Murder With My Husband - 212. The Sidewalk Stalker

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

Payton and Garrett explore several murder cases in Saint Louis, all tied to a common serial killer. Live Show Tickets: https://www.murderwithmyhusband.com/live-shows Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/th...emwmh https://www.instagram.com/murderwithmyhusband/ Discount Codes: https://mailchi.mp/c6f48670aeac/oh-no-media-discount-codes Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@murderwithmyhusband Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/into-the-dark/id1662304327 Listen on spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/36SDVKB2MEWpFGVs9kRgQ7?si=f5224c9fd99542a7 Case Sources: Forensic Files, Season 7 Episode 35: “X Marks the Spot” Fox2Now - https://fox2now.com/news/true-crime/serial-killer-maury-travis-the-street-walker-strangler/  Saint Louis Post-Dispatch - https://www.newspapers.com/image/142857903/?clipping_id=31904973&fcfToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJmcmVlLXZpZXctaWQiOjE0Mjg1NzkwMywiaWF0IjoxNjQ0ODU4NTg5LCJleHAiOjE2NDQ5NDQ5ODl9.1Z1HKjvrRspgE55U_G4G8psvVkhivjYy2JWF1BSwcMQ  https://www.newspapers.com/image/142061857/?terms=%22Alyssa%20Greenwade%22&match=1  https://www.newspapers.com/image/142814741/?terms=%22Mary%20Shields%22&match=1  https://www.newspapers.com/image/141160308/?fcfToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJmcmVlLXZpZXctaWQiOjE0MTE2MDMwOCwiaWF0IjoxNzA5NTk5NTk0LCJleHAiOjE3MDk2ODU5OTR9.B-bK-Xyh8TM9-YtiDUKplTKki7HUhSG5gu9lep0v2Zw  https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-courts/from-the-archives-st-louis-serial-killer-victims-were-less-than-human-to-him-police/article_6d10868c-b3ef-5e32-81ab-bd450eb85268.html  ABC News - https://abcnews.go.com/US/woman-found-serial-killer-lived-home-watching-tv/story?id=24467447 https://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/exclusive-serial-killers-home-movies/story?id=132005  CBS Mornings - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7wyKX23vuY&t=41s  The City of Saint Louis - https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/live-work/community/neighborhoods/baden/index.cfm  Pew Research Center - https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2015/06/26/americans-internet-access-2000-2015/ FBI - https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/serial-murder Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:01:05 I'm Peyton Marlind. And I'm Garrett Marlind. And he's the husband. I'm the husband. Another week, back in action. Reminder as always, re-pay not free. Bonus content, you gotta pay for it.
Starting point is 00:01:18 I don't know why I said free. It just sounded good to say free, so I said free. But it's not free. If you want bonus episodes and ad free content, it's not free, it costs money, but it's not free if you want bonus episodes and add free content It's not free it costs money But it's basically free because we give you such good content and everything's that and it's that free on patreon apple subscriptions and Spotify Do you want to check it out there will be links below everywhere? All right? Are you ready for your 10 seconds for this episode? or
Starting point is 00:01:41 This week I'm looking at new cars. Don't know what I'm gonna do yet, but I've been looking I'm always looking I'm always looking for new cars, even though I don't need a new car and by new car I don't mean like a new car just I love cars I like cars if I could spend every last dollar on cars and live in the trunk I would do it But that's not real life. So I don't do it and On top of that hot take for the week is del taco is better than Taco Bell, what do you think about that? I Disagree pain disagrees del taco is better than Taco Bell. I
Starting point is 00:02:15 Know people are gonna say oh, they're different. They're different. Okay, but we're just gonna take the two We're gonna put them side by side. Which one are you going to, Del Taco or Taco Bell? Taco Bell. If you've never been to Del Taco, you need to try it out first before saying you like Taco Bell and vice versa. You have to go to both and then you can't be, you have to be completely emotionless about it and you have to decide what's better. Do you know what it is about Del Taco that throws me off?
Starting point is 00:02:40 What? It's a little bit like Jack in the Box where if there's a place that is called Del Taco, but then also sells hamburgers and french fries That okay, but talk about this that too. So no, they don't they don't sell hamburgers They they sell all different types of Mexican food, but they have french fries No, they have nacho fries. They don't interest. No Okay, I still think Del Taco is better than Taco Bell. So let me know below No, they have nacho fries. They don't have french fries? No.
Starting point is 00:03:05 Okay, I still think Del Taco is better than Taco Bell, so let me know below. You're for sure Taco Bell? For sure. Peyton loves the Doritos. We haven't had either of those in forever, but Peyton loves- I still like Del Taco. I'm just- I know what you're saying though.
Starting point is 00:03:22 I kind of get what you're saying about that, but it could be a Mexican hamburger. You don't know? It's not. See? This is exactly, they don't call it a Mexican hamburger. You know what they call though? It talk about Mexican pizza. Okay, but just because you put Mexican in front of something doesn't make it Mexican.
Starting point is 00:03:37 I'm just saying stay in your lane. Okay, our sources for this episode are Forensic Files, season seven, episode 35, Fox 2 Now, St. Louis Post,Dispatch, ABC News, CBS Morning, the City of St. Louis, Pew Research Center, and FBI. Trigger warning, this episode includes discussions of murder and self-harm, including suicide, so please listen with care.
Starting point is 00:03:56 All right, as we know, the internet has changed basically every part of our modern lives, from the way we shop to how we do our jobs. And it's frankly kind of creepy how easy it is to keep tabs on people through social media. Really, you can tell exactly how people spend their time, where they go, and maybe even what they're up to right now. The World Wide Web has also transformed
Starting point is 00:04:21 the way police conduct investigations, not only thanks to massive databases or the way they can ask for tips and share information online, but also based on what their suspects do when they hit the web. Today's case, which was from way back in the early 2000s, was only solved with the help of a travel website.
Starting point is 00:04:44 It was from a time when a lot of people didn't even use the internet regularly, so life was pretty different from today. But the tactics the detectives used were practically unlike anything they'd done before, and when they solved the case, they made forensic history. So let's jump back to when the investigation began and the police never suspected it would be so groundbreaking. In fact, at the start, the murder they had to solve felt pretty routine. On April 1st, 2001, the police were called to the scene when somebody found a body in St. Louis, Washington Park. The victim was a 34-year-old black woman named Elisa Greenway. There were marks on her neck, her wrists and ankles that indicated she'd been tied up and strangled to death.
Starting point is 00:05:31 So it was clear she'd been murdered. But Elisa was a sex worker with a history of substance abuse. So to be clear, she still deserved justice. Everyone does. But her death wasn't a high priority at the beginning. She lived a dangerous lifestyle and there were countless possible avenues the investigation could take. It would have been very easy for police to let her murder stay unsolved, for her case to just go cold like we often see, except Elisa wasn't unique. A month and a half later, another woman's body was found.
Starting point is 00:06:05 Her name was Teresa Wilson and she had a lot in common with Elisa. Both were black sex workers who worked in or near the same St. Louis neighborhood called Baden. They'd both abused controlled substances in the past and while the police couldn't determine Teresa's cause of death, so they weren't sure if she was also strangled, her body was dumped in the same general area. So this obviously suggested a connection.
Starting point is 00:06:30 And then a bit over a week later on May 23rd, the authorities found another victim who fit the same profile. One more was found in June, one in August, and then a final one in October. So six, seven? Six. Okay. And after that though, the killer just stopped. It was like the killer stopped.
Starting point is 00:06:52 They had no more bodies show up. I always wonder, this seems to be a common thing amongst serial killers. They'll do like five, six, seven, whatever it is, and then they'll stop for years. Yeah. And I don't understand that. It's like, did they move?
Starting point is 00:07:05 Did they get put in jail? Like why all of a sudden stop? What happened? Well, and the police are thinking the same thing. They weren't sure what had changed. In total, like we said, this meant that six women were all killed in the same six months or so.
Starting point is 00:07:18 So between April 1st and October 8th, all of them were sex workers and most had been killed by strangulation. Maybe all of them were. The police just couldn't be sure of every woman's cause of death. But the odds looked good that they'd all died in the same way. So either way it was now undeniable there was a serial killer prowling St. Louis, Missouri. Even with the uncertainty around the causes of death there was just too much similarity between the murders for them to be unrelated.
Starting point is 00:07:48 So once the police realized that, they started noticing that some other older murder victims also fit the profile. For example, one sex worker was found dead in the summer of 2000. So that was almost a full year before the others were then found pretty close together. At the time, the police had figured hers was an isolated case, but now with all these other victims turning up, the detectives were thinking that maybe their serial killer had been killing people at least a year and a half ago. Maybe this was his first kill and then he or she solidified what they were doing and then went on to do this rampage.
Starting point is 00:08:24 But the clock is ticking again. In January, new bodies turned up after about a four-month hiatus of no activity. They were back at it. And to make matters worse, the police were also discovering even more remains of previous victims, as in people who'd most likely been killed in the summer or fall of 2001, but they then weren't found until 2002. By this point, they were too decomposed for the police to take their fingerprints to identify the bodies, and in some cases they couldn't even find a cause of death
Starting point is 00:08:56 either. The detectives assumed these women were also victims of the same serial killer because their bodies were dumped in the same area and on the same timeline as the others. Seems crazy to me that someone can kill that many people and nobody has any idea who it is. And that it takes so long to put together. How can you kill that many people and we're just like dang we have zero idea who it is. Well so police are like okay this murderer is even more prolific than we'd originally thought and they estimated the kill count was around nine or ten Yeah, by this point. That's ridiculous, but they're also like what body should be included in the serial killer. What shouldn't so now this was in a word Tragic it seemed like the police didn't have any leads and more women were losing their lives
Starting point is 00:09:42 The longer they took to solve the case, it's obvious the more people would die. So a journalist named Bill Smith wrote an in-depth profile on one of the victims. And in his article, he said he wanted her to feel like a real person, not just another statistic. He focused on the second confirmed victim that was Teresa Wilson. To research his piece, Bill interviewed Teresa's friends, people who'd known her for years. And here's what Bill said. So he's like, I wanna draw attention to this case.
Starting point is 00:10:11 Teresa was very independent, even as a young girl. She didn't like to be told what to do. And her parents were pretty content to let her explore the world unsupervised. On one occasion, Teresa convinced a friend to hop on a bus with her and head to an amusement park. They didn't tell their parents where they were going.
Starting point is 00:10:27 It was just a little adventure, except she and her friend missed the last bus back home and ended up stranded in the park. They had to call a family member and confess what they'd done so they could then get a ride home. But that didn't mean Teresa was always getting into trouble. In fact, she got good grades and she didn't drink or abuse hard drugs while she was in high school. She then got pregnant when she was 17
Starting point is 00:10:48 and afterward Teresa was a devoted mother. She was willing to move the moon and the stars for her daughter Chastity. But sadly, something changed when Teresa was in her mid-20s. It's hard to say what, she didn't tell her friends what she was struggling with. So Bill couldn't include an explanation in his article. But we do know around that time, Teresa began smoking, she began doing
Starting point is 00:11:10 cocaine, she developed an addiction. And after this, her life took a sharp turn for the worse, she turned to sex work to support her habit. Most days she'd walk up and down the street in Baden waiting for clients to pick her up. And from the sound of it, she didn't charge much. Teresa barely made enough to survive and she was in debt to her drug dealers. Some days she couldn't even come up with a measly 20 bucks to keep them off her back. It was a dangerous way of life and Teresa was arrested a number of times. She also went through a drug addiction recovery program. From the sound of it, Teresa
Starting point is 00:11:45 was serious about getting clean, but before long she was back on the streets. Her friends, the people who knew her before her addiction, worried about her. They told Bill that sometimes they drove up and down the street hoping they could spot her and bring her back home to safety. That old friend who snuck off to the amusement park with her once tried to wrestle Teresa into her car like she could help Teresa beat her addiction by force. It's safe to say she was trapped in a spiral and she didn't get out even after her daughter was removed from her care. The locals in Baden knew who Teresa was.
Starting point is 00:12:19 They were used to her disappearing for days or weeks at a time. So when she disappeared sometime in May of 2001, nobody thought anything of it and no one bothered to report her missing. In fact, nobody realized she was in trouble until her body was found on May 15th. And now thanks to Bill Smith's reporting, her story could be told. And as soon as it hit the newsstands, it was like Teresa came alive for the people of St. Louis. She wasn't just some anonymous body in these unsolved murders. She was a real woman who deserved to be remembered, which apparently made her killer furious. See, just a few days after Bill published his article,
Starting point is 00:12:59 he got a letter in the mail. And at first he thought it was a prank. The return address was obviously fake. It said it was from New York City, but the post first he thought it was a prank. The return address was obviously fake. It said it was from New York City, but the postmark showed that it was mailed from St. Louis. The name in the return address was Ithraldom, which was the name of an S&M themed website at the time. And the note inside was typed with red text and it said, "'Dear Bill, nice sob story about Teresa Wilson.
Starting point is 00:13:24 Write one about Elisa Greenway. Oh my gosh. Write a good one, and I'll tell you where many others are. To prove I'm real, here's directions to number 17. That phrase, number 17, implied the letter writer had killed at least 17 victims. At least. Which was pretty alarming, because the police had only
Starting point is 00:13:43 discovered around 11 so far. What a weird, I mean I always see a complete weirdo, he is killing people. Right. But that he got that upset, he wrote a letter. Yeah. That's, that's embarrassing. Also called it a sob story. Like what? I don't know man. So assuming the letter was real that meant there were five or six more bodies that hadn't been found yet. Now, in addition to the note, the sender also included a printed out map with an X on it. It looked like someone had downloaded the map
Starting point is 00:14:13 from one of those websites that gave directions back in the days before we had navigation apps on our phones. The X indicated a certain spot, the spot where victim number 17 supposedly was. The page was a smidge smaller than your typical 8x11 standard sheet of paper. It looked like the person who sent the message cut off the bottom of the page, specifically the footer where the website URL usually is. So whoever the killer, we're assuming, printed this off, didn't want the URL he used to be
Starting point is 00:14:44 trapped. I guess it was a way kind of of hiding their identity printed this off, didn't want the URL he used to be tracked. I guess it was a way kind of of hiding their identity. If the police didn't know what web page the killer had used, they wouldn't be able to trace the map back to them. Assuming that is that the person who sent the letter really was the killer. Bill wasn't so sure it was real, but he handed it over to police anyway, just in case there was something to it. And they followed the instructions to a T. They drove out to the address that was indicated on the map and searched the grounds. Sure enough, there was another victim there. Not very often that happens where it's real and true.
Starting point is 00:15:18 She fit the exact same profile as all of the other women and her discovery basically proved that the letter was not a hoax it was straight from the real killer. Can you believe that almost 75% of people have subscriptions they've totally forgotten about and I'll tell you what Payton and I are one of those 75% of people. From streaming services to fitness apps and delivery service it's never-ending there's seriously so many different subscriptions out there these days. Shout out to Rocket Money for saving us from flushing money down the drain and those forgotten subscriptions. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending,
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Starting point is 00:17:22 So this meant it was worth the detective's time to take a closer look at the letter itself. Obviously, this is not like the biggest piece of evidence they have. It's possible that the killer figured that they'd covered all of their tracks. The police didn't know their real return address because it was typed, there was no handwriting to analyze.
Starting point is 00:17:41 They tested the paper and the envelope for both prints and DNA. There was nothing found on it. However, the murderer had made one major error. Let's hear it. Had to do with the map they included. Now it's important to remember this is 2002. Only about half of all Americans used the internet at all. There was a, trying to think of what year it was, but I remember there was a certain website that my family used for directions that they would print out when they needed to go places.
Starting point is 00:18:14 You know what I'm talking about? I know they exist, but I don't know what one it is. I'm curious if it's the same one that you're about to mention, if you mention a website. Well, it was just Expedia.com. Oh, okay, it wasn't Expedia. Okay, so obviously the internet is not nearly as widespread as it is today, and a lot of the most popular websites
Starting point is 00:18:32 we use in 2024 didn't even exist yet. So on the entire worldwide web, there was only one site at this point that had a map of this specific area. And like I said, it was Expedia. The police contacted Expedia's parent company and asked if they had records on who had accessed that specific map. They knew the killer must've downloaded it
Starting point is 00:18:55 after May 19th, which was the day Bill's article was published and then on May 21st at the latest because that was the date on the postmark. It's crazy the things they can track. Yeah. It also goes to show you whenever you're trying to hide something online. It's impossible. Well, it's just nearly impossible.
Starting point is 00:19:12 It seems. And it's also like this killer obviously dumped the victim's body in a remote area. So there was only one place that would even have a map of that area. And he just didn't think about that. He didn't think about it. Granted. I mean, you have VPNs, VPSs now, but back then I think it was a little bit of a different story. It's not like they're going through his search history. They went to Expedia and said, we need anyone who accessed this map in these days, literally. So it turned out there was only one specific St. Louis area user who
Starting point is 00:19:46 viewed that map in the right date range. Of course the folks at Expedia don't know their name they only have the IP address for the computer that was used. Still with that IP address the detectives could figure out the killer's address hopefully as long as it's not like the library. But it was a house in a St. Louis suburb. Interestingly, it was only about a 10-minute drive from Baden, which was where many of the victims worked. That's so creepy. The house belonged to a 55 year old woman with no criminal history, so police are right off the bat are like, hey we don't think she's the killer. But she had a 36 year old son
Starting point is 00:20:25 who lived with her and worked as a waiter. His name was Maury Travis. Maury had been in prison on a number of occasions, but he'd never been convicted of a violent crime. His record was mostly robbery and drug related charges. Still, he was worth taking a closer look at. Now, while the police were figuring all of this out, I have to imagine that Maury didn't suspect a thing. Oh, for sure. Today, we're all so aware of the way our phones and computers and tablets can track us
Starting point is 00:20:56 and the ways our browsing habits and clicks all get packaged and sold to advertisers. It's common knowledge. But the internet was so new to so many people in 2002, a lot of individuals didn't even understand things like cookies or IP addresses. The web felt pretty anonymous at that time. So it's entirely possible that when Maury downloaded
Starting point is 00:21:16 that map, he had no idea it would lead anyone, especially the police, straight to his door. Either way, the police showed up at Maury's house at 7 a.m. on June 7th. They knocked on the door while shouting that they had a warrant. And when Maury answered, at first, he seemed more annoyed at the hour than anything else. His first words out of his mouth were, it's seven in the morning. And the police agreed. They knew what time it was.
Starting point is 00:21:42 They asked Maury if he knew why they were there. And I don't know if it was the officer's tone or what, but it was like Morrie immediately realized he was in trouble. He looked down, almost ashamed and said, yeah, I know why you're here. Oh man. When they searched Morrie's house,
Starting point is 00:21:59 they discovered a real world nightmare. Oh, I cannot even imagine what they're about to see. His basement was stained in blood and it was everywhere. How? Time out before you keep going. The mom? Just lives upstairs. Doesn't go down into her son's space. Yeah, I don't know about that.
Starting point is 00:22:18 She's older. Okay. Holden all my thoughts. The blood was on the walls, the floors, the ceiling. When they opened a filing cabinet drawer, they found tools like rope and gloves, exactly what a killer would need to commit their crimes. And there were a ton of video tapes. One was labeled, Your Wedding Day. And I'm sure the police didn't know what to expect,
Starting point is 00:22:40 especially given that Maury wasn't married and he couldn't have a wedding tape. Instead, the video was extremely graphic footage of him strangling one of his victims today. Oh my gosh. In 2002, this guy's filming his killings. It was so disturbing. All the officers who watched it were required to go to counseling afterward. And it wasn't the only one like it.
Starting point is 00:23:04 There were countless videos of Morrie with the different women he'd taken home. There is, oh, I'm probably controversial, but I do not understand how I know what happens, but how your son can live below you and kill that many people. I'm not talking about he went and robbed the grocery store or he went and took something from your nearest 7-eleven. We're talking about filming and killing people below you. Multiple. Seventeen. Maybe more. I don't know. I'm sure we'll get to it. It blows my mind. Yes, but at the end of the day, he is the only one responsible. A hundred percent. I'm not saying she's responsible or blah, blah, blah.
Starting point is 00:23:43 It's just how could that happen? Exactly. How can that happen? Right. And there were countless, countless videos of him. Sometimes he would just have sex with them and then he would let them go. It's not clear what made the ones different that he let go versus that he chose to kill. Some of the clips showed Morrie toying with the woman
Starting point is 00:24:02 before he murdered them. He gave them weird orders, like that they should put on a white garment and dance around for him. It's got to be loud too. Other times he would say horrible things to them, like they deserve to die. Once Mori was done messing with their heads, he either handcuffed or duct taped their arms together. And then I'm not going to go into detail, but he would torture them
Starting point is 00:24:25 and then eventually strangle them to death. It really showed a lot about Maury's psychology. He seemed to see sex work as deeply shameful, which was very hypocritical because he wasn't above hiring these women for their services at times. And he even used cocaine extensively, but then whenever he would talk on tape to these women,
Starting point is 00:24:45 he would talk about how they love cocaine more than their own children and like just really, really judge them. So it's odd that he saw these women as inferior to him. The qualities he hated, like their drug use or their sex work, were qualities that he shared with them. From the comments he made, it also sounds like Maury assumed
Starting point is 00:25:03 all of these sex workers were bad mothers who'd abandoned their children. And for the record, that wasn't true. Some of his victims were very actively involved with their kids, but Morrie didn't care. Regardless of reality, he decided that these women all deserved to be punished. One police officer said that Morrie saw them as as quote, less than human. I'm not too sure why he was so obsessed specifically with the idea of absent mothers and substance abuse. There was no indication that Maury's parents had ever been neglectful or abusive or that they ever used drugs. So the police weren't sure what made Maury the way he was. And even when like this all comes to light,
Starting point is 00:25:43 his friends are shocked that he would do something this violent. He never had a temper, he never got into fights. In fact, he was known as a shy, it quiet guy who stayed out of people's way. Someone who volunteered to help out his neighbors when they were in need. His girlfriend also said she never got the sense that he was interested in experimenting in bed. Those weird head games he'd played with his victims seemed completely inconsistent with his personality. Maury had really come across as a normal guy with a very normal childhood. Right up until the day the police identified him as a serial killer.
Starting point is 00:26:18 And I think that's interesting because according to the FBI, there's no such thing as a standard serial killer profile. These people can come from all kinds of backgrounds and they have all sorts of different motives. Some individuals do turn to violence after surviving horrible abuse and neglect, but others were just ordinary people with ordinary pasts who grew up to kill anyway. Which I'm not doubting that, but I would be surprised if there was something not said or something hidden just because of how many people he killed and what's going on.
Starting point is 00:26:53 It seems to be deeper than that. Right. Well, there's one thing there's no question about. He was obviously guilty. We can say that with confidence, even though he never confessed. During his interrogation, he didn't even seem interested in talking about the murders and said he was really curious about how the police had found him He has a lot of questions about that and the detectives explained everything they were like we got you through the map
Starting point is 00:27:14 Yeah, we contacted Expedia. We found your IP. I break in Matt man, and he was Fascinated he was like you what's an IP address like he was Early, I guess that makes sense. 2002, it's not really a very known thing. Right, he didn't understand. This was all news to him. But it was OK that he didn't confess, because the police didn't really need him to admit anything.
Starting point is 00:27:38 The evidence spoke for itself. Even beyond the videotapes in the torture chamber in his basement, at one point during his interrogation, Morrie sipped out of a can of soda, and the police saved the can to collect his saliva, then compared it to some genetic material they'd found on the victims' bodies. It's obviously a match. They also matched the blood in Morrie's basement to six of the victims that they'd found. And they'd figured out why the remains had stopped turning up in October of 2001 and then began again in 2002. During that short little window,
Starting point is 00:28:09 Maury spent some time in prison on unrelated drug charges. So the killings had stopped right when he was off the streets and then started just when he got out. And finally, this might be the creepiest piece of evidence that police gathered against Maury. Maury had plans to expand his basement. He'd made these hand drawn blueprints and they made it look like he was going to add rooms and he'd done research on adult diapers. The police thought it was so Morrie could imprison his victims for days.
Starting point is 00:28:41 I cannot even, I can't even think about that. He could lock them in these rooms, they wouldn't have access to a bathroom, you could then bring them out, put them back in. All I can say is thank God they caught him before he could make any of these dreams a reality. And I know that typically these stories then go into trial, but we're never going to make it to a trial in this case. Because when Maury got put back in prison, he got put on suicide watch because he had expressed multiple times
Starting point is 00:29:09 that he didn't wanna be there, he didn't wanna be back in prison. He was basically, a watchman was supposed to stop by Maury's jail and check in on him every 15 minutes. But on June 10th, so three days after his arrest, something goes wrong. The jail has never publicly explained how this happened. All we know is that the guards missed two check-ins
Starting point is 00:29:30 in a row, so 30 minutes, well, it was actually 45 minutes he was left unattended. This was enough time for him to take his own life. When he died, Morrie left behind a note. It included an apology to his mother. Among other comments, he said, "'I'm sorry for the pain this caused you and the family.'" But Maury, in that note, never apologized for the murders
Starting point is 00:29:52 or admitted he was guilty, never apologized to the victim's families. He died before he went to trial, he was never convicted. He died before he went to trial? He did this three days after he was arrested. Oh, okay. And since he died without confessing, the authorities still aren't sure how many women Maury killed. Even to this day, the letter he wrote, the reporter said there
Starting point is 00:30:14 were 17 bodies, but the police have only been able to definitively link him to 12. So some people think he might have been underestimating. There may be close to 20. Some people are like, no, maybe he was overestimating and didn't actually kill 17. Sadly, it's likely those women's families will never learn for sure what happened to their daughters,
Starting point is 00:30:34 mothers, sisters, or aunts. Plus there were those bodies that police found but couldn't identify. Or link. Even after Travis's death, the police still didn't know who they were. There's no guarantee that a trial would have even answered any of these questions, but it is so frustrating that Maury removed himself from the equation without sharing what he knew without giving
Starting point is 00:30:54 these people closure. Now, before I wrap up the episode, I do want to give you a little bit of an epilogue in this case, because this story didn't actually end with Maury's death. Remember his mother owned the house that he lived in and she didn't get rid of the property after Maury's arrest. Okay. Instead, she found a new tenant to move in and pay rent on it. Oh, I have so many questions.
Starting point is 00:31:22 Her name was Katrina McGough and Mrs. Travis didn't say a word about how the previous resident had murdered at least 12 women within the basement. Uh-huh. In Missouri, there's no law that requires landlords to tell you if someone has died in the house. And it was her son. Right. So Katrina moves in. She has no idea. Not until a family member called her and said she had to watch this documentary on this serial killer named Maury Travis The relative wouldn't say why just that she really needed to check it out Katrina turned on the TV and her house popped up on a screen now
Starting point is 00:31:55 Katrina was not okay living there now that she knew what had happened and she was also really annoyed that her landlord his mother had Withheld this information so she tried to break her lease and move out, but Mrs. Travis wasn't willing to let her walk away from the rental. And they ended up in a legal fight about the situation. Yeah, I'm telling you, there was something up with the mom. So eventually Katrina took her story to the press. And before long, she was appearing on the national news to talk about how desperately she needed to move out of this house.
Starting point is 00:32:26 The bad coverage encouraged the Missouri Housing Authority to get involved, and they helped Katrina and Mrs. Travis work out a deal so she could pack up her things and leave. Work out a deal. Yeah, which Katrina did as soon as she could. And I've got to imagine from that point onward, Katrina Googled the address of every home she ever considered moving into. That's, all I'm telling you is I still think there's something up. Well, really, this is just the big theme
Starting point is 00:32:51 at the heart of this story. The internet is so full of information and it makes our lives so convenient. But all that data isn't just there for our use. These websites are also collecting a ton of information about us with every key stroke we make. This was a good thing, right? In Maury Travis's case. Obviously the world became safer when he was arrested and taken off the streets. But it does make you wonder,
Starting point is 00:33:15 what other secrets are websites storing? Will they help break the next big case? And in the meanwhile, how much does our browsing history reveal about every single one of us? I can't believe how many people it killed that's so sad and it's just so devastating how bad it was. I know I've said this before but I really do we need to figure out a segment where I can just share my unfiltered thoughts because I just be getting all this pent-up anger. Nah, I was kidding. But you know what I'm saying? Well, I think that you're not alone in this but it's also when you when you covered these cases like we do multiple times a week, right? And we've been doing this for almost four years now.
Starting point is 00:33:58 It just gets to a point where you're like, it's frustrating. It really is frustrating. Screw this. Like how are people continuing to kill people and there's not better punishments? It's still happening and you know I guess it's just the way life and it's always gonna happen. Yeah. But it's just sad. Oh it's devastating and I think like you said it's just frustrating when you hear some of these cases it is just so frustrating because you're like, how could this happen? All right, you guys, that was our episode and we will see you next time with another one. I love it. I hate it.
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