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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.
Angie, yes, they've helped over 150 million homeowners care for their homes. Whenever the project, big, small, indoor, outdoor, come to Angie, you understand, we both own homes and projects are difficult. And they pile up. They pile up, and Angie makes tackling the project simple from start to finish. Get started on the app, or you can go to Angie.com. That is A-N-G-I dot com. Get your job done well with Angie today.
And now back to the show.
This week, in Libertyville, Illinois, the perfect family in the perfect house in the perfect neighborhood, until one bloody night tears it all apart and earns the house the nickname of Murder Mansion. Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay! Yay!
Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you folks so much for joining us today on another insane episode of Small Town Murder. This one is no different.
The twists and turns. It's a good mystery today, which I love. A property with a nickname. Shit. I love a mystery. I love a nickname for a property. All the kids are like, oh, that's Murder Mansion. Don't do that. Don't go near there. No, no. Avoid that on Halloween. That's awesome. That's spooky, and I love it. So let's get into it in a second here. Before we do, though, head over to ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com. First of all, get your merch, all sorts of merch there. Oh, yeah. Get your tickets to live shows. There we go.
Oh, my goodness. We cannot wait. September 20th is the next one in Minneapolis. Yeah. It's at the absolutely too nice for us state theater. It's beautiful. Fantastic place. Come on in and watch us foul it up with dick jokes because it's going to be great. We can't wait. If you sell it out, it will be our biggest show ever. You'll beat Chicago and take the title of biggest small-time murder live show ever. Next night, we're in Milwaukee at the Pabst, which is also fantastic.
one of the most beautiful venues too. It's amazing. And get those. There's only a couple tickets left there, so get a few tickets. Grab those. And then also Oklahoma City. We opened up more seats for Kansas City. Get in there. Austin, Texas. Boston, there's still some tickets left. And then a few left in New York too. So get those.
And yeah, shut up and give me murder.com. Now, if you get that, all that's not enough. You have your tickets. You're listening. You're listening to this show. You're listening to small town murder express. You're listening to crime and sports. You're listening to your stupid opinions. And you're like, I still need more of these morons.
Well, we got you covered. We have for you Patreon. Patreon.com slash Crime in Sports is where you get all of the bonus material. We got a couple of good ones for you this week in honor of the 4th of July and a day that will assuredly be filled with fireworks accidents.
We're going to talk about fireworks accidents throughout history. They're fun, too. Because that's like explosive and there's like marching band music playing, so it makes it extra ridiculous for some reason. And then for Small Town Murder, we're going to talk about the real tombstone. You like the movie Tombstone? You like Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp and the
cowboys and all that stuff. We're going to tell you the real story and some of the stuff that the movie kind of, you know, made a little more cinematic and less, less real. You know what I mean? So we'll get into all that. Patreon.com slash crime in sports. Do that. And you get a shout out at the end of the show too, where Jimmy will mispronounce your name. So, I mean, you get a lot here for the,
for the $5 a month. Anybody $5 a month or above. You can get a cup of coffee or all that we just told you about. Hundreds of episodes. So do that. That's that disclaimer time. Oh, yeah. This is a comedy show, everybody. It's also a horrible murder show at the same time. But we're going to find some jokes in there somewhere. And we're going to find some jokes
It's never during the murder. It's never like, oh, my God. It's hilarious to hear about dismemberment. That's not usually where that goes. It's more about, you know, hey, this guy thinks he can get away with murder and he's not real smart. That's good. Or, you know, why didn't this police department notice that this guy came in? It's like they said, well, we saw blood on his shoes, but we didn't think anything of it. So we let him go for five years and he killed eight more people. Stuff like that.
There's a lot of stuff to make jokes about. But what we don't do, we never do, we don't make fun of the victim or the victim's family. Mm-hmm.
Because we're assholes. But? But we're not scumbags. There you have it. That's how that works. So if that sounds good to you, oh boy, you're going to hear a wild story. You think that true crime and comedy should never, ever, never go together. I don't know. Maybe we're not for you. But maybe we are. How about give it a shot? And then we just, if you don't like it, we part ways. No complaining later, though. How about that? That said, I think it's time, everybody. Let's all sit back. What do you say? Let's all clear the lungs. Arms to the sky. Let's all shout.
Let's do this, everybody. What do you say? Let's go on a trip, shall we? Let's go. Let's hop in the car, Jimmy. We are on the move and we are headed to Illinois. Yeah. Let's go to Illinois. We're going to Libertyville, Illinois. Where's that? Which doesn't that sound like a, like a,
quintessential small American town, Libertyville. Yeah, sounds very nice. Lots of flags lining Main Street. Right on the sides of the parade as it goes by. It really feels like... They have permanent flagpoles on the lights so you can put flags up there anytime. Different flags for different occasions, too. It's, you know, anything. Christmas flag for the Christmas parade. There's flags, yeah. It's in northern Illinois. It's the kind of far out Chicago burbs.
The exurbs, they call them, not the suburbs. The ones beyond the suburbs, second layer there. It's about an hour from Chicago, an hour, hour and change depending on traffic.
About 35 minutes to Arlington Heights, Illinois, which was actually our last episode, which was kind of also in this area. But I know people want Southern Illinois too. And I promise you the next one will be Southern Illinois. This has got to be out near Rockford then, yeah? It's kind of northwest of Chicago, up in that area up there. It's on the way to Wisconsin, where back in the day all the kids would go to drink because Wisconsin had an 18-year-old.
was their drinking age in Illinois was 21. So they still don't. Yeah. A lot of people drove, a lot of people drove through this town. Well, in Wisconsin, you can drink underage in a bar. If you're with your parents, you can drink. Yes. You can go to Wisconsin with your 14 year old and order them a beer and it's fine.
What? That's legal. No. Look it up. That's absolutely legal. We're going to have so many Wisconsin people go, oh, Christ, I've been drinking in a bar with my parents since I was 13. That's unbelievable. That's literally legal. No. I don't know how drunk they're allowed to get, but you can serve them. So, yeah, the last one, Arlington Heights, was A Russian Doll of Murders was the name of that one, which was fun. That's kind of what we got here, too. This is in Lake County, area code 847. They have a motto in this town.
Oh, boy. By endurance we conquer.
Oh, that's so, so we'll just intimidate. We'll just hang around. It's almost like we'll just keep hanging around. You can. Yeah. They won't leave. We will not stop. We won't go away. We'll just stand here forever. You can't make a stop. Shit. You can beat us, but we'll eventually win. We'll get there. A little bit of history of this town. Kind of modern Libertyville histories is in the 1830s is where people started settling here. A guy named George Varden came in and.
Yeah.
So this town is born on the 4th of July. It was mail service from Chicago to Milwaukee was established in 1836. And that meant that people here said, let's get a post office. So, you know, on the way up there, they can grab our shit, too. So they got there. They got their first one. And yeah.
It was registered under the name Libertyville on that day because an Independence Grove post office already existed in Illinois. So they didn't check. They just said Independence Grove. Yeah. They didn't think about let's check and see if there's another one. Yeah. Nobody did that. So they became Libertyville without any kind of vote or anything like that. So they also had Burlington.
was the name of it for a little while as well. Really? Yes, which is interesting. The coat factory was real embarrassing. Now we've got to change it. They're like, oh, Jesus Christ. That place is just, have you seen it in there? It's a zoo. I can't deal with it. There's coats everywhere. It's a mess. Everything's brand new, but it feels secondhand. It's strange. Cheap housewares that don't really work, shit like that. I don't want a knockoff nose hair trimmer right now.
And I say that with two coats in my fucking closet from there. Oh, I'll go right in there. I'll absolutely buy a big coat there. I'll go there first just to see. Yeah.
If I can get something there for half the price, I'm doing it. That's the thing. I'm cheap as shit. If I can't, then I got to go buy like normal clothes. But if I can get a Burlington, I will. I'll get that. It is fun to go in there and just laugh at myself that I can't believe I'm doing this again. Yeah. I'm in a warehouse staring at racks of coats. It reminds me of like in a mob movie when they have like when they hijacked a truck.
And they have it all on racks in a warehouse. That's what it feels like. Like, oh, this is all hijacked off the truck. Or just still in the trailer. That's what it feels like. Yeah, it's so weird.
Such a weird place. So in the late 1800s, this place expanded rapidly once the railroad came through from Chicago to Milwaukee. So now you can go to either place, and it got big after that. And the village was finally incorporated in 1882. Now, reviews of this town. Let's find out what other people think because, you know. Let's hear it. Let's do it. This is kind of an affluent area, too, as we'll find out. Oh, yeah. No, this is like.
This is nice out here. There's some dough, huh? There's some dough out here. Wait till you hear the income. Median household income is wild. So here's five stars. Quote, it's a very great town. It's a very great town. Yeah, okay. Okay. There are awesome restaurants downtown, and everything is close together.
I would assume it would be. It's a small town. The communities are connected and there are many things to do. The town is also close to other towns where things are, where there are more things. And so it's a very good place to be. Sounds like a seven-year-old wrote that, doesn't it?
Just got a real wide vocabulary, that child. But, like, they start out with, it's a very great town, and at the last sentence, it's a very good place to be. Very good place to be. They learn sandwich your ideas, and they did it. There was also a very famous – I just did it, but –
I don't know whether it was Shakespeare or Twain or somebody that is incredibly smart that said anybody that uses vary before their descriptive word is a fucking dummy. I mean, that's not their word. If you're a writer, yeah. Yeah. They said that's an ignorant person. Yeah. There's ways to modify your word to mean that, so you don't need to use vary. There are much better words than vary. Yeah. Yeah.
Sometimes it can be funny, though. Yeah, yeah. Because it's a very has the rhythm of it. It's a cadence, yeah. It's just two syllables and it's fast, yeah. It's hard, it's fast, yeah. So in a comedic sense, you can go, I was very something and it makes it much funnier. Or extra or super. Extra, yeah, yeah. So three stars, it's a nice community that is very safe, but there's nothing to do.
All right. That's what happens. The other guy said that there's all kinds of stuff. All just teaming with shit to do downtown. The price to rent a storefront is so high that they go out of business within months. It's a high rent district. The town could be more things. The town could be more things to do. That sentence doesn't work at all. I was like, is that me reading it wrong? No, no. That's how it said. Well, it's taking effect in the middle of the review. Nope. It's the children who are wrong, as Principal Skinner would say.
I guess it's mostly a lot of old people that live there, which is sort of accurate. Yeah, it's accurate. Here's two stars. As I said before, like we've all hung out with this person. As I've always said. As I've always said. Yeah. As I've said before that we don't know about, the people aren't very good. Oh, okay. Aren't very good. And you've said it before. And then in quotes, me first area. Okay. Okay. Okay.
I don't know what entitled, I guess. I guess so. I don't know what he wants from people, but it's pretty funny that he says, as I said before, I just love. Oh, he's back a lot. Just never put on the Internet. And then two stars. There aren't many attractions in this area. This is nice, though, since there is little traffic or noise.
Love that. So yeah, if you want it to be quiet and in the middle of nowhere, then you're not going to have a lot of malls to go to or anything. That's how it works. You have to drive somewhere else. I do put up with a lot of traffic where I live. Because there's tons of shit around there. Because there's tons of shit. Yeah. There's really not. It's fucking embarrassing how many people there are with the lack of shit to do. There's nothing here. Why are we doing this? There's nothing to do. It's just strip malls. It's just like chain pizza places and hungry hounds and shit. Right.
I'm driving 15, 20 minutes to get to a mall, and it's literally five minutes away. Oh, yeah. It's just going to get so much worse, too. Oh, it's not going to get any better, I don't think. In the heat, too, it's even worse. So population of this town, 20,616.
So a good-sized town, but not a giant town here. Females outnumber males by a good amount here. It's almost 53% female because there's some older people. Median age is 42. There's a lot of kids from families, but there's also a lot of older people. Husbands die first.
Yeah. So there you go. And you end up with more females. So married population here, well above the national average. It's almost 63% married here. Holy. And out of that, 62% are currently married. So they're just getting married, staying married. Too much money in a divorce here. We can't do it. Okay.
Can't do it. It's just that's all there is. Now, the unemployment rate is regular median household income here. Hold on your ass, everybody. Oh, boy. One hundred fifty three thousand six seventy four. That's median. Do it. That's fucking median household income. Wow. I don't know if we've.
That's definitely in the high end of any town we've ever covered, I think. Yeah. That's up there. Cost of living, though, 100 being regular, average across the nation. Here it's 97.
That is marvelous. That's great, but the problem is the main cost is housing. Median home cost here, $481,600. Holy shit. Yeah, this is like a real nice area that you're going to pay for is what this is. So we have for you the Libertyville, Illinois Real Estate Report. ♪ music playing ♪
The average two bedroom rental here is about seventeen hundred twenty bucks, which is well above the national average. Expensive. All right. I found here's your bargain home is the cheapest home in cheapest structure in Libertyville. Three bedroom, one bath, one thousand eighty square feet.
It's a little house. It's very clean, very, you know, nice, very HGTV inside. You know, everything's brand new, white quartz countertops, all that kind of shit. Just reduced in price by $11,000. $339,000 for that, though. Oh, man.
That's a tiny house for $339. There's not much of a yard. It's a very small lot. That better be five acres, man. That is not five acres at all. I mean, it's pricey. Here's a four-bedroom, two-bath, 2,088 square feet on a quarter acre, which isn't very big. That's not big at all. That's pretty small. Decent inside, but also some old shit that needs to be updated, not old.
It's not all perfect inside. It's a nice fireplace that looks like it's old and pretty cool. $465,000 for that. Jesus. And then finally, this is the most expensive house available in Libertyville. So we have the lowest and the highest. This is a four-bedroom, five-bath, T-Bowl for each and every B-Hall, baby. And a spare for the neighbors. 5,252 square feet.
It's a big house. Yeah. It's a honking house on 0.26 acres, mind you. That's all house. It's all house. Yeah, there's not a lot. Inside is fucking amazing. It's amazing. It's like how I would dream I want a house. It's like...
This huge, long fireplace that's really cool. High ceilings, all straight lines, like fucking modern, cool. Really nice. Not a huge backyard, I will say. No, it's not even a quarter acre. But the neighborhood's like a very exclusive upscale. I mean, yeah, beautiful. It's like Brentwood over here. $2,675,000 for that. Holy shit. You barely have a yard, man. That is...
Nowhere to park. That's rough, dude. That's a rough one there. Things to do in Libertyville. Let's find out. The Libertyville Days Festival, of course, is the thing to do. It is a yearly fundraising event to support the Libertyville Civic Center Foundation. It's just more money to take from off of people? Yeah. Well, they do like all sorts of like...
shit over the course of the year with kids things and activities and all that kind of shit so they fund it once a year with this and some activities first of all on the Thursday they're going to kick it off with the Miss Libertyville pageants yeah let's judge some women you got Little Miss we'll judge some children sure ages 6 to 8 Junior Miss ages 11 to 13 you really want to stick them on stage during that awkward period and judge their looks that's good for them
That won't cause any eating disorders later. No bulimia coming from that. And then the Miss category, which is ages 16 to 21, which is not fair at all. And also weird. A 16-year-old is like with a 21-year-old. You're like, this is fucked up. She knows how to pop her tits and stuff. I don't even know. I just learned how to drive. Yeah, I got a lot going on. Yeah, she's fucking... I'm asking her to buy me some Boone's Farm. This is wrong. Yeah.
On the Friday, they have a children's party, ages 8 and under, games and activities, and a child fingerprinting and ID party. Let's get you kids. Woo-hoo. Fingerprint those kids. Yeah. Now that's a party.
You can take the ink and draw something with it. They give you a piece of paper after. I understand why. Yeah, yeah. It's just funny. This is fucking weird. This is the time this comes. Then there is a demonstration by the Tricochi University of Beauty Culture where they're going to show you Minnie Manny's hair braiding and temporary tattoos followed up by a fireman's rib cook-off contest.
Bunch of guys in mustaches making ribs. That's what that's going to be. Flirting with your wife. Yeah, your wife wants to bang. Yay. Then there's Todd Downing will be performing in the park. Okay. And the Joey Acapiato Band. Joey, hey, get over here. What do you got going on?
Then the main stage, though, we got our other bands. That's just the warm-up acts. Great. Let's get with the main. We have Gazzy, G-A-Z-Z-E. Nope. I don't know. It's reggae. That's all I know. Okay. Followed by Uncle Pigeon will be there.
He follows Gazi? Uncle Pigeon follows Gazi, which is, that's tough. And it says in the description of them, Northern Illinois's fastest rising stars. Uncle Pigeon. He's going to play the weed clouds. Yeah. I prefer Aunt Possum, but I'll take it. It's fine.
Next up, Sneezy will be there. All right. Sneezy. Does he have to talk with him? Then there's going to be just a parade of dwarfs after that. Sleepy on drums. There he is. Libertyville's Kings of Jam will be back at it again. All right. They're local and they play fish, it sounds like. Oh, boy. The Tim Gleason Band.
They say, quote, this extremely popular country pop sensation. Sensation. Sensation. Fastest rising star. They're really throwing around the words here. Did Mr. Gleason write this? I think this is from theirs. Yeah. We'll get you dancing in the streets. Oh, boy. So I looked him up. He looks like Junior from Reno 911 is exactly what he looks like.
And he was performing in American flag overalls. Overalls that were in America with no shirt on underneath it. Picture Junior from Reno 911 playing that. Next up, maybe my favorite band name ever, Melon Cougar. I wonder what he plays.
And it doesn't say he's a John Cougar Mellencamp like tribute guy either. It's just called Mellencougar and we just expect you to play like. He just plays ACDC only. That's it. I figure just Jack and Diane like a little off. You know what I mean? Like Mellencougar. Mellencougar. Next up. Cougar's Melons. Cougar's Melons would be nice.
Ivy Ford, who was just called the Queen of Blues. Oh. The Queen of Blues. Who is the king? Is it B.B. King? She's like a 30-year-old white lady. Queen of Blues. That's amazing. She knows all about it. All about it.
The Rock City 7, they do covers. The Expo 76 doesn't say what they do. Not a fucking, not a recognizable one amongst them? I don't know. Let's find out with the big closer here. The Pino Farina Band. What? Pino Farina. Oh, boy. Known for their showmanship, high energy performances, and tender, intimate songs.
All of those, huh? Yeah, they do all that stuff. They're poison.
let's get into the crime rate. Crime rate in this town, we're interested in here. Property crime is about half the national average, as it should be if you're paying that much money for a house and everybody's rich here. Violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course assault. The Mount Rushmore of crimes is about one third of the national average. Very low. Not a lot happening here. That said, let's talk about a murder here. Some murder we'll talk about. Okay, let's start out. We're going to jump right in the fire here.
June 5th, 1980 at 8.30 a.m. All right. So it's the morning. You can hear the Bugs Bunny morning music there. That's how uncultured we are. It's a classical piece of music. And to us, it's the Bugs Bunny morning music. God, we're morons. Yeah.
So this is at 2057 North Milwaukee Avenue in Libertyville. It is a 13-room beautiful home. Oh, it's a house, huh? It's a big home, real big. 13 rooms on 7 1⁄2 acres.
Hell yeah. Now, I've read you all those two million something dollars for point two, six acres and all that kind of shit. Seven and a half acres. These people have to check Zillow for this thing. Yes. So there's a long story. It's all you'll know by the end of it. You won't have to check Zillow because trust me, it's on seven and a half acres. They have a they have like horse stables there, too. Yeah, it's really nice. It's in the Bull Creek subdivision case. Anybody's wondering if they're from there.
Now, the family is awakened. At least 16-year-old Robin is awakened by the phone at 8.30 a.m. Right. Okay? She pops up. She's a young lady, 16 years old. She is the daughter of the family. Her brother Billy, who's 15 years old...
is in the next room. Now there's some debate as to who fields this phone call, but most people say it's Robin. So we're going to say it's Robin here because it makes the whole thing makes more sense anyway, if it's Robin. So I believe it probably was Robin. Somebody misheard it and it got out there and that's what happens.
So she's woken up by the phone. Now, her father, Bruce, her name is, by the way, Robin Rouse. That's the family name. R-O-U-S-E. Rouse. Her father's name is Bruce Rouse, which if you say it a certain way, he could be Bruce Roos, which is a tough name. So Robin here gets a phone call and it's gas station employees. And we've all been awoken by that.
By gas station employees calling at 830. There's a reason her father owns several gas stations. Oh, got it. Yeah. And he's a real hands on guy. And one gas station opens at 530 a.m. or 5 a.m. And he's usually there by 530 to do the stuff with the safe and all that. And it's 830 and he hasn't shown up yet. So they're like, where the fuck is Bruce, man? What's going on? So Robin stumbles out of bed and goes looking for her parents. Yeah.
And she is looking for her parents in the bedroom. She looks into the bedroom and sees a horror scene. There's blood everywhere. I mean, everywhere. That's all she sees because she can't see her parents, as we'll talk about why in a second here.
So she loses it, screams, runs in, gets her brother Billy. Billy, Billy, holy shit. Oh, God. There's blood everywhere. Oh, my God. We got to call the cops. She's hysterical. Billy calls the cops and says, I think something happened to my parents. My sister's freaking out. They can hear her screaming in the background and all that kind of shit.
So, Billy, while they're waiting for the cops, runs outside out of the back door into the little guest house cottage in the backyard. They got a little Cato Kaelin house back there. Very nice. And back there is 20-year-old brother Kurt who's living back there. Oh, he's having the time of his life. He kind of is, too. He loves Kurt. Kurt's a big weed guy. He's in a band. Yeah.
He's a big weed guy, likes to have a few beers. And he stays in the half address behind the house. He's staying out behind the house. He's living the life of Cato Kaelin. He's just living quite the life here. So he's asleep back there, obviously. He's not going to get up until at least 1231, I would say. So Billy goes in, wakes him up, and Kurt said later on, quote, I think he said mom and dad are dead. I looked behind them, and there was a police officer with a gun aimed at my head. It was like waking up into a nightmare. What?
The cops showed up and they were they were clearing the fucking premises looking for if there could be an intruder, there could be somebody hiding. There could be anything. So more injured people. Guns at the kids. So they came in. Well, it's just a guy in the back. I don't know. It's this kid. It's a 20. And if you looked at him, he looks like it's only 1980, but he looks like he just joined Soundgarden is the best way to put it. He's got long hair. He's got like just the like a big.
Goatee. No, a big like goatee thing that's like big and full. He's in a band and he looks like he's in a grunge band from the 90s. A cool band. He was kicked out of Alice in Chains for being too crazy. Too much of a drunk for them even. You know what I mean?
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Yeah. So that's what he looks like. And the police go in and they find Bruce and Darlene as well. The parents of these three kids. There's Kurt is the oldest Robin 16 and then Billy is 15 and Bruce is 44. Darlene is 38. Oh, they're so young. They're very young. Yeah. They got married young and had started having kids when she was 18 years old. 44 and own several gas stations. Good for several. Yeah.
I mean, he's got like a $3 million net worth in 1980, which is pretty damn good, I would say. The police find them in the bedroom. They are covered with a red, white, and blue sheet. So a big sheet they're covered with.
And they were like, oh, this isn't going to be good when we pull this back probably. And by the way, when they cover – somebody gets covered up, it's in a place that's not like to actually hide them. It's usually some sort of guilt or remorse or some shit like that. Like they feel bad. So they don't want to look at it basically. So they take the sheet back and wow, it's like a horror movie. I mean –
Bruce's lower jaw has been completely shot off. It's gone. Gone. And the top of Darlene's head is completely missing. Wow. The whole top of her head, like she opened it up to take something out. Yeah. Missing. Just blown to pieces. Decapped. And there is blood everywhere. There's also a lot of wounds on Bruce's chest as well that don't look like gunshot wounds. So they're like, what the hell is that? Because the other two are clear wounds.
kind of point blank shotgun blasts. Like that's the only thing that's going to blow a jaw off and take the top of someone's head completely off their fucking off their body. So there's a trail of blood that leads upstairs and stops at the landing as well. The there's blood fucking every, I mean, imagine the scene in the bedroom. It's blood walls, bed floor ceiling, like someone exploded in there.
So they find police find Robin in a state of hysteria. She's losing her shit. You know, 16 year old girl. She's barely in the Miss competition in the pageant. Right. She barely qualifies. Barely qualifying for this. They said, though, that both Billy and Kurt seemed unusually calm here.
And I don't know if that's like you wake up to this. You'd be kind of in a state of shock, maybe like, what the fuck is happening? Am I really awake? Yeah. But if you panic, but you know that your big brother is there and.
Who knows? I don't know. He's in a band. He's 20. He can manage himself. You know what I mean? If you've got him there, maybe you're calm, too, because at least I've got this guy here. Also, you're trying, when you're 15, you have a 20-year-old brother. No matter what the situation, it's habit to try to not look like a pussy in front of your big brother. You know what I mean? Look like you can hang out with him and be grown up. And also, the other side of the coin, as a 20-year-old brother, you don't want to look like a pussy in front of your younger brother and younger sister. Exactly.
Plus, he smoked so much weed the night before, probably, too. He was like, what's up now? Like, whoa, hold on. I'm still very chill. I'm just, I'm laid back at the moment here. In the newspaper, they call Kurt an unemployed musician, which is a...
Kind of a, you know, we get it. Yeah, you said musician. You know what I mean? So they told the sheriff investigator, Kurt Proshowitz, that they heard nothing. They didn't hear anything during the night. Really? Said, did you hear gunshots? And they said, no, not at all. Not even two giant shotgun blasts? Yeah, they said, no, we slept. Everybody said they slept through everything. They don't know. Wow. They said a robbery doesn't look like a motive because Darlene was still wearing five rings and explosion.
Expensive ones, too. Diamonds and things like that. And Bruce's wallet was sitting on his dresser with $300 in it. So if anyone's doing a robbery, grabbing rings and a wallet off a dresser would be the things you would steal, at least. So they said maybe it was a robbery gone wrong because it looked like the bedroom had been ransacked a bit. And they asked the children and everybody else that...
you know, do you lock your doors? And they said, usually, no, we don't lock our doors. This is a very safe area. And they're kind of where they are is kind of by themselves. There's not a lot of houses around. It's, you know, they don't even think about it. Kurt said, I don't know that anyone in the family actually carried a key. That's because one of the doors will be open type of thing. He said it was that kind of feeling in Libertyville that you could just leave your doors open and no one was going to wander in your house.
Yeah. What a fucking life these people are living. I mean, I've been in a lot of places and every time I panic, somebody's coming through the door. Click. That's the first thing I'm doing. Lock. Yeah. Like somebody saw me go in the door. They're going to follow to see what's in there. Yeah. They're waiting or they've been waiting like for me to arrive so they can murder me. One of the two. They're hanging out in a bush anywhere. No, they're just waiting or they're going to sneak in and hide there until I go to sleep and then murder me.
That's a big one I have. Somebody wants in here. Someone wants to fuck in here. So the fire chief who showed up said, quote, I've been on thousands of calls and many of them have been brutal, but none quite as brutal as this one. Yeah. How do you. Yeah, they're fighting parts of heads everywhere. If you've seen two people minus half of their head, get out of that job. That's a crazy job, dude. Yeah.
I would think like that would be the big thing. Like if you're a cop, like, you know, there's a lot of shit you have to deal with. Obviously, that's a that's a shit job. Yeah, whatever. But like the first time you get called to like some kind of scene where there's just a like a decomp, like someone who's been in a house for 30 days and all that. You got to actually go in there and look at that shit. That's I don't want to do this again. No, I'd be like, well, that's enough of that shit. It's going to happen again and again and again for 25 years. Last time I'm doing that shit.
Man. So let's talk a little bit about these people and find out who they are. Bruce here, the 44 year old patriarch of the family. He he comes from gas station people. Oh, the whole family's been the whole family. Yeah. Bruce was born in 1936. His father owned a successful gas station in Mundelein, which is another suburb around here. One of the first ones, for Christ's sake.
Back then, this was a big deal. Gas stations were new, sort of. I mean, he opened it in the 20s. In the 30s, yeah. In the 20s, if you opened a... I mean, cars haven't been around that long. No, no. And a lot of them ran on kerosene and shit. Ran on whatever you put in it. Yeah. Whatever was flammable nearby. Oh, shit, booze, moonshine. So Bruce got his first job pumping gas in a family-owned business. Gee, wonder how he got that. That must have been hard to...
Hard to fight through the pile of applicants for that one. Yeah. But he wanted to be on his own. He opened his first gas station before he was 21. Attaboy. Not bad. This is with family money, too, and that sort of thing. But still, he opened it. Still got to do it. It's one thing to... Because, like...
it's one thing to get money to open something that's, but then you actually also have to run it. Right. The capital is the hard part to come across, but then you have to actually now do the job. Yeah. So a lot of people who get handed the money can't do the job after that. A lot of people fail even when they have dad's money. This guy's a, he'll work 20 hours a day. A lot of days. He,
He is a very hardworking guy that is not resting on his family money, which is nice to see. He also – this is when he's in the mid-50s when air conditioning was far from a standard thing in cars. It was like a special order in a car. Right.
He decided to set up a facility in the corner of his garage strictly for installing air conditioning and cars. Adding them. Atta boy. Yeah. He thought that was going to be the big wave of the future, and it absolutely was because people wanted them so bad. So people all throughout Chicago would bring their cars to him. He had a huge monopoly on it for a while. He made $80,000 in his first year. This is in 1955. Wow.
Oh, boy. So that's like making over a million dollars in today's money. That's a lot of money. So his family has been in this area forever, by the way. His family's been here since 1880 they got here, which is right around the time they got like they were actually like incorporated and it became a real town. Right. So his grandfather was the mayor of the town. Yeah. They're a very prominent family here. No kidding. His father had the gas station, had some property, brewery.
Bruce took that and what his father had and then built on it. He bought more gas stations. Bruce invested in property and a ton of real estate holdings and also interest in – this is how he – this guy saw the future, man. Between the air conditioning and in the early 70s, he invested in cable television companies.
What? He said that's going to be a big deal. He fucking knew it. He fucking knew it. And think about it. In 1980, when this all happened, it was about to blow up. He was about to make a fortune off of that shit. And also like shops for auto maintenance and things there. He's not the kind of guy who really hangs out at the country club or anything like that very often. Either. No, he he goes to work in overalls.
and comes home with grease all over him. That's him. He works hands-on. Yeah. He'll go back and work on a car if he feels like it. That's what he does. So he works. Everyone calls him a workaholic, like by far. He's never home, they say. He's always at work.
He works at least 16 hours a day, if not more. That's how you get $3 million in the bank. That's the thing. Yeah, he had to work that hard. So one resident who knew him since high school called him a bit rough around the edges, not really polished.
Okay. He's not one of those guys. I'm seeing a lot in the mirror that looks like me, man. Are you? Except for that money part. Except for the, and working 16 hours a day and being covered in. Man. I'm seeing nothing here that sounds like you. Absolutely nothing. If I owned it and if I had the capital and something that I loved that I could go do. You're late to this. Yeah. What are you talking about? This guy's at work at 530 in the morning. When I worked, I was fucking working.
I was doing hung out with you when you would blow off your job to sit in my fucking living room for two hours and play Madden football and talk about comedy with me. You are not a hard worker. You are a fucking you're a hard worker if you want to like like fix your jet ski. But outside of that, you are a fucking terrible employee. And so am I. I'm an awful hard worker. That's it. That's a good point. Yeah.
So I'm saying if I owned it and I loved it, I'd fucking do it 20 hours a day. Absolutely. That's fucking funny. That sounds great. We do this and this takes a lot of time. But doing it for somebody else, I'm a bad employee. Yeah, that's the thing. Yeah, he's a... That's amazing.
I was going to say, because we're both bad employees. Yeah. Employee. But we work our asses off on this. You know what I mean? Working for ourselves, we work hard. There's a lot to do. I've always been an awful employee, though. Good God. Oh, boy. I won't do it for anybody else. You don't want me working for you. You don't want me working for you. For a salary, fuck that. But for doing it on my own, I'll work hard. Yeah. For possibly no return whatsoever, I'll throw everything into it. Ha, ha, ha.
We've done that. That's how we that's gambling my whole life on it. Fuck it all in guaranteed money. If I just do what this guy asked me to. Nope. Fuck you. Can't be bothered. Sorry. Don't tell me what to do. Other people, though, about Bruce said he was a dedicated community worker and always generous to those who were in trouble. So if anybody needed anything, he'd help them out.
Now, when he I don't know what's going he's got to be like 23 when he meets her, which is very strange. He meets Darlene Stenland, who will be his wife. He's six years older than her. Right. And she's still in high school when they meet.
Which means that this is in the 50s. I guess that was especially if you were successful. Right. Christ, if you were Jerry Lee Lewis, she could be 14 and your cousin and nobody gave a fuck. So, yeah, you can fly to you fly to Germany and take a sergeant's daughter if you're Elvis Presley. Yeah, totally. And they're like, here we go. Better on back to Graceland. In good health, sir. Yeah.
But Darlene here, yeah, I guess back in the 50s, he's a successful young guy. He's a catch in this town. You know what I mean? So I guess nobody really cared at that point. A little creepy now. Don't be trolling around the high schools when you're 23, please. Would she have been 16? 17, I guess. 17, or if he's 22, she's 16, something like that. Back then, that was considered fine. She probably popped into the gas station and saw him in his overalls and that rag in his back pocket. Look at you.
Top it off. You betcha. They got married as soon as she graduated from high school in 59, and she'll have kids. I mean, boom. Kurt is there, 1960, right there. Oh, boy. Right away. He is trying to work up a chain of gas stations. That's what he's doing. So he's opening new ones. He's building them up, and this is...
5.30 in the morning, he comes home at 10.30 at night most of the time. Good Christ. Crazy schedule, yeah. And at first, the first year or so, she would work at the stations with him. Really? She'd come so they could be together because that was their honeymoon was going to work at the gas station. There was no...
Sinclair. No, Honeymoon. It's a standard station. Oh, it's a standard? He's got a bunch of standards. That's Chevron now, yeah? I think so. I think so. Yeah, I think they turned into Chevron. So they have kids. They have Kurt in 1960. They have Robin in 1963. And they have William, Billy, he goes by in 1964.
Now, by the time the 70s come around here, he owns a bunch of gas stations, has all these real estate holdings. He's a partner in a cable television station and an investor in other companies that are cable companies. He had interests in a concrete-ready mix firm. Yep.
and a used car business also, and he had about $3 million in personal fortune, or they did as a group here. He's like a mobster, but like a legit one. But totally legit. I'm a legitimate businessman, and he totally is. Paying taxes and shit. He's got a ready mix? God damn. No, this guy is hustling, man. But he would still work at least 16 hours a day, a lot of times at the nearest station to his home in Libertyville. That's where he was there all the time.
So in 1974 is when they buy their new house. And this is like their big we've arrived thing. This is it. Yeah. This is a mansion. It's a 13 room mansion on seven and a half acres. It's beautiful. 2057 North Milwaukee Avenue, like we said.
He had a swimming pool put in, or they had a swimming pool put in the first year they were there. And then the next year they covered it up, so made it into a building so they could use it year round. Indoors. You know, yeah, you know, it's tough in the winter. Sometimes I want to swim. You know, that's rich. Yeah, indoor pools, yeah. You're like, this weather, it's cold, and that makes me not be able to swim. Let's build a house for our pool. Let's make it warm. Yeah.
Wow, that is a rich person solution to shit. Then they added stables for horses. These are for Robin's two horses, because Robin has two horses. Oh, that's nice. He literally bought his daughter a pony and then said, how about two? Let's do it again. Yeah. Run it back. What an idyllic life for these fucking kids, man. Yeah, no shit. I'm jealous as shit of these kids. Indoor pools and horses? Fuck, man. Indoor pools, horses, an expensive game room.
Mm-hmm. With, like, all the new, like, they had arcade games back then. Right. Like, when they were brand new, they had them in this room. Like, this fucking place is crazy. As a kid, you couldn't ask for a better thing. They said, though, the interior, they said it lacked any decorating flair, and the general feeling was more cluttered than anything else. Okay, yeah. He doesn't care because he's never home. Yeah. He's treating it like a gas station. Yeah. He's leaving overalls everywhere and brake pads and shit. Mm-hmm.
And I think too, like if you're, if you don't, cause I don't think she comes from a lot of money, Darlene. So if you're not like from money, I don't know if it's getting money doesn't automatically make you know how to like,
what expensive shit to buy that looks nice. So maybe they're just happy with whatever. They don't care. And he likely, as the guy that's working fucking 12, 15 hours a day, he's coming home. He doesn't care. He doesn't give a shit. No, they say he goes home. He goes right to sleep most of the time. This isn't the gas station. I don't care what's here. Doesn't matter what's here. Yeah, I know my bays are clean, but outside of that, I don't know. So he cleans everything in the house with gasoline. You're like, this isn't how we do it here, Bruce.
Stop spraying the horse with that. We have pledge here. We don't use gasoline. He's just wiping down the horse's leg with a rag soaked in gasoline like it's a wrench.
So Darlene, and this is from a newspaper, I'll describe how they describe her. Darlene Rouse, 38, a short, dark haired, slightly chubby woman. That's how they describe her. Had an active social schedule and it does too. She's got all sorts of shit going on here. People said she was obsessed with bridge, playing bridge.
The card game? The card... She's only 38, not 68. Yeah, that sounds like... My husband died and now I just play bridge every day with all of my friends. Yeah. I smoke Benson and Hedges and play bridge. It's wonderful.
Pinnacle's next. Yeah. She's obsessed with that, and she's in a bunch of different bridge clubs, and she bowls every day at 4 p.m. Every day? That's the most Midwestern thing I've ever heard. A rich woman bowls every day at 4 p.m. There's no other place in the country where a rich woman bowls at 4 o'clock every day except for Milwaukee and Chicago and that general region. Rich club at noon, bowling at 4. Bowling at 4. Bowling at 4.
That's awesome. So she did that. She would meet with about a dozen friends at Miss Alice's restaurant on Main Street and have coffee and bullshit with the girls. And that was after bowling.
And then she'd come home. Husband was never home. Didn't matter. So there you go. She is doing so much stuff, though, with all of this shit. It's a lot. They spoil the hell out of the kids, too. Yeah. I mean, really spoil them. The girl's got two horses, James. I think that's pretty obvious. Two.
And she only asked for one, as we'll talk about here. Really? Yeah. They said that Bruce was always spending extra money on his kids, giving them what they wanted, getting them out of trouble with his money and things like that, too. Yeah, this is all... There's some problems in the family. They look perfect from the outside. You know, two boys and a girl and the house and the businesses, but...
Kind of different here. One investigator said everybody kind of went their own way in their own direction. The father was a workaholic. The mother had outside interests, bridge and clubs and things like that. Oh, she's having the life. She's having a great time. And the kids went their own direction, too.
So they did their own thing. Another guy says the whole family didn't get along together. There was trouble among everyone. The parents didn't get along. The kids didn't get along. Really? Everybody's fighting with each other, but there's like this veneer of...
And they can all kind of use the money and the size of the house to kind of stay away from each other. Okay. And ignore their problems. Sure. You know, you can just buy your way. Oh, he's being a pain in the ass. Let's send him to a camp. Here's the money he needs. Just get him the fuck out of here. Yeah. Get Robin another horse. That's great. She'll go do that. So one friend said they were not exactly your all-American family.
They said it wasn't because Bruce and Darlene didn't try. They said one friend said, I think they tried too hard to make it perfect. Yeah. Yeah. They came up, you know, in the 50s and they had this idea of what the perfect American family was. And that's what they were trying to be. And material shit and giving your kids everything was part of that. Right. Let's talk about a bit of the kids here and see what their deal is. Okay.
Now, Billy, he's the youngest. Billy, a neighbor, said later on he was bad news from nursery school. Hell, I'm bad news. Bad to the bone. She's going to start singing George Thorogood lyrics. On the day he was born. The nurses, they all gathered around. They all gathered around. I'm telling you.
She called him in this, I've never heard these words put together before, quote, a gross delinquent. Gross one. Gross. At least she didn't say very. Yeah. That would change it. That would change it. A gross delinquent, always in trouble of one kind or another, even as a little kid. He's only 15. He's already always been into shit. Ruined. He's ruined. He's all been into shit. He's...
since nursery school. Yeah. You don't, you can't even read yet. He's the spult baby, huh? Yeah. That's, and I'm going to blame parents for that. If your kid is 17 and a shithead, the world is, has affected him also by that point or him or her. So you don't, that might not be your fault, but if the kid's four and a shithead, you've had literal physical control over that kid, his entire life. That's your fault. Zero outside influence so far. This is all you. Yeah.
And anything it does, you can literally pick it up and move it to someplace else to where they can't do that. You've had full control. So when he was in the fourth grade, Billy, he freaked the teacher out. At nine years old? He brought in a bunch of animal feet into class. Okay. Duck feet, like possum feet, raccoon feet, just feet of shit that was in the woods, just
Just the feet. He's picking up the woods, not making the feet. He's not taking them off of things. He told teachers his brother Kurt caught them in traps around Butler Lake. They were like, well, where'd you get all the feet, Billy? Where's the rest of the animals, John? He's nine, so they're like, this is weird. Hey, where's the rest of the duck? Hey, ducks have bills. Did you see that lying around anywhere? Where's this duck that swims in a circle? Yeah. So...
Near the end of sixth grade, Billy was accused of setting off a false fire alarm. Yeah. Which is what every school has the one asshole kid who sets off the fire alarm. He's accused of that. That's what I mean. It's all we know. We know. Yeah.
And he was sent to the principal's office for this. And his father was pissed. Really? His father was so mad that he wanted to teach him a lesson because he's been bad since nursery school. So he said, I'm going to nip this right now. Not quite in the bud, but yeah, somewhere. He comes to the school. The father shows up to the principal's office with a policeman with him. Yeah. He shows up with a cop and somebody said, Billy was absolutely terrified. White is a ghost.
He's like, oh, shit. He thought he was getting arrested. They took him to the police station. Oh, they did fake arrest him. Yeah, they fake arrested him. It's funny. Cops still do that. You'll still see a fake arrest on...
On patrol once in a while, the kid won't, you know, mother can't control him. They'll go up to the mother and they'll go, I'm going to take him and put him in my car for a minute. So he'll go cuff the kid. That's it. Sorry, you're going in. Head on the top of the head. And the kid goes in there and he's sobbing. Crying his eyes out. Yeah, because the kid's 12. Yeah. So they said they took him to the police station and he became absolutely hysterical, screaming and crying, and he shit his pants uncontrollably. Yeah.
In the police station, he lost his mind so much. He screamed and cried and shit himself. What are you doing? That's how they fingerprinted him. We're going to use that now, boy. How? As a parent, what do you do with that?
At that point. I mean, at some point you've got to stop, right? Do you go so hard on this kid that you make him shit his pants? That's what I mean. But they just took him to the police station. Nobody beat him or like, you know.
Anything like that, they just said, well, this is what happens, and he lost his fucking shit. Like, you can't take me. Yeah, I will shit my twice. Lost it. My God. He had a fucking, he had a shit fit. Really lost his mind here. Yeah.
I mean, it's sad thinking of an 11-year-old kid doing that, but it's like, what the fuck, bro? I mean, have some decorum here. And as a parent, logistically, what do you do? How are you going to get them home? I don't know. Yeah, there's that. But at least you know your kid's not that much of a badass. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is a silver lining in this.
Throw me in a fucking cell. See if I care. Yeah. I'll run that fucking place in two days. I don't care. I like bread and water. Let's go. Go fuck yourself. Yeah. He's shitting his pants. So I think the father said, maybe I scared him. Maybe this is scared straight. Yeah. Or this just fucking ruined this child. Or gave him a poop fetish. We'll find out. Who knows? So finally, he said his sister had told him to do it.
And they took him home. But I guess it had a huge impact on him. He was humiliated that he shit his pants and he was all upset. And he blamed it on his sister, who by all stretch of anything, we don't think Robin told him to do it. But she's only a year older. So that's close. Kids fuck with each other when they're real close. Billy gets a little worse here. At one point, he felt ignored by his father.
Because he was working so much, which makes sense. So he said, quote, I wanted his attention, so I set his bed on fire. Oh, my God. That'll do it. That'll get my attention. Was he in it? No. Okay. No. But when he came home to go right to sleep, his bed was burned. So he couldn't do that. We're going to have a problem. Yeah. And then he had to deal with him. You know what I mean? It's like Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club. Now they have to deal with me. It's one of those. Yeah.
Now his bed's burned. Yeah. So Kurt said that he thought Billy's problems were rooted in an undiagnosed learning disorder. I guess I was frustrated. Kurt said, I think Billy had some learning disabilities, maybe some dyslexia. And also he was one of the kids who smoked cigarettes and got in trouble. Okay.
That's not a learning disability. We were those kids too. Those things are powerful. Yeah. It wasn't because we didn't read well. It was because, yeah, they have nicotine in them and it's very addictive. Boy, does it got a hold of you. It gets a hold of you. I am sucking on a lozenge right now so that I don't do that. No shit.
He also, Billy in school doesn't do very well, not a real good student. It was determined that he, they found this out when he was about 12, that he didn't know how to read yet. He's been going. He's been faking it? He's been faking it. He's been getting by. He's been going to good schools, too. So it's not like it was, hey, there's 45 kids in the classroom. It's west side of Baltimore or something.
These kids are getting their little asses kissed and he still, he didn't figure out how to read. And so we don't know if that's a learning disability, dyslexia, whatever it is. So his father put him in a correctional school.
And I also would be asking for those checks back. Yeah. You know what I mean? Hey, well, he was going to public school. Oh, he was going to public school. Now he's got to go to a different one. And Libertyville High School actually pays for it to get him out of there. Wow. They even pick up the tuition. But Billy, along with some other kids here, vandalized not one but three different schools in the village.
While he was there. His father had to then pay the $250 monthly tuition. The school wouldn't do it anymore. So that's how that went. So that's what he was doing then. He was in this correctional school. Apparently, though, he went – this is in 1979. Billy and some others, when they were vandalizing all sorts of shit, they really fucked up a principal's office. That was one thing. So he's got it in for principals now.
And then after he got caught and in trouble, he withdrew a substantial amount of money from his bank account because rich 15-year-olds have bank accounts with money in them. Imagine having a bank account with money in it when you were 15. How quickly would you spend all of that on weed? It would be gone very fast on a lot of different dumb shit. All sorts of shit, yeah.
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He took a bunch of money out of his bank account and ran away to Florida. He got to Florida? He got to Florida. He's 14 years old. He got to Florida. Holy shit. And he stayed for two weeks. He just kicked it. Had like a fucking...
Let me have a honeymoon with myself. You know, I went to the beach. I watched the sunrise in the morning. It was excellent. Yeah. That is certainly a foreign idea to me of how that was even possible. Imagine that. I'm going to run away to Florida and just hang out. That's the kind of money he had. He could live off it for two weeks. It's incredible. So that's Billy, okay, the 15-year-old. Now let's talk about Kurt.
Kurt started out as exactly what his father wanted. I mean, he played football on the Lake Forest Academy football team. Jesus.
He was runner up in the state of Illinois in the 167 pound wrestling class in high school. Second in the state at his weight class. That's impressive. Yeah. So they were very proud of him. Very proud of him. He graduates from high school and this is all through high school. Great grades to sport athlete. Yep. Everybody looks up to him and then he just does nothing after high school. He has no ambition whatsoever. I'm terrified of that.
None. He and his parents fought all the time because they wanted him to go in the army because he had no other prospects. He didn't want to go to college. He didn't want to do anything. So like, you got to do something, join the fucking army. At least you'll be somewhere for a couple of years and you can figure out what you want to do. Eventually though, he just, they just said, okay, to stop arguing rather than moving to the army, we'll just move you into the guest house for now. And we can stop arguing. It's closer than the army. Yeah.
That's a bad transition because that just gives him an out. Exactly. Well, and they said, this is a friend said, or a neighbor that knows them. People say the parents wanted Kurt to go into the army. He had a couple of jobs, but didn't stay long. I guess he was just sitting around, not doing anything except smoking pot and drinking. That sounds great. Yeah. That's really to be 20 for a day, 20 in your own little cottage with money to smoke pot and drink without working.
I want one weekend like that now. I would kill for that weekend. I told my son that he's going to college when he graduates, and he said he wants to take a year off. I think this is what he has in mind. This is exactly what he has in mind. He's going to be Kurt back there. Watch out if he tries to join a band. Does he play any instruments? Not yet. Okay, well, he'll pick it up, I'm sure. Kurt never holds a steady job. He occasionally worked at one of his father's gas stations. He didn't like that either, didn't want to do it.
He's very lazy, Kurt. Yeah. Which is so weird because in high school he wasn't lazy at all. Yeah. He's always at a sports practice. He's always studying for something. And now it's just I don't feel like doing nothing no more. Just that's that. Tough times create tough people. You know what I mean? Exactly. And soft, like easy shit makes soft, easy kids. Absolutely. But then again, their dad had ambition without. Yeah.
having it hard. He came up wealthy too and his father was the mayor, grandfather was the mayor and all that kind of thing but he had ambition. It's just you either have ambition or you don't. Sometimes it takes a couple generations I think. It skips a generation sometimes. It really does.
So the parents thought if he joins the army, because his father had been in the army for a couple of years. So he said, look, if you join right after World War II. So he was a perfect timing, pre-Korea, post-World War II. Pretty nice, yeah. Nice little soft spot. So he said he thought it would straighten him out like it would straighten him out. He goes, straighten me out, it'll straighten you out.
He said, stop hanging out because basically what he does is Kurt likes to go to the park, Cook Park. That's, by the way, where they have the festival we talked about. And just likes to smoke weed sitting on a bench and drink out of a paper bag. Fucking sick day. That's what he likes to do. Sounds great, right? Yeah. I love it. At one point, he agreed to join the army. But it was because his parents offered him a bribe. They say it was cash up front. They were.
They were going to pay him to join the Army. They were going to give him a signing bonus. And $500 for each month he served. They'll pay him on top of what he makes in the Army. Oh, fucking. Yeah. I'm going for the recruiter. Yeah. There's no wars going on at that point or anything. Fuck it. Why not? Let's do it. Kurt then changed his mind.
And his parents were super pissed at that shit. They were not thrilled at all. That's when he moved into the coach house behind the main quarters of the house. That's when he went out to the guest house. It got too hot. A friend said when they found out he had changed his mind, they became absolutely incensed. It had gotten to the point where parent and child couldn't stand one another and they became completely alienated. So, yeah. Yeah.
And also, by the way, Billy, when he's going to Florida, Billy also smokes weed, drinks, does fucking hallucinogens and shit like that. Whatever he wants. Whatever he wants. Yeah, the life of a rich kid. Both boys fought with their parents. Neither of them really respected authority and all that kind of thing. Billy would fight with Darlene a lot because she's the only one home. Right.
And when he's fighting with his mom, if the father happened to be there, he'd just go, come on, Billy, cut it out. And then he'd go sit back down. He wouldn't like... He's too tired. He's just like, yeah, come on, Billy. Jesus. Yeah. He doesn't want to deal with it when he's home. So they said that Darlene would threaten to hit Billy with something. She'd pick up like a statue and say, I'm going to crush your skull with this. Like, how do I get something? I want to beat this into your head. And he would taunt her.
Do it. And say, quote, go ahead, tell dad he won't do anything about it. He's not going to do anything. See, they never do. So then there's Robin. Robin is described by a close friend as the apple of her father's eye. Daddy's girl. Daddy's girl. And everybody said, by the way, that Billy was Darlene's favorite.
Really? Billy was mom's favorite, even though she was... She was the young baby, yeah. Threatening to crush his skull. He's the baby, the baby boy, too. She never crushed his skull, you know what I mean? Never crushed his skull, that's true. She loves him. This person said about Robin that Bruce would do anything for her. When she wanted a horse, he bought her two. Yep. See what I mean? She only wanted one. Then he built stables for her and bought her saddles. When she turned 16, he bought her a new car. So...
She he's just like spoiling the shit out of her. And she's also very respectful. She does very well in school. Yeah. She's kind of doing, quote, her part, whatever that would be for this. She her father loved everything she did. Never disappointed in her. She appeared to get along with her parents very well, as you would if they were buying you, building you horse stables. You better fucking be nice to them. But her and Kurt didn't get along.
Okay. She fought with Kurt a lot. Yeah. Yeah, four years apart. One time, I guess, when she was – I don't know, he was 17 and she was –
13 or something. He took her out with his friends and got her drunk and she got sick and all that. And she was mad at him. And people say, maybe that's what it was about. Yeah. Which is what, when you're 13, all you want is your older sibling to take you out and get you drunk. That sounds awesome. When you're 13, especially nowadays, that wouldn't fly. But in 1980, that was all you wanted, you know, it's fucking awesome. So Bruce and Darlene though, they say that the family, uh,
They had their troubles, too. People talked about how Darlene walked into her coffee club one day. Alice is there and was showing pictures that showed bruises on her and saying, Bruce did this to me.
Really? I don't know how he was home long enough to kick her ass, but he apparently was. Maybe he does it in his sleep. He's a violent man when he snores. Maybe. That's the thing. There are people that strike out in their sleep and people wake up bruised. June 4th, 1980. This is the day before where we started here. Bruce and Darlene go golfing with a friend that day.
They take a day off. A guy named John Feeney, who was a family acquaintance and went with them here. That day and other times before, this guy said Darlene said she was afraid of Kurt. Really? Afraid of him. Yeah, this guy said that the parents were going to change the locks and exclude him from the house. Oh, kicking him out. The guy said, in other words, get rid of him. And I guess Kurt knew that.
So that was an issue in the house that we're talking about. He's about to have to figure it the fuck out. Yes. So now June 5th, 1980. Let's do this here. This day, the opening should be June 6th, by the way. It was the morning of the 6th. But this is June 5th here. Kurt here, he fights with Darlene that day. He fights with Mom. Really? The day of the 5th. Yeah. It was about the Army again.
And they look at this act here because what we'll find out, they say Kurt's a pretty big, strong kid. He's not a huge kid, but he's strong and athletic. And he's young. And he's young. Bruce went to work and took Billy with him to help him install a spray painting booth for cars.
Oh, so Billy went with him to help him work. Yeah. Um, then at the end of the day, he went, Billy went home and Bruce went to a rotary club meeting, you know, cause God forbid your home. Yeah. So Billy went home and drank and smoked hash.
Wow. Pretty good. Pretty good day. That's a hard day. Pretty good after work activity. He's living like a much older man, I'll say, at 15. I built a paint booth. I'm not, weed's not going to do it. No, I got a hash and booze. That's all I can do. 100%. I need all the, right away, I need to be stoned. Very stoned. I don't want to skip high. No, I want to go right to...
Right to fuck, and I'll be fucked up anyway because I'm going to have a half a bottle of Thunderbird beforehand. I'm going to crossfade the shit out of this. Oh, I bet he has good booze too, this little shithead. Oh, you bet. Yeah, he's got a nice Glenlivet. He's got like something good. He's not drinking fucking Mad Dog 2020 like he had to. He's probably got a nice beer and some hard whiskey. I'll bet that's what he drinks. Probably. He's got a backer there. Now, 10.30 p.m. is when Bruce gets home.
And that's about normal for him when he usually comes home. He's there at 5.30 and works until then. That night, like I said, he was working with Billy. He went to the Rotary Club meeting and all that. Billy said he curled up in front of the television in the rec room, and he said he dozed off because he was smoking hash and drinking. You work all day. Come home, smoke hash, and drink booze. You will doze off quickly. You're going to miss Carson. Yeah.
Absolutely. Billy said he woke up in the living room and then stumbled into his bedroom on the second floor and went to bed. His sister was sleeping already in the room next door to him. Now, apparently, Darlene, mom here, came home from a bridge party at about 11. These people are living a wild life, man. They are staying up late.
Yeah. And she, I guess, went to bed too is what it looks like. And Kurt had been out with a girl that night, you know, because he's Kurt. He's like, I didn't grow my hair this long for nothing. Yeah.
And he had come home, but he didn't go in the house. He went right back to his guest house and went in there and was hanging out, went to sleep. Darlene, like we said, was out for dinner and playing bridge with friends and all that kind of thing. Now, by the way, lately Darlene had been threatening to send Billy to military school because she'd been noticing that he smells like booze all the time. Yeah.
Now, everybody's in bed, apparently, and whoever did this enters the master bedroom on the north side of the house. And by the way, the casita is all the way at the south side of the house, and the master bedroom is all the way at the north side. And while the parents were sleeping, Darlene was the first to get it, was shot point blank between the eyes with a 16-gauge shotgun. My word. Between the eyes, and took the top of her head clean off. Wow.
which is fucking horrible. One shot, that's all that was there. Now...
She died immediately, they said. It took half her brain away. It took half her brain, yeah. That doesn't have half her brain. Apparently this noise, this shotgun blast, woke Bruce up. Right next to your head, yeah. What the fuck? He popped up apparently and was like, what's going on? And then the killer turned to him with the shotgun and shot him in the face too. Okay. But didn't hit him up high, hit him in the jaw. Yeah. Hit nothing vital. Just took his jaw off his head. Oh, what?
Took his jaw and half his face off his head, but didn't kill him. Oh, no. Didn't hit any organs. Didn't hit brain. Didn't hit brain stem. Nothing like that. Just the bottom face. So he's just this horrible, writhing, bloody mess. So...
This must have freaked whoever did this out that a shotgun blast to the face didn't kill him. So the guy, whoever did this, just turned the gun around and started beating him with the butt of the gun. Yeah, because it's only got two rounds in it. Yeah, it didn't reload it. So beating him with the butt of the gun. Yeah. And that didn't work.
So he then stabbed him repeatedly or they then stabbed him repeatedly in the chest until Bruce finally died. Boy. Total of six stab wounds, deep stab wounds to the chest. Somebody is covered in blood.
That's what I'm talking. This place, now that I've told you what happened, imagine the fucking blood in this fucking place. Oh, man. From the shotguns, from the beating, the spatter from the stabbing in the heart. He was stabbed in the heart. Blood gushing everywhere. And his face is like, if anybody punched in the mouth, that's a lot of blood. The mouth is completely open at this point. That's way more blood. It's so much fucking blood. It's just pouring out. He's got no jaw. Yeah.
And then his chest, it's horrifying. So then 8.30 in the morning, apparently whoever did this slipped away or whatever, 8.30 in the morning, Robbins woken up by the phone, goes in there, finds them with the sheet over him. So somebody made sure to put a sheet on them. Finds them, wakes up Billy, they call the cops, and here we are. We're restarted.
The Lake County coroner, who, by the way, later on will be the sheriff, which is fun. Yeah. Robert Mickey Babcox. Mickey Babcox. The coroner ran for sheriff? Yep. And they elected him. And they elected him. Absolutely. Knows nothing about law.
All right. Who knows what he knows about? Well, the sheriff's in any elected position of sheriff. You don't have to know shit about anything. No? It's just whoever will vote for you. Yeah, and you're dealing mostly with money then, huh? Just budget and shit? Yeah, for the most part. Unless there's a huge murder of a prominent citizen, then you kind of have to be involved. Then you've got to be involved. Fuck. So Mickey Babcock's the coroner's one of the first people on the scene. Uh-huh.
And he saw that Bruce had been shot in the lower jaw and been beaten about the head and stabbed six times in the heart. And he said it looks like Darlene one shot between the eyes. The sheriff, Lake County Sheriff Thomas Brown, he's got to show up for this. Yeah. He said whoever did this was a person with a lot of hatred. No shit. That's a really great insight. Thank you. You think so?
He said he pressed the shotgun right against her head and pulled the trigger. Oh, Jesus. This is a contact wound. This isn't even close range. This is a fucking half inch away. Kaboom. Holy shit.
Now, there's going to be different estimates in the time of death. Of course. The day after this happens, when it's in the newspaper, they're estimating the time of death at between 2 and 3 a.m., which, by the way, to this day, with 45 more years of science, they still do three-hour windows, not an hour. So that's crazy. Then later on in the next couple days, that number will go away, and it will be 1230 a.m. will be the time of death. Okay. Okay.
Not 1230 to something else, just 1230, which is a game. My estimation, and I'm pretty good at this already because between 11 and 830 a.m., that's the window. That's when we know it happened. She got home at 11 and they found her at 830. That's when it happened. With no science, we can come up with that. Bingo. We should run for sheriff. There we go. Got it.
So they said the only other person in the house besides Robin was Billy and his bedroom was directly above his parents. And then Robbins was next door to it. And he said, I fell asleep watching television. I went to bed and I didn't hear shit right above it.
Right above it. Ten feet away. Heard nothing. We've heard so many stories of gunshots in the night that people do not fucking hear in their own house. I can't believe it. It's shocking, but it happens all the fucking time. All the time. Look at the Amityville story, that whole thing. It was fucking gunshots. That's got to be some sort of psychological thing that your body blocks it out because it knows it's danger. Yeah.
won't allow you, like it's a protection thing. It's got to be. Or you heard it, but it's one of those things that's gone by the time you wake up. So it might make you go, ah, and then you go, you look around, everything's quiet, and then you go back to sleep. You might not even remember that happened. I'm thinking. There's also the point of people sleep through their crazy loud snoring.
Yeah, and alarms. I sleep through alarms all the time. I mean, that's meant to wake you up. But, I mean, a shotgun blast? A shotgun blast. Kaboom! I mean, that's so fucking deep, man. It might actually be easier to wake up from like a 22 because it would be a higher pitch. Yeah, it's a pop rather than a boom. Maybe the boom might be almost soothing. Yeah, exactly. It rocks you to the humps, little baby. Kaboom! There he is. He's down. We'll put him down now.
Yeah. That's fucking amazing. Kurt was in the back, they said, at the time when they found him. And it's kind of a common knowledge throughout the neighborhood that Kurt is like kind of banished from the house and for being a ne'er-do-well who won't join the army. Right.
So the police immediately were curious about a few things. Number one, how is it that the two children who were in the house immediately above the bedroom didn't hear gunshot blasts and shotgun blasts? They said also if the murders were committed by an intruder, why didn't the family dog bark? It's a black lab. Why wouldn't the family dog have barked if it was an intruder and awakened the children? Either way, something should have woke the kids up. And also, why were all the guns in the house missing?
Not a single gun is left? No. They found out he had about six guns and they're all gone. Huh. Nothing else is taken. None of the money, the jewelry, nothing like that. Just the guns. So they're like, huh, that is very fucking interesting. Whoever did this is well-armed now. Now they're well-armed and they think it probably was his own gun that did this to him, too. Yeah.
So now Robin, they talked to her. She'd been out at a school dance that night, and she came home and arrived home probably just before this went down, they said, a little while before. And she said she saw or heard nothing that night. So that's interesting. Then at one point while the police are there, now they've called their family members. Family members are on the way to assist the kids here. Yeah.
Before the family members get there, Robin told a deputy that one of her brothers did this. Yes, but didn't say which one. Now, that's one story is that she didn't say which one. Okay. But she told the cops that. Now,
Kurt, when he's interviewed, told the same story as Robin, that he found the bodies when they came out and got her, and the cops were there. Billy said he didn't hear anything either. Now, by the way, this is a very brilliant police officer here who said this, quote, whoever did it wanted them dead, very dead. Really? He was aiming for faces and shit. He took a pause and then said, very dead. Yeah.
Not just a little bit. Not just a little dead. You know what? You're right. Very is a dumb word. Because this guy used it. It's the only reason why. Holy shit. So they go through, like we said, not a robbery, whatever. By the next day, like we said also, 1230 a.m. is the time of death, not between 2 and 3 a.m.
Now, they go outside and find the car's, Bruce's car's exterior is covered in blood. There's blood all over it.
when they go in and when they turn the, the car on the windshield wipers are in full blast on mode. They're cranked on. Nobody turned them off, which is crazy because if you live in a cold environment, you know, turn the fucking windshield wipers off before the car, because otherwise if it freezes and they come on, you'll burn your motor out. And that costs a lot of money. That's if you, if you grew up poor in the Northeast, you know, that never do that.
So the windshield wipers are going like crazy and they're like, interesting. Very, very interesting. The windshield wipers are going like crazy because when Bruce came home last night, it was not raining. Bruce would never have had them on, especially not when I had him on. There was a massive thunderstorm that night. That's why they think maybe the thunderclaps are what why the kids didn't hear stuff.
But that didn't break out till 3 a.m. They looked at the radar stuff. It didn't happen till 3 a.m. over Libertyville. So this car had to be driven after 3 a.m. Otherwise, there's no reason for the windshield wipers to be on full blast. Right.
So that's interesting. Now, the crazy part is they're talking to the kids and Robin says that they really want to talk more to Robin. Right as that's happening, family members show up, grab the kids, tell them to shut the fuck up. Don't say a word to these cops. And they have lawyers on the phone for all the kids. Yeah, they have lawyer. The kids have lawyers and are being taken. This is a wealthy family. You can't push the kids around because the relatives will take them.
So family comes in, tells them to fucking dummy up and get some lawyers. And they because they said, well, at least let us let us give them a polygraph test. And they said, fuck, no, no, not happening. They've been through enough. Basically, you're not going to interrogate them. The Billy's lawyer that they get is Louis G. Garippo, who was the judge on the John Wayne Gacy murder trial. Right. Yes. He's the judge that sentenced Gacy.
He is Billy's lawyer. He's defending a child. Yes, against no charges, by the way. Yeah, for pooping in his pants and doing a fire alarm. So after this, they say that they take Billy and he's living with a family member and is in school, is what he would say the next day. Now, for Robin, they get Dan Webb, who's the former head of the Illinois Department of Law Enforcement.
They know some wealthy or some very powerful people in law. Yeah, they have money. And this lawyer said, I feel it inappropriate to discuss any family matters because of the age and circumstances of Robin.
And they get a lawyer named Jim Bartucci for Kurt, who just says, quote, I can't say anything. I got nothing for you. I'm Italian. I don't say nothing. I'm sorry. I can't tell you. It's a secret. I don't know. Yeah, I can't tell you nothing about Kurt. Tell you later. So what about Robin's statement here? That's the big one. Yeah. One of my brothers did this. Why would she say that? One of the cops says that she said which brother did it to.
A few of the cops said she wouldn't say which brother before we got a brother out of her. The family came. One of the cops said she said Kurt killed her parents. My brother Kurt did it, she said. So they're like, OK, that's interesting. We'd love to talk to him, but he's lawyered up now. We can't talk to him. Basically, once somebody is lawyered up, you can either arrest them or shut the fuck up. Those are your options. Talking to them isn't an option anymore.
So they said that she felt her brother had committed the murders and, you know, that's what it was. So one of the Lake County coroner Babcox reported that she referred to Kirk. So the current coroner, future sheriff said,
says that she said Kurt. Bet my career on it. Bet my career. I'll fucking run for office on it. It's going to be my campaign slogan. She said Kurt. Everybody knows what you mean. Now, a theory advanced is that the thunderclaps could have obscured the sounds of the shotgun, but they're saying the time of death is set now at 1230 a.m. Storm didn't start until 3, so how the fuck does that work?
One of the investigators here, when asked about that, he said, that would be amazing luck, huh? Like in a sarcastic way. So he said he thinks it happened one or two hours before the storm broke. So not possible anyway. So right now, the three kids are the prime suspects. All three of them. All three of them. Absolutely. And the brief statements, they hadn't really heard anything about it. Nothing about thunderstorms or anything like that. So.
Reaction here, this is a friend of Kurt's that said, quote, this was like the worst crime we ever had in Libertyville. Yeah. Bra. Bra. Yeah. This was like awful, man. This was like real bad. This is like very bad. Yeah.
He said, I'll never forget my best friend calling me the next morning telling me what happened. And I thought, oh, my God, what the hell did Kurt and Billy do? Everybody felt that. Really? Those are both ne'er-do-well fuck-ups. Yeah. Two days after the murders, okay, this is June 7th, 8th, right in that time period, Kurt calls the sheriff's office. Oh, okay.
Not to say he'd like to make a statement or, you know, help out with the investigation anyway. To ask whether, hey, I know you guys have everything in custody. Can I have my mom's 73 Cadillac back? Because I'd like to drive that. Fucking badass. It's pretty mint. It's huge. It's very long and...
I'm going to fuck a chick in the back of it. That's what I'm saying. It's like riding on a pillow. Yeah. And on top of that, he said, and if I could have that, could I also get an increase in my allowance as well from the money I get from people? And is it possible I can go to California for a while, maybe to move there? I'd like a raise, a sick car, and a vacation.
So he's a murder suspect asking, may I have the means to flee? And then can I flee, actually, and go to a state that's 1,500 miles away? Will you give me the money and the wheels to get there, please? And they said, you can't do any of those things. You're a murder suspect at this point.
So the money, who gets the money? What's their wills all about? So they left the entire $3 million estate to the three kids to split even. Oh, not to Robin's horses. In their will. All of them to Robin's horses and a very special gas station employee that Bruce took a shine to. The best painter this side of the Mississippi. Best damn pumper they got over there. Yeah.
Been with them since the beginning. So the Wills placed the estate in a trust with Lake Forest Bank to be divided equally between the children when they reach 21, which none of them have yet. Oh, no. Oh, no.
They were also the sole beneficiaries of $900,000 in life insurance of their parents as well. Now, that's why they had to call. He wanted to get a raise from the trust of the bank because the bank controls everything. So he was trying to get that from the bank, but he was trying to get the Cadillac and permission to go to California from the police. Now, right after... Look at that caddy with that big 400 in it. I need it. It's the two-tone paint. It's hot. So fast. Cushy leather seats. Yeah.
So Robin and Billy, the kids are all going to go their separate ways here. Within a few days, Robin and Billy are each going to be in psychiatric hospitals. Really? Yes, they're sent there. Each of them spend two months in a psychiatric facility, Robin and Billy. Oh, man.
Then went to live with relatives around. Kurt moved in with a friend in another town, but at that point he's still seen around Libertyville all the time and shit like that. He's just hanging out, though. Didn't have to go to a hospital or anything. Right.
Um, they said that, um, yeah, Bill, they admitted Billy to the river edge hospital in forest park two weeks after the murders. Um, the one doctor who saw him first said he had become extremely withdrawn, very agitated, speaking in a paranoid way, speaking in discontinuous speech, staring off into space and not manageable at the relative's home.
He's all fucking PTSD'd out, it sounds like, so that's not good. This is going to ruin the tour. This is going to fucking ruin the tour. What tour?
We talked about this, by the way. That guy knew who Justin Timberlake was. Yeah, that's true, right? If you know cops, cops will especially say they don't know who you are. You could be Jack Nicholson. They go, I don't know. Never saw anything you've been in. What was the last thing you were in? Never heard of you. It could be the most famous person you could think of, and they would say they never heard of you. First successful movie, was it? I don't know. Because if they say they heard of you, now they have to do you a favor. All right. Because now they're going to try to ask for one. So that guy's full of shit.
We looked it up. Timberlake's done how many Super Bowls while that guy's alive? He's been at more Super Bowl halftime shows. And just recently he was at one. Just recently. And maybe the most famous one where he exposed a woman's tit on TV. That guy knows. He knows. He knows what's up. Even if that cop's 26, that thing happened 15 years ago. It was everything. You were at your parents' house and you saw Janet Jackson. Your mom covered your eyes up. Yeah.
Now, an insurance company which held policies on the house hired a security firm to guard the vacant house. Oh. Because it's- Armed guards? Yeah. Yeah. They have literally security guards. On the morning of Tuesday, June 24th, one of the guards was patrolling the yard and was clubbed unconscious by someone who snuck up behind him. What? What?
And he woke up an hour later with a headache and a fucking lump on his head. And yeah, he did like Omar, like, where's my man? He's sleeping. Assaulted. He did one of those. Yeah. Yeah.
And so they don't know what's going on. Did somebody come back to get evidence or something to clean the place out? But at that point, we believe that Robin and Billy are in the hospital. Yeah. So who knows here? Anyway, the cops are suspicious about this because they heard about all these family troubles from everybody. But the same neighbors that are telling the cops about family troubles are also saying that's not that abnormal. Every family is like that. Yeah.
One neighbor said they weren't all so different. Come out here. A lot of people around here are like that. Like just because they live in a nice house and stay married doesn't mean everyone doesn't hate each other basically. So, um,
They're looking for evidence, divers they get, to search all the creeks, the ponds near the family home because they don't have a murder. They're looking for a gun and a knife, too, the murder weapons. They're looking for any evidence they can find, evidence of cleaning up blood stuff from someone who was covered in blood maybe. They search several gravel pits near there and the nearby Des Plaines River. Des Plaines, I think they actually call it. Des Plaines.
And Des Moines and them should fight to the death to figure out how that works. One of you has to burn your down down. Whoever wins gets to burn the other person's down down. That's how it works. Yeah.
They're trying to come up with the guns, missing guns, murder weapons, anything. They're looking into the victims' backgrounds, trying to establish a motive outside of the kids possibly. Could it be somebody else that did this? Why, basically? He runs gas stations. Unless you're mad at him for something that happened at a gas station, you're not going to be mad at him. And she hangs out with ladies and plays bridge. Right. Some Unical stores got beef with them over two cents cheaper gas. Yeah, this motherfucker lowering the price. He's selling diesel over there, that motherfucker.
Oh, man. So July 21st, 1980, they do a coroner's grand jury inquiry. Okay. And this is kind of a pre, this is, they sit everybody down and get all the evidence on the table and put people under oath and make them testify about, get their statements on the record. Oh, very serious. So now, yeah, if there's a trial later on, now your statement's locked in and if you disagree, they charge you with perjury. So it's one of those. Wow.
So this is the inquiry here. They bring all three of the children, Billy, Kurt, and Robin, to talk about this. All three invoke their Fifth Amendment right. All three take the Fifth, which if they have lawyers, they're going to tell them to do that. And they refused everything there. They wouldn't do anything to say a word. So a few months go by, and there's still no progress. Nothing. The Lake County Sheriff here, again, brilliant, said, quote, it was a hate killing.
As opposed to one of those love killings that they have so often. Yeah, right.
It was a hate killing. Crime of passion. Crime of passion. The deputy fire chief here said, we don't see anything immediate. We have a couple of avenues we're pursuing. But they said the investigation is stalled. Why the – oh, he's the first deputy chief, not the fire chief. I apologize. I was going to say, why are the fire chiefs involved in a homicide investigation? I have no fucking idea. Where's the game warden? Yeah. Yeah, he wasn't burned. Nobody was burned to death.
So they said that they're not. There's multiple questions here. Obviously, the kids not hearing shit. The investigators say that they they can't prove anything at this point. And when they don't say I invoke my Fifth Amendment right when they're they have to say the like that whole on the grounds that it may incriminate myself. That part like on the investigation about your two murdered parents, you might incriminate yourself. You might incriminate yourself. Yeah. That looks so bad.
Anytime anybody takes the fifth, it looks bad, but the judge gives special jury instructions that somebody taking the fifth is their constitutional right and you can't hold it against them for doing it. But it doesn't look good. But it's still in their brains. Yeah. The jury still goes back there and goes, I'd have just said some shit if I didn't do it. That's what people say.
But legally, it's the best thing to do, I guess. They will not deny the police, by the way, that the investigation and the focus of the investigation is on the kids, they said, because at this point, they were the only ones there. And one of the reporters asked the cop, you know, something about them being asleep. And he said, if they were asleep. Yeah.
But a savage murder like that, where two people are shot and then a man is stabbed because the shot didn't do it, and the people that are capable of doing that are going to leave three children that possibly could have witnessed it? You know what I mean? They don't know that those kids didn't see anything. No. Well, unless it's like Bruce owes somebody –
shitloads of money and they came in just to do the job. Even then, none of it doesn't make a lot of sense here. And then if you're owed a shitload of money, now you're not going to get that money. No. And if it was like maybe Darlene's got a boyfriend, why would he shoot her in the face then? That doesn't make any sense. There's a lot of things here. October 1980, though, they get a small break in this case. There is a surveyor out in the river here.
And they find some shit in the river. They find, in about three feet of water, about 30 feet from shore, they find some bags, some plastic bags. That's a good throw. Yeah. Sheriff's, well, it's from a bridge up above. That's why. Yeah. Sheriff's deputies, they all come out there. They have 10 different divers going, and they use magnets and shovels and all this shit. They found about a half a dozen unfired shotgun shells. Oh.
clothing, a woman's watch, a purse, which they know is Darlene's, number one, because it has her initials on it, and number two, it has her driver's license inside of it. That'll do it. And also costume jewelry that had her initials on it as well. Wow.
The guy who found the wallet said, that's what I saw. That's what I saw. The name, Darlene Rouse. And he said he knew, obviously, that he found the deal here. They also find a 16-gauge shotgun and two spent shotgun shells. Yep.
That's something. They said that they end up finding more guns as well, too. There's all the missing guns from the house are there in addition to this shotgun, which they think may be the murder weapon, but they're never able to conclusively, scientifically, ballistically link it to the murders. Because of those shotguns. That's why Omar favored them. Yeah.
They said in one of the few developments here, this was in the Des Plaines River. That's where they found it here. They said that farther downstream from the guns were the two plastic bags with Darlene's purse and jewelry and all that kind of crap in it. So they said that this is insane. One of the relatives said, I know one thing. Whoever did it was vicious and calculating. They may have even committed the perfect crime. So far they have.
Nobody knows. So the sheriff turns the weapons over to the lab for analysis and they find they don't find what what happens to what one of the weapons belongs to Billy, though. It's actually Billy's gun, but it might be kept with his dad's stuff. So probably they don't know all the other items, including the shotgun that they thought were the murder weapon. Everything has been completely wiped clean of fingerprints.
There's not a fingerprint on any one of these guns anywhere. That's interesting. That shows they've definitely been wiped on purpose. Somebody did that shit on purpose. Yeah, I never wiped one of mine. Never. Right? Why would you? Yeah, you don't mind your fingerprints being on there. You're not planning on murdering anyone with it. Right. So the site where they found everything was about four miles from the home, by the way, and about 900 feet from a bridge over the river at Illinois Highway 60.
Someone threw it off the bridge and it floated down a little bit and got caught in a rock or something. That's where it's there. Now they uncover a witness at this point. Once they make this public, a witness steps forward saying they saw Bruce Rouse's car on the bridge the night of the murders. Like,
Like, oh, boy. They said someone got out. By the way, this isn't like a fucking thunderstorm. Yeah. Imagine looking up at a bridge and seeing a man get out with the wind blowing his hair and rain pouring down. Driving rain. Lightning lighting up the sky as he stands up there like a madman with bags throwing him off a river. Throwing bags into the river.
Holy shit. That's fucking spooky and amazing. That's a horror movie. That is a horror movie. And they saw them toss something into the water and the bags went downstream. And that's where they were found by the surveying team.
Now, this connects to the windshield wiper theory. Right, because they were on. Yeah, that Bruce had no need to have them on when he drove home, but the killer might have had them on while driving through the rain four miles to throw guns into a fucking river. By the way, the knife has never been found. The knife is not with everything. And they searched, like I said, magnets, this, everything, trying to find the knife. Never found it. It's in that river.
It's got to be right. And they never are able to figure out who was the person on. All they saw was like the outline of a person. It's that's it. That's all they saw. So the police keep telling the papers to that children are suspects, but we can't talk to them. Children are suspects, but we can't talk to them. And they said they're not actively pursuing any other suspects. And, um,
Basically, they're saying until one of the kids decides to fucking talk, there's nothing we can do because we have no physical evidence and they won't say shit. So, you know, whatever. November of 1980. This is in the Muncie Evening News. This is a very overdramatic newspaper account of how the house is sitting right now. It's hilarious. And I had to put this in here. OK. The twisted, narrow, two story Rouse house now seems to be a new made haunted house.
No one answers the doorbell. They're all fucking dead. What do you want? No one answers the doorbell. Nobody's in there. Nobody's home, stupid. Who do you want to answer? That's what I mean. I'd be terrified of someone. Who the fuck are you and why are you here? Why are you here? But anyone who cares to gain a fair knowledge of its interior simply by walking around it and looking through the picture windows. There's a newspaper lying on the floor beside the dining room table as if someone had brushed against it and neglected to pick it up.
Probably dead. Yeah, about since, what, June 5th-ish or 6th-ish?
That's close as shit for a place on seven acres. Right.
Now, Billy ends up in Florida by the next year. Yeah, he loved it. He loves Florida, and that's where he's going to run away to. And cops are trying to keep track of where everybody is, and he ends up in Florida because they're going to get some money that we're going to talk about in a second. October 1981, the house has been sold, and now it's about to be resold. Wow.
A guy here that bought it, Mark DeFore, he bought the 14-room, 7.2-acre home less than a year after the murders took place. But a few months later, he's already selling it here. He purchased the home in late spring, and he bought the home so his 13-year-old daughter could have a horse.
He heard. Wow. Spoiled motherfucker. Also on the estates are stables and heated and enclosed swimming pools, sauna, coach house. This guy said that we never moved into the house, though, and he has to sell it because, quote, my daughter rebelled. Oh, I don't know. So she doesn't like horses anymore or doesn't want to be in a murder house. I'm not sure which one. He said, I need this place like a hole in the head. Do you have to say that here? Why? Why would he do that? Really?
Of all things to say, come on, man. Why does everybody? Everybody. I think it's like, I don't know if it's like subconscious, whatever your subconscious is saying, just avoid saying that you have to say it. Like if before we go on like a live news thing and they go, no cursing. And we go, oh, shit, that's all we're going to say is fuck now.
All these intrusive thoughts. Like a hole in the head, sir. Like a hole in the head. You fucking idiot. I shouldn't have bought it. I don't have a brain. Yeah. I feel like half my brains are missing today. It's weird. My daughter now, it's like a knife in the heart. It's just like a knife right to the heart. You know what I mean? Like six of them actually. Like just repeatedly being stabbed in the heart.
It's like having a magic wand for your wallet.
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Why would he say this? That's what I'm wondering. That's why I put this in here because I'm like, this is ridiculous. He said it was strictly a business deal. I bought a piece of property at what I thought was a good price and I thought we'd move there, but I changed my mind. So they listed the house and that's how it's going to go now. Okay. December 1981. Yeah.
The kids are going to get insurance money. It's coming. Yep. The three children of the couple here will receive nearly $250,000 each. Oh, my. In 81. In an out-of-court settlement with an insurance company that initially refused to pay because they said that they're possible murder suspects. Yeah, there was a murder. Now a year and a half has gone by and the judge says, okay, well, there is no case and...
You know, you got to pay money out at some point. You've got a contract to fulfill. Yeah, this is the American United Insurance Company. And this was in federal court. The insurance company had refused to pay off the $900,000. And there's that. Now, January 15th, 1982 is when they actually get their money, I guess, because that's when the settlement happens here.
Now, the house, okay, at first it was guarded and cordoned off with police tape. Then it was sold when they realized there's no more evidence they're going to get out of the house. The new owners ended up buying it, and like we said, they're going to sell it again. And we found out who they sell it to. Apparently, they sold it to guys in the Chicago Mafia. Is that right? Yes, and we know that because they opened a gambling casino in the house. They opened a casino in the house.
They had two cocktail lounges in it and valet parking. They made it into like a fancy fucking nightclub is what they did in the middle of a neighborhood because it was out in the middle of nowhere by itself. Seven acres. Let's fucking build the Copa. It had blackjack and craps tables and it was a...
A big fucking business. Yeah. It boomed. Then in May of 82, a bookmaker named Robert Plummer was strangled and beaten to death in the stairway of the house. Oh, no.
Yes, his body was found a week later in the trunk of his wife's car parked at the Holiday Inn. Holy shit. Mob figures Rocco, Ernest Infeliz, and Salvatore De Laurentiis, who ran the casino, are going to be charged with the murder, and they end up being acquitted.
How? Of the murder. Oh, my God. Because there's no proof. But convicted of racketeering. This is when everybody in the area starts calling it Murder Mansion. Now it's just Murder Mansion because within two years, there's been three people murdered in this fucking house. A completely unrelated one of them. Totally. But it's now a cursed house at this point. Obviously, the mob has been affected by the curse. Yeah. They would have never turned violent if it wasn't for that curse. All right.
The guy who William Jahada describes the killing, actually, he's a mob bookmaker who turned informant. And he said, I heard a rhythmical metallic staccato sound. It lasted perhaps three seconds. He said the last words he heard Plummer yell were, oh, my God, what was that? And then he was beaten to death.
He said that he and Plummer arrived at 10 a.m. at the mansion in separate cars. And he said at that point in Felice was wearing a pair of golfing gloves, which isn't normal. Yeah.
Usually only wear one. He's got a pair. Hey, what are you going to do here? Why you got the right one on, bud? What's going on? The other guy, Jehoda, the informant, said that Infelice instructed him to take Plummer inside of the mansion to lure him upstairs and then keep on walking. Don't look back. So this Jehoda guy said no. He said he didn't want to get too close to the smell of blood. But this guy said, ah, you'll be fine. You won't be a part of it. Don't worry about it. Very little blood.
So this Jehuda guy said, I was about halfway up the stairs, and that's when I heard a loud bang similar to a door slamming. I was about to turn around, and I heard Bob exclaim, oh, my God, what was that? I saw a flash of light and plumber pinned to the wall. A man had him pinned. But he never says which man. That's why they get – he's three feet away. Yeah. And he says, I don't know which one. I don't know what happened. It was this man there. And they got away with the murder like that. Yeah.
Yeah, that's a big fucking deal. Anyway, November 1982, there's a new sheriff in town. Here he is. Literally. Is this the coroner? Literally. Mickey Babcox has been elected sheriff of the town, saying that his number one thing to do is to look into this murder case and figure out who did it. Okay, priority one. That's that. Priority one. They have a new approach as time goes by. They're like, okay.
Robin said Robin was willing to talk at the scene before people came and told her not to. So what if we it's been some time has passed. What if we do a lend around with Robin and see if we can get her to testify before the grand jury under a grant of immunity and see if she'll fucking do it.
See if she'll tell us something, if she has immunity to this. Zero punishment for anything if you just solve this for us. She could literally say, I did it. I did all of it. And they'd have to go, okay, well, I guess, you know, have a good day and let her go. Yep.
She could absolutely do that. So they said, she seems like a nice kid. And from everything they've heard from everybody, they said it's going to be a matter of time before her conscience is going to eat her alive. Right. And she's going to fucking come forward and tell us. And this is, you know, late 82 into 83. And they said, this is the way we're going to do it. We're going to slowly work on Robin over the course of 93 here.
And hopefully maybe by next year we can get her in here. 83, you mean? 83, yes. I mean, 83. So they're going to do that. But August 31st, 1983, Robin is driving in Racine, Wisconsin. Oh, no. When her car smashes into a utility pole and she's killed. Oh, no! That is a fucking doornail. The family's curse. Fuck the house. This house has long tentacles or...
This shit is fucking cursed. She hit a pole in Racine? Another vehicle had swerved into her lane and she swerved to avoid hitting him head on and pow, into a pole. Oh my. And that was that. So she is pronounced dead at the scene. Wow. That's that for her. So now they're like, fuck, now what? What are we going to do now? Well, now Kurt moves away.
Kurt takes his inheritance or his insurance money and he moves to Northern California, gets married and purchases a plot of land outside San Francisco. Smart move. That says, yeah, I mean, for business wise, yeah, it's going to be good later on. He lives in a trailer on 75 acres. He bought.
I can't tell. That's awesome. No, that's not awesome. No, that's not right. No, that's just a lonely. Yeah, that's living like a hobo, not even a hillbilly. That's not good. That's living like Charles Manson. Depending on the quality of. No, it sucks. It sucks. Yeah, it's not good.
75 acres to yourself. Great. That's cool. Yeah. Trailer in the middle of it. Have a nice house. Great. Let's go. Let's attach a house to the ground here and let's work on that. Yeah, let's dig some footers. Shit. So Billy ended up drifting down to Key West, Florida. Oh, okay.
Where he became known as a big spender at the bars because he has this inheritance to piss away. Billy, this isn't going to last forever. Nope. He attracts a group of ne'er-do-well scumbags who hang out with him, spend his money, drink his booze. Shit. All that sort of shit. In October of 1984, Halloween night of 1984, Billy's playing chess with a man. Okay.
Okay. Now, chess normally isn't a game. Like, I've seen guys in the park in New York City playing chess. Nobody ever gets mad and yells and screams. It's a calm game. Nobody says a word usually. They don't say shit. When somebody wins, they kind of nod to each other and one guy gets up and another guy sits down. It's not a real boisterous game. Billy gets in an argument during a chess game.
You touched it. You got to move it, motherfucker. You took your finger off it. It stays. It stays. That rook is my meat, baby. So he is not over a poker game. Yeah. This isn't the old west during a chess game. And he fucking stabs a man. Oh.
Over a chess match. Yeah, he's 20 years old. He stabbed Scott Gilliam, a 26-year-old, stabbed him in the abdomen during a dispute over a chess. This is the world's first chess stabbing ever that's ever happened. Yeah, they said that Gilliam suffered permanent injury and disfigurement when he was slashed with a three-inch blade. Uh-huh.
They said that our position is that this case, because they called the Lake County people in Illinois and they were like, hey, isn't this the guy with the dead parents? And they said, case is still open. If he says anything, let us know. Rouse, in a taped interview, Billy admits stabbing the guy and said he acted in self-defense because the guy tried to attack him with a pool cue.
Where are they playing chess? Are they playing chess in a dive bar? What the fuck is going on in this place? That's a wild choice. Holy fucking shit, man. Apparently, yeah, Rouse was arrested at his hotel where he went back to and...
That's fucking insane. They ask the the cops in Illinois, does this make you think he's more guilty now or anything? And they said, I'm not sure that this sheds any light on our homicide up here. Yeah. Who knows what he's done over the last five years? Has he been getting shit faced in Florida and turned himself into a stabber now? We don't know. We don't know. And also this is at a bar with a pool cue. I mean, this isn't your parents cold blooded in a bed. That would be that's different.
So he is sentenced to, you sir may fuck off, 60 days in jail and fined $1,000 for this. What? In Florida, you know, it's stabbing someone in a bar is considered a minor. I think that's a misdemeanor down there, right? He had a pool cue. That drops it down to self-defense with a little malice. A little bit.
1988, coroner slash sheriff Babcox here. He's no longer sheriff or coroner. Oh. He's actually about to drop dead. Really? And he does an interview and says, quote, this is about the whole Bruce and Darlene murder. Yeah. The cops really screwed this one up.
He said they should have separated the three kids right away before they got the chance to get together. Now the big time lawyers have moved in. There's $3 million here and everybody wants a piece of it. This thing could drag on for years, which makes sense. June of 1990 comes around, 10 year anniversary. Wow.
And the newspapers all do a 10-year anniversary thing, and Lake County authorities regard the case as dormant at this point. It's cold. That's the best way to say cold. Yeah. There's no investigators assigned to it, and unless the leads come up, they really don't have anything more to do. It's, you know, it's resting. We rest it. They said the homicide is in the forefront of our minds, but nothing's changed to give us anything new to go on. Okay. So, tough shit.
1990, the sheriff's race comes around here. Oh, boy. Politics. And politics gets involved. One guy does a news conference in front of the house. What? That's what he's doing. He does it in front of the house and says, today...
This house represents the focal point of the failure of law enforcement in this community, the flagrant openness of organized crime, and, as reported by the FBI, how some officials are doing the bidding of the law offenders. Did y'all get off my lawn? I'm trying to have a party. Yeah, where are those people inside going? What the hell's going on out there? What are you doing? Get off my lawn. It's my daughter's third birthday. People are going to be here soon. Fuck off. Get the hell out of here.
So, yeah, they're talking about how the FBI made deals with mobsters to try to convict other mobsters in that particular house. But he's saying this house just says it all. A murder they can't solve. Scourge of this society. Mobsters doing shit right under their noses.
Now, Billy's got a new life in Florida down there. Oh, he's out of jail now. Oh, yeah. He didn't do much time. He's fine. He got a Florida driver's license. He married a woman named Frances Dobbins after she got divorced from her first husband. He held down a construction job for a while. Yeah. And at age 21, he bought a white ranch home at 1122 Petronia Street for $100,000. Wow.
Yeah, he spends $100,000 and he's got a new house. He's ready to go here. Yeah, he's got that. In addition to that, neighbors said he spent at least $75,000 more adding to the house. He installed a glassed-in jacuzzi room.
That's a 21-year-old thing to do. And also, I need indoor water stuff. I'm used to it. I want a jacuzzi where the Skeeters can't bite me. Skeeters can't bite me. I could put the air conditioning on because it's hot.
Then outdoor deck, a second floor also he put on the house. He added this. Okay. Connected by a wooden spiral staircase wrapped around a tree trunk. This fucking guy went, the hubris on this guy. Jungle book. What the fuck are you doing? I need a real tree house. The whole time though, he drinks like a monster. Really?
Shrinks like a monster, always fighting with his wife here. They have a kid, then another kid, and then she kicks him out in 1991. Kicked him out. Kicked him out. Done. Out of his own house. Out of his own house. Yeah, because he bought his parents weird money there. So he was behind on property taxes and unable to repay liens on his home.
So they were forced to sell the house in late 1991 for $120,000, which is only 20 more than they paid for it. They lost a lot. Yeah, the guy who bought it, his name is Perk Larson. Perk. P-E-R-K. Perk.
By the way, Billy had a son named Billy Jr., of course. What? Now Billy Jr. Yeah. Yeah. I guess they also said Billy was violent and with his wife. One night he threatened Francis with a gun as well. That's not good. So they're going to separate and all that. Now, when Perk Larson bought the house, he said the house, when he got there, he said it looked like a war zone. Yeah. Yeah.
He said an engine block sat in the back. That's the trash, obviously. When you just leave engine blocks hanging from the tree, that's the stereotype. He's got a 350 sitting on the patio. And two of the glass walls to the jacuzzi room were smashed. Yeah.
Yeah, that sounds like a Billy right there. Enclosed it just to break it. All right. Just to break it. At the closing, when Billy showed up to collect his share of the money, his wife served him with divorce papers. As if that wasn't a low enough day. Ouch. Perk Larson said, I was walking out when I saw him in a chair with a piece of paper in his hands. I don't know if it was the divorce summons or the check, but he looked like his best puppy dog had died. That dog is dead.
Holy shit. Three weeks after the divorce was completed in March 1992, he married again. Oh, his wife married again. I'm sorry. His wife married again. So she had that going for a while. Yeah, she had somebody lined up. Yeah, and moved away with the children to North Florida and left them there. Oh, no. Probably Jacksonville. I'm sure, some Tallahassee. 1995, they reopened the case.
The police up there reopen it. Okay, so they're like, where is everybody? They find out Kurt is in California. Billy has blown through all of his money, $300,000. He's gone through all of it. He is at this moment living on what is called in the newspaper a derelict boat.
He's living on a shitty houseboat that is unseaworthy. Just barely floats. It's probably on the ground. No, it's floating. It's in the water, but it can't go anywhere. Can't go anywhere. Yeah, it's like the Captain Ron ship before they fixed it up. It's not going to work. But worse, it's a shithole. Wow. I mean, all fucked up. It's anchored in Key West, and they even fly a skull and crossbones flag from it, of course, too, because they are trash. Right.
At that point, he's living with people. They're like crashing there, a bunch of scumbags that he drinks with. All he does every day is drink Bush Light, they said, by the way, beer. Just drinks Bush Light beer all day long. Now, in May of 95, there's a bank robbery in Florida. Mm-hmm.
What the fuck do we care about that, right? Well, it's right around that time. A Chicago television reporter had just finished finished reading about the Rouse case in a book written by Chicago Tribune reporters called Getting Away with Murder. Oh, in 91, that was written because, you know, more than 10 years later. So a TV reporter called the sergeant and asked for an update.
The sergeant, Chuck Fagan, said that he happened to have the Rouse file open on his desk when the call came in. Oh. Because they had just reopened it, unbeknownst to everybody else. He said that he'd been reviewing it as a matter of routine, looking for new angles. And he had some time. He'd look at that and see if he could figure anything out. He was asked if the case was closed, and he said, by no means, absolutely not. He said he's carried a photo of William with him for 15 years, this guy. Really?
Yes. So the reporter calling prompted this Chuck Fagan to call the Key West Police Department to let him know of their suspicions about Billy and say, if you guys ever come up with anything on him, please let us know.
So they go, as a matter of fact, we got him right here right now. He's sitting here. He's fucking sitting here, which is wild. They said the police in Illinois said based on the review, which began in June of this year, a strong suspect emerged, William Rouse. So at the time of the investigation here, he was in custody in Key West on a concealed weapons charge during a bank robbery.
Yeah, so members of the task force flew in to question him here. He's arrested on a charge of concealing a handgun used in a September 13th robbery of Barnett Bank of Key West. The person charged with $4,500 is all they got out of it, by the way. That guy's name is Johnny Prescott, who lives on the boat with Bill. Yeah.
He's Billy's boatmate. And two other men also are charged who also live on the derelict boat. We have four guys that are splitting $4,500 on the risk of robbing a bank. Wow. Robbing a fucking bank. Then, I'm sorry, this was a couple weeks after they had robbed it before. Because on September 1st, they robbed it also and got $5,000. Same branch. Yeah. Idiots.
So according to the cops here, Rouse and Prescott were arrested after the second holdup. Prescott was nabbed as he was shaving off his beard. They caught him to disguise himself. That's hilarious. And Rouse was picked up for concealing in shallow ocean water a handgun that was used by Prescott. Mm-hmm.
Police said he admitted his part in the holdup, Billy did, and said, quote, all I got was beer and vodka out of it. He didn't even get any fucking money. Oh, Jesus. He's an actual alcoholic. Yep. So there we go. Now, Billy has had, this is not his first run in with the law since he's had problems with his wife. No. In the last year, in 94, he was arrested on a drunken driving, during a drunken driving accident. So he plowed into somebody. Yeah.
From 1992 to 1995, he basically was Ronnie Dobbs, the David Cross character. Yes. They know everything that he does. They catch him all the time. He slammed his... He had a 72 Dodge, which was probably sweet as fuck. No, a car. Oh. They don't say what it was, but some 72 Dodge. Could be anything. So he slammed his 72 Dodge into the chrome wall of a Checkers restaurant. Oh, yeah.
Got out and ran away, which is...
Very Ronnie Dobbs thing to do there. Just, I'm gone now. Y'all can't catch me. And he just keeps running. Jesus. Then also they picked him up on multiple charges of disorderly conduct, disorderly intoxication, selling marijuana, failure to appear in court, dealing stolen property, resisting arrest. Oh, boy. The basic Florida resume is what he's got here. The basic derelict boat resume. The...
The average Florida taxpayer. Sorry, Florida. We're fucking around. This is where he said the comedy comes in with roasting. This is what you get. He even lost the part-time construction jobs he had. And, wow. He, in the days before he was arrested, he was shuttling between a morning job picking up trash from a Winn-Dixie parking lot. Yep. And his...
And then he would do that. He would do his daily trash pickup at the Winn-Dixie. Then he would pick up his beer for the day at Walmart. And then he would go back to his boat and drink beer and fall asleep in what the newspaper described as, quote, a filthy sleeping bag on the roach-infested plywood floor of a derelict houseboat. Oh, my God. Now, that's good writing right there. Yeah.
You stacked that shit up like a pyramid. That was beautiful. Filthy sleeping bag. Yep. They said he spent his days just drinking cases of bush beer on the front porch of this deal, of this houseboat. Then he'd go to Red's Bar, which according to the newspaper is, quote, grungy by Key West standards, even by Key West standards. Yeah.
They said it's a hard rock home of $1.50 bush drafts and frayed, unshaven panhandlers. And they don't mean people from the panhandle. They mean people begging for money. They get money. This is where the homeless people drink.
To get $1.50 to go have a bush. Yep. They said on the houseboat, he fell in with a group of people who planned the bank robbery, which happened at 9 a.m. on September 1st when an armed man entered a Barnett bank branch, handed a gym bag to the teller, and told her to fill it. He walked out a minute later with $5,000 in cash and bicycled away.
Again, you know you're trash if you're going to rob a bank on a fucking bicycle. Your getaway car is a bike. Jesus Christ. That's sad shit, dude.
Fuck. And police think Rouse's role was to ditch the weapon used in the robbery, which you'd go, well, I'm surprised they can afford guns. Well, not so fast. It was a pellet gun. It wasn't. It wasn't even a gun. The police suspected Rouse and his boatmates immediately because they're like, they're the biggest scumbags in the area. I'm sure it was them. And one of them rented a water scooter along a nearby waterway about the time of the robbery.
Like a jet ski? Yeah, so they could ditch the bike, hop in there, and make an escape. Yeah.
All of them usually were scrounging up money for a half pint of vodka or a six pack of beer. And instead that night they were running up hundred dollar takeout liquor tabs that day at Walmart. Yeah, we want it all. They're just gathering up everything. Usually they're at the fucking patio of a shithole. But right now they're Ubering booze to their house. They're doing DoorDash boo fucking food and pick up some booze while you're on the way. You guys got such a windfall of cash. Yeah. Well,
A little strange. Yeah. So then at 9 a.m. on September 13th, the same robber walked up to the same teller at the same bank and got $4,900 because they ran out of fucking money. Yeah. That's all it is. They ran out of money and they're like, well, I guess we'll, not let's rob a different bank in a different area. That bank worked. Let's do that again. Yeah.
So Detective Bill Larkin picked up Rouse outside of the Walgreens where they were buying booze. Yeah. His buddies, including a man identified as the robber, were inside the store. He was hanging out outside like finishing a cigarette and they came up and they were like, you a dipshit? Yeah, dipshit. Hands behind your back. Nice bike. Nice bike, dummy.
So, according to the cops down there, they said they were contacted by the Lake County authorities in Illinois, and he said they were looking into the case again. I knew he was in town. I was steps behind him and couldn't catch him. All of a sudden, there he is popping up on this case. Oh, that's the guy I was looking for. Perfect. Yeah.
So at the request of the Illinois detectives, they interrogate Rouse in Key West about his parents slaying after his arrest here, which, oh, my God. Can you imagine if you're the guys up there working the case? You wouldn't go. You guys just handle it. You'd want to fucking interrogate him, not these people. You've been waiting. You've been waiting to talk to this kid for 15 fucking years. Yeah, but look, I.
I'm afraid of flying. Yeah, I'm just lazy. I don't want to be down there. I like to fly. I'm drunk. So they said Rouse told how his parents were found dead in their bed but said he didn't know anything about who was responsible. He told them, as a matter of fact, quote, I'd like to find out who killed them myself. Okay. And they said, what happened to all your money, by the way? And he said, I blew it. Yeah, I was a kid. You shouldn't have given me that much money. Yeah, it's bad.
So will he give up any info? We don't know. One of the investigators from Illinois said Billy hasn't given up too much in the past, although he was highly suspected. It's unlikely he'll give up much now. Now, the cops from Illinois head down there. They walk into the room with him, and he says, quote, I expected you guys a long time ago. Hey, there you are. Hey, there you are, pals. Welcome.
When they met with him, he said that, and then he said, quote, if I didn't want to talk to you, I would have told you, and I would have told you to get lost, and I would have got a lawyer like I did the first time. Right. That's what he said. So they said their first goal was to obtain hair and blood samples from him, which I don't know how that would be relevant because he lives in the house. That's a lie.
I guess just to establish cooperation or something, because if it matches from the crime scene, that would mean nothing. Nothing at all. At all. To any of that shit, because he lived there. So he agreed. They were shocked. They didn't expect that at all. They were like, okay. So they talked to him a little bit more, and he said, yeah, I think about my parents' killings every day. He says, but I have a hard time remembering that night real clear. You know what I mean?
And they said, do you think about him every day? Really? You think about the murder every day? And he says, yeah. Then there's a pause and he says, I think I really might have done it. Oh? And they're like, oh. You think you might have? You think you might have done it. All right. Because they said the only other person who might have been able to correct the case possibly was Robin because Kurt wasn't talking to anybody. And they said, holy shit. So they said, you wouldn't want to like maybe talk
hypnosis or take a polygraph test or anything like that, you know? And he said, all right, fuck it. Yeah. I'll give it a shot. Yeah. They put a videotape. They video record this in 37 minutes. He tells everybody exactly what happens. Less than an hour. Less 37 fucking minutes. This is, that's incredible. Yeah. Um, he said he was fed up with his mother's nagging. Uh,
He said whenever something went wrong, he was always the guy to blame. Always my fault. Always my fault. They never blamed Robin for shit. They said with me, they'd take my credit cards away. They never took her credit cards away. She'd spend more than they told her she was allowed to, and she never got in trouble. So it's, why does Robin get to do it? Robin, Robin, Robin. And Billy said the night of his parents' murder, he got in a fight with his mother. He said, I came home drunk, and...
Fifteen. Came home hammered. Pulled the car into the garage, you know. For the last time. And they argued about whether he was drunk. And she said, quote, yeah, don't worry about it. You're going to be shipped out to military school. I'm just over it, you fucking moron.
That's what mom said to her and said to him. And he said he got pissed off. He went in the rec room and ate some mushrooms, some, you know, psilocybin mushrooms, not just not just some not some button caps there. That is a portobello. Baby Bellas. Yeah.
No, he goes in there, eats mushrooms and said he's very angry. And the more he sat there, the angrier he got. And he felt he had to just get rid of his mother. I've done mushrooms a bunch of times. Never got two hours into it. I couldn't even remember what the hell I was angry about beforehand because now I'm on mushrooms and it's awesome.
So then he drank some whiskey. We were right. Oh, wow. I knew that before but didn't want to say anything. And ate some of the mushrooms and said he, quote, simply decided I was going to get rid of my mom. Wash down mushrooms with whiskey. With whiskey. I'm never doing that. That's a bad idea. That's a bad idea. He said he went into the closet where his father kept his guns, pulled out the 16-gauge semi-automatic shotgun, and loaded it up. Uh-huh.
he said he had envisioned stabbing his mother to death, but he wanted it would take too long. He doesn't know how easy that would be. That sounds complicated. So he said this might be more instantaneous. One shot, put it right against her head and shoot her. So he said that he went toward his parents' bedroom. He paused outside for about 10 minutes. He said he stood out there with the shotgun for about 10 minutes thinking about what he was about to do and if he should do it.
He said then he opened the door. He went in. They were both sleeping. He said he, quote, took the 16 gauge, put it up to her head and the trigger went off. No, it didn't. Nope. You pulled it. That's not how that works. Talk about distancing language. Holy fuck, man. So he did that. He said he didn't intend to kill his father. That was never the plan.
The plan was kill mom. That was it. How mushroomed up was he? He thought dad was going to sleep through that? Yeah, he said then Bruce woke up and he went, oh, fuck. I'm standing here with a shotgun. My mom's got half a head and my father's looking at me. I better shoot him too. So he said he turned the shotgun real quick. He said that his father, quote, sat up real quick, looked at me, and the trigger went off again. No, it didn't. Wow, this gun has great timing. It only goes off when you're pointed right at someone's face. It knows to go off.
Wow. He said that when he blew his father's lower jaw off and it didn't kill him, he panicked at that point and started beating his father on the head with the butt of the shotgun. He said, I didn't want him in fucking misery, so I grabbed the fucking knife and I stabbed him until he quit moving. Grabbed what knife? That means you brought a knife. He brought it with him. Yeah. Yeah, because he thought about stabbing her at first. Then he got the shotgun, so there was all that stuff.
They said that, yeah, he said he couldn't bear the sight of his father writhing in pain. So that's why he was bludgeoning him. And then when that didn't work either, he had to go to the kitchen and grab a knife. And then he stabbed him six times. And he grabbed the rest of his father's guns along with the knife. He said he jumped into his father's car. Windshield wipers on high. Wow.
drove onto a bridge over the Des Plaines River. Fifteen years old. Fifteen. He doesn't even have a fucking license yet. Fifteen years old. Fifteen, and he operates like a fucking gangster. No shit. This is what Chris and Snoop would do in Newire if Marlo told him to kill people. They'd dump all the guns. And he did this at 15, high on mushrooms and a bunch of whiskey. How the fuck? And hash, don't mind. Yeah, right. He smoked, too.
Yep, he said he threw the items into the water just like that person saw. And he said, my brother and sister had nothing to do with this. Wow. Not a fucking thing. They didn't know about it. They didn't know anything. When he asked whether he was sorry if his parents were dead, he said, yes and no. Oh, my God.
That's fucking cold. I'm surprised. At least he didn't shit his pants in here, though. So he's come a long way. He's certainly grown quite a bit. A little bit. He said that he was glad that he didn't have to deal with them anymore. But he expressed regret because, quote, the whole thing really fucked my sister up. And then she hit a pole, man. You ruined her life. She hit a pole and fucking died. So, yeah, they have this all on videotape.
And then he said, I asked him what he did with all the money. And he said, I blew it. Yeah. And they said drinking. And he said, yeah. Amongst other things. Yeah. Amongst whatever. Just, you know, being a shithead. Just living in Florida. Just doing my thing. Yeah. 300 grand doesn't go very far when you're 15, 16 years old. No. He got it when he was 21, I think. That's when he moved down there. Two years. It was all gone. All gone, man. And that was much more money than that is now. Yeah.
So this is horrible. This is all in videotapes. He said it wasn't. He's doing this of his own free will. The thing was, he was there one night, then they let him go, and then they brought him back again. This was like the third day they had talked to him.
So his lawyer is going to have some fun with that, as you can imagine. A friend of his from Florida here. Well, he's from California but lives in Florida now. They describe him as Alex Schmidt, a Californian with a full body tattoo and a pierced tongue. This is 1995, so that was considered the peak of freakdom this guy was at that point. And a fucking thing in his tongue. Oh, my God. Jesus. He loves oral sex. Chris Rock says he'll suck my dick. Pervert.
Oh, my God. He says, quote, I always knew he was a freak, but I never thought he was a killer about Billy. A freak. He said he was really, really quiet. That's another friend. He always acted like he was broke as the rest of us. And by the end, he was.
At first, he flaunted his money. Then after the divorce and everything, he didn't flaunt it anymore. Right. Because he didn't have it. And then there was that. Now, Florida is going to drop their charges having to do with the gun and the bank robberies so he's allowed to be extradited. Because I guess they have a rule where at that point where you can't extradite someone if he's under there or whatever. Yeah. So they have to drop it so he could do that. The next week, he goes before a judge with a public defender. Mm-hmm.
And he's got long hair and a big goatee and all that kind of shit.
He is first taken to, when they take him back to Illinois, he's taken to the children's court because this happened when he was 15. Oh, yeah. So the children's judge has to assign this case to adult court or they do it in children's court. But he's this 30-year-old dirtbag who's lived on a boat drinking bush for all this time. Yeah. And he's got long hair and a big goatee and he's standing in children's court, which is just hilarious. With a fire truck.
Oh, my God. So his attorney opposed the transfer, saying juvenile court would be able to offer psychological treatment and lengthy probation. And they said, yeah, that's why we're trying him as an adult, so we can put him in prison. We're going to try him as an adult? They were trying him as an adult, yeah. Do you think that's what he should be done? I don't know. He was 15. He was a fucked up 15-year-old. Oh, shit. I don't think you can try that as an adult.
That's tough. But the judge decided that he will be tried as an adult. Oh, my God. He said it's in the best interest of the defendant and the public that the transfer occur. I think the public, maybe not the defendant. 1996 is the trial in adult court and the prosecution's opening. They say that the defense or the prosecutor says that William didn't have a very terrible life.
As a 15-year-old, he had everything he could want, a comfortable lifestyle. They said that wasn't good enough for this defendant. Yeah. They said that Bruce and Darlene were trying to live the American dream, and he had to screw it all up. Well, shit all over it, if you knew him, actually. Shit all over. So the defense attorneys argued that
They tried to argue, first of all, that the confession tape not be admitted, but it is admitted. So now they have to argue why it's not useful. Yeah. And they say that he could not withstand three days of straight interrogation, even though he went into sleep. They didn't keep him for 72 hours in the box. They said they kept bringing him in there, kept bringing him in there. He said that Billy was coerced and wasn't in a fully rational frame of mind when he gave the interview. Okay.
And basically the only evidence is this confession. Without that, it's over. So the defense attorney tells the jurors in opening statements that Billy loved his parents and he didn't kill them. He said what he saw in those few moments in that bedroom sent a shockwave through his life that he's never recovered from.
He's a scumbag because of this. He didn't do this because he's a scumbag. It's the other way around. That's what they're saying. They said, well, he was as a result of this, he was never able to make anything out of his life. And they said he lived penniless on a makeshift raft and drinking himself to death. Yeah. They said that he even went on to say getting a confession out of him wasn't difficult. They said he was putty in the hands of these detectives because he suffers from PTSD. Yeah.
What, his own volition? Yeah, well, from the... It's still bothering him. That's why his life has turned out like this. This is all a symptom of PTSD. His whole fucked up life can be explained away. And the defense then said, the real killer should be sitting in this courtroom. The real killer, Kurt Busch.
Oh, they're saying Kurt did it. Billy's brother. They're saying Kurt did it. They said Kurt was the one who had a bad relationship with his parents. They were the ones who were kicking him out of the house and locking him out and trying to kick him out to the army and cutting him off his money and all that kind of thing. It's all Kurt, not Billy. Billy, sure, he got yelled at like any other teenager, but I mean, who cares?
So they bring an investigator on, the original investigator, and he comes out and he says that he, you know, just finding out the facts about the family, he said that Billy had told them that if he wanted to buy some clothing, he'd be given a credit card. Then he'd have to return it in a short period of time with the receipts. Right. And that made him upset. Yeah.
Can you imagine at 15 if your parents gave you a credit card to buy something? Yeah. Number one. And then said, just bring me the receipt. No problem. I wasn't allowed to get anything. They were going to buy it for me. Never mind have fucking take my credit card and buy it and just show me the receipt.
He said Robin, though, was allowed to use the credit card as long as she wanted. Okay. And showed the favoritism, and that's what Billy was upset. She's not pulling fire alarms and shitting her pants, man. That's the problem. Well, he says that she made him do it. Oh.
Now, cross-examination, they point out that Rouse worked with his father and he went go hunting with him and he was close with him. And they said Billy didn't tell you his parents showered him with material possessions. And they said that William had a horse. They bought Billy a horse at one point. What kid has a fucking horse and gets a credit card?
So the evidence, they bring in all these bags. They had a telephone, a phone book, a reading lamp, a picture from the master bedroom. Basically everything from the master bedroom that had blood on it, they brought it in to show the jury. Look, see, that's covered in blood. You could bring one item in and go, covered in blood. I got more.
Picture of the room covered in blood. They said they found Darlene Rouse's credit card on the seat of her black Cadillac and an empty shotgun box found on the second floor rec room of the Rouse home. Second floor rec room where Billy said he was hanging out. I don't know why they didn't bring
bring that up earlier. They bring in an aunt here. This is for the defense. This is Jill Elinouski. And she said she's never witnessed any outbursts of violence between William and his parents. She said, Billy was my sister's favorite. So, yeah, it's mom's sister here. And also she's she became she's Billy lived with her for years after the mental institution.
Lived with this aunt. The state calls another aunt, Donna Stenland, and she said that she had been sitting in court throughout the proceedings. She testified about a phone call she got from her nephew a few days before the trial where he inquired whether she would be attending the proceedings. When she asked him how things were going, he brought up Kurt. She said, quote, he said, we're going to nail Kurt to the wall.
And when she questioned him further, she said he responded, who else could have done it? Had to be Kurt. Got to get Kurt on the stand. The prosecution does. Otherwise, the specter of him is going to hang. So they call him and ask him straight out. You kill your parents and see if they believe him or not.
So he gets there. He comes in. And by the way, they haven't seen each other in 10 years, the brothers. Oh, no. Only talked like twice over the last 10 years. Kurt comes in and puts his hand on his brother's shoulder and like squeezes his shoulder. Like, nice to see you. He takes the witness stand. He is...
Yeah, he said that it's damaged him a lot, this suggestion that he is the killer and a lot of people have thought he's a murderer over the years. That's why I live in a fucking 75 acres and a trailer. He said, I love my parents and they love me. He said, I just turned 20. I thought I knew a thing or two. That's all it was. He said it's a normal teenage stuff that he had with his parents, nothing that he would murder them over.
He said, but also he might have helped the defense a little bit when he talked about Billy's relationship with his parents. He said, he didn't hate my mom and no, he didn't hate my dad. Kurt does an interview outside of court where he said he wished he wasn't here and he said he didn't do anything. He said, I'm tired of being falsely accused and having a shadow of doubt hanging over me all the time. I have nothing to do with the murder. I don't know who did it.
He said, I just feel sorry for my brother, regardless of what he did. Guilty, not guilty. I just feel sorry for him. It ruined his life. It ruined mine, ruined my sisters, our relatives, all of us. We just lost so much. He said, I love my parents and they love me. I had just turned 20 and thought I knew a thing or two. So he had some problems, but nothing like that. People have made it out to me. They got an argument over the army. That's all it was. It wasn't. I'll kill you. Closing arguments here. Okay. The prosecution said,
Said that he was a brooding, just angry kid who was just sick of his mother's nagging because he wouldn't stop using drugs. And so he heartlessly killed his parents. They said, assistant state attorney said, he's cunning. Okay.
When he was 15, he was cunning. You're not cunning when you're on whiskey and mushrooms and 15. The word cunning will never enter into that. And as an adult, he's anything but cunning. Did you hear they robbed a bank? He is a fuck up from day one. Yeah, he is. He smoked weed, ate mushrooms and washed all that shit down with whiskey. That's that's not a genius plan. He's not cunning at all. He's a fuck up. No.
Not at all. The prosecutor goes on to say the defense has been popular or the defense that has been popular in the last 10 months as well. The cops are dirty. This is during the OJ trial time. So he said, so they say in this case, the cops are dirty.
And they noted that the Lake County Sheriff's Lieutenant Charles Fagan, Chuck Fagan, who elicited the confession from Rouse, had picked up an 18-year-old Rouse for having a beer in his hand, then let him go when he was called to another incident. So it's not like they have it in for Billy. He had let him go. They said, if Fagan was such a bum, why didn't Fagan squeeze a confession out of him in 83 with the beer? He said, the reason is because he's honorable and he came into this court to answer questions truthfully. Okay. Okay.
psychiatrist here. They talked about a psychiatrist that testified for the defense and said he had PTSD. But he said, could the prosecution said, could it be that the defendant was depressed because he killed, he killed his parents. Maybe that's why the defense drew a picture of just a typical teen in the seventies, man. Just like, you know, nothing like that. Nothing, no violence. He said, this is crazy. He said he confessed only because he was trying to get the police off his back.
So the defense even played portions of the videotape for jurors, pausing the tape every few seconds to point out inconsistencies in his statements and saying, see, now that didn't actually happen. That's wrong what he said. Also suggested to jurors that the evidence could link Kurt to the crimes. He said, I don't care if you believe Kurt did it or not. The question here is, is there reasonable doubt that Billy Rouse committed this crime?
We'll find out eight women and four men are on the jury. Yeah. Two weeks of a trial. They start deliberations on a Friday night. And again, they don't send them home. They just say, you're going to deliberate all night. Really? Yeah. This happened a couple weeks ago, too, in a case. They deliberated for the next eight hours. And they watched the confession tape three times during that period. Oh, good Lord.
By 2.40 a.m., they said they had a verdict. Really? I don't like when you tell jurors, I know you've been here all day, but go in that room and don't come out until you got a fucking answer, is not how you do this. That's not fair to anybody. Wake a man up to learn his fucking fate? That's wild. They do. And it comes in and they find him guilty of murder. So sentencing comes around and the defense is just begging for leniency here.
He said, you know, the Ralph's home was a place poisoned by infidelity, domestic violence and substance abuse. He said that it was the environment that a young, emotionally disturbed son withered, turning to alcohol by age seven and finally murdering his parents while intoxicated at 15. He hasn't killed anybody since, mind you. He did stab a guy, but that's fine. He survived.
So they judge then has a different thing. The judge sits Billy down or stands Billy up and said, quote, they gave you life and brought you into this world. They gave you every opportunity for a future.
You did the most hatefully shocking thing when you took that shotgun and at close range shot your mother who brought you into this world and then shot your father. You not only took their lives, but you took your own. You, sir, may fuck off two consecutive 40 year sentences. 80 years. Get the fuck out of here.
80 years they gave him. Then, I know what you're going to say in a second, but let me finish it. That way you'll have more ammo for this. This will add to your fire here. She said she was disgusted that she wasn't able to sentence him to life without parole. She said, quote, that is the injustice that I now have to live with.
The judge is a victim. The judge said that. She said it was the maximum under the law, and that's why. And, yes, this is obviously... To a child. You'd sentence a child to 80 years. Yeah. A fucked up child. If they caught him when he was 15... There's no way they'd give him that. They wouldn't get this. No. That's the thing that bothers me, is he's still...
It still happened when he was 15. Just because you're looking at a Florida man. Yeah, just because you've turned into bath salt face eating guy. Right. You can't do that. We've had murderers on this show get way less time than that. Way less time. And it was, you know, an adult killing another adult. Right. This is a child killed his parents. And he didn't even want to kill his dad.
No, I don't like it at all. Don't get me wrong. It's terrible and horrible and it definitely should get a shitload of time in jail. I don't think you should walk by any stretch of the imagination. The way he killed is maybe worse than most of them too though.
Yeah, it's horrible. It's fucking horrible. I mean, if you give him 40, if you give him the 40, 240s concurrent, I'm okay with that. Yeah, yeah. Because the girl in Arkansas that killed her father, the, you know, fucking Don't Anger the Princess, that episode. That chick is out. She got out way early. She got out when she was like in her 20s. But I mean, she got like that much time and then got paroled. So I mean, that's kind of fair for a teenager killing their parents in cold blood. And then that woman that stabbed her mom.
And she's out. She's out, too. So...
The reason is that he was spared a more severe punishment because stiffer laws for juvenile crimes were literally enacted the week after the murders. Oh, shit. Having nothing to do with the murders. They were just in the wheels were in motion and that happened a week after. So they couldn't sentence him under those guidelines when they were saying, you know, fucking put kids in jail forever. That was the 80s and 90s. Yeah, literally. Yeah. If a kid's a drug dealer, murder him. Like, that's what they would say.
So they said that all and because of the modern truth and sentencing laws can't be applied to a 1980 case. So they can't say 40 means 40. So in this case, he could be paroled in 39 years, including time already served and credit for good time. So he could get out when he's 70, maybe. Yeah.
Okay. 2002, the house burns down. Really? It is cursed. It's a cursed house. Somebody bought it, purchased by a new family. They were out of town when the fire started in the laundry room and burned to the fucking ground. Didn't clean out those fucking lint traps. Well, I don't know who was doing laundry, but they also ruled out arson on it. Oh, okay.
An accidental thing. Firefighters extinguished the blaze in time to leave a shell of the home behind, which then became a spot for transients to live and drink and hang out. Sure, yeah. So the next year it was demolished completely. Like a derelict boat.
Like a derelict boat. Now, here's what's suspicious. The homeowner said he was planning on knocking it down, building a new house anyway. Anyway, yeah. Which, gee, if it burns down, then it's all paid for, too. Weird, right? Then I don't have to put the bill on that. Not making any accusations, but I am Italian, and that sounds pretty familiar. Interesting.
2015 Investigation Discovery makes a documentary on this whole deal here, and they said they were met with, producers were met with some resistance by the board of trustees and the mayor of Libertyville. Really? Yes. The guy said, you're talking about taking pictures of our signage, which to us will read, welcome to Libertyville, the place where we have murderers and mafia run gambling houses. No, you don't. It's gone. It's gone. It was 40 years ago, you fucking weirdo.
He said to make sure that the mayor said to the person, make sure that you say the term unincorporated Libertyville because it's right outside because it is outside the town proper. Yeah, it's not an unincorporated. Yeah, it's not like on Main Street. He said, I just want to make sure it's made clear these events happened in
unincorporated Libertyville. Reality TV isn't always real and it tends to dramatize a place or situation. We were recently named one of the top 20 safest towns in Illinois. We like being perceived that way. Look at our new splash pad. Look at that. See, isn't that nice?
Now, Billy is at the Pontiac Correctional Facility. Yeah. And he is, his projected parole date, his first possible parole date is going to be February 24th, 2027. Okay. So I don't know what happened, but that's what ends up being. That's not bad. Yeah. And then his projected discharge date would be, because that's his projected parole date, his discharge date from custody would be 224, 2030. Okay.
Jesus. So there's that. Yeah, I don't know. You got something knocked off of there or what. But there's that. And 2015, people are started really looking at this case a lot. They fucked that kid, man. They fucked him. Yeah.
There's somebody who is on crimelibrary.org, and I found a comment. I look for comments all the time. And this person says, if anyone has any information on this issue, I really need you to contact me. I'm a master level student specializing in forensic psychology. No, this is not forensic science like you see on TV shows. I'm not a CSI professional. I study criminal behaviors. All my degrees thus far are in psychology. I have reason to believe that Billy Rouse is innocent in all capital letters. Okay.
Please, if anyone has any information, please call my cell phone and then gives out her cell phone number, which I won't give out on this show. This is not a scam or a reason to put a virus on your anything. I've been researching this case for some time now. I've been threatened to stop my research. Okay.
Nobody's saying, just stop. You're a dummy. He admitted it. He did it. I think he did it. I think he did it. Whether he got fucked in the execution of the whole thing, no pun intended, but yeah.
So 2015, an episode of Investigation Discovery Hell House series. They did. 2014, an episode of Blood Relatives on Investigation Discovery. And an episode in 2008 of Dominic Dunn's Power, Privilege, and Justice. That guy. That's what we called the case. Man. Poor bastard. My goodness. Feel bad for him. So there's Libertyville, everybody. What a pull.
What a fucking case, huh? Jesus Christ. They really took it to a man. A child. Yeah. I'd like to see what everybody out there thinks. What are your opinions on this, too? Yeah, definitely hit us up and comment. Far be it from me to defend a murderer. Yeah. Well, we know. I mean, yeah, we're idiots as we've established many times over the course of this fucking episode.
So there you go. If you like that episode, tell everyone about it. Get on whatever app you're on and give us five stars. It helps so much. I don't know why, but it really, really does. Tell us what your favorite condiments are. That's nice. That'd be great. That's perfect. So you can do that. That'll help us out a lot. Follow us on social media as well at Small Town Murder on Instagram, at Small Town Pod on Facebook, at Murder Small on Twitter. Also check the website, shutupandgivememurder.com online.
This is all, by the way, after you've listened to Crime and Sports and Your Stupid Opinions, our other two podcasts, which you should be listening to. But definitely head to shutupandgivememurder.com. Get your merch. Get your tickets to live shows. September 20th, Minneapolis, the State Theater. Big, beautiful.
Can't wait.
Yeah, anybody $5 a month or above. A mere cup of coffee. That's where it's at. You can either have that or you can get hundreds of back episodes immediately that you've never heard before of bonus stuff and new stuff every other week. One crime and sports, one small town murder. You get it all, baby. All of it. Goddamn. All of it. This week, which you're going to get in honor of the 4th of July for crime and sports, we're going to talk about fireworks accidents. There's a lot. And we'll talk about our own personal fireworks accidents because we both had them. I'll tell you about them.
Tell you how bad Jimmy's got a good one. Then for Small Town Murder, we're going to talk about the real tombstone. Old West shit, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, how shit really went down, different from the movie. And even if you've never seen the movie, it's just a cool Old West story we're going to tell about murder and...
you know, dirty guys hunting each other. It's fun stuff. And the sheriff signing his own wife's prostitution papers. That's wild. Yeah, that's good shit, man. So, yeah, do that. Patreon.com slash Crime and Sports. And you get a shout-out at the... When is it? Right now. Oh, fuck. Right goddamn now. Jimmy, hit me with the name of the people who are so wonderful and would never kill us in our sleep. I'd like to hear them right fucking now. This week's executive producers are Franny Hitzke. Goddamn it. I never...
Get her name right. Well, thank you. I adore her. Franny in Australia. She's terrific. And she's doing murals down there now. She's painting. She loves art. Fran-stralia, baby. Thank you. Fran-stralia. It's geek. Liz Vasquez. Jalita Renee. Cecilia Gross King. Yeah, she's terrific. Madison Rae Hall. Netta. Nettie. Nettie. Nettie Marie. Nettie. Nettie. N-E-T-T-E. What is that? Is that net? Net.
Netta? Netta. How do you pronounce V-E-T-T-E, James? Vet. Right. So it's net. I think it's net. Like Annette, probably short for Annette. Oh, or Nanette. Nanette, yeah, something, but with a net on the end of it. Other producers this week, James, are Peyton Meadows, Gary Howard, Jolita, Renee Cecilia Gross-King. I think I've said that. Very good, guys.
Janice Hill. She's wonderful, too. Zach Bowles. Zach, thank you so much. Lori White. Angel. Angel Ledford. Bailey Ashley. Eric Garver. Lori White. Sharon Peters. Steve Galuski. Amanda Sheridan. AJ Jaquie. Zach Nowicki. Elizabeth Munson. Mike Yost. Angel with no last name. Joe Sandoval. Emer LaDue. Alyssa Madden. Lauren Taylor. Joseph Jurglenanis. Jurglenanis.
Jiggle it a little. Jiggle it. Carolyn Cuckerts. Cuckerts? Did you say cuckled? Cuckerts. Oh, sorry. Cuckerts? I don't know. I heard you. I wasn't looking over at you. She's heard it. Francine Boucher. Boucher. Boucher. Kendra with no last name. Jeremy Treesh. Lucas May. Ty Damon II. Rebecca Broussard. Jody Olson. Pingu the Cat. Kelly L. India Allen. Oh, my God.
To you. There's a guy on TikTok that has his cat read things, and then he just says meow. And I die laughing every time. It's the dumbest shit on the planet. Darren with no last name. Corey Burton is incredibly stupid.
B-more six. Haley with no last name. Megan Bortner. Bill Woodson. Scott C. Amanda Chamont. Aaron with no last name. Sarah Hickson. Sia Thebia. Court with no last name. Nicole Gabarik. Gabarik. Justin Jones. George Plant. Dayton with no last name. Jennifer Cavan. Cavan. Donnell Elliott. Anna Baxter-Singh. Melissa Clark. Darren Brand. Jules Anderson. Jordan Hadley. Lisa Rizzone.
Yeah. Dawn with no neck, I guess. I don't know who he is. Divas apologies about your neck, Dawn. Nancy with no last name. Aaron, we're a chick. We're Lord a chick. We're Lord a dark chick.
Wow. Angel Sonoran, Saronan, Carl Height, Aaron Hammond, Craig Nicholas, Gail with no last name, LD with no last name, Sarah Sherwood, Megan Aiken, Kelder Varagat, Mike Sackett, Brandy Zweter, Tarni Tuggle Gradilis, what?
Tuggle. That's the last name. Joshua Wilson. Eleanor Winfield. Amanda Keenan. Marie Evans. Lily Myers. Matthew Bowers. Andrew Palmer. Natasha Dan. Carl. Carl Brum has two of them, James. He got two. Wow. Holy shit. Thank you. Thank you, Carl. You're amazing. Julie Olivier. Johnna Stenstrom. Sierra Sturgill. Jessica Lopez. Mariah Kasner.
Denise Taylor, Matthias Wendert, Fiona Oler, Mattie Tappa, Joseph, Tiffany Kameho, Davey Frankowitz.
Damian with no last name. Judy Oyenart. Shelly with no last name. Jennifer Bach. J and N. The two letters J and N. Stacey with no last name. Anne Hunt. Melissa Kanuch. Oh, boy. Kanichiwa. Kanichwa. Kanuchski. Kanichski. I don't know.
Lauren Brown, Elena Marquez, Rochelle Taylor, Joel Crawford. I like how I try to help you, and I don't have the names in front of me, but I'm trying to sound them out with you. I don't even know what letters are on the paper. I have no clue. Well, just say these so that I don't have to. Jake Giles, Peyton Hersner, Vin Suki, Owen Mitchell, Adriana, Tiffany, oh, boy, Soravia. Wow, Sorlapia.
Sorlavia? Oh, wow. JT Kinder or Kinder. Ashley Haley. Amanda Rosen. Kirk Ryan. Jason Nezeth. Sarah Whited. Whitehead. Paldo. Paldo Fett. Stacey with no last name. Carrie Kinghorn. Taylor Amison. Jennifer Graham. Catherine Hammerl. Hammerl. Hammerl.
Max Cox, that's easy. Anita McCauley, Jordan Deal, Nick Cohan, Cohen maybe, Jordan Peterson, probably not that one, Christopher Ford, and all of our patrons, you're terrific. Thank you everybody so much.
Thank you for what you do for us, for all that you do for us. You never stop. Thank you. We appreciate the shit out of each and every one of you. Thank you so much. And if you want to find us on social media, head over to shutupandgivememurder.com. There's drop-down menus that have all that shit. Keep following us. Keep hanging out with us. And until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.
If you like Small Town Murder, you can listen early and ad-free now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.
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