Small Town Murder - #13 - Murder Bubbling Under The Surface in Old Orchard Beach, Maine

Episode Date: April 12, 2017

This week, we look at the close knit town of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, where a young man's murderous urges went unnoticed, until it was too late. His actions would shock everyone, and leave nothing the same in this beach community.Along the way, we see why it's so dangerous to grow apples, how much cocaine can be bought with enough money for a trip to England, and how many flags you have to sell to be able to send a child to college!!Hosted by James Pietragallo & Jimmie WhismanNew episodes every Thursday!!Please subscribe, rate, and review!Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts!Head to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder!For merchandise: crimeinsports.threadless.comCheck out James and Jimmie's other show: Crime in Sports Follow us on social media!Facebook: facebook.com/smalltownpodInstagram: instagram.com/smalltownmurderTwitter: twitter.com/MurderSmall Contact the show: [e-mail] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You're listening early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. What if you married the love of your life and then stood by them as they developed 21 new identities? What would you do? This Is Actually Happening is a weekly podcast that features extraordinary true stories of life-changing events told by the people who lived them. Listen to the newest season of This Is Actually Happening on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. This week, we look at the tiny town of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, where nobody noticed a young man simmering with urges until it was much too late. Welcome to Small Town Murder.

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay! My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host. I am Jimmy Westman. Man, we are so excited to be here this week. Thank you, everyone, for your iTunes reviews this week. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It's unbelievable.

We've been going up the charts a lot because of you guys. We cannot. Honestly, guys, thank you. So high. From the bottom of our hearts. If you could, if you haven't already, please get on iTunes. You could give us five stars. You can say anything you want. Anything. We don't care. Lucy Goosey. That's it. Tell us you like pink cars. We're good with

that. That's fine. Just do that. It helps us out immensely. Can't tell you enough. Also, too, one more thing. If you just like us so much that an iTunes review is not enough for you to show your affection, you can also get on patreon.com slash crime and sports. That's our other podcast that you

should be listening to anyway. Get on there and you can make a donation on there to tell us how much you love us. And that is beyond words appreciated. Also, too, one-time donation. If you want to do that, you can do that, too, at PayPal. Our address there is crimeandsports at gmail.com, so you can do that. But never mind that stuff.

No, never mind that. Never mind all that stuff. Never mind that. Had to get that out of the way. Listen, I just want to get James health insurance. I really do. The day that that happens, it's going to be a huge announcement. It'll be nuts.

I would like that. Either or, both of these fucking podcasts. We're going to thank you guys big time because it'll be because of you guys. James will be able to get a well check. That would be amazing. Oh, wow. That'd be terrific. Never mind if I'm sick.

Yeah. But we hope you enjoyed last week as much as you could enjoy the horrors of Mr. Coddington there, of Herb Coddington of South Lake Tahoe, California. Two parts. God, it's so long and it's so much. And it was just, it was brutal. That guy was the worst. Like we said, we've covered a few people now

in crime and sports. We've covered a lot. He might be the worst. That's pretty hideous. He might be the worst because he wasn't like the stupid guy who was just like a mouth breathing guy who was like, I see some girls. Come on, get them. He wasn't like that. And worse than that, he's not like just driving down the road and like seeing a little girl and snatching her.

No, no, no. He's very calculated. I would say. And going to get kids where you trust that you're putting your children and they're safe. It was crazy. That was a terrifying episode. It really was. All the other ones, there's kind of a randomness to it.

But this was like so calculated that you were like, oh, there's monsters. They're real. And we'll get to one today as well. All right. We're going to get to one today. And let's get to where he's from. Let's talk about our town this week. It is Old Orchard Beach, Maine.

Fantastic. It sounds lovely. It's just like it sounds, too. It sounds like, and it is, it's basically like a time that, it looks like a community that time forgot, kind of, this beach community. It's like half Stephen King novel setting. And Stephen King, one of his novels was actually partly set there. I think it was Thinner was partly set there.

Really? Yeah. That's a crazy movie. Yeah. As we know, all of Stephen King's stuff is set in Maine. And this is just this little town. It's down in the southern – kind of the southern tip of Maine. Yeah.

In the New England area. It's not way up in Canada area or out in the ocean. It's one in the southern, kind of the southern tip of Maine. Yeah. In the New England area. It's not way up in Canada area or out in the ocean. It's one of those. It's about an hour, 45 minutes to Boston, 25 minutes to Portland, Maine. So that's the closest city would be Portland, Maine. But I'm sure they get like some Boston TV stations and stuff like that. Lighthouses and lobsters. That's what it is.

And also, too, at Giant's, we'll talk about a big beachfront arcade amusement park they have with a big Ferris wheel and all that sort of thing. So it's what you would think of like a small town that you'd take your family to for vacation for the weekend. It's a tiny Coney Island. Yeah, that's kind of what it is. But nice. It's nice. It doesn't have – there's no syringes in the sand or anything like that. It's a nice place.

It really is nice. Lots of people in short brown shorts and sandals. Yeah, khaki shorts and that sort of thing. And they're playing games and getting ripped off by carnies. You know how it is. Moms in long dresses running in the sand. Yeah, you know how it is, guys. It's in York County, Maine. I don't know what the significance of that is, but that's

where it is. It's zip code 04064. So two zeros in there starting out with a zero. Area code 207. It's 22 square miles, the town, but only seven of that is land. Oh, wow. Fifteen of it's water. Really? Yeah, so it goes out.

They got water calculated as the town? Yeah, they do that a lot. It's kind of what belongs to that town, so I would assume that's it. So if you fuck up in those waters, you get prosecuted in the south? I suppose, yeah. If you're doing a boat around there and they pull you over, you're going to go to Old Orchard Beach Court for a boat DUI. In New York County.

Yeah. In New York County there. Yeah. So 15 miles of water. I don't know if that's – I think that's the ocean basically. It's like a couple miles – it's probably two miles offshore or something like that. Maybe a sound or something close by. That's possible.

Something of that nature. Now, the history of this place, the area was discovered as much as you could discover anything. Discovered by the goddamn pilgrims. First Europeans. I'm not going to say discovered by because we know there was people there. But the first Europeans got there in 1603. So this is some old school time here. This isn't like South Lake Tahoe where they just, you know, Europeans found it 100 years ago, 150 years ago.

There were, basically, there was rivers nearby. So they're like, man, this is a good spot. Because back then, everything was about waterways. You needed waterways to bring your goods. Freshwater. Freshwater, fish out of there, everything. That's why everything is on rivers to begin with. Everywhere.

The two rivers nearby are the Saco and the Goose Fair rivers, apparently. The area was settled finally in 1657. That's how long it's been settled by anybody. But it took 50 years to settle it? I suppose. Well, it's just forest land. So someone has to make the commitment to start chopping shit down and put something there.

Tell some land. Yeah. That's a big commitment to say, especially back then, it's not like, all right, bring in the backhoe. Right. You had to get two guys with a saw going back and forth yelling timber. And a guy nicknamed Backhoe. That's it.

Yeah. Exactly. Probably a slave named Backhoe back then. Several of them. Yeah. Thanks to the team. But it's settled in 1657 by Thomas Rogers. And a lot of times these towns get settled by a family first, and they're kind of the whole town, and then more people come. He called it the Garden by Thomas Rogers. A lot of times these towns get settled by a family first and they're kind of the whole town and

more people come. He called it the Garden by the Sea. That was his nickname for it. They still kind of call it that based on it. He sets up an apple orchard. I was going to say apples. It's apples up there. He sets up a big apple orchard. Now it's a lot of vineyards up there. Apples and oil. That sounds right.

Oil. It was Thomas Rogers discovered oil in 1657 for his buggy. He sets up the big apple orchard. But eventually, soon after, his family – and imagine you set up. You go to the wilderness and you knock all this shit down. You set all this stuff up and you set up an orchard. But you should be careful where you're setting up orchards because who do you think that land belonged to before you? Yeah, no doubt.

Not you. No, angry people that are pissed now that you set up. Or they're happy that there's brand new apple trees there. Maybe, yeah. Maybe they're like, we need some apples. Let's get rid of these people because after a series of Indian attacks destroyed their home, they left the area basically. They were attacked and left.

That's awesome. So the town got the name from his orchard, Old Orchard Beach. Gotcha. Because he was the whole town at that point. The orchard stuck around afterwards for 150 years. They kept the orchard going. So apparently they did want apples. Yeah.

The Native Americans, they were like, let's get some apples in here. Let's see. In 1829, the first public house opened. Yeah. I think it was a bar. Yeah. You know, the first, that makes it a town, a place where people can go and gather. Otherwise, it's just some farmhouses where everybody is just thinking about that farmhouse down the road.

I bet they're in a weird shit. Right. If you don't know them. Is it 1821 or 1829? 1829 this happens. Wow, so it took them 200 years to figure out a distillery and, yeah. Yeah. And to start selling the shit.

Yeah, and to get enough probably people that they'd want to gather anywhere to begin with. You know? Maybe that was the deal. And 200 years to hopefully get the other people that are'd want to gather anywhere to begin with. Maybe that was the deal. 200 years to hopefully get the other people that are going to burn our building to the ground to leave. Maybe make friends with them. Either one. Hey, guys, let's work an agreement out. We've got half an orchard of apples for you, half an orchard for us.

Every time you come in, first round's on the house. Right. Let's make a deal. Let's do this. And you don't burn anybody's house down. So by the 1830s, it became a tourist spot because it's a nice place on a beach. Because there's booze. And there's booze.

Yeah. And you can go drink by the beach. It's no mistake that nine years later, they've got booze. You said 1829? 1830s. So 1830. Yeah. 1829, it was built.

And a year later, they've got tourism. Surprise, surprise. Well, you've got Boston right there. So people are actually coming out of the city, which wasn't even much of the city. Let's go get fucked up somewhere else. That's all it is. They'd go to the beach. They'd want to go to a quiet town on the beach.

And they did it. You could visit. They could have done that in 1828. Yes, they could have. But here, there was actually a place to stay. They'd have to pitch a tent before that. I'm telling you it was booze. It was probably booze.

If they had booze in Boston, I'm going to go ahead and assume. That's a good point. It's plenty there probably. Now, in 1883, it was officially incorporated after the Free Will Baptist Revival Camp was set up there by the Bates College president in 1881. They needed that shit to incorporate it? Yeah. Man, I guess so. Well, they needed a structure.

And I'm sure this guy had some sort of government set up or something where they could control people and tell them not to do things that they felt were wrong. That's what I assume was going on there since it was a Baptist thing. Now, most of the hotels were destroyed in a big fire in 1907 there. So they had to kind of rebuild things. There's still a couple original buildings there, though, like from the 1800s that are pretty amazing. Sure. During the summer, this place currently is big with Eastern European tourists for some reason.

Lots of Eastern European tourists, tons of them. I don't know why they're drawn to this particular spot. Very odd. French Canadians also come down for the summer a lot. Like, it's a huge destination for Quebec, and also two students from there come down for the summer to work. So I guess you run around there in the summer, you're going to hear a lot of French being spoken from what I understand.

Population currently of Old Orchard Beach is 8,776. It's a pretty small town. It's stayed about the same since 2000 after about a 12% increase between 90 and 2000. I don't know what people were thinking. They're like, let's go to the beach. And then they said, never mind. I don't know if there was a tax on their orchards. I don't know what people were thinking. They're like, let's go to the beach. And then they said, never mind. I don't know if there was a tax on their orchards. I don't know what the hell happened. Basically, stats here, it's about average of the male, female, 51% female, 49% male.

Median age here is a little old. It's 50.2. As we've talked about, the average is 37. So it's an old, I don't know if there's nothing for young people to do. You move, like these small towns a lot of times. It's people move away when they're in their 20s and 30s to work and then they come back later. Or it's just retirement people moving from Boston. That's what I would want to do. It's a nice town. Sounds amazing. You can hear that bell, you know, that nautical.

You can hear that going off. On the buoys in the distance. You can smell the salt water. You can hear the waves crashing when you think about this place. Seagulls caw-cawing or whatever the fucking noises they make. Not a lot of young kids there. It's about half the average of 0 to 14-year-olds. So kids under 14, there's about half of them as usual.

So that's a weird thing. About a quarter of the kid of the normal of age 15 to 20. There's 25% of that, which is nuts. 15 to 20? Ages 15 to 20. There's about a quarter of the average, but normally is there. Yeah, so kids under 20, there's just way less than normal. It's an older person town, and I guess the people who do live there aren't spitting kids

out as much. Every age group of 35 plus is above average. It's all older. Double for 60 plus. Gotcha. Even double for 85 plus. Slightly less married people. Double the divorced people of the average rate, which I found very interesting.

Much more widowed people than usual, which old people. That makes sense. There's a lot more old. About half the people that are married with children as average, which is strange. Double the single. No children, obviously. And smaller household size than normal. Under two people per household.

It's 1.99, just under the thing. We're talking about your average household is two people with no goddamn kids. Probably two people 50 years old, kids are gone. That's wild. Yeah, it's very interesting. The race and religion, we'll break it down here. Race, 92.23% white. Very white. I was going to guess black. You would expect in a Maine beach down here. Race, 92.23% white.

Very white. I was going to guess black. You would expect in a main beach town. But no, Jimmy, they're white. Shocking. Shocking. 62% is the average. 2.07% black.

12% is the average there. 0.25% Asian. So there's like one restaurant and he's got a couple of kids at home and that's that population. 1% native. 0.81% Hispanic. So not a lot there. Not a lot going there. 30% are religious, which is way lower than the 50% average. 20% Catholic, which you'd expect.

That's the one. You're going to expect that. You're going to get a lot of, you know, it's the Northeast. Yeah, people coming from Boston. It's the Northeast. So there's just a lot of Catholics. They're all over up there. 0.02% Jewish. All right.

That is literally like one person. Yeah. That's like a couple. But we got some. 50 years old, no kids. That's them. That's it. That's 0.0% Muslim, obviously, because we are in a beach town in Maine and, you know,

all these small towns. If we're doing a town, you can bet there's probably no Muslim people there. 57% Democrat, 40% Republican registered voters up there, which is about what you'd expect, like I said, Northeast. Now the education, they spend the average amount per student, way higher high school graduation rate there. There's 92% are high school graduates there, which is good. Average on all the degrees also, so four-year degrees, everyone's average.

Unemployment's much lower than usual. 3% unemployment, which is 2% lower than the average, which even 5% is very low. Household income average, $41,800 as compared to $53,000 is the national average. More people make between $20,000 and $50,000 than average. That sounds like fixed income. Exactly. That's what I was thinking. Fixed income or people that work the tourism thing.

If you go serve cracked lobsters down at the thing to tourists. Retired and you're going to serve that shit to whoever comes in from French Canada. Exactly. Or you're from there and that's what you work. Or you're a carny that works the amusement park. Who knows? 25% of the jobs are in management and finance basically. Three times as much legal as the average.

Really? As much legal help. So there's plenty of lawyers there if you get in trouble. Healthcare, twice the amount of healthcare because healthcare workers, because old people. Right. Full of old people. About 10% of the average of fire and police. So they're way below the fire and police threshold of where they should be in average.

But in the event that you fuck up, there's lawyers everywhere. There's lawyers everywhere, which is great because you'll definitely get off because there's no cops to gather evidence. You're not going to get caught. Plenty of lawyers to get you out of trouble. Cost of living overall, we do 100 being the national average for everything. Overall here is 107. So it's health and transportation are a lot more.

Even housing is a little more. It's a 108 as to a 100. So most of the time, these small towns, we get cheaper housing. But this, not really because it's a beach town and people want to be here. The median home price there is $200,000. How do you pay that with 41 grand? I don't know. That's what I mean. I don't know where. That's crazy. Yeah. Well, there's also a lot less and a lot more. I got to assume that it's people that did well somewhere else and moved there and then sold the house wherever they were at and bought a house. And now they're just living off their 41K.

And a lot of it's vacation, too. A lot of these homes that are more expensive that bring the median up are vacation homes because, as we'll find out here, 32%, almost 33% are vacant vacation homes. Gotcha. So a third of the housing is just off the market for vacation. It's right there. 65% of the houses are between $100,000 and $300,000. So they're in a normal range. Not a lot of low-end or high-end housing, honestly.

It's just – it's kind of – It sounds very like a destination beach community that's not like super – what's the word? Commercial. Exactly. It seems like a decent place to take your family. Right. You take your family for the weekend. Right.

It's not absurd expensive. But there's a nice restaurant down the pier. Exactly. You and your wife decent place to take your family. Right. You take your family for the weekend. You play some games. It's not absurd expensive, but there's a nice restaurant down the pier. Exactly. You and your wife can go get some lobster, that sort of thing. Go dancing and have some champagne. Exactly. And then come back to the kids who've been playing video games all day. That's exactly it.

And a town like this, too, the people who do live there, a lot of times they've been living there for generations because who leaves the beach, really? You know what I mean? So it's one of those things where the community is extremely tightly knit yeah it's a tourist town but the people the residents all know each other okay they all recognize each other i mean it's we'll talk about later when somebody i saw him in town today and i saw him yesterday and everybody knows everybody's business it's really i walk past so many people and could give a fuck yeah no that's yeah write them off right away they know stranger they know what everybody's doing

god damn it now if we have convinced you to move to old orchard beach main let's do the old orchard Yeah, no, that's the right them off right away. They know stranger. They know what everybody's doing. God damn it. Now, if we have convinced you to move to Old Orchard Beach, Maine, let's do the Old Orchard Beach real estate report. Guys, two bedroom apartment. There's average of about nine hundred sixty five dollars. That seems that seems reasonable. That's reasonable. One thousand twenty seven is the average.

So and that's for a beach near the beach. That's not bad. I could live with that. That's not too shabby. It's a seven. It's only a seven miles of land on the whole place, so it can't be too far from the beach. Yeah, it can't be too far. You want a three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath, 1,400-square-foot home.

It's a nice little house, actually. It was pretty for $240,000. It's decent. I like that this town got you to use the word pretty. It's a pretty little house, actually. It is. It's nice. It's cute.

I like it. It's adorable. Go on. pretty. It's a pretty little house, actually. It is. It's nice. It's cute. I like it. It's adorable. One bedroom, one bath, 675 square foot right on the beach, a condo.

I mean, the picture of it was there's sand from the beach. It was from the water, and there's like 15 feet of sand, and then there's your condo right there. It's $234,900. Wow! Which is expensive, but it's on the beach. That's outstanding. 675 square feet. You don't need is expensive, but it's on the beach. No, that's outstanding. Yeah, 675 square feet.

You don't need much more because you're on the goddamn beach. I dare you to find a place in San Diego, one bedroom, one bath, for under fucking $2 million. We'll give you half a mile from the beach. Never mind. This is literally- Never mind throw a rock into the ocean from your patio. Yeah, you could. You'd sit there and you'd get hit with spray as you sat on your patio.

It was ridiculous, man. It's so nice. And there's also, if you want to maybe move there and start a bed and breakfast, because I found a place that's clearly a bed and breakfast that somebody's selling. It's a nine-bedroom, three-and-a-half bath house, and it had these awnings. It was totally a bed and breakfast, obviously. It's obviously an Airbnb at minimum. At minimum, yeah.

It's at 3,600 square foot for 595 grand. My God. So if you want to move there, buy some of this mansion and deal with tourists. This place sounds so great. It sounds great, right? Reasonable. I want to go to this place. Yeah.

I'm telling you. If you want to just grab a tent and camp out. On the beach. On the beach. There's some land here. 0.27 acres on Wild Dunes Way. It's not on the beach. Right.

Can't be too far, like we said, for $120,000. That's great. So grab yourself a tent and head to Hull D'Orchard. For a quarter of an acre? That's fantastic. I would say so, man. I would say so. Now, we have things to do.

You can't wait to go there. I love this part. Obviously, restaurants and beaches are the thing, the main thing. If you look at things to do, the first 20 things are this lobster hut and this, you know, beach spot and this alcove and this restaurant on the beach. Also, too, they have June 3rd. Oh, boy. And that Veterans Memorial Park is the Scottish Festival, the annual Scottish Festival. Fantastic. On Facebook, it says that 812 people are currently going. So there's a I checked that out. So you might want to get down to the – It's a monster. It's a monster event. It's a big festival down there.

The Scottish Festival. The Scottish Festival. That sounds like – don't they eat like bratwurst and haggis and stuff? Haggis and – well, like you said, booze, Jimmy. Yeah. They have booze. They will attract the Scots. Ginger booze drinking, sons of guns.

You know it, man. And also, too, of course, the Palace Playland Amusement Park is the main attraction of this town. It's built in 1902, which is amazing. It's an old – It's an old building. It's not a building. It'sland amusement park is the main attraction of this town it's built in 1902 oh which is amazing it's an old building it's not a bill it's an amusement park oh my gosh old timey like amusement parks so it's all outdoors yeah it's amazing it's on four acres of beachfront property fantastic i mean think about that nowadays they would never put that in shit on that on that beach but i'll go look at it. They would never put that. They'd be like, that's a valuable real estate. Get this fucking Ferris wheel out of here.

Then, I mean, this is like the town's center of the town. It's four acres of beachfront. Think about that. That's crazy. That's got to be worth. It's insane. But they've been there since 1902, so what are you going to do? It's still around today.

It's got a huge new Ferris wheel they put in because they had the old one. Typical beachfront pier stuff with arcades and rides, and you can throw those milk bottles that don't fall down, and you can throw the ball at them. The park site claims that it is, quote, New England's only, and that's capitalized, so it must be fucking true, New England's only beachfront amusement park. I have no idea if that's true, and I doubt it is. I was just going to say, I feel like that's not true. What are all of New England?

Is it seven or is it Vermont, Virginia? I don't even know them all. That's the other thing. It's not Virginia. That I know for sure. Virginia is way down south. Yeah, Virginia is down south. Oh, yeah, yeah, you're right.

You're right. It's way too far south. Maine, Connecticut, Mass. Well, Connecticut's in the tri-state area. I don't know if it's also in it. This is what I mean, too. They could be lying based on like, well, that's not, we don't count as new england and we don't do this rhode island delaware region more than anything i think delaware's involved in it delaware's like down south too like there's

and i don't want to sit here and just speculate i'm gonna fucking google it i also yeah you could do that rhode island is involved in it i know for sure massachusetts connecticut maine uh possibly new hampshire not sure anyway, it doesn't matter. Now let's get into the thing that matters for us, and that's crime. What do you say here? The crime, property crime in this town, burglary, larceny, theft, et cetera, all that is more than 10% higher than the national average here. Really? It's a tourist town.

Yeah, I can see that. Yeah, you never know what kind of fuckery is going on, stupid shit. Now, violent crimes, murder, rape, robbery, rape robbery assault almost 20 higher than the national average so maybe that booze is flowing maybe you're 100 right on that maybe maybe it's definitely possible but let's talk about a family in this town our family that's it's tragedy will happen to obviously otherwise we wouldn't be bringing them up so let's talk about that uh now, we'll start out with a man named Christopher Balduke. OK. Baldick, Balduke.

I think it's Balduke. We'll call him that. Go ahead. Christopher Balduke. He owns a couple of stores downtown. This is his thing. He's got one of these shops. One of them is a flag store.

OK. It's called Blustery Flags, I believe. And it's a Blustery Day Flags is the name of the place. It was killing on November 12th. Oh, you know. Or September 12th. Yeah, yeah. He's just got, I don't know, because it's Blustery Day Flags is the name of the place. It was killing on November 12th. Oh, you know. September 12th. Yeah, yeah. He's just got, I don't know, because it's breezy there.

People buy flags for shit. They put them on their boats. They put them on their house. I don't know what the hell these, but apparently. He made a gaggle of money September 12th, though. I guarantee it. Yeah, I'm sure he did. I'm sure he did.

I don't know if he owned it then, but you never know. Now, his mom was, or the mother in this case, not his mom, the mother in this case. His wife is Carol Balduke. And she is they're both 42 years old. And when this story is taking place now, the mother, she's the president of the Neighborhood Association. He owns a nice little a little a little store downtown. Yeah. That sells flags.

They're a nice family. It's one of those things are nice family. Nice enough for nice people that are from the outside. They're a nice family. It's one of those things. They're a nice family. I mean, nice enough. Nice enough. For people that are – I hate HOAs. That's what I mean. That's where I'm going with this. I don't think there's HOAs here. The Neighborhood Association, not the Homeowners Association.

Okay. This is just like I think this is probably like, hey, we're going to set up a parade downtown. And we're going to do – I think it's shit like that. I'm into that. Yeah, let's set up a flower bed at the end of the street so everybody, when they turn on the street, will think we live in a pretty area. That's sweet. I think it's one of those things. Or else she was a nosy, horrible person that told people what color to paint their fucking house.

One of the two. I'm not sure which. We're going to say she's a nice person at this point. I'm going with that. We don't know any better. We don't know any better. Now, they have two children. They actually have one child that is theirs completely, and that is Josh Balduke.

He's 15 years old at this point. He is their child of both of them. And then there's Matthew Cushing. Matthew Cushing is Carol's son, not Christopher's. Christopher is his stepson. Yeah. Yeah, is his stepfather. So Matthew's parents, Carol and her ex-husband, divorced when Matthew was just a baby.

He never knew his father to the point of his stepfather, Christopher, when his mother and Christopher got together. He always thought that was his father. And yeah, he didn't find out until he was like seven years old that that was not his father. Oh, that's tough. That is tough. And that'll maybe give you a little anger underneath that nobody told you this type

of shit. But it's interesting. Matthew would spend the weekends with his father after that. Once he found out that wasn't his real father, his father, I guess, wanted to see him and decided that he was going to not be a piece of garbage for five minutes and check out his son. Matthew would go over there and spend weekends there. How old is Matthew?

At this point, he is – well, they were – we'll get into how old he is when we get to our deal here. But we're talking as a child. He's seven years old. He starts going over with his dad. Gotcha. So that's what happens there. He says he was scared of his stepfather

later on. He claims that Christopher was abusive to him, but yet everyone outside the family says that Christopher treated Matthew really well. He said he cared about him. He tried to push him, that sort of thing, in the right direction. And Matthew says otherwise though. It's here, but we're

not sure what that's all about. Now, he claims that he had urges, Matthew, early as a child, as six, seven, five years old, had urges to do violent things as a young child. He said they started early and intensified. That's wild. He tells a story about being little and his father was tying his shoes, and he's five years old, four years old. I mean, to the point where you can't tie your own shoes.

His father was tying his shoes and he just reached up and grabbed something off the counter and hit his father over the head with it and hurt him pretty bad. Oh, really? Yeah. Picked up a heavy thing and knocked him in the head just because he said he had the urge to do it. That's wild. But I mean, kids do that shit not knowing. My son has smashed me in the face with a truck before because he thought it'd be funny when he was four. He didn't know

any better. My daughter smacks me with a baseball bat in the sack and thinks it's hysterical. That's what I mean. So that's what I'm talking about. So I mean, at that point, it's not really a big deal. It's not really. I mean, yeah, he smacked me on the head. The little shit he has to know you're not allowed to do that. He might not have known. He might have seen a cartoon that day where he hit someone

on the head and went boing and he didn't. Maybe so. When you're five, you don't know. You have to have someone seen a cartoon that day where he hit someone in the head and went boing. And he didn't. Maybe so. When you're five, you don't know. You have to have someone tell you, stop. Don't hit people in the head. And you go, oh, OK. I don't want to hurt anybody.

Either way, when we're done, I'm going to Google psychiatrist for my daughter for tomorrow. You should probably do that, I'd say. She is a girl which is better off statistically. She's less likely to be. I'm still a little scared. She knows where I sleep. I would check her out. So on his childhood, we have a quote. Matthew later on gets talked to extensively. And we have a quote that he gives on his childhood, we have a quote Matthew later on gets talked to extensively.

And we have a quote about that he gives on his childhood here. And normally I don't really care what the people have to say. But in this case, it's so different because it's honestly inexplicable. The main thing you're thinking is why. Why did this happen? And so no one has any insight on it except for possibly him at this point. So we have to hear what the hell he was thinking on his childhood. He said, quote, they thought I was such a happy child. But a lot of times when I was off by myself, I'd get these visions

in my head. I would be thinking about hurting someone or murdering someone. Sometimes they were just pictures, but sometimes they were urges to at school. One of the things I would always think about was tying up some of the other kids in my class and setting the building on fire. Oh my God. Scary. Yeah. I never thought about that. I never once thought about that.

I thought about leaving the building so I could go play with my wrestling figures and play some Nintendo or something. Go the hell home. That's it. Yeah. I want to be here. I don't want to burn the place down with everybody trapped inside, tied to a chair,

especially not bad. Exactly. No one has visions of that. That's wild. Or just to actually do that. So at some point here, when Matthew is six years old, when he, like I said, he starts seeing his dad, he finds out that Christopher is not his real father. That's when Josh is born, Carol and Christopher's biological son together.

Josh is, so he's, Matthew's six years older than Josh. They were very close. Matthew, everybody says Matthew treated Josh extremely well. He looked at, and Josh idolized Matthew. Of course. He's the brother of six years, too. So that's like, whoa, he's so much older. You know, it's a different, like, level.

And that's all he knows, too. Like, he doesn't see stepbrother. Like, you don't see that when you're that age. You just see, that's the kid that was around when I was born. That's my brother. And everybody says, too, they never differentiated with, this is a stepbrother. You don't see that when you're that age. You just see that's the kid that was around when I was born. That's my brother. And everybody says, too, they never differentiated. This is a stepbrother. This is that.

This is that. They were brothers. And they always felt like they were brothers. They grew up in the same house. I mean, Matthew felt very close to him. And also, too, Josh idolized him because Matthew was actually really outgoing socially. And actually, they're not even stepbrothers. They're half-brothers because they have the same mother.

So they're still brothers. Yeah, they're not even stepbrothers. They're half-brothers because they have the same mother. So they're still brothers. Yeah, they're still brothers. And I mean, Matthew had a normal childhood that a younger kid would idolize. I mean, he had friends in high school. He played sports. He was well-liked. He had some girlfriends. Like, you wouldn't look at this kid and go, oh, man, yeah, he's going to have problems.

Oh, geez, he's probably brooding on the inside. There goes a happy-go-lucky kid. He's going to go off to college, have a good time, and he's going to go find something to do, and he'll move the hell out of Old Orchard Beach and then come back when he's 50. Unless he saw those fiery daydreams he had. Yeah, nobody got those. Nobody got the, you know, fire starter dreams happening.

Those weren't broadcast to everybody. No. Those were just for him. That's it. Yeah, he didn't do that. He actually even was an exchange student at one point. That's what I mean. He's involved in things. He's not just going to school and getting C's and coming home.

He's involved in things. He's in groups and sports. He goes to Ghana in high school as an exchange student. I can't even pick that on a map now. I'm 36. It is in Africa. That's all I know. I would guess that. It's over there. But I'm not going to find the border and the outline of it and go, there it is right there. I wonder if they have any beachfront amusement parks.

I doubt it. I doubt it. But possibly. So anyway, yeah, he's an exchange student. Only one other kid signs up. So he's like, yeah, I didn't even know the kid, but we went over there. We had a good time. That's so nice.

It was one of those things. Yeah, this was all right. He graduates high school in 2005. Did you ever think of doing that, being a exchange student? I never was involved in anything. I thought of getting out of school as quickly as possible we had a couple of exchange students at our school and just because i hated my home life i wanted to go try and do it but then i was like then you have to get on a fucking plane you have to leave the country i just knew there was like paperwork

involved and i didn't know how to do that like literally i don't know right i'm a shit student at this school and i speak this language am i gonna go somewhere i don't know what to do with that. Right. I'm a shit student at this school, and I speak this language. Am I going to go somewhere else? I don't want to go anywhere else anyway. Yeah. I was like, no. I don't want anybody in my house. No. I don't want anybody in my room. Yeah, that's the other thing.

Get the hell out of here. I had to torture some fucking poor kid from Ghana in my house. Jesus. He had it better in Ghana. Probably not. Well, maybe, actually. At least he probably has all his fingers on like you do. My house was a piece of shit.

So he begins college after that. I mean, he's that normal. He goes. His parents are paying for his college, too. Christopher, his stepdad, is paying for his college, his dad and his mom. So that's a decent thing to do. It's a great family. Yeah, that's what I mean.

You look at this family. They're from a nice town, and they're a nice family. Everything looks great from the outside. It's not going to be so great for a while here. He begins college, University of Maine. He's a European history major. He's thought of as a fun, funny guy, Matthew. People say he was funny.

He was fun. He was a good time. He was a good guy to have in the group, basically. I'm sure he wasn't that funny. Probably not. Yeah, he's probably hacky and shit. I don't think he was that funny. The quotes Ace Ventura and everybody's like, he's so funny.

He's fucking naughty. He saw a movie. Fuck you. They were drunk in college and they're like, hey, he's an affable guy. He smacked a dude in the dick. He's hilarious. Fuck him. I hate him.

Nice dick drawing on that guy's face. Matthew's a dick. Yeah. So that's great. By 2007 and 2008 period, he is in college. He is living in a house off campus, which right there, that's good. That's shit. I mean, that's what you're trying right there, that's good. That's shit. I mean, that's what you're trying to go for as a kid.

That's got to be good times. You're not only out of your house. 2008, you said? Yeah, 2007, 2008, he's doing this. He's got 10 roommates in this house. Holy shit. It's a big house. It's a big house.

They all rent together. He's got 10 roommates. He begins drinking very heavily now because he's off campus. I mean, this is what kids do sometimes. And we don't know what his father's history is like. If he left to the point where he didn't even know, the child didn't even know he had a father,

he's probably, something is wrong with him. Possibly alcohol or something of that nature. And maybe he's predisposed to loving that shit and now he's off the rails in college all alone. He's got ten dudes in a house that are absolutely encouraging this monster. Oh, can you imagine?

Yeah. They're like, he's a fun, funny guy, probably when he drinks. After he does keg stands, he's great. Oh, and this is 2008. Old school had just come out. They're like, oh, he's like Frank the Tank. Get drunk. Let's go drink in the quad.

And he's quoting the shit out of that movie, and they think he's hilarious. And they're going, he's so funny. Right. This guy's hilarious. He has a friend in there he calls Blue, and he screams, you're my boy, Blue. All the hackiest bullshit. You know, they have like freshman interns that they're like, come on, you're better than that. Shake your tail.

You're better than that. Oh, no. It's so bad. God damn it. That's what I see constantly right now. I just see him being such a douchebag. He's possibly a douchebag, I'm going to say. As a matter of fact, he's a douchebag.

We're going to label him a douchebag right now. Not only drinking, though. He starts doing drugs pretty heavily also. Oh, Christ. That's the drinking and the drugs together. Sometimes people can handle one or the other. Together, it's a bad mix. Pick one and go mellow.

How about that? He picked cocaine. That's what he picked. As we know, it's not great. If you listen to any, basically, 40 of our 63 Crime and Sports episodes, you will see that cocaine does not react well with people with certain personalities. Not great. Coke is so bad. Hey, everybody.

Just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you about our new sponsor, Hunt a Killer. Oh, you got to check out Hunt a Killer. Just want to take a second to tell you about this new subscription box service. Maybe you've heard about it. A lot of people are obsessed with this thing, including me, including my whole household. Hunt a Killer sends a package to your home each month full of creepy correspondence from their killer

curator. He's a little like a Hannibal Lecter type, and he's got a little mystery for you to solve. Each month, you'll receive clues, letters, articles, objects, tools, all adding to an ongoing murder mystery. It's up to you to solve. Each month, you'll receive clues, letters, articles, objects, tools, all adding to an ongoing murder mystery. It's up to you to solve it, along with thousands of other members all working together in our online communities.

It is the perfect thing for the armchair detective looking to put their sleuthing skills to the test. You can join by logging on to Huntakiller.com and applying for membership. Huntakiller is growing so fast that they limit new members to 500 a week. Once you apply and you're approved for membership, you'll receive a private link to subscribe. Then a package arrives on your door each month. Waiting is still the hardest part.

They've been featured in BuzzFeed, Fast Company, and Bustle. Hunt a Killer is forming a cult-like community of web sleuths and amateur detectives. If you love poring over creepy codes, ciphers, and clues, Hunt a Killer is simply perfect. And if it's not for you, I have a feeling you know at least one person that would love to receive this as a gift. I cannot recommend this membership enough. Seriously, it's so much fun. You got to do it. To help support our show, Hunt a Killer has offered a 10% discount code for our listeners, which is tracked to this message. You can use the code TOWN, that's T-O-W-N, TOWN, to get 10% off. That's it. Use the code town and you got it. And now back to the show. He explained later that he would, if he

couldn't afford drugs or like good booze, he would just drink two or three bottles of cough syrup. Oh my God. So he doesn't give a fuck. He's just getting messed up. He wants to be wasted no matter how he gets there. Just slurred speech all day. I don't give a shit what it is. I don't know if that's to quell the visions in your head or murderous urges or what it is, but it's not great. Booze and cough syrup puts out the fires. Yeah, sort of. But he also said that he had fantasies of going room to room and killing all of the other 10 housemates at this point. So now you have a guy who's on booze and Coke and cough syrup fantasizing about killing you sleeping in the next room. Every last one of you. This is frightening.

Yeah. Bad things could happen here. I see potentially 10 deaths happening in front of us. We have another quote from him on his murderous thoughts here. He said, there are plenty of times where I'll just have had a bad thought in my head about one of my best friends. We'd be sitting there and he'd be explaining something to me and I'd end up thinking, I should attack him with this.

No. I can't get that thought out of my head. Those are the situations where I'll end up saying, I got to get out of here and go home for a while. I'm not going to stick around. Jesus. He would have to. It's not even like, there's a great Bill Burr joke.

Bill Burr's best comedian. Yeah. About him just fantasizing about what if I just grab a slammer head right down to the table right now. What if I just steer the wheel. Yeah. Into the into the people walking on the sidewalk. Keep your hand up here.

Yeah. And you're and you're and you're going fine. Just right. Anonymous. And then two inches. Two inches. Five o'clock. That's what I mean.

Like, everyone has a fleeting thought of, what if I did this great? But then that's it. That's the end of the fleeting thought. You don't actually have to remove yourself from the situation so you don't do it. Right. That's amazing. But, I mean, I do admire at this point his self-control to have these urges and actually don't act on them. That's a good thing, I suppose.

Let's hope it keeps up. But based on the name of this podcast, I'm going to say it's not. He just never seeks therapy either about this. And his parents, they have all the means in the world to do it. He's at a college. There's counseling available there. All the opportunity in the world for him to go somewhere and get help from this. The kid can afford Coke.

He can afford a fucking psychiatrist. Oh, he absolutely can. And I'm sure if he went to his parents and said, I need help, they would have absolutely helped him. Guarantee it. The school would have helped him. Instead, he talks to his parents about dropping out of school and traveling to Europe. The parents are not okay with

this. He wanted money. He wanted to drop out of school, at least for a year, and wanted money for a trip to England, to go to England for the Christmas of 2007. I don't to England to go to England for the Christmas of 2007. I don't understand why he wants to do this. European Studies History major or whatever.

Oh, that's a good. You're right. You're right. You're right. Blah, blah, blah. That's what he's telling his parents. I'm going to go over there. But finish school first.

He's literally got one more year left. They're like, finish school and then go over there. You've got literally eight months of education to go and you can go do whatever the fuck you want. Somehow he talks Christopher and Carol into this, though, and they give him money for the trip to go, but he doesn't go on the trip. He instead stays home and blows all the money on drugs. Wow.

Blows it all on cocaine. So he couldn't afford it. Couldn't afford it. Ends it up he can't afford it. Blows it all on cocaine. But that's probably money to travel to England is probably a good amount of cocaine, I would say. I would assume it's-

A chunky amount. How long did he say he wanted to go? Through Christmas good amount of cocaine, I would say. I would assume it's – A chunky amount. How long did he say he wanted to go? Through Christmas? Through – yeah, for the Christmas holidays. Assume it's a week or two. Yeah, that's a good amount of money. That's probably five to ten grand. Gone.

Coke. So anyway, Chris and Carol, unbeknownst to most of the people in town, and only really Matthew knew about this, they were planning on getting a divorce. That was going on. It said that Chris is gay. Now, this was disputed, but multiple people that – employees that worked for him all said the same thing, that he was gay, which is fine. I mean, a lot of people do. I mean, he's 40-something.

He's 42 years old at this point. And he figured out that he was gay. I mean, that happens. And being honest, he probably figured old at this point, and he figured out that he was gay. I mean, that happens. And being honest, he probably figured it out a long time ago. Yeah, and was fighting it. But because of the way the fucking society is that shames you into trying to try pussy, I guess. Yeah, give it a shot.

Come on, they're like someone in a Chick-fil-A in a food court going, come on, just have a sample on a toothpick. I don't want any. Hilariously, you pick Chick-fil-A. They're always there with the damn cup and the toothpick. Leave me alone. I don't want any shitty Chick-fil-A. It's Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby just going, you're not gay, you're not gay, you're not

gay. I didn't think of it that way. But yeah. But that's the problem. And then it ruins some poor woman's life that has children with this man. Yeah. And then he's like, look, I can't keep up this facade anymore. Absolutely.

It's so sad. And it's so terrible. It is. I feel bad. That's got to be tortured. Be your fucking self. You also shouldn't lie and bring a family into the matter too. But it's also, it's not really

their, that's a tough thing. It's so much. I feel bad for everyone involved. I feel bad for this person for having to live a lie that they can't just be themselves and I feel bad for the people who were involved in the lie. Life is hurt. Right. But it's said that Chris is gay and he also wants to be with a man that he met. He wants to leave the family and be with a man.

One of Chris's employees, a guy named William Huntington, said that he that Chris had met a man and wanted to move down with him to South Carolina after the divorce. So he's going to shut down the flag store and go down to a different beach and move to a state that flies the rebel flag. I think Maine would be a little more open to his lifestyle. That's a bit much. Now, on December 26, 2007, so day after Christmas, Matt's dog, Nanook, is hit by a car and killed. Now, friends say he's very upset by this.

A lot of friends say he went into some kind of weird distraught thing over this, which I don't believe based on what we'll get to in the future. But Matt had done extensive searching around this time on the Internet that we came up with later about the best way to stab somebody, where the best stab points are to kill people. This is what this is what he's searching. He's not looking at Pornhub and he's searching. You know what I mean? He's not looking up best British bed and breakfast that I can stay in. He's not on MrSkin.com checking out Beverly D'Angelo in some movie naked. European too, right?

Yeah, yeah. In the shower. Yeah, yeah. That's exactly what it was. It wasn't the – yeah. Right. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah.

But you do know the 80s. Yeah, I know the 80s. I like it. So we have more – another quote here from Matthew on this whole thing. He said, I had thoughts about killing people for a long time. And when I woke up that morning, I didn't see any other solution. I had decided I don't have any other choice. I'm going to end up killing my stepfather.

Holy shit. So this is where he's focused this on for some reason. Here's the question I've got to ask. Yeah. He had to Google where to stab somebody. Yeah. I mean, there's a few spots. He's looking for best points.

Neck, chest. Yeah. Done deal. I think he was like looking for real strategic. I don't know if he thought he was going to be a Navy SEAL now and he's going to know. I don't know what he was thinking. Or maybe he was looking for like torture spots to like watch him bleed out or some shit. I don't know.

I think he was looking for efficiency possibly also because I don't get it. He also says in the other part of that quote that, quote, I was pretty agitated. The only thing I can think was that he's leaving my mom and brother. He's leaving me. I'm not going to let him do that. Wow. He'll be back at some point not going to let him do that. Wow. He'll be back at some point if you just let him go to South Carolina. You don't have to kill anybody.

Here's the other thing. Now you've got a second destination to go vacation at. Look at the bright side. And he's a gay guy. It's going to be beautiful. Beachfront amusement parks down there left and right. It's going to be crazy. You're going to feel just at home. The nicest curtains you've ever seen.

Beautiful. This place is going to be amazing. Yeah, absolutely. So February 20th, 2008 is the day he's talking about. Matthew wakes up, he gets in his car, and he heads to Old Orchard Beach. He has with him a taser that he bought a couple months ago, or last month in January. He also has a knife. Yeah, drugs plus crazy equals dead people is the formula we've come up with here.

Pretty solid equation. Yeah. If you mix mental illness and drug abuse and murderous urges, bad things are going to happen. Now, he pulls into town. He does not park at his house. He parks in town and walks to the house. That's an indication of some bad shit. That's a bad problem if you don't want your car seen in front of the house. He expects that only his stepfather will be home. That's what he's thinking.

He's going to walk in. His stepfather's going to be there by himself. Instead, it's his little brother Josh is there by himself. Oh, fuck. They discuss the impending divorce. Matthew is pissed off, and he's saying they're getting fucking divorced. They're going to sell the house. They're going to tear the family apart.

What are you going to do? What am I going to do? What's mom going to do? The whole deal. And Josh blows it off because he's 15. And he's like, that'll be fine. Literally, he was like, it's going to be fine. Who cares?

Like, you know, they'll be all right. They'll work it out. You're 15. Your whole life, your parents have been together. Everything's been fine. You don't think they're actually. They're going to break up. I just fucked the sofa.

Who cares? It's fine. Yeah. I'm still going to do the exact same thing tomorrow. I'm still going to masturbate four times tomorrow, no matter what happens with those two. It doesn't matter to me. Masturbate four times tomorrow, no matter what happens with those two. It doesn't matter to me.

So Matthew tells Josh that he's going to kill his stepfather, who is Josh's father. He just tells it to him. Yeah, he says, I'm going to kill him. He's worried about, like I said, he's worried about his mother. How she would support herself. I think Matthew was also a little more concerned about his cushy lifestyle getting yanked away, too. Matthew tells Josh that they're going to end up selling the house. Their lives are ruined.

He's trying to convince him that this is a good thing to do. He tells Josh to help him kill Chris, who is his own father. Oh, gosh. Josh's father, which is insane. Or step aside. He basically says either help me or shut up about it. Yeah. Don't don't get in my way.

That's going to happen either way. I got to go is my answer. Yeah. I got to go and I'm going to go call the cops or I'm going to go call mom or I'm going to call somebody. I'm going to call mom and make sure she doesn't go home. I may call Chris, too. Maybe. Don't go home.

Don't come home. So Josh doesn't want to kill anybody because he's fucking normal. He doesn't have these visions. He's not on a bunch of cocaine. So he's not doing that. Matthew gets madder and madder and madder. And he says later on in a quote for Matthew, once he gets mad, quote, I can't get unmad. Oh, boy.

Which is a weird thing. He ends up jumping on top of his 15-year-old brother and stabbing him repeatedly. Oh, boy. Unreal. Unreal. So Matthew, in his own words, says, I remember sitting there talking to my brother after he was dead and telling him that I was so sorry that it happened. Jesus.

A little late for that, asshole. I don't think you're sorry. No. I'm talking to his dead body. Unreal. So he also said that he knew right then that his life was over. Yeah. Which, no shit and so

so is josh as you take it that's the thing no feel that's what i'm gonna say no feeling for josh right just my life is over my life is over not oh my god this poor 15 year old kid who just said hey please don't kill my dad right which wasn't a big request i don't think you know he's not he's not saying come over here and and give me a hand job he He's saying, Jesus, we've talked a lot about jerking off today. He didn't say that. He said, please don't kill my dad. I think that's pretty standard. Now, Matthew puts a towel over Josh's face because he says he didn't want to remember Josh that way.

Couldn't take it. Once again, for him. Yeah, he had to just make him an object. He had to objectify him. He says he didn't get any thrill out of it, but he wasn't too upset about it either, basically. So it's like he just has no affect, this kid, at all. And when you talk, I saw an interview with him. I watched this interview with him, and the psychologist did, and it was, there is no affect to this guy whatsoever.

There's just no emotion. No emotion. Just whitewashed and just straight afoot. Matter of fact, just I did this and that, and I don't know. Straight face, eyes ahead, and just says it. And there's no, like, there is nothing. He doesn't even pretend. He's just like, I don't know. That face eyes ahead and just says it. And there's no like – there is nothing. He can't – he doesn't even pretend. He's just like, I don't know.

That's just what it is. It's crazy. One of Chris's employees at that point says that he saw Matt's car in town and he tells the mother. This is one of Chris's employees at the flag shop. He tells the mother. He calls the mother up and says, hey, Matt's in town. I saw his car down there. And the mother says, I didn't know he was coming today.

So she calls Chris to ask if he knew that Matt would be in town. And he didn't know either, which is super weird because he usually says when he's coming in town. So Carol leaves work and goes home. She walks into the house. Matthew says his mother was acting weird toward him when she was just saying, what are you doing here? What happened? You were at school. Is everything OK?

You're a cokehead who blows through money and just wants to drop out of school. So, you know, asking whatever. She asks where Josh is. That's when things become problematic. Matt says that he's fine. Don't worry about it. Carol tries to push past him to go find Josh. She's like, where's Josh?

And then he starts holding her back. So then, you know, there's a problem. You know, where is Josh? What the hell's going on? You're getting closer and closer to being stabbed yourself, dear. Yeah. Matt ends up tackling her to the ground. Oh, God. This is his own mother. And we have a quote from him on what he did here. He said, quote, I grabbed her. I can remember her saying stop and then not saying anything else. When I was sitting on top of her, I think I had my hands around her throat. I don't know if she was still alive or not or not alive, but I think I ended up stabbing her in the throat when i looked down her

eyes were shut and her face was the wrong color this is his mother and he said this that's a description of his own mother he just said that so matter of fact like he said yeah i went to the store and they were out of you know orange soda so i got dr pepper like that's literally what he was saying like no no that's what happened. Her face was the wrong color. Says that he didn't want her to know what happened to Josh. He felt, you know, obviously this is all for her. She knew, bro. Didn't want her to have to deal with that and the divorce.

Just too much pain. So pain you've caused half of, by the way. No doubt. You could have just, the divorce, she'd get over it. People get over it all the time. She doesn't need a divorce now, by the way. No, she'd get over it all the fucking time. Anyway, people, it happens.

This all made Matthew even more mad at Chris because he blamed Chris for making him do this. So now he's super pissed. Matt says that he came to kill Chris, and now that this happened, it's all Chris's fault, and he's happy he's here to do this because he deserves it, obviously, because he made him kill his brother and his mother. Insane.

Chris is still at the store in his office. He can't get a hold of Carol at all. He's calling Carol. She won't answer the phone. He gets worried and heads home to see. And Matthew's sitting at home waiting for Chris with a taser and a knife ready to go, which is insane. Now we have a quote from Matt here on what happened here. He said, quote, as he came through the door, I lunged at him with my knife. I stabbed him. He started screaming. And I had this terror that if I didn't kill him, he was going to kill me. I stabbed him some more.

I think I remember him dying. That's what he says. But he also tased him a few times, too. He was tasing him and stabbing him. And it's horrible. So, yeah, the autopsy revealed that, that he used the taser on him. They couldn't determine if it was pre- or post-mortem because it was so close. It was probably both,

honestly. They didn't know. Matthew sits at the house now trying to figure out what to do. Because you just killed your whole goddamn family. Asshole. What do you do with that? What do you do? You just killed the whole family. What do you do?

Well, what you do is you head into a side room. And this is the funny part, too. He killed his brother. He killed his mother. He killed his father. We're going to get much more people talking about this. Guaranteed. Because it happens every time something like this happens.

Heads down to a separate room where the family's dog, Spike, is in a cage. Oh, motherfucker. And he goes in and stabs the dog to death, too. What the fuck? Stabs the dog to death, too. What the fuck? Why? The dog was in a cage in another room.

It did nothing. It did nothing to him. It wasn't getting a divorce? Well, would you like an explanation on what it was? We have a quote from him on this. Did it see it? Well, let's see what he says. He says, quote, people ask me all the time about our family dog.

And they say, did you really have to kill the dog? And I say, listen, I don't mean to sound like a monster, but I just killed my brother, my mother, my father. Do you really think I give a damn about the dog? Jesus. Cold fucking blood. That is terrible. This person is awful. Unbelievable.

This is a bad person, man. I can't even. I can't even, I mean. He's terrible is that I'm panicking over the dog. No, but it's everything. It's, you do all that and then it's a cherry on top. Oh, God, the ending is just that. That's so terrible. Yeah, that's a horrible cyanide frosting on a shit cupcake.

That's just horrible, man. It really is. It's the worst. My God. Unbelievable. So Matthew decides that he doesn't want anyone to find the family's bodies like they were for some reason. So what do you do?

You set fire to the house, obviously. Jesus. Burn this motherfucker. Burn it all down. Yeah. The firefighters are the ones that find the bodies. The house wasn't burned very well because he's a moron. Matthew claims he wasn't trying to cover up.

He says that his hands were cut up and the police were going to know what he did because his hands were all cut up because he stabbed the shit out of three people. When Christopher and when he left the store to go see him at 3.30 p.m., William Huntington, the guy who said that he was going to move to South Carolina, says that he was going to call the police if he didn't hear from him in an hour because he didn't know because Carol wasn't answering. police if he didn't hear from him in an hour because he didn't know because Carol wasn't answering. So at 530, Huntington got a real call from Chris's neighbor that was calling the shop to tell Chris that there was a shitload of smoke coming out of their house down there, but they didn't know that Chris was inside dead. Now we have in the aftermath, Detective Sergeant David Hemingway said this. He said, quote, it was one of the worst I've seen in my entire career.

The family was known. They owned a local business. Their kids went to the local schools and they were active in the community. Because of that, there was widespread grief on the scene. All these guys knew these people. The firemen and the cops, they were local town people. They all knew Chris. They'd stop by the shop. Hey, Chris, how you doing? They'd see him in town. Like I said, they all saw each other. Hey, your son's in town. That's how it was in this town. So this is their friends they're finding like this. Fire investigators find two points of origin on the fire, one in the hallway, like by the basement stairs, and the other in the kitchen right next to Chris's body. On the kitchen floor, investigator Christopher Stanford's found a

melted red plastic gas can, a lighter, two cell phones, and a digital camera. So I don't know if he was trying to burn evidence, burn their evidence. I don't know what he was doing. Burn their things, their belongings. The digital camera, though, that's weird. I don't know what was on there. That didn't come up even in court. Just wants to get rid of all the family photos and everything. Yeah.

Now, Carol's car, because remember, Matthew had no—his car was in town. Right. So he took Carol's car, and her car was found near Memorial Park in town with a bunch of blood inside, tons of DNA evidence. You know, instead of the car being in the driveway, he just dumped it where his car was, which was stupid because people noticed the problem at that point. Maine State Police come in to help with the crime investigation because it's a small town that doesn't have that kind of investigators or those kind of investigators or equipment

or just they're not built for an arson, triple murder crime scene in this tiny town. Right. They're built for like, let's investigate the carny for fucking fixing the games. Like, that's it. Orchard Beach Police Department talked to everyone in town and discovered that Matthew was seen in town that day. So obviously they're pretty curious about talking to him. They're on to him.

Yeah. He had driven back to college at this point. And he went right the fuck back. He went right back to college at this point. He went right the fuck back. He went right back and waits to be caught, basically. He just sits there. Police immediately suspect him. They come to Matthew's house late that night. Officers ask him why his hands are all cut up.

He tells them that he cut his hands while cooking, while cutting a thick steak, is what he tells them. I've done that before. Yeah. I've had 50 cuts on my hands from cooking steak. The steak was so thick. I just had it all over my hands. Six-inch filet.

It was unbelievable. Insane. I don't know what it was, but I butchered myself. A thick steak. Thick steak is his excuse. What a fucking excuse. Unreal. So police.

That was a dog's name. Thick steak. That was a thick steak. Thick steak. I cut him up while cutting thick steak. The dog's name was Spike, actually. I had to find out the dog's name's name was a little dog, too. Police search Matthew's place.

They find a bloody backpack. Don't ditch any of this shit, idiot. Just take it home with you. He took the bloody backpack with him back home. Oh, not only the bloody backpack, the stun gun and the bloody murder weapon. Wow. And the knife. All of it together.

Even OJ was smart enough to dump this shit off. You know what I mean? So, shocker, he's arrested because he's a moron. He denies everything. He's being held in Old Orchard Beach that day, denies everything. He says that he cut his hand on the stake. Like I said, he's, I don't know what you're talking about. They tell him that actually the DNA in your mother's car is yours.

So that's a problem. After that, he confesses and just says, fuck it. What's he going to do here? Prosecutor Lisa Marchese says, quote, there is no doubt that this is one of the most heinous crimes in recent memory. No shit in that area. The prosecutors are saying it's premeditated. He did Internet searches. He bought a stun gun.

He showed up with the knife. He drove there. He also had time. This is the other thing. He had time to think about this between murders. He killed Josh. He sat there for a half hour before his mom came home. Then he killed her.

Then he sat there for an hour before a stepdad came home. He was just lying in wait for these people. And then he cleared the entire house and went and got the dog. It's like – Yeah. That's like – Let me kill that too. Right.

In movies when they set the tone of how bad somebody is, they talk about how he went three counties over, killed his wife, then went two counties over, killed the parents of the wife. And then he went two counties over and killed the family's dog. Like they explain how insane that thought is. And this guy did it in one fucking afternoon. One afternoon. And they're still like not sure exactly why he did it, the prosecutors. They don't understand. Right.

They're like some people say it's the Europe thing that he wanted to go to Europe and drop out of school. Because they don't know about the divorce yet. They didn't know what was going on exactly. And there's a Marchese, the prosecutor said, I don't put much stock in the Europe story. This is before they knew the full extent of they gave him money and he blew it. And they thought he was mad at them for saying he couldn't go to Europe instead of dropping out, you know, drop out of school. She said, this is clearly a very complicated situation and much more was involved. It is my experience that we don't always know, even after the trial, the motive behind the crime. The state doesn't have to prove motive for good reason.

There is rarely direct evidence of the workings of the human mind, completely. There are theories, but only Matthew Cushing himself knows the motive behind these murders. And that's the truth, too. In court, motive. On TV, they're like, well, we need a motive. No, you don't you don't you don't need a motive you need to know did he do this when and where right that's it all you need to establish him being at the body that's it that's it i don't give a fuck why who cares about why that's not in in in the course of the of the prosecution in the course of sentencing why never comes up nope it doesn't matter it doesn't matter i mean it helps

in in terms of creating a story and a narrative for a jury, but who gives a fuck? The great book I've talked about several times, the David Simon Homicide book about the homicide detectives, they said, like, I don't give a shit why somebody killed. Give me the where and the what. I don't care. And the who. The why only helps for 2020 and fucking Dateline. That's it. He said, give me the where and the what and I'll tell you the who.

I don't care about the why. He said, give me the where and the what and I'll tell you the who. I don't care about the why. He said, that's not my concern. I don't care why Pookie shot Pogo on the corner. It doesn't matter to me. I just want to know that it happened. Matthew pleads guilty on February 25th, 2009. Pleads guilty of three counts of murder

and one count of arson. The prosecutor says this is just so difficult. An entire family has been wiped out by the son, and now he's facing life in prison. It's just devastating. So the whole family is gone now. I'm shocked that in that part of the country where they're mostly liberal, right? We said 57%. Yeah.

How did they not at least get a cruelty to animal charge in there? I don't know. I think – Maybe they threw it out with the plea. That might have been – But I guarantee you that shit was in there. Probably. Why not?

They charge it with everything they can. Yeah. I'm sure there was a weapon charge. There was breaking and entering, I'm sure. Everything. Everything. Well, now he got let in by his brother. Oh, that's a good point.

Yeah. Still, though. On March 26, 2009, Matthew was sentenced for three counts of murder and one count of arson. Superior Court Justice Paul Fritzschel. Well, that's a tough name. Fritzschel said, quote, said that Matthew had planned the killings. And because all the evidence, the research, everything he said, quote, most people, when they don't want when they want to have a family conversation, do not come armed with a stun gun and a knife. No doubt.

As he was saying, I just showed up to talk and it just got out of control. And they're like, no, it's premeditated. That's all we know what you did. saying, I just showed up to talk and I got out of control. And they're like, no, it was premeditated, asshole. We know what you did. Christopher's parents, Balduke's parents, gave a victim impact statement, as they do for sentencing. His grandparents.

His step-grandparents. But, yeah, they did. They said that they were taught to hate the sin and not the sinner, and they begged for mercy for Matthew and give him less than a life sentence so he would have a chance to have a life. Meanwhile, we don't want this kid out ever. He's got urges that he can't even explain. He took three lives and didn't give them a chance to have a life.

How can you? I don't see how anybody can forgive that. No. That's crazy. Especially that quick. No, that's what I mean. They're amazing people. They're sweet people.

They're very nice. They're religious people that actually take their religion seriously. Right. They're not just like, I'm a Christian and I hate everybody. No, they're actually like, they take it seriously. It goes against my book. Yeah, exactly. I was taught to hate the sinner, not the sinner. Whatever. So yeah, they do that. Matthew reads a statement apologizing in court. He says, quote, they've been robbed of the one thing they can't replace, that I stole so much love from my family is horrific and inexcusable from the bottom

of my heart. I'm sorry. I don't think you're sorry. I don't think you even give a shit. I think you're trying to look like you don't are in a complete flat affected monster. Right. The judge said that because of this, Matthew's crimes warranted the state's harshest punishment because of the premeditation.

Because of the unusual cruelty, multiple killings and premeditation, he sentences him to life in prison without the possibility of. All right. Yeah. Because of the unusual cruelty, multiple killings and premeditation, he sentences him to life in prison without the possibility of. All right. Yeah. He says any other sentence than life in prison ignores the enormity of the wrong. And also it ignores that this is not a person we want on the street. No doubt. This isn't a guy who had a bad day. No, this isn't a guy who had a bad day, a passionate thing. This was a guy who doesn't even know why, but just wants to kill people and decides to do it. That's get him off the street. Not just people. He's killing everything. Yeah. Now he, he did this interview on television with a psychologist and he, they asked him, why'd you agree to be interviewed? And this is his answer because I was curious too. And I'm glad he answered. He said, well, one psychologist basically told me, I don't know why you did what

you did. I can't tell you anything. And I was kind of hoping to get some insight on it if I could, if I could have done anything differently or even if the thoughts in my head were normal. I can tell you, first of all, no, they're not. And you could have absolutely done everything differently, including not killing your entire fucking family, you asshole. I think I think he took that out of context. He asked the psychiatrist what he could have done, and the psychiatrist thought he meant him. And he's like, I don't fucking nothing. I can't do a goddamn thing.

Shit, I'm here with you. They asked him if he would have continued to kill if he would not have been caught, and he said probably. Yeah. And if it wasn't his family, it would have been his roommates or somebody. Jesus. He's like, I would have killed somebody. Yeah, I would have killed my roommate. It was happening, basically.

You're going to kill all kinds of people. It was bubbling over. It was going to happen. What kind of question is that? I killed a fucking dog. Yeah. I killed everybody and then a dog. Was it just the rage with your family and you wanted to do that?

And he was like, no, somebody's going to die. I would have killed somebody. Probably a whole house full of people at some point. I would have burned down that house with 10 people. Now only three died and a dog instead of 10. I guess it's a plus. It's a net gain of five and a half. We'll count the dog as a half.

Fine. He's serving his time at Maine State Prison in Warren. Detective Sergeant Hemingway, again, this is on the whole thing and how it ties into the town and how these people are coping with this as a town because they were a beloved family. He says, quote, in a community like this, you don't see things on a scale like this that often. It was really a wake-up call to the community and to the police department that you never really know what's going on behind closed doors and families. It was really out of the blue. And because we're such a close-knit, small community, something like this does have a ripple effect.

They're still talking about this in that town. They're absolutely still talking about this. about this in that town. They're absolutely still talking about this. And on July 31st, 2014, the families of the murdered victims, they put up a monument to all the Maine, all the people who've been murdered in Maine. Oh, that's nice. It's a murder victim monument. Only 83 names under that.

So Maine's pretty damn safe. 83 in Maine? Yeah, you're not going to get killed very likely if you move up there. In the history of Maine? I suppose. I don't know what the cutoff date is. I don't know if they count the guys who got their orchard taken over by the natives or whatever. But I don't know what it is.

But the families of all the victims gathered around, including the Bullduke's parents. They gather at Augusta's Holy Family Cemetery for a dedication of the murder victims monument. Like I said, all the names were there, including Christopher, Carol, and Josh. And, yeah, Matthew Josh. And yeah, Matthew was sitting in prison, and that is Old Orchard Beach. I hope they put Spike's name on that monument. One kind of fucked up tale. I think it's for people. Maybe there's a murdered dog monument down the street.

I don't know how many murdered stabbed dogs there are. I think Spike deserves to be on that one, though. I do, too. Spike had it rough. He was in his cage like, I heard people. What did I do? So poor Spike, poor everybody, poor Carol, poor Josh, poor Christopher. Terrible. This is bad shit.

And yeah, that is Old Orchard Beach. If you liked Old Orchard Beach and if you liked hearing about this, you can get on iTunes and give us five stars, say whatever you want, say clouds look so fluffy and we'll be like terrific. The five stars are important. It helps us so much on a business end. Like we said, patreon.com slash crime and sports if you'd like to make a donation. That helps us out so immensely.

Tremendous. This is so much work and that really makes it worthwhile. We really, really appreciate it. I want to visit this place. I do too. It sounds like a nice place actually. We should do that sometime. I want to do a beach town.

Yeah. It sounds like a Stephen King novel beach town and I'm into it. I'm very much into it. If we ever go to Boston, we're taking a quick little drive on a Sunday. I like it. I like it. Also, too, we're going to do shout-outs in a second. Yes.

We're going to do shout-outs, and if you'd like to get a shout-out from us, you can definitely, first of all, Patreon people. That is the number one. We will shout you out and tell you how much we love you. iTunes reviews, and also, too, if you want to get a hold of us, we are at Murders Small on Twitter. Yes. We are Small Town Pod on Facebook.

You can find us there and say hello and like some of these fine people here. Please do. And then also just tweet about us and we'll interact with you guys. It's so much fun. I really appreciate the people that do. Ashley Wilhelm, Courtney Lawson, Tim Vickers, Suzanne St. John, Sydney Grace in Portland, Tony Papalo, Papala. Hey, Papala. St. John. Sydney Grace in Portland. Tony Papalo. Papola.

Hey, Papola. Yeah. That was a tough one. I don't know why that one throws me. Angela D. Dow. Landry Baum. Paige the Elf. Scott Countryman.

Countryman. I'm sure it's Countryman. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like Countryman, though. That one's fun. Countryman. Eat. Maria Barber.

Elijah Potter. Samantha Rothwell in Hong Kong, by the way. Eat Hungryman dinners. Yeah, yeah. Scott Countryman. Eat. Maria Barber, Elijah Potter, Samantha Rothwell in Hong Kong, by the way. It's Hungryman Dinners. It's got Countryman. Kyle Walker, Heather Rylander. Your email made me smile, by the way. Jessica Landgren in Australia. Matthew Miller, Jennifer Boswell.

I believe she goes by Cricket. Lauren Vogt upped her Patreon donation. Thank you so much, Lauren. We love you. Thank you. Katie Garland Noble and Brenda Connors and one more is Court Martin who also updated and huge. Thank you so much, Court. She sent us 50 bucks.

That's amazing. From the bottom of our hearts. That's amazing really. That makes us, that makes it all worthwhile that people be willing to do that. Thank you. And also too, it helps too because this is like kind of my job. Right. This is all because of you guys. So thank you guys so, so much for listening.

We're stand-up comics. That's what we do. So we're stand-up comics. We don't have a big media connection or anything like that. You guys spreading around is how we get around and how we've gotten around so far. And you've done a great job of doing it. Awesome. Thank you guys so, so much.

Do you want to give them your social media, Jimmy, in case they want to get sucks w-h-i-s-m-a-n sucks on twitter instagram and snapchat and i am at jimmy p is funny and if you want to get adventurous spell my last name you can just copy and paste it from the show description if you really want you can friend me or do whatever you got to do interact it's fun interact it's a good time and uh do that and join us next week where we will have more and more and more scum. It's going to be wonderful. Thank you very much, guys. We'll see you next week. It's been our pleasure.

Bye. Bye. Hey, Prime members, you can listen to Small Town Murder early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus and Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. I understand that anybody who's paid attention to the media would have to come to the conclusion that I killed my wife. Hi, my name is Zach Stewart-Pontier. I'm one of the filmmakers behind The Jinx, and I'm excited to bring you the official Jinx podcast.

We'll be revisiting all six episodes of part one and watching along with part two as it airs on Max starting April 21st. Bye bye. The official Jinx podcast. Listen on Max or wherever you get your podcasts.