Small Town Murder - #195 - The Head Of The Serpent in Lafayette, Indiana

Episode Date: October 29, 2020

This week, in Lafayette, Indiana, a terrible, hideous murder makes investigators look in the wrong place, for a minute, before the culprit becomes very obvious. A person as deranged as anyone we've ever talked about, turns out to have their own twisted belief system that causes delusions of epic proportions. The murder is absolutely crazy, and the explanation is even more insane! Along the way, we find out that about the Feast of the Hunter's Moon, that you can't judge a librarian by their cover, and that when someone tells you that they think you're god... run!! Hosted by James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman New episodes every Thursday! Donate at: patreon.com/crimeinsports or go to paypal.com & use our email: [e-mail] Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder & Crime In Sports! Follow us on... twitter.com/@murdersmall facebook.com/smalltownpod instagram.com/smalltownmurder Also, check out James & Jimmie's other show, Crime In Sports! On iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Small Town Murder early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. 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 in Lafayette, Indiana, a very unstable person has some interesting and scary delusions leading to a barbaric murder and even more deranged explanation. Welcome to Small Town Murder. hello everybody and welcome back to small town murder yay yay indeed jimmy yay indeed my name

is james petra gallo i'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you, folks, so much for joining us once again. Everybody, we are excited. Halloween. Oh, my. This is our special Halloween episode. It's my wheelhouse. So we go for the most kind of a supernaturally crazy kind of thing here. Not really supernaturally, but crazy enough where it's almost when crazy gets to a certain level, it becomes almost supernatural in their beliefs so it'll all

make sense when you hear the story absolutely one of our nuttiest kind of makes pocket robin look like your town's alderman basically we'll put it that way but uh before we get to that thank everybody for everything they've done this week for us we really appreciate it if you haven't done it yet please get on i uh apple podcast that purple icon whatever the hell that is and give us five stars it really does help out a lot those reviews why we have no idea it's just a thing helps drive you up the charts that's how they've set it up we don't know so thank you for everyone that's done it and if you haven't yet please please give that a shot head over to shut up and give me murder.com as a matter of fact if you're listening today the day this comes out

or even the friday or the saturday you can check it out the virtual live show right very exciting and get your tickets right now we're coming right to your living room we're gonna be all up in your business so do the thing tonight it is the all violent felon edition of the prisoner dating game holy shit is it going to be amazing because i have some insane people laid out for you jimmy and a couple of curveballs of course oh great line jimmy up with four lucky bachelors four lucky bachelorettes the only thing they all have in common is they are all incarcerated for a horrible violent felony and uh they have put their dating profiles out there he chooses one of the four of each and uh then he gets to find out what they look like

see their pictures and then also what they've done to earn their position in life at this moment so balls man oh it's gonna be so much fun check that out shut up and give me murder.com october the 29th and for 48 hours afterwards you can also get it do that right now also patreon this week is hopping as well yeah over on the crime and sports one which you'll have access to you get access to everything with a patreon donation so uh that is the plane ride from hell it's got the word hell in it so it's halloweeny i figured but it's not scary for somebody it's scary for a lot of people it was wrestlers coming from a european flight a chartered flight full of wwe wrestlers coming from a European flight, a chartered flight full of WWE wrestlers coming from Europe

with a full and open bar and flight attendants and all the hours to do it. Fighting each other. The lawsuits stem from it. It's a crazy thing. It makes the boat ride for the Vikings look very tame. So that'll be crime and sports. That one was only a two-hour

boat ride. This is what, 12 hours? Eight hours? Very drunk. It's a long time. Very drunk. Not only that, for the small town murder bonus episode this week, we are going to look at, because it's Halloween, it's going to come out on Halloween, we are going to look at

the kind of spookiest and most hauntedest small towns. We have some of these small towns make their whole reputation on come to this town, we got haunted shit. So we're going to do kind of the top most haunted-y towns you can get. Haunted-y, that's a word. It's new now. That's what draws there. It's the haunted-y-ness.

Pay attention, Webster's. There you go. Put that in your bucket. That's a goddamn word. Put that in your book. Enjoy that one. So that's going to be a lot of fun. There's just some crazy shit and some wild stories of murder that cause the

hauntedness. I mean, that's a requirement almost for haunting. Yeah, so there you go. It's not usually something calm that happens, so you can get all that. Patreon.com slash Crime and Sports and anybody above the $5 level. And you get a shout-out too at the end of the show. Jimmy will mispronounce your name horribly if it's Italian. He'll really

mispronounce it bad. And if you just want to have good karma and get a shout-out as well, you can uh on our on paypal using our email address crime and sports at gmail.com quick disclaimer it's a comedy show yeah it's a comedy show the stories are completely real nothing is made up for comic effect but there's going to be jokes made sure there is not at a murder like while it's happening or anything like that, but around it, there's a lot of crazy shit happening. Plenty. It's murder.

That's a crazy thing to do. Think about it. That's why there's stuff to make fun of. And we're going to do that. But what we don't do is we don't make fun of the victims or the victims' families because we're assholes. Go on. But we're not scumbags.

There you have it. That's how it works. So if that sounds good, awesome. If not, we warned you. I don't know. Give it a shot if you want. If not, don't complain later if you didn't like it sensitivity which i don't know what to tell you you know what i mean but for the rest of everybody let's hang out let's have a good time and let's clear the lungs and shout shut up and give me murder let's do this jimmy okay let's

go on a trip let's do it shall we let's? Let's go. Let's go get sick. Yeah. We are going to Indiana this week. Oh, boy. Back in Indiana. I think Christmas Eve was the last time we were in Indiana. Is that right? Last year, yes. Indiana's our holiday thing for Christmas, for Halloween.

Oh, you know what? I'm thinking of a different state. No, it's Vincennes was the last Indiana. Oh, really? This is Lafayette, Indiana. And I know people are going to say because whenever this happens that's not a small town it's not a small town yes i know population wise it might not be a small town but it actually is because it's a college town oh and when this happened it was even in the parameters of what we do anyway so i don't want to hear it's not a small town

when it happened it was i know what i'm doing that's where lafayette the college is at it's not it's where uh purdue is oh purdue is where the hell is lafayette no idea louisiana i have no clue there's a lot of lafayettes there is so this is lafayette indiana it's west central indiana and a little north too it's about an hour to indianapolis two hours to chicago oh that's interesting it's kind of in the middle of why would you you can get to things why would you be there that's what i mean just go a little farther there's better places and about two hours and 45 minutes to vincennes which was our last episode which was last christmas eve of 2018 we stop with that one that's that and uh this is in tippecanoe county oh it's like that's a real word

tippecanoe county what the fuck are you doing over there guys what's happening in indiana what do you do tip a canoe and it's uh seven six i'm sure it's some ancient native word and i'm an asshole now i'm sorry if that's a fact if it was just american people thinking it was a funny sounding word then it's dumb but if it's some like it's gotta be american then i'm an asshole i apologize so it's uh area code 765 it's 29 square miles it's a big place like i said it's got a big college on it and things like that the motto is the star city oh yeah no that's la the star city well cincinnati called themselves the queen city and then they called themselves the star city to be better or as it's

known in the rest of the world quote that place where purdue is yeah that's it's cincinnati really the queen city that's what they called themselves in the 1800s why doesn't charlotte call themselves the queen city so does manchester new hampshire enough right stop there's the queen does not favor any of you all right that's what it's like charl Do we say Charlotte? Charlotte is the one we went to. Because it's named after the fucking queen. Yeah, we were at that comedy festival last year. Yeah, that's where that was. But that's the whole point.

They're named after Queen Charlotte. That's the Queen City. What Queen Cincinnati is there? You don't know about Queen Cincinnati? She sounds hideous. Queen Cincinnati was, she was a very, she ruled with an iron fist, Queen Cincinnati. She had spaghetti broth. Yeah, you know how it goes.

So the history, by the way, in the prisoner dating game, one of the prisoners, I was so mad because her story wasn't that great, but her name was basically Ninja Pineapples. Get out. With a couple other words, and I'm like, Ninja Pineapples? I want Ninja Pineapples to be in this episode but it just didn't work out anyway history of this town uh european explorers when they arrived here exploring the midwest i guess it's not much of an exploration no that way across the flat field there it is like what are you exploring that's uh let's get the fuck out of here yeah the tribe of uh the miami indians were there at the time. And in 1717, the French government established a fort there across the Wabash River. And then the fort became the center of trade for trappers and merchants and Indians.

Everybody kind of got along. It wasn't fighting or anything. Everybody was trading with each other. It was more like a big trading post. trading post and an annual reenactment of this time period of the trading between everybody and the French and the Indians and everything is a festival known as the Feast of the Hunter's Moon. That's kind of cool. Which sounds, that sounds like the Feast of the Hunter's Moon.

Sounds like every, like at sundown, people are going to emerge from the woods with carcasses over their shoulders, draped in blood. And they're going to be like, here with carcasses over their shoulders draped in blood. And they're going to be like, here's our kill. We got it now. Yeah. And then there's going to be like a bison on a spit. You know what I mean? We're all going to chant and drink from goblets.

Sounds awesome. Drink from Stanley cups and shit after around the fire. The slayer playing. We shall drink the blood of the vanquished from the Stanley cup around the fire. For it is the feast of the hunter's moon. That's what I feel. That sounds awesome. It's held there every year.

In fur clothing. Oh, absolutely. Just shit over their shoulders. Fur top, yeah. Dressed like the barbarian in WWE. You know what I mean? Like coming out with just like a fur thing over boots. Absolutely.

Half a fur top from 1992. Leather flap over your balls. Oh, you gotta have that. You gotta have a leather ball flap. What if something flies in and you wanna have a little resistance? It's a cock bib. Yeah, it's a little cock bib. There you go. Go wipe myself in my cock bib. So the

town of Lafayette was made in about 1825. They platted it up and William Digby was the guy who did that, for whatever that's worth. Anyway, it's the Sahara Desert Fart Fact of the Week. William Digby. William Digby platted Lafayette in 1825. So it was designated the county seat of Tippecanoe County, and Lafayette was named for General Lafayette, who was a French officer who helped George Washington and the army

and the revolution a lot. So that's why there's a shitload of things named Lafayette in America. George Washington's right-hand man. No, no. He was a French guy. He was a French general, but he was working in accordance with the Americans. Yeah, because they hate the fucking British still. The French and British hate each other to this day, and it wasn't any different 250

years ago. Let's put it that way. Unbelievable. So yeah, that'll never change. The French and British will always hate each other to this day and they it wasn't any different 250 years ago let's put it that way unbelievable so yeah that'll never change french and british will always hate each other i don't know what that's about but uh i don't know it's too close that's why it's they're right next to each other and it's a completely different everything you know what i mean it would be like if in new york and new jersey they spoke completely different languages and there's a river between you but beside that we're completely different people it's you know yeah it's very different one of us will get hairy and fucking the streets and then

the other ones will be very buttoned up and just a river yeah that's all it takes about that the debauchery and then the not the the stiffness it's one river right fucking wild breads and desserts and fucking over here and then so wild fucking cardigan over there plum yeah things yeah things are made out of fig right everything is fig over there enough with the fig yeah sorry but they've oh i love how much lamb they eat over there i love lamb i eat a lot of lamb i'm very confused by their food some of they've it's gotten good now for a long time it was just awful boiled shit right but now they've gotten they've gotten better i watched the great in the 90s they started getting

good chefs and then gordon ramsay helped that a lot just in terms of fame in the rest of the world they had marco pierre white before that he was like big in england and train he was in france and never mind i watch him putting fish in too much things though you know what i mean yeah there's a lot of different and pastyy. They love a quail egg. Yeah. Those are good, though. Pasties? Yeah, that's like a pot pie without a bottom, basically.

It's weird. That's fine. I can eat that. But fish? No. Why are you putting fish in that shit? I don't want fish in a shell like that. I don't want fish in anything.

I want a piece of fish. That's how I eat it. You know what? I kind of have to probably agree with you there. Either bread it or just leave it the fuck alone. Yeah, sear it up or grill it or something. You don't put it in with like fucking rice? What? Yeah, sear it up or grill it or something. Put it in with fucking rice? What?

I don't know. I think that's a- A couscous? Get the fuck out of here. That feels like a keep it good thing. Right. You know what I mean? Leave it alone.

I'm sure. No, no. I mean, I feel like putting it in a pie, it makes it hold longer. Oh, gotcha. It lasts longer. During war times and things like that. All right. You can eat it in two days.

Yeah. It's like, yeah, we have a lot of food. Like that's why people in the Midwest is all fucking casseroles. You can just throw it in there and then eat it again. Put the plastic on top and put it away. Yeah, because I feel like that's kind of the point of that is you can just always- Wake up in the middle of the night and eat that fish. You can grab that throat in your lunchbox.

Gross. Yeah. Jesus. Fucking breaded chunk of fish. Go down to the smoke factory, like an early London. It was just a factory where smoke poured out. I think they just made smoke there. That's all they do.

You just shovel coal into a fire. That's your shift. We just make coal. Originally smoke. It's for the ambiance. Making it smoky. So Jack the Ripper can do his thing, see? The pictures are going to be amazing.

It's going to be so much better. Creepy, you know? So, all right. Where the hell am I here? So a guy named Ellsworth here, Henry Levitt Ellsworth. Ellsworth just reminds me of the guy from Deadwood that married Alma in Deadwood. So he purchased 93,000 acres of land and published a booklet titled valley of the upper wabash indiana with hints on its agricultural advantages it's basically uh what they used to do and like when

they opened when they started making developments in florida they'd send pamphlets to the northeast like come down to here look how great it is this is that's what this was there's nothing here yet but give us time this was come here and look at this fertile farm. Don't you want to just come here and be a farmer? You want to leave the other life behind? That's what they were advertising. No, I don't know. I saw the booklet. I had a picture of it.

I'll post it till the land and be reliant on the weather. It's that's the problem. That's horrifying. You can't control that. No matter how hard you work, you can't make rain happen or not happen. Or stop snow. Or snow, or temperature, or plague of bugs. Right. There's a lot of things you really can't control, especially in the 1800s.

A lot of variables in there. Yeah. So Lafayette was the first site of the first official air mail delivery in the United States. Uh-huh. On August 17th, 1859. Really? You wouldn't think that, but a guy named john wise piloted a balloon so it was a balloon starting on the lafayette courthouse grounds and made an airdrop

so he just basically floated a balloon and threw somebody's mail down so they could say they were the first to do it is that how airmail works you just throw it out no okay that's not how it works at all i'm sure he landed and then did the land technically still it's an air thing but yeah i don't think now they just drop it from planes above the addresses throw it out of a fucking biplane hurry go we're almost never mind we're past the street we're gonna have to make another run over there just tap the street gonna make another pass i got this guy's electric bill he's gonna want this he's gonna be pissed if we miss this guy's electric bill. He's going to want this. He's going to be pissed if we miss this. He's going to be super mad about that if they shut his lights off.

So this guy hoped to reach New York, but the weather conditions forced the balloon down near Crawfordsville, Indiana. Not quite to New York. Didn't even make it out of the state. And the mail reached its final destination by train. But that's still technically the first launch. the mail reached its final destination by train but that's still technically the first launch in 1959 the u.s postal service issued a seven cent airmail stamp commemorating the centennial of the event so oh boy there's a stamp commemorating this town's commemorating balloon ride failed balloon ride so uh i have reviews of this town they are a little they're funny all

right let's get into the first one here. This guy's very all... This is like he thought it was Yelp. He fucked up. He put it in the wrong place. This is a three-star review, so it's average. Quote, there are several ethnic restaurants, such as Mongolian, Chinese, Greek, and authentic Italian. There are also the normal fast food restaurants and chain restaurants. The specialty, in quotes, restaurants are awesome,

offering authentic food and drink. The fast food restaurants offer the typical menus offered by them. The chain restaurants such as Bob Evans and Richards offer quote down home cooking. The local flavors offer small menus, but they do them well. That's it. Just all about food.

There's nothing about the town in here just he just gave a restaurant rundown in case you were stopping by vincente or uh lafayette how long ago did you review that 2015 all right just some restaurants he saw diners drive-ins and dash that's all i've got to do this yeah this is what i do now i'm just going to review food uh this one is good too um normally it's not too bad an area except uh what is it except during the summer during this time there's an or before the summer there's an increase in traffic and rude people i wouldn't choose to live in this particular area again because down the road is a trailer park with a large amount of pedophiles

and child molesters and i would not want my children to grow up in the area well then um is that is that presumptuous or did they do research i mean i i think they just look down there is that like where they put them all maybe is that the neighborhood that's like outside the zone of school zones it's like the one geographic place they can go or do they just like look at all those fucking pedophiles look at them mustaches and bands they've gotta be every one of them why else would they choose to be over there dirty just dirty now a population of this town like we said it's technically bigger but uh when this happened it was about 40 000 people were in this town total currently there when the murder happened we're going to talk about currently there is 72,174 people which is up 65 percent since 1990 purdue huh so what yeah purdue uh the story takes place

in 1982 so it's lower but the 2010 census said the year-round residency not counting students the students make up for more than half the residency the year around the actual full-time residents are 29,596 which is a small town so in more ways than one it's a small town i don't hear any arguments about it there you go so uh male female population is normal it's about 51 female median age is low because purdue is here so you're going to get a lot everybody's you know in their 20s and 18 19 years old median age is 32 because Purdue is here, so you're going to get a lot. Everybody's in their 20s and 18, 19 years old. Median age is 32.4, so pretty low. Married population is lower also.

It's only 42%. This all makes sense with a college town, basically. 26%, 23% are single with children, so there's kind of more of those kind of people. It's lower married because they're in college and this isn't utah yeah you know that's that's how that works uh race of this town about 76 percent white uh about eight and a half percent black 1.6 percent asian only 1.6 percent asian the fucking ecology running over there that's the weirdest thing i've ever heard how do you have a huge university and i only have 1.6 asian population that feels like i mean you get a lawsuit i don't know if i'm being stereotypical but there's a lot of asian kids in in college

i mean we have a i only say that because we have asu here and if you go near asu there's a shit load of asian kids like there's a lot of them you're like oh yeah that's where they're going so i don't know it's weird And they have a really big. What is that? That feels on purpose. Yeah, it does. It feels on purpose. It feels like there should be a lawsuit involved.

There's like, yeah, I applied there. And yeah, and I can't get in. Why is that? On this? Welcome to Lafayette. Not you, Ching Chong. The fuck is that? Get out of here, Ling.

What the hell is happening here? Get back. Very strange. 12.2% Hispanic. It is 33% religious because they're a little bit younger, so they haven't quite needed to... They haven't needed anything for hope yet, so that's good. Good for them.

And it's a good mixture of a bunch of everything. It's not a real dominant religion here. Some Methodists, some Lutherans, some Catholics. 0.3% Jewish, 0.2% Islam, so no Hava Nagila, no politics we're going to talk about, especially this week. Fuck that. I'm not going to get into that. It's right around the corner. Yeah, let's have fun instead and not worry about it.

This is a break from that. That's the point. This is a, hey, look at over here. Want to hear something crazier than what happens here? This is what we're going to talk about. We'll make this shit you'll go oh boy those things are sane if you feel incapable of voting and processing that information we got you covered it's fine we'll make that real easy so the unemployment rate here is low it's

about three percent so that's that you know that was before this is beginning of this year before the world caught on fire so median household household income, about $44,000 a year. Normally it's about $57,500 in the rest of the country. But you've got to figure there's college kids kind of bringing that down with a lot of minimum wage, part-time work, and shit like that. It's double the manufacturing jobs as normal here. So that's an odd thing.

A lot of that in the Midwest you come. What do they make there? I don't know, but it comes and goes, that kind of shit. And more educational jobs, too, because there's a huge huge university they might be making the snuggie right now they could be doing anything yeah or a swiffer either one anything any cute named product that starts with an s something something in the as seen on tv you know something like that next to the magic pillow right so uh overall i were, God, where the hell were we? It was before all this shit started. We were in a mall, and they had this cardboard cutout of that guy just holding his pillow out.

And he's sticking out in the hallway. I just wanted to clothesline him just because he was smiling at me with his pillow. And I'm just like, I don't want your pillow. I don't know. I don't know anything about the guy except that he's got a pillow, and he's blocking my way as I'm trying to walk by. That's all. I was like, get out of my way, pillow man. You don't know why it the guy except that he's got a pillow and he's gonna he's like blocking my way as i'm trying to walk by that's all it's kind of my way pillow man you don't know why it made me so angry he could have been literally anybody on it could have been just like a mother theresa cardboard i've been like out of my way old lady there's something pretty arrogant about creating

a quote-unquote product that's existed for so so long that we were all fine with yeah and he's like this one is so much better than everything else you've ever used how about go fuck yourself yeah i want in the wheel and i want the only i'm more like an astronaut to give me that like i had somebody said that has been somewhere unbelievable we had to invent this in space it was the only way that it would work so we needed astronauts to do it so it's clearly better now it's that would be something that would be like this is the best toilet paper ever really is it is it how dare you yeah it's does better. Now that would be something. That would be like, this is the best toilet paper ever. Really. Is it? Is it?

How dare you? Yeah. Does it do the same job probably? So the cost of living in this town is about 78, which is low, 78 out of 100. And that's because of housing. The housing is actually super low here. It is a 59 out of 100. And the median home cost is $136,800. So pretty low a lot of the homes are worth between 60 and 150 000 a lot of those in there and if we've convinced you damn it it's time to go we

have for you the lafayette indiana real estate report your average two-bedroom rental here is about $750 a month, which is below the national average by a lot. So college kids, get yourselves nine roommates and move on, man. Three-bedroom, two-bath house I found, 1,488 square feet. It's a good family home here. Decent, nice, detached garage, too, in the back. That's nice, kind of in the back of the house. Like a sitcom.

Get away from him and drink. Like a Midwestern sitcom. Yeah, you'd have a fridge out there. $135,000 for that. Not bad. God, I want one like that. Yeah, not bad, right? Now, four-bedroom, two-bath, 2,145 square feet.

This is a nice house. It's nice, too. It's white with pillars. It's got four big pillars in the front that go the whole two stories. Absolutely. Very nice. $159,900. With pillars. With pillars. Nice house. Wow. too it's white with pillars it's got four big pillars in the front that go the whole two stories absolutely very nice 159 900 bucks with pillars with pillars nice house wow not bad then i found this house is insane it's five bedroom five bath t-bowl for every b-hole yeah that's right everybody if you're gonna vote make sure it's for t-bowls for every b-hole which is not on the ballot but that's fine so uh it is 6,571 square feet christ

cute nice it looks like three houses like welded together that's what it looks like because it's like got different sizes and shapes it's awesome looking 565,000 bucks in phoenix this house would be five million dollars like it's crazy i couldn't believe it great it's a beautiful too things to do should we go any farther than the feast of the hunter's moon never i think i'm not leaving i think we need to know all about that because it sounds it sounds much more awesome than it is really like it sounds like it's like the feast of the hunter's moon it's not like a be like a boar jerky fucking no nothing. Nothing like that. It's going to be like Motorhead playing the anthem on the way in as people come in. Just like some dark shit. That's so straight.

Yeah. It's the Feast of the Hunter's Moon. Hunter's Moon. The Hunter's Moon. It's so good. Going off on it. Yeah. Does that.

No, that's not happening. It's very different. It offers. This is what it says here. It's very different. It offers, this is what it says here. The Feast of the Hunter's Moon offers both public and the participants a realistic portrayal of the people, cultures, and lifestyles that existed on the French and English colonial frontier in the Great Lakes region during the time of Fort Quaytonon, which encompassed the period from 1717 to 1791. They could spice this shit up the feast of the haunt i need i need an extra bass player up right i just picture like teenagers showing up like cosplaying like some crazy shit with like a horn coming off like yeah and they show up they're

like what the fuck is this shit it's like it's like violins and shit dressed like a pixie yeah people with like tights and wigged douchebags running around all over the place it's gonna be a mess we want to interpret this time and place as accurately as possible in order to offer the public an educational and unforgettable experience and also to honor the people who lived here the feast of the hunter's moon is a weekend festival and historical reenactment held each fall on the first weekend of October since 1968 at the present day site of that fucking fort that I can't pronounce. This will come up later, too, because the Feast of the Hunter's Moon is attended by our people. Hilarious. Oh, boy.

And they were into that sort of shit. A replica 18th century French military and trading post. Holy shit. They are blowing it. They have such a cool name. It's really just a gift. It's a golden goose right there. Fuck, dude.

And they're fucking their golden goose. That's fucking metal. The Feast of the Hunter's Moon. You could hire so many metal bands. Fuck. And employ. You'd give guys so much work. There would be every year.

Oh, there'd be STDs all over that place. Just people being grown. It would be amazing. So during the festival, they reenact the annual fall gathering of the French and Native Americans, which took place in the mid 18th century. Participants dress in the garb of 18th century French soldiers like asshole 17, 1700 soldiers. Whoa. Settlers and Native Americans who lived in the region. I don't know if you have to pick out of a hat ahead of time

which one you are. It's based on what kind of costume you have access to. I'm not sure how this is doled out. It seems like you're going to have a whole lot of one and not a lot of the other. I don't know. Who wants to be a settler? I guess it'd be the easiest one to dress for.

Just tattered clothes. Put some dirt on your face. Yeah. The Native Americans. that's so much more fun plus you'd have well then you got an issue of you're gonna yeah you're am i culturally appropriate what am i looking like here french soldiers you gotta have a that's just too much too much garb food vendors sell traditional period foods oh gross which is we really want the foods they ate in the 1700s because that's before they had refrigeration and knew what to do. McCormick didn't exist then.

No. They didn't have spices from across the world. They didn't have a whole grocery store aisle dedicated to it. Well, you know what they do have? Rabbit stew, Voyager stew, which sounds like just whatever you picked up on the side of the road, and venison sausage, which is probably good. Also, music, marching, dancing, and reenacted military maneuvers.

Holy shit. Wow. Just prancing 18th century Frenchmen. That's great. Nothing more embarrassing and boring than simulated walking. Oh, that's awful. That's not even like a Civil War reenactment where they're killing anybody. That's great. Nothing more embarrassing and boring than simulated walking. Oh, that's awful. That's not even like a Civil War reenactment where they're killing anybody. Everyone's getting along.

What the fuck are you reenacting? Synchronized, not synchronized. Yeah. Synchronized walking. Let's do that. While dressed like 18th century French soldiers. So musical acts also perform, including Native American drummers, historical folk music performers, French folk singers, and period thief and drum corps.

Or fife, whatever those little... Oh, fifers, yeah. I don't know, what a little whistle thing he is. So yeah, lots of that. There's food booths, roasted corn, buffalo burgers, homemade root beer. Ew. We have... Have you ever had like an IBC or like a Stewart's?

That's good root beer. Or that Western Sarsaparilla. Oh, you don't need this. It exists in barrels. Homemade root beer. Or that Western Sarsaparilla. No. Get it. You don't need this. It exists in barrels. We need a homemade root beer. Get the hell out of here.

You don't need somebody in the fucking kitchen putting the sugar together. You get a rabbit stew and a homemade root beer? No. What the fuck? What are we, hobos? Hold on. Let me put my bindle down while I order a fucking rabbit stew and a homemade root beer. Get out of here.

A rabbit. Gross. And also, I don't know what this is. As you would expect, a huge gathering of Suttlers, S-U-T-L-E-R, will be present at the Feast of the Hunters moon to offer, as you would expect, obviously, to offer period era wares and crafts. Furs, clothing, woodwork, toys, baskets, apple head dolls. Ah, that sounds terrifying.

Apple head doll. Sounds like a doll with an apple head. Yeah. That's gross. Sounds like a doll with an apple head yeah that's gross that doll doesn't last long no it'll rot right away probably treat it your older brother smoking weed out of it man what'd you do i just hollowed it out bro don't worry about it couldn't find my bowl shit bro lost my mountain dew can musical instruments barrels cast iron fireworks cast iron fireworks okay oh fireworks that make cast iron fireworks. Cast iron fireworks? What? Oh, fireworks that make cast iron shit. Oh, got it.

Fireworks. Fireworks. Like an employee. Yeah, but it's one word. Yeah, they shouldn't have done that. Quilts, blankets, pottery. Who gives a shit? Anyway, crime rate in this town.

Great. That festival sucks. I'm bored of it. They blew it. They ruined it. Great name, bullshit thing. Got an opportunity. So property crime is almost double the national average which is kind

of typical for college towns college kids do dumb shit they really do they do dumb shit they get drunk in the streets and all that kind of thing they take shit out on their ex-boyfriend or girlfriend well that's where you get to the property to the violent crime oh the property violent crime murder rape robbery and of course assault the mount rushmore of crime is high about 20 high here. So a little bit high on that too. So it's got some stuff popping off, which is strange. Speaking of stuff popping off, let's talk about a murder.

In May of 1980, near Anaheim, California, Dorothy Jane Scott noticed her friend had an inflamed red wound on his arm and seemed unwell. She insisted on driving him to the local hospital to get treatment. While he waited for his prescription, Dorothy went to grab her car to pick him up at the exit, but would never be seen alive again, leaving us to wonder, decades later, what really happened to Dorothy Jane Scott? From Wondery, Generation Y is a podcast that covers notable true crime cases like this one and many more. Every week, hosts Aaron and Justin sit down to discuss a new case, covering every angle and theory, walking through the forensic evidence, and interviewing those close to the case to try to discover what happened.

And with over 450 episodes, there's a case for every true crime listener. Follow the Generation Y podcast on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Generation Y ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. It's all a lighthearted nightmare on our podcast, Morbid. We're your hosts. I'm Alina Urquhart. And I'm Ash Kelly. And our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy. The stories we cover are well-researched. He claimed and confessed to officially killing up to 28 people. With a touch of humor. I'd just like to go ahead and say that if there's no band called Malevolent Deity, that is pretty great.

A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing. This mother****er lied. Like a liar. Like a liar. And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of cursing. This motherfucker lied. Like a liar. Like a liar. And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal, or you love to hop in the Wayback Machine and dissect the details of some of history's

most notorious crimes, you should tune in to our podcast, Morbid. Follow Morbid on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to episodes early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. I think he goes by Gerald. Does he? Everybody seems to call him Gerald. Gerald Smith is 30 in 1982, and Shelley Smith is 26 in 1982. So the story takes place in 1982, which makes it more interesting, I think, here.

We'll find out. He, Gerald, is a senior at Purdue. Oh. So he's- 32? 30. Oh, 30. He's 30.

I don't know if there was of gap he had or whatever. But he also delivers newspapers in the morning. So he's basically except for the college. Like if he dropped out of college, he'd be Chris Elliott from Get a Life. That old show back in the day there. But instead, he's in college and married. So he has a life going on here. So he's doing fine.

Gerald Smith. He's trying to graduate. He's trying to make ends meet while he graduates. He's married to Shelly Smith, who's 26. She stays at home because they have a one-year-old daughter. So she takes care of their one-year-old daughter. He hustles newspapers in the morning. He gets up at about two in the morning, leaves the house at three, and delivers newspapers,

gets home about 8.30, changes changes his clothes and goes to class. Fuck. So, you know, and then he's got a one year old and she's got this half life. Yeah. And then she's got the one year old by herself. So it's they're both, you know, they're working toward a bigger goal is what we're getting at. You know, they're building something together as a family here. So in 1981, there's some other people involved that we'll talk about here.

So they're married for a couple of years. They seem very happy. Like we said, he's in college. She's into like poetry, Shelly. And like they're kind of like kind of artsy. They're artsy people. Like she has like poetry reading jam sessions over in the living room of the house. You know what I mean?

People like local people that they know, friends and artists come over. And it's kind of like in like the late 50s it's weird they're like 20 years still going on from like what they used to do like with the beatniks and hippies and shit later on would do just get together and have jam sessions and shit but i was gonna go the teenagers do fucking now yeah now it's college kids do that shit together a lot that's pretty popular expressing feelings and stuff. Fuck that. Yeah, 82, though, it wasn't... No.

It didn't seem to be a big thing, but... So 1981 was the year before our main kind of center of the story, but this is... We'll go back to 81 for a second and talk about a woman who they know later on. They don't know her at the time in 81. A woman named Marsha Ruth Heald. H-E-A-L-D. Heald or Held?

Held? I don't know. I'm going to go with Heald. I'll go with Marsha. Okay. Marsha. Marsha, Marsha, Marsha. Easy.

Marsha's 44 years old. Yeah. At this point, she has two teenage sons. She's been divorced twice. She's 44. She's had a life. She's a religious woman. She's been divorced twice. She's 44. She's had a life. She's a religious woman. She goes to church.

And she was born. She's raised in Indiana by her parents who've lived there, obviously, probably. She wasn't raised in an orphanage or anything. She's raised in, I think, Plainfield, Indiana. And she's raised as a Quaker. Oh, boy. So she's raised as a Quaker. She plays the harp.

What? Yeah yeah she does her aunt describes her as quote well educated she was a graduate of earlham college and then had uh earned a graduate degree at indiana university awesome so yeah she does i mean it's great for she's doing very well for herself she always did well in school and she worked for libraries since then she's very much into books and music of course art it's a heart that's what i mean she's into that sort of thing she's not someone who's like cool i'm going to wall street right i'm gonna make a buck in the stock market like she's much more into you know more i don't know more artsy endeavors here so she uh she goes there her she was very active in the quote in the local

society of friends church and in music groups yeah so she's into church she's into music groups social she does things uh she comes from her family's like a good family they live on she's raised on a farm that her family still lives in same you know her parents still live there outside of plainfield and you know they live there forever she in 1981 she's employed at the indiana state library in downtown indianapolis where she worked in the library's loan department since uh 1979 the loans the loans i don't know if that's loaning out books is it that or is it like she's the library cop like on seinfeld or what's her story there's a loan officer for paying your fucking overdues. That's what I mean.

Is she going around collecting? He, this person owes us 65 cents. Breaking legs. They've had this book for 11 years. They owe us 65 cents. I got to collect. She's dispatching a group of thugs to knock on your door. She's got like a bunch of hell's angels that she sends out there.

Oh, yeah. Fuck it. You guys get a cut of it we'll give you three nickels if you yeah pull this together hey next week or snot's gonna come visit you he's gonna come after you i'll tell you what so uh february of 1980 she also started working two saturdays a month at the indianapolis children's museum oh that's nice she does lots of fucking like yeah she's proper shit yes she's very much things that we don't do ever she she has an education that's we don't do that she works at

the library forget just going there once she wants to help people with her stuff she you know she works at a children's museum because she likes the children and she likes the the she likes the museum too she's into education that's you know she's very smart and she's like i said divorced twice and she has at the time a 16 year old son and a 14 year old son or 13 at the time and uh her 17 year old son lives in plainfield with her parents and he stays there and then her 14 year old son uh moved to albuquerque the year before new mexico yeah oh nice nice pop there you pop that pop that bad boy good her her younger son moved to albuquerque to stay with her with her ex-husband his father yeah so he was going to go live with the father for a while poor bastard which is fine so she's living alone at this moment

in time but she's in constant contact with her sons and things like that they haven't like you know disowned her or anything she's they just wanted to yeah you know whatever something else yeah so she lived in this area kind of her whole life um except she moved away when during one of her marriages briefly and came back so her father's a retired truck driver and laborer, and he keeps the grounds for several churches in the area on a volunteer basis as he's retired. So she comes from a nice Quaker family who volunteers and goes to college and then helps children and mows lawns and fucking weed wax for free. Yeah, that's when you're retired. Imagine being like 72 years old and being like, I'm going over fucking weed wax for free yeah that's when you're retired imagine being like 72 years old and being like i'm going over to weed wax right the old baptist no baptist lawn

is a little overgrown nope i don't care what i have i dispatch my grandchildren to do this type of thing nope you're mowing over here you're doing volunteer work for me you're doing say it's from me yeah but i can't do it i wouldn't even bother i'd just send a letter cut the grass it looks like shit it looks terrible fucking bums so now we got to talk about another guy here who she meets a man named brian thornton uh thornton he is uh he's a he's a musician he's a piano technician i keep saying i don't know what the hell a piano does he fix pianos there's a musician. He's a piano technician, I keep saying. I don't know what the hell a piano. Does he fix pianos? There's a whole racket for tuning those fucking things, man.

That's what I mean. I don't know if he does like for, he could be a piano tech for like concerts or for studio work or something. They have those. I know that'll get the piano all ready for the artist to come sit down and they can just crank away. That tuning is expensive. Yeah, no, it's an art form. And if you're into music, that's,'s i guess a good way to make a living where you can still be around a piano and he this is i've never heard of anyone doing this before

i feel like okay he builds harpsichords what i feel like all the harpsichords in the world were built in before the 1870s right we've probably got plenty about 1880 they were like that's enough harpsichord we're good i think we're good for like plenty about 1880 they were like that's enough harpsichord i think we're good for like 200 years soon as they were plural we're good we're shutting it down like you know it's one of those things if you want a harpsichord you get like it's like an antique harpsichord from the you know some french person's house in the 1870s set it on desk and never touch the fucking thing that's what i mean i don't know that i didn't know that they were currently being produced i've never heard anybody need a harpsichord bad have you never never i don't think i've ever

seen one i feel like when someone dies who has one it'll go to somebody else and that's enough harpsichords around and hopefully that person knows how to play the fucking thing if not they can maybe give it to someone who does that's how harpsichords get around but i don't feel like they're made and produced and i'm going down to the harps accord store it's like i've been in music stores a lot of them and i've never seen harps accords for sale yeah i bought a guitar for my kids for their birthday and um no was there a harps accord section i don't think so no i think you know there was there was guitars and drums and that's it bass or two that's it some shit let me be a tambourine done that's about all yeah i don't know i don't see a lot of harps accord say there wasn't a guy in the back with like puffy sleeves toiling on a harpsichord

making one honing it and whittling it out of some shoes with hooks on the ends yeah no it's so strange little bells on them that's odd i don't think you'd see that so he was uh brian was put in an asylum at age 10 yeah for a while for a while um well we don't really know exactly for what and it's it's what we don't this is a chicken or the egg situation with brian as we'll find out a little bit later we're not quite sure brian's got some what would be considered in 1982 indiana aberrant lifestyle choices which now would be nothing at all and not considered he's well he's running around with a harpsichord the bells on the pointy shoes people are freaking out but we'll find out brian is uh brian kind of brian's a little

bit by he's bisexual kind of he'll go you know he's with men sometimes with women sometimes i guess that's the definition yep and uh that's there it is that's the one so the symptoms those are the symptoms so i don't know if back then in the 50s if a kid showed tendencies that way they would put them in a fucking asylum sometimes if there was like a very religious family or just uh just a lot of times just people who just didn't know back then so they thought it was and people used to it was classified as a mental illness right until like the 80s or some shit homosexuality was too that's what i'm talking about that's not just not i mean not just bisexual i mean any kind of homosexual tendencies as they would you know put it back then but any any anything perceived

gayness back then they'd be like that kid needs help and put him in a home yeah whereas you know some kid parents if they were good would probably just talk to their kid yeah find out what they're into and then be like oh all right well they seem like well that's that and then you just yeah i don't know but anyway off of that one so he was he's putting aside so we don't know what happened or if there was other reasons why but uh he says when he was in the asylum, he saw what he called atrocities there. Oh, I'm sure. Go on. And this is like in the early 60s. Yeah.

So think about that. I'm sorry. Like the early 50s. So this is not a time when this was. Have you seen like Cropsey? Yes. Okay. Like with Cropsey, that was the late 60s.

They were just letting people fucking run around in their own shit. And you know, it was, it's, it's disturbing to watch how they treated those people. Think about 20 years before that, how they were treated at children because they didn't think they knew any better. They couldn't understand or process or tell anyone. That's with adults. Right. That's why they'd let them go.

Cause physically you don't want to have to tangle with them. You can physically dominate a 10-year-old. So that would be scary of how they were. So anyway, Brian and Marsha meet each other in September of 1981. They meet each other at the Eagle Creek Rendezvous, which is a music festival. And it was terrible. You know, it was harpsichord players and everything some symphony somebody with a lute yeah a lot of that shit yeah damn it this was rough uh they

worked out several tunes together she was playing the dulcimer i don't even know what it is i don't know either i know it's some something you have to pick it's got strings okay i know that because later on one of the ladies complains that she didn't like the way she played the dulcimer. Oh. Wasn't into it. Not her cup of tea. No, just not good.

And Thornton was playing his flute. Okay, I know what that is. So, yeah. Old-fashioned-y. Yeah. They're skipping around, man. This is some like... How do you spell dulcimer?

Is it with a Y? D-U-L-C-I-M-E-R. Oh, it's like a fucking steel guitar. Yeah, okay. There you go. It's like a lay-down guitar. I knew it was some kind of string instrument. Or it's not. What the fuck?

That's not the same instrument. You can't have that and then that and have them be called the same thing no like that's maybe they make the same sound i see that one being like a uh renaissance fair that's what i'm saying yeah it's an old-fashioned fat long guitar something she needs to pick the strings on so i knew that had to be a string and those are not the same instrument god damn it get those off the internet together and him on the flute with a big jester hat you know i'm sure with bells on the end of it too to match his shoes well he hopped on back and forth with his flute yeah wearing tights and she's sitting in a chair with that shit on

her lap yeah and a picture and they're just they're having a just a grand old time look at that isn't that wonderful jesus they're liking it they loved it. They get into it and they like each other. These two, they like each other a little bit as friends, a little bit romantically. You know, they're into each other. So they're having a good time making music together. They both have interests in 18th century reenactments. So they love going to the Feast of the Haunted Moon. They love that shit.

They love it a lot. And they go to folk music festivals together. And, oh, boy, they become friends and shit. Later on, she gets a little bit clingy. And he kind of wants to break away. But it's not that bad. And we'll get into that in a little bit here. But she is very much into music.

She keeps a journal, which we're going to refer to plenty over the course of this. In the journal, here's a quote from one of her journals. This was made on February 4th, 1982. Quote, music is the language of souls. We play music in many places and many settings among many people until we find those who have the matching souls. among many people, until we find those who have the matching souls. Okay. So she's saying she might have found her matching soul through music with Brian here.

In 1981, October 81, Marsha goes with Brian to the Egyptian display, and he read the hieroglyphics, because I guess he had taken some Egyptian shit. Oh. Read some hieroglyphic, right? He's fluent. I don't know if he's fluent, or he might have been full of shit yeah who knows i mean see this right here is the cat likes the arrows that's hieroglyphics i'm shooting them to him yeah i could tell you anything that's like you know when doing like a nonsense foreign language for an actor like yeah what language is that oh it's fucking whatever it's like kazakhstani it's just uh not a real language so i don't know anyway she or it was then i mean you could you could make up anything you want now because nobody fucking knows what that is is what i'm getting at

it's not active rosetta stone for this i'm sure but they do they probably do they're going to get get money out of you one way or another so she at that point told him that she believed um that she was ancient okay what do you mean well um she believed she was not of this time oh she believed she was ancient and has lived many lives as like in her soul well yeah she's been reincarnated over and over again. All right. We'll find out how old. She's a party.

Yeah. And she also, she told her friends that Brian told her that, quote, my friends think I'm the god Pan. Okay. I don't know that particular god. I'm not. Maybe it's an Egyptian. I'm not sure. i'm not up on my gods it might be a peter thing not positive but she said well i'll be i'll be your tinkerbell

and then they went off together and you know a tent and fucked while he played the flute i don't know what happened so that none of that happened so but he said he thinks he my friends think i'm the god pan so that's not going so far as to say i think i'm the god i've been told rumors abound that i am possibly the god pan but don't quote me on that not that i resemble i am i am off the record right off the record this is what friends have told me i haven't confirmed it for myself obviously but that's what's going around people tell me people tell me this and it's possible you. I could be the God Pan. What do I look like?

I don't know. I play the flute pretty well. I make harpsichord. How many other people know I know how to make a harpsichord? That's right. God Pan right here, whatever that is. Anytime somebody says, people tell me I look like this, that's that person wishing they looked like that.

People always tell me that. You always look at them and go, do they? No, they don't. Who would tell you that? What asshole did this to you? No one's ever told me I look like anybody no that's the honest to god truth i've heard dana carvey and that's just because we both have thin lips that's it neither of us have an upper lip between us you looked like the drummer in a in the 90s band that i saw a video for remember and i sent you the screenshots

what band was that i don't remember you look just fucking like him, dude. It looked just like you. It was creepy. And to my credit, or theirs possibly, a lot of people look like me at an angle. And I know that because Facebook tags me in so many people's pictures. And none of them look like me. Put a hat on and you won't.

That's pretty cool. Just put a hat on. Be bald with glasses. Have a beard. You're everybody. That's all cool put a hat on with glasses have a beer that's everybody that's all that sees is that those three features you're everybody they're like can't see your face there's a hat i don't know who you are done it's beautiful you hide it oh shit so she decided later on in the this is what she told her friends if christ came back to earth yeah if um he would be thornton he'd be brian he'd be brian yeah absolutely if he

came back i feel like that's who he'd be yeah so that's just on the table i feel like it's possible that's what she said yeah so she's like i just want everyone to. I feel like it's possible. That's what she said. Yeah. So she's like, I just want everyone to know that, that I, it's, I'm not sure he is Christ. That's not what I'm saying. But if Jesus was back, that's the guy he's right here in front of me. So I found him just in case, but you never know if, if by chance he was back now, I think I ran into him. That's all I'm going to say. Good guy. guy plays the flute

we get along well so she's just saying that much so fast forward let's fast forward this is like late 81 early 82 let's fast forward to august 2nd 1982 august 2nd 1982 8 30 a.m to be very specific gerald smith remember him 30 years old delivering delivering newspapers, going to Purdue as a wife named Shelly. One-year-old daughter. They're hustling. Okay. Gerald Smith calls 911 at 830 a.m. Gerald calls 911 to say

that his wife has been attacked in their home. He walked in. She's in the hallway. She's unresponsive. There's blood everywhere, and she's naked. Oh, oh boy not a good 911 call to me he said i just got home from my paper route right and this is what i found right so police arrive and uh they find her she's she's dead uh shelly has been killed and uh this is well this is uh one of the police officers here. Quote, the murder was extremely brutal.

He said it was one of the worst he'd ever seen. He said, quote, there was a large number of stab wounds with a variety of weapons. He said nothing in the apartment indicated there'd been a struggle. There's nothing knocked over. No lamps, nothing like that. He said that Shelley Smith is nearly decapitated uh barely just some some tissue and flesh basically holding her head on her body that seems to be very common i don't know what it is about yeah but so a lot of times they do it a certain way we'll get into this this was beyond

what we usually see usually it's uh they there's at least a swift instrument of some kind or this is another level of when we get into how this happened. So they said four knives ranging in size from a paring knife to a large butcher knife were found like kind of spread around the area of where they found Shelly and in her body was nude. She was found in the hallway there. He described her lying on her stomach with her palms down. Her head was twisted around. And basically, yeah. Also, above her hair, above her head, intertwined, basically had like, there was leaves in her hair. like a vine from a wandering jew plant yeah and that's what they're called wandering i have one in my living room actually but they're the there's a vine with like like inner hair like inner like a crown like almost like just yeah it's like inner

hair now there we know we're not sure how this exactly happened. And there's pieces of a broken mirror everywhere all over the place. And a brown clay pot was near her head as well. An empty brown clay pot. So a lot of clues. This is a scene. Naked dead woman, blood everywhere, head nearly off, broken mirror, tons of knives. Clearly placed in her hair like like a, you know, a vine with some leaves in it in there.

Also, this is a very odd scene. Now, the police officer said that he was a, he was a religious guy and he was brought up in the church. And because of that, his first thought was that this had something to do with the occult, the murder.

He said that there were two books on the occult on a nearby dresser and a picture on a picture of a crucifix in unusual colors oh not a not a rainbow crucifix or so not that oh god well that must be uh and it's 1982 case closed it's indiana that's what i mean it's very everything is very conservative in terms of just it's footloose this is the town from footloose basically that's that's where it wasn't in indiana i don of just it's Footloose. This is the town from Footloose. Basically, that's where it wasn't in Indiana. I don't know. It's somewhere in there in the Midwest.

I don't know. So he says, quote, it was so it was so gruesome. It suggested something other than just shoot him up and get out kind of deal. Yeah, it was clearly somebody worked at this. So her one year old daughter was inside the apartment as well. Safe and sound. Not uninjured, untouched in her room. I mean, not uninjured.

No, but in her room, had no idea anything happened. Looks like no one ever went in that room. There's no blood in there. There's no footprints. There's no anything. So nothing like that. Gerald Smith is allowed to take the baby outside at least because i mean obviously he's i would say he's your number one suspect immediately when the husband calls i was go i

was out and i came home and here she is like really did you know that was what everybody says so uh they also noticed that at some point shelly was hit over the head by something in the apartment which might be the clay pot possibly most of the of the blood was found where Shelley was discovered in a hallway that leads from the bathroom to other parts of the apartment. And they said the husband left about 3 a.m. And we'll find out a little bit more exact about that for his job delivering papers. He said she was fine when he left. He left.

He said he returned about 830 and found her. He said when he left, he closed the door quietly but didn't lock it, which I get it's 1982 in Indiana. But why wouldn't you lock your door? You got a one year old. How do you not lock your door? I know that I'm from a different place or whatever, but you lock your door always. Just lock it.

It's not that hard. Just click. There you go. Peace of mind. Hey, no one will walk in and butcher my family. Not even necessarily. It'll be harder for your Just click. There you go. Peace of mind. Hey, no one will walk in and butcher my family. Not even necessarily. It'll be harder for them to do it. Safety of your wife, but you got a one-year-old in there.

Yeah, you got a baby. Even for you, if you're in there, just lock it up. Who knows? Even if it's not to keep bad guys out, it sure keeps her in. The baby. Or her. They have an 18-month-old baby. That's why you don't want them wandering out.

You keep that thing inside. What do you think of that? Shelly ain't getting a key either. Like, no, that's not what happened at all. From what we understand here. So he he was holding a little girl when the cops arrived. He stood outside the house for most of the afternoon with the baby and then was at police headquarters and didn't comment to the press at all, but talked to the police and gave the statements and all that sort of thing. Police, they go inside the apartment.

They gather information. They said they've done a very extensive investigation in the apartment. Gerald here, he says, quote, later on, he said he returned from his paper route. Quote, she was lying there with her face up and there was a piece of mirror laying on top of her under her chin. He said, I was shocked and confused i reached down and took the piece of mirror off of her i thought it was laying on her chin but it was laying on her back because the rest of her body was turned around oh my christ yeah oh boy yeah her head was backwards. Ripped it backwards. That's wild. That's why. So imagine that. That's horrific.

That is horrific. He said her body was cold. I stood there. I tried to make sense of what was happening. That's what he told the police. So, I mean, Jesus Christ. That's horrific. So back to Brian and Marsha.

Okay. Back to those two hanging out and playing the flute and skipping around. Ryan and Marsha. Okay, back to those two hanging out and playing the flute and skipping around. May of that year, May of 1982, she attended a Renaissance Fair in Indianapolis. Of course she did. Yeah, of course, because Thornton was booked to play the harpsichord there. That's gigs you get is Renaissance Fair gigs.

Hell yeah. I got a Ren Fair. I just picture Patton Oswalt and Reno 911. That's all I picture. And them yelling at him. And he's like, no, no, you don't understand. It's in this time and blah, blah, blah. It's modern conveyance.

Get your ass in the goddamn car. That's what I'm picturing. You've been to it here, right? No. Oh, James. No, no. My daughter likes that shit, though. She thinks she likes that kind of kind of i feel like she's like enacting yeah but if covid wasn't happening i'd drag your ass there because it's beautiful and

it's in a nice time of year it is it's i'm not doing anything it's in the desert i'm not gonna drive to go to a plot of desert there's never gonna happen i don't care what's there that is hilarious never happening an hour and a half to fucking get there. There's desert here. Then you get there, you have a turkey leg, and then drive an hour and a half home. A dusty turkey leg from the desert. No. See a guy jam swords in his throat. I do nothing here.

It's just all dirt, and I'm not doing it. Why is it always dudes that do that? It's not chicks. Yeah, I know. They know that's rare. I feel like I'd watch it a little closer if it was a woman. We're going to get tweeted like a million chick sword swallowers now. You know we are. I do it. You know we are are look at this this lady doesn't i just i want to watch here's my friend and down to the hilt there's always a dude that like right to the

hilt puts it between his teeth opens his mouth and it fucking slams on his cheeks it's crazy i want to take you i really do to the to the red that's fair that sounded very sexual i want to take you it was like i looked over at you like what what do. To the red hair. That sounded very sexual. I want to take you. It was like, I looked over at you like, what? What do you want? You're talking about jamming things down your throat, and then you're like, I want to take you. Like, hold on a second.

What are we talking about here? Put the beer down, Listman. I was very confused for a second here. Yeah, I was like, good Lord. How, what, this edible kicked in. I get that the edible kicked in a little bit ago, but like, not that hard. What's happening? This guy, James, blows up long balloons and pushes them down his throat, and then his

stomach gets really big because he's got fucking balloons in there, and then he jams a knife down there, and his stomach goes back to normal because he pops them all. So then he's got a shit rubber? Then he's got a shit rubber out. Chunks of rubber? Yeah. Shitting out balloon nuts? Poor bastard.

That's colorful shit it's like did i eat lucky charms today i don't know which one so oh that's terrible it's wild well that's what they go to the ren fair to the ren fair we go and she said if it wasn't in the middle of desert i'd go there but i'm not going to the desert so uh she said there um this is one of the when things start to go a go a little loopy with her. I mean, the Jesus thing and all that was a little loopy. But she said that while she was there, an Egyptian looking man wearing a lot of a lot of jewelry seduced her there. Yeah.

Okay. So a bejeweled Egyptian man seduced okay uh seduced her at the ren fair uh which is interesting i don't understand that more on that later don't worry that'll come back it's not xerxes no we don't know okay just a guy could have just been some italian guy wearing a lot of jewelry and she's like he's an egyptian man come over here how you doing look at the two little sweet ass all right let me let me get you a turkey leg and some food on top of that you know i'm talking It's like, hey, sweetheart, come over here. How you doing? Look at you, little sweet ass. All right. Let me get you a turkey leg and some food on top of that. You know what I'm talking about?

Come over here, sweetheart. Hey, come into my tent for a minute. I think he's Egyptian, right? She's from Indiana. She's a Quaker. She has no idea. Never seen culture. She's Egyptians.

Wow. He was just wearing gold. So much. He had a horn of gold around his neck so uh she in may she threw herself at brian thornton's feet and began kissing them for what reason out of the blue yeah um he told her at that point that she was quote loony yeah but in like a fun way like you're loony you know what i mean you are loony man so during this time he started asking his friends that he knew and that she was introduced to kind of why can you talk to her and like tell her like you know like hey i'm not jesus just tell her i'm not jesus

if you would like is she's starting to kiss my feet and shit like that and it's getting a little bit weird so just be like hey you know brian's not jesus right joke around don't make her feel uncomfortable he's not you know that sort of thing so slide it in the conversation don't shoehorn it if she brings it up right make sure to give a retort is all i'm asking for including shelly smith is one of the people that he asked maybe you know if i if you guys run across each other be like hey by the way brian's not jesus have a good one yeah whatever. So they continued, though. Marsha and Brian continued to hang out with each other and play functions. There is a dulcimer society that they go to, and they both hang out there.

How do you find this whole underground society? You go to a Ren Faire. I guess so. Just one. You'll find it. Oh, it's all there. Go to a Ren Faire. I guess so. Just one.

You'll find it. Oh, it's all there. In July of 82, she saw Brian at the Fiddler's Festival. People are booking these things. A Fiddler's Festival, Ren Faires, Dulcimer Societies. What the fuck is worse? People are patronizing. They're going and watching.

That's I mean, there has to be there has to be members enough members to support this so there are people doing this like how are they finding this how is this happening i am fascinated yeah with whatever underground society they have going on here fascinated by it i'm always fascinated whenever anybody gets like a little society going as long as it's not like destructive to people right when it's fringe like that well yeah but when it's like this they're not bothering anybody they're fucking playing fiddles and shit like that's you can dulcimer dulcimer to your heart's content no one's gonna be you know hurt from that at all this is this sort of thing i have no problem with whatsoever i don't want to do it but go crazy if you want to but yeah i'm

fascinated by it also uh battleground i don't know what the hell that was. I imagine dress up like the fucking Battleground. I don't know. Do you mean like the barbarians of the time and fucking fight? I see it in the park all the time. Well, the problem is the Battleground one got broken up by a rainstorm. And apparently during it, before the rainstorm, he had been, in her mind, avoiding her. Brian had been avoiding Marsha, she thought. She's like, I don't know, man.

He's talking to me. He just kind of looks like he's trying to get away from me and trying to avoid me. So then the rain came. So she told her friend and wrote in her diary as well, quote, he caused a rainstorm to avoid seeing me. Whoa. Oh, my. You made it rain. Oh, Jesus boy that is happening that is next fucking level now i'll be between her ears yeah now at this point she starts to tell people that she believes brian is in fact jesus okay like the actual he's christ yeah like that just you know not like a christ figure or a

prophet he's the actual jesus so there he is um yeah and she says some people around her around him some of his friends are keeping him from realizing his christ potential oh they're holding them back they're holding his jesus. That's what they're doing. He's like a jack in the box and it's on its last crank and they refuse to pull it over and just let it crank and let him pop out and turn water into wine and shit. They're saying you're keeping him down, which some people like to keep their friends down. It makes them feel better. He's surrounded by a bunch of Judas.

Yeah. I mean, crabs in a bucket. Like, you know, that's the original crabs in a bucket i guess right there yeah so crabs in a bucket they always say in comedy they don't you don't want people don't want people to get ahead of them so they right they like crabs in a bucket they pull them back in down no they all believe they're jesus yeah but this is which comics do yeah most of them yeah comics and doctors so they believe they're jesus because to heal someone yeah is like a magic trick so that would

give someone a god complex and to be able to go in front of hundreds of people cold yep and they don't fucking know who you are and make them laugh forget it how many people do you know personally that can do that not many not fucking many so that's what it's now don't get us wrong it's not a god-like thing it's just a stupid skill that you've practiced enough to be able to do it it's a magic trick but in a deranged narcissistic head people go i'm god look what i did you know they're following me it's fucking crazy david blaine feels that way probably yeah yeah i would assume so so even though he knows what's happening he knows what he's doing yeah still and he makes us what david. He, do you hate him?

You know, there's something about that guy. Okay. Yeah. Let's, let's David Blaine. Now, when he was back in the day when he first came out. The street magic. And he did like, he went on like David Letterman and like did a couple of cool card tricks that looked like he was a fucking warlock.

Okay. I remember him doing this card trick where they slow mo, even in slow mo frame by frame, there's, you can't change. It just did. It just does it. It just happens.

Like you don't see. So that was pretty cool, but that's not a reason to be famous. He was just a guy who's going to make good tips on the street, like make doing cool tricks in the subway. He's going to kill it. Yeah. And then he's like,

I'm going to bury myself, you know, in the middle of Mount Everest in the very center's gonna kill it yeah and then he's like i'm gonna bury myself right you know in the middle of mount everest in the very center base of it and then i'm gonna explode out of the top of it like a fucking volcano you know yeah with the words david and fireworks above me and that's a little far i think i think you're taking it too far he is named after a guy in the bible i'll bet he thinks he's jesus he thinks he's something yeah i don't know what the hell he thinks he is but he thinks he's something he's quite biblical yeah i feel like he learned card tricks to get girls to fuck him yeah that's what it seems like yeah he was like well that's

something yeah not that that's gonna get that but it's it's better than having no approach at all at least it's a cold you can you can break the ice with you know some crazy magical wild shit you can put that wedding ring somewhere fantastic. There you go. It's all a lighthearted nightmare on our podcast, Morbid. We're your hosts. I'm Alina Urquhart. And I'm Ash Kelly.

And our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy. The stories we cover are well-researched. He claimed and confessed to officially killing up to 28 people. With a touch of humor. I'd just like to go ahead and say that if there's no band called Malevolent Deity, that is pretty great. A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing. This mother f***er lied. Like a liar.

Like a liar. And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal, or you love to hop in the Wayback Machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes, you should tune in to our podcast, Morbid. Follow Morbid on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to episodes early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller,

available exclusively on Wondery Plus, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced.

She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. With an all-star cast led by Emmy nominee Sanaa Lathan and Star Wars' Kelly Marie Tran, Chinook is available exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

I understand that anybody who's paid attention to the media will 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. So back to Marsha here. Now, Marsha, Marsha feels like she's she's honed in on the source of what's keeping Brianrian from his his christ potential yeah okay and also her potential to be with him because she's got an idea of who she is as well that we'll talk about now she referred she doesn't know who the person is but she knows she doesn't know what form this will take but she knows what the force behind it is that's keeping Brian down. She refers in her journal to a, quote, lady of illusion, a lady of illusion with red hair

holding Brian's love for her and his Christ-like potential in chains. That's just, he can't achieve it, and she can't. Some ginger is holding them back this lady of illusion god damn it down fucking bitch every time this lady of illusion she gets me so yeah brian a little more about brian um he says when he's 10 uh that's the he went to an asylum what he refers to as a quote, insane asylum said it wasn't a nice place.

Uh, he said there was atrocities that he saw. He also tells her of a time when he, this might've been probably one of the reasons why he was in a, in an institution in the fifties. He had a boyhood fantasy where I guess some delusion that the numbers six, six, six were branded on his right hand. so he thought he was like the devil for a short time as a child based on this delusion and then he was put in an institution and i don't know what came first good news the chick thinks you're the opposite so yeah you got that he said that um he also this is what he told they kind of shared their secrets him and marcia

they shared you know he told she told him crazy shit like i of shared their secrets him and marcia they shared you know he told she told him crazy shit like i think you're jesus and she told him or he told her hey i had a fantasy about having 666 on my hand and was putting in the same asylum they also talked in later meetings about how they have uh he has a theory that angels come down and mate with humans and then return to heaven oh these two what the fuck that's his theory oh boy so i don't even know what the fuck to say about that what do you say about that uh a lot get help i mean yeah you're both nuts so in may she writes her will for some reason 40s no reason why she's not sick she just writes her will for some reason. In her 40s. No reason why. She's not sick.

She just writes her will. She's starting to have a little mental. She's going a little off the deep end here. So she writes. This is for her family and friends and everything. She thinks at this point, she writes in her diary, or in her actual will, that she's probably going to be killed by brian thornton marcia is because she's a sinner and he's jesus okay so the only way jesus because jesus kills sinners yeah that's what she says and a lawyer read that and was like that'll do that's fine

this isn't notarized this isn't notarized this is just she writes this down kind of puts it in her stuff for like her family and privacy of her own home there's not she's not there's no actual she's not deeming property she's not doling out actual things that can be measured okay in her will she says quote uh to jerry play and sing play and sing your music fills the universe to cindy you are beautiful in your diversity. You attract to all your many facets. That's not. Let's put that under will. She's not willing anything. That's what I'm saying.

It's just like, it's more like a letter to her friends. It's strange. And willing their own energy to do something. What? Yeah. You're beautiful. Keep doing that. Keep doing that.

Hey, keep that up, chickie. Why'd you put that under will? Hey, sweetheart. Wink, wink. Keep that up, will you? Keep doing that. Keep doing that. Hey, keep that up, chickie. Why don't you put that in your will?

Hey, sweetheart. Wink, wink. Keep that up, will you? So in a letter to Brian over the summer, she writes, this is like July-ish, she writes, quote, I am always fascinated by the movie Night of the Generals, which I have not seen. I assume it's an older movie. I watch it with rapt and adoring attention to the performances of Peter O'Toole, who's an amazing actor, as the clean, pure, beautiful, and untouchable

Nazi general who slices and hacks to pieces the prostitute because she offers him too little. Peter did that? Peter O'Toole is apparently a prostitute-chopping Nazi at one point. I had no idea. I did not see this movie at all. I saw him

in high spirits and loved him totally missed that one seems like he would have been great and intolerable bastards they gotta put what's his name right out of glory when i say intolerable jesus christ what the fuck is wrong with me that sounds like a better title because we just watched that intolerable cruelty on ps i hate this movie like two weeks ago. So intolerable bastards. So intolerable bastards. He made a new movie. That's what I would call that, which would be a great movie. That would be anyone-

Intolerable bastards with Catherine Zeta-Jones. Well, it's anyone who's in that movie being hunted down by the crew from Inglourious Bastards and having the bear Jew bash their fucking heads open. That's what I would like to see. Scalp Catherine Zeta-Jones. That's what I would like to see. Only for that, her characters in the movie everybody in the movie i'm not saying i want

to see katherine zeta jones i don't know intolerable bastards jesus christ so yeah she's apparently loves and adoring attention she says adoring attention to the performance. I don't know. So she picks up three pieces of jewelry. Now, this is something she's very proud of. These represent the sun, the star, and the moon. These three pieces. Okay. She purchased the jewelry at the Children's Museum in Indianapolis, where she works as a volunteer on Saturdays.

children's museum in indianapolis where she works as a volunteer on saturdays um she calls the three neck necklaces quote her potent jewelry okay so it's strong stuff it's potent yeah yeah it'll knock your socks off i'll impregnate a woman from across the room if i have this necklace on you have no idea sun the moon the stars it's just boom look at you you're six months along by the way that's i didn't just. It's not. Yeah. Skip the prenatal. That's it.

They're not going to help you anymore. That kid's going to come out walking. Don't you worry about it. He's going to run out of there. And then there's a hat. Okay. Okay. There's a hat.

Now, the hat will come up about 30 years later as well. The hat is insane. The hat is a large, broad-rimmed,rimmed floppy brown hat yeah has a leather band around it right and is adorned with the star of david an earring several locks of brian thornton's hair i'm not kidding you jimmy in the band no like stuck to it like like a fisherman's hat like instead of lures she's got like a star of david an earring and chunks of dude's hair locks of his hair a peacock feather yeah um a yellow cord i don't know like an extension like just a piece of cord i don't know yeah just as a yellow

cord all right and a french cross which i think is like the one with the circle around it. You like the like the Nordiques logo, I think, like the fleur de lis or whatever it is. Oh, that. I think that's that's not a French cross. I don't know what a French cross is. That's a Florida. I don't know. Is it the one for like apartheid? Is that a French cross?

I highly doubt it. No, no, no. I don't know what the fuck it is. Either way, it's on her fucking hat. OK, so apparently her friend said that her hat she wore constantly over the summer of 1982 always had this bat shit hat on yeah okay crazy fucking hat symbolized they looked at it as the symbol of her mental decline like literally the more she's all crowing weird shit to it if you saw her in the hat like every day that meant

she was really fucking off the deep end that week like watch out all right well a french cross could be a fleur-de-lis james or it could be a fucking bananas french cross with like a double cross maybe so it could be either of the two doesn't matter all right she's got that shit on her there you go more shit dangling off her hat so this is weird yeah it's an odd thing to wear yeah every day yeah you know like an everyday hat it's a little strange and they're like especially the hair they're a little freaked out by the hair they get the feather maybe that's interesting but the rest of it's a little odd and the star david that's fine if you want to put that on your hat but i don't know she's not jewish that's odd as well adding that with that old french cross it's very strange the whole thing's weird so it's she's got it's a coexist hat from the 1982 she made the first

coexist material unfortunately it was a floppy brown hat that didn't catch on somebody took her vision and went bumper sticker with it and really cleaned off but i want to see it it's not her it's got to be the hideous hat Right. It's weird. It sounds like. So he tells her at this point that now in late July and into like in the late weeks of July, he he's had an on and off sexual relationship. Brian and Marsha. Yeah, it's kind of on and off. In late July, they have another little sexual foray. Okay.

And we'll talk about that because it's a little weird what ends up happening. He tells her, though, that he lives with a guy that he's in a relationship with currently. Yeah. He lives with her. And that week, this is the last week of July. He's also he's had sex with her. And he's been with the guy that he lives with, and he also had sex with Shelly Smith, the deceased woman,

Gerald's wife, is what he tells. This is what Brian tells Marsha. So he's telling her, like, yeah, I'm banging everybody. It's highly in demand. You don't play a harpsichord for nothing. It's true. As a kid i said how am i gonna get that ass and i was like lead guitar no no too common yeah see everyone does

that you're gonna stand out with the harpsichord yeah that's what it is so um yeah so in late july he stayed brian stayed with marcia in her apartment in plainfield where they um this is where they had kind of a sexual relationship because they were going to some festival he didn't want to kiss her he told her that he couldn't kiss her yeah and she said well you don't kiss anybody and he said well I kiss the guy that I'm with I'll kiss him but I can't kiss you so in his mind it was like, it was almost from what I gather, like he was in a relationship with this guy. And he was, in his mind, cheating on this guy because they're in a relationship. They live together with this woman. But if he doesn't kiss her, then it's not cheating.

So if you've seen the Inbetweeners movie, it's basically that. It's Neil the whole time going, well, I didn't kiss her, so it's not cheating. I only put the tip in just a little bit so it's not that's not cheating you know prostitutes won't kiss guys because that is uh girlfriend stuff and it's also really gross in a way to spread tons of disease with people you fucking yeah not good so they've they've they learned their lesson on that one a long fucking time ago so that's how that works he's not a prostitute but you're just giving people who don't want sleeping with several people at the same time but i feel like this is his way of not cheating like that's intimate sex is is a different thing so that's fine and that's whatever your value system is

in terms of cheating is up to it's all relative to your relationship yeah whatever everybody does so i don't know it's up to you enjoy uh so that's an interesting thing. He also said he could kiss. He could kiss Shelley Smith, though, too, which was weird. But he couldn't kiss her, but he could bang her. Yeah. And I'm sure he asked her to take her hat off first. Either way. So he tells her all of this.

This is interesting. Obviously, Saturday, July 31st, 1982, Brian and Marsha attend the Eagle Creek Festival at Eagle Creek there. And so they get back to her apartment and he was staying overnight because they were going back to the festival the next day. And so that's why he was staying there because they were going to a festival near her house. So that's why he was staying there because they were going to a festival near her house. And he said that this was the night that she told him that in her belief. Okay. I don't know how to put this.

He's Adam. Yeah. And she's Eve. Okay. And, you know, that's what she believes. Some days he's Jesus. Today he's Adam. They're going even farther back now yeah and she's eve he later on would tell people that he thought this was just another way

of her to try to get in his pants again so he said he rebuffed this particular advance okay so that's how this worked now marcia believed brian here uh at that point started telling him that he is the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. That's a fact. And, you know, he is the he's the she's decided now she figured it out. First, she thought one thing. Then she thought Adam and Eve. Now she's saying, OK, you're Jesus Christ. I'm the Virgin Mary.

And I want you. I need you to be back in my womb. That's what she tells him. So she now is his mother. But also she wants to fuck him because that's how he can reenter her womb. Oh, that's what she's saying. This is what happened. All right.

A human being said that to another human being with presumably a straight face or a very excitable excitable or like huh right right now you get it what do you think what the fuck and he was like oh boy yeah cool so that'll drive you away from checks forever i'm gonna go to sleep early tonight i think because i got a big day tomorrow so august 1st comes around 1982 it's marsh's 44th birthday today on august 1st so um she at this point um decides that she uh um she talks to shelly smith later on that night and she talks to her on the phone earlier that day because they're going to go over shelly and gerald's house that night for a poetry reading and a parps accord jam throwdown session. So Shelly asked her, do you really believe that you're the Virgin Mary? And she said she did.

And Shelly said, well, I think you should see a psychiatrist probably, you know, because Shelly's a sane person, you know. She says that over the phone to her, right? Yeah. I think you should probably see a psychiatrist if you really, but in like a jokey way. Like if you really think like, I don't think she thought she was serious. She was like, if you really think that you should see a psychiatrist, dude. Like, you know, like you would tell someone if you don't want to be like, are you serious?

I will get a butterfly net right now because you are fucking nuts. That's crazy. So on her birthday, she gave on Marsha's birthday. Marsha gave Brian a present because that's what you do on your birthday. She's given presents. Yeah. She gave him a book titled A Prince Who Knew His Fate. And inside, she signed it to Brian in honor of my 44th birthday in the present lifetime.

Wow. In the present, 44th in this present lifetime. 44 more. Yes. That's what happened there. And she signed it? Yeah, and she signed it. Now, they go to the festival.

You give anybody anything on their birthday and you sign it, you're a fucking asshole. That's weird. Yeah. Thank you for defacing this gift that you gave me i appreciate it thank you that's wonderful i really appreciate any headshots you fucking dork how about that you're hanging on my wall frame it so that night they august 1st here uh she goes back to her apartment and she writes a letter to her 15 year old son in Albuquerque. She writes a letter to him

saying, quote, last Tuesday night at the folk dance I met the most beautiful little girl. She is two and a half years old, sat with me, gazed at me, touched my face, bounced with me, helped me play tin whistle, danced with me in my arms. She was all excited about seeing some

little girl happy. So that's normal. It's little creepy but it's it's she's a nice motherly quaker lady i'll give her that that's fine she wants to be excited about a kid that's fine um so oh my god so the last time brian and um i'm sorry uh the last time brian and shelly smith had sex was july 28th in the in a wooded area outside lafayette known as black rock this is really happening that happened actually this is not him spewing fucking no no they were fucking yeah they were really fucking out and out in the woods somewhere so this is kind of a torrid little affair here and then on the 31st is when he had he ended up banging marcia again the night where he originally rebuffed her and then probably a couple glasses of you know the uh of the wine that he

turned from from the tap they uh probably got it on now so she writes to her son in another letter that thankfully never gets mailed so watch out because this is not the letter you want to get from your mom if you're a 15-year-old. In a letter to her son, she writes that she was banging Brian Thornton, and that he got down on all fours and ran around the room making noises like an animal.

That's what she said. You're 15, let me describe my sex life to you. Hearing your 44-year-old mother a is just having sex with some guy number one you don't want to hear anything about that then she's getting into details of it being like weird and freaky right he's getting down on all fours barking like a dog and shit whoa like yeah what ghostbusters hadn't even come out yet you know what i'm saying like we didn't even have that to go on so down on alls. I don't even want to read the rest of this, mom.

I don't know what's about to happen. It's gross. Yeah, I'm throwing up and I'm never opening another letter for my mother again. Cease contact, mom, please. Then she wrote in her journal, quote, This will be a very strange day, a singular day, probably the last day of my earthly life. Tonight, I meet the lady of illusion with the flowing red hair or jolene my mission as i perceive it chopping the head off a red-headed creature

oh that's what she said she knows she keeps that um yeah she didn't send that one out she got that one that's her own that's her own she also wrote that she went around that day and cleaned the 18 mirrors in the living room of her Plainfield apartment. Who the fuck has 18 mirrors in their living room? Yeah, that is weird in your house altogether. This is in a living room of an apartment. Wow. That seems like overkill on the mirrors.

Yeah. So, yeah, she said to she talked to Shelly on the phone earlier that month and said, quote, I once said that I hope to write a sequel to the story of John the Baptist. Now I know I do not have to write it. I and two others are going to live it instead. This is what she said. It's about a lioness, a leopard and a lamb. I have always known about the lioness who would do battle for the lamb i had not known until this night with whom i would be engaged in battle this is what she said yeah

so that night of the jesus christ of august 1st they go to the poem brian and marcia go to the poem poetry reading jam session at gerald and uh shelly smith's apartment shelly smith and marcia this is the first time they meet face to face. They've talked on the phone. Really? Intimately about this type of shit. I'm going to write about John the Baptist. She's never seen this woman in her life

and she tells her. They've never met before because they live in a different town. She lives in Plainfield and the Smiths live in Lafayette, so they don't really run into each other. This is the first night like, oh, I'll take you over to meet the Smiths

who you've been talking to on the phone. on the phone talking about i'm mary people used to just do that though they used to just talk on the phone because that was the only incoming anything in the house there's no fucking internet or social media now that's what i mean it's the same thing so they meet for the first time it's just a small get together in their apartment you know a few people there not that many that sort of thing um apparently uh the gathering breaks up and uh it's around two o'clock in the morning ish it kind of breaks up late night 2 a.m gerald smith he went to bed early they're out there harpsichord and reading poetry he's sleeping because he's got to be up at two something in the morning to go to go throw papers to get the papers out at three

so he gets out of bed to get to work and and he found Marsha and Shelly engaged in a conversation in the living room hanging out in there. So he goes out, talks to them, says hello to everybody. Everybody's, you know, whatever. And then while he's getting ready, everybody leaves. Brian leaves. Marsha leaves. A couple other people leave.

Everybody's gone. Gerald continues to get ready, and Shelly goes and lays down in bed, because by now it's almost 3 o'clock in the morning. So he leaves about 3 o'clock, Gerald does, and he says that Shelly was in bed asleep when he left. He says he closed the door carefully but didn't lock it. Once again, what are you talking about? So he returns home that night, and we know what happened there. Now, what the fuck happened while he was there?

Well, let's start with Marsha saying this. Quote, I wore star and moon and necklaces, two opal earrings and a star of David earring. I knew I had to wear the jewelry to signify who I am. Signify who I am. To tell who? Wow, the lady of illusion yeah um she just walked in the front door of the smith's apartment she came back about 6 a.m so she went home came back uh came back about 6 a.m went uh through the front door and went to a downstairs bathroom first didn't go to anybody there she took all of her clothes off got completely naked in the bathroom yeah okay

gets completely naked then proceeds to the kitchen where she grabs a paring knife now a paring knife is a little tiny knife it's a little fucker to get like on top there you go a little paring knife so she grabs one of those completely nude by the way walking around the house with a paring knife she goes to the bedroom where she finds shelly asleep on her back in bed okay um she walks over kind of stands there for a minute and then just stabs her in the throat with the knife right in the throat uh it's severed an artery so as you can imagine there is a mother fuck load of blood i mean is wild, but she doesn't die right away. She just awakens with blood spraying out and looking to survive and fight and struggle.

So which is frightening here doesn't kill her. Obviously, Shelly screams out. Oh, my God, you're hurting me. And obviously what she does, she tries to get out of the bed and get out of the bedroom and run away, does Shelly, but Marcia catches up to her and slashes her throat repeatedly with the paring knife, just attacks her throat

with the paring knife until she finally gets her down. During this whole thing, Marcia's got some scratches and things on her too, and Marcia is hacking away at poor shelly here so uh apparently she said she pulled uh she pulls shelly smith through a bathroom and into the hallway where shelly collapses from an artery being severed and being stabbed a bunch

other times too from loss of blood following the blood following the collapse there she's not moving shelly real or i'm sorry marcia realizes this paring knife isn't really the best most efficient weapon that she could have yeah so she goes to the kitchen to get a better knife oh boy you know gotta have that so she grabs a bigger knife she grabs a few knives because she doesn't know which one's going to do the job here. So with a butcher knife, she attempts to saw Shelly's head off. Oh, boy. Not with a power saw, not with an axe or something that is meant for this. With a butcher knife, she tries to saw.

Good Lord. Just cut it like it's a rump roast through this poor woman's neck. She can't get it off, though. It's hard with a knife. Once you get to the muscles are thick, and then once you get to spinal cord and spine there's a lot of stuff in there it's not easy yeah um so she gets a little pissed off and uh looks around she's like what the fuck am i gonna do now so she grabs a large mirror that's there it's a big giant plate glass mirror she grabs it brings it over and tries to drop it on her neck like a guillotine holy shit the problem

is a mirror though doesn't have sharp glass edges a mirror has a frame so the mirror doesn't cut her head off the mirror just it just causes the mirror to break and shatter and with thousand pieces of plate glass everywhere plate glass mirror so jesus god yeah so marcia yeah then grabs a chunk of broken mirror glass and tries to sever tries to saw shelly's head off with a piece of shattered mirror glass okay think about just the animalisticness of that yeah i'm gonna grab this sharp piece it's gonna cut me too fuck me and i'm just gonna fucking hack at something that is crazy um she can't get the head completely off yeah so she gives up and goes back downstairs where back into the bathroom where she showers up and then puts her clean clothes back on that she had

before and um yeah she said that there was it was only a little bit of skin and muscle that had held shelly's head on her body and um she later on would say about it as she's stabbing her she said that she thought to herself quote is this a human body it felt like rubber i didn't expect red blood i had to take her head off or she'd rejuvenate into a snake oh boy so duh jesus mike she's so delusional um so what does she do now yeah run away no she sits down make some phone calls at the house at their apartment um sits down on the phone bill it says that she calls two calls um she calls seven minute call to plainfield for her one son and then a 53 minute call to albuquerque new mexico to her other kid to her other kid an hour an hour so she got there at six i mean she's pushing to where gerald's almost going to run into her when he comes home

uh 53 minute call um this is right she's the phone is right within eyeline of shelly i mean it's right there you can see her she tells her and she tells both her sons that she did it she says oh yeah i just wanted to call and tell you that i killed i killed the serpent um you know so that happened um killed a serpent and at currently i'm waiting for christ to come and chop the serpent into 12 pieces because that's what he does right so i'm just gonna hang and that's why she was come and chop the serpent into 12 pieces because that's what he does right so i'm just gonna hang and that's why she was hanging and making the phone call because she said she had to wait for jesus to come and chop the body up so she knew that the snake was dead as a kid are you like freaked out or are you just like my mom's really lost it i i don't that's

that's what i mean i would assume as your kids you know your mom isn't right that's why you'd live with your dad yeah not that you live with your dad everybody lives with their dad because i went and lived with my dad doesn't mean my mom was crazy but if you're one of your parents was nuts you'd go probably want to go live with the other one is what i'm getting at yeah so she also called brian as well and uh but brian's roommate wouldn't wake him up because it was like 6 30 in the morning and she was he's like i'm not fucking waking her up he's been out getting ass all night i can't yeah i can't do it she did say to her son quote since i couldn't get the head off i had failed my mission okay i had to get the head off i failed so then she left her left the house left the apartment and went to her car and while she got in her car she just noticed that her

hands were cut to shit because she was using broken pieces of plate glasses fucking weapons so uh yeah in doing that she's um she goes oh wow i better go to the hospital so she stops at a nearby hospital and uh they remove glass out of her hands and fix her all up and bandage her and she drove around lafayette for a few hours okay just drove around hanging out then she stopped at brian's house at about noon stopped by you know he know, he wasn't he wasn't home. So instead of leaving, she just sat on the porch swing and took a nap. Yeah, because she's exhausted by now. You know, she's had a lot of hacking and everything else.

Sleep tonight. He returned home about 830. I'm sorry. When Gerald returned home and he discovered the body, he the police, when they did their investigation, they obtained all the names of the persons who had been at the home that night especially and gerald told them you know everybody else out there uh the police were conducting the investigation while they were in the apartment you know doing the crime scene brian called and asked to speak to shelly and they said well not quite because she's dead so that's going to happen there and they said would you mind coming down and

talking to us? You're one of the people that are on our list because you were here last night anyway. So he said, sure. He went and talked to him. He said, I'm not a resident of here. I live somewhere else. Blah, blah, blah. He said that, you know, he reiterated who was at the party because they were trying to make sure they got everybody.

So two plainclothes officers in an unmarked car were dispatched to brian's home and they introduced themselves and said they were investigating shelly smith's death and they asked marcia because she's out on the porch swing if she'd be willing to be interviewed and um she said sure and she got in the police car there's no she didn't cuff her there's no guns drawn or anything she asked if she was under arrest and she was told that she wasn't uh then they uh you know they asked her about was she there and you know that sort of thing was she there the night before so this is um this is pretty fucked up here so anyway um marcia they search her her being her stuff they find a photograph of shelly um as she was found in her apartment and uh it is the front of her of her it's it's the front you can see her she's got

like dirt and plant vines and shit all over and mirror pieces it's a fucking mess apparently she took a goddamn polaroid she has it with her yeah just to prove to jesus that she did it i don't know what the hell she's for so they said she stopped in the emergency room about seven o'clock for cuts on her hand that's when they talked to them so when they talked to marcia um they give her her miranda right she signs a waiver she says that she was at the smith home until about 2 a.m but she doesn't know anything about the killing i don't know anything about it they said well why are your hands all cut up and bandaged and bleeding and she said it was a result of a fall on the brick sidewalk at their house right fell down and you know just also you ever go hard on a fucking harp oh it'll rip you up yeah

play play the harp a while and then we'll get back play the dulcimer and then we'll talk okay so then they let her like use the bathroom and let her have drinks and everything they kind of played her soft they didn't come hard on her with the with the interrogation she um asked again if she was under arrest and they said no no not under arrest at all the they're recording this whole thing and um this is when her weird shit starts to come out on the tape. She said that she was one of the first few people to see her and all that sort of thing. Included in her purse were letters with threats against the Lady of Illusion and the necessity of severing the head of the evil serpent. Because you got to do that, obviously. Wow. of severing the head of the evil serpent because you got to do that obviously he wow she also provided a pretty shitty explanation of her activities from two o'clock in the morning until

she sought medical attention as well so there was that um when she talks here she says look yes i'm a 44 year old mother i'm a christian yeah but what you don't understand here we go i am also 5743 years old i'm the mother of the universe and i'm an instrument of yahweh okay so sure in case you were wondering that's actually what's happening here mother of the universe mother of the universe yeah yeah yahweh you know put me in charge the universe is 6. Yeah. Yahweh, you know, put me in charge. The universe is 6,000 years old. Well, clearly that's what she's saying. Yeah. That's a mop.

Clearly. Yeah. She's really getting down to the letter of the law here. All right. She said that she describes her world as a place where, quote, where the beast and the angel coexist, where the beautiful and the terrifying and the terrifying are interlaced even at the same times this is what she's telling the cops right and they're like do we even need to can we just high five we got her right this is obviously her right there's two guys in like

white coats just gonna come in and grab her and take her away while the benny hill music plays right because this is fucking bonkers there's like you know sane and insane and guilty and is there a bonkers because if that's it you know yeah if there's an actual also case closed we know god we surely have somebody that's capable of murder um then she told them that brian thornton is christ yep and that he shelly had to be killed don't you understand anything shelly had to be killed to prevent because she was preventing brian from realizing he was christ got it she's holding him back okay he's the duh she says though but she said i didn't kill a woman i killed a snake i know what i did so in fact she said it's not okay she said it wasn't just a snake it was the devil's lead snake oh

the head of the snakes of the devil so the hsic so we thank her yeah i think so i think that's what she's going for like you're welcome i killed the devil's head snake what the fuck um she also she uh let them search her stuff and all that sort of shit here and they found the letter to her son with all the weird shit in it then she starts describing how she did it search her stuff and all that sort of shit here. And they found the letter to her son with all the weird shit in it. Then she starts describing how she did it in her own words. She said, quote, I took her by the hair. And she said she got out of bed. We struggled.

I just remember twirling around. I just kept shouting Yahweh's kingdom come. Oh, no. That's the other thing. She's nude. Imagine waking up to this she's nude trying to stab you screaming fucking crazy religious shit at you woke you up by plunging uh the lime knife in your throat this is the craziest shit i've ever heard of my life yeah you're you're wanted to slice lemons for the iced tea and this is what you get oh boy i shouted it over and over

again because i knew it was the battle i was destined for this is what you get oh boy i shouted it over and over again because i knew it was the battle i was destined for this is what she's been trained for she said by then she was down i had to saw the base of the neck one of the knives broke because there's a knife that she actually broke the fucking broke the handle off of it doing this i went into the kitchen found another light another knife later there was a big mirror with a wooden frame. I dropped it down on her neck. The mirror broke. Then I started using a big piece of mirror to saw.

The head of the snake had to be taken off. Duh. Clearly. This is in her recorded statement. I figured I had not done a very good job. I recalled something about crushing or smiting the head of the serpent. That's what she said. Yahweh puts within my reach the things I'm supposed to use.

I just have to reach out for them. So I went over and got a big plant and I dropped it on the head. I had I had I then tried to pull her head off by the hair. So, yeah, she just tried to pull it off. I put your feet on her shoulder. Yeah, just tried to pull it off by her hair. And he said, still, it just didn't work. And so she said, well, I guess I'm a failure.

I'll call my kids. Oh, boy. Wow. So they found the knife with the broken blade that they believe was the first initial attack. Five other knives were found near Shelly, but could not be submitted into evidence because the lafayette police failed to establish a proper chain of custody god damn it god damn it that shit kills me oh boy it's like i get that you that's not what you do every day i get that you don't have crazy crime scenes like this every day but you're i mean speeding tickets and all that whatever but like this is your main job this

is the stuff we actually give a fuck about this is what we need you for this is the main thing all the rest of this shit can fall aside if you solved every murder people wouldn't give two fucks about anything else happening every fucking murder gets solved it's amazing 100 you kill me you're going to fucking jail people will be okay with everything else don't fuck this shit up gladly pay the speeding ticket yeah this is this is bad the chain of custody type of thing there's no excuse for that that there's a procedure that you didn't follow and it's every force has a has a procedure in place and training what to do and training yeah so i don't know if that's a supervisory problem or what but people are actually surprised though apparently people that knew her before this is out of character completely a new marsha a new marsha

they don't get it. Paul Harden's a guy who is, he used to be a prosecutor somewhere in the state. He said that he's known her most of his life. And he said, quote, is this the Marsha healed I know? It just seems totally out of character. Her Aunt Ruth also said, quote, I'm just stunned. Our family has never had anything like this happen before. We're quiet Quakers.

Well, if you had this several times in your family, your family's super fucked up. Well, I would say that would be a problem. This is normal. Run of the mill. Her dad did this shit, too. Better well being done out of the ordinary. Her dad butchers people all the time. No big deal. So this Marshall wants bail.

Oh, boy. She wants bail oh boy she wants bail uh they the state filed to get her bail set at five million dollars her attorneys asked for 55 000 it's a little less um yeah so she they they ask her this is a pre-trial thing or with a hearing for the bail they asked her quote were you ever arrested for anything and she says speeding does that count and uh the the judge says quote i think the evidence of her history and her life and times in indiana do indicate that she will appear uh but that wasn't the issue also that was she'll probably show up but that's not the that's not the problem she said if she was released she intended to live with her parents. And then the prosecutor said that, you know, that, you know, wouldn't might not be with her parents.

If she did get out, it would be somewhere that we would designate. And they go back and forth. And she said, well, quote, my mother said the house is crowded. You know, we don't really need a not enough room for you. Yahweh fucking Christ. The serpent lady, your hat. There's just a lot going on that we don't have room for sorry it's a little crowded already a little crowded yeah so the the judge said is there

any other reason that they might not want you there i don't know cut a lady's head off probably nobody really wants that around and then she says quote they probably think i'm a different person than i used to be and he asked if she thought that she could get her job back at the indiana state library i cut a lady's head off and it's in every fucking newspaper do you think i can get could oj get his job back with nbc sports on june 13th no he couldn't because his fucking wife had no head that's the problem you can't go get your job back afterwards while you're up for a fucking murder one. They never made another naked gun. No.

It's done. Everything's over. Her answer was, quote, I think not. Yeah, that was the only thing there. She said, quote, I wasn't intending to work. I was intending on living in seclusion and preparing my defense, which is what she would need to do. So they said also that it's not clear what extent her parent and her parents are willing to offer assistance in terms of money or anything like

that or helping with the bond and uh she's also pleaded insanity at this point she's going to plead not guilty by reason of insanity so they said the insanity charge with the murder and the risk of non-appearance so you know this is probably you know she's up they're saying this is a death penalty crime we're not gonna let her go wander around this is basically they also said a couple of things like we get that she's like a librarian but like if this was just some dude who worked at a gas station you would say no bail in two seconds we wouldn't even be fucking talking about it just because she's a librarian doesn't mean she's not trying to cut people's heads off this is crazy so um the pre-trial she pleads not guilty by reason of insanity she will not wear shoes ever will not wear shoes she shows up at court with no fucking shoes on i have pictures

of her walking on the sidewalk outside with no shoes on she's in the court if they make her wear shoes into the court as soon as she sits down she takes her shoes off no shoes on. She's in the court. If they make her wear shoes into the court, as soon as she sits down, she takes her shoes off. No shoes. Will not wear shoes in the courtroom, which is probably there's a minimal. That's a dead giveaway. Shirt and shoes required. It's court.

It's not an Arby's. Can't even go to a gas station. No, no shoes. You can't go to Arby's and they sell poison. You can go here. Allegedly. I'm sure there's something poisonous in there but yeah you can't go as my gut to a shit yeah you can't go get diarrhea for that but you can it's

insane so she pleads that the judge rules that she is competent to stand trial after psychiatrists offer all sorts of opinions um really oh yeah psychiatrists are in there judge says no you know you're good to stand trial guy last week get what this the 82 was a every article's like this is a bad time to plead insanity apparently there was a big uproar publicly about quote bullshit insanity defenses so this was like anytime you pled insanity it's like yeah right this was this was the start of that this was when we stopped when we went into a period of not believing anybody had was i was mentally ill and it was just all you know bullshit there's no such thing as that that was like a thing of that we went through for a while if you murder someone you can't be crazy it's like

actually that's a crazy thing to do i would check that first wouldn't it right wouldn't that be like the the number yeah number one what's the evidence that you're crazy? Well, try to cut a lady's head off, number one. That's pretty crazy, right? Yeah. And then you go into the Yahweh stuff after that. You say, how many years old? Yeah, that right there I think is a giveaway.

Yeah. At her hearing, she also said this. Quote, it was written 2,500 years ago. It would be at Lebanon. that's where they moved the trial because of publicity lebanon so she said they knew it 2 500 years ago it was predicted that this trial would be in lebanon oh boy they knew yeah um it is yahweh's will human beings have no knowledge of my world they shouldn't med. I am not a human being. I am an animal.

I became an animal in March. Okay. Just so you know. I don't disagree. But she's basically saying you have no, like, dominion over me because I'm not human. Like, you can say what you want, but I'm a fucking god animal. Like, clearly, this is not going to stick. Oh, boy.

You know, this is better than having a good lawyer being a god animal well then for the time you're here we're gonna hang on to you we'll see so there's a shitload of motions uh basically they want her journal to be kept in the state believes it could link her to the practice of what they call quote white witchcraft oh i suppose that's like non-island witchcraft yeah There's a white kind. Yeah, that's her. It's a white lady in Indiana who thinks that she's a fucking animal or some being. Okay. They said that, this is so crazy, man. It's 125 handwritten pages that I would love to read. Oh, boy.

And also letters written to her kids that she didn't mail, all this shit. The judge denied the motion, saying at one point, the state's testimony has not convinced me that the state is entitled to those documents and they said that some of the papers were quite personal they said a lot of the papers were ramblings that disturbed him this is the prosecutor said he said it wasn't about wasn't brought out why any of the anybody had seen the journal and the judge was asking about that. So the judge said, have we been given any reason to believe that it may be a ritual-type killing? So the prosecutor was like, yes, yeah, that's what it is. Sure.

They said that also, because this is the first time this came out, recently Marsha had sacrificed what she called sacrificed her cat. And Marsha had sacrificed what she called sacrificed her cat. She had killed her cat recently as a sacrifice to a god of some kind. Oh, boy. So they were like, that was part of it. She said. And also the police detective that was there testified to what she said as well to him.

He said, yes, she felt that Hitler had been reincarnated into a cat. And that was the reason for killing the cat. Okay. She thought her cat was Hitler. Ladies and gentlemen, I give up. I give up. That should be our last episode as well. We've never.

I said pocket Robin. That's crazy. But did he think his cat was Hitler before he kept a fucking head in his pocket? That's some punishment if that's what you're reincarnated as. My cat is Hitler. I mean, every cat's kind of Hitler. They're dicks. Okay. What's the craziest thing a person could shout at you?

Like if someone walked up to you on the street and said, my cat's Hitler. That's the most. What? That makes no sense. My cat is Hitler. That's the craziest thing anybody's ever said. My cat's hitler yeah that's the most what that makes no sense my cat is hitler that's the craziest thing anybody's ever said my cat's hitler so i killed it okay oh and then that part oh that part makes it more oh my um but don't worry i got him yeah and then then also the prosecutor said that she's involved in white witchcraft belonging to a coven of witches, which we never hear anything about that again. I think they were just talking shit to get the journal in.

Then they talked about the shit in the journal. They talked about who in the journal. It said that there was a lady of illusion and Brian Thornton was being held in bondage and being kept from his quote held in bondage. That's what it says. Being kept away from his rightly place at the top of the universe food chain so awesome um the journal also mentioned shelly and you know in the same references with ladies of illusion and all this shit and shelly had strawberry blonde hair which is close enough to red for marcia it'll match it matches up just fine for her woman thinks her cat's hitler jane that's what i mean her cat's hitler any shade

strawberry blonde is red it doesn't matter that vanilla ice cream sure tastes a lot like strawberry eh who cares your cat's hitler the name of this episode should be she thought her cat was hitler that's the end of it that should be crazy enough for anybody my cat is hitler that sounds like a bad 50s movie my cat is my cat was reincarnated hitler holy christ so then they talk about that she doesn't want to give up her pubic hair what they need a sample of her head hair pubic hair blood and a footprint sample but she said why and they said because she was nude in the house so we want to make sure that the pubes we picked up that she was shedding are hers pube shedding hitler cat killing fucking i don't even know man crazy hat wearing he's got so much bush it's just falling out imagine her nude with the hat hacking away that's frightening so that's even weirder that'd be weirder right a picture and like the it's the

hat that like robin hood wore like as a disguise you know the big one it's that one kind of yeah like that a picture and either like that or like the one what's his name wears the fucking uh oh my god what the hell is the name i totally blank out carrie elwes in men in tights when he has to be crazy pharaoh is wearing at the goddamn fucking will pharaoh which pharaoh what are we doing never mind accent you ass that's the other thing yeah i get nitpicked for words and i'm like i must say 10 trillion words an episode i if you heard like my family and stuff i am pretty mild i have jimmy have i not pretty non-racial tone down 93 so if once in a while i say horrible or orange or whatever the fuck in a

weird way shut the fuck up about it especially where are you from i bet you have a weird accent too anybody that says y'all i don't want to hear shit about my horrible because at least horrible is a fucking word anyway there you go so feral who's feral never mind all right so i want to see the hat it's just a stupid hat i'm looking thinking of like a like a what's his like a that fucking brendan fraser movie um like a mountie hat oh like a mountie hat is it do it no yeah yeah doctor not doctor i give up i'm not gonna dudley do right i'm not gonna try to come up with names of shows or anything that's my my fault. I have like, well, I know I've slept like six hours all week and that's my fault. So I can't come up with things.

So there you go. Can't come up with names of movies. You can't give me clues to the movies and then have me just throw words out. That's true. Because then I'll agree with you. And then we're really in trouble. It's Dr. Doolittle. Yeah, sure.

Dr. Doolittle. He's a Mountie who talks to animals. Giant hat. With a big hat on. So, oh. Dr. Doolittle. He's a Mountie who talks to animals with a big hat on. So, oh, my God. So they say they have a confession from her. They have all this shit. They, you know, all this.

So the trial comes around. Insanity is the thing they have to decide for possible verdicts. Guilty, not guilty, not guilty by reason of insanity. Guilty, but mentally ill. Yeah. Okay. I would probably go for the fourth one on that one. Feels right.

I feel like definitely out there and sure shit guilty. So I'll give them both. She knew what she was doing, but she's nuts. So the state wants a guilty verdict, but they said they could live with guilty with mental mentally ill because it's basically the same thing. It means basically if you're they'll put you in an institution, but as soon as you're sane then they'll put you in jail yeah you're not getting you don't get to go free then or if it's just not guilty by reason if not guilty by reason of insanity that's a different story they can put you in an institution like our one guy right but

then once they feel you're healed to the jail you go yeah you can they can release you to the street never mind the jail this is yeah this that would be not guilty by reason of insanity in indiana anyway so um yeah during court she sat really weird uh no shoes on she would smile out of nowhere um she would stare at the ceiling for a while she would talk excitedly and too loud with her attorneys about case strategy. She there was an artist for the TV station, like sketching the trial. And she was like reaching out toward him and shit like like she was on acid or something. I don't know what the fuck is going on here. The jurors ask a question. This is seems weird.

The jurors ask a question. They said, hey, this is kind of complicated. There's a bunch of people. Can we take notes? So we have like, so we know what the fuck we're doing. Because like, I couldn't tell this story without my notes. You can't just, you know, like, can we take notes? So when we go back in there, we can refer to them.

And the judge said, you're allowed to take notes. But quote, the law in Indiana is very screwy, is what he said. You may take notes, but you may not rely on them during your deliberations. That's the state of the law in Indiana is very screwy, is what he said. You may take notes, but you may not rely on them during your deliberations. That's the state of the law in Indiana right now. You can take notes, but then you can't look at them when you need them. What is the point? If you write it down, maybe you'll remember it more. I suppose.

Rely. You can't refer to them. You can't be like, oh, who is this one? Let me go. Oh, okay, it was that. You can't do that. Wow. Which is the point of taking notes, so you refer back to remember it's that's what the judge

was like it's the dumbest law ever but that's the law who wrote that an idiot so uh it's a prosecution here they want to they're trying to make it a love triangle gone wrong that's what they have to do here they're trying to convince the jury that marcia was a librarian and that she's not crazy she's quote crazy like a fox instead this is all a big load of shit and she just wanted to kill just shelly because she was jealous of brian and all that which i don't really that's part of it maybe but she was loopy way before shelly before he knew that she knew anything about shelly fucking brian it's also a love rectangle because there's a dude there's a dude another guy yeah there's that poor guy fucking delivering papers and all that shit

so oh no his boyfriend that he was the other guy too add another one jesus christ it's a five-sided it's a pentagram there you go it's a love pentagram i almost called it an octagon a love pentagram that's what this episode is called an alleged love pentagram so uh he he uh they tell the jury here this is her attorney that she was only marsh's attorney says she was only quote an instrument of yahweh and saw herself as killing a serpent and not a human being so you got to explain that to the jury he said the crime in the in murder in indiana requires that you knowingly or intentionally kill a human being. If you if you're knowingly and intentionally kill a serpent, then you weren't you weren't knowingly killing a human being. Super different.

So that means you're crazy. So he's trying to really parse that out. Her sons testify for the state. One of them do here that she talked to one of her sons, Seth, here. one of them do here that she talked to uh one of her sons uh seth here he said that when his mother called him about the murder she said she killed a woman didn't mention shit about a snake oh so he was like they're like that's interesting um then they get brian to testify boy does he have some stories as you can imagine um yeah he testified uh he said that uh he he he was mad at her and they were asking if like, are you doing this to get back at her for hurting Shelly? Are you testifying? I'm testifying because they asked me to testify.

They said, would you like to hurt her? And he said, yes, I would. Obviously, I'm mad at her. And so he said, quote, my feeling is that she shouldn't be permitted to ever live in a free society again is what brian responded so they said isn't it a fact that you hate and loathe marcia and that you do anything that you could to do uh anything that you could to do hurt to marcia and he paused for 10 seconds and then replied yes which is fucking great that's a great reply he weighed it heavy he thought about it he's like no yeah i do want to hurt her i fucking i don't like her she's an awful person who killed my friend what a fucking dick so um she smiled broadly while he was testifying like you know glowingly like there's my guy like your kid was just got a hit a triple in little league that's what she had a big smile

like i taught him that it's jesus he did it look Look at him. I know. Oh, bask in his glow. Bask in his glow. I fucked him. Good. Yeah. Uh, he crawled around on the floor and parked. It's a jury of six men and six women, by the way.

So it's even on that score. Um, then her attorney asked Brian if the philosophy in the satanic Bible is that when someone kills a friend, you avenge that death. And he agreed that it was. He's not a Satanist, but he knows occult shit and knows stuff like that. So he said, yes, it was. And they said, quote, her attorney said, isn't that?

And you're and what you're trying to do is avenge that death, isn't it? And he said, no, he's not trying to avenge the death. He said they also had to bring it out that he lives with a you. Is it true that you live with a male lover because it's indiana in 1982 so we're going to try to discredit you completely by he's touched a penis so clearly nothing nothing he says can be believed obviously all incredible yeah all completely not credible uh yeah he says that he had they also he testifies that he had intercourse with shelly with marcia and this man in the same week and um she he also testifies that yes he was committed to an insane asylum when he was 10 because uh for among other things for strange

religious beliefs and yeah that was that and uh he said he never told marcia that he was an angel or christ or anything of that nature they discussed like angels and weird shit you talk about after a couple glasses of wine my words they were her words yeah but he's like i didn't say i'm jesus by the way yes there's angels and i am one then they talked about uh their sex and the the lawyer said quote isn't it true that you growled at one point to brian and he says i might have growled this is a hilarious conversation oh fuck at this point uh she starts laughing marsha's laughing at the defense table which is again super weird and not what you want to do uh then they referred to a deposition he gave uh to the where Brian said, quote, I went out of my mind.

I felt like I was turning into some kind of animal and I felt like I had no control over this. And then they asked him about getting down on all fours and running around the room after sex. And he said, quote, I remember crawling on the floor, but I don't remember running around as you call it so he's like no and then he agreed that at one point he asked marcia why she had quote let the beast come out of him not in a devil way in a sexual way why'd you let me get out on my fuck train because once i get out fucking i'll fuck everybody and damn it, the gates are open and the fuck bulls are running through the prairie. You opened the cage. Oh, damn. Fucking Stein is run free.

What does this have to do with her murdering somebody? They're trying to just ruin his possibility and his credibility and embarrass him. I don't ever want to be alone. So we listened to your podcast, wasn't we? Heard you put your balls in a ponytail. Pretty cool, huh? Put that on there. God damn it.

So next comes a psychiatrist. This is an interesting lot. Larry Davis, he's a psychiatrist, court appointed. He said that Marsha is, quote, very delusional, very disturbed, and very psychotic. She believed that she was killing the devil's chief snake instead of a woman. Yeah, here's the profile that he compiled. As a child, she saw a

rocking chair rock without anyone in it and recently said in her bunk at the Tippecanoe County Jail that it shook in a regular rhythm that couldn't have been caused by the building's vibrations. So, weird things happen. She told a psychiatrist now that

in 1964 she was in new york where she was picked up by three jewish men and had sex with them i believe that okay she got so there's a yeah they ran a jewish train on her and she says that after that she had to have like a cleansing ceremony because of the implicate. I don't know, man. She went into this whole thing about a cleansing ceremony where she would seek the cleansing right. Oh, she did the cleansing right later. We'll get to that in a second. He also said that, quote, to to a somewhat unique degree, Marsha was convinced the world was convinced the world she was experiencing was completely

accurate. Marsha described to me seeing Shelly and recognizing in her profile the picture of a snake. She indicated that she went into the Smith's bedroom and attacked with the intent of cutting the head off the snake. She told me, quote, as everyone knows, you have to cut a snake's head off to kill it. She said she was surprised the blood was red rather than green or blue. Yeah. She said he said the behavior she described was the task that Yahweh assigned her to chop off the head of the devil snake. Duh.

Yeah. Yeah. So he says that this it's his opinion that she is very insane. Obviously. Now, Marsha testifies. Really?ifies really oh my goodness no shoes and all she's gonna talk she's gonna talk uh she was asked to say her name and age yeah you can get off the fucking stand god damn it never mind yeah she said sure and then in her nice voice she said quote mars the god of war 5743 years old 44 in her nice voice, she said, quote, Mars, the god of war, 5743 years old, 44 in her current form. So now she's Mars. Mars.

So she's narrowed it down. She's getting it there, though. She explained having a sexual encounter with a Reverend Jones who she believed to be a friend of Brian's, but who turned out not to be a reverend or a friend of brian's but instead an agent of satan that's what happened yeah so she said she went through a cleansing rite holding her hand and mouth over a candle flame so it was just oral and hand stuff apparently yeah just her hand and mouth wherever the penis went hand and mouth over a candle flame, smearing her face with ash and burying religious tracks the man gave her on the porch at her home. But she knew, she said, that the final cleansing would have to come from Brian Thornton, obviously, because he's Jesus. She said when she went to work the next day, quote, I felt like that would be the last day of my life. And then it was inevitable that she go to Lafayette so that thornton could quote dispatch me with his sword and hatchet clearly a harpsichord teacher this

is unbelievable yeah who no um then the lawyer asked why would he do that and she said that's what's always happened before i was cut up before in 12 pieces what the fuck does no one pay attention when i talk jesus christ she says she's been reincarnated as religious figures from the past. She's originally Eve from the Garden of Eden, and it's gone from there to me now. What the fuck doesn't get through your thick skull about that? Eve, Mary. It's like I'm talking to myself up here. Unbelievable. I've been reincarnated from Eve to, yeah, I'm Mars, I'm Eve. I'm a lot of things. This is deep.

Yeah, I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child, I'm a mother. I'm a lot of things. I'm a sinner, I'm a saint. I got a lot of things going on right now. Choker and a smoker. Remember that fucking awful song was, yeah, you know. Listen. What kind of things?

There's a lot. You want to get back from this wet ass pussy is what i'm telling you it's going all through the years she's quoting fucking loop poets from the 12th century they're like you know all the references how do you do this so yeah um she later testified that quote i began seeing something in front of shelly smith i saw this face and i saw it was a snake yahweh was sending me messages i could see something at her neck like scissors or knives and i said myself is i said to myself quote is this the lady i have to do battle with um is she the the red fucking menace here or what the alluge lady of illusion intolerable bastard this intolerable

bitch so she answered the the questions here in a quiet precise voice and then um while her lawyer was talking to her and saying going into a question she just sat up in her seat stood up and shouted angrily quote jesus christ what have i done yeah they were like huh we're trying to figure that out that's the point that's why we're all here um yeah so we've been doing this for a while she said then she said that's how thornton had reacted after coming out of a trance like state and they realized and realizing that they had had sexual intercourse so she just burst out of that and that without no question apropos of So she just burst out of that without no question, apropos of nothing.

She just said that. So her acquaintances are on the stand. Here's the one that's hilarious to me. This one lady, Linda Belner of Indianapolis, said that Marcia at times would play the centuries-old dulcimer with a knitting needle instead of a pick. And she said, quote, it took away the sweetness the

dulcimer had has and i said once to a friend that the reason she the reason she played it that way is because there was violence in her dude because she's doing it with a weapon dude you are at like a dulcimer festival with a bunch of mild ladies from the midwest playing with a and they're like there's evil in her look how she's playing the dulcimer she's got a knitting needle i mean she's right but jesus christ that's horrifying that's picking there um she said she'd known her for six or seven years through her membership in the folk music and dulcimer society and had always thought of her as quote delightfully eccentric yeah uh yeah and another, Scotty Selch, a co-worker at the Indiana Library there, described a conversation that happened in the fall of 81

in which Marsha suggested that Brian Thornton was Jesus. He was telling her co-workers, too, I know Jesus. I met him. He's this guy named Brian. He plays the harpsichord. Yeah. Yeah. jesus i met him he's this guy named brian he plays the harpsichord yeah um yeah she said that uh he had known thornton and that they had been in reenactments together so she knew him and she

asked me if i uh she asked me did i love brian and i was like yeah he's all right i mean sure you know he said that i love brian and uh she he said that she came into work in the library last May and spent five hours writing strange religious and philosophical thoughts in a journal and that she placed in his care. She said, now hold this for me. No. They asked what her feeling what this guy's feelings was toward Marsha. And he said, quote, I liked her as a co-worker and I liked her very much as a friend. It would be hard. It said it would be very hard for you to call Marsha crazy because of that, the lawyer said.

And he said, quote, yes, it would. Other people testified that she seemed to have evidence of mental problems. They talked about the hat, things like that. The Reverend Bruce Musselman of Constantine, Michigan, her former father-in-law. So he said that, uh, Jesus Christ, the,

she, she was once married to his daughter, obviously, or to her, his son. He's a Baptist pastor. Oh boy. He described her quote as a product of the hippie movement.

20 years ago, intellectuals and college students, dirty hippies. Yeah. She wants to go out and get a job instead of just, I mean, Product of the hippie movement 20 years ago, intellectuals and college students. Dirty hippies. Yeah. She wants to go out and get a job. Right. Instead of just, I mean, Jesus Christ.

Deaf poetry slam. He is John Lithgow from Footloose, this guy. Literally, it's from the hippie movement. I always felt she was capable of doing something like this. Wow. Because she was a hippie. What? I always felt she was capable of trying to cut a woman's head off, is what he said. Fucking idiot.

That guy knows all the details of the Manson Young. Monday morning quarterback extraordinaire. I predicted this murder. He recalled when she was in her early 20s, she fell to the floor in a tantrum of kicking and screaming after he told her she should stop reading so many technical books and read more domestic books on being a wife and mother that's what he told her stop why don't you stop trying to learn things and learn how to cook book learn how to fucking be a wife and wow jesus christ uh he said that uh he tried to make at least one visit a year to indiana after after they were his son and her were divorced and he kept in touch with marcia and his grandsons and even visit her in the jail in lafayette he said i felt she needed a friend

but there was no rational communication at all she said her life was programmed and that she talked about and then she talked about yahweh i tried to get to her but i couldn't reach her mentally she wasn't the girl i'd known years ago she's out of her fucking mind so closing arguments they uh prosecutors review all the shit they talk about the romantic relationships and all that uh the prosecutor says quote she wove a thread of lies marcia healed made some made continual references to shelly smith as a human being she mentioned her eyes her nose her chest are those physical attributes attributes of a snake well nose and eyes yeah snakes have noses and eyes right so yeah they're all one chest yeah

it's all one big chest a long chest uh healed would have you believe marcia would have you believe that she killed a snake no one of course can bring back bring back shelly smith you can't bring back shelly smith but you can make sure her murderess is punished. Six men and six women got the case at 2.35 p.m., deliberated for about four and a half hours, and then announced the verdict here. And after 12 days, they announced that she is, our verdict is, guilty and sane. Really? Not even guilty and insane. Guilty and fine. What? Fine. She's good. Faking it. No problems. guilty and insane. Guilty and fine. What?

Fine. She's good. Faking it. No problems. Oh, boy. It's all good. Her reaction to this is she gets up in court and says, I was charged with one thing to be accomplished by Yahweh.

That was to chop the head off the serpent who is called Satan. I should have finished my mission in my last life. If I had not chopped the head off Satan in this life, I would have had to come back again in my next life. So she's like, I was just getting it over with, dude. She. Yeah, that was her reaction to it. That was her thing. She didn't say, I'm sorry.

She said, look, I had to get it over with every fucking life. They chopped that off the serpent. Yeah, I know. I got my best. Guess what, guys? I'll be back again. See you you soon didn't get it done the uh wow the her attorney said quote it was a fair objective sentence uh that was not based upon passion or subjective opinion he doesn't think the trial was fair he's saying he's going to appeal during sentencing. The judge said that he this is weird.

He gave her a sentence and then said it should be longer. I'm like, well, then why that one? Then he sentenced her to you, ma'am. May fuck off 40 years in prison for the murder. That's a standard sentence. And then he said, quote, I feel she probably should have gotten more than I gave her. But there was no legal basis for it um he said she basically probably shouldn't be out on the street i think he also sentenced her to 30 years in prison on a burglary conviction for walking in

uh but uh basically that uh served both sentences at the same time she's so it's concurrent and she's fined twenty thousand dollars means that on good behavior, she could be released in 20 years. Prosecutors had asked that she receive one hundred and ten years in prison. So, yeah, I don't even know what to say here. Gerald Smith, he was in the courtroom. He wouldn't comment on the sentence. Her parents were also there. They met with her daughter with their daughter and kind of

you know they said um they were they were sad about the whole thing of course yeah the they asked for uh the prosecutor said we were confronted with a criminal who has a potential for extraordinary violence we're dealing uh here with an attack that was unprovoked horrible and vicious i would say so they do appeal in 1984 they appeal on the basis that her confession was coerced out of her that she said she didn't want to talk but they kept asked she said they kept quote hounding her that's kind of what homicide investigators do they hound you for answers to find out what's up with dead people yeah but she didn't ask for um she uh she said that uh uh the warning she'd be punished they were warning her that she'd be punished by god if she didn't come clean which is what they do

right they read the homicide book they pretty solid threat whatever your thing is that's what they're going to try to get to if you really love your grandma they're going to go man you know you don't want to yeah you don't want your grandma, you got to be a man here and admit this. And that's what they do. If it's God, they go, you're going to go to hell. You want to go to hell? You fucking better admit this shit and then you won't go to hell maybe. And that's what they do.

They play on whatever. They want you to fucking confess and get it off the board so they can move on to the next one. You're like a table to them. They're trying to get that table cleared and get another fucking, you know, get sit down so yeah so they said the judge says that's fine you're allowed to do that fuck off you no appeal you're done okay so she completes her sentence on july 28 2002 during her incarceration she was considered a good inmate she only received a couple of minor conduct reports and never was violent or aggressive in the 20 years she was there. She worked at the print shop and actively participated in, I knew she was an asshole, the clown ministry.

Hey, Jesus. Where she dresses up like a clown and goes and, you know, makes three people out of an entire wing of a hospital happy while terrifying fucking some people and just making some people want to punch her in the face if they had the goddamn energy is that what she's doing going to hospital that's the clown ministry that's what they do the clown ministry goes around the hospitals like fucking stupid patch adams and annoys people dressed as a clown thank you i was just gonna say a fucking child's room how'd you like to be incapacitated hooked up to tubes not going anywhere and have a woman who decapitated somebody and his bonkers out of her mind walk in in a fucking clown outfit with sharp objects around your way that's what you want that's comforting thanks a lot i'll make you wish for death that is wild she also worked as a prison

tutor because she's been in graduate school for christ's sake and not a lot of people in prison have graduate degrees and her prison record contains several letters of recognition for her prison volunteer work she regularly attended prison counseling session but refused psychotropic medication while incarcerated so she would not take any meds and her delusions persisted all throughout her prison sentence she was just nice about them in the 1990s by the way i read found this article where she invited people inmates of the women's prison of indapolis, where she was at the time, who were serving sentences of 20 years or more, were permitted to invite up to 20 people a year to picnics. What? You could invite people to picnics over the course of the year.

Like on the yard? Yeah. Like you go sit out on the grass and have a picnic. I've heard of that. It's like a family day type thing. I've heard of that. Yeah, they have like family day type shits like that. so she was in there and she had some family in there and they went and hung out with her so 2003 she's gonna she's paroled from jail good lord but yeah they

want to have a hearing to find out if she should be released or put into an institution now because they're like yeah you're still fucking crazy you might not need to be committed so she her case was going through and you know it was 50 50 then she wrote a letter oh a month before she is supposed to get out okay i can't wait a month before uh this is a letter to the boone county clerk of the court okay now uh first of all there was a a courthouse bombing in the tippecanoe county courthouse at some point in the 90s and that's what we'll talk about in 1998 okay so let's get into that all right you need to know that for the context of the letter quote i am once more inquiring about the disposition of the hat of the righteous one of israel which has been in your

keeping since my trial in the boone county superior court in 1983 she wants her hat back she wants her fucking hat back bro she wants her hat her evidence she wants it released she wants it yeah ms tammy hunter my transition coordinator at indiana women's prison has made several telephone inquiries into your office, the prosecutor's office, the sheriff's department, and also the police and sheriff's department, as well as the courts in Tippecanoe County, trying unsuccessfully to locate the hat.

Everyone she has talked to says that the hat is gone, and they have no idea where it went or when. Okay, now it gets crazy. The misplacing of the hat of the righteous one of israel creates a huge public safety menace as taxpayers of the tippecanoe county found on august 2nd 1998 oh you can't say shit like that when their courthouse was bombed on my 16th anniversary her 16th anniversary so she thinks the missing hat people fucking yeah this caused it was gone so

on the 16th anniversary of the murder they were avenging that by blowing up a courthouse that by trying to bomb a courthouse oh boy um yeah she said i recently learned that the people in possession of the hat are the ones who firebombed the courthouse okay okay they apparently believed that the hat was a play thing to put on on their own heads and jest this violates the command of yahweh most high god of the universe uh that only the anointed one may wear the hat very important for my own protection for i'm sorry for yeah for my own protection i'm requesting an affidavit from your office regarding the disposition of the hat. I need to have proof of where the hat went, who authorized its removal, or destruction, so that I will be exonerated from all blame. Otherwise, it's all on her.

I need paperwork. That's what she needs. I need a TPS report on that the blathering idiot who removed the hat from the boone county courthouse can be charged with collusion in the tip of canoe county firebombing because giving the hat to an unauthorized person is like giving a loaded gun to a five-year-old child who believes the gun is a toy oh she's a party oh my god i do not incidentally believe that the hat was destroyed at the beginning as the blathering idiot planned. The hat is very fair and attractive and fae.

And anyone who saw it in the garbage heap would be bound to retrieve it as a boon souvenir. Because it's amazing. You see that in there, you're like, I'm getting that out of the garbage. No one's throwing that out. I can devise a way to get the hat back. Now she goes into.

If you are willing to put up a reward of several thousand dollars and advertise in the right places as I shall direct you. Also, I will have to identify the hat from photos submitted by the prospective reward seeker. Obviously, this will require a sting operation and much patience, but it will be worth your time and trouble because the person who comes forward with the hat of the righteous one of Israel will be the typical new courthouse bomber. You'll have your suspect. Case solved by me. Unbelievable. We got to do a stakeout. Whoa.

Yeah. Get Richard Dreyfuss. We're going to get this hat. So if that wasn't enough, Dr. Payne concluded that she is a very nice, intelligent person who is a grandmother figure to the inmates, but is severely mentally ill. She is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, explaining that she has a complex delusional system. In fact, the most complex I have ever seen because she is very highly intelligent, but feels she is half human and half angel. highly intelligent but feels she is half human and half angel she feels she is a warrior type angel and that she had to protect brian thornton who she perceives as christ from the murder victim who marcia knew from a past life 5 000 years ago fucking dot i want to read books so bad i'm afraid to now because i don't want to this is what's going to happen to stay don't hurt your

brain remain not all of us stay dumb. He further testified that he believed that she is on a religious quest, that she believes she's on a religious quest from God and that she did the right thing when she committed the murder because Marsha felt the woman was a snake and she needed to cut the head off. Still, she believes that also questioned her ability to take care of herself because she still suffers from the same delusions that were responsible for the murder of Smith. And she says that she is a danger to herself and others, especially under duress. He also remarked that her insight and judgment are extremely poor. He said, quote, There is a marked paranoid ideation in Marsha. When pressed with pertinent issues, she can be easily disturbed. So she's not OK to let out and be on her own, obviously. Yeah, they said that she has a delusional disorder everybody went through and and said all this shit here uh the prison ministry

guy said he saw her twice a week and uh she was he said that a loving and supportive environment would be beneficial to her and that the church might be able to help her find a place but she would need to be taking drugs she would need to be on something she can't just have paranoid schizophrenic unmedicated wandering the streets they said that you know if she was she was taking meds maybe we would take her in and you know that could be here uh they also found that the court finds that she presents a substantial risk of danger to others and is gravely disabled. So, yeah, they are not good at all here, I would say. And gravely in the she's bad.

She's she's she's pretty sick. Yeah. She says, is this her? Yeah. Involuntary. Her our counsel in the closing said 20 years ago when it was convenient for the state to fight against an insanity defense and have their convicted just as guilty as the crime, they convinced the judge and jury that the mental illness played no part in this act. It seems ironic that now she's three days away from being released and the state would wish to say that they want some sort of do over for a second bite at the apple to say that this was because of mental illness. So if you say it was because of mental illness, it should have fucking been because of mental illness before,

not just now. But either way, they stick her back in. They say she got to go back to the loony bin. Yeah, that's too much. And as far as I know, she's still in there. I can't find anything. I don't know if she's still in there. If she's out, she's kept mad quiet.

I'm not sure. There's no way she's out. I don't know how anybody would let her out. I honestly don't. That one's too loud. She's so crazy. i don't think she can help saying these things i think she's really nuts yeah she kept it up for 20 years in prison this isn't a fucking act she's nuts i mean she's really out there i could see saying oh she conveniently went real crazy the last few months and killed somebody that's a real convenient thing and blah blah blah but 20 years yeah and then a few months

that's still saying serpent james that's what i mean she's still like i did the right thing like she's not even she doesn't she does she knows how to play the game and she's not playing and she's still saying i did the right thing fuck her she's a serpent so that is crazy that's our halloween story everybody i don't know that's i don't even know what to call that. Supernaturally, sort of. That's too much. Holy shit, man. Have we found a crazier? Is that our craziest yet? It's got to be, right?

Yeah, I think it is. But either way, I don't know. It seems like it is. If you enjoyed that story, congratulations. So did we, because it was fucking crazy. But you can tell us all about it. Get on Apple Podcasts, that purple icon. Tell us you like it.

It doesn't matter. Just give us five stars. It helps drive the show show up the charts and we thank you guys for doing that thank everybody out there who does that head over to shut up and give me murder.com for the tickets to the virtual live show right it is tonight if you're listening right when this comes out it's thursday october 29th and it'll be available for 48 hours to view after that. So if you can't make it right away on Thursday night at 6 o'clock, 6 o'clock our time, 9 o'clock Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific in the U.S. I don't know. Do your math overseas.

I'm not sure. Sometime there. Yeah. If you can't see it then, it will be available for 48 hours to watch as well. So you can check that out. Get on that all-violent felon edition of the prisoner dating game. Jimmy is going to get to pick from four bachelors and four bachelorettes. And I have some surprise twists in there as well.

We always try to up the ante every one of these. So it's going to be so much fun. Check that out. We can't wait. Like we said, shut up and give me murder.com today for that. Well, you got to do it today or tomorrow or the next day. I don't know. That's it. That's it. It's your last chances. That's it. It's over because I don't know when the hell we're going to do it today or tomorrow or the next day. I don't know. That's it.

That's it. It's your last chances. That's it. It's over because I don't know when the hell we're going to be able to get back on the road. I wish we were. We wish we could come to places, but we can't. It's not going to happen.

It's not going to. It's going to be a while. Not up to us at all, by the way. So we apologize for any. A woman died on a fucking airplane. I don't want to be on a fucking airplane. That is so scary. Yeah, that was a bad thing.

That's horrible. That was terrible. Yeah. The whole thing's a goddamn disaster. Somebody's within an inch of their fucking life, and they're getting on a plane. I'm not getting on a plane with you people. That's fucking terrifying. Who the hell?

That's what I mean. So, Jesus Christ. We want to be out there is what we're saying. I love it. We wish we could see you guys and just come out there, see everybody, and hang out with everybody. I miss you so much. Do meet and greets and take pictures and just hear you guys laugh it's a lot of fun so

we wish we were there but we're not so do that shut up and give me murder.com today if you want more content than that well we got it for you you can get be a patreon sponsor donor i should say patreon.com slash crime and sports you'll get access to all of the bonus materials and there's so many episodes we do at least four a month so with crime and sports you'll get access to all of the bonus materials and there's so many episodes we do at least four a month so with crime and sports and small town murder so tons of good stuff and they're hilarious we're not going to be humble here they're goddamn hilarious this week for crime and sports is which you'll have access to you'll have access to everything with the donation we are going to do the plane ride from hell just because it has the word hell in it and

it's halloween but it's actually a bunch of wrestlers. WWE wrestlers. The whole crew flying back from a long European tour. On a chartered flight with a full and open bar. And debauchery. And lawsuits. And everything. People get fired from it.

It's a fucking disaster. Wild tale over here. Worse than like a snake on a plane way worse than that drunk wrestlers on a plane nightmare for vince we're gonna yeah and also for small town murder since it's halloween we are gonna do kind of the creepiest most i don't know if they're creepy not to me they're kind of neat but like the the most the small towns that like haunting is their whole thing like we're a haunted town and we'll kind of we'll go into like kind of the the legends behind the hauntings and things like that and kind of try to find the creepiest small towns we can find basically we've done kind of the weirdest small

towns yeah now we're gonna do creepy haunty small towns so a lot of ghost hunting in there yeah oh there's gonna yeah people it's the only reason to go there so they're pumping it up so that'll be a lot of fun patreon.com slash crime and sports. Anybody over the $5 level gets access to everything. We'll have a good time laughing at people's ridiculous legends. Oh, I can't wait. That'll be so much fun. If you want to just get a hold of the show, say hello.

You can do that. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, all that crap. You can follow us. We are at Small Town Pod on Facebook, at Murder Small on Twitter, at Small Town Murder on Instagram. We're at SmallTownPod on Facebook, at MurderSmall on Twitter, at SmallTownMurder on Instagram. We're all there. Find us there. It's a lot of fun. Jimmy, speaking of fun, you know it's a lot of fun. I do.

I like hearing the names of my favorite people who would never believe that I'm a serpent whose head needs to be removed from my body. Jimmy, right now, hit me with those wonderful people. I need them. This week's executive producers are Christopheropher paul cowell jordan bennett on their self her and simon are celebrating their 16th anniversary congrats anniversary fuckers uh nicole blair alexa alexa alexia gordon happy birthday to her also uh susan mcquilkin jesus i'm sorry katherine conqueror

chris taylor chrissy ann costaldi. Again, thanks, Chrissy. We got to get back to Boston, man. Yeah, God, Boston was great. Also, Chef Kristen Kuhlander's birthday is today, or this week. Happy birthday. I don't know which day. God damn it. Happy birthday.

Larea Rouse, Jesse Plotkin, Gavin Smith-Pill, Don Fritz, Lisa Neuberger, Sherry Dickens, Samantha with no last name, Michelle, oh boy, Baba Sina, I think, Rachel, what, Funderburk, I think, Demin, nope, that's Dean, Woder, Cassie McMahon, Jim Boyceode, Bomi Sode, Christ, Jennifer Lucky, thank you guys so much. We can't do this without you. Thank you guys, amazing. Other producers this week, thank you so much we can't do this very true amazing other producers this week thank you so much cater carter harris uh melissa mcvicar jesus sarah koudel thomas smith nico robin uh robin james leah colwell sally matani uh tracy renninger gary howard thanks gary thanks uh katarzyna

neil zolka uh timmy right nope that's night god damn it zachary jackson dakota harrington kylie short kieran white marissa cole tisha tisha thomas uh hayley pierce ramsdale brendan ables thank you brendan uh james martyr liz vasquez thanks liz josh barda uh jill haynes marissa cole kristin bellinger j Jessica Matthews, Katrina Jones, Michael Scott. Is that real? That could be real. Jake Nasso, Elizabeth Burko, Brandon Bendy.

What is this? Benoy. He's a Native American and he likes to send me horrible things, horrible words to me because I'm accidental. I don't mean to uh jessica nikka nikka uh hayley viera megan schroeder uh obviously uh what was that guy's name schroeder david no uh he was a famous actor schroeder oh ricky ricky

had it locked and loaded there for a sec, and then it unloaded. Brooke Kale, Todd Theroff, Kimberly Paxson. What is this? Diary? That's not right. That says Mary. Veta with no last name, Jeb Edmondson, Amanda Knight, Whitley Crum, Devin Cleveland, Kanner152, Josh Garcia, Heather Musser, Todd Vanderhoff.

Oof. Oh, fuck, Joanne Ahern, thank you so much. She said happy birthday to me because I posted that my birthday is on a Monday. A Monday. You fucked that all up. The ever important A, never talk about my birthday. Thank you so much for anybody that sent money thinking that it was my birthday. It's not Jimmy's birthday.

I did not do that to bilk money out of that. No, it's February. Thank you. February. Don't send anything in February. You've done enough. Thank you. Vinnie Caputo, M. Sims, Tim Johnson, Rob Smith, Tracy Jacobs, Janice Hill.

I have an uncle named Vinnie Caputo. Do you? Yeah. It might be him. My cousin Jesse Stepfather. I'll bet it's him. Might be. Jesse probably used his credit card.

Maybe. Rob Smith, Tracy Jacobs, Janice Hill, Jonathan Hoskins, Mason Ohern, Tim Johnson. What did I do here? Leah Medlock, Gordy, nope, Gordy Bunk, M. Sims. I said that. Wes Rich, Chloe Campbell, Adam Bennett, Tay Howe, Molly, is that Molly? March. It's just M-O-L-L-E.

Is that a Molly? Is that? Moll. It's Moll, right? Moll. Molle. Molle. Molle March. It's just M-O-L-L-E. Is that a Molly? Is that? Mol. It's Mole, right? Mole. Mole. Mole. Mole March.

Mole. Miranda Kincaid. Susanna Platt. Kyle Juarez. Samantha. Nope, that's Sarah. Lockhart. I am fucking dumb.

Todd. You're on a roll. Todd Tunks. Gunnar Gray. Jesse Salisbury. Baga Kiwanuka. Baga? Baja.

Baja. Fuck. Robert Weyer. Weyer. Reagan. What? Jesse Salisbury, Baga Kiwanuka, Baga, Baja, Baja, fuck. Robert Weyer, Reagan, what? Day Herm DeBlay. Nope, Day Herm DeBlay. Wow, I think he's the guy that Kurt Angle wrestled in the, we talked about on Crime and Sports. Brian the Wizard, Franklin Berry, Cal Seeley, Matt Morgan, Renee Peterson, happy birthday. Winston Howard, Brian, oh, Shodorf, sorry, Brian,

Mark Kaiser, Bethany Plack, no, Black, what did I do? I don't know. That's one syllable, man. It could be Plack or Black. Depends on how shitty my writing is. Short name. Cassandra Newsome, Rachel Reed, Trisha Rinespear, Stephanie Tilford, Tyler Criswell, Mallory Ian Coney, Brian Niehaus, Archibald Meatpants, Stephanie Andrews, Jesse Thomas, Tracy Munix, Christy McFarland, Liz Gray, Sean Platter. Dwayne Mattson. Susan Wooten. Jamie Fee.

Mary Brutus. Jason Ho or Huff. Justin Greenberg. John Robinson. Alex Knoll. Tom. What? Tim.

Tim Wolotkin. Jay with no last name. Alyssa Marie. Mitchell Smith. Alex Casey. Tori Keegan Hafer. Nope. Kai Kafer.

Whoa. Fuck. Hannah R. Tripp. Brittany Galen. I don't want to keep going because i could say horrible i don't want to say up and people are going to think that's my fault but i'm just reading i don't want to say worse words jonathan crow ectorina ecotarina uh what jackey mater uh a monkey chef what What? Katie Watkins, Dennis Kuspert. Asia Monroe, Alexis Roy Lance. Christopher Lewis, Courtney McCarthy. Riley Kyle Dignan, D-Nan.

Katie Hale or Holly, I don't know. Melissa Miller, Emma Mars. Kelsey Martin, Chris Leonard and Carlton Merritt. D. Gemma 1000, Jim Monroe, Sam Powell, Stacy Loper, Corey Akechi. What? Achtabowski? That's not right. Jennifer Dalton, Haley Stefkovic, Phil Biebsheimer, Kevin Rohn, Kimberly Wade, Olivia Ours, Kenzie

would know last name, Andy Young, Rice Kamen, Aaron Tienes Free, Tom George, Carl Stump, Charles, not Carl. What? Amanda would know last name, April Williams, Laura Nichols, Maggie Fitch, Kelsey would know last name, Bagaku Anuka. I think I said that once before. They donated both ways. That's what happened.

Thank you. Sean with no last name, Melanie Hood. Michelle with no last name, Maylee or Mayle, Rivka Arbetter. Rika? Rivka? It's fucking not American, right? Is that English? I don't know what that is.

Who knows? Kim Lincoln, Sandy Stoica. That's okay. We like all of you. Hala Grimson, Travis Eckerd. Who knows? Kim Lincoln. Sandy Stoica. That's okay. We like all of you. Hala Grimson. Travis Eckerd. Sean with no last name. Stefan Tott.

Steven. Captain Surly. Olivia, what, Cianciulli? That's Italian. I don't know. Myra Ezrell. I hate that one. Myra.

Tiffany Knoll. Luke with no last name. Anne-Marie. Anna-Marie. Like the fucking song. Morgan Pendleton. Samantha Myers. Jack with no last name, Anne-Marie, Anna-Marie, like the fucking song. Morgan Pendleton, Samantha Myers, Jack with no last name, Nancy Drew, probably not the author. Chris with no last name, Grant Springer, Trisha Mobley, Cody Adams, Kyle Rauch, Jessica Giroux, Tim Umstead, David Lemieux Jr., probably Mario's kid, I'm sure. His brother. Or class. or right sandy zavala non

brothers david gv cv i don't know what i did sean joles uh michelle pandino josh w nick armenta uh ali thomas pastel pastor zol jowl it's a xl i'm never going to. X-A-L. Not. What? Joshua Doherty. Misty Kavasnik. What? G. Meesey. Melissa McVeaker. I said that already. That means she donated both ways.

Thank you. Wow. Thank you. Colby DuPont. Probably that dude's kid. Eric Stumpf. Timothy Driscoll. Colin Ackley.

What? Colin Ackley Buffington. Chad Hobnik. Kobnik. That's a K. Lance Vachok. What? Colin Ackley Buffington. Chad Hobnik. Kobnik. That's a K. Lance Vachok. Nope. Vachok.

Vachoke? Something. Something. Trish with no last name. Tanya Hall. J.D. Johns. Shane with no last name. Samuel Garcia.

Jeffrey Jefferson. Steel Flex. Tyler R. Matt with no last name. Steven Sigler. Gavin Guaginello? What? Guaginello? I Adrian Coronado, Sarah Barber, Zachary Mills, Jana Wells, Sean Miller, Wade with no last name, Larry Larkin, Chris Feichner, Jordan Fisher, Matt Chesser, DeAndre Floyd, Karen Crank, Letitia Bradford-Mohamed, Kira Barton, Nicholas Chiapari, Andy Dressel, Laura VanderWarka, Robin Middlebrook, Michael Belanger, Chastity Cassidy Moore.

It's her birthday. I don't know. Well, happy birthday. I'm never going pronounce that Brianna uh Hall Angela Rockefeller Hannah Simmons Lee Goffett Goffett Goffett uh Jonathan Gorstia why is it always Gorstia why is it Italians Brandy would know last name I love the food Kevin uh Kevin Mathers obviously Eminem's brother. Beverly Krennic. Hannah Simmons. Esther Hedberg. Dallas Allman. Mitch's kid.

Right. And Dallas Allman, one of the brothers. One of the brothers' kids. Sons and daughters of royalty today, everyone. Nick Yates. Shepard Pinhorn. Tyler Gunther. Gunther.

Kelly Dempsey. Patrick's kid. Samantha Wright. Jamie Infante's ward. Heinz's daughter. Garrett Johnson, Mike Shanahan, obviously. Montgomery's daughter, it was. James Melzer, Candina Huff, Jamie Hicks,

Katrina Svensson, Jamie Lichtenbarger. You know that famous... Yeah, Bobby Lichtenbarger's kid. We know that one.id barhart eric gordon kelly mitchell jeff bajima basima i don't know if that's a j uh linda baker leilani g michael halzima tisha tisha jackson of the jackson seven timothy six six tiffany square of the dancing fortune courtney spring emma eva m ava m gavin nelson jordan schrock britney helm mindy welch of the grape juice uh clearly britney smith christy oliver uh joel and

joel bateman uh jason's brother that is i believe angela cornman uh natalie etzel uh ann Angela Kornman, Natalie Etzel, Anne Kloss, Santa's daughter. This isn't a sec. Clearly. Maria Anwar, Christine Dowling, Andres Sandoval, Dale Kress. Water. Pablo's girlfriend there. Pablo's daughter. Lauren Reuter of the News Fortune.

Clearly. Sherry Penrod, Simon Freeburn, Maggie Pappas, Jeanette Guthier, and Jonathan Trost-Clair of the Kennebunkport Trost-Clairs. And all of our patron donors. You guys fucking make my day. Thank you so much. We really appreciate you. Thank you so much, everybody. Honestly, thank you for everything.

We can't tell you how much we appreciate it. It's been a crazy year, and you guys have stuck with us we just third year thank you so much jimmy what if they wanted to stick with you how could they get a hold of you find me at wisman sucks w-h-i-s-m-a-n sucks where are you uh at jimmy p is funny and just my last name is there copy it you're not going to spell it right so just do that thank you guys for hanging out with us and everything you do and uh we're excited for next week we're already into goddamn november next week yeah and uh holidays yeah we're on it we're on a run to thanksgiving now and then christmas it's crazy shit so whatever you celebrate and everybody enjoy your shit but uh we'll be here the whole time sure yeah we'll be

here for you however you feel however you feel at the end of this week coming up maybe save this show for tuesday if you need a laugh or something for whatever side you're you're rooting for but either way everybody until next week it's been our pleasure 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.