi with no last name, James Gonzalez, Jamie Barnett,
S-D, the letters S and D. Like a card. Amber Carter, M. Williams, Talanda Robinson, Michael Belcher, Sam Thompson, Ashley Graham, Ray Stebbins, Adrian Aquino, Aaron with the letter A. I don't know, sorry. Brittany. Brittany Drawhorn. Toriana Munari, Dorothy Ann Pierce, Joseph Johnson, Aaron P., Carl Wenzel.
Ben Tuttle, Luke Hilton, Craven Moorhead. All right. Natalia Destin, Sam Grisafi. Melissa Pearson, Leighton with no last name, Jim and Kim Cody. Mary Zart, Hannah Bayment.
Piment, John Barlow, Cloud7A, James with no last name, Andy Beecham, Shane Whitaker, Ethan Rye, what is this, Rhea Marsh, Kyle Pancake, I doubt it, Kelly Campbell, Tracy Thomas, Jim Jam, Sean Slade, Jill Pfister, Casey with no last name, Casey Witten,
That's two different Casey's spelled different ways. Wow. That's crazy. That's too much for me. Casey, Casey Whitten, and Cassie all donated right in a row. That's unbelievable. Wow, you guys are, they did that on purpose. They coordinated it. Truly. That's fucking, that's never happened before. Stop confusing us. Liz with no last name. Melissa V. Ronnie Grubb. Megan Wright. Jesse with no last name. Cody Butler. Jody Boyer. What? Cody and Jody.
Cody and Jody. Butler and Boyer. It's true. What's happening? Kathy Margulies. Megan Orr. Jack Miller. Sinead Birmingham. Morgan Thomas. Janelle Borgstrom. Leanne Corbett. Andy Muth1. Susquito. David Wilbert.
Lilac Lavender, Tyler Weath, Robert Poe, Casey Ort, Jada Lynn, Skylar would know the last name, Miss Britt, Mel Shoebridge, Kimmy Wolfe, Nicholas Hobbs, James would know the last name, Robin Ragsdale, Sean would know the last name, Emily Satori, Johnny Luff,
Tracy with no last name. Jessie Marie. Amy Frick. Kevin Child. Scott Frank. Jenny Remar. I'm not saying Remar. I won't say Remar. H.M. Redden. Nikki with no last name. Abriana Only. Sean Campbell. Salem Golden.
Steve Cecil, Aiden Wynn, Molly with no last name, Daniel Namislaw. What? Johnny Parks, Lauren Nogle. Not going back. Shannon Kay, Stephen Scattergood, Dead World, Christopher Cardona, Sarah Sowers Stone, Stephanie Thompson, Laney with no last name, Savage Randy. Oh, I see what you did. Jasmine Goodman.
Uh, Damon, what wider, wider, wider. And Saul, uh, Jacob R. Christie Duffin. Selena would know last name. Rhonda would know last name. Jessica Nelson, Chelsea B. Stephanie Robinson, Dallas white. Nikki would know last name. Melody. Right. Right. Uh, Cambria white Walker, uh,
Wyatt Walker. Got it. Shannon Welachiko. Welachiko. Brian Duchette. Justin Griggs. Jen. Jerry. Jerry Frampton. And all of our patrons. You're fucking incredible. Thank you so much, everybody. You're fantastic, wonderful people. We do appreciate everything you do for us. And we would never come into your home and slaughter you and your children. Ever.
Never once. So keep hanging out with us. Keep doing this. Follow us on social media. It's at Small Town Murder on Instagram. And you'll find us on there at Small Town Pod on Facebook. You want to find either of us on social media. The drop down menu is on our website. Shut up and give me murder. And I'm finally doing Instagram now. So I gave up on Twitter. So I got to.
I had to fucking ditch that. There's so much. It's too many. Built up a whole thing over there. Now I got to do it over here. So lots of fun with that shit. Yay. Woo-hoo. Anyway, keep doing that. Keep hanging with us. I hope you care some more. And until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure. I don't care anymore.
I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like...
I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. It's like doubling and tripling, and it's all these girls. With a diagnosis the state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, well, yeah.
No, it's hysteria. It's all in your head. It's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since The Witches of Salem? Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here. Something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical.
Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.