Small Town Murder - #241 - The Murdered Murderer Murders - Rutland, Vermont

Episode Date: September 16, 2021

This week, in Rutland, Vermont, a horribly murdered body is found, on fire, beneath the ski lift of a popular resort, and investigators have very little to work with. This isn't some tourist, either, this a full on small town twisted plot, that is as crazy as it is cruel. But the whole thing comes to a halt when something very basic comes into question... is the dead person actually who we thought it was? Or is that person actually the murderer?? This one is as wild as they get! Along the way, we find out that syrup runs downhill, that you should rely on more than a murder victim's uncle to identify them, and that if you see a friend, who you thought had been murdered... don't talk to them!! 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 Rutland, Vermont, a horribly murdered and burning body is found beneath a resort ski lift, sparking a mystery

that calls everything into question, including who this dead person even is. Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay, indeed, Jimmy. Yay, indeed. My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host. I am Jimmy Wissman. Thank you folks so much for joining us. We're excited. Jimmy was so excited. That yay was like, you came in quick on it. I love it.

I'm on it. I love the enthusiasm. Let's get into this. What a show we have for you today. This is just a crazy episode. One of those episodes that you're just going to want to talk about. It's just because I've been going nuts, burning up inside, wanting to tell you all about this. And I'm like, I got to wait till the show.

No, it's so good. Before we get to that though, very quickly, just want to say thank you for everything you do for us. First of all, go ahead. And if you want to do something nice for the show,

you can review us on whatever platform app you're listening to, whatever, however many stars they let you give, give that many stars and say something nice for the show you can review us on whatever platform app you're listening to whatever however many stars they let you give give that many stars and say something nice and it helps the show you also very importantly if you want to help the show head over to shut up and give me murder.com right now not only for everything about you know merch and all that stuff but the virtual live show is today if you're listening the day the show comes out, it is today, Thursday, September the 16th, 2021. And let's say you have plans tonight. You're like, oh, damn it. I got to do it.

Doesn't matter. Three days. You got 72 hours afterwards. You can get it for shut up and give me murder.com right in your living room. The case is awesome. It's a, I mean, it's a murder case, so it's not, you know, awesome,

but the story is crazy and we have, it's a murder case, so it's not awesome. But the story is crazy, and it's going to be fun. Lots of laughs. Come hang out. You can drink and everything, and you don't have to drive home from anywhere, hopefully. We'll have a party. We are going to have a party. Join us at this party tomorrow or tonight or whatever day in the next three days you want to do it. ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com today.

Do it right now. Check it out. We can't wait.com today do it right now check it out we can't wait can't wait to see you or have you see us and there's all sorts of stuff too where you guys can talk and there's interactive stuff so it's pretty cool this new setup they have so check all this out do it right now patreon this week by the way everybody is amazing we have uh a golden week of patreon patreon..com slash Crime and Sports. Good stuff here. First of all, for the Crime and Sports episode of Patreon, which you'll have access to.

You have access to both shows, Patreons, the whole back catalog and everything. You're going to want to check this out. Not really much to do with sports. It is about a guy named... Not much to do with crime. No. It's sports as fuck. Well, not really.

It's kind of not. Well, not really. It's kind of not really either of them. It's a guy named Barry Bremer, Bremen, and he is, you could call him a master imposter. He got onto the field and on the court and on the ice at all of these major events. He even accepted a Best Supporting Actress Emmy. It's so funny. It's insane. This episode is crazy. Check that out. And then for the Small Town

Murder episode, one that we just can't wait to do, it is the Richard Kuklinski, the Iceman, who's responsible for over a hundred murders in horrible, disgusting ways. We're going to talk all about his childhood and how he got to where he is. Origin story. Origin story.

And if you've heard the Richard Ramirez Night Stalker one, you're definitely going to want to hear this Origin story. Origin story. And if you've heard the Richard Ramirez Night Stalker one, you're definitely going to want to hear this because it's crazy stuff. So good times here. Patreon.com slash Crime and Sports. And you'll get a shout out because we love and respect you, damn it.

And we want to tell you that. So Jimmy, to do that, we'll mispronounce your name. You bet. So check that out. All of that there, Patreon.com slash Crime and Sports. And if you just want to make a donation and get your shout out you can do that as well over at paypal using our email address crime and sports at gmail.com that's a disclaimer quickly yeah we this is a comedy show we're comedians so jokes will happen in addition to dead things happening as well people will be

murdered not dead things dead people right people will be murdered. Not dead things, dead people. Right. People will be murdered. Not our fault. We didn't kill them. We didn't do it. We're not happy it happened. But what we're going to do is we're going to make fun of things like the murderer.

We're going to make fun of like if a bumbling police force can't catch a murderer who's right in front of their face for five years. We'll make fun of that. Things of that nature. What we don't do, though, we go out of our way to not do is we do not make fun of the victims or the victims' families. Why? Because we're assholes.

What? But we're not scumbags. That's how it works here. If that sounds good to you, we're going to have a good time in here. Honestly, one of the craziest stories we've ever told. I should say. And if not,

if you think true crime and comedy should never go together, I don't know, maybe it's not for you, but maybe it is. Maybe give it a chance and check it out, because I'm telling you, I don't think it's probably what you think it is. But everybody sitting there, whoever's left our show that we love so much, quote, it's not that bad. The marketing genius of the century, Jimmy Westman, quote, it's not that bad. Thank you very much.

That said, it's time to sit back and shout shut up and give me murder we were in sync on that one that was crazy let's go on a trip Jimmy that's why yes he did it that's pretty exciting I'm exciting we need to get posters let's go on a trip here. What do you say? Let's do it. We were coming from Oregon last week, so far clear on the West Coast. Let's head all the way across the country to the Northeast. We've really been zigzagging here lately.

We're going to do Vermont this week. It's been a while since we've been to Vermont, and it never lets us down. I don't know why we spend so much time away from Vermont when they have such crazy murders. It's really West Virginia of the Northeast in terms of how their murders break down. It's always like weird syrup people who live in a tree, you know, stab each other. It's always something crazy. This is in South Central Vermont, which is right down to where Vermont comes to a syrupy panhandle right there on the bottom.

Central. Snoop Dogg says it's bad there. You know it. He knows it. Covered in syrup. You got to pour some out. It's very slow. It takes a long time to do it. It just comes out real slow. Hold on. I got a lot of homies. It's going to take a while. It's about an hour and a half to Burlington, Vermont. About an hour and 50 minutes over to Albany, New York, if you go kind of the other direction. And then two hours and 20 minutes to Enosburg, Vermont, which we repeatedly called Penisburg because we're 12. Because it's easy.

When the last thing was there. That was episode 181 way back in July of 2020 uh in july of 2020 so 60 episodes ago it's been a while thanks for waiting vermont this is in rutland county the name of the town's rutland rutland county area code 802 it's about seven and a half square miles good size and there's so many mottos and nicknames i'm not even going to make any up because it's just too much as it is. How many are we going to have? I found they call themselves

first of all Marble City. Gross. Okay. I don't think maybe it's marbled nicely like a ribeye. That's better.

You never know. Gateway to Southern Vermont which I didn't realize there was a gate. I didn't know the Southern No one was really I didn't know

it was so desirable. That's what I mean. Are we all outside the gate does he got to go through here and then finally quote colorful historic festive in fall yeah otherwise there you go so those are the three and um you can make whatever jokes you want in there because they're all as equally ridiculous so they're all kind of just cheesy marketing slogans like uh you know it's not that bad that should be their new one yeah quote it's not that bad history of this town very quickly it started as a very small hamlet uh called mill village was the initial name it was on otter creek

yeah this is in the 18 early 1800s and uh the governor it was named by the governor uh benning wentworth here in 1761 he changed the name of it to rutland after john manners the third duke of rutland oh my which i don't know i would be great if manners came from him but we named it after where he's from not even after him no just where the third duke of rut. I would love it, though, if John Manners was the origin of manners. Mannersville. Not because he had manners, because he was a slob. Have some manners. Have some manners.

Mind your manners. They just made him like a pig that never said thank you. Super. Yeah. He's got like a half a meatball sandwich in his beard. He just burps. He's a mess. Yeah.

Like a half a meatball sandwich in his beard. He's a mess. So in the early 1800s, the small, high-quality marble deposits were discovered here. Oh. So that's why it's Marble City. And in the 1830s, a huge, large deposit of nearly solid marble was found in West Rutland. Is that right? So yeah, there's been a lot. By 1840, people started to have excavations and shit

and tops are in demand yeah that's uh but to get the marble out was great but you couldn't do anything with it until the railroad came through in 1851 because how the hell out that's the thing you're gonna put it horses can pull a lot of shit but they don't pull a lot of marble as the thing marble it's heavy it's pretty heavy you kind of need a train for that dense project yeah you can how do we have donkeys i don't know what we use we need a lot more of them this is rough now so yeah this they definitely uh had a problems they had all this marble and they were like please can we have a railroad to get all this shit out of here and eventually they did and rutland became one of the world's top marble producing areas anywhere um a large number of what they did is back in the day here they brought in a bunch of italians from italy

that had experience in marble okay in the that was the one thing like this country was fine with letting italians in when they needed marble work done at first because we were they were really italians were on that shit the marble forever you know and over here they were just trying to figure it out and they were like marvel was used a lot we'll bring in those guys they know what they're doing a while yeah so that's what they did there and uh they brought those in and that they brought their families here so apparently there was a pretty large italian population here once when the marble was going on but the closing of the quarries happened in like the 1980s and 1990s that was a lot of the jobs in the area so that kind of that hurt this area for marble was all fucked out more all fucked out jimmy as we've discussed many many

times so they have a uh the downtown section seems to be where things are going on here there's 108 buildings in the downtown area that are listed in the national register of historic places it's yeah they've kept it reasonably intact 108 108 it hasn't really burned down a lot of them date back to the mid-1800s one of the few towns that were not like 1895 a huge fire obvious destroyed it all reviews. As if they've never seen fire before. It all burned down. We made it of wood and we're right on top of each other and we heat our places with flames and oil.

Should be okay, right? And we use fire for light. No problem. Everyone should be fine. Hang a flame on the post. It'll be all right. Just hang it on the wall. What are we doing here?

So reviews of this town. I'll give you some medium, some excellent, and then some not so excellent here. Here's five stars. Yeah. Rutland, Vermont is amazing and beautiful. Oh. Beautiful and amazing. The surrounding mountains, it's all ski resort.

Killington is there. So it's all ski resorts around there. But like Rutland is where the people who work at the ski resort live. Got it. That sort of thing. Surrounded by mountains and forests full of animals and nature. The city is small, but people's hearts are big. Oh.

Now that's a slogan. That's a slogan. They replace all that other shit with that. That works. Here's three stars. Mediocre. Not so excited, but we'll talk about it. Quote, I grew up in Rutland and have been here for over 50 years oh my god there is a great sense of community but a serious

decline in businesses and job opportunities and activities as we discussed not a bad place to raise your children as it is fairly safe so pretty safe 50 years not not bad next review two stars yeah okay quote you could get robbed by three guys who are robbing each other at the same time but not the worst but not the worst three guys robbing each other and you and you but that's not but it's not the worst i've been i've been to worse places i've never been robbed by three guys three guys who then all turned on each other and robbed each other. That's a bad place. That's bad. That's a bad neighborhood when the robbers don't even stick together.

I've been to downtown LA. Shit didn't happen like that. No. It was fine. It was ugly, but it was fine. Back in New York in the 70s, you'd get mugged. A couple guys would mug you, but then they wouldn't mug each other when they were done with you.

That's different. That's a lot. The school was all right, but the people themselves aren't not to mention this one really stupid traffic light sitting on a hill that has a traffic light that immediately follows it it's right next to the catholic school and it turns red and never turns green that's all review they're angry literally angry at one traffic light that has another one 500 feet away how much do you want to bet that their kid went to that catholic school and they had to go there all the time and wait at that light and they've had just untold incidents of road rage while

children in small little uniforms stared at them in disbelief there's a light by my house that turns red and there are no fucking cars no needed everybody has it turns every goddamn time i get to that intersection stop for nothing nobody crosses there's no car nothing and nobody cares that's why you shouldn't put it in a review or talk about it on a podcast no one cares about the shit light by your house it doesn't make me very mad yeah of course it does it It makes everybody angry. It makes you crazy. It's made you go, ah, you. Every time I go, fucking why? Why?

Here's one star. Things get quick. Yeah. They decline quickly here. All right. One star. Nothing about the lights, but everything else. Rutland is by far the worst place I've ever lived.

Okay. It's too expensive for how crappy it is. It's honest. Yeah. The people are rude. there's very little to do here worst of all is the amount of drug addicts all over this town my advice would be to steer clear of rutland i wouldn't even come here to visit wow says from his house shit just arms crossed yeah on the porch in his living room not happy he owns this place and he wouldn't come here to visit and every kid that walks by or like rides by on a bike they just go you little drug addict

one of those that's right now yep look at him all cracked out little crack you're a little crack babies you're all cracked out i can tell all of you too much energy one star the housing availabilities are nil especially those of us who have pets we've had for years so they were having problems finding pet friendly housing apparently i understand not enough industry or decent paying jobs not near enough convenience of shopping okay okay so yeah the pet thing i mean that's just normal in every place it's just difficult we've we dealt with that ourselves so it's that's tough yeah population of this place it's just difficult we've we dealt with that ourselves so it's that's tough yeah population of this place it's been in a steady decline since about 1980 it's it peaked

out in 1970 at 19 300 people in that region here now it's there's 14 914 people here down about 18 percent since 1990 yeah so it's it's declining male and female populations are pretty normal median age is slightly older it's about 43 and a half about six years over the national average but there's no like a huge swath of older people and it's just kind of a little just the way it worked out married populations a little bit low, that sort of thing. Single with no children, a little bit high. So if you want to get down and find a party place, this might be your spot here. If you can ski. Vermont can party.

I'm telling you, if you can ski, you can take over one of those lodge. You'll be pulling tail. Oh, all over the place. Oh, my God. Male or female, you can do this. I love any movie where they're taking over a ski lodge. Big puffy neck sweater on, sitting there, hey, how you doing? Fire crackling.

I've never done that ever. Never been skiing. No? No. Oh my God, it's so much fun. You'd love it. You're going to go down and then what? You got to fall down and get back up again and climb back up?

Why am I doing this? There's snow all over me. I'm not going to be a professional skier. I'm one of those things where like, unless I'm going to be really, really good at something, what am I doing this? There's snow all over me. I'm not going to be a professional skier. I'm one of those things where like, unless I'm going to be really, really good at something, what am I doing this for? And the other part is that when you do fall- It's not fun unless you're great at it.

You get snow all over you. What happens next is it gets wet, and that's not fun. No. That's horrible. Being terrible at something is not fun ever for me. I suck at this. It's wet and cold.

Yeah, why can't I do this? Race of this town, it's vermont so it's pretty white uh 93.8 white as a matter of fact very very white 1.3 black uh 2.1 asian which is kind of more than i've imagined honestly in this town and 1.7 hispanic which is very low it's like 10 of what there usually is and And it's normally 17%. 38% of the people in Rutland are religious, which, you know, a little less. It's kind of normal for the Northeast.

Most of the people that are religious, though, Catholic, 25% of the population is Catholic, because as we know, Catholics are the Baptists of the North. There we are. We have that couple of Methodists here and there. 0.2% Jewish, so not many Jewish people here. We have last presidential election, 53% of the people in this county, almost 54% voted Democrat, 43% voted Republican, and about 3.1% Independent, which is low for Vermont, actually. Vermont is where Bernie Sandersie sanders is from

and he's an independent he's not a member of a political party he's the representative of this yes technically so they're they're open to the eye next to somebody's name they don't see that and go well they're not really in a party so it's it's serious yeah uh unemployment rate's a little bit low here so you can get a job but the household income is also low so you have that uh more jobs that pay less money so uh median household income here is 42 861 dollars so it's about 15 000 super low for vermont yeah it's about 15 000 under the national average not as many people making over 100 000 as average in the u.s it's just kind of a lower wage place here. Cost of living, $100,000 is regular average.

Here it is $83,000, and housing is actually the low one. Really? Yeah, housing is a $59,600. What? Pretty low. Median home cost, $209,500. Okay. Which for the Northeast is not terrible.

Most of the houses are between 100 and 250 000 a ton of high end or real real low end so if we've convinced you my god you have your skis all waxed up yeah you're ready to dominate the lodge and what was it would you say pull some tail at the lodge or whatever there you go pulling some tail at the lodge you're gonna okay never mind we have for you i had something very dirty i'm like i'm not gonna say the rutland vermont real estate report your average two-bedroom rental here goes for about $933, so that's lower than the national average. I found a four-bedroom, two-bath, 1,752-square-foot house. That's good.

Got some kids. That'll work it out. Everybody will fit. This house is fucked up. It is. It's terrible everything. I can't. It has inexplicable flooring is the best way to describe it.

I don't know what it is. It's different in different parts of rooms. It's not wood? Sometimes. Sometimes. Sometimes it's other things. I don't know what it is. I don't even know what the material is.

I don't know what is happening in this house. I like it. It has the most terrible wallpaper from like the 40s everywhere. Shit that's never coming off. I mean, you're gonna spend six months scraping this off and then you're gonna find more wallpaper under that who knows what's under that i don't know what you're gonna find under that skeletons i'm not sure a mess this house 29 900 bucks holy shit for a house of that size it might be worth unless it's the foundation

is rotting away it might be worth that unless the foundation is rotting away, it might be worth an investment. That is staggeringly affordable for a new apartment. Yeah, that's very, very cheap. So I found a three-bedroom, one-bath, 1,248-square-foot house that is nice, clean, updated. If that house got put back together again, $142,500. Affordable. That's like the entry level there is that, unless you want something that you're going to put back together again 142 500 so that's affordable that's like the entry level there is that if unless you want something that you're going to put back together

then i found a five bedroom five bath okay 8 640 square feet holy shit rolling green lawns just beautiful 10 acres oh my god huge guest house that's not even near the regular house. Really? It's a fucking quarter mile away from it. You can have people over and you go, are they still here even? I don't even know. I think they might have left three days ago. Call them and check on them.

Amazing. $1,595,000. That is the cheapest thing I've ever heard for 8,000 square feet. That's what I'm saying. I mean, obviously, I'm not buying a house of that cost, but if I was in the market for that? That is so cheap. That seems like a good deal.

I don't know. Fuck. Someday I'd like to look at that and go, not bad, rather than, wow, that's amazing. I want to look at that and say, send the realtor over. Yeah, that's not happening. That sounds crazy. So things to do in this town, pretty much the main thing to do.

And there's other things. There's a lot of skiing, obviously. That's skiing, skiing, skiing, you know, fucking lodge gashed, all deal. Right. All of that. But there's also Rutland Bowlerama presents the Northeast's 48th annual green mountain open tournament of bowling bowling this is awesome so yeah you can enter that there's going to be all sorts of people there and uh bowl away i wonder if that who do you think you are i am guy is there oh god the guy is awesome

uh is that pete weber yeah yeah pete weber there's a 30 for 30 on him really it's a short one the shirt just because of that phrase. Well, his father was also like the, he was Dick Weber, who was like the guy who was on TV every week for like 40 years. That's his dad? That's his dad. Holy shit. So he's a legacy in bowling. Anyway, that's more crime and sports.

It's a big deal. I found the Rutland Halloween Parade. Hell yeah. This is their big thing here. Parade. It's huge, this Halloween parade. It's so much so, as we'll talk about, it's been mentioned in tons of different comic books. Really?

We'll talk here. It's been taking place since 1960. Awesome. There. And in the early 1970s, it was used as a setting in a bunch of comic books. Really? Including Batman, number 237. Justice League of America, number 103.

Holy shit. Amazing Adventures, adventures 16 avengers number 33 the mighty thor number 207 they mentioned it a lot there's a guy named tom fagan who's a local writer and he's big into comic books and he apparently helped in the beginning of the parade was involved in it and helped make helped have it have a superhero theme. That was it. So it became like the superhero parade. It's the original Comic-Con. That's exactly what it is, except in syrup country down the middle of the street.

It's a very sticky Comic-Con. It's very icky. Hold on. You get your feet off the ground. Somehow it's stickier now. So in the Bostonoston globe article said in 1965 the joker plastic man and dr strange were roaming the streets of rutland along with batman so he was i guess running around fagin was being batman or whatever the hell's going on here uh 5 000

spectators watched in 1970 uh who. Who they had all sorts. Every superhero was there. They had floats with Thor on it. All sorts of shit going on there. So apparently that's a huge deal here. And the parade, they would kick it off by yelling Avengers Assemble. That's literally how they would start the parade. So if you're into superheroes and want to go to like a street comic-con yeah that's it's

still going on today so enjoy yourselves uh crime rate in this town what we are obviously interested in here uh property crime is super high really it's about 50 high it's high they will steal your shit here a place with uh caped fuck? It's like they have sticky fingers or something. Do your job, Batman. Yeah. Clean this shit up. Clean it up. So violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course assault, the Mount Rushmore of crime,

that must be what Batman is concentrating on because that's actually lower than average. Yeah, it's about 20% lower than the national average. So they'll steal your shit, but they'll stop short of actual violence here so with that said let's talk about something that did not stop short of actual violence a brutal brutal murder yeah let's do this uh let's head all the way back to the night of well we all remember where we were this night jimmy july the 3rd 1971 oh yes i have no my parents were still in school like i don't even my dad was i think 11 that's what i mean my my yeah my dad was my dad didn't even jerk off yet i think my dad might have just started by then when it was close call it's a close one so we're yeah this is uh

before our time obviously the cusp of parental masturbation that's a good way to put it yeah right on the taint of parental masturbation that's a good way to put it yeah right on the taint of parental masturbation right in there on the edge of it gross so this is 1971 it's about 10 30 at night and um you know some of these times when we have murders and people are found we'll be like oh man how'd they find that person? That's what a coincidence. Like, if you look at the serial case of Heyman Lee, like that guy really picked an intricate place to pee and then, you know, saw a hand and a foot like it's a it's really pretty, you know, chances. The chance.

Yeah. The chances are crazy. It's a chance thing. This, on the other hand, not quite as much of a chance thing. Was the mortuary guy walking into the morgue? Well, directly under the Killington ski gondola lift. The Killington. Killington is the name of the town.

It's the same area. Killington is the name of the ski resort town. Got it. It was Killington. And then I think they were like, we want people to ski here. This is probably bad. We want people to come around. So they changed it changed it to i think sherburn for a while and then they said you know what killington was kind of cool people were like fucking killington bro they

wanted a t-shirt like i don't know what we were thinking where are you going this is this winter i'm going up to fucking killing i survived killington so i think that had a little more cachet to it so they put it at least it's memorable. So they put it back to that name. So under the ski lift where people are on as they travel to go up and down the mountain to ski, there is a fire that is spotted. And it's about seven feet down an embankment from a road. And then the ski lift runs off of it there and uh it's a dirt road there off the road that's uh has access to a bunch of like the chalets and the camps and you know where like the ski instructors and the i guess i guess i don't know yeah yeah it's it's

where anybody that works there uses it you kind of like those if you look in the back and like disneyland you're like what goes on back there? And they're like a golf cart guy going. I want to go on this ride. I want to go back there. I want to see what's happening back there. They're jerking each other off back there. I know it.

Goofy's fucking Woody back there. I've seen it. I want to look and see what's happening. I need to know. Goofy's a girl under there? I don't know. They're both guys. What do I care?

I don't give a shit. Yeah, I think they're both guys. Who knows? Maybe they could be Eiffel Towering. I don't know. Well, I was thinking Porky Pig. That's Mary Metz, Warner Brothers. Can't have that.

Well, let's see. Who would be best? Who would be the best? No, no, no. Goofy's the guy. The Johnny Depp Pirates of the Caribbean guy. I want to see those two. Eiffel Tower, the Johnny Depp Pirates of the Caribbean guy. I want to see those two. Eiffel Tower, the Johnny Depp Pirates of the Caribbean guy.

I think that would be entertainment. That's what's happening back there. So what they see is a fire, and they look down. It's only a few feet from a point below the gondola cable. So, I mean, you're cruising right by it on the uh on the old ski lift so the everybody could see it basically there's no effort to conceal this fire it's in kind of a rugged place but it's in clear view of a shitload of things including where tourists go right by it so uh anyway they they get closer and they realize right from a newspaper here, they say, quote, the scene that greeted them was a gruesome one, which contrasted with the quiet backwoods beauty.

It's one of those. Near the road, they found a heavy patch of fresh blood, which had soaked into the ground. So they follow that about seven feet down the embankment, and they find a smoldering body down here. The victim is lying on their side, head uphill and feet downhill, is how this works, and pretty kind of charred up. It's just been set on fire. The clothes are burned up.

It was discovered, the body, by a New Jersey man who owns a camp along the road. And he was on his way home in his car with his family when he noticed a fire on the side of the road, which will catch your attention at night. Sure will. It just does. When is this? This is in July. So the sun just went down. I mean, it's about 1030, so it's been down for about an hour and a half.

But as you know, on the East Coast, it stays light really late in the summer like when on fourth of july you were like when's it gonna get dark here i sure want to shoot these fireworks yeah what's going on it's never gonna get dark i'm tired already getting sleepy so uh he noticed this he this guy's name is charles hoover he ended up continuing home to his camp which was just a few hundred yards away from the fire so he saw the fire then he returned back to check it out he said no we'll go home drop the family off and come back but he also brings his 13 year old son with him to investigate and they discover that it is a body that was on fire so that's fun for the the to discover. He threw some water on the body. Oh, boy. So I don't know.

Obviously, I doubt the police probably. Whoever's investigating probably doesn't want you to put a fire out on a person. Anything on it. That's probably not great, but he threw some water on this body because that's just a human reaction. There's a person on fire. I should probably put them out. Also, my 13-year-old son's there. I don't want him to think you don't put somebody out if they're on fire.

That's a bad lesson to set, really. You're trying to set an example for the kid. Plus, back then, I don't think they'd seen so much CSI-type shit, so they didn't know, like, I'm going to be washing away fibers. I could wash them. They wouldn't know that back then. I'd just rinse semen off of it. Now they're just like, oh, there's a person. Put them out. Oh, shit.

They wouldn't think to preserve the preserve the crime scene that's not what yeah that's very new that's the last 20 30 years so obviously they call police the police there's not a lot going on around here in terms of like you know smoldering body so police really roll up on this plus it's a resort ski resort so they really it's bad for the town yeah if tourists are seeing smoldering bodies from the from the ski lift it looks bad no yelp yet but if there was yelp that's definitely going to be on it in summertime uh even those ski lifts in the summer get all kinds of activity oh yeah see the a thawed out mountain going up for a hike back down or whatever the fuck but yeah there's all kinds of activity there's people around too that just work around there anyway they have to preserve it all

year round so they get there and uh they also send uh steven klein who and uh dr harris who is our crime scene experts all the way from montpelier wow they come in so uh it's the capital indeed so it's absolutely pretty goddamn disgusting. Like we said, there's blood everywhere. The body itself is a male. The clothes were practically burned off, the police said. It was set on fire. He appears to have been wearing jeans, a light brown plaid shirt, and hiking boots.

Yeah, 70s attire. It's 1971, exactly. His hair was burned, and there were severe burns around his abdominal area as well. So he wore a friendship ring on his right hand. That sounds like a 60s thing. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Pretty love stuff. Some sort of, yeah. I remember from the 90s, there was the friendship bracelets. I think it's like the 70s version of that. 70s, very hippie thing. Yeah, probably. So they found no signs of a struggle, although they did say it would be difficult to tell because the body's kind of burned.

So little things like scratches and stuff become harder to see. Insignificant, too, really. Yeah. Compared to the fucking injuries that he's sustained now. That's the thing. So they finally get the, this was 1030 the body was discovered. They get him out of there by ambulance at 3 a.m. Process it all because it's dark and it's outside.

So they really have to kind of spread out slowly. I don't know what the procedures are back then. And it's dark. And it's dark. We're going to see. They're a little bit lax back then as we'll find out take a little more time they could have taken an extra couple of seconds not exactly with this but with a couple other things uh they did say that the victim bled extensively at the scene indicating that this is probably the site of the initial attack

and also that the victim did not die quickly or immediately. They definitely bled a lot before they died. So they thought that the fire on the body occurred probably, not positive, but probably after the death. Either that or as he was bleeding out. Yeah. One or the other. They didn't think he was on fire and aware of it for too long.

Anyway. They lit him on fire and then started stabbing or doing whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To let blood. You don't even know what they've done yet here. Now, the first thing they have to do, obviously, is figure out who this is. Clearly, you can't figure out who murdered someone without understanding. Generally, the first is identification.

The murder of, yeah, who are they? Where were they? Who are they with? Helps, you know, who might have been mad at them. Instrumental. So they do remove a portion of the wallet that's in there that's burned up. So they bring that to the lab later on. That'll be something. And there's a clothing label with some stitching on it. And the clothing label has the clothing.

The shirt itself has holes in it that don't appear to be from a burn. So they're thinking that might be some sort of either a bullet hole or knife wound or knife hole or something like that. So they feel like that shirt was on the victim when they were attacked. It wasn't like put on. 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. 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 and the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. 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 way back 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. 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. ...on them afterwards. So there is an identifying tag in the clothing that's going to help out a lot. And so they're trying to figure it out, though. They call the Rutland Police Department and try to get descriptions of anybody missing to see if they fit or whatever.

They say that it looks to be, because they find where it turns out to be gunshot wounds in this victim. First, they think it's two gunshots to the neck, two shotgun blasts to the neck. Oh, my God. Then later on, they will realize that, oh, no, it's not two to the neck. There's one to the right side chest and then another to the neck oh my god then later on they will realize that oh no it's not two to the neck there's one to the right side chest and then another to the neck and then they realize oh wait there's multiple there's more than just two is the problem there's one in the neck one on the right side one on the shoulder one over here all sorts of shotgun blasts on this person they've really battered around with a shotgun and then set ablaze at a ski resort, which is different. You don't hear that.

You wouldn't expect that. Never. Anytime you're in a ski resort, the last thing you're thinking is I'm going to be attacked with several shotguns. Right. And you don't, at this point, too, they don't know. They don't know, is this a tourist? Right. They're hoping it's not.

Oh, please don't be. You'd rather this is a local because it's bad for tourism otherwise. you're like let's let this be like some dirt bag from around the way here to be a guy that's got a fight with somebody over the black diamond i don't need this to be anything more than that nothing to do with skiing please so they're trying to identify this guy they stop a few people including a guy named ste Steven Banigan, and he has two people with him. They stop him about 1.30 in the morning, and they live in a chalet off the road, so they question the man, the people. They said, were there any parties or brawls the night before? Did you hear any crazy shit going on, a bunch of dudes fighting?

How about a bunch of shotguns? I was going to say, maybe a shotgun blast or two, maybe followed by, oh, God, I'm bomb hit. Something, anything like that? Oh, Jesus. Anything like that? No, don't set me on fire. Nothing like that. And they said no. They never, you know, nothing.

They said, do you have any idea who this might be? Somebody who died? And I said, we don't know anybody who's missing, so not us. They get reporters there crawling all around. It turns into a zoo pretty quickly. Really just people everywhere. They're investigating the possibility, the police say, that they think some fuel was used to promote the burning of the body. Because otherwise bodies don't catch that well.

Generally an accelerant. Yeah, an accelerant's needed. They take soil samples from where the body's found to find out if there's any kind of fuel in there, which is smart. They bring in more people from Montpelier to examine the crime scene. They're Bureau of Criminal Investigation people. I'm in the Vermont Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Initially, they check they look all around they do a big sweep they find no weapon so that's a that's a issue so that's no clue to go

on there uh they end up the guy they turn to to solve the mystery yeah is a patrolman for uh a patrolman for the rutland police department here and it's a patrolman named Edwin Hall. It's a police officer. And he checks this out and he believes it's his nephew. That's why they bring him in to try to identify. He thinks the body is. He thinks his body could possibly be his nephew. And so they bring him in to make sure because he said hey my nephew didn't come

home or i don't know where he is not answering his phone and you never know because we'll find out his nephew's type of guy that uh you never know where he's going to pop up so you don't know so they say among the marks that he recognized was a tattoo on the victim's right arm it's the form of a rib or ribbonraped cross with the Marine Corps with Semper Fi on it. So that's what he's got. A military tattoo. Yeah, a military tattoo. Other ones that he found out, he said that the general size

was about correct with his nephew, and he said he helped raise this guy, so he knew him very well, so it wasn't just like I haven't seen him in five years. It's probably my nephew, Ronald A. Rogers is his name. At this point, he's 34 years old, which is so funny because 34 doesn't sound very old at the time. Born in 1937, which sounds like he's got his pants up right below his tits.

Very confused. That is a crazy age eight isn't that crazy but at this moment he's only 34 years old he's doing fine he's right in the middle of everything he's got a kids he's got a whole bunch of stuff going on yeah today that is an elderly person rodney dangerfield was born in the 20s yeah we were we were shocked to see that this guy is is 10 years younger than that we watched back to school again the other night because sarah had never seen it and we're like listen there's so many references and other things to this movie you kind of have to see it and rodney is and it's great at his most rodney it's his most rodney you don't lie to me you lie to. It's the most Rodney you're going to get. That old school, whatever.

So, yeah, anyway. Yeah. Ronald Rogers here. And his name's, okay. Very close. Yeah, Ronald. Is that why we thought? Oh, because of the date of birth.

Yeah. Anyway, yeah, we looked it up and we're shocked that Rodney was like 60 in that movie. Right. 65. He was 65 in that movie. 65 years old when he made that. Holy shit. And he can still pull off the triple lindy.

Amazing. What that movie. 65 years old when he made that. Holy shit. And he can still pull off the triple lindy. Amazing. What a movie. Now, Ronald is an unemployed ski lift operator and carpenter. Okay. He's unemployed in two separate locations. Double unemployed. Double unemployed. That's very unemployed.

Very impressive. If you have two skills and can't get hired for either of them, that's an issue. Yeah. He is described by his uncle and other people as a loner. Listen to this description here. Described as a loner, a reader of serious books, and a man with a tendency to provoke drinking companions to anger. That's how he's described. He's an asshole.

I was just going to say, what does that sound? What's the the word i'm going i don't mean to besmirch the dead yeah we're not doing that but when you hear that you go that sounds like um an asshole what's the word i'm looking for huge ass definitely an ass i don't know if he is but the description sounds like it whoever described him as that is not his friend that's his uncle who loves him oh so my good think about it that way wow yeah it might be worse that's the most positive thing said about him yeah pretty much uh he well there's more said about him he was seen at the center street bar early saturday afternoon which is that day that afternoon but not anywhere near that time because they said when he was set on fire and shot there was probably pretty soon

before the person found him since he was still on fire yeah so there's you know that shit goes out pretty quick the window's pretty small here so during the afternoon he was still alive and he was seen there um also he was placed on a different street at a different bar at about the same time okay you're telling me a guy that makes his drinking partners hate him hate him uh was drinking multiple places oh he's seen by the way in multiple places at the same time wow just several he was at several different bars at the same time so i don't know if he was having a beer at each place and everybody's times just kind of collapsed over like they were fudging their resume or something yeah you know just or he quickly pissed people off and had to dip that's what i mean i

don't know what was going on or people are confused because he's got kind of a common face i don't know or people are confused because they were you know drinking that's the other thing they were drinking in the middle of the afternoon so there's that it's something to think about reliable people it's certainly something to think about everybody's drinking in the middle of the afternoon maybe that's an issue. So they cops at this point, investigators don't really have a motive. They don't really know what the fuck's going on other than he's kind of an asshole, but they don't think someone's going to kill him and set him on fire for that. It's hard to get to from from don't buy me Irish car bombs, too.

I will literally shotgun and light you on fire at a ski resort. That's a bit far. So they said everybody called him a loner. They said that he suffered periods of depression and despondency in general. They definitely, all of his friends said he would very easily provoke people. That's a thing. So they're like, if someone got that mad at him, that would not be surprising. Everyone said he'll definitely push buttons.

He's either an asshole or the most fun person ever. He might be fun, but- Because you would be this. Wait a second. Say it then, Jimmy. Say what? What are you going to say? He's what now?

He's like you. Well, not quite. Who is he? He's your kind of guy, isn't he, Jimmy? Which would be- I might like him. Okay. You always say that at exactly the

wrong time that's the funny part about this you say that not before i'm like hold on to that thought for 10 minutes you say it as my mouth's opening to read a line that's going to make you completely not think that that's what's amazing it's beautiful your timing is spectacular it's fucking nah i just know so many guys. I just started running over a Rolodex of people that are really good at pissing me off, but I like them. Yeah, I get that. I get that. But the next line is, Rogers at one time supported Nazi beliefs.

Oh, never mind. Never mind. Jesus. Let me get that line out, and then tell me how much you like him i'm like oh 10 seconds jimmy you son of a bitch uh yeah nazi beliefs uh they said though not all of his political talk was all nazis and hitler here they said not all of it was extreme some of it was david duke yeah some of it was more toward the i I don't know, more toward the not off the cliff, but dangling by your fingertips with someone stepping on them hard, which David Duke is falling off the cliff. But still, he was literally in the Klan.

A local politician reported that he, Rogers, once conducted a highly intelligent discourse on the poll tax with him for several minutes. Wow. at a highly intelligent discourse on the poll tax with him for several minutes wow so he's a smart guy everybody says can be a huge pain in the ass a sometimes nazi who then is apparently very very well invested in and interested in the poll tax in vermont so he also according to a relative of his, said that he liked to drink and, quote, would get agitated in bars with political discussions. And they said he could be, quote, miserable when he was drinking. Yeah. Gets in drinks, starts fights or gets in drinks, has drinks. Same. Gets in fights.

Yeah. Gets in drinks, starts fights. That's it. Drinks. That's what he is. Yeah. He's a drinker and a fighter not much of a lover not much of a well we don't know that all right um so far now his

uncle who identified him as the brother of his mother so that first song you know right there okay mother's brother yeah that close uncle not like a distant uncle or anything like that he uh he said that rogers often felt like no one wanted him. He just wasn't. He didn't felt like he wasn't wanted by a lot of people. And his uncle also said that he, quote, had a lot of time on his hands. Too much time. Literally, there's dot, dot, dot.

Too much time gets him in trouble. His uncle said that his reading ran to, quote, deep stuff. Oh, boy. And that, quote, he could tell you more about the Communist Party than the communists can. him in trouble his uncle said that he his reading ran to quote deep stuff oh boy and that quote he could tell you more about the communist party than the communists can that's not good well i mean you can read political theory and economic it's economic theory so it's good to read up on i don't know if he was enthusiastic for it or against it i'm not sure if he just generally knew about it be interested to read it yeah or if he just knew about it, he's just, I'm very interested in the economic and political systems of the world.

Especially the Nazi side. Especially the Nazis. And then sometimes the communists as well. But still, I just like it all. He said they never participated in politics, but his uncle said, quote, he knew what he was talking about. So he was into it. He sounds like a guy who'd be a real pain in the ass on social media yes he uh he was about six feet tall they said that he could take care of himself though he wasn't a you know he

would start fights and he wasn't a pushover he could fight for himself and he was a formidable guy and they said that his uncle said that he felt like he would have definitely put up a fight if he had known that someone was attacking him. If he was out there to be murdered, there would be some sort of resistance put up because he was an ornery type. Yeah, that wouldn't take too much shit. And there's no sign of a struggle there. So the uncle thinks and the uncle's a cop too. So I don't know what kind of investigative skills he has, but maybe more than the average layman there. So he seems to think that, you know, this has to be some kind of setup or something. Otherwise, he would have fought back. He said that also that Rogers reportedly recently took medication, quote, for his nerves.

Oh, that's what they would say in 1971. Yeah, that's such a vague term. Yeah, he's putting inside. That's what I mean. Medication for his nerves. God knows what they gave him back then, especially. He had recently checked into a veterans hospital in White River Junction and also one in North Hampton, Massachusetts, in an effort to, the way his uncle described it, quote, straighten himself out, which is the most 1971 way to describe anything he takes some medication for his nerves and he checked on into the loony bin there to straighten himself out

that's a very 1971 uncle about a week he'll be fine he should be all right he's gonna come out of there i don't know he comes out a drooling and his tongue's flopping all over the place but eventually he pulls it together so they used to it was a very cheer up bitch moment for that um so yeah they didn't say they asked him what was he straightening out and there was no real defining answer on that just his general his general his nerves i guess so uh they do find out all about him that in three days on july 6th so it was the third was saturday fourth sunday fifth tuesday july 6th he was set to go on trial for armed robbery oh dear his trial was set for an armed robbery and this was the retrial for an armed robbery it was already a hung jury that was a mistrial on the first one it was a 1969 robbery and the first trial was in 1969 and this was 71 so he's three

days away from an armed robbery trial found on the side of the wow interesting uh very very interesting apparently he was charged with robbing an ames food land in rutland ames i'm wondering if that is the same ames chain that used to be in new y, too, because there's one in Fishkill. There was Ames that was there forever. That's right. It was like a road. It was like a target type of thing. Yeah, it's only a couple hours from this place. So, yeah, they said they had the police said they had no information indicating that he was involved in, like, the drug traffic or anything like that, any high-dollar crime that would cause people to kill him based on his illegal activities.

Anything more than just being an asshole. They don't really have much of a – being kind of an asshole sometimes. You know, they don't really have a lot. They do a check here. At first, it was two shotgun blasts, one in the back of the neck at close range, and then one hit him in the right arm in the chest. And that one was fired from a greater distance. So they think probably either that one was fired first to knock him down, and then they came up and hit him in the back. Or he was hit in the back, and then the other one was just kind of as he rolled down the hill, and then it was for good measure.

They weren't positive. First, they thought it was two blasts to the back of the neck, but then they figured out maybe it wasn't. Now, he apparently, later on, they decide that he had been shot, quote, several more times than the first two times they thought. Once they looked a little further into this. There's not a real lot of science going on here. They just say that and like, we looked a little further into this. There's not a real lot of science going on here. They just say that like we looked a little further into it.

Like, what were you doing the first time? Just a cursory once over. What the fuck are you doing? Just roll and count. It's an autopsy. Let's really get in there and check it out. Magnifying glasses are good. I don't know anything that gets a closer look.

Yeah. They said that he has sustained additional gunshot wounds to the chest body and right arm besides the two neck shots that they originally found now they're thinking four or five times he was shot they said that some of the wounds were a result of close range shots while others were fired at six to eight feet jesus fuck man um that's brutal so they got to find out about his life a little bit. He's born in 1937. Like we said, his parents name are Sydney and Ina.

They are lifelong residents of Rutland. He had been employed by the Killington Corp and was a veteran of the Korean conflict. So he went to Korea like right out of high school. This kid was 37. He was born.a was over by

then he might have went to korea but he wasn't in the conflict right i don't know the fuck did korea go on for did it go to like 56 i don't know it might have went to like 56 i'm not sure it must it had to have because then yeah i guess he did for it not to because then he would have went if he went when he was 17 18 that makes sense then so um maybe he was there for two three days to help sign the treaty i think maybe he came into he wanted to set up the dmz yeah get it all ready get it established he had to do it yeah he had to he was gonna argue over the exact lines he's gonna roll out some barbed wire he had like that blue tape that blue string shit that you put down when you're like laying a deck that's what he did the chalk line he had one of those he came through

with it hold on the cigarette hanging out of his mouth. One of those painter hats on. Wait a minute, everybody. Back up for one second. I'm going to put the line down. I'm putting the line down. They're going to give me stripes for this. Man.

So his mother died when he was six. Shit. So that was an issue. That's when he went to live with his uncle, who was the police officer who identified him. So his father had left the home well before that. So he had no parents from six on. God damn. Rogers.

Yeah. He spent some time with a stepfather in Albany after his mom died. They gave that a shot, but that didn't work out. No. Obviously. Why the fuck would that work out? Yeah. That's so. got divorced from your mom

and then she died and then he's going to take you in and that's probably not going to work. Fuck that. Then what happens when he finds somebody else and he has to explain, oh yeah, this is my... Oh, that piece of shit?

My divorced wife's son and then she died. She died after I divorced her. I mean, it's a nice thing to do, but... Trying to be a good person. Instead, he comes back and lives with his uncle and all that shit. Or I figured that'd help him land women. And then when it didn't, he's like, you can go back to your uncle.

Maybe you can go back. I took you to the park and it's not really working out. It's not working, kid. I'm not getting what I like to call lodge gash out there. That's the problem. Now, usually, if you were cuter, I think we could pull it off. It made him very sad. Go tell that pretty lady this is your first birthday without your mom.

Yeah, no shit. Come on, do it. Get the fuck back to normal. Take a hike. Take a hike. And say, Daddy's been very sad. So this is terrible, obviously. But you know what?

It's probably not far off from what some people have done. As a kid, he was never really a problem. The uncle said, quote, he always did what you told him. He was always a good kid, but they said he could stir people up otherwise. His uncle said, quote, he would get guys agitated in bars. He would discuss politics, and they couldn't keep up with him. He was so deep. Jesus, his uncle sounds like he really is in love with him here.

So he ends up in two separate... He did stints in both the Navy and the Marines, which I didn't know was possible, especially because they both ended in medical discharges. So I don't know how you can get medically discharged from one branch and then just join another one. That's how easy

the Navy is. Maybe. I don't know. Possibly. Or he was like, you know what yeah i'm gonna test this this uh my knee out and uh join the marines to see if this stable thing will work i'm not sure either way he uh he's in both and he ends up having two marriages that don't really go anywhere a couple of daughters as we'll find out kind of a mess when he first gets married rogers people thought that this was going to cool him out. And he'd be, you know, everything's going to be all right.

Oh, he's settling down now. That's kind of how they looked at it back then. Once people got, quote, got married, they were like, oh, that's settling down. He'll stop being an asshole. He'll blow them right out. Yeah. But he liked kids. And he wanted to have a kid.

He had a kid with his first wife. And then they got divorced, though, and she took the kid. And back then it was much less, you know, I'll just see him every weekend type of thing. It was people just. I'll see him when I see him. Yeah. If you went and broke up, whoever took the kid and got, like, remarried, that was just part of their family now. And you didn't see them anymore.

It was weird back then. It is fucked. Very weird. Yeah. So they got divorced, like we said. family now and you didn't see them anymore it was weird back then it is fucked very weird yeah so uh they got divorced like we said he ends up getting married again and they have another daughter okay this is in the late 60s and uh but by 1971 they are separated for a few months before this all happens i found some from 1968 his wife tried to divorce him in 68. This is when she started the entered a divorce suit against him on the grounds of what she called, quote, intolerable severity. What the fuck?

That means he was abusive. That's physical and mental abuse, as we'll talk about. Intolerable severity. Like I could handle an an asshole but not this level of asshole that's a different thing is unbelievably severe yeah it's way severe they were married in 1964 but by january of 71 they were still married and uh in in january of 71 he is ordered to be sent to the vermont state hospital for observation after he is charged with breach of the peace. As we'll talk about, the judge recommended a plea of, I'm sorry,

his lawyer recommended a plea of innocent by reason of insanity after he was charged with, quote, hitting his wife in a family type squabble. Wow. That's not a squabble, really, I would say. If you hit your wife, it's beyond. That's beyond a squabble wow that's not a squabble really i would say if you hit your wife it's beyond that's beyond a squabble he was jailed and uh was lacking the 500 bail so they put him in a hospital instead so um yeah it was uh pretty interesting so after that he ended up moving out and he spent a little more time in a hospital and then came back out

and was kind of floating around in june he stayed at a motel in june and then in july we know what happened right before his trial he's got some mental health issues for sure yeah there's some issues and there's also he's also kind of a mysterious guy who like has a lot going on he's got armed robberies he's got like uh a lot of things that are kind of a mysterious guy who has a lot going on. He's got armed robberies. He's got a lot of things that are kind of a mystery, as we'll talk about. So let's enter another character into this little drama that we have brewing. Robert D. Gosia is his name. He is a year older than Mr. Rogers here.

Mr. Rogers. He's a cab driver, this guy. He's also been employed at Shelburne Corp., which is the operators of the Killington Ski Area. Got it. So that's how he knows Rogers. They work together there. Sure.

So, yeah, they're both former employees there. 1969, all I could find on this Gosha guy is he's a terrible driver. Just has nothing to do with murder, but it'll take two minutes because... He's a cab driver just this has nothing to do with murder but it'll take two minutes because he's a cab driver that's bad just terrible at it i just just keep seeing the paper all these fines are running stop signs he got in an accident in a parking lot at 6 30 in the morning oh man what are you doing 6 30 vehicles driven by him and some other guy collided in a grand union parking lot like are you kidding me it's too early for that shit another 1970 here uh he suffers a broken foot and facial cuts when

his motorcycle is in a collision with a sedan jesus he's got bad driving he's just bad at all of it in two years he's got tons of accidents happening here. And then in 1971, oh, here we go, another one here. This is April of 71. He pleads innocent of leaving the scene of an accident and a violation of the law of the road. And then he pled guilty and was fined to two stoplight violations. So he's a bad driver. This is all in the same day. It's not just that he's a bad driver.'s all in the same day he doesn't even it's not just that he's a bad driver he doesn't just doesn't follow the fucking laws of anything what stopping

is really his problem that's the issue now we bring him up because the it is alleged that he participated in the ames robbery with robbers goshea g-o- G-O-S-H-E-A. Goshea, probably. I like thinking of Goshea. Goshea. I think it's probably Goshea. Sounds better. It sounds cooler.

Yeah. So he is, that's the, that's the, that's how that works. So they're trying to establish if that was because when Rogers went on trial, he's tried by himself and he says to anyone who will listen that he does have an accomplice, but he just doesn't choose to talk about them right now. Yeah, I don't want to name them. So that's how it works. So there's a speculation that it's Gaucher here. There's a woman named Marilyn Perkins who, at the time of the robbery, she operated Rutland Tax Service with her husband Frank, and Gaucher worked there.

It was kind of his job at the time. She said that on June 9th, 1969, the police were going to the AIMS store to investigate the robbery that just happened. Gaucher was at their house, which is two blocks away from the store. She said she learned of the police from another taxi driver who had radioed her about the police action. from another taxi driver who had radioed her about the police action. And they said that she said she didn't know how long Gaucher had been in her house,

which is only a few minutes from the store. So he was in the vicinity of the store. So that's kind of neither an alibi nor not an alibi. It doesn't discriminate him, but it certainly puts him near the scene, and that's not good either. The prosecution would say, puts him two minutes from it, and the defense would go, puts him in another place from it. Puts him near the scene. And that's not good either. The prosecution would say, put some two minutes from it. And the defense would go, put some in another place from it. Put some two minutes away.

Put some in front of other people. So it could work either way. I think that's a wash probably. But they think, the state and the cops think that the prosecution will eventually say that Gauthier helped Rogers to rob the store and then fled to the Perkins residence to look innocent. And that's what happened here. Now, at the time of during the first robbery trial for Rogers, he was sent to a state hospital at Waterbury for observation.

And that was in 1969. And that trial ended in a hung jury. And the speculation that there was an accomplice out there was kind of part of the reason why some of the people didn't vote guilty because they thought maybe he was being threatened or something not to say anything and they felt bad putting a guy in who was being you know somebody else yeah somebody was putting the screws to him basically is what they thought so um yeah anyway they they thought that's my that might be what it was so that retrial was set for january or july 6th 2000 or 2000 july 6 2000 jimmy gonna investigate

this for 30 it's gonna be a while july 6 1971 okay so from june 2nd to june 17th rogers the dead man spent two weeks at the Berwick Hotel. The desk clerk, Miss Beverly Williams, found him to be, quote, very quiet, apparently sober, and what she described as always alone. And this is a great quote, overall, a nice young chap. She's the only person who said that. He paid $23 per week for a room. Wow. That's so cheap. week for a room. Wow.

That's so cheap. Holy shit. That's incredible. It's like $3 a day. That's wild. That's insane. And when he checked out, he just left the key in the room and he didn't come back. So that was his way of checking out, kind of like you do now.

Yeah. So now the body, let's get to this, the body when it's found, it's found wearing a light-colored striped cotton dress shirt, hiking boots, it's dark hair but burned, a bushy mustache, about 5'11", 175. Like we said, he is identified by his uncle just to do that now what they do is because it's his uncle and because he works for the he's a corporal in the rutland police department they just that's the identification they just work yeah they just have him idea they don't take fingerprints they don't do blood tests they don't do dental records none of that he's got a criminal record so we have his fingerprints right probably yeah they're on file yeah definitely he was on trial for christ's sake but they said the victim's fingers were

shrunken from the fire and from whatever so they said they could have injected saline solution into the fingertips to get the fingerprints on the dead man but to do that the ends of the fingers would have had to have been cut off oh jesus they felt bad cutting the fingers off to do you know science stuff that you need to do yeah and for an autopsy and an id so uh and you have to do it's identification they said that this is wild this is the police department explaining that quote i'm a native vermonter this is the cop guy okay i'm a native vermonter and i have some compassion in this regards you shouldn't unduly mutilate a body we have a positive identification when asked why didn't they do any of that he goes well we don't need to mutilate bodies around here okay i'm a

native vermonter i don't like to quote solve murders i just what does that even mean i don't know i don't know what that is i'm a native don't blame it on that don't? I don't know. I don't know what that is. Don't blame it on that. Don't blame, yeah. Don't blame I would like to be ignorant as to the identity of a corpse on the fact of you're born in Vermont. That's stupid. Where do you file taxes? Makes no fucking sense.

So they have no leads. Days go by. All they find out is they indicate that from an autopsy, they figure out that Rogers ate carrots before he, shortly before his death. Thin, raw, circular strips of carrots, like, you know, twirled up. Really? Carrots, like from like a salad type of thing. Like spaghetti strips? I guess like if you shaved, like, you know, you skinned it kind of, whatever.

I think it's like that. They said strips like ones made by a potato peeler. So, yeah, just like you're doing that like on a salad on top of a salad or something. He also said that they wanted to check these local restaurants because they believe he had carrots and corned beef is what they decide based on the summit contents there. They wanted to find where he might have eaten and lock down that he definitely had that. So they can do a secondary identification based on circumstantial evidence, essentially. Based on somebody had that shit at Margie's. Yeah.

So no leads. They say a few days later, five days later, not a thing new, the prosecutor says. Nothing new to report. They said that the initial guy who was investigating the case, he's gone for a couple weeks. So he went to bomb school in Connecticut. Oh, God. Go learn that. So, you know, we'll get to it.

That's the guy that we have investigating this? We'll get to it. Is the guy on the bomb squad? Yeah, he's got a class he's got to take. We'll get to the murder thing. He's got continuing education is very important jimmy so they said that they did have state's attorney robert tepper said they did have some response from the public uh so that's a you know an encouraging sign that maybe people will step forward they said quote it's that it's difficult to say if it represents a good portion of the people who saw him and knew him here.

So, you know, they don't know who who what percentage of these people are trying to help or if it's the same person calling 10 times. But they'll figure it out. They said he was wearing a bushy mustache, which is different than he looked in a in a newspaper photo. So essentially, he's telling everybody, you know, if you're thinking, is it that guy mentally put a mustache on him? Essentially, he said that he didn't know. The state's attorney didn't know whether there was any money on Rogers at the time of his death, that the wad was taken from him from the wallet. And we'll find out what that was. They found partially burned checks with his name on them they said it was

like the end of his first name and had rogers and the end of his street address on them okay so partially burned checks and on his shirt the tag sewn on the inside of the shirt uh had ronald rogers sewn into it oh so okay it couldn't be more of an id yeah he might as well have like uh yeah hat on that says i'm ronald rogers and the like a the ronald rogers experience t-shirt on so much identification for a murdered man left in a field that it's almost like why does he have all that on him you know i get the shirt but doesn't ronald rogers and his mom's penmanship yeah underwear like that shit like that yeah so it. So it's very interesting. That is fascinating to have that on your shirt.

I've never thought of that. No, I think back then people might have. Stitched in. Stitched in. I don't know if that's because if you work somewhere that has lockers maybe. That sort of thing. Kind of like in school. Like in gym you write with magic marker on your shirt though.

It's my shit. Yeah, that's it. Wman there you go so um they did say that the investigation part of the thing that was really hurting them was that people have placed him in different places at the same time on the night of the that he was killed so that's they're having a hard time yeah that's that's funny figuring out where the fuck he was and when that's a problem so uh they said the investigating officer said quote i have nothing i could release on anything at this point and i would not characterize what i have been uh have what i have as being nature of nature of evidence that would result in an arrest in the near future so basically we have dick is what that

means i got nothing i got i got a little, but it's not enough to do anything. I would not characterize what I have as being of the nature of evidence that would result in an arrest in the near future is the longest way to say we have dick that I've ever heard. We don't have shit. Not a goddamn thing. So that's wild. There are the state police. Everybody's involved in this whole thing. They feel they find out the meal is corn, beef and cabbage and carrots.

That's what they're looking for. That where he what he could have possibly had. Why? Yeah. St. Patrick's Day. A little bit. They said the time of death is about 930. Give or take an hour because you can't tell exactly.

They're pending laboratory tests on material but it's 1971 so really what are they going to find out not a lot you're going to find out except you know he's an a positive great he had blood in him yeah there was basically it we found out he was human and he ate food red blood corned beef cabbage bullets bullets apparently hurt him that's the other thing a lot of bullets susceptible to flames which was a it was expected but good to know they uh they also found out from a relative that who rogers had spoke with a relative of his that he quote might go away for a few days on his own that was like the day before saturday night might be going away for a few days on my own didn't say where he

was going or anything like that but he definitely had to be back tuesday for his armed robbery trial right so that might have been the few days maybe he figured i'll go you know freedom for a few more days enjoy my freedom yeah so uh yeah uh anyway by three years go by wow nothing happens wow nothing they're just a bunch of shrugged shoulders we don't know you know hopefully the case will crack and it just kind of gets cold and nobody really gives a shit about it anymore until 1974 okay when uh remember gaucher remember Remember him, yeah. Remember Gaucher. Now, Gaucher, he's got a common-law wife, for lack of a better term. Oh, no.

Never actually officially married, but they have two kids together. They've been around for a while, so she took his last name. Okay. So they're not really married, but they're sort of married. Basically married. Now, the thing about that is that makes it easier to break up, obviously. Yeah, it does. Yeah.

And that's what happens, is he breaks up with her and takes the fuck off and leaves. And then then she ends up taking the kids the other direction. And that's how it goes, because, of course, he's got kids also, because all of these people have to have kids while they're doing armed robberies and everything else. She this is Joan Crandall. This is Joan Crandall Gauthier. She said that she was very hurt when Robert Gauthier left her, but what she's about to say has nothing to do with that because she would never implicate him in a crime he didn't commit. Not a spiteful woman.

Not a spiteful woman. I'm upset, but this is more about the world than justice. I didn't care about justice for the last three years, but now I'm concerned about it. I've got a real Batman thing about me. Then again, again if he is a murderer you might be afraid of him so you never know that could go either way again that's another one that could go either direction equally the same right so according to her she says that they went to a local restaurant together her and gauche and uh on the 4th of july and she asked him what was wrong what's going

on there big guy it's a problem you're looking down yeah and uh she said he responded with quote i killed him oh i killed him she said who right i mean that's an obvious question he said rogers he wouldn't listen to me i tried to talk to him but he wouldn't listen which sounds like rogers yeah and uh she said that uh he that gaucher claimed that rogers wanted to implicate him in the robbery as well that he said he was basically telling him look i'm gonna tell them you were with me i'm gonna get me a lower sentence well don't do that and they can't get either of us remember the last one hung jury don't worry about he thought they were going to get him and he said let's not do all of that yeah 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.

I understand that anybody who's paid attention to the media would have to come to the conclusion that I killed my wife. Hi, my name is Zach Stewart-Pontier. I'm one of the filmmakers behind The Jinx, and I'm excited to bring you the official Jinx podcast. We'll be revisiting all six episodes of part one and watching along with part two as it airs on Max, starting April 21st. Bye-bye. The Official Jinx Podcast. Listen on Max or wherever you get your podcasts.

So, this woman here, the Joan, she says that Gaucher said that he took Rogers up to the mountain and he shot him. That's what he said. He said, quote, or she said that Gaucher said, he said he wouldn't be recognized because he set fire to him. So he didn't have to worry about getting caught because they just go up. He's all burned up. I guess we don't know who he is. It's a hell of a theory. Not even going to look into it.

Oh, well. Damn it. He burned him. That's what they do. He burned him. That means we can't solve it. Never mind. Moving on.

Let's go write some parking tickets, boys. They keep burning him. How are we supposed to solve this? It's over. It's part of the rules. If you burn him, we're not allowed to solve it. So, yeah, he said, though, they asked her, well, you know, she said, well, he asked me to provide him with an alibi. So she did originally when everyone who knew Rogers was questioned.

She gave an alibi for that. But now after he left her, she said that she needed to come forward. It was the right thing to do. She said enough closure with the family and, you know, all that stuff here. So they issue an arrest warrant for a Gauthier. Not even that goes easily as well they issue this arrest warrant he's gone he had just moved away so they don't even know where he is so vermont goes to the federal government and says will you issue like a fugitive warrant for like a national thing and they went nah no they said not really

doesn't sound like us i mean i don't. That seems like something we probably could do. Yeah. But I don't really want to right now, you know? Sounds like your problem. That sounds like more of a Vermont problem. So that's what they do, essentially. Okay. They go, if you don't catch him in a reasonable time, then come back to us and we'll talk

about it. Yeah, give us a call. At least try first. You know, you clean your room before you come and ask me to help you. You know, that's what you say to your kids. If you you clean it for a good hour and then if you need some help, I'll come in and I'll, you know, move some of the big stuff around. But you're going to have to work on this on your own. Yeah.

So the the police, though, are very confident that they have a solid case. They said that, you know, they have this woman saying that gaucher asked her to lie for him and admitted to the killing so it's all good she uh the prosecutor says that she only cooperated with him quote because she loved him she loved him it was the love of a man keeping her it's a real sweetheart together uh they lived together for several years and uh all that sort of thing and in april 1974, Cochet left. And then a month later, she was talking to the cops. It took four weeks of raising two kids on her own to go, fuck this guy.

If he wants to be on his own, I'll make him on his own. He's going to be on his own, all right. He'll have a roommate. That's the kind of thing. I'll get him some time alone. I'll get him some time alone. So she said, within a month, quote, the burden became too great. That's what the prosecutor says.

Yeah. And then she came back to tell him all about it, tell the police all about it. Now, obviously, the other side says that she changed her story when she found out that he had left her for another woman. Oh, shit. what it is his side's going actually she just he walked out found another woman and she's jealous and uh you know hell hath no fury you betcha so uh like a woman who knows you committed a murder hell hath no fury like a woman who has some dirt on you who knows you committed a murder you're in deep shit. That's how it works, brother. I do love that when celebrity couples break up

and then all of a sudden you get all these bad stories about how much of a piece of shit Johnny Depp is. This one's terrible and then this one never takes a shower and this guy's dick doesn't work. It's all, everything comes out. It's a mess. Never tell your spouse anything.

Never. Keep it away from them we live in another room come out see them dressed very nicely once in a while then go in your own room and lock the door because they're going to say bad things about you someday if you ever see him poop you two know way too much you know you need to be you're going to be murdered in a ski resort so uh at this point they said quote her bitterness turned to revenge and then uh asked the press quote is she worthy of your belief yeah this one who's just a scorned woman scorned one clear reason to be upset and say yeah things that are wrong and uh also one from the gaucher team

they say that listen he couldn't have't have killed the Rogers because he and the missus were, quote, parking during the time the murder took place. Yeah. So him and his common law wife were making out in the car somewhere like they're fucking Rizzo and make out point. Yeah. Well, that was happening here. So I don't think so.

Now, the states, the state contends that they have enough evidence to show that Gaucher picked Rogers up at his house around 5.30 p.m. They spent the next two hours in different places. One was the Amber Clown Bar. Jesus. Amber Clown? It's at the Howard Johnson's restaurant. A bartender would testify, told the police that he would be willing to, that Rogers was so nervous that he couldn't write out a check. He was shaking.

His hands were shaking. He was very, very nervous. So they're still looking for Gaucher here because he moved away. Gaucher moved away. He did. Yeah. He took off. They said all they know is he went out west somewhere, which is pretty big if you know the United States.

It's not enough. It's not enough. From fucking Vermont? Everything's west. You need to know exactly where out west is. There's a lot of land out there. He could be anywhere. He could have turned Mormon.

He could be in Utah. You never know. He could be in western Vermont. He could be a cowboy now. We have no idea what this guy's doing. You never know. He could be in western Vermont. He could be a cowboy now.

We have no idea what this guy's doing. So they end up trying. Still, they keep asking the feds to step in and issue stuff. And they're going, I just, we're a little busy. A grand jury in the U.S. District Court failed to turn out a federal indictment against him, which is funny. They're just like, you should look yourself. I really feel like you should look yourself. Failed implies they gave it a run. Yeah, that's the thing.

They said that they want to hold off a bit in case Gauthier is apprehended within a short period of time. You take care of it and then come back if you need us. He doesn't sound super dangerous. We're not going to do this. Well, I mean, what he did was pretty dangerous, but that's the only time we think he did it. Well, that he's accused of. We don't even know that he did that. By the way, this is about to get really crazy in a second here.

I mean, this isn't like a simple, oh, now he's going to go to trial and we'll talk about some legal shit. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is crazy what's about to happen. So he said that to have this grand jury and have all this wouldn't be economical, whatever. So they believe he fled the state and they don't have any leads and and have all this wouldn't be economical whatever so they believe he fled the state and uh they don't have any leads and they have to find him they eventually do find him in clute texas way west out west yeah clute texas i don't even know where the fuck that is c-l-u-t-e named after a texas dude named clute that is so that's got to be like johnny clute mad rural

near el paso right i i have no idea literally that could be right by amarillo i have no fucking clue That is so that's got to be Johnny Clute. Mad rural near El Paso. Right. I have no idea. That could be right by Amarillo. I have no fucking clue where Clute is, but he's arrested there. So clearly he was hiding. Yeah, that's you don't go to Clute, Texas to start over again unless you're hiding. Probably imagine there's very few big job opportunities in Clute, Texas. That's what I'm saying.

So physical evidence. Let's go over what they have here. They have pieces of his charred shirt, Ronald Rogers, a book of checks found on the body, a label sewn into the neck of the shirt reading Ron Rogers. The old part is burned. So just Ron Rogers. Part of the lettering was destroyed by the shotgun blasts. I'm sorry. So bullet hole through the old of Ronald.

The checks were badly burned, but the edges read old Rogers and had Stratton Road, Vermont, which was his address. So reasonably sure that was that. So they find they have a chemist and a criminalist with the state police. state police, he says that he thinks the body had been burning for 30 minutes as opposed to the state's medical examiner thinks that the body had been burning for two hours, which is a long time for a body to burn. It's also a big discrepancy between a lot. That's four times the amount. It's a lot.

So they it's I don't know how a body would stay on fire for two hours without a shitload of propellant and a propellant being added. Right. Also and or at least other things around it would to burn it. Something just two hours of something burning with with paper in that fire. Generally, paper doesn't last. No, it's quick. It's going to go really quick. And the clothes weren't even all the way burned off for two hours. And the shirt didn't burn off. That's great material. That's what it seems like to me. They said that this medical examiner said he thinks 30 minutes but really doesn't even know

because he nor the state have no way of knowing that because there's too many variables involved in a burn situation like this. We don't know about propellants. We don't know about propellants we don't know about this that so they said the uh the soil under the body the type and amount of accelerator fluid and the atmospheric condition in the area all are big factors and fires and how long they last he did admit that he is not an expert on burns on the body and then said that the he said the state's guy might be right, but he doesn't know. He said, I don't think he is, but he might be.

This guy seems way too sure of it. Basically, he seems so sure of it. I wouldn't believe him because there's no way to be that sure of it, essentially. And this medical examiner also, and the state medical examiner as well, also said that, in an odd thing, he didn't see the scars on the body that the uncle said he saw. He never saw those scars. He's like, I must have missed them, but I didn't see those scars that it said I was looking for. So let's talk more about the stomach contents. And I promise there will be no sperm heads involved.

I swear. Like last week. So he says the digestive tract contained beef or some other mammalian meat, so mammal meat. They said the red blood cells of chicken or turkey contain nuclei, while mammals' red blood cells do not. So that's how they know what kind of meat it is. The autopsy failed to really figure that out because they figured out that it was beef. The problem is here that they speak to a waitress named Virginia H. Page.

She's a waitress whom Rogers was a regular customer for, came in the diner all the time. And she had no difficulty remembering that he was there that night that he died. And what he ordered, because it's his regular fucking order. So she knows what it is. And she knows what she fed him. And that was a hot turkey sandwich. Uh-oh.

And a glass of milk. Okay. No beef at all. No carrots. No beef. None of that stuff. so they were like hmm yeah now this is three years ago so they're like you could maybe she's not sure that's she could not be sure that's a thing before could have been the day before but she goes no no because i remember

i fed him that evening it was only a couple hours before and then i heard the next morning about what happened and i was like oh shit he was just in the night before he was in hours before he was killed that you'd certainly remember she said in her mind she thought i fed him his last meal holy shit like that was what she thought in her mind wow that's crazy i hope he liked it hope the turkey wasn't dry sugar how many times has that ever happened in a lifetime it's probably never happened yeah you don't know maybe someone could have gone and blown their brains out after they you ate their terrible food i don't know but in the paper this is the only one that sticks with me that's it uh so that she said this was about four hours after the body or before the body was found okay so about 6 30 at

night so last that's last meal he was eating uh I doubt he would have eaten the hot turkey sandwich and glass of milk and then got another meal before he ended up dying, probably. That's a hungry man. Yeah. We just ate turkey before we recorded this. We had turkey sandwiches, and I am full still. I'm not eating until tomorrow. No, there's a lot of turkey. And it wasn't even hot.

Right. There's no gravy involved or anything. It was just on bread. No glass of milk? No. Very good bun, though. Holy shit. Yeah.

If you happen to be in the village of Wappinger's, go to Chubby's Deli. Chubby's is fantastic. Very good deli. They'll make you very chubby. They will chub you up. So, yeah, they, and just a reminder, the medical examiner found corned beef and raw carrots in his stomach. So, no mention of raw carrots or anything like that. Another thing in the autopsy that's revealed is they go over all the organs and they weigh them all.

They see which ones are normal and all that sort of thing. They note in the autopsy that this victim had a spleen, which is fine. Lots of people have spleens. I have a spleen. You have a spleen. We all have a spleen. One person, though, who does not have a spleen is Ronald Rogers. Uh-oh.

Because Ronaldgers had his removed in 1961 according years ago according to his medical records he had them he had his removed in 1961 after a medical problem questionable so yeah um there's some things here that the defense is like um so we didn't do an identification other than the uncle who he grew up with yeah who um i'm sure might want to could possibly help him yeah you know if he's going to go to prison for years might help him in this way the food doesn't match and this what are we talking about here and he's already in the ground right this is what are we gonna do now this is uncomfortable so the prosecution's theory like we said Gaucher picked him up.

They went to a bar about 5.30, spent the next two hours in the bar. That would contradict the waitress saying 6.30 he was in there eating a hot turkey sandwich. Bartender says he's so nervous he couldn't write out a check. Blah, blah. Okay, that's where that was.

He's alleged to have taken Rogers to Roaring Brook Road on Killington Mountain and had him get out of the car. I don't know for what purpose or I don't know if it was what the ruse was to get him out of the car or if it was just get out of the car and he had a shotgun pointed at him. Not sure, but doesn't seem to be any fighting with it. We don't know if maybe Ronald thought he could talk his way out of this or what was going on here. But apparently he couldn't because he was shot many times,

set ablaze, obviously, and all of that. Now, the prosecution is going to argue that... I have to get around the physical stuff here. They're going to argue that the spleen that was extracted... Now, this new one is an accessory sp an accessory spleen oh he's got an extra one there yeah yeah just like it sometimes grows in the place of your spleen an accessory spleen is that real apparently yes it will grow back in its place but it's not it's way smaller than a real spleen and it's it's noticeably smaller like a real spleen and that spleen

aren't the same thing a baby spleen it's a baby spleen. It's a baby spleen. Yeah, it's like a little, like an ingrown spleen. Yeah. A little ingrown spleen. We are starfish in that way. Yeah, exactly. So apparently so. So apparently the medical examiner, the state's medical examiner, says that the spleen of this dead person was the spleen that they were born with. Okay.

This is not an the spleen of this dead person was the spleen that they were born with okay this is not an accessory so yeah their own medical examiner contradicts the main crux of their case which is difficult it's his molar spleen it's his molar splits is really it's his adult spleen the big one it's his adult spleen it's in it's in deep by the roots right they said this guy said it was too big and heavy and not the right shape to be an accessory spleen. And the prosecutor appeared visibly upset at this pretrial testimony about this fucking guy. He's on our side. Damn it. So they said they asked based on medical evidence, is this victim spleen the original one? And the doctor said yes.

So that'll fuck your case. Good. Now, the defense theory is that there's no proof that the victim is Rogers. And they suggested that Rogers murdered a lookalike as part of a scheme to disappear away from his armed robbery trial and start a new identity and frame this guy for this. Holy shit. Now, they have witnesses, too, including uh rogers's own cousin who said that that was his plan and he had discussed this plan all along i should have never said that he's your kind of guy jimmy oh my god now he's a nazi who fakes his own death at this moment he's a bad man

so in an attempt to uh discredit the prosecution they uh call somebody in who say that gaucher this is the the guy woman who said gaucher was at her home around the murder they both called her to say that same thing and then we're like yep that bolsters our case just like we said uh this was mrs marion perkins who ran a taxi service for which gaucher not a tax service a taxi service did i say tax before yeah i was like why is the tax lady uh got a got a taxi radio in her house i knew it was taxi and i remembered saying tax and i meant to correct it and i got caught up on something else so i apologize we're all caught up now all caught up so then they said there's no direct evidence of a planned killing of you know gauche

planning to kill rogers the only thing they have on that is a, quote, revenge story cooked up by Gaucher's jilted lover. This is a mess. This is a fucking soap opera. This is amazing. See what I mean? It was a slow cook, and I'm like, it's going to pop in a second. Relax.

It's really boiling. This is boiling. I can smell it. It gets even more. Yeah. So she says, this is ex. Go Shay's ex. She continues to say on the stand that he said he did it in 1969. He also go Shay admitted to her the robbery of the Ames food land as well.

And said that a number of people called. There's a question of who's trustworthy in this trial. Yeah. All right. Next thing you know, the cousin comes in. Oh, boy. This is Roger's cousin now. She said that Rogers told her the week he was shot that if he ever needed to get away,

he would shoot a man in Rutland who he knew and that looked enough like him that he could be his brother or twin. Jam all my shit in his pocket so I'm getting out of here. Yeah, put a shirt on him with my label on it, my checkbook in his fucking pocket. Peace out. So he said he's had this guy basically clocked for years as like an escape plan. Like this guy has looked like him. He goes, if I ever need to escape, I'm going to kill that guy and fucking set him on fire and take off.

This is nuts right i better hope stanley tucci or mer from impractical jokers don't get into deep shit no shit jesus christ so he he said that yeah he was going to burn the body on killington mountain is the other thing that he told her so he told her the whole thing this This is Nancy Barker is his cousin. She also said that Gaucher had revealed a similar plan to her, the accused murderer, but he didn't have anyone in mind that looked like him. Whereas Rogers had the guy picked out already. He was like, I'd do that, too. And they were like, well, who looks like you? He's like, I mean, nobody, but I can find somebody. Pretty unique.

I don't know. If I find somebody, I'll do it. I'd do it. find somebody unique i don't know if i find somebody i'll do it i do it um so nancy barker continues to say uh that this happened starting six months before the murder and then kind of right up until the murder she thinks he was she said he was planning this whole thing she called it a an elaborate plan that he developed and it was a local man um she said like i said it was a guy from rutland and uh he told his cousin everything would be arranged so that the body would be identified as his own told him my uncle

it works for the cops so they're gonna call him in id the body and uh he's gonna just say it's me because he's gonna know that i'm taking off to get out of my shit yeah so uh there is no scientific evidence so far such as as fingerprints, blood comparisons, or dental records to check to prove that he was actually Rogers. They didn't even look at the teeth. Didn't do shit. They just went.

Ed said it's him. No, well, Ed said so. It says it's his kin. Just bury the fucking kid. He's been lurking here for five years or something. We should believe him probably a goddamn corporal like he don't know what his own nephew looked like jesus christ so uh the defense attorney isn't accusing edwin hall uh the uncle of doing this on purpose that's

only the cousin who's accusing them the defense says that they believe that hall maybe naturally assumed it was rogers after seeing the label on his shirt that read Ronald Rogers. He was like, oh, well, that's my guy has those. So the trial comes around here and the public defender, he argues that it is impossible

for a reasonable jury to conclude beyond reasonable doubt that it was Ronald Rogers who was found burning which you know it's true true yeah he also argued that there's no evidence of premeditation there's no basically evidence of much here other than this person said this so it's a lot of he said she said a lot of that shit so um anyway they uh they the prosecution said there is ample evidence to support the charge and emphasize the testimony of Gaucher's ex who said, you know, he told her about it. That's basically all they have at this point here.

Also said that it's possible, also citing the possibility that the spleen that they say isn't the right spleen could be the right spleen. Maybe his baby spleen grows big. You don't know. He's got got a big fat baby spleen we don't know what's going on there so the judge ruled that the circumstantial evidence from which the jury uh could infer premeditation so there was all the shit that they were letting in to say that they could charge premeditation now the spleen the uh one medical examiner said, quote, Ronald Rogers would have would have to have been a medical one of a kind, basically, to have an auxiliary spleen that grows back the size and shape of the spleen found in the body here as a like a real one. So that's not really the way it works. The medical examiner says that basically this victim's spleen weighed 120 grams, while the largest auxiliary spleen he had ever seen discussed in medical literature is 70 to 80 grams.

So he's got the biggest one that's ever been seen. The biggest auxiliary spleen ever in the history of the world, or it's not him. It's the biggest auxiliary spleen ever in the history of the world, or it's not him. He also indicated that the auxiliary spleen would be an egg shape and that this spleen was not an egg shape. It's a peapod. I don't know what fucking shape it could be. It's an L. It's a star, Jimmy.

Like you said, starfish. It's got an asterisk. So also this spleen was found in the normal splenic bed where a primary spleen would be located as opposed to an auxiliary spleen. It goes a little higher. So they bring Uncle Corporal in. Yeah. Uncle Perfect. Oh, my God. Yeah.

Uncle Corporal. This whole thing is such a fucking mess here. I don't know how they get to the end of this. I'm riveted. And it's 1974, so you just know. Nothing can just be solved by, well, I mean, we'll swab somebody and see who's related to who and who's got what. None of that shit is going on here.

None of it. They literally called a guy in the middle of the night to come in his bathrobe and went, that's my nephew. Yeah, got that when I shot him with the BB gun in the ass. I see it. There's a Marine tattoo. Yep, that's him.

That'll do. And they went, all right, good. Charge that guy with murder. Like, to charge a person with murder, I don't mean to go sidetracked too much here, but to charge a person with murder, you kind of have to know that the person you're saying was murdered was murdered

right you can't just assume it and then charge a guy and have this whole backstory you made up when you don't even know if the guy that you think is dead is dead right it's fucking weird so um he testifies here core uncle corporal that he looked at the corpse that had been brought to the funeral home because it was the next morning. And he said that the thing he noticed was, he said it was the prominent Adam's apple and cauliflower ears were things that he, I don't know if he was a wrestler or what. You have to be like a hardcore grappler to have cauliflower ears. Also, fire kind of makes your ears look like that, don't they?

That's what I was thinking. Was it cartilage? Because because cartilage and fire i mean yeah it's not bone no but and fucking ears curl up pretty fast in a fire i've seen people that were alive after a burn that have no ear because they're just curled and died i'm thinking of like dogs pig ears that you give them and shit that's a pig ear that's burned up. And pig skin and cartilage is the closest to human, so maybe that's similar. It really turns into kind of a cauliflower-esque ear. Yeah, yeah, I guess so. So he said that.

He also noticed a scar on the corpse's face, and Rogers had a scar. He says the uncle said because of a fight in which he had been involved. That's where the scar came from. And he also said he recognized marks made from the removal of tumors from his arms okay so he had tumors in his arms and a marine corps tattoo and several scars across his wrists as well he's really been through it yeah and i don't know how on a glance you're gonna see all of these little scars on a burnt corpse right

on a corpse that the medical examiner said has been burning for two hours he's like there's a little scar from a big assist removal on his arm like that's this removal that looks like cauliflower ear and that there looks like suicide attempts yeah uh one of the other reasons why he said he knew it was him was the name tag on the shirt he said you know that i would name. So those, all of those things, which I think that's kind of what he saw. That's the easiest ones. That's the one he saw. And he went, my nephew.

And then it was like, I saw all that other stuff too. I'll slam all that in there. And I'm not even, he could be covering for him or whatever in the story, or he could just be an uncle who doesn't want to look at his dead nephew anymore. And he says, that's him. That's him. It's him. You know, that's him. That's him. It's him. You know it's him.

I'd rather look at a shirt that's on a corpse and say that that name is exactly right. Who knows? You don't know. I mean, just to give them the benefit of the doubt of him not just being like, I'll help him escape. Yeah, so there's several facial neck features, all this sort of thing. He says, quote, I have no doubt at all that the body was Ronnie. That's his testimony at the trial. No doubt at all.

So we have the lady who said that Gaucher was at her house, the taxi service lady. She testifies on cross-examination that now she wasn't sure what time he arrived or left. She did say, confirm, that her house was two blocks away from the food land and that would only take a couple of minutes to walk there from the house so essentially she is brought up by the defense and completely doesn't help them at all and if anything hurts them much much worse than ever yeah that basically made it i don't know when he got there and he could have robbed it and came right to my house and I wouldn't have known. And this is not great.

So and they're true. They have to set that up to set up the premeditation. So they almost they have to prove this robbery and they have to prove the murder. Right. Essentially. Two cases in one. Yeah. Otherwise, why the fuck would he kill him?

There's no reason at that point. No motive. According to the woman here on separate occasions though she or this is the cousin again uh at trial she says that both men had i described an identical identical crime that they said they would disappear kill a look-alike in court this must have been some wild shit to sit and watch imagine if you're the jury yeah in a small town in vermont you don't think that this is going to be exciting you're like yeah i'm gonna go do this and then you have someone being like they described killing a look-alike he had a man in rutledge and rutland that he he fucking he had all planned out he was

gonna kill him and put his hat on him and his shirt on him and it was gonna be him to go back and not talk about this with my family yeah this is banana this is crazy uh they even got to the point uh of saying not only would they use killed lookalikes but they would use a shotgun to do it because shotgun pellets would be way more difficult to trace to a specific weapon way to go much like omar yeah he's wow some omar shit going on in 71 Vermont with Omar and flannel. What's going on here? Omar with ear flaps. Ear flap Omar over here.

That's what I'm calling. Go. Shite. Ear flap Omar. Whistling. Hey, diddle diddle. Yeah. Definitely.

Hey, diddle diddle outside. Holy fucking shit. And not only that, but they would then said the both of them would take the corpses to killington mountain and burn them wow so it's the exact same thing they even said that it would be more difficult to make a positive identification if they were burned and easier for him to have somebody go identify him yeah so they got it right down to that whole thing now she could be full of shit or she could be on the money we don't know so the verdict comes in here for against uh gaucher it's seven hours of deliberation which is far too fast in our cases

is slow though in our cases it's always like you know 14 minutes later the jury said death penalty like wow that's it huh holy shit pretty convinced couldn't have talked about it for a minute have a snack in there seven hours as fast as shit though it is still fast to discuss this case yeah in a straightforward murder case fine but this is what it's a lot of ins and outs there's a lot of stuff i feel like you'd argue about is it him or not for more than seven hours i feel like too many what have you yeah we'll find out on social media when people here are going to be like are you fucking this wasn't him so they uh they end up coming back with a verdict now if it is a guilty verdict by the way under vermont law

it's an automatic appeal to the state supreme court for a murder conviction so seven hours later they come back and say guilty wow of murder unbelievable seems tough that's just seems like real tough to me how do you get there that seems right um i mean sounds like there was one holdout and it took seven hours for 11 guys to turn him i well essentially you either believe the whole plot or you don't yeah that's the thing like look at like the OJ case there was a lot of little things you could have disbelieved to make it if you're on a jury if you saw all the coverage obviously but if you're limited to what was shown to you in court and you're in the jury you know what I'm saying there's pieces where you could go

well what about the glove well what about that Shouldn't there have been more blood in the Bronco? Shouldn't there have been this? Why do you get blood here and there? Why was that there? How is it Mark Furman? He's the guy of the whole police department. There's a lot of different little things you can pick out where you don't really need to build a straw man. There's enough pieces of enough appendages laying around where any one or two of them make it difficult.

You don't need a straw man because you have a whole man. You have a whole man. It's a lot. A head, but also a whole man. And a whole woman, as a matter of fact, as well. Minus a lot of blood and head. And extra blood that happens to belong to one man. Yeah.

Somehow. That's weird. That's super weird. Whereas here, it's not really like that. That's weird. That's super weird. Whereas here, it's not really like that. You either believe that this is not Ronald Rogers, that he made up the whole thing, and he is now off into the wind while this guy is left to hold the bag for everything.

Or you don't believe that, and you think that you believe what the state's telling you, and you just fucking go through it,'s guilty or you don't uh or you think that the state is missing a lot of shit this man ran to cliff that's the other thing what was it killington no where'd he go in texas clute clute texas clute texas this is the first time anybody's ever heard of that town that's where he went that's why he went he went there to hide that's what fuck all the evidence the man was found in clute texas who gives a shit? Yeah. Might as well be called fucking Hiding Place, Texas. Yes.

Hidey Hole, Texas. Might as well be called We All Killed Somebody Somewhere Else, Texas. Hi, where are you from? Yeah? How many you kill? All right. I won't tell nobody. So, yeah, it's a lot to say.

I mean, you can... fuck, I don't know. I don't know what I would do if I was on a jury there because there's a- It's too much. To me, if I hear about that spleen, I'm going, how the fuck does he have a big spleen like that? What's up with that? 120 grams. I'm hitting the guy next to me going, 120 grams. That's a lot for an auxiliary spleen.

Like I know about spleens, but I'd be a spleen expert by the end of it. Holding an ounce of weed going, this is, it was 120 of these that's 120 grams yeah 28 in an ounce i mean i can see that 28 grams it's a lot it's a lot of grams this is like a half pound of weed here it's a lot of weed so i'm sorry spleen so he's found guilty and he's going to be sentenced. And the trial, by the way, doesn't take place until 1977. Jesus. So he's being sentenced in early 1978. Seven years ago. Seven years after the trial.

So it comes out, though, March 15th, 1978. Out of nowhere. Do you think the case can't get any fucking weirder? It just got a little bit weirder. Who got arrested? Well, nobody. They confirm that there is a report from a man who has known Rogers his whole life and used to work with him that he is not dead, actually, and seen alive and well shopping at a Montgomery Ward in Burlington. You son of a bitch.

He stayed in Vermont. So here this goes. Shopping at Montgomery Ward. They file a motion for a new trial based on this on newly discovered evidence. The evidence is that, wow, this is wild, man. The guy's name is Robert E. Johnson of Rutledge. He's known Rogers for 10 years. And he believed that he saw Rogers on Januaryuary 5th 1978 at woolworths at 32

church street in burlington he subsequently contacted the rogers family and said hey i think i just saw your boy alive and nothing happened there so then he contacted the attorney for gaucher and uh in the motion they said quote this citing is material to the issue of whether it was Ronald Rogers body that was found in Sherbourne which that's what it was called at the time uh the evidence is not merely cumulative or impeaching it could not be have been discovered by due diligence prior to trial let's get into this in a second here Johnsonson uh uh said quote i just want it known that i did that this is what i saw and um the crazy part comes when fucking um okay the reason why this becomes an issue is because this guy also called the prosecutor oh the prosecutor did not return his phone call doesn't

want anything to do with this doesn't want to do anything to do with this so this guy called the prosecutor he doesn't return his phone call which then makes it a uh an alfred via not an alfred a uh a brady violation because he's withholding possibly exculpatory evidence if someone's seen the dead guy alive that's a problem the prosecutor is under they have to it's their duty they don't just confirmation bias you can't do if you're a prosecutor. That's the thing. Like, I get in real life you can't help how your brain works, but if you're prosecuting a case, you have to turn over every stone.

You can't just look for the information that you like better. It's not your grandfather watching politics. And as a prosecutor, you won that case, so go chase this shit down and win this case too and exonerate the fellow that you just- Or investigate it. Not only that, if the guy, let's say this guy's right and this guy is alive, aren't you pissed if you're a prosecutor that this guy is escaping armed robbery prosecution by fucking setting up somebody else? Oh, not to mention, that means he killed a guy. Right.

He's also a murderer at that point. He's a fucking murderer. So you'd want to figure that out. I would out i would at least want to figure it out but they're so not wanting to fucking lose this appeal on this thing that they're like it could all be true maybe he killed people and he's not alive at the same time he's dead and he's a murderer both of those things so um yeah the uh attorney this is the defense attorney said quote i don't know why ronald rogers is hiding other than he doesn't want to uh doesn't want to be caught for killing his look-alike yeah so um gaucher is still you know set to be sentenced and everything and uh the

defense says we will present evidence in support of this claim and we will get the conviction of first degree murder throws out it and he has a mandatory life sentence at this point so you sir may fuck off uh then december 24th 1978 rolls around christmas eve yeah what do you think of when you think of christmas eve do you mean a family late shopping jingle bells yeah food yeah you've you come to my house a lot there's food going on and family stuff and there's presents songs just things happening we're not religious at all it's just a matter of um i like food and i like presents and stuff cheers me up yeah trees and shit did it again yeah hey we all survived it's fun make up the lamb chops you think of that now that's a christmas eve like we've had and like a lot of people have and even if your life isn't

that great you try to pull it together there's a couple days a year where you try to pull it together maybe someone's got your kid's birthday or some shit christmas eve you try to pull it together there are some people out there that had way worse christmas eve than most people could imagine tell me more we're talking like a like a Dickens level bad Christmas Eve right here. How would you like to be on exhumation duty on Christmas Eve? Oh, Christ. Of a seven and a half year old burned corpse. Dig it up.

How the fuck would you like to do that? How do they not just say, we'll do it in two days? As you're pulling on the fucking rope what are you kidding me are you wearing a santa hat while you're doing this this is ridiculous you'd have to be so hammered i picture like dan akroyd and fucking trading places with the santa suit he's taking salmon out there's beard hair caught in it and he's just pulling the rope with a fucking casket. The brothers from... The Criterion brothers from fucking Funny Farm.

Pulling a body out talking about... While Chubby Chase drinks in the rain out of his flask. That's what's going on here, I figure. Drinking dickle.

How do you not do that? It's all you gotta do. It's Christmas Eve. I don't want to see a fucking corpse. What are we doing? I am a poor boy too. At least I don't have to exhume a big corpse.

I have to check his spleen to make sure it's big. to make sure it's big what is happening will you please drink with me that's an unwrapping oh man this is quite an unwrapped present. That's an unwrapping. This is quite an unwrapping, yeah. I've never had to dig a present out, but they had to apparently. This is a way of unwrapping. This is when your mom gives you a gift wrapped in a layer of wrapping in a box, then you unwrap another layer of wrapping in a box, and on and on and on until you get to the

spleen. Until you get to a nice big fat... Until you get to the gift you didn't want today anyway the auxiliary spleen so they dig up the corpse and this is actually the state's attorney requests this it's like they all got together they didn't want this

all to happen and they went you know what we gotta do it we have to I guess it's we should know who the fuck we have here so they pull him up and the the uh everybody this is like shit loads of people here officials police people the defense team the fucking judge everybody everybody's here on christmas eve watching this corpse be pulled from the bottle what a fucking disaster they pull him up yep and uh they at first it wasn't released publicly why

they were even doing this and then they figured out obviously why and the reason is to check the dental on it yes the teeth are there we that's one thing we can still do there's no dna obviously back then but we can check the teeth and what they find is through the teeth they find that it is ronald a rogers oh my based on dental records it's him how the fuck somehow it's him it's based on the dental records it's it's the guy that he has unbelievable spleen he has an anomaly spleen he has a fucking anomalous spleen that does not want to agree with the laws of nature or medicine. So it's a fucking trip. But it's the truth.

It's Ronald Rogers. And he doesn't shop at Montgomery Ward. Nope. It's him. Apparently, he just had his checks on him and his shirt on. And that was that. I mean, all of these things that pointed to this can't be him. No explanation of the food yeah that's the thing

the only explanation is the waitress was mistaken she missed a day she missed a day and and he didn't eat there that night that's what it is because she wasn't he wasn't there all the time and he could have come in the night before that and he she could have got her nights mixed up especially four years later right this is one of those things that we've talked about where memories our human memories are terrible it's bad they're really bad the fucked up part is your brain doesn't decipher between something you sort of remember and you think you remember and something you definitely remember your brain just fills the gaps in for they it does it for us to try to make us feel okay but it doesn't help us remember shit because then we kind of make up what's in the middle.

And our brains are bad at this sort of thing. And time going by is really bad. It's a protection method. It is. Your body is trying to protect you. Whether it's a memory that's happy or a memory that's sad. It changes shit just to make you feel more comfortable. That's it.

And your brain doesn't tell you how unsure it is that's the thing your brain's not like i think i remember 50 55 your brain either knows it completely or doesn't know it at all that's it so if you believe that's your memory then that is your memory and in your brain you can see it happening it's got you have a memory of it that doesn't exist because your brain put it there, but you don't know that. And we've all done it, and it's crazy. It happens so much. That's why eyewitnesses are the worst thing in criminal trials.

They're the worst, but they're the most impactful. Eyewitness accounts are better than DNA in court for a jury, but yet they are the least accurate thing possible. Really, all you know for sure is that that person feels it that way. That's all you know. You sit there on a jury and you believe a person is, because they believe it. They're telling the truth, how they believe it. I believe I saw this, and I know I saw it.

And you see that and you go, that person really believes it. They're passionate. That means nothing. The amount of passion they have or the amount of sureness is very insignificant. Super, super insignificant as we're finding out in this. Very sure that Sinbad was in a genie movie. They're positive. They'll argue with you even though they know it's not true.

It was not there. They look it up and see it's not true and they go, it's being hidden. They don't, their brains. No, it's not. They can't process the thing that you get your brain is planted in there it's wild never believe your brain never that's why they say believe half of what you hear or half of what you see and none of what you hear because half of what you see you've processed it wrong even though you think you have we have i'm not saying you we do it our brains any human being in history has done this in their brain it's pretty fucking crazy it's your brain is like a misfiring computer all the time it's

worthless like a computer with a virus in it at all times and you're like there's a file missing and it's broken and you gotta try to play it anyway but i hope you're enjoying all the words and uh and words and and lyrics of uh nove that you downloaded on LimeWire. You do remember that forever. You ruined that computer. You'll remember that for the rest of your life. I can tell you every statistic of everybody in the 1990 New York Yankee batting order, but I don't remember what I did three days ago.

So I really don't. Was it that week or that week? I'll be positive and then i'll have proof i was wrong it's crazy so anyway uh there's an appeal uh even though they know now that it is ronald rogers for sure the appeal is based on the guy who saw who said he saw ronald rogers alive and it wasn't followed up on by the prosecutor so this is he is a this guy isn't some dirtbag he's a a uh employee of the new england telephone company he's a supervisor there he's a member of the rutland town school board so he's an upstanding guy and he had worked with

rogers at pico peak ski area and uh last saw him in about 1971 he said which was before he died as we know now he said that uh um you know seeing him prompting prompted him to call he said that he worked uh with him during the winter of 67 68 and had known him known him before that he said that he saw the man in burlington he met him face to face on the stairway in a Woolworths. I'm sorry, not a Monk Armour. Defunct department store. Same store. Who gives a shit.

Yeah. Same shit that I don't know what they had because it was already pretty much out of business by the time I was around. It's a Sears. That's what it is. Yeah. They sell tools and you can buy tires there and a couch. And a goddamn washing machine. And some clothes for your grandma.

Saw him at a Woolworth's department store stairway and he said he saw Ronald Rogers. He said he didn't speak to the man even though he thought he was murdered. Face to face. If you saw somebody that you knew that you had heard was murdered, wouldn't you be like,

Ronald, you're alive? And he'd be like, I'm Frank. Oh, my bad. Shit, sorry. I had a friend who was working on his car. The car fell on his head. I knew he was dead.

I went to his funeral. I saw a very similar looking kid in a grocery store and I was like, what? And he looked me in the face. I was like, never mind. That's not you. I've done the same thing. It's because obviously I want him to be alive.

I'd love that. And that's the fucked up part. I've done the same. That would be great. I've done the same thing. It's because obviously I want him to be alive. I'd love that. And that's the fucked up part. I've done the same. That would be great. I've done it multiple times. I've actually walked up to somebody once. Didn't say anything, but I walked up and stood in front of him and then realized I was crazy. And I actually, on the way over there, I went, did he fake his death?

I literally did. Because the person I'm talking about, it's not Rod, by the way. It i went did he fake his death i literally did because the person i'm talking about it's not rod by the way it's a different person the person i'm talking about was the type of guy who would do some weird shit like yeah just because he thought it was cool like if he could get away with it he'd pop up like two years later and be like i faked my death cool right just for no fucking reason like justice were you running from the law no fuck no no no it's upstanding and shit he How much did you hate your wife? Not at all. I loved her.

He wasn't even married. He wasn't even married. He would have just done it just to be like, fucking cool, right? So I could see that. And I actually thought, oh my God, this month, did he fake his fucking death? And I walked up like excited and angry at the same time. And this person looked at me and I just was like, excuse me. And I walked...

There was nobody around. Dude, there was nobody. Right for me. Totally open thing. I walk right up to a person and say, excuse me, and walk around them. Like I couldn't avoid them. And they looked so confused. And I just kept going.

I felt so embarrassed. I just said, what? Yeah. I'm sorry. My bad. Not you. Whoops. I just said, what? Yeah. What are you? I'm sorry. My bad. Not you. Whoops. I thought you were dead and never mind.

I just mistook something he said for insulting. What? What? Get the fuck out of here. What the fuck are you saying? Is that you, bitch? God damn it, Brad. Never mind.

That's amazing. Forget it it i'm a nut he says he didn't speak to him but he believed it to be him because quote he saw how intense his eyes were and his eyes and his thin nose he said he had very distinctive features he said quote and there's something about his eyes you know you just remember him when you see somebody like that that's really striking he was a very intense looking person and it also wasn't him that's what i mean when you see something when you there's something about his eyes that you just remember him no you think you do because we're people and we suck and we're mammals and we're not as good as we're not computers and we think we we are intense eyes. Jesus. He was a very intense looking person.

Get away from that man. He's about to open you. Maybe that's why he didn't talk to him. Yeah. Your brain told you don't talk to this man. This intense son of a bitch over here. What if the guy he saw happened to be a murderer? That would have been real fucked up.

So he this guy confirmed, though, that he contacted the state's attorney's office, left his name, phone number and a message that he had seen someone that strongly resembled Rogers and possibly some. He possibly has some information that the guy might want to look into. And the phone call was never returned by the state's attorney, which is pretty fucking stupid. by the state's attorney which is pretty fucking stupid so uh the goes to the state supreme court where they overturned the verdict because of the discovery because of that discovery he didn't give him the fucking information even though it was information that was garbage that we now know was still information he needed to put out so the prosecutor's got to be kicking himself in the ass for not just doing it and exhuming the body to fucking begin with so instead he does all that there's a new trial obviously before this new trial though they offer a really

sweet deal to go shea and he pleads guilty he won't admit the crime but he pleads guilty because the deal is just too sweet to turn down basically almost essentially here um he pleads guilty he doesn't have to allocute doesn't have to say he did anything here pleads guilty to second degree murder yeah here uh um prosecution says obviously that this was a the funny thing is they're making this deal even though they're saying this was a premeditated killing to prevent someone from testifying against him in an armed robbery which would be like that's insane that's the highest form of murder prosecution there is to shut a witness up that's horrible uh instead they're like we can just plea him out though so wow so they uh and his

conviction was overturned the more time that goes by the more muddy shit there is in the waters and shit like that they still have waitresses saying that they're you know she's she sold him turkey so all this stuff he refuses to admit it he pleads guilty uh to avoid the life sentence the county attorney said that he agreed to the reduction of everything because the state's star witness gaucher's former girlfriend had left the state and refused to come back to testify oh my god she said nope i'm good and they said well we kind of don't have anything else right because there's no physical evidence literally all we have is you saying that he told you he did this that's it that's the only thing we have connecting them yeah She's not coming back. But the deal they offer him, pleads guilty you, sir, may fuck off.

He waives his right of appeal, obviously, on this. He is sentenced to 10 to 12 years in prison, but with time served, because he's been in there for fucking six, eight years at this point he'll be eligible for parole in five years and four months holy shit so a five-year murder is not too shabby even if they don't parole him in five years and four months he'll be released on out completely done time six years and ten months is the longest he could spend in prison on this so they the the defense attorney said they were going to fight the whole thing but he said that the deal offered was quote so favorable in terms of a sure release date that they had to accept it no choice you have to you never know why would you do go through the

trial he's been in there forever you go do another six years and it's over there was even a parole after that you're released you're out but the chance But the chance of acquittal is so good. And it's great in this situation, especially with no witness. Right. So he's in prison. In prison, Gaucher writes letters to the newspaper editors about certain issues. And you want to hear them? Because why not?

Guy sitting in prison with all the time in the world. One of them is actually for John LaCardy. The guy who prosecuted him is apparently a defendant in a case here and he writes a letter this is in november of 1981 and the title is acquainted with the defense lawyer it says uh in the burlington free press the past few days i read articles concerning charles wade but most interestingly was that of the attorney for this defendant john luc LaCardy. Okay, he's his attorney. He used to be a prosecutor. Now he's a defendant, or he's a defense

lawyer, which happens all the time when people want to make money, then they go do that. He says the case has a familiar ring to it in it for me, not so much as to the nature of the offense, but more in tune with LaCardy declaring declaring his client innocent and the state failed to prove their case against his client, except by mere circumstantial evidence. The real difference here is he is doing the defending instead of the prosecuting. I can only assume he must have established a good format for his predecessors, and most important of all is where and how to get a conviction where no evidence exists. Perhaps Lee Jones can be of some assistance to him again. The article concerning Wade on October 30th in the Free Press states he would like to write his own version of his predicament.

I think he should also include the story in the real judicial process of Vermont, since he has a former prosecutor representing him. But then again, who really gives a damn? A Vermont jury consists of 12 people who believe a crime has been committed. The individual being tried is guilty because the prosecutor said so. And besides, I have to get home by dinnertime. Robert Gaucher, St. Albans Correctional Facility. Oh, my.

Ramblings of a madman. This one's even better. This is called hate factories oh yes he says it's like his belly of the beast basically here i feel it is very strange wait this is from 84 so this is like the end of his sentence here i feel it is very strange that many letters are sent to the editor for publication expressing the conditions of corrections very few are printed and even lesser acted upon. I realize the inmates are dealing with an apathetic society,

but I also realize corrections has been ripping off the taxpayers of this state for years. And the more the taxpayers are ripped off, the more they seem to enjoy it. That's kind of true, though. Good point. The taxpayers of this state condone the fact that corrections always wishes to expand their enterprise as to warehouse more inmates. A close observation of these correctional centers will reveal them to be hate factories rather than correctional institutions. they are creating the future criminals of tomorrow. This system is a way of bringing out the worst in a person and not for the purpose of dealing with the problem. When your hate and anger reaches its peak,

the inmate will once again be released to society to play havoc on some poor citizen who doesn't realize his or her tax money was spent to make this person a more hardened criminal. Yeah, it's called recidivism. It's constant. A tour of any center will also reveal the majority of inmates sitting around vegetating. The superintendent of these centers give textbook lip service to all tourists.

So by the end of your tour, he'll have you wishing you could spend some more time in one of these centers. Inmates are not allowed to speak to visitors. And if permission is granted, the questions must be screened through the superintendent first. And of course, you will be informed that we that we the inmates will do nothing but lie to you senator peter welch called uh this the department of construction he is more nearer to the truth than he realizes take a look at the windsor farm take a look at st albans in 10 years that st albans will be the state prison in 10 years in 10 years that what the fuck in 10 years that will be the state prison for this state that will be that

will be but he doesn't albans yeah he writes that weird though it's a weird uh there are surely they are slowly but methodically building it so as to not attract attention of this of the townspeople oh my st albans was to be the youth center they are now asking for at Essex Junction. If it is approved, the people of Essex Junction may well get used to the hate factory in their midst. Hell, yeah. Wow. The latest burden upon the taxpayers

is the THC test to be conducted regularly. The cost? Enormous. They're going to test them for weed in jail, like that matters. Then, the constant transporting of inmates all over the state basically it serves no purpose they will tell you it's to place a man in his own hometown a survey of the inmates will reveal that to be false every program this system has for inmates is really a self-serving plus it doesn't cost anything

they will tell you this of the sports program but they neglect to inform you that the equipment is purchased from the profits of our own money through canteen services. Is that real? Apparently so. Most decent men quit their job with corrections and others are afraid to talk in fear of losing their job before finding a better one. And others keep this job just because they are on an ego trip. Inmates won't last, won't talk for fear of retaliation, fear of being transferred to St. Albans. If society is so concerned about crime, then they should be more concerned about these

hate factories and the negative results that come out of them. Robert Gaucher, Windsor Correctional Facility in Windsor. So that's him. He knows that it's not correct. He knows it's not corrections and presumably he got out from there and um i don't know led a quiet life of getting into car accidents and being fined for getting into uh grocery store parking lot car accidents but he's away apparently ronald rogers is definitely dead uh i guess and um him and his enormous spleen he's been his huge fucking spleen and we suppose that uh he killed him i said i guess maybe that's gauche that's the sort of

i don't know we don't know he pled to it so we'll say yeah i guess but there's really no evidence except for who knows the ex-wife saying he told me that after he went off with some broad to Texas. So who the fuck knows what happened. He did go to Clute. Yeah, he ran away. Clute. To Clute. Clute.

To Clute, Texas. So, I mean, get a Clute, man. What are you doing? He's fucking, I don't know. But not a lot of evidence there. Who knows? All we know for sure is that Ronald A. Rogers died. That's it.

We know that for sure. A horrible death. Someone definitely killed. Rogers died. That's it. We know that for sure. A horrible death. Someone definitely killed him. That was not a suicide. We know that for sure. Really bad death. Really bad death. And that, everybody, is Rutland, Vermont.

And like I said, Vermont never lets us down. It's always nuts in Vermont for some reason. Every time we're there, it's fucking crazy. I have another case in vermont that's even fucking crazier it's like not even crazier but pretty crazy too i have like two more for the next time we do vermont and it's so nuts there i don't know why it's just the cases you end up with these weird little like pockets of west virginia these cases come out of so whatever it is thank you so much for listening to it truly if you enjoyed that show

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Get your tickets for the virtual live show. I can't wait. If you're listening on the day this came out on a thursday it is tonight at 9 p.m eastern or you can see it anytime for the next 72 hours after that as well it'll be available to purchase watch do all that sort of thing it's going to be so much fun a real episode of small town murder it'll be lots of we'll have pictures we'll have tons of jokes lots of good stuff it'll be a live comedy show in your house. We set up, Sarah went crazy with the set. How cool is it in there?

She did it up and we have new lights. The mic, the sound is better. The visuals are better. The lighting's better. Everything is better. We've invested in this. It looks terrific. We really, really want you to check it out.

We think you're going to love it. Shut up and give me murder.com right now on September the 16th, 2021. Get your tickets right now and do that. And even go into the group. Some people are buying each other tickets and people can't afford them. That's a really cool thing that you're doing. That's just wild. Thank you for doing that.

I'm stunned by any of that. The generosity of this audience is staggering. It's amazing. And we are we're really blown away by that that's really cool that you do that uh also you should follow us on social media we are at murder small on twitter at small town pod on facebook and at small town murder on instagram so you can get updates to everything patreon is cooking this week i mean it's bubbling it is an out of control cauldron of bubbling this week we have

such good stuff and the way patreon works in case you're new to this five dollars a month is the the basis the basic for the baseline that's the baseline that gets you everything that gets you access to all the bonus episodes from small town murder and crime and sports and most of the crime and sports ones are not about sports they're about weird stuff it's about fun crime and weird stuff and comedy basically so you're going to get everything we do basically four shows a month two shows every two weeks bonus wise you're going to get access to all of it the whole back catalog and there's a lot in there too there's at least i think 100 episodes in there to listen to everything for just five dollars a month and uh this week crime and sports they episode we're doing is a guy named barry bremen who in the

late 70s and 80s decided to be an imposter he would dress up and he actually got onto the field started as a gag started as a gag where he warmed up with the for the second half at the 79 all-star game with the all-stars because he had this warm-up uniform on and he's such kind of has a personality that the guys weren't even mad at him they thought it was funny kareem abdul-jabbar was high-fiving him and shit and thought it was funny he's got a face that's just so uh non-threatening it's non-threatening just let him in and he said sorry guys i'm not here to hurt you or anything. I'm just having some fun. And they were like, this guy's funny. All right, do it.

He did this at several sporting events, varying success. Sometimes he was hogtied and taken away, and sometimes he was laughed and it was all good. The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. To the point where he, and this isn't on purpose, he did it as a prank. And this isn't on purpose. He did it as a prank. He accepted the Best Supporting Actress Emmy Award to the non-delight of the woman who was supposed to get it, who was very upset. So check all that out.

So amazing. The master imposter, Barry Bremen. Then for Small Town Murders, we have something even crazier. If you've listened for a while and you do have Patreon, you've known that we did the Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker childhood episode. And that was just very interesting to get into that. Wild. This week, we're going to do something even crazier. We're going to do the Iceman, Richard Kuklinski's childhood. Oh, boy.

What made a monster? What made a guy who killed over 100 people who had the most creative and disturbing ways to kill a person. Something that a horror movie writer would only dream to have a creative mind of how to hurt somebody, people like this. What causes that? We're going to find out all of that and more at patreon.com slash crime and sports. And in addition to that, Jimmy is going to mispronounce your name here in a second when we do shout outs. He's going to try hard to get it right, but he won't. He won't, because it's hard.

Dames are hard. And if you just want the shout-out and to have great karma and our undying affection, you can do that as well over at PayPal using our email address, which is crimeandsportsatgmail.com. That said, you know what? I need good things. Oh, I got it. Tell me about good things, Jimmy. Hit me with the name of the people who would never, ever shoot us and set us on fire in

full view of a ski lift. Hit me with them now. This week's executive producers are Amanda Jacobs, Travis Croxford, Kevin Spilker in Spokane. Thank you, Travis. Appreciate you, man. Thank you. Jordan Bennett, obviously.

Ah, she's the best. Thank you, Jordan. Joanne ahern christian panella and sarah gillette passed away uh i have her daughter's name where the fuck did it go either way but sarah loved us and she was uh she was she was somebody's mom uh obviously no not obviously not everybody's a mom not everybody's she was a mom and she well if her daughter if her daughter is doing this for her then clearly she has children yeah and it's probably a mom and we miss her we're so sorry to hear that and uh it's terrible yeah sorry for your loss yeah definitely wish we'd met her other producers this week are pixie de leon jay killa lea uh tiffany gonzalez and she donated in the name of andrew jackson thank you tiffany that's very sarcastic go back and listen to old episodes if you do liz vasquez liz not elizabeth we like the uh james martyr thomas smith mark and karen hummel

uh peyton meadows uh she wanted us to shout out uh 9-11 service work i don't know if she meant like waiters and waitresses i assume i'm to go with probably the first responders and military people who then, you know, went overseas. She's right, though. Yeah. Aaron Olin. Shout out to them. Marcel Destin and Delilah Destin.

It's her birthday. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. From mom and dad, obviously. From mom and dad, obviously. Dances with Vapes. Steve Schnell. Jennifer Ward.

Steve Schnell. Nicholas Cosgrove. Rabbi Shmulalovich. Oh, of course. Shida Perlman, Kelsey Couts. Shida? It's Shida. Oh, Shida. That's what he said.

Should have went with Shida, and that way we... Jennifer Stevens, Frank the South African Bird Washer, Sally Pigeon, after a bird washer, that's nice. Eugene Martyr, Martin, I don't remember. I don't know if that's a typo or not. Jude Kendall, Jeff Spicoli, and Mr. Hand. Janice Hill, Azazina, Morales, Kevin Spilker donated both ways. Thank you.

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Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody, so much for everything that you do for us, and especially all the Patreon people and the PayPal people. You guys are fucking amazing. You're absolute heroes. people you guys are fucking amazing you're absolute heroes we really appreciate what you do for us obviously and we just hope that everything all the bonuses and stuff can uh make you feel good for doing that so uh yeah it's a thank you for everything so thank you for supporting us and for always supporting us and being there and making this a viable endeavor and you know with uh getting grounded from the road for a year and a half you You guys kept us alive, and you kept us. You kept food on my plate? I can't thank you enough.

So thank you for keeping us alive. We really do appreciate that as human beings, that everybody's so supportive. Thanks for giving a shit. Yes. What if somebody gave a shit about you, Jimmy? How could you find out about that? I'm on the internet.

Are you guys on the internet? If you're on the internet, you can find me at WismanSucks, W-H-I-S-M-A-N Sucks. Where are you, James? I am at Jimmy P is funny. Or just the easy way would be to Google search the show, Small Town Murder. Google us up and they'll tell you who's hosting it. They'll show you.

And then there's got to be links in there. Or just go to shutupandgivememurder.com to purchase your ticket for the virtual live show. When you've done that, you click on the host part or whatever it is and there's all the social media you can find us on there see my dumb face yeah see our dumb faces get the experience and also then you can go look at the merch and the t-shirts and all that kind of stuff it's all see how it all finger fucks itself in there it's wonderful and i love to hear that thanks for listening to a crazy episode this week. I hope you had as good a time as we did.

That said, until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure. Bye. Hey, Prime members, you can listen to Small Town Murder early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus and Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.