Murder With My Husband - 198. The Deadly Sleepwalker

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

In this episode, Payton tells Garrett about the case of Scott Falater, a man who committed a crime while sleepwalking. Was he telling the truth, or was he responsible for his actions  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murderwithmyhusband/ Listen on apple: https://apple.co/3sMXYum Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6GaodpBsSpBuUMhmEXhjK2?si=67c9faf80cbf4fed More social links and AD DISCOUNT CODES: https://linktr.ee/murderwithmyhusband Case sources:  “Forgive Me For Killing You: The True Story of Yarmila and Scott Falater” by Marci Blau.  People.com - https://people.com/crime/scott-falater-case-man-killed-wife-claimed-sleepwalking-son-speaks-out/ ABC News - https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/video/sleepwalking-killer-scott-falater-wracked-guilt-wifes-death-75560579 CBS News - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sleepwalker-guilty-of-murder/ Medium.com - https://medium.com/crimes-before-midnight/the-sleepwalking-murder-9d55eb712e1c Inside Edition - https://www.insideedition.com/who-is-the-sleepwalking-killer-scott-falater-man-who-killed-wife-still-says-he-has-no-memory-of TheCrimeWire.com - https://thecrimewire.com/true-crime/Scott-Falater-The-Sleepwalker-Murderer-Who-Killed-His-Wife The NY Times - https://www.nytimes.com/1999/06/07/us/sleepwalking-given-as-defense-by-man-in-killing-of-wife.html Heavy.com - https://heavy.com/news/scott-falater-today-now-update-2021/ CrimeTraveller.org - https://www.crimetraveller.org/2017/11/homicidal-sleepwalking/ AP News - https://apnews.com/article/c7c3bc37038fdde048fd8e3caf3c84ee Oxygen.com - https://www.oxygen.com/sleeping-with-death/crime-news/can-you-kill-someone-while-sleepwalking-what-expert-says#:~:text=The%20use%20of%20the%20sleepwalking,%2C%E2%80%9D%20according%20to%20Michel%20A Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everybody welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder with my husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. I'm the husband. Well, if you're listening to this, you can probably tell that Garrett and I are a little bit sick. We are coming on the end of a cold. Um, but you know what, we're doing good. Definitely the worst cold I've ever had in my entire life. Yeah, it hasn't been fun. It's been crazy. Ended up with the sinus infection. But you know, we're hanging in there. And here we are recording. It is, we haven't recorded in a while because we actually got ahead

for the holidays and good thing we did because we got sick. We're able to record for a while. We're back here. It's a new year. Lots of stuff going on. We've got a bunch of big things coming up from our different husband in January and onomia and podcasts in general. And we hopefully have some new merch coming pretty soon. We're so sorry to take into long, but we figured everything out. We got some new merch coming. We got some other stuff next week that we're gonna talk about. And here we are, recording. So one of those things is that we are revamping things

over on Binge, which is my solo show. I'm really excited for this. Just a fresh new outlook for the new year. We are changing the cover art. We are even changing the name. So, it was formally binged and now it is into the dark with Peyton Moreland. Actually, changing the format as well a little bit, it will be true crime, but Peyton will

also be talking about some spooky episodes, some conspiracy theory episodes, some true crime episodes, a little bit of everything. It's gonna be very interesting. We've been working a long time on the artwork and the new format and new episodes, and it's great. I just really wanted to be proud of what I was putting out and so I'm really excited about these changes. All right, do you have your 10 seconds?

I feel like we've got a lot going on. Been sick for a while, like a lot. I got beat up. I got beat home, babe. I got a freaking wrecked. But I can talk now. Last night, I finally slept for the first time in a week. That was amazing.

And got some bad news for everybody. It's not funny. It's not funny. It's not funny at all. It's horrible. Not gonna be able to do... Not that I'm not gonna do A marathon. I'm not gonna be able to do this marathon. I haven't run in almost two weeks because...

Well, I've been better at it. And I'm just not gonna be able to run for probably another week just because I have a sign of some fiction now. And so rather than go out there and kill myself, I'm gonna give myself a little bit more time to train. I'm looking at another marathon, I don't know where I at yet. Looking at another one, maybe three or four months out. I'm gonna do that one instead, so I'll keep everybody updated.

Also some bad news, we had a shaved daisy because she had some knots. We try to brush her every day but she likes the snow and she liked the water and so those two don't go well together. So we had a shaved daisy, she looks like a little naked mole right now. But yeah, sorry everybody about the marathon. It's okay though, staying positive, paying things is a little funny. I don't think it's funny. I feel bad, I feel bad. You really were training, you were doing a little-

I was, I was going hard, I was doing what I need to do, but you know, I think. But you know how it is over here is that when it rains, it pours. So true with Peyton and I. This is the last time we ever try to get ahead. It's just one thing after another. But you know what, it feels good to be back. It feels good to be back. We are blessed. New year. Hope everyone's doing great. Hope

everyone has some great goals for this year. Peyton and I are going to sit down soon and plan some of our goals out and some things for this year and so everyone else is doing great. Here we go. We're with my husband, 2024. Who would have thought we started in 2020? That is crazy. It is now 2024 and just stay tuned. We got some things coming.

And on that note, let's hop into today's episode. Our sources for this episode are forgive me for killing you. The true story of your Milla and Scott Filater by Marcy Blow, people.com, ABC News, CBS News, medium.com, inside edition, thecrimewire.com, The New York Times, heavy.com, crimetraveler.org, AP News, and oxygen.com. Okay, we've all woken up in that terrifying state of confusion before wondering where am I?

How did I get here? What day is it even? Thankfully, that wears off after only a few seconds once we realize we're still safe and warm in our own beds, right? Well, that's not the case for everyone. Around 4% of adults experience something called somnobolism. The clinical term for sleepwalking, which means they might find themselves waking up in the most unusual of places,

like in front of the refrigerator or on a wet lawn in their bare feet, or if we're talking about today's case, at the top of their stairs, with the police screaming at them to put their hands in the air. Not remembering a thing until they're told, their loved one is dead, and they are the one who killed them. So today's story begins in a little red brick bungalow just outside of Chicago in North Riverside, Illinois. In the 1960s, it's home to the Kleksons, a family rooted in Midwestern values but not immune to the changing political landscape brought on by that decade. The Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, the blossoming hippie culture, amongst it all

is the teenaged Yarmila, the eldest of three children who always tried to keep the mood light in the Klexen home, using her excellent sense of humor to shield her brothers from some of the scarier changes the world was going through for this family. Those who knew Yarmila described her as nerdy but confident, blunt in her opinion, but open-minded towards other ideals, patient, particularly with her mother and namesake Yarmila Senior, who's constantly finding ways to get under her daughter's skin. But the first decade and a half of Yarmila's life, living in that little brick bungalow

with her middle-class family isn't of much note. Her story really starts around the age of 14 as a sophomore at Riverside Brookfield High School. When she met another student named Scott Fallater, it was around 1971 when Scott and Yarmila first sat across from each other during English class. Scott was tuned out, as usual, while the class discussed a story they'd just read, about a woman rowing a boat by herself across a giant lake. Some of the boys in the class laughed at how unrealistic the story sounded.

A woman could never row a boat that far alone, they said. Oh my gosh. And that's when your millis spoke out. I could row a boat across the lake by myself. She shut the other boys in the class right up. And when Scott looked up and locked eyes with her in that moment, he knew from then on, this was the love of his life. Oh, man. Nothing like a girl rowing a boat across the lake. It's me going. The two started dating a relationship that lasted well throughout high school.

But to Scott, it was more than just a teenage romance. Yarmila became his lifeline, his escape from what was truthfully a pretty challenging home life. In fact, Scott found it hard to have Yarmila over to the house to even meet his parents. He claimed that a lot of the time they were both intoxicated, just too busy with their own issues to get involved with their kids' social lives. Prior to settling down in Illinois, the family had moved around a lot for their father's work, but it might have been the chaos that kept his parents stable.

Because once they laid their roots and riverside, Scott's father's drinking grew especially worse. According to Scott's mother, Lois, Scott's fathers drinking grew especially worse. According to Scott's mother, Lois, that's when her husband became both physically and emotionally abusive towards both her and the children. And Scott, the eldest of five, felt a duty to protect his mother and his little siblings, which meant he took on the brunt of the stress at home. And while in some cases you might see a child begin to follow similar behaviors as they age, that wasn't actually the case for Scott. He always stayed level-headed, patient, caring, no one really had a bad word to say about him.

Instead, his trauma manifested a bit differently. In his early years, Scott frequently had bed-wedding incidents. His mother chalked it up to him being such a sound sleeper that his body didn't even know how to wake up to use the bathroom. What she didn't realize was this was a sign of a much larger issue to come. Around the time Scott was eight or nine, he woke his mother up from a very sound sleep, fully dressed for school, holding his textbooks in his hand, wondering when she was going to get up and take him. Except it was the middle of the night. There were several other incidents as well, like when Scott Wander downstairs one night completely

naked, or when his sister Laura caught him sleepwalking out the back door. She grabbed him to stop him from going outside, but he just took her by the shoulders and shoved her out of the way. I slept walk until I was about 13. Really? Pretty bad, yeah. My parents have some pretty crazy stories like full on sup walk. I'd go up and down the stairs. I would talk to people. I would scream. Tell us about 13 years old. I don't know. I don't know. No, you're gonna You're gonna make me my pulse speed up. Hopefully you're in kids, don't sleepwalk.

Oh, so the thing was, Scott always claimed to have zero memory of the sleepwalking event the next day. This is true. I never remembered anything. But over the years it continued and it seemed to be correlated with stressful events in his life, like around 16 years old when his parents finally divorced, or when he was 18 and lost one of his best friends in a drunk driving accident.

So no, Scott really didn't have it easy, which was why so many people who really knew Scott were shocked by how even killed he always was. They said he hardly ever lost his temper. He always put others before himself. Which could also mean bottling up a lot of his stress, which led to more frequent episodes of sleepwalking. Something I'm going to get into a little bit later on. Now, when it came time for Scott and Yarmila to go to college, the two chose entirely different schools, which meant they

only saw each other about once a month. Yarmila went on to earn a degree in microbiology while Scott went to a private university for electrical engineering. And much of Scott's free time was spent working a side job to pay for his education, and ideally his future with Yarmila. Because even though they were long-distance, he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. Which is why during Christmas break in 1975, Scott took Yarmila to their favorite restaurant, got down on one knee, and asked if she would be his wife. Yarmila was over the moon, and they set a date to be wed that following summer. But it was around this same time that Scott was making some giant life decisions without

really consulting his bride to be. Over the last few years, Scott had been looking for more spiritual meaning in his life. He'd been raised Catholic, but never connected with that doctrine. So when he got to college, he began a sort of religious quest to find something that felt meaningful to him, but instead religion found him. One afternoon, Scott opened the door to two missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and almost immediately something just clicked for Scott.

He began attending the church and felt a sense of community like he never really had before. Real friends, real meaning. The only thing it was missing was Yarmila. Question, before we keep getting into this, is his name Scott Peterson? No. Because there's a murder named Scott Peterson, correct? Yes. That was all the us? No. Oh. Well, there is, there is, we, okay, this is funny. This was actually our first episode of Murder with My Husband that we deleted. Was Scott Peterson no way? Yes. I don't remember that.

Yes. That's insane. Yeah. Okay. I just didn't know if there was any correlation. I don't even know what the Murdoch is about. I probably, my mind probably just remembered it, okay. So, Yarmila was less than thrilled about this giant change that was happening in Scott's

life. And the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is definitely a commitment. And so this would be a really big change for Scott. Before joining, the two were far more intimate, closer physically and emotionally. But since, Yarmila felt as though Scott was putting the guidelines of the religion before their relationship, including the very insistent, no sex before marriage rule. Still, Scott was certain this was something he wanted to do, and he didn't want to wait

for Yarmila's approval to move forward. So shortly after their engagement, he got baptized, leaving her so frustrated that she actually almost called off their engagement. But over time, Yarmila came to accept how happy the church made her fiance. She developed her own relationship with Scott's new friends and eventually warmed up to the doctrine as well. Then, just before their wedding, Yarmila also got baptized into the church. They were then married on June 28, 1976.

And come 1980, both Scott and Y Milla were ready for a change of scenery outside of Chicago, Illinois. The couple and their cat picked up and moved south till Melbourne, Florida to accept new jobs in their respective fields. And the following year in 1981, they welcomed their first child, a little girl named Megan Ann. Honestly, life in Florida was good for them. Their well-paying jobs bought them a comfortably sized ranch-style home at the end of a cul-de-sac. They were financially very comfortable,

and they were taking Megan to Disney World almost every other weekend. But when Scott accepted a new job in Minnesota in the mid-1980s, things changed for the family. No offense to any listeners in Minnesota, but I feel like it would be hard to go from Florida to Minnesota. I do, I do too. And things didn't necessarily change for the better.

The relocation was hard on your milla who found herself with no friend group and no support system outside of her husband, particularly because she'd quit her career to be a full-time mom to Megan and their newest addition, Michael, in 1985. Are they still all the yes at this point? Yes. Okay. And Scott admitted it was during this time that Yarmila began experiencing depression. At that time, it was the lowest point in their marriage, as Scott spent most of his time at work, away from the family, leaving Yarmila to fend for herself in the kids.

But the important thing was, Scott came to recognize this. He knew their marriage was suffering and felt it was time to make a change. He accepted a different job in Phoenix, Arizona, and by the late 80s, they were packing up for what they didn't realize would be their final home together. The couple purchased a bigger property than they'd ever owned before. A two-story house with a swimming pool and a big yard. Then the couple found their place in a local LDS church

and made friends with the locals. And before they knew it, Scott and your Miller's marriage was kind of back on track. Dang, that Minnesota really, really brought that condition. It wasn't good. Come 1997, Scott was working a high ranking engineer job at Motorola. Megan was 15 and Michael was now 12. The family spent their free nights and weekends supporting their kids at piano

recitals going camping, going to the movies, Christmas caroling with the church around the holidays, taking frequent family vacations, financially, emotionally and physically. Everything seemed perfect. Yeah, they were a pretty healthy family. Even their son, Michael, admired his parents' marriage. He claimed he never saw the two of them fight or exchange disrespectful words. They were always a solution-oriented couple, which was their secret to a successful 20 years of marriage by this point. Plus, they'd mastered their roles in the household.

Yarmila was in charge of maintaining the finances while Scott was the primary breadwinner. Although Yarmila had taken up a part-time job as a teacher's aide at a private school in Scottsdale, Arizona at this time. Now she was working towards dreams of becoming a full-time teacher, and this was an ambition that Scott shared with her. He was kind of getting sick of his career in engineering and found that he really loved teaching people, particularly because he'd been teaching at the church's seminary school every morning before work. And for those that don't know what that is, it is basically a scripture class

for the youth in the morning. Yes. And even though that was a volunteer job that added more stress to Scots already full workload, it felt too rewarding for him to ever give up. So yeah, the couple had a lot of things they were working towards and a lot of things to look forward to. Yarmila's 42nd birthday was right around the corner coming in February 1997. The family had a huge European vacation slated for that summer with specific plans to check out France, a place that Scott and Yarmila had talked about retiring to one day. But to Scott, that vacation probably felt like a lifetime away, particularly because things were

getting increasingly difficult for him at his current job at Motorola. That January 1997, Scott was working as a project manager on a new product Motorola was developing. But the goals he had to meet were proving to be very challenging. Scott found himself waking up all hours of the night with ideas for the new line. Sometimes sleep wasn't an option at all as he had to take phone calls in the middle of the night

with overseas clients. And as his sleep patterns became more erratic, Scott began to rely on something to get him through the long hours of the day. And those were caffeine pills. Even as co-workers noticed, like, aterol or like actual caffeine pills. It didn't clarify, like sources didn't clarify it more, just said caffeine pills. Okay. So even as co-workers noticed a decline in his performance claiming Scott was falling asleep in meetings. They said his eyes looked sunken in, he appeared depressed, and as if he had lost his spark. But the one thing that never wavered was Scott's dedication to his family.

He always strived to make it home in time for dinner or to do whatever family event he needed to attend. But by the second week of January, Scott was worried about meeting deadlines and getting the product up to the company's standards. Between that and teaching part time for the LDS Church, Scott was burning the candle at both ends. And he had a huge meeting scheduled for Friday, January 17th that he wasn't thinking was going to go well. He was prepared to tell some of his employees that the product just wasn't working out. And there was a possibility they might be laid off if they didn't hit their goals.

This caused even more sleepless nights for Scott who couldn't bear the thought of breaking that news to his team. That is tough. That's pretty hard. Because I mean, obviously you mentioned the beginning, kind of where this goes. It's a really curious to what the jury has to say about everything, if we get to that point.

So ironically enough, Scott would never make it to that meeting on Friday anyways, because the day before Thursday, January 16th, Scott left the house at his usual time of 6.15 AM to teach his seminary class before the kids started school. Then he trudged into work with the dread of preparing for the big meeting the next day. That evening, when he got home, he changed into some comfortable clothes and joined Yarmila and their two children for dinner.

The kids knew their father was stressed with work, but said the conversations and mood over dinner were nothing out of the ordinary. They assured him the weekend was right around the corner and that he'd be over the difficult hump soon. Which, it doesn't surprise me, I feel like majority of the time males keep everything in, pretend everything's okay and then yeah. On top of that, Yarmila reminded Scott that the pump in their pool still wasn't working and Scott promised he would take a look at it.

After finishing dinner, the kids went their separate ways as Yarmila curled up in front of the television. And at around 9.30pm, Michael and Megan came downstairs to kiss their parents good night before heading off to bed. That's when Scott remembered Yarmila's request. So he went out to the garage, grabbed his tools, and then went to look at the pool filter. Realizing it was too dark to get any work done on it, Scott called it quits and came inside. He woke Yarmila who dozed off on the couch and explained to her that he would take another look in the daylight. Yarmila nodded and went back to sleep as Scott went upstairs and crawled into bed just before 10 pm.

But when Scott woke up, he found himself standing at the top of his staircase. A team of police officers had their guns in his face and were yelling at him to put his hands in the air. Scott was completely confused. He had no idea what was happening, but he could tell he was in some serious trouble. Because his neighbor? Well he had seen everything. Oh my gosh, I don't even know what to expect, okay?

It was sometime between 10 and 11 pm that night when the Philators next door neighbor, a man named Greg Coons, heard the sound of moaning and crying outside. Greg got out of bed, went out to the backyard and realized those moans were coming from his neighbor's backyard. If first he thought it might just be the couple having sex,

but as the sounds continued with more distress, he figured he should go take a look just to make sure no one was in trouble. Now between the two homes was this tall block wall about six feet high. So Greg gets up on a planter to try and see over to the other side. That's when he noticed Scott milling about the backyard and another body rolling around on the ground. And it was Yarmila, his wife. Greg's first impression is, okay, maybe this woman just has had too much to drink. But then he notices, Scott's the one being weird.

He doesn't seem to be helping her. Instead, he goes back inside, grabs something, and comes out. At this point, the family dog is trailing behind him, which he instructs to lay down and stay on their back patio while Scott hovers over Yarmila, looking unsure of what to do with her. Then, Scott puts on a pair of gloves, grabs Yarmila by the hands and begins dragging her closer to the pool. He then throws her in, grabs her head head and begins forcibly holding her underwater.

And that's when Greg, the neighbor, rushes inside to call 911. Well, nevermind. What? I was just going to say, I mean, not Greg's fault, but I wonder if I would have called 911 or if I would have jumped over and been like, dude, what the freak are you doing? That's, I'm sure it's a whole different topic for another day, but I'm just saying like, I, I, I, someone's in distress. Yeah, everyone reacts different

and everyone has different things. Right, right. None of this is even in Greg's hands, but, Well, what Greg didn't see was that Scott had already stabbed his wife over 44 times before dragging her into that pool. Can't ever mind Greg. Then he changed his clothes and cleaned himself up.

But when the police confronted Scott in his home only minutes later, he was in a complete days insisting he'd just woken up. He kept asking what was going on and why they were there. One officer claimed Scott seemed rather calm, detached and confused, a large contrast was going on and why they were there. One officer claimed Scott seemed rather calm, detached, and confused, a large contrast from how most murderers act when they are confronted by police. What Scott couldn't see was the team of emergency responders who had moved Yarmila's body

from the pool to the living room to try and resuscitate her, but it was too late. Yarmila was already gone. At this point, Scott was already in handcuffs being moved to the back of a squad car, because his neighbor had seen him basically doing this whole thing besides the stabbing. But Scott was also now beginning to panic. Having not seen Yarmila's body since he'd woken up, he wasn't completely sure what had happened to her, and he began crying hysterically for the police to check on his children. Because in his mind, he thought there was a killer loose in the house, and he was worried his kids would be next.

But after a few moments, Scott realized, wait, but I'm the one in handcuffs. And that's when it dawned on him. The killer was probably him. Oh my gosh, this isn't making me, this is a kind of sad. was probably him. By this point 15 year old Megan and 12 year old Michael were wide awake equally as confused by all the commotion. Until a police officer explained to them that their parents seemed to have had a bad fight. Their mother was dead and it appeared that their father was to blame. Except both children had a

hard time accepting this truth. They told the police, no, no, no, our parents don't argue. There was zero history of physical violence in this household. To them, the situation just wasn't adding up. But neither was this sleepwalking narrative to the police, mainly because they found some pretty damning evidence in the back of Scott's Volvo. Like the bloody hunting knife he'd used to stab Yarnila, plus a soiled pair of gloves, shoes, and the clothing Scott had been wearing earlier. To detectives it seemed like Scott had known darn well what he was doing, like he had made a desperate attempt to hide the evidence of his crime.

Was that something someone really thought to do if they committed a murder while sleepwalking? Well that's the question, investigators and attorneys return to over and over again throughout Scott's case. All right, so pause real quick because this is nuts. I don't know, I don't know how I feel, I don't know what you do, I don't know, you charge him, do not charge him. Well do you charge him? Do not charge him. Well, do you believe him? I only do right now because he's had a history of it before. I think if he's never had a history of it, and this is something completely new, then no, bull crap. But like, like,

sources said that he had shoved his sister in his sleep before went in real life. He would never have done that. Yeah, he's walked out naked, it seems like he's done all these crazy things sleepwalking. And then you look at work and everything that's going on there, I have 100% think this is possible. Well, and it just as I was researching, I couldn't help but think this is clearly where Scott historically put all of his stress. Everything that was wrong in his life Came over to sleep walking and sleeping right. He's a love with his wife. There's no violent past

like He's stressed which could be motive every case we do were Something like this happens. There's always some past. There's cheating. There's something going on There's none of that going on here. Well, let me tell you what comes, what comes in the week's tip-fall. Okay, okay, okay. All right, all right. Once he was down at the station, Scott acknowledged even admitted, okay, it's possible that I killed my wife. But he maintained that he was asleep until the police burst into his house.

And you can imagine the tear running through him is he's like no I sleepwalk and they're like come on you don't sleepwalk you murder someone and he's like but I was asleep like just imagine trying to fight this narrative to the police and like in his other episodes of sleepwalking he had no recollection of committing the crime whatsoever. Scott insisted he loved his wife he would never mean to hurt her, but there was no taking back those few minutes. His life and the life of his children would now be changed forever. Scott was charged with first degree murder, and after that, never

spent another night at his family home. His kids went on to stay with a number of different host families from their church, visiting their at Jell is frequently as they could while he awaited his day in court a day that came over two years later. Oh my gosh that's there's so many layers to this as well you have kids this is a disaster this is sad. It was in May of 1999. So both sides knew this wasn't a matter of trying to prove whether the accused was guilty or innocent. I mean, it's pretty clear who did it. There was an eyewitness. But, I mean, are you a different person than your sleepwalk? So... The question in Scott's case was, did he do it while asleep? Or was he awake?

One of the best pieces of circumstantial evidence for Scott was his long history of sleep blocking and other symptoms of a disorder called parastomia, things like his bed-wedding, daytime sleepiness, having difficulty sleeping through the night. All things Scott claimed to experience years before he killed Yarmila. In fact, two of the world's leading sleep experts were brought to the stand to defend Scott's claims. They agreed that the stress from his work compounded with his recent lack of sleep could have easily led to this episode.

And much of the evidence they presented was backed in science. For example, sleep disorders can be due to a dopamine deficiency, a chemical that's released by your brain when you fall asleep to paralyze the body so you don't act out your dreams. And while I'm not sure whether Scott was specifically tested for this, I do know he's not the only one in his family to have experienced sleep walking. Both of his sisters' kids had episodes as had Scott's own daughter, Megan, which suggests

this dopamine deficiency may be a genetic trait that runs in Scott's family. There were even several inmates who testified at Scott's trial saying they experienced him sleepwalking while sharing a cell. One man claimed that for the first two weeks, Scott was behind bars. He woke up several times a week, got out of his bunk, and violently shook the bars of his cell. He was unresponsive, then just went back to bed and didn't remember it in the morning. That's even crazier that his cellmates saw this. So there's so much evidence that he was sleeping.

They also, but could he been faking that? Yes, 100%. That's possible. They also called to the stand Dr. Roger Broughton, a leading expert in the field of sleep study, who offered a really strong testimony in support of Scott falling victim to his condition. He pointed to the lack of motive in the case. Scott had no history of abuse. The family was financially stable. There was no infidelity.

They seemed fairly happy. However, the immense stress from Scott's work, compounded with his lack of sleep, was the perfect recipe for a dangerous sleepwalking episode to occur. Bro in explained that when someone is sleepwalking, the cortex of the brain, the part responsible for recognition, planning, sensory skills, and forming intention, are not active. It also doesn't make sense that an intelligent man would have done such a sloppy job of killing his wife in such a gruesome and public manner. This was premeditated chances our things would have unfolded pretty differently.

The defense proposed that on the night of the attack, Scott might have been having a dream about fixing the pool filter like Yarmila had asked him to do. Perhaps she approached him while he was sleeping and Scott, who felt attacked in his dream, reacted to what he thought was a threat. And look, Scott wouldn't be the first person in history to have gotten violent during a sleepwalking episode.

According to a study done in France in 2013, 58% of adult sleepwalkers displayed violent behavior. 31% towards themselves, and 46% towards someone close to them. One of the most famous sleepwalking cases happened in May 1987, when a man named Ken Parks actually drove 12 miles to his in-laws house and bludgeoned his mother-in-law to death with a tire iron. Oh, he must have really hated his mother-in-law. That's crazy.

In a shocking conclusion, Ken was actually found innocent of murder because he was sleepwalking, or at least he said he was. But things weren't looking as optimistic for Scott, who was facing a rather aggressive prosecution team. Particularly because they pointed to over 65 different pieces of evidence that suggested Scott might not have been asleep after all. For example, while Broughton argued that recognition is turned off during sleepwalking, Scott seemed to recognize his dog enough to tell him to stay put on the deck as he went and held Yarmila underwater. They also argued that Scott would have been woken up once he touched the freezing cold pool. The biggest question asked was, would a sleep walker actually know enough to change

his clothes and hide them in the trunk of his car? The prosecution argued the whole series of events was far too complicated and seemingly calculated for someone to just have pulled off in their sleep. They also pointed to a few other details that seemed to suggest the couple maybe was having issues after all in their marriage. Little things like, the fact that Yarmila was not wearing her wedding ring when her body was found. No, I, be honest, I have worn my wedding ring in like a month because I lost it. So, that one's already out the window for me. I don't have my own current.

And Payne doesn't have her on currently. We're both just bad at wearing them. Does something we don't love each other? I love you so much. Or does it? And that the couple had bickered about Scott's desire to have more children on Yarmila was kind of stepping back from the LDS church. Details that were either so trivial or so unfounded,

they hadn't even appeared on their own children's radar. However, the defense had a solid come back for why it might have seemed like Scott intentionally had his items in his trunk. For sleepwalkers, routine habits like driving, changing or showering are actually more common during an episode because the brain is wired to just do them unconsciously. Yeah, it's like autopilot, I assume. So if Scott had a habit of going to his trunk to store his items, which even his children argued he did, then it makes sense that this was something he might have done while sleepwalking that evening.

Well, a psychologist named Dr. Michael Bayless, who evaluated Scott after he was arrested, offered one of the final statements in this trial. Bayless said that in his 23 years of practice, he had never once seen, quote, a murder that was so devoid of pathology. You often get results that some type of mental illness or something is going on like paranoia, aggravated depression, bipolar disorder, Scott had no psychopathology. And yet, despite all the evidence stacked in Scott's favor, the jury found him a danger to society. Really? No, I thought for sure he was going to be found in a scent. After deliberating the members of the jury decided Scott was guilty of first degree. Holy crap. So this doesn't happen very often where I don't agree.

You would say manslaughter in voluntary manslaughter. Yeah, probably saying voluntary because he still killed someone. I mean, that's not okay. Yeah. I'd probably say involuntary manslaughter. He was later sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. I see.

And the reason I don't think I agree with that is because I think it can be in quotations fixed. As in, there's probably medications and stuff he can do while he's sleeping where this doesn't happen again. If he was sleeping. I mean, can you tie yourself down?

That's like extreme, right? Like I'm just saying, you could put hand cuff yourself to the bed. Could you, for safety measures, make sure that you're unable to get up, or would that just lead to an even worse episode? Like I just don't know. Well, I just think that there's medications you can take

that would probably make it, it could be wrong, but you don't sleep walk out. I would assume there has to be someone someone out there doctor psychiatrist Let us know, but I would assume so So when interviewed after the trial many of the jurors believed Scott may have started sleepwalking only to be woken up Mid-episode to find that he'd killed his wife So then he continued with trying to cover up the crime. Which I think that's actually a lot of work. Scott's team filed for several appeals and a mis-trial after the prosecuting attorney was

disbarred for several instances of misconduct, but as of this recording, Scott has never been granted a new trial. Wow. Today he's serving out his sentence at the Yuma Prison Complex in San Luis, Arizona. After his sentencing, Scott vowed to still make something of his life and continued pursuing one long-term goal he'd always hoped to achieve. Teaching. Scott has been offering courses to fellow inmates that teach them new skills and how to professionally

better themselves for their release. In fact, Scott's created an entire program designed to break the cycle of reoffending and has even trained other inmates to teach the classes alongside him. Dude, I feel kind of bad for Scots. I mean, he killed his wife, so I feel bad for the kids and all of that family. I don't know who I feel bad for. Since starting the initiative, Scots received dozens of letters from former inmates who've said these classes helped turn their lives around for the better.

Scot has also stayed in touch with both of his children who have long forgiven him for the death of their mother. His son, Michael, who went on to become a attorney in Nevada, maintains that he and his sister had a good childhood and that his father was always a wonderful dad to them both. Ah, heartbreaking man. He believes Scott's sleep disorder is the only thing to blame for ruining their family. But Scott, he's had a much harder time forgiving himself. He claims there is a single night when he doesn't lie in bed thinking about what Yarmila had to go through that night

and the pain and terror that she experienced. In an interview, he admitted, we were meant for each other. I never doubted and I still don't doubt that, so I will miss her until the day I die. Oh, this has to be one of the like, pure, saddest cases in a different way that we've done. Because even, I mean, if we're going based solely off the evidence, and it's not like, I'm not just sad for Scott if I're going based solely off the evidence and it's not like I'm not just sad for Scott If I'm going based on how has he not gotten a retrial That doesn't seem there's a make any sense to me especially because it's

25 years later whatever 24 years later. I feel like the technology The research and everything's probably better with sleepwalking and what he's done. I just feel like it probably wasn't first degree murder. No, no, no. What I think maybe should have happened is manslaughter, 20, 20 years in prison, you can get out in half the time, 10 years with parole. Okay, judge.

Not that I'm a judge or the parole. Okay, judge. Not that I'm a judge or anything, but dang, man. It's just overall, well, first of all, it's a, there's so many layers. What's that word? It's a, well, just like in a stonishing case to think that someone could murder someone

in their sleep, especially the love of their life. And not just murder, but stab them that many times. I guess what I'm a little confused about, and maybe a little upset about is juries and the justice system has no problem giving those that have split personality disorder, either reduce sentencing,

or they go to insanity sense and things change. His was basically that, but he's not actually insane. And nothing. I mean, first, should we immerse our imprisonment for life? Yeah, it's just also just heartbreaking for the children. And it's heartbreaking for Yarmila, whose life was taken away, whether by accident or, you know, I mean, I guess the jury thinks it was on purpose, or at least that he continued covering it up, which would make it first degree murderer. Either way, it's just a heartbreaking story and an

astonishing story, because you're just like, could this really happen? And then it just brings in all the layers of the cases that we cover of, there's so much more going on in someone's mind than as simple as like black and white. And it's just, I don't know, like it's just a crazy, crazy case. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Let us know what you guys think in the comments, messages,

social media kind of curious. My thoughts and my prayers go out to his children and just everyone who is affected and also remembering your millifer who she was. She was a beautiful mom. She was chasing her dream of teaching like she was so much more and I'm sure at trial she got completely overshadowed because of the for sure. He has the circumstances of this case. Yeah. All right you guys that is our episode for this week and we will see you next time with another one I love it. And I hate it. Goodbye.