Rotten Mango - #106: The Haunting of Corpsewood Manor (Case of Dr. Charles Scudder)

Episode Date: October 17, 2021

Charles took a step back from his self-portrait. He was just adding his finishing touches of paint. “Are you sure this is what you saw? This is how I’m going to die?” “Yes” the voice said. The painting showed Charles with a gag in his mouth and 5 bullet wounds on his forehead. It was a gruesome piece of art but everyone that knew Charles said he was just “eccentric.” They had no idea that’s almost exactly how Charles would later be found at the crime scene. With the painting hanging above him… Full Source Notes: rottenmangopodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to this week's mini-sode of Rotten Mango. I'm your host Stephanie Sue, and today we have another ad-free Spooktober episode. I'm just going to drop you off into the middle of the crime. Charles, he's sitting there, staring at this painting that he had just finished. It's a self-portrait, so it's himself. Maybe you're imagining him sitting on a chair, looking into the eyes of the audience. Maybe you're imagining him at a dining table with all of his friends enjoying a glass of wine. Something happy, something beautiful to hang up on his walls in his new mansion. But instead, it's him on his knees with a gag in his mouth and five bullets to the forehead.

Once he's done, he steps back and he asks his friends, are you sure that this is what you saw? Exactly like this? This is what you envisioned? Yes, I swear. He would later show off this painting to all of his friends, talking to them about how this is how I'm gonna die, guys. Look at this painting. No, my friend saw it in a vision.

I swear I'm gonna die just like this, because he had seen it. Now, they all laugh it off, because they're like, oh, that is just Charles being eccentric again. Charles is such a weird one, right? But they had no idea that his body would later be found in the middle of his mansion, gagged with five bullets in his skull near his self-portrait.

As always, full source notes are available at RottenMangoPotCast.com, but there's actually a really good book on this case called The Corpse Wood Manor Murders in North Georgia by Amy Petula. Yes, this takes place in Georgia where we just recently moved to Atlanta, so this is a little bit further away, but same state, same state. So this takes place in Ch where we just recently moved to Atlanta, so this is a little bit further away, but same state. Same state. So this takes place in Chattoga County, Georgia. Now there's a small town.

I know you're going to try to correct me and say it's Chattanooga County, it's not. Okay, so the river is Chattanooga River, but it's Chattoga County. So there's a small town, it's called Trion. Now they have a population of about 1700 people. If you check out those articles that are like, how do you feel like you left Atlanta without leaving Atlanta? This is one of the places that you go to. Because it just has like that old timey,

classic vibe, a classic talent filled, with some not so classic people. I mean, there were a lot of weird people in this town. So for example, there was a guy named Zeke. If you walked up to him and you're like, hey, I'm a little bit lost, how do I get to the gas station? He would introduce himself. I'm Zeeq. Let me show you to the gas station. He would talk you up a storm and then at the end he'd say, hey, take my business card. Oh wow, well maybe this guy's a salesman. Maybe he's just trying to make a good living. He's not working.

But when you look down at that business card, it says, Zick would all nudist. I sure do like running naked. That's it. You know you have to pay to make business cards, so he spent a bunch of money making these business cards to tell people that he loves being naked. What's his business?

Running naked. Running naked. You hire him for parties, and he just shows up naked. You get that shock value. Your guests are confused. Okay. Now, I think the town is also somewhat connected to a lot of crimes that happened nearby and a lot of these actually happened after the Corpsehood Manor murders, but I just kind of want to set the scene for you. So there was a woman by the name of Judith and her husband Albin. Okay, so when I say woman, I'm talking like she was a teenager when most of this was going

down. She had a rough start to her life. Her dad had passed away when she was only 9 years old. And since then, her mom, Judith's mom, has been bringing home every single boyfriend. And they were very clearly having sex in the house. So 9-year-old Judith, I mean, she's uncomfortable with this. Her mom wouldn't stop, wouldn't listen to her, so she starts sneaking off into the woods behind the house. She would sometimes sleep on a big branch. This all sounds like it happened a million years ago, but it happened like in the 80s, okay? So

when she's 15, she meets her future husband, 29 year old Alvin Nealy. Now very clearly, there's many red flags with this one. First of all, the age difference. She's still underage. He's twice her age. He's also a criminal, and he's already married. So after the first year of dating, he starts influencing her drop out of school. I'll teach you how to steal. We're gonna steal stuff. You don't even need school. What can they teach you about money?

We can just take it. We don't need to make money. We take money. She starts getting more and more daring so that Alvin will be impressed by her and then eventually she ends up robbing a woman at gunpoint on Halloween night and both of them end up going to jail for this so Judith starts writing Alvin these prison letters, like these love letters, and she's talking about, you'll never believe what the guards did to me. They raped me.

They will regret that they ever did this. I will get our revenge on them. And she goes from being the one that was listening to Alvin, and in prison something happened, and she became the one that started pressuring him to do things, telling him how things were gonna go. So once they get out of this prison, she becomes obsessed with this new hobby of hers, which is driving by prison guards homes and just shooting it up. Now, I don't know if this was the purpose.

I don't know if her aim is just really bad, but nobody was hurt. Thankfully. A little while later, Judith goes to the mall. She ends up meeting with a 13 year old girl by the name of Lisa Ann Mulliken, and she convinces her to come get in the car, will hang out at my hotel. We can just have fun. Girl to girl. But Alvin was there waiting for her.

And for the next three days, they raped her repeatedly, took turns, dragged her into a forest nearby, injected her with drain-o, shot her, and then pushed her body off a cliff. They also murdered another woman. They tried to kill her boyfriend, and on top of that, when Judith, she was one of the youngest woman to be sentenced to death at the time, I mean it was later commuted into a life sentence. While she's in prison, she even manages to kill somebody. Another woman. This woman had started writing to her. I don't know if this was a pen pal situation. I don't know if this was a fan. I don't know. I really don't know but they start communicating through letters and Judith keeps telling her, I want to take my own life.

But I don't want to do it alone. I want to do it with people, so that we can be together wherever that is. Maybe in the afterlife, it waits the same day at the same time, in the same way. We can be holding hands. When we go meet the darkness together, she's saying all of this nonsense. Now, this person, outside of prison, who's her pen pal, is just eating it up. I mean, I think that she was probably vulnerable. She was in a rough state in life and she felt like, yes, this is what I need to do.

So they talked about it for weeks and weeks and weeks. And when the day came, the woman took her own life. Meanwhile, Judith was playing cards in prison. And she just had a little cake out of it. She just thought it was the cutest, darnest thing. Wow. So this is a crime that's commonly associated with the area of Trion, the small town.

But this wasn't charged back to her. Like they didn't. No, because I mean, she already had a life sentence. And I think it was kind of, you know, one of those things. Then there was another scandal that played this area. Now this was a little bit, um, afterwards. So this is in 2002. Have you guys heard of Ray Brent Marsh?

He owned a crematorium that was founded by his dad and it was passed down to him. It was called the Tri-State crematory where a lot of the residents near and in trion would also send their loved ones to be cremated. Now, Tommy was successful in his business because he was generally well liked, but when he passed away, he passed it all down to his son Ray. Now the police were constantly being called

to this crematorium, because they were always dead bodies just laying around his property. Not even just inside the building, sometimes even just like behind the building in the woods, which is insane. I mean, people were finding body parts. Just walking around owners would be walking their dogs and they would stumble across human

bones. So they kept calling the police like, hey, I think something weird is going on with this crematorium. I think you need to check it out. I don't know what their process is, but this doesn't feel right. Now the police kept ignoring it. Oh, it just sounds like one of those haunted urban legends all you saw bones behind the crematory, sure you did.

You just want to get on the local news. They ignored the crap out of it. But finally, there's too many complaints. Like so many. Every single person that stepped in there, like a gas employee for the gas company was like, hey, I needed to fix something in there. Like a gas line? Dead bodies everywhere.

And the police are like, yeah, it's a crematorium, you know, there's gotta be dead bodies. They just ignored it. So finally, they check up on it, and when they do decide to investigate, they didn't even know how to respond. This was the level of like a horror movie that nobody expected in real life. 338 bodies were found. A lot of them were corpses, severely decomposed. They were just laying on top of each other, with fluids just leaking onto the floor. Some of them were suited, severely decomposed. They were just laying on top of each other with fluids just leaking onto the floor.

Some of them were suited up in their Sunday bath. Some of them were still in their hospital gowns. There was bodies with baby skeletons nearby. And the families of these corpses that were identified were sent ashes. And they're like, wait a minute. I got grandma's ashes on my fireplace. What are you talking about? So they go and they bring it into the FBI and the locals, you know, police like, these are my grandma's ashes. What do you mean you found my grandma's body

in the crematorium that doesn't make any sense? Because my grandma's here. She's been with me for years. When they checked, a lot of these families were sent cement dust, not ashes. Now, Ray was found guilty, sentenced to 12 years in prison. He got out in June 2016 and he knew the families wanted answers but he said he couldn't give them one. And that's the worst part of this story is, is why? Why did he do this?

So a lot of people argued, maybe he's just lazy. But to wheel these bodies off the property, which he would just stack bodies in the woods sometimes, or to even dump them in a nearby room, takes as much effort, if not more, then to place them in the incinerator. So then people thought maybe the oven was broken. But it was tested, worked perfectly fine. And on top of that, it had warranty. So it had a really good maintenance program

that's super affordable. It doesn't cost an arm and a leg to fix. But he never gave an answer. And now he's just free roaming around. What do you think the answer is? So there was a little bit of a conversation that he had mercury poisoning. Yeah, so there's a lot of toxins and cream nutrients and the ventilation wasn't good. So he was exposed to a lot of mercury. Okay. So a lot of doctors believe that because of that mercury, he, uh, what can I say?

He wasn't thinking straight. Mercury is in vitro. Mercury isn't retrograde, okay? That's what happened here. I have no idea. I mean, truly, I don't know. What's even more fascinating is that mercury poisoning is sometimes called madhatter's

disease because a lot of hat makers back in the day were exposed to a lot of mercury, so they would get this type of poisoning. And so because it's called madhatter's disease, they said that he was trying to create his own sick twisted wonderland filled with bodies. Then in the area, there was a Howard Bissol. In a trion convenience store parking lot, in this small tent with what two thousand people He murdered his girlfriend cut off her left hand her right leg tossed them onto the floor of his car Pushed her eyes so far into her sockets that originally the doctors and the police believed that her eyeballs were gone

They thought that they were gouged out then he cut out her heart and after that He just calmly buttoned her shirt back up, put her seat belt on, drove to Alabama, and when he was finally arrested by the police, he started casually pulling something out of his... Pucket to eat. No. Like a snack, like a kind bar, but it was in a softha kiss. It was his dead girlfriend's a softha kiss and he started munching on it while he was communicating with the police. Oh my gosh.

Listen, if you're from Trion, I know. It's only like a couple of bad cookies. That's what every small town is. Okay, everyone's like perfectly normal and having a great life. And then you get like those two bad cookies that make the whole town sound berserk, okay? It makes a whole town sound crazy. Back to the naked man.

Zeke the naked man did not have the same amount of notoriety of a man in town by the name of Howard Finster. They just called him Finster. He was a cookie street preacher. That's what he that's what people called him. So he would preach religion at church, but specifically mainly on the curbs, you know, like on the street. So okay, so he doesn't do it in the church. He does it on the street.

Yeah, he likes to do it on the street. And in his free time, he repaired bikes. Why does he call cookie street? That means crazy. Oh, I see. I see. Kind of like a mean way. I didn't know.

Yeah. So if I say, you're cookie today. Yeah. That means I look like a snack. You know, life is about perspective and how you take things. Yeah. So he's working on this bike one day and he's patching up the tire and he has this smudge of white paint on the tip of his finger.

And that white paint just slowly warps into a face. And the face starts moving and the face starts talking to him, paint, sacred, art, paint, sacred, art. And so Howard starts having a conversation with this face, the paint on his And so Howard starts having a conversation with this face. The paint on his finger. He's having a conversation with one of his fingers. Imagine walking in on this completely sober. He said, but finger, I'm not a professional artist. How do you know?

How do you know? How do you know? So he starts painting George Washington on a piece of wood and decided from that day forward He will be an artist his mission was to was to create 5,000 paintings That was the number that God allegedly had given him But he quickly passed his goal and created over 46,000 pieces of art during his lifetime You're thinking that's a whole lot of art. How much paint did he use a lot of the times it was in painting?

Sometimes it was sculptures that he didn't really make That's a whole lot of art. How much paint did he use? A lot of the times it wasn't painting. Sometimes it was sculptures that he didn't really make. Sometimes it was just literal trash. Okay, so imagine you titled something, Starbucks Mermaid Sculpture, but it's just to use Starbucks cup. And why does that sound like something an insanely rich person would pay millions for?

Does it not? Yeah. Now Howard had way too much art and he deemed it all to be sacred, so he need a place for it. So he starts construction on a garden museum that they called the Paradise Garden. It was originally an abandoned single story church that he turned into a sanctuary.

He added three stories on top of it, but they weren't really level. So it's not like this one building going straight up, like a rectangle, but more so like a cake with tears, you know? Yeah. The blueprints were obviously not from an architect. No, rather they were from God. So he displayed his trash, his dust covered old cars, his portraits of his heroes and at one point he had acquired a 200 year old corpse of a 17 year old girl that had been dug up from her grave, which was on her doctor's property, and they donated it to Howard.

Listen, if I'm 200 years dead, don't be donating me anywhere, okay? He kept her on display, he had even purchased a coffin for himself, too. He said, this is the coffin that I'm gonna be buried in, but more importantly, I wanted to be filled with 1 million letters deposited by my visiting fans. All of my fans, I want them to write to me letters to be filled with 1 million letters deposited by my visiting fans. All of my fans, I want them to write me letters to be buried with. Yes, very humble. His humility shall be buried with him too.

Now Howard's neighbor was not a fan of the sanctuary or his art. He told him that his little art palace looks like a wedding cake because of the stories and the architecture of it. And he screamed at her, well, I think your house looks like a peanut butter sandwich and he stormed off. So this is, I mean the house does really look like a cake. I've never seen a house that has more like more cake like resemblance than Howard's house if I'm being honest with you. But everyone tolerated his HOA violating cake building because he was generous. He had given away most of his money.

He really only spent money on his art supplies. Oddly enough, he even refused to buy his wife a clean pair of undies. Listen, I don't know if that's a king grip, I don't know if that's being cruel. I really have no idea. During their entire marriage in life, she never got like a clean pair of underwear.

So his main feeling, howards main directive in life was that there was evil in this world. And sure enough, in this tiny town, there really was some evil brewing. Why would you break into these apartments? For money, for drugs, whatever was in there. Why aren't you afraid of getting caught at doing this? No, who's going to catch us? What a police.

It was the height of the crack era, and instead of locking up drug dealers, some New York City cops had become them. I would suit up in my uniform, and we're going to want some drug dealers, and I know how to do it really well. This is the inside story of the biggest police corruption scandal in NYPD history and the investigation that uncovered it all. Did you consider yourself a rat? 100%.

I saved my soul just like everybody else does. Listen to and follow the set, an Odyssey originals documentary podcast series available now in the Odyssey app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your shows. I'm not a bad guy, man, but I love being that dirty mother f***er. Let's talk about some even weirder residents. Dr. Charles Scudder was the owner of the Corpse Wood Manor, which by the way you can still visit this in Georgia. It's like one of those hot spots for teenagers to go.

There's apparently hauntings. You can see ghosts. Some weird stuff happens at this manor. Yeah, don't be looking at me like we're about to go. There's apparently hauntings. You can see ghosts. Some weird stuff happens at this manner. Yeah, don't be looking at me like we're about to go okay. Okay. How far is that? No, no, no. I mean it is Halloween right? It's like hours and hours away. It's practically on the other side of the continent. If you really think I'm so scared. No, Dr. Charles Scutter, his childhood. He was born in Wisconsin to these two really respected parents. Both of them had attended college, which was really rare at the time.

They were a very wealthy family, and Charles was able to study whatever his heart desired. And that was zoology and languages. And after college, I mean this guy's a catch, she ends up marrying two times. The first time it didn't work out, the second time it didn't work out either, but he had four kids. Now it's not really clear what ended the marriages, potentially because Charles was this eccentric character.

He was a professor at Pharmacology at his university, which is the study of drugs and how they interact with humans, prescription drugs, recreational drugs, he was fascinated by it. How do you put something into the human body and get all of these crazy different reactions? But the word professor makes you think that he's a very traditional, smarty pants, right? No, he loved his purple hair.

He would dye it all sorts of colors, sometimes it was blonde, and he absolutely refused to tell anyone that he was a natural blonde. Like that was like his thing. He refused, okay? He had a pet monkey. One of his best interior design choices was this pink gargoyle fountain that squirted water out of its mouth. He would even bring it to Georgia, to Corp.

Swed Manor. While he was teaching at school, he was also able to do these government-funded experiments with drugs. So on behalf of the government, he starts testing how LSD affects people. And he starts running these tests. These experiments is a better word for it. And studying all these drug-debt people. Now as he's going through his second divorce, running government studies on LSD, petting

his pet monkey, he's a busy guy. He meets another man by the name of Joey Oda. Now Joey had a very different story from Charles. His family was poor. His dad worked at a hotel, and everyone called him, and I quote, a hotel linen boy. He didn't have an education after the fifth grade, and he was always just kind of getting himself into trouble,

getting into prison. Now, Jail is where Joey tried to build a future for himself. I'm sick of this. He learns how to cook, and he's so good at it, but he loved the idea. He'd always tell his inmates, one day I'm gonna get out of here, and I'm gonna cook on a traditional, old-fashioned stove. I'm talking a wooden stove, which is a fire pit.

I don't want electricity, I don't want gas, I just, I want that simple life. And that's when he meets Charles, and Charles is taken by him. Love's his simplicity, and he didn't mean it in this like, demeaning, alma professor away. Just like Joey is not jaded. He's not miserable. He really appreciates these things. Now it is speculated that these two were lovers. But this is the 70s. So being gay really wasn't accepted and they lived together as

employer and employee. So they were living together. Joey was the housekeeper slash personal cook. Now Joey moves in, starts doing the housework, and I mean Charles really was taken because he ended up disinheriting all of his family members, all of his prior children, and leaving Joey as the sole beneficiary to his will. So with less and less tying them down to Chicago, they kept daydreaming about the day that they would get away from this city, just live off the land, build their own palace, our own own castle deep in the woods where nobody can get to them, where we don't owe anyone. We don't want to pay electricity bills, we don't want to pay water bills, nothing. So both of them, they were over it, they sold everything they had, they quit their jobs.

Charles was 50 years old when he quit the university and as his own parting gift himself were a job well done. He took three vials totaling 12,000 doses of government level, government grade, LSD, and two human skulls. Somehow the school failed to notice this was missing. This reminds me of Richard's backsprains. I'm like, how do these things just go missing? And nobody notices, okay? How is this possible? So they pack their very small amount of bags and they take their two giant mass steps, their two big dogs all the way to Georgia. They buy this plot of land in the middle of the Chattahoochi National Forest in Triang, Georgia and he got a great deal for it. Charles got a bang and deal for this

piece of land, okay? There was a rumor circulating that he was able to get such a good price because the family that were living there before him, well all of them, okay? Mom, dad, kids, they wanted to go on a walk on their own property. So they're walking together, enjoying the sunshine when they come across a rattlesnake nest. And every single family member is bitten by the rattlesnake and died. Now there's nothing to back this up, but he did get a good deal. So when they finally move into the land, there's no house, just land.

And they were disappointed. They thought we were gonna get our dream land. Rabbids jumping from the tall grass, you know, fresh air, trees. Just rustling in the wonderful musical sound of the Wind Cottage Corvipes. But instead, on their first night there, they found a rotting corpse of a horse. So that's why they called it Dead Horse Road and named their future house Corp's Wood Manor. Because they found a corpse in the middle of the wood. It sounds a

lot freaky, right? Yeah. Corp's Wood Manor. So then you had to build their own house hand-by-hand using brick. They had no building experience. they just read books on how to build a house that's why I think it looks so fascinating and it's this huge haunted spot because I mean it just looks so bizarre it definitely does look a bit sinister because they have no idea how to build a house they also didn't want to build any corners so all the walls are rounded oh my gosh because it's speculated that evil hides in the dark corners of your house. But they named the house a corpse woodman. Yeah.

So I don't know if they like it or they don't like it. I know what's going on. So they managed to build this two story brick house. I mean, it looks very much like a castle. It's not massive, but do you know what I mean? It looks like a castle. All the walls are curved. They have three layers of walls to preserve heat in the winters because like I said they're not going to have running water, no electricity, and if this

was not a true crime podcast, if there wasn't something evil that happens here later, it does have a magical feel to it, this house. They were going to use the pond out back and turn it into this makeshift pool, they planted fruits, veggies, wheat, they used all of this to make incredibly delicious and strong wine for their gas. They kept bees, they forged the woods for food. They even built this massive chicken house by hand. So this chicken house was three stories bigger than their own house. The first floor was just filled with chickens. The second floor was filled with their canned goods, their storage food, just in case, but also tons of porn. Just like a plethora of porn.

Then the third floor is what they call the pink room. This is really ear you because I had a vision for a pink room because I'm obsessed with the color pink. Otherwise known as a pleasure chamber, everything in the room was pink. The walls were pink. The mattress. I don't know how they found one but it was pink. The pink sex toys just porn on porn pouring, and the room wasn't just for

Charles and Joey, but whoever wandered into the woods that consented to having some fun in the pleasure chamber, they would go. Now these two, they're living out their retired lives, you know, their dreams, with their manner, their pleasure chamber, they were bored. So Charles is talkative. He needs to be around people, which is odd because he wants to be isolated at the same time. So anytime they go into towns, he's chatting up people, making friends, inviting them over to the pink room. When people wander too far into the woods to go hunting or hiking, he would talk to them and be like,

you want to come into my pink room? Sounds like a nightmare, okay? But he was actually a really good social butterfly. He was fascinated with every person that he talked with. You would have his undivided attention. He's one of those people that makes you feel like, wow, he's actually really into this conversation. Am I that interesting? He loved talking to new people to find out more about their psychology. He loved the idea of finding out what makes people tick. And once he made you a friend, he would offer you a peak into the pink room. If you said yes, you go in and you have a ton of fun. If you said no, well Charles really wouldn't be offended.

And he'd probably just offer you a cup of tea. But it sounded like a lot of people were interested in the pink room because they would have these sex and game parties that would sometimes last days, if not weeks, where a bunch of people would come gather to have sex and do LSD. This part is a little bit strange, but Charles did keep an intense record of everyone that came into the pink room. Even at a long list of the guest sexual preferences,

sometimes even included photos in the diary, Charles would even do a quote medical check on the people before they entered the party, and those were included in the notes as well. So, words start getting around in this small town. Of all the things going on, yeah, whatever about Howard, Fenster, and his cake house, yeah, there's just seek running naked

across the Starbucks parking lot again. But hey, have you seen that corpse with manner? That's what they call it. In the middle of the woods, isolated. I heard, they're doing some demonic sex parties over there. Now, a lot of people in this town at the time were incredibly homophobic, so they started adding their little twists to this story. Not only is it just a regular, consensual gay sex party, no, no, no. Charles and Joey, they're taking advantage of straight men.

Charles likes to experiment on people. I heard he was a doctor before this. Oh, I heard he was a doctor that experimented with drugs. They completely ignore the fact that Charles is not a medical doctor and just has a PhD. But that's not the point. He was also continuing his LSD experiments, but in his torture chamber, this is he's going off-grid. He's continuing government experiments, but he's doing it on straight people. He's probably trying to make them gay. That's what they were saying.

Then when that rumor didn't have the shock value, the town gossipers. They start adding their own personal touches. Did you hear? He's a Satanist. Oh yeah. He's got that underground lab where he performs some medical rituals and sacrifices. I heard he's making a Frankenstein. No, no, no, I heard that his satanic Bible is bound with human skin, like Edgain.

There may have been a little bit of truth to it, because Charles was a Satanist. Okay, that was supposed to be a scary yes, okay? Which essentially, I mean, it just means that you're an atheist. Satanist, they're not sitting here wearing those black robes in the woods, like drawing out pentagrams like you might see in those movies. They're really not doing that. I mean, yeah, there's differences per person, but real Satanists, they don't sit there worshiping devils and demons. They're not trying to wreak havoc and violence onto the world.

They actually don't support any of that. They just kind of don't really like Christianity or most organized religions. They're kind of doing their own thing. They're harmless people. But he was the Satanist, it seems, and he had a lot of satanic art all over his house. He had pentagrams drawn on his chimneys. He had a Jeep that he would take into town that had a reverse pentagram with two points pointing downward, which is typically a symbol of Lucifer's fall. But it could have been an artistic choice, you know. They also had a lot of strange things in the house, a cabinet full of teddy bears, two paintings near the staircase, one of them was a baby emerging from the womb

out of the vagina. The other one was the same exact image, but the baby was dead and skeletonized. He also had a sign that said, beware the Thing. Which sounds like a cute Halloween decor. With it triggered the whole town into thinking, Well, I'll be darned, this man has summoned the devil. The demon to his house, that's what's beware the thing. It's the devil! Personally, I think the scariest thing about this place was the absence of showers. That was probably the most terrifying thing, okay?

But everyone else was nitpicking every little interior design choice that Charles had made. And that is when he meets 17-year-old Kenneth Avery Brock. Now he goes by Avery and he is someone who is at a really rough life. He was kicked out of his house by his dad and in his own words, he said, I've never been to a professional sporting event. Nor a live concert. never eating in a restaurant, never had a job where I got a paycheck where they took out the taxes, never filed taxes,

never had a driver's license, never been married, never had kids, never been a prom, never had a life or the chance son had to learn to live life. I don't know what it's like to be loved by a woman. So for most of Avery's years, I mean, he was just trying to get food on the table. He was out hunting in the woods, and that is when he runs into Charles and Joey near Corpsewood Manor.

And I was like, hey, why didn't you come over? Yeah, I mean, that sounds fun, do you guys have food? So they invite him into the pink room where they give him some strong wine and some food, and it's alleged that Charles had some sexual relations with Avery. Now, mind you, Charles is way into his 50s and Avery is 17 years old. So this is really inappropriate. Now Avery said that he was ashamed of it but he would come back and visit them more often for other sexual favors it seems and on his very last visit he brought his good friend,

Tony. Now Tony, his background is murky. Here's what we know. When he was 13 years old he shot and killed his two-year-old nephew. But he told everyone why I didn't think the gun was loaded, it was an accident. So they believed him. He was arrested multiple times for thefts and he escaped from prison and shot his brother-in-law. So this is probably not the best person to be buddies with. Now Tony is 30 years old now, he's broke, he comes across Avery who's stealing food and

because of their age difference Avery wants to impress him. I've seen some crazy things too. I saw, oh there's two insert homophobic slur devil worshipers in the woods who gave me LSD. So instantly Tony's intrigued LSD, drugs, that's an expensive drug to get. Well next time take me with you. So when they go together, they go to the pink room and they do these drugs together.

Charles meets Tony, everyone's getting along. Charles does sexual relationship stuff with Avery. And Tony claims when Charles tried to do something with him, he told him, first of all, Charles had homosexuality with Avery. Okay, that's a really weird sentence. Imagine going around saying, I had heterosexuality with Avery. Okay, that's a really weird sentence. Imagine going around saying, I had heterosexuality with my fiance. But when Charles reached over and tried homosexuality with me, I told him I didn't believe in it. But there was something that Tony was interested

in. He was convinced that these two guys at the manor were loaded. That they were living this strange, quirky, cottage, core lifestyle because they were eccentric. They had bland, which means they had money. They had valuables, they had drugs, and Tony wanted a piece of it, and he wanted Avery to help him. Now Avery was against this. I mean, he's 17.

He typically only commits crimes to put food on the table. What are you talking about? They were so nice to me. They fed me, they gave me wine, and Tony would convince him, why do you want to be friends with them? Do you know that you're not gay? And they essentially brainwashed you? And they raped you. That's what happened. So the more Tony kept telling Avery that you've

been taken advantage of, the more Avery starts hyping himself. He's like, wow, you're right, this makes sense. We need to teach them a lesson. They're raping people out there. They raped me. And he starts planning more violence on need to teach them a lesson. They're raping people out there, they raped me. And he starts planning more violence on what initially started as a robbery. He said, oh yeah, oh yeah, you think that they're just going to get away with doing perverted things to me? No way. They're going to think twice about that when we rape them with a hot, soldering iron.

I'm going to rape them until they tell me where the valuables are. So December of that year, Avery Balleros, his mom's gun to go quote unquote, rabbit hunting meets up with Tony and before they do anything, they decide to hang out at Tony's sister's house to watch football. Okay. And that is when they meet Joey Wells on a date with Teresa Hudgens. Now, Joey is also Charles's partner so we're going to call him Wells. This is Tony's nephew. Okay. Now, they're both teenagers, Joey and Teresa, who's like on their first date, Wells and Teresa. And Tony says, shh, Avery, we gotta bring them. Why? Why are we bringing extra people to our robbery?

Because if Charles tries to do some homosexual stuff, we might as well just sacrifice my nephew and his girlfriend. Okay. Now, it's unclear if Wells knew what was gonna happen that night. Avery claimed that he did, well said that he had no idea. I mean, it's just up in the air. Theresa definitely had no idea what was happening. When they get to the house, she's asking, what are we doing? Oh, we're just going to the top of a mountain

to the Devil Worshippers house. The Devil Worshippers? Yeah, it's just a couple of gay dudes with homemade wine. So she thinks it's really innocent. Now, on their car ride, they're having paint, then our glue, drinking alcohol, that's called Tudaloo. It comes in a bucket. Yeah, I know, it sounds like toilet paper company, okay? But it comes in a bucket and you just drink it. It's like very strong.

And once they get there, they're invited in by Charles, who just wants to have a good time with his friends. They're all in the pink room just wants to have a good time with his friends They're all in the pink room drinking wine having a good time when Avery says he's got to go back to the car to get some more Toodaloo so he comes back But he has a rifle this time now Charles is smart He knew that he had to de-escalate the situation and he was a bit tipsy so the minute that he sees Avery with the rifle he says Bang bang And for about 20 minutes, it worked. So they're just sitting there chatting.

And then Charles casually gets up to grab something and every grabs him by the hair, puts a knife to his throat and says, hey, give me your money. Charles is like, what kind of game is this? I can play your game. You know, they throw him onto the mattress. They start tying him up all in this completely pink room. And they're screaming at him, where's the money? I don't have any. It's all to the mattress. They start tying him up all in this completely pink room and they're screaming at him

Where's the money? I don't have any. It's all in the bank. Do you have an iron? Because remember they wanted to rape him with one. No, no, I don't I don't even have electricity So of course I don't have an iron and Teresa starts freaking out. She's getting hysterical. Please let us go Don't hurt us. I mean she's not tied up But she is losing her minds and before Charles is gagged, he asks her, are you okay? And she's like, what the hell is wrong with you? Worry about yourself. I mean, she was so shocked that he was even asking her this question.

So, Theresa and Wells, they're trying to be quick, they want to leave. But when they try to sneak out of the chaos of things, Tony forces them to stay by pointing a gun at them. And they keep telling Charles, well, if you don't tell me, I'll go ask Joey. Now Joey was in the main house cleaning, and so they go on over there and they ask him where are the valuables. Now Charles has no idea what's going on. He's still in the chicken house in the pink room, and he hears gunshots go off, and Avery

comes back to say, yeah, I just killed that man in those dogs. And they dragged Charles still bound down to the kitchen in the manner where Joey's just laying their blood everywhere. He had been shot in the head four times, once in his arm, and the two dogs were also laying covered in blood. Tony would later shoot the dogs again just for giggles. Charles had been calm up until this point,

trying to diffuse the situation, but when he saw his entire family laying that he started crying through his gag. They kept asking him, where's the money? Do you have an iron? And he's not listening. Charles is just trying to make his way to Joey. That's his best friend, if not the love of his life, you know?

Sit down or I'll shoot you, they keep yelling at him. And when they take the gag off of him, ask him where the money is, he responds. I asked for this. Now it's believed that his comment is referring to inviting evil into his house. So it's kind of the same concept. If you know those shows where vampires aren't able to enter our house without an invitation, so he had invited evil into his house. Tony was sick of this. So he said, okay, well we can ransack the place ourselves and he shot Charles in the face. Charles dropped to his knees, but he was still alive.

Tony would shoot him four more times, five times in the head total, till he was finally dead. And they go through, they ransack the entire house, but they didn't find any money. All they found was some jewelry, wine, a pistol, and some small little knick knacks. They couldn't even find the drugs. Now a lot of the furniture was made with very nice materials and could probably be resold for a lot, but they were terrified

that these were satanic symbols or sculptures. So they left it. Now when they get out to their car, they load it up. It won't start. There's actually a legend about this. That to this day, if you go to Corpsewood Manor and you take anything that's not yours. It could be the smallest piece of brick, maybe a little souvenir. Your car won't start. Dang. So they said, okay, well, we can't just stay here. We've got to take their Jeep.

It's less risky, you know, than to just walk out of here, but it's also riskier if we get cut because we have their car. So they steal Charles' Jeep too with all of his things inside and they start driving off. There was a painting in the house though that the killer's didn't steal. They didn't even notice it.

As near Charles' body, the self-portrait he had drawn where he was gagged with five bullet holes in his head. Is that true? Yes. Yeah. true? Yes. Yeah. That is wild. That is really wild. I don't even know what the chances of that.

Or how to, because it's very specific, he was gagged. And you're saying the killer, they didn't see the painting. No. So it's not like they're trying to copy the painting. They didn't even know. Wow. They drive off in the Jeep, and when they come across an off-duty cop sleeping in his Toyota,

they kill him for his car. I mean, it was kind of like a robbery gone wrong. And they start thinking of places to flee Mexico, Alabama. So they drop the Jeep. Now they're in this off-duty car, the Toyota, the off-duty cop's car. And Teresa, she was able to break free. Because she was being held captive for days

after this robbery, because they were scared. That she was gonna go to break free. Because she was being held captive for days after this robbery because they were scared that she was going to go to the police. She calls her uncle immediately. They run to the police station and the police had a hard job on their hands because we're traveled fast within the residents of this town. So all of them are sneaking onto Corpsewood Manor. They're trying to break in at night. They're leaving crosses all over the place and eventually, eventually, the two guys are

arrested. Avery was arrested for hitchhiking, so he gets arrested. Then Tony realizes that he's lonely and he would rather turn himself in than be alone. He walks into a random police station that's not near Trion and he has to convince and beg the police to arrest him. Because news had not traveled to that station yet and they didn't know that a killer had just walked in. So both of them were to be tried,

and the DA on this case was a strange one. His name is David, but he goes by the name Red, and he was mainly elected to be the district attorney because he was comedic, he was very funny. So he would say things in the middle of a trial, of a murder trial, say things like, shot like a dog, blood like a hog, but even whores deserve to live in my right.

Oh my God. So you know the word exacerbated, right? So he would say exacerbated, exacerbated. What the hell are you talking about? This case ain't even about sex. Cause he thought they were saying masturbated. So he's the one in charge of this case. I don't know how that makes me feel.

Now A. Ray claims that he didn't mean to kill them. I had just gone into their house. I was shooting around at random. Yeah! Because you know, you just make fun choices sometimes. And then one of the bullets had ricocheted off objects without leaving a mark because magical things happen in that house. And it went into the victims.

Tony said he killed them. He was like, no, I killed them. But I did it because I know I know they were the. Tony said he killed them. He was like, no, I killed him. But I did it because I know, I know they were the devil. And I killed them, and that's how I feel about it. When that didn't work, both of them claimed that they were bewitched by Charles or demons. No, the drugs. They were hallucinating.

They were seeing skulls everywhere. The dogs looked like lions. That's why we had to kill them. Meanwhile, the whole LSD aspect in court was barely admissible because the LSD that was taken into evidence by the police was constantly decreasing in size. Just the amount of LSD. Once a vial of LSD went missing and it was accidentally not logged into the evidence and accidentally snuck into the chief investigators cabinet at his house and he accidentally failed to tell everyone

about it. Because accidents can happen. So both of these men, they were found guilty on all counts and they were both given life in prison. So why is the manor haunted? Will remember Zeke, the guy that was nude all the time, will he move in to Corpsewood Manor? And he covered the entire pond. I mean, this is very specific with Cadillac floor mats

so that he could be naked and rummaging through there without getting scraped by sharp stones because he's completely naked. Cadillac floor mats, like the Cadillac car floor mats. Under the pound? Yeah. So that it feels. How much floor mats this year need?

Oh, you don't know. It sounds like a very pricey renovation. So that when he's, you know, rummaging around the pond, swimming around, he won't nick his, you know, his goods on a sharp stone. And the town started using Corpse Wet as a Halloween hangout spot. Mainly teenagers want to be Satanist, devil worshippers started showing up, Even paranormal investigators who were still convinced to this day that it was haunted. The chicken house is completely burned down and what's fascinating is I cannot find a single picture of that pink room.

But it is true. Yes, the Beware of the Thing sign allegedly was stolen and sold for a pretty penny on eBay for like a lot of money. And a lot of people who visit still claim that they hear either harp music because Charles loved harps, or growling dogs when there's no dogs around. Sometimes you might even see two men sitting on a lawn chair having a nice chat. They're dressed a little bit differently, but you just think, oh, it's just another curious visitor like me. Someone paying their respects. They have an interesting vibe about them.

But when these same visitors see a picture of Charlie and Joey, they freeze, and their blood runs cold. Because these are the men they claimed have been sitting on that very lawn. And that is the story of Corpsewood Manor. I don't know how it turned into this hot spot in Georgia of just haunted paranormal activity. It does look a little bit creepy. Can I see?

Yes. Is it one of the most famous spots or? Yes, it's one of the more famous spots in Georgia. Other than the Coca-Cola Museum. What? What the heck is that? The Coca-Cola Museum? The Coca-Cola Museum? The Coca-Cola Factory? The main Coca-Cola is haunted?

No, no. Oh, haunted spots. I'm talking about like just famous spots in Georgia. Like, we got the aquarium. We have the Coca-Cola Museum and then we have Corpsewood Manor. Oh yeah, that's creepy. Yeah, it does. Okay, so if you guys are driving right now, it's one of those places where it's completely made of brick, so it does give you even an old time year vibe than just a 1970s house. And because nobody's living in there,

nature has kind of taken over. So you've got the vines coming out of the windows, vines all over the building, all over the entryways. Very fascinating. What are your thoughts on this case? I mean, do you think that this is haunted? And what the heck happened that night? I mean, none of that made sense. Let me know, and I will see you guys on Wednesday for another main episode. Bye!