Crime Junkie - MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF: Casey MacPherson-Pomeroy and Caleb Guillory

Episode Date: May 30, 2022

Casey MacPherson-Pomeroy and Caleb Guillory had plans to ring in the new year on the beautiful Caribbean island of Anguilla. But before the proverbial ball could drop, they were both dead. The four people with them that night haven’t spoken publicly about the incident since -- and until they do, the mystery of what happened to Casey and Caleb will remain on the island.GoFundMe: Justice for Casey & Caleb. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/mysterious-death-casey-macpherson-pomeroy-caleb-guillory/

Hi crime junkies, I'm your host Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today is about two young men, friends since childhood, who were ringing in the New Year with their wives and two other friends on the beautiful Caribbean island of Anguilla. But long before the clock struck midnight, tragedy struck instead. And the families of those two men have been left to try and piece together the truth about what happened from almost 4,000 miles away.

This is the story of Casey McPherson, Pomeroy, and Caleb Dealerie. It's almost 10 p.m. on December 30th, 2018, when a call comes into police dispatch on the Caribbean island of Anguilla. On the other end of the line is a woman named Alicia Gross, and she's saying that her friend is not breathing and they need an ambulance. Police and paramedics arrive a few minutes later to a chaotic scene in an apartment in Island Harbor. There are six people in the apartment, and one of them, 37-year-old Caleb Dealerie,

is dead, laying on his back on the living room floor. Before they can really even start asking questions to try and figure out what actually happened, a second man, 37-year-old Casey McPherson Pomeroy, starts having seizures in the next room, the bedroom. Oh my God! According to a report filed by a detective from the Royal Anguilla Police Force, paramedics rush Casey into an ambulance to take him to the hospital, and police stay behind to speak to the four people still in the apartment to try and figure out what happened.

One thing is clear from the very start, all six of the people who'd been in the apartment are American, not Anguillian. They learn that Casey and his wife Barbara have been living on the island for the last few months so that Casey can attend medical school there. The rest of the group, Caleb and his wife Carly, along with friends Chuck and Alicia Gross, are visiting from the U.S. Casey has known both Caleb and Chuck for years, since they were elementary-aged kids growing up in Eagle Point, Oregon, so he and Barbara had invited them and their wives down to Anguilla

to ring in the New Year with them. And the six of them had just gotten home from a night out at a local beach bar when, apparently out of nowhere, they say that Caleb started having convulsions. Carson Courier reported for KTVL News that Casey started CPR on Caleb before the paramedics arrived to try and revive him, but he wasn't able to. And then he just started having seizures right after? Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure if it was like right after, but the police report just says a short while after.

But it was while the first responders were still there. Right. And just to be clear, neither of these guys had any sort of like underlying condition that would cause seizures or anything. Yeah, well, there's no mention of that in the source material for this case, but based on kind of how things unfolded from here, I don't think that they did. Right, like it seems like really shocking and surprising for everyone. Yeah, and almost right away, Casey's wife, Barbara, starts talking about how the two

of them must have been poisoned. Okay, poisoned with what? Well, I'm not sure anyone knows what, but they do have a good idea about how. So apparently the two had shared a drink at the very end of the night. Now there are several versions of this story, and the details vary slightly in each one, but the broad strokes are the same. Apparently they were on their way home, and Casey had realized that he had forgotten his flip-flops.

So he and Caleb went back to this little beachside bar to get them, and when they were there, they got one drink, this rum and coke, which they shared while they were looking for the flip-flops. Now, Barbara says that the drink was left unattended briefly while they were looking, but once they found them, Casey and Caleb headed back to Casey's apartment. They took the drink with them, and they were like finishing it along the way. Okay, just to pause for a second. Casey left the bar without any shoes on, and no one really noticed this on the way home.

It sounds strange. I mean, it may be a question kind of how much maybe they actually had to drink that night, or how out of it they really were. But I mean, also think about the setting. I mean, they're living on the beach. The bar is literally on the beach a few minutes away. They're probably walking on the beach from the bar to home. So do you know if your feet are in the sand or your feet are in flip-flops in the sand?

I don't know. Okay, that's fair. But to kind of go back, like again, it also could be a possibility that they had just been drinking a lot, and police are for sure curious about how much the group had been drinking and maybe what else had been going on. Because one of the things that police notice while they're at the apartment is that of all of the people, Barbara, Carly, Chuck, Alicia, they're all acting kind of strange. Okay, strange how?

So in the report, it literally just says, quote, abnormal behavior, absent-minded, end quote. Which I kind of read as like they're out of it, which to be fair, could just be from the shock of everything that just happened, or maybe it's from alcohol that they were drinking. But police are concerned enough to bring all four of them to the hospital to get checked out just in case. Now, unfortunately, despite the hospital's best efforts, Casey actually dies later that night.

But thankfully, Barbara, Carly, Chuck, and Alicia are checked out by medical staff and they're all released, but they're not sent home. Instead, they're taken into police custody and held there for nearly three days. On January 4th, a pathologist does autopsies on both bodies and afterwards sends them to two separate funeral homes on the island so that families can make arrangements to get the remains home. And at this point, they are all just anxious to get home. And Barbara tells Casey's family that the fastest and least complicated way to get the

four of them plus the two sets of the remains back home is to have the bodies cremated. According to a 2021 episode of Investigation Discovery shows still a mystery. Casey's extended family, so his mom and his stepdad, his dad, his sister, they want to bring his body back home to Oregon so he can be laid to rest. Caleb's too, for that matter. A family friend even offers to fly to Anguilla in a private plane, pick up all four of them and both bodies and fly them all back to the US. But Barbara refuses that offer and says even that is going to take too long.

They need to get out of Anguilla now. They feel like their lives may be in danger. What? Like, in what way? Honestly, I don't know if Barbara ever kind of expanded on that, like the source material doesn't go into any more detail about why she and the others were so fearful for their lives just that they were afraid. And of course, the family doesn't want to push back on these two women who have just

lost their husbands tragically and unexpectedly in a foreign country, but the idea of cremation at this point just seems wrong. I mean, on one hand, I kind of get it, I had an uncle die out of state, which is still in country, but the idea of and the costs of like moving his body from where he lived to where the rest of his family was buried was exponential. And so cremation was the best plan for us. But I mean, in this case, they've already done an autopsy on the bodies, right? Like, do we know what those say?

Well, so yes, there has been an autopsy done, though at this stage, no one has actually seen the report or even heard any of the findings, which is why cremation seems to everyone kind of like a rash decision at this point, especially in light of that offer that the friend gave with the private plane. Right. Like that's basically saying that there's no cost to move the bodies anymore. And especially since there are so many unanswered questions about these deaths, like, I don't know how your uncle died, but if it were mysteriously and his wife's talking about, you know, he

could have been poisoned, like, in my mind, it's like, we got to pump the brakes. And I understand if they needed to get out and that needed to happen quickly, but let's wrap up this investigation and find out what really happened to these guys. Well, despite everyone's objections or concerns on January 7, both Barbara and Carly give the funeral homes the go ahead to cremate Casey and Caleb's remains. By January 15, they're back in the U.S. and all four of them stopped by Casey's mom and stepdad's place. And of course, everyone is super emotional, still trying to process what happened, which

means talking about it. And Barbara is telling the story about that night about Casey's missing flip-flop, the beach bar, the rum and coke, only this time she says that it wasn't just Caleb and Casey who went back to the bar to retrieve that lost flip-flop. She says now that she was there too. In fact, according to reporting by Sandra Sobri-Westfall and Jeff Truesdell for People magazine, Barbara tells them that all three of them sipped from the same drink as they carried it back to the apartment.

But wait, I'm just realizing if in her first version of events, she wasn't with them, how was there even a story about the drink? Like how would she have known? I don't know. The only thing I can think is, I mean, remember, when they come back, at that point, Casey is still okay, right, because he's the one that tries to give Caleb CPR. Okay. I don't know if maybe he mentioned the drink.

It's truly, it's never explained how she knows about this rum and coke. Well, I guess there would also be like a cup, because it's a rum and coke. If they kept it, right? Like again, I don't know when all this is going down. It's a little bit of a mystery. All I know is that at one point she says it's the two of them, and now she's putting herself with them as well, which is a little bit of a change. And not only with them, but drinking from the same drink that they had.

So if that's the case, why didn't she get sick too? Well, she says that she did get sick, but she hadn't had as much of the drink. So she says she didn't get as sick. And maybe this is part of why she, I don't know about the other people, but you know, it's in the report that they all looked out of it. Maybe she really wasn't feeling well. I don't know. But Barbara also tells Casey's family that police arrested all four of them, which is

also news to us, and they confiscated their phones and their laptops. They locked them up in separate cells. They withheld food and water, and they refused to put them in touch with the U.S. Consulate. And so again, when we go back to like why they were like, we got to get out of here now, she talks about how scared they all were and about what a challenge it was for them to even get off the island. And at one point, Barbara says that the only reason they were able to leave the island is because Chuck's dad wired them $40,000.

Wait, $40,000? Yeah. For what? I don't know if this was like a point of discussion during the visit with the family. And frankly, it's still not clear to me what this $40,000 was exactly for. But all of the media coverage on this case tends to suggest that if this indeed did happen, it was likely some kind of payoff. Oh, wait, you said if this happened, do they think that Barbara's lying?

Well, no, I mean, not at first anyway. But for Casey's family, the questionable stuff like this just keeps adding up. The quicky cremation, Barbara's new story about her being poisoned to this $40,000 payment they had to make to get off the island, it's just, it's all strange. And so is the fact that the whole time that the four of them are at Casey's parents place that day. Barbara was the only person who talked. Apparently, Carly, Chuck, and Alicia were just silent.

And remember, I mean, these are very good friends of Casey's. They know Casey's mom and stepdad better than honestly Barbara does, actually. And they've known them for longer. Like these are not strangers, but they don't say a word. And then right before they leave, Barbara tells Casey's family not to talk about what happened in Anguilla or publicize anything because it'll just cause problems. Even when the subject of a memorial service comes up a couple of days later, Barbara says that she doesn't want to have one at all.

Casey wouldn't want it. But like his family knows Casey. He was energetic. He was super outgoing. He was a wildly social guy. It seems the kind of guy who would have like 500 people show up. Yeah. And have like a celebration of life event.

Like it seems bananas to them that he would deny anyone the opportunity to come together in their grief and remember him. Again, none of this is adding up for his family. And listen, we've said it a hundred times on this show. People grieve in different ways. There is no right or wrong way. Okay, okay. But we're not talking about like, is someone crying enough or too much?

Or did they go out to a party the next night? None of that because I totally agree. That doesn't matter. Like that doesn't say anything about grief. I mean, telling the family not to ask questions or say anything publicly or I mean, even having a memorial service. Here is the one thing I will say about the memorial service because this piece stuck out to me because everyone thinks it's so weird.

I would never deny anyone else having a memorial service. I don't know that I could do a funeral if Eric died. I've always said like funerals are not for the people like closest to the person in my mind. Like I don't want to be around people. I don't want to stand there with a processional of everyone coming and shaking my hand when I'm like grieving the most. Like I feel like funerals are almost like the people grieving the most having to put

on a show for the people who are grieving less and I hate it. I don't think I could function in a memorial service. So to me, it's not weird that she doesn't want to do that or even thinks that he wouldn't want to do that. Okay. But if that's the case, say like, I don't feel like putting my grief on show essentially. Yeah. If you want to have a memorial service, that's fine.

I just don't know if I emotionally and mentally can participate. And that's what I'm saying. I totally get, I couldn't participate, but I would never tell Eric's family not to do anything. Exactly. But of course, me not showing up, everyone's gonna think I murdered Eric. So, cool. I mean, yeah.

But that's one thing. But we also have like, don't ask questions, don't say anything, don't talk to the public. And also don't provide a chance for his friends and family to experience grief together. All of it sandwiched together. Not a great look. Yeah. But Eric's family at this point, it's honestly just like nothing but questions. Their 37-year-old son and his best friend, both healthy and young men in the prime of

their lives, dropped dead on the same night. Like, I mean, we're not 37 yet, but like, this would be like me and you dying at the same time on the same night. And everyone being like, don't ask questions, don't talk to anyone. Like, it was super weird, but like, everyone move on, we're just gonna get new hosts of crime junkie. Like, look the other way. Well, and on top of that, like, our spouse is going to our families.

Yeah. And we're just saying that like, you and I have been friends for ages and being like, yeah, this isn't what they would want. And we'd be like, from wherever we are, being like, no, question something, please. Yeah. And again, like their families are questioning stuff. Like they want to know what happened. They want to know why it happened.

And the whole time Barbara is saying that someone, you know, must have poisoned their drink at the bar. But for whatever reason, she doesn't seem to want to find out who. In fact, none of the four people who were there when Casey and Caleb died seemed to be asking that question. Like, okay, if they got poisoned, who poisoned them? Which if they aren't asking the question, like that just makes me think that there's got to be more to the story that they know that they aren't letting on.

Yeah. And that's just the most obvious question. As Casey's family starts kind of like peeling back the onion, more questions emerge. For example, that $40,000 Barbara said that Chuck's dad wired them so they could get off the island and get back home. Well, they can't find a record of that money anywhere. And they're saying it's some kind of payoff. No, no, no, that just seems to be like the implication in everything that I've read.

No one is saying that. But the four people who had been on the island, they talk about corruption and extortion among authorities on the island. So I think that the assumption is that if this payment actually happened, again, there's no record of it, that it was potentially a payoff money in exchange for freedom, basically. And if you think about it, it's in the Anguilan authorities best interest to kind of make this case go away. I mean, it's an economy driven almost exclusively by tourism, high end tourism.

I mean, Anguilan is not a cheap Caribbean destination. Right. And I mean, murder is obviously pretty bad for business. I think we saw this in the Natalie Holloway case a little bit too. Yeah. I mean, or again, even if the murderer, any kind of unexpected death of American travelers in general could hurt that. Totally.

And you said there had been an autopsy there on the island. Like, I would assume a legit autopsy. Wouldn't that have ruled on some sort of manner of death? So yes, that would definitely be in the purview of a forensic pathologist. But whatever information was gleaned from that autopsy, that's just another thing in the long list of things that Casey's family doesn't have. Like they don't have and they cannot get despite their best efforts. Because of course they aren't Casey's next of kin anymore.

Barbara is. This is a great time to remind people to let a couple people know about your if I go missing file, not just one person. But regardless, did she get this and share it with them? So I don't know for sure if any official documents are released to Barbara either. On January 7th, 2019, on the Royal Anguilla Police Force's Facebook page, the chief of police said that they would be releasing post-mortem results, issuing death certificates, and sharing the pathologist report with the next of kin, Barbara and Carly, who at the

time of this happening were still in Anguilla. And that's the same day that the bodies were cremated. But whether or not they actually released this stuff again, they said they were going to, but if they actually did, I don't know. I just know that none of that stuff made it to Casey's family back home in Oregon. And while that was definitely frustrating, I don't know if that's really surprising. Because honestly, I don't get the sense that Barbara had ever been super close to Casey's family anyway, even though they'd been together for like 13 years at this point, because like

Casey and Barbara actually lived in California the whole time, whereas Casey's parents were still in Oregon where they grew up. Like Casey's family knew Barbara a little bit, like at least enough to know that she and Casey had a lot of shared interests. They love to travel. They loved adventure. They love to be outdoors. Honestly, she was exactly the kind of person they expected and hoped that Casey would

end up with. The only thing about Barbara that gave them pause was her age. She was 22 years older than Casey, and the age difference didn't seem to bother him in the least. So honestly, it didn't bother his family really either. They got married in 2012. At the time, Casey was 31, Barbara was 53, and by then Casey had moved from a job in pharmaceutical sales to a new career as an actor, and he was having some success with

small roles. I guess he like booked a little spot on like the bold and the beautiful. But after the two were married, Casey's family noticed a shift in him. Like he became distant. Casey's dad told Sandra Sobray Westphal and Jeff Truesdell from People magazine that Casey told him basically, listen, Barbara doesn't like family, so there's not going to be any kids. We're not going to do holidays.

We're not going to do birthday parties. None of that. Um, what does that even mean? She doesn't like family. Like she just doesn't do family. I mean, basically it seems like this was their way of saying like, hey, don't expect us at the reunion or family dinners or anything like that. And listen, while that was like no doubt tough to hear, Casey, again, he seemed happy and

he and Barbara both traveled a ton for work. He was spending more time in LA trying to, you know, get his acting work going and he hadn't had his big break yet, but things honestly seemed good. So it was kind of surprising for his parents to find out kind of all of a sudden that Casey and Barbara were going to move to Anguilla so that Casey could go to medical school. I mean, wasn't surprising because he was moving so far away. Well, honestly, that part's not surprising for a guy who loved adventure and travel. Like living on this island is like right within his wheelhouse.

What's surprising is like Casey had never said anything about being a doctor before. Like this wasn't some lifelong dream of his. Not that it necessarily has to be, but at this point he's 37 years old. He has years of school ahead of him. He just came out from being like an actor. It's a weird time in your life to pivot to something that requires such specialized training. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I literally worked in the medical field for a while.

Never heard of it happening. Right. Because you have like school and then training and then you have to like basically intern for a while. Like there's a lot that goes into it. That's what Grey's Anatomy taught us. So anyways, all of that is to say that Casey's family had never been particularly close with their daughter-in-law, which puts the family completely out of the loop on what's going

on with the police investigation, at least through official channels. But the family does find a local in Anguilla to kind of be their eyes and ears on the ground. And it's that person who is finally able to get their hands on some of the official police documents, which they hope is going to help clear up some of this murkiness surrounding Casey's death. But if anything, it does the exact opposite. KOBI5 News reported that Casey's cause of death on his death certificate is listed as quote, pulmonary edema, cardiac toxicity, cardiac ischema, hypothermia, and seizures.

End quote. Okay. We have to pause. Did you say hypothermia? Yeah. It's okay. I don't know why this is. It's so amazing how you'll like read something or talk out loud.

Like I have read this, written this like so many times and I don't know why. Well, it's a direct quote. So like you just have it here. Yeah. But hypothermia, they're on like a Caribbean island. Yeah. Like again, you're like walking barefoot on the beach. Like hypothermia, that is bizarre to me.

But again, it doesn't get like point, like that's not the thing that stands out. But all of a sudden I'm like, what is happening? Yeah. Me too. And listen. So all of these things together, it's not so much a cause of death. It's more like a list of things that happened and contributed to his death. The cause of death would be the other thing that was apparently noted in these documents,

which is that Casey died from a lethal dose of cocaine and MDA, which by the way is not MDMA, like Mollier Ecstasy, but it is similar. Like it has a similar effect on the person taking it. But according to Healthline, it produces a heavier high and lasts longer. And on the flip side, an overdose can cause both convulsions and seizures, among other things. Casey's sister, Debony told still a mystery that her brother had not just overdosed by accident though.

They found apparently four times the lethal amount of MDA in his system. Okay, so knowing that all this time we were told that they got sick from that drink, I'm gonna be honest, I was kind of expecting them to find something like GHB or Hypno, not something like Ecstasy, right? Well, and at that level, I mean, that sounds to me like someone either didn't have a clue what they were doing if they were trying to spike a drink, or this was like specifically intentionally made to be deadly. So do we know if Casey or Caleb or honestly anyone in the group used drugs like even once

in a while? Like they could have gotten their hands on MDA and overdosed by accident. I mean, I don't know. I don't know how frequently they might have used drugs if they did it all, but I would have no idea how much to like administer or take to receive any sort of high at all, let alone kill someone. Yeah, so I agree. Like I don't know if I would be able to do a thing.

I don't think they like drugs from like a dealer comes to like an instruction manual. And all of the source material, though, for this episode says that neither Casey nor Caleb used drugs. So again, to your point, like, who knows? But like at the same time, like Casey is also a 37 year old grown man. It's not like the kind of thing you bring up at a family dinner, like lead in like conversations with random people like, oh, like, yeah, did MDA this weekend? Totally, totally.

So I don't think it's something that you can rule out 100% like that they didn't dabble in this, not necessarily on this night, but ever unless you were like with them. I mean, again, God knows we know people keep secrets. Okay, but on that note, these are like some of his closest friends who are all hanging out with him over a holiday. But here's the thing. They're not talking though. Like it's Casey's family who's saying like, oh, he didn't do drugs, Caleb's family who's

saying, oh, he didn't do drugs. Like these four people who are with them again are like keeping a pretty tight lip about everything that happened on that island. And honestly, it turns out Casey had been keeping a secret as well, at least from some people. But it wasn't until after his death that his friend, Chris, who was also his agent back when he was acting and had known Casey like 10 years, even found out that he was married.

What? Yeah, Chris says that to everyone that he knew in LA where he spent a ton of time over the years, he was just this carefree, single guy. Like they had no idea that he had a partner, let alone a wife. Like Chris told People Magazine quote, no clue, no nothing that he was married. He once told me about a wedding that he had gone to as a best man. And after talking to Debony, I learned that he'd been telling me the details of his wedding.

That's not an oops, I forgot to tell you type of thing. This was a deliberate lie. End quote. Um, yeah, it was, but why? No one knows why. But clearly this is a man with secrets. So could he or any of the others in the apartment that night have been using drugs? Sure.

There's nothing in the police report that sticks out for me at least. Can you actually read just that first paragraph under investigation? Sure. It says quote, while on the scene, the police officers observed what appeared to be illegal substance inside the living area of the apartment. The scene was processed by the RAPF scenes of crime officers and the said items collected along with others were collected as exhibits. Based on what was recovered, search warrant was later executed at the apartment and certain

items were collected and later handed over end quote. So that's a super vague statement. Does it say what the substance was like maybe the same ones found in their systems? So the police report doesn't say nor does any of the other source material that our team pulled together for this episode. So still TBD. Now during the summer of 2019, Casey's family is frustrated with the lack of information and action.

And so they hire a private investigator. Someone who has some experience investigating suspicious deaths overseas. The highest profile of his cases is one you've already brought up Natalie Holloway who vanished while in Aruba back in 2005. And you guys probably remember we actually covered that case in our fan club back in early 2020. Anyway, the family hires him and by mid-August he has tracked down something new. He gets his hands on Caleb's death certificate and like everyone assumed that it was going

to look pretty much identical to Casey's, you know, since they had supposedly drank from the same poisoned drink. And Caleb did have a lethal dose of MDA and cocaine in his system, just like Casey. But it also showed a few other things that are as shocking as they are confusing. Caleb's autopsy also found asphyxiation, manual strangulation, ligature strangulation, and multiple blunt force traumas. What? Yeah.

He was strangled with a ligature? That's what the death certificate says. And that's to be clear, never mentioned before right now in this episode, correct? Mm-hmm. Okay, cool, cool, got it. Yeah, and I wish I could give you more information about the findings or what they even mean, but that is literally the sum total of what's out there on this. I mean, that's because the information is going through Barbara and Carly because they're

the legal next of kin, right? That's part of it, yes, but the other part is that there was supposed to be a coroner's inquest into the deaths? The chief of police references it way back in early January on that same Facebook post that I mentioned before. He says, quote, the case will go before the coroner at the end of January, end quote. But that didn't happen. When Sandra and Jeff's People cover story, they report that the inquest wasn't officially

called until September, nine months after Casey and Caleb died. I mean, I guess it's better late than never, but I mean, what were the findings? No, no, no, no, I said the inquest was called, not that it happened, because it didn't. Ugh, Ashley. Yeah, it still has not happened as of this recording. What? According to a GoFundMe set up by the family to help cover the cost of their PI, which we will link to in the show notes and on the blog post, police have subpoenaed all four

of the witnesses, Barbara, Carly, Chuck, and Alicia, but all four have refused to return to the island to testify. I found at least one reference to them being subpoenaed three different times, and I guess Anguillian authorities can't or won't proceed without the testimony of those four witnesses. That's where the answers Casey's family is looking for are going to come from. So this also means that until this inquest happens, the police investigation is officially still open, which means police aren't going to share what they know with anybody, especially if they're considering possible criminal charges.

Right. The People magazine piece that I mentioned talks about an email that Barbara wrote in the spring of 2019 to some friends that said Anguillian police charged both her and Chuck with manslaughter, but then didn't end up prosecuting them because, quote, we had suffered enough. End quote. Okay, I'm sorry. What?

The authorities were just like, you seem really sad, and I know this is really hard for you, so we're just going to, I don't know, not charge you. Something like that. But here's the thing. For what it's worth, the family doesn't believe that this even happened. Again, there is no record anywhere of charges being filed, no paperwork or anything like that. Okay.

Hear me out. If that untraceable $40,000 was maybe to make the charges disappear, though. Again, if that even exists, you could say that we won't charge you guys with murder as long as you, A, pay us a huge sum of money, and B, keep quiet about the whole thing altogether so our reputation stays all bright and shiny. And tourists can keep signing on our beaches and all that stuff. Again, there's no record of any of this, so how can you even say that that's true? Now, there is something else that I should mention because you'll see it come up in

the source material if anyone looks into this case on their own. In late February of 2020, the family's private investigator finds two life insurance policies. One on Barbara and one for Casey. And listen, there's nothing suspicious about that. Life insurance is good. I have it, Eric has it. But what catches his attention is when Barbara filed for a payout under Casey's policy. According to still a mystery, she tried to cash in on that the day she got out of jail.

As you know, love playing devil's advocate, is there like an acceptable time you're supposed to wait? I mean, maybe she had to pay Chuck's dad back for that mysterious $40,000, like if it even happened. If that happened, yeah. Maybe she needed money to get them all back to the States. I mean, there could be reasons for her to want that cash. I totally get, and I don't know this for sure, but I kind of find it hard to believe that

no one would be willing to help her again, you have somebody offering a private plane for you. It seems weird that like, I have to assume again, never cash in on life insurance policy, that there's a lot of paperwork you have to jump through hoops. And if you're really so scared that you're like, we have to like cremate my husband's body, get out of here this second, like, wouldn't it be easier to get money from family than like go through trying to get a life insurance policy payout? Well, and now that you're kind of talking about it, I would assume that you would probably

need like an official death certificate to submit to the insurance company to prove that whoever was covered actually died, right? Yeah, I don't know. But listen, that's not the only thing that the PI discovered. He also found that just a few months earlier, just before they left for Anguilla, Barbara had attempted to increase Casey's life insurance by $1.5 million. Okay, but did she have a life insurance policy too? Like was there a policy on her where Casey would have then been the beneficiary?

So like I said, they did both have policies. It was a million dollar policy based on what Casey told his mom at that point for both of them. But the thing that I don't know is if they also tried to increase hers. Okay, so how much did insurance end up paying out? Like millions? Well, they haven't paid out anything, at least not yet. Even though Anguilla and police haven't filed any charges or named any suspects or even

shared any theories about what they think happened, there is still, again, an open investigation to determine the manner of death for both Casey and Caleb. As I understand it, until the coroner's inquest is complete, they aren't going to pay out at all. So basically, Barbara not going back is holding up the inquest and therefore holding up her insurance payout. Right. Is it really that simple?

No, no, no, you're not. Like that's it. It's a total catch 22. Okay, so that's it. Like the case is at a standstill waiting for the four survivors to go back to the island to testify then. Yep. The family is still out there rattling cages, trying to find answers to their lingering

questions, trying to find out the truth about what happened that night. But they are stuck in this horrible game of freeze tag between the Anguilla and police and the four witnesses where no one is it. The witnesses won't go back to testify, which means the inquest can't happen, which means Barbara's insurance won't pay out and no one ever really gets to the truth. Right. It's like a snake eating its own tail. But I did have a question.

Can't these people be extradited back to the island? Well, I'm pretty sure that they can only do that when there are criminal charges. And like, I mean, surely the fact that Caleb was strangled is enough to at least file charges and get them down here. I mean, you would think. But the thing is, again, like, I don't know enough about the investigation to say that they're like considering them suspects again, they're called witnesses. So I don't think you can charge anyone till you have more information.

You can get more information till you talk to who are now witnesses. And again, all of this on top of the fact that the Anguillian authorities, I don't think are chomping at the bit to press charges or even get that inquest underway for all the reasons we said before. Right. Like they're doing the bare minimum to keep the family quote unquote happy while also not hurting like their entire economy. Right.

And I assume that there's nothing the US government can do either. Well, actually, I'm pretty sure they can do something. Or at least that's my totally unqualified interpretation of Section 18 of the Criminal Code. Basically, what I found is the US government can't get involved in everything that happens in another country, obviously, but they can when it comes to murder, manslaughter and attempted murder or manslaughter. And I suspect that they need to pick their battles wisely and I'm not sure if they can

step in at the behest of the family against the wishes of both the legal next of kin and the foreign country in which the crime occurred, or I don't know if this request has to come for law enforcement for them to do it. Right. Right. According to the Murder in Paradise website, the family has contacted the US State Department but didn't get anywhere, partly because there were so few official documents and partly because they, again, are not next of kin.

OK, but I mean, doesn't that all change when the person who is next of kin, I don't know, might also be tangled up in all of this? I guess not, I don't know. So until something changes, until the Anguillian authorities file charges or get tough with their subpoenas, until the four witnesses actually go back there to testify at the inquest, that big pile of questions that Casey's family has been trying to get answers to since January of 2019 are still unanswered. And that intercontinental game of freeze tag continues.

So has the family's PI gotten anywhere with their investigation? Not that I'm aware of, nothing that is out there and available to be used for source material anyway. In statements from the family to media on the truth and justice for Casey and Caleb Facebook page, there are several sort of cryptic references to more information coming, like big stuff that's supposed to be coming, that sort of thing. And at one point in January 2021, there was a post on the Facebook page saying that the family had met with Anguillian authorities and that a quote, bold new initiative was discussed.

And either it's like a really long build up to that or more likely whatever they were promised by either the police or their PI didn't end up coming through. And I think like there are probably two ways to look at this case. The first is through a sort of conspiracy theory-ish lens where you see the insurance policy and the cremation and the silence as evidence of murder or evidence of something sinister like a planned deliberate poisoning. But the other one is that two men accidentally overdosed and police made a deal with the survivors that they wouldn't pursue charges for possession or manslaughter or whatever

as long as they came up with $40,000 and agreed to keep their mouths shut. Okay, if that's the case though, then calling this inquest and issuing those subpoenas like that's what? Musical theater? Well either that or another option, it's honestly possible the subpoenas didn't actually happen. It wasn't any official published statements from the Anguillon police confirming that they issued subpoenas.

That was something that the family said police told them. I mean, none of this would surprise me except for the fact that Caleb was found by police already dead and strangled. I mean, he may have ultimately died from whatever you said, complications from MDA poisoning, but ligature strangulation is not a complication of that. No, I agree. And that's where it's like even if it was an accident, even if it was something you had no control over, like something else happened, we're missing a piece of this story.

So it's like one of two big things that I just cannot wrap my head around in this case. Okay, so what's the other one? Well, the other one is Barbara's story. I mean, first of all, the changing nature of it over time, but mostly that she's saying she, Caleb, and Casey all drank from that same drink, that single rum and coke, but she just ended up feeling kind of sick and they straight up died and like I know she only had a few sips, but remember, if there really was four times the lethal dose of MDA in that cup and she had any of it, one sip, a couple of sips, I would think that she would

have been, again, if not dead to severely ill, like again, it's enough to kill two perfectly healthy fit men, but only make this 62 year old woman a little bit sick. Well, and what I keep coming back to is they took all four of them to the hospital to be checked out, right? So you would think that if she did ingest some of this poisoned rum and coke, she wasn't feeling well. The hospital would know, hey, police brought these four people in. We should really look into anything out of the ordinary.

Yeah, but I don't know if they did any like kind of drug testing on them. I think they just were like, hey, you guys seem out of it, are you okay? And I have no idea what was done there before they were released. But regardless, like, even if she's not feeling well, you would think that that would be manifesting in some way, whether she tells them, whether she physically acting unwell, I don't know. I have an up and down and sideways on this case, and I can tell you based on what tiny little bit of factual information is out there, official police reports, witness statements, that kind of thing, honestly, everything is conjecture.

But do I think there is more to this story? Absolutely. Again, maybe not cold-blooded murder kind of stuff, but there is something we are missing. Those four survivors might know more than they're saying, which, by the way, is still nothing at all at this point. And until someone with actual authority decides to take this on, I don't know if we're going to ever get down to what really happened that night in Anguilla. For more information, please visit our website at www.crimejunkiepodcast.com and follow us

on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode, but stick around for profit of the month. Crimejunkie is an audio check production. So what do you think, Chuck, do you approve? So today's prepet is named Jock, and he is a total rock star, Ashley. His owner Caroline sent us his story, and I thought it was just too good not to share with our listeners.

Jock? Or Jock? I was like, okay, I also asked her to specify how to pronounce her name. I'm just traumatized by that episode. It'll never, it'll haunt me till the day I die. Okay, well, you might get a kick out of this, too. I panicked, and I was like, is it Caroline or Caroline? Caroline.

It's Caroline, Brian. Brian. Oh, I was gonna say, we're getting really deep into life. The Sumter County Dose is an inside joke with all crime junkies, because if you guys didn't know, like, I messed up that episode hard, I never went back and fixed it. You can just see my Midwest showing from miles away. This one is what Brian Regan. Yes, one of his stand-ups was about Caroline versus Caroline and how people get mad about

it. All right, profit of the month has gone way off track. Bring us back in, Brett. Sure thing. So, Caroline grew up in an apartment, never had a dog, but she met a guy who had a Scottish terrier named Jock, and he was so sweet and playful, and she wanted to be clear that that's the dog she's talking about, and Caroline just fell in love with him immediately. But there was a little problem or hiccup in her relationship with Jock.

Whenever she slipped over, he'd wake her up in the middle of the night, like, get in her face and growl until she woke up. She would get up, let him out, but he'd freak out because that's not what he wanted. So she'd bring him in because no one likes the neighbor with the berserk dog in the middle of the night. No. And it just kept happening for, like, months, to the point that Caroline was barely sleeping, and she couldn't get it, like, she did not understand, like, during the day, he was the

perfect little gentleman, would be sweet, and so well-behaved, but in the middle of the night, he would just not let her sleep. And she finally found a solution. When Jock would wake her up, she'd take him to the kitchen and get them each a spoonful of peanut butter. He calmed down, and she got a little snack. It was something that they could work with. Me and Chuck just, you know, we have this kind of routine too, but it's salami that

we get at two o'clock in the morning. So after a month of their little ritual, she still wasn't sleeping, but she did notice that some nights her blood sugar levels would dip kind of into a dangerously low range. Stop, Brett. She's diabetic, so this was something to keep an eye on for sure. I can't. I know where this is going. I'm going to die.

Okay. One night, Jock didn't just wake her up. He woke the entire house up, barking, running around, licking her face, everything. It was like nothing he had ever done before. He just would not calm down, and he got super protective of her, like, almost biting her boyfriend when he got close to her. Is everyone listening, like, heart, like, beating? I'm, like, sweating, because I know what's coming, and I'm so obsessed, yes.

So they ended up having to crate him, which they never have to do. That's his space. He puts himself to bed there with his blanket, his stuffed elephant, but he was going so off the wall that they had to contain him. And Caroline finally checked her sugar, and it was super, super low, lower than it had ever been, and she was rushed off to the emergency room where she was admitted to the hospital for, like, three days to regulate her sugar. It turns out the insulin that she was prescribed was way too high of a dose, and if it hadn't

been for Jock and his instinct to keep her safe, she possibly would have never found that out and could have even died that night. I can't. That is so magical. Oh, no. So we know that dogs can be trained to do amazing things. Detect low blood sugar, the onset of seizures, all sorts of things to help humans with health conditions.

But get this, Jock has never had any training for that. I know that's what makes it so magical, is he was just, like, so in tune to her. And as far as they know, she is the first and only diabetic person he's ever been around. That is unreal. But because of him, Caroline was able to get on the correct dosage. She's doing great. She and Jock are inseparable. Well, he frickin' saved your life.

You better be. Right, like, he's up with her every morning so she's not late for work, waits for her to get home every night, insists on cuddling on the couch with her always, and still watching out for her. Caroline ended her note to us by saying that she wasn't sure she wanted to submit the story at first, but actually she was writing to us in the middle of the night, because Jock had woken her up again, and sure enough, her sugar was low. I have freaking chills.

I am so glad that she wrote us. This is one of the best stories I've heard in so long. What a, like, we get a lot of sad ones. I know. This is a good start to finish. So heartwarming. Also, just picturing this adorable little Scottish terrier, which of course we will be posting pictures of on our website, like, I don't know, saving someone's life, something

casual like that. I just... Dog of the year. Ugh, I love it. So as always, we like to highlight a shelter or rescue, and I asked Caroline if there was one that we could shout out for Jock, and she said that they are looking for their next fur baby at Second Chance for Life Rescue, and we'll be linking to them on our website as well.