Small Town Murder - #494 - Gossip & Brain Bashing - Cherryville, North Carolina

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

This week, in Cherryville, North Carolina, multiple couples are beaten to death, in their own homes, in as brutal a way possible. This sends the town into hysterics, with burglar alarms, and guns, flying off the shelves. Gossip, and police pressure drive one suspect to madness, but he turns out to be innocent. The real killer was hiding in plain sight, with so much evil bubbling under the surface, that no one would have believed it, if they knew!!Along the way, we find out that shooting off your musket is a wild way to ring in the New Year, that enough gossip can actually cause its own kind of reality, and that when someone tells you that they like to watch people die, in agony... believe them!!Hosted by James Pietragallo and Jimmie WhismanNew episodes every Thursday!Donate at: patreon.com/crimeinsports or go to paypal.com and use our email: [e-mail] to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder & Crime In Sports!Follow us on...twitter.com/@murdersmallfacebook.com/smalltownpodinstagram.com/smalltownmurderAlso, check out James & Jimmie's other show, Crime In Sports! On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Wondery, Wondery+, 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. We've all turned to the internet to self-diagnose when some random ailment pops up in our lives. Even though our minds often go to a worst-case scenario when we experience these things, most times it's nothing to worry about. However, for an unlucky few, their weird symptoms are just the start of a terrifying medical mystery. Listen to Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts. Hello everybody and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express. Yay choo choo! Oh yay indeed Jimmy, yay indeed.

My name is James Petragallo, I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you folks so much for joining us today. We have another crazy, this is a lot of murder stuffed into an hour here, so buckle up everybody. It's a wild one. Very quickly at the top of the show here, shutupandgivememurder.com. Definitely May 31st, Durham, North Carolina, Raleigh, Durham, triangle area, get your asses in there.

Let's do this, we're doing a North Carolina episode to try to entice you. So get in there. Sell out the last few tickets. Nashville the next night, you are sold out. So get in there and then also get your tickets for later on in the year. Minneapolis, Kansas City, we added extra tickets. There was another year that we opened up. So you can get tickets to that now.

Oklahoma City, get your tickets. Few left in New York and that's in December. So be careful. Get your tickets there. And also Boston too in December. Get your tickets. Few left in New York, and that's in December. So be careful, get your tickets there. And also Boston too in December. Get your tickets there. Oh, so close. Unbelievable.

Yes, so definitely get them now. Minneapolis, you're going to be our biggest show ever if you sell out. So let's do it, Minneapolis. Let's be partners in this. I can't wait. Let's do it together. You also want Patreon.

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One crime in sports, one small town murder, and you get it all, baby. You get it all. You get it all. This week we're going to talk about for crime in sports and sports we are gonna talk about the OJ Simpson trial now. Great. Not the cultural stuff around it not like what we were all talking about and what people were saying none of that stuff. Not a low-speed chase. No none of that stuff we're gonna talk about the actual trial how did how does a how do you go

from DNA blood evidence and all this stuff to an acquittal? Slam dunk! I watched all 496 parts on YouTube of the trial, and I'll tell you exactly why. It's pure incompetence, and we'll get into all of that and how that happened. And then for small town murder, inside Ed Gaines' house. Let's do it. Oh, let's see. Yes, that's going to be fun stuff.

A day in the life of Ed Gein and all the weird creepy Weird stuff. I had to smell crazy in there. Oh had to be disgusting. Yeah, just his sheets had to smell nasty Oh, this guy wasn't doing laundry. It had to be was gross, right? It was absolutely disgusting and his aversion to bad smells is hilarious because he had to stink Oh, yeah, we'll talk all about it patreon.com Crime in sports, but we got to do this first Let's get to this episode. Man is it crazy stuff. Let's see here. We have I think it's time to yeah We got to take a deep breath everybody. What do you say and get ready for this and let's all shout

Let's do this everybody let's go on a trip shall we Give me love and give me murder. Let's do this everybody. Let's go on a trip, shall we? Okay. All right, we are going to North Carolina. Right. In both spirit and in body soon as well here. We'll be going there. So we're going to Cherryville, North Carolina.

Cherryville. Cherry and vill, just like it's normal. Two words put together here. It is in south, kind of central, western North Carolina. South, like west of Charlotte. Nowhere near the coast. Nowhere near the coast. It's about 45 minutes to Charlotte,

two hours and 45 minutes to Durham, where we will be May 31st, live with Small Town Murder. See you there. And about an hour and a half to Clemens, North Carolina, which was our last episode. Episode 451, Turd Boy, Satanic Killer. One of the craziest episodes ever. Gross. Oh man, median household income here is almost 20,000 below the national average. It's about $51,000 here. And then median home price also lower $230,300. That's great.

That's pretty good. It's a real, this place is kind of an insular kind of a place and it's changed recently because now it's, you can drive to Charlotte from it so more people have gone but it was really a small insular town where- How far from Charlotte though? Forty-five minutes. Oh, 45. It's only 45 minutes. Oh 45, two hours to Durham, got it. So yeah, it's one of those.

Motto here, where life blossoms. Oh yeah, cause the cherries and shit, you know what I mean? Not on this show it doesn't. On this show, this town is where life goes to. It's where it sunsets, man. It's not great, not great. So a little bit of history of this town. It's been agriculture for a long time was the base here. That's where it's tobacco. Exactly. North Carolina is one of those places where the stereotype is true.

They are growing tobacco all over this bitch. But during the 1800s, the late 1800s, the textile industry started booming here. They had a lot of mills and things like that. So July 13th 1966 trains number 45 and 46. Oh This is gonna be oh of the seaboard airline Road hit head-on. How does that happen? Just don't send two trains go in opposite direction on the same track track. And it's otherwise physically impossible for that to happen unless someone really fucks that up bad. Yeah. Wow. The crazy part is just like you guys as an engineer, seeing that coming down the line, you gotta be like, I mean, nobody can,

this is the worst game of chicken ever. Yeah. Nobody's going anywhere. No, it's not like somebody was drunk and they swerved. Yeah. They're on a track. Crossed the yellow line, didn't happen. This killed one and injured three, which seems like that's way less than it could have been. A miracle, yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Reviews of this town. Here is five stars. I really like how Cherryville is a small town and is pretty Okay, it it has every store you may need for example Walmart dollar general drug stores and even small business sit-down restaurants along with some fast food chains everything you'd need Walmart I need way more than that than the dollar general. Yeah Jesus a little bit more. I'm looking for Two stars I've lived here since I was 11. By the way, since is N-I, or I'm sorry, S-I-N-E-S is since. Sunise.

Sunise, I was 11. Not really much to do here. The less common here, like you're listening, has a little, Sunise has a little skate park in town and the New Year's shooters is always a cool thing to go down to town for during New Year's. The what? New Year's shooters, we'll talk about it. No. We got things to do.

That's where a lot of older people bring their muskets out and shoot gunpowder, powered, gunpowered, it says, in the air for New Year's. That's the thing that they do. A couple of small stores no one really goes to just a small town with nothing to do but quiet and calm and never feel like I'm in danger being anywhere in the town. Except for on New Year's. Except for on New Year's when all the old men have their muskets out. Then it's watch

your mouth that day. Wow. What a town. Things to do, first of all the Cherry Blossom Festival, obviously you knew that was coming. That's nice. You can be there for the Miss Cherry Blossom Pageant, gotta have that. And of course food and all that shit. And a band here, the Dirty Grass Soul is the band. Dirty Grass Soul. Dirty Grass Hole, which yes, exactly. That's why I said it. I want to

make sure you got the connotation that they're saying their asshole is filthy. Dirty Grasshole. Not fucking, that's funny as shit. Okay and then Bounce Houses. And then the New Year Shooters, which is I guess this is a tradition they've been doing for hundreds of years where to celebrate new years Yeah, I'm sure back then drunken bands of guys would go through From house to house which these houses weren't close back then. They was like farms So they've all come with their muskets and they chant and yell until you came out of the house with your musket and fired It off and then join the party to the next house. Oh Until you came out of the house with your musket and fired it off and then joined the party to the next house Oh my so now they still do that and now they do it also in the town square

They all just fire their guns off muskets though You know, why do you have a musket? I for this night for this? It's for this night You gotta have a muscle. Yeah moved for January 1 black powder only and without bullets. It's just the report Yeah, there's no yeah, they're not firing. Still frightening. Yeah not firing lead balls into the air luckily but still frightening you don't know who's packing. Yeah yeah you don't know what. What you packing in that musket. Yeah somebody thinks it's funny to throw an M&M in there. Yeah Jesus Christ it melted on my face not in your gun that's not right. Somebody throw a paintball or

a jawbreaker in there all of a sudden there's a problem. There's an issue. All right. That said, let's talk about some murder, shall we? Okay. A bit about Cherryville here in this time. This is from a Washington Post article from February 29th, so a leap year article here, 1992 by Kent Jenkins Jr.

And there's several pieces of this article that we use for information, so definitely want to give credit to that. So it says, quote, even by the standards of rural America, Cherryville's 5,000 residents are uncommonly close-knit and impervious to the world at large. Impervious. Impervious. This is a close-knit town.

Yeah. That's it. We're like that tribe in the Amazon. Pretty much. Yeah, we've never seen people and we don't cover our dicks. Leave our dicks swinging free. That's our cherry fell. Our dicks swing free. Early this century when industrialization invaded the Carolite and P Piedmont Thousands of subsistence farmers abandoned their land for the mill villages that seemed to spring up like dandelions Right kept poor and powerless by their employers because that was back in the days of company script and company housing and all that They came to depend on profoundly depend profoundly on each other Developing community ties almost as deep as blood a few years ago when sociologists published a study of Milltown life, they titled it like a family.

Cherryville Police Chief Johnny Wehunt has been on the job for more than a year, but is still universally known as the new chief. He came from Morganton about 30 miles away, and while he's as open and accommodating as he can be, he's still working his way into The town's graces and he said quote people around here are clannish and they always have been let's not use that word Let's not say that Last name is we hunt. Yeah, we hunt That is they've always been oh boy good God

I keep asking how long do I have to be here before I'm not the new chief? And I've been told I don't know how many times, I don't care how long you're here, you'll never be from Cherryville. Oh no. So that's the town we got here. It's not even, it's, being insular is fine, but like, just pushing people, like, you know what I mean? Not, not even accepting and welcoming. Proud to be terrible hosts is not a good thing.

Yeah, that's not a good look. That's not a good look at all. Especially when even to your chief of police. That's what I mean. He's going to help you if you have a problem. And they're like, well, don't care. He ain't from here. Like calm down. Fuck you outside. He's from 30 miles away, too It's not like Morgan it's not like he's from Paris France, and he came over here with a fucking beret on go

We we what are you doing over here people that you should have orgies in this street in a church. Why you do it's not him Yeah, where he's from has the same weather as we do today, so The same storm came through still shit the same time we're getting the same exact problems all right let's let's go to 1991 that's the same error that was written okay yeah July 28th 1991 let's talk about William Fred Davis apparently everybody calls him Fred okay Okay. Old Willie Fred. Old Billy Fred here. He was born, he's 68 years old in 1991.

And he's got a wife named Margaret Shuford Davis. Shuford's her maiden name. She is 67 years old. They've been married for 40 years or something. They have a long time. William, or Fred, was in World War II in the Army Air Corps. Holy. I mean, yeah, fought Hitler, this guy.

Before it was the Air Force, for Christ's sake. Yeah, yeah, the Army Air Corps. If you ever watch All in the Family shit, that's where Archie Bunker was in the Army Air Corps. Really? Yeah, they were like the ground guys that helped supply the, helped keep the airplanes going. Got it. Then he worked for the North Carolina Department

of Transportation as a mechanic. And he also always was farming as well. So he had a day job and also was a farmer, which is a lot of work. That just sounds like, okay, doesn't quit. No, he gets up at 4 a.m. farms for three, four hours, then goes to work all day, comes home, farms a while, goes to bed. And made it to 1991, 68 years old, crushing it.

That's pretty good. Margaret worked at Jenkins Food. She worked at the, what they call a mush house locally. What is that? A sausage making plant. let's not call it. There's literally just a thing. You don't want to see how the sausage is made. That's a an idiom So yeah, you really don't want to see how the sausage is made and this lady fucking The mush house she makes it Both her brother and sister lived within a mile of them. Everybody kind of lives here Her brother and sister lived within a mile of them. Everybody kind of lives here. They have an old house where everybody, like the house she grew up in

is also right on the same area, and that's where their daughter lived. They renovated the house for her daughter. She's got, they have a daughter named Ruth and a son named Stephen, and now they're retired. And they, a long time friend said, I grew up with them and no one ever had anything to say against them.

If the church door ever opened on a Sunday morning and Fred Davis wasn't there, I never heard about it. They were as fine as any people who ever lived around here. That is a long way to go to say, he's at church every Sunday. Nice church going people. That's all he's trying to say with all of that shit So like I said, he they have a daughter named Ruth that they redid this house that the mother grew up in that Margaret grew up in

And Ruth has a husband named Joey James Melton. So Joey Jimmy. Yeah, JJ old Joey Jimmy here He's 29 and he's a high school dropout, who Fred and Margaret vehemently opposed the wedding to. Yeah, he didn't help redo this house. He's useless. Yes, and now he's moving in, and they later had to help the couple financially. The parents did. They set them up in a mobile home that's

about 150 yards away from the house, which will come in majorly later. and also then provided them the house that Margaret grew up in that they did. But they did not like Joey Jimmy at all. No good. Neighbors and families say that Joey Jimmy had problems that- Is that what they called him? No, that's what I'm calling him.

Oh, okay. Jesus Christ, why would you do that? They called him Joey. They called him Joey, but his name is- Not even JJ. I like Joey Jimmy a lot. That just sounds- Hey, Joey Jimmy.

Yeah, I think it's got a good ring to it. Joe Jim ain't so bad either. Joe Jimmy, yeah. Joe Jim is good too. That kind of sounds like Toe Jam. I don't know if you want that. I like that. I like Joey Jimmy.

So they had- he had a lot of problems, Joey Jimmy, Jimmy and attack used to attract the attention of law enforcement Officers shall we say he underwent psychiatric treatment multiple times in the 1980s And all the neighbors said that he used to use a lot of drugs, but he doesn't seem like he's doing it lately What do we know what happened to him? No, he's just a he's a local just a general ne'er-do-well Shit, no the mill don't give a fuck run in the mill. Yeah, I dropped out. I do a bunch of drugs I'm a fuck up. I get arrested all the time. You know, they don't know what's wrong with me They send me to a psychiatric center. They go. You're a drug addict stupid and they kick him out and that's that Why don't you want to do anything and make a living that seems hard? Yeah. Yeah, that's like the guy. I like doing drugs. It's more fun. Okay.

Well, yeah. Point taken. You are correct. It is more fun, but we get it. So Sunday, July 28th, 1991. Now, Fred and Margaret Davis were at church, obviously, and they were given a ride home from church and dropped off. Mrs. Davis, Margaret, was carrying a light beige pocketbook with some money inside of it. And later that day, their daughter-in-law, Kathy, Stephen's wife, spoke with Margaret and also saw Fred when Fred stopped by her home

to deliver some vegetables that he'd been growing. The son of a gun grows vegetables and grows too much and gives them away. Oh, I gotta give them to the kids. They need vegetables. So Ruth here saw her father that afternoon in a field near his home and also spoke with Margaret at the home as well. Then the daughter-in-law, I guess, oh no, another person here, another neighbor, stopped by the house around 6 p.m. to borrow

a vacuum cleaner. No one was home, but the back door was unblocked, so she just went in, grabbed the vacuum cleaner and left. Okay. Okay. Now, at some point in the night here during this evening, someone broke into their house and threw a back window. Yeah.

And basically what happened was Margaret was attacked first. Oh God, they were home. Someone came in with an axe handle. Oh boy. And beat Margaret to death with it. Wow. In the home. Now Fred, that was in the bedroom.

Now Fred was in another room watching TV He's he's Fred's mostly deaf and he had no idea this was happening in his house He couldn't hear it at all and he's got the TV turned on He's got god-awful level probably blaring like great old people anyway, and if he's hard of hearing on top of it Jesus Christ It's probably blaring. He wouldn't hurt it even if he wasn't hard of hearing and he didn't know that this attacker was sneaking up behind him and Attacked him from behind with an axe handle and beat Fred to death. He beat Fred Un-fucking-mercifully and Fred never even saw it coming. So it's like he could have caused done nothing to cause this ire

You know what? I mean, he didn't even see it happen Whoever did this knew they were gonna have to give him hell because that is a tough man yeah be able you're not gonna overpower that guy these old farmers are tough he's in the fucking world war two for Christ's sake so Fred is just beaten horribly now they lay there they're both killed they lay there till the next day when their daughter Ruth comes over to see them and discovers them. Shit. Now, there's no clear motive.

Nothing is stolen except just her purse is stolen. That's the only thing stolen. The beige pocketbook. That's it, and there's no evidence of sexual assault, although they said that Margaret was found partially disrobed, but not assaulted. That's weird. I don't know. So the autopsies to find out exactly what happened here, they're conducted. There's six major lacerations on the scalp and face of Margaret. An internal examination revealed

contusions hemorrhaging into the brain and multiple skull fractures. Also wounds to her left elbow and right hand could have been defensive wounds. She probably saw her coming, they said, or it could have been a result of a fall. We couldn't, don't know. That is a nasty axe handle, huh? It's fucking brutal.

Must have been tempered or something here, so. Just thick. For Mr. Davis, for Fred, they said that an external examination showed blood and brain tissue on his head, face and clothing. Wow. Both of his eyes had been blackened and he had bled into the substance of his left eye.

His skull bones had been thoroughly fractured and pressed inward into his brain. They said that he was beaten so hard about his head that his brain was pulplified. His skull chewed up his brain. Yeah, they pureed his brain with a fucking axe handle. My God. And they said there was blood spattered on the ceiling everywhere. I mean, it was a fucking brutal, brutal attack. A 68-year-old man.

68-year-old man with no enemies, too. These are just, they're not like they have all, they've had huge beef with these people over here. They're not the Hatfields and the McCoys, they're just old church people that farm. So there were 12 lacerations to his face and scalp. His dentures were protruding from his mouth. His left little finger was, pinky was torn almost completely off of his hand and his

left ring finger had scrapes and cuts on it. The wounds to his hand could have been sustained as he tried to defend himself, or been caused by the hand resting on top of his head when the blows were inflicted, might have scratched his head or something. They said the nature of the injuries to both were consistent with being caused by a blunt instrument,

such as an axe handle. Tore a finger off with something blunt man. That's hard. That's aggressive. Somebody's this is there's a lot of anger in this. I mean especially with no other didn't rob the place didn't go through a jewelry box didn't you know didn't break the old way didn't do any of that stuff so it doesn't make any sense. So the purse that evening, by the way, is spot...

It's spotted on fire by a local resident who calls the sheriff's department, but by the time the resident and the deputy get back to the spot where the purse was, it's gone. Not burned up. Somebody took it. It's just gone. Not burned up, somebody took it, it's just gone. But they do find in that area the dress that Margaret was wearing that day. Yeah, they find that, but the purse is gone. So that's interesting. Now, the first thought everybody has is, let's all talk to Joey Jimmy. What do we say?

Probably, yeah. Out of everybody in this town, he's the only one that's had any beef with these people whatsoever. They don't like him. He doesn't like them. It's just the way it is. So they really, the Rutherford County sheriffs go after Joey Jimmy. I mean, they're fucking, they said basically it's like a parade of police cars to his house all the time They're they're just camped out on a street. Yeah Yeah, we're gonna get you talking to him also the gossip spreads from there Oh boy, and everyone in town goes well. He's the only person that had any beef with them

So he obviously did it no one else fucking did it. This is ridiculous. It's a plus where the house is it's like rural It's not even in a house is it's like rural It's not even in a place. Somebody would wander by just stumble on it. No someone had to be doing this Floyd Terry who runs the grocery store Terry's groceries sure he said they were all over the place and all over him meaning Joey Jimmy I asked him straight out after it happened and he said I couldn't do nothing like that I couldn't and if I did I wouldn't do nothing like that. I couldn't. And if I did, I wouldn't be crazy enough to let my wife go back there the next day.

That's not the response you want either, by the way. And if I did. Couldn't isn't what you want. Didn't is what you want. Right, wouldn't, wouldn't, didn't. Wouldn't and couldn't is what OJ said. Right, yeah, good point. Couldn't is bad. It should be didn't and didn't. Wouldn't and couldn't is what O.J. said. Right, yeah, good point. You know what I mean? Couldn't is bad.

Yeah. It should be didn't and wouldn't. That's what you'd say. And to say like, and if I did, I wouldn't be crazy enough to do that is usually a bad sign too. So that's weird. But as the weeks go by here in the summer through the end of July and through August, they find no physical evidence and no evidence

linking him to these killings. Nothing. They have nothing to go on, so they're trying to figure out how to trip him up here and maybe make him confess or something like that, but when they do, he won't crack. So they have nothing to do, so the pressure kinda eases up on Jimmy Joey,

or Joey Jimmy a little bit. So September 8th, 1991, okay, this is another Sunday by the way, another Sunday evening, we have EZ Willis. EZ, that's his name, EZ Weider Willis over here. Does it. And yeah, and his wife Sarah. So EZ is 71 and Sarah is 67. They live on a farmhouse on Flint Mill Road. Oh no. And he is retired from his job at an auto repair shop and he walks with a cane now. But he's still very active. These people are very active. Like he's retired and walks with a cane but that week, the week before, he was up on top of the garage patching the roof.

Yeah, he walks with a cane because his legs are sore from pickleball, James. It's got a lot going on. They're sore from going for the elderly squat thrust record. If you're listening to this podcast, then chances are good you are a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious. And if that's the case, then I've got some good news we just launched a brand new strange dark and mysterious podcast called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries and as the name suggests it's a show about medical mysteries a genre that many fans have been asking us to dive into for years and we finally decided to take the plunge and the show is

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Looking back now, it's hard not to wonder, why did everyone blame them and not the man pulling the strings? Follow Blame It On The Fame, Millie Vanilli on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Blame It On The Fame early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Got a lot going on there. Yeah. So, Sarah though still works and works overtime even at the mill that she works at. Jesus. So Sarah's still putting in time at 67. Apparently this evening they were home and someone came into their house through a bedroom window and when no one was in the bedroom and confronts the couple in the kitchen.

The killer has a tire iron but EZ has a cane. And they know as we'll find out later for a fact that he got a couple of shots in with this cane. Really? Yeah, he was fighting and defending himself here, but apparently though they were brutally just unmercifully beaten with a tire iron, both EZ and Sarah. Canes no match for a fucking tire iron. And especially a 71 year old man who needs the cane to walk, so that means he's not real

sturdy on his feet while he's swinging the fucking thing either. So you knock him down once and then you pummel him to death with a tire iron. She's probably exhausted from working at the mill. She just punched out for Christ's sake. Yeah, so the next day is when their daughter, Sheila comes over. So like identical.

It's the same exact thing. I'm exacted the Sunday, the Monday morning, the daughter finding it. So, again, it's the same exact thing. I'm exacted the Sunday, the Monday morning, the daughter finding it, the daughter lives next door. That's the thing. All of these little places all have the families all live in like, it's almost like a hollow, a holler that's not a holler. You know what I mean? Right.

They just wait until the house next door goes up for sale. Great. My family needs a home. Yeah. Or generations ago, because these families have all lived here for generations. they just build houses on them exactly so she discovered the bodies of her parents on monday morning she said you can't imagine what it was like i haven't been back to the house since this was a little later on i can't go in things like this don't happen in cherryville apparently they do i mean it's happened twice.

So the police are saying, okay, this seems related. Both couples lived in rural areas, both over 65. Neither home was ransacked. Nothing was taken from this home at all, by the way. What is that? The Willis's. The home of the Davises is only 30 miles from the Willis's. The Davises live in Ellenboro.

The Willis's are in Cherryville. They said everything is just exactly the same. When you have 10 or 11 coincidences, it may not seem like a coincidence anymore. Yeah, somebody just likes killing, man. Both houses undisturbed. Robbery didn't appear to be the motive. The killings occurred sometimes Sunday night or early Monday in isolated rural homes, each about a mile from the Cleveland County line, by the way.

Both couples were beaten to death with a blunt object, different objects, but still beaten with blunt objects. And in both houses, the TV sets were left blaring afterwards. Now, we don't know if that's coincidence of just old people listening to the TV loud and they were on when he came over and then they stayed on or if they cranked them up either to maybe cover the screams and wails I don't know both of the couples were no enemies well respected church-going nice people that lived lived in the community all their lives they were neither of them you know came in recently yeah both of these couples were last seen on a Sunday

night and found dead the next morning by their daughters. The Davis is actually, it wasn't even their daughter who walked in first. It was their seven year old grandson who walked in and found grandpa's quote, pulplified brains. Yikes. That's fucking disturbing. Um, so yeah, that's pretty crazy. So the poor daughter who had to find them, they said they're going to compare the cases with similar ones around the state. They have one case from 1990 where a retired tobacco farmer and his 76-year-old wife were found stabbed to death in their home, which was in a rural area. Nothing was taken except a woman's purse as well, and there was no sign of struggle there.

So but the problem is this is in Alamance County and they had just charged a man with killing them. Now this man had known the couple and is being held without bond but they don't think that he's the guy that was over here. Number one because he was in jail already while one of them happened. So, yeah, so they think it's, there's at least one other person doing this. Now as soon as these bodies are discovered, this town is bonkers bat shit hysteria at this point. How could you not?

It's nothing happens here, they all know each other. The viciousness is horrible also. It's obviously one person doing it, which is scaring people as well. So they're really freaked out, everybody. The day after the Willis's are discovered, Easy and Sarah, Joey Jimmy writes a suicide note, puts a shotgun to his chest and blows himself away. What?

Commits suicide. Gone. Gone. It worked. Yeah, he didn't do it away. What? Commits suicide. Gone. Gone. It worked. Yeah, he didn't do it though. What? It wasn't Joey Jimmy. That's, that's...

Didn't do what? Suicide or these murders? He didn't do any of this. No, he killed himself. He didn't do the murders. Okay, he did. Wow. That's the thing.

So he's found dead in his living room sofa at 5 15 a.m. by Ruth, who then had to find her parents and then her husband a fucking month later that is horrible here. Ruth said she heard a crashing sound in the living room of her house and came in there and saw his you know his inside spread up on the wall. He left a note but she wouldn't reveal the contents of the note but yeah they said he shot himself in the abdomen with a 12 gauge shotgun. They said authorities were uncertain if he had any connection to the death of any of that stuff.

They said we've had so many similarities between the two investigations, we certainly couldn't brush this aside. We're not taking it into consideration now, but at some point we may have to, is what the police said. Ruth says she doesn't wanna talk about anything anymore. She moved out of her house immediately and just left the area.

She doesn't want anything. Everybody's been murdered that she's close to here. And they're all in the same neighborhood too. They're all so close, yeah. So close. So at this point they know, they never found any evidence that Joey Jimmy did this shit, and so they were upset.

The people in town are pissed off at the cops. Thinking that they blew it? For forcing them to do this and leaving people. Yeah, the Sherry Terry, that's a person's name, Sherry Terry is the daughter of the local grocer, and she said that she sees Ruth in the store and says she's doing the best she can raising her kids You should see her little boy. He looks just like his father who's now dead so

He's very bloody he's very bloody he's got brains all over the place or it would be intestines probably The sheriff said he doesn't want to say much about Joey Melton's death Largely because there's been talk that Ruth Melton may file a civil suit charging the department with harassment over this. Oh. Said, she's talked to us several times and I think she's settled down now. I think she understands what happened in this case was unavoidable. Other people don't though. A guy named Seabert McKee, who's a retired farmer, he said, quote, the law killed that

boy. They killed him, yes, sir. That's what he said. The law. The law. He also, then Sherry Terry said the boy had his troubles, but he didn't do what they said he did and he didn't deserve what he got. I still think about Joey killing himself.

I reckon he felt everybody thought he did it, but if he could have just held on a couple more days. A couple more days. Couple more days? We'll find out why. Because in a couple days we find out he would have been. All we needed was 48 hours to clear this boy? Oh, god damn it.

Everybody, by the way, the gossip, these are horrible murders. I just gave you the actual facts. But the rumors that spread around town of what happened is crazy. The rumors are everybody tells the daughter, oh, I heard your mom was raped. I'm real sorry.

She wasn't raped. Oh, for heaven's sake. One of the local papers reported that both the Willis's and the Davis's had houses with semi-circular driveways. So soon, people were saying in town, it took two days for people to start going, it's the work of a cult. And there's semi-circular driveways,

or literally, that's what they were doing. Everybody start paving your driveway straight. Yep, they said the shape of the driveways was some kind of symbol, and that's what it was. One of the police chiefs said everyone was buying guns. He said, our officers became genuinely concerned about being shot themselves. When you go out at two o'clock in the morning and someone's walking around a house with a gun you don't know if it's a prowler or the

homeowner. We finally had to tell our callers to stay inside till we got there. We'll knock and then you come out. Don't fucking do that because it's dark too. This is a rural rural area. So the the sheriff wrote an article for the paper asking gun buyers to think seriously whether they're actually mentally prepared to take a life. Think about this before you're doing this. That is such a great point. I don't think everybody thinks about that.

Yeah, nobody thinks about that. He said the burglar alarm salesman came from all over the place and the guy at the hardware store said people came in for locks, dead bolts, all sorts of shit. The bullets, they couldn't keep bullets in. I don't know if they thought an army was coming to their house to, you probably only need one or two if someone's coming in to murder you, you know, by themselves. But they're like, I need an extended clip. Yeah. But I guess, you know, whatever. So one guy here said that he knew, this is Jimmy Terry is his name. All these Terries.

Yeah. He said that he said many people in the community believe that Melton was somehow involved in the Davis deaths because police had questioned him and because of problems he had with the family. But Terry said that after the Davis killings, quote, this is about Joey Jimmy, he got real quiet. He used to be outspoken. Everyone thought he was hiding something, but I don't think he was capable of getting

involved in something like that. Who might be? Well, let's talk about someone who could be. Was it Floyd Terry? Philip Lee Engle, Engle, I-N-G-L-E. By the way, Wayne and Lee as a middle name. Huge red flag for murderers. He's born in 1961, so he's 29 at this point in time.

He's married and has two little girls. Really? Eight years old and one year old. Uh huh, brand new. The Engels are three generations deep in Cherryville. He's a local guy He's had a tough life Everybody said his mother and father split up soon after he was born and that she was only around periodically

When he was growing up and when she was Everybody would wish she was gone because she caught me a dad. No dad took off Long time so where the father relatives how the, how's he doing this? Relatives, just getting kicked around. He's got a sister too, talk about it. They said that there was a cousin of his that sexually molested him during his childhood. And yeah, he also had psychiatric problems,

treated several times in the 80s. He was described by his sister as a tortured child and when he was grew into an adult his nickname around time around prison whenever he was in jail was psycho. That's nice. Great. In prison that's your nickname. Those guys consider you nuts. Yeah. I get if you work at like a you know an accounting firm and you're the wild one, hey psycho. Do a lot of coffee tossing. This is in jail. He's psycho.

His sister said that he never knew his real father and his mother was a drug addict and would constantly torment her. They said that the family dog got much more affection than the kids. She said that sister said, I can't tell you how many times she went to the hospital for overdoses. He himself here, Philip tried to hang himself twice as, as, as, from the age of six to nine. Wow. How the fuck does a six year old note, to try to hang themselves? That's terrifying also That'd be tough. You're you're a very light guy. No shit. Yeah, you'd have to have that shit Hi, you need a big drop. Yeah, you gotta you gotta jump I'm impressed though cuz a lot of six-year-olds can't tie shoes this kids making the news as tying nooses pretty impressive stuff here

He also attempted suicide by shooting himself in the abdomen with a rifle as well. Sounding a lot like Joey Jimmy, right? He did it, huh? Pulled the trigger and got it. Yup, and didn't die. He repeatedly tried to crash his car once he became a teenager to kill himself. Another occasion when he was 19, he said he wanted to kill himself. That's when he shot himself in the stomach with a rifle.

And then there was another time when he went out in the highway, we'll talk about later, and tried to get hit by cars. He's given it his best. Yup. His sister said, quote, we both wish we were never born. That's what his sister said. Holy shit. They said her mother Juanita would swallow painkillers by the handful and yell at her

children and insult them. She said that once when he wasn't old enough to drive, for some reason he was driving and he ran over the family dog by accident. Oh my God, no. And he felt horrible and but the mother went crazy on him and said, quote, I wish it was you. I wish it was you who died, which is I don't know what I'm more horrified about of any of this, this is horrifying.

And we can get another talk, but. Fuck, I wish it was you. I wish it was you! Wow, he had numerous head injuries as a child, including one when he was bludgeoned with a long stick during a fight. Repeatedly bludgeongeon with a long stick. And also a neighbor, in addition to their cousin, a neighbor molested both her and him. Not a great life. So she also said he's got some odd religious beliefs, including the idea that demons can possess people all the time and control their

actions. Yeah, he has pleaded guilty to charges of DUI and simple possession of marijuana in the 80s, so low-level stuff. But one woman said that he has a big temper when he drinks. She said, he came to our house once and tried to pick a fight with my brother for no reason at all. Just drunk. So, a week or two prior to the Davis murders, the first murders, Fred and Margaret, he had been involved in a huge argument with his grandmother.

So there's later on, there'll be psychiatrists who think there's a link between seeing the sight of elderly people pissing him off and triggering a psychotic episode because he was mad at his grandmother, but for some reason could kill his grandmother. Just the sight of old people sets me off. Look at them. Old. Keep that man away from the Cracker Bear. Just all old.

Look at him. Ugh. Gonna come out and fire his musket off. What a wild thing to trigger you. And the other thing is the nearest resident, the residence, the mobile home that's located 150 yards from the Davis's house, he rented it from them in 1987. Oh boy.

Yeah, Philip did. So he knows them well and lived on their property. They were his landlord. He rented from them. As of August 91, this is before the Willis's got murdered in September, he was working in a mill doing second shift at the Dora mill. What mill is that? I think they do some probably. Is it not the one that Sarah works at? It's not the same one, different one, different one. But we find out that EZ Willis is his third cousin.

For fuck's sake, are you serious? Which I think in this town a lot of people are third, fourth cousins. Yeah, that probably makes you first cousin. Yeah, but they're third cousins with these people. He didn't know that at the time, by the way. Really? Yes. Now, everyone was in a panic when he was working at the plant.

The women didn't want to go anywhere alone. So when they would want to ride to work or be walked to their cars, he'd be the guy that would do it, you know, because he's such a good guy. I'll walk you ladies to the car, make sure nothing happens to you. Keep you safe from that psycho out there Then he went to a party one night. This is after the murders and This is after the Davis murder but before the Willis's murder and Talked to a long-haul truck driver friend of his and said quote man. I killed two people I beat him to death

so he told this guy and The guy and then he asked his friend if he needed anyone killed. Need anyone killed? Oh, I'm for hire. So the guy was laughing and he pointed at his neighbor's house going, yeah, those assholes over there. And so then Philip started asking this guy questions

about his neighbor. So he said, bro, I'm just kidding. I didn't actually want my neighbors killed. Because he was like, oh yeah, well, literally he was asking them like that. Like what's their schedule like? You know, do they have dogs like shit like that? I'll run them over if they do.

So he said, I'm just kidding. He said that he wanted, he said, you know, I'm kidding. I didn't want my neighbor armed. And he said, also my neighbor's a real big guy and he's heavily armed. So don't go over there. He'll shoot you, man. Well, he, Philip said this in return, quote, that doesn't matter. They'll never see me coming. All I need is an axe handle.

And then the guy said, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. And Philip said, well, man, I wouldn't be telling you this, but I know I can trust you. Yeah. Apparently not because I'm giving you his quotes. So don't trust me too much. I'll tell everybody. Yep. The friend ended up going, leaving on a trip to truck. And he said he wasn't thinking twice about that. He said he was just drunk and he thought he was running off at the mouth, trying to act like a tough guy. But then when he returned and found out another couple, a couple had been beaten to death in their homes, he went, um, I should go to the police here. This isn't good. Wow.

So he goes to the police and then they find out that there's a set of palm prints at the Willis's house on their windowsill, you know, as you'd boost yourself through a window and they match angles because they have angles from his arrest back in the day. So this they figure out to cross reference it withalls because this guy says he heard this guy doing it, so then they check against the prints and they go, that's our fucking guy, holy shit. That's the only reason they got him. Yep, a palm print and this guy's drunken bullshit. And a loud mouth.

Yep, that's it. So was anyone even looking at Ingall? Well, he showed up for work that Monday, the Monday after the Willis's were killed, EZ and Sarah, with a gash on his face. You know, like if you got hit in the face with a cane. He told his friends and coworkers that he slipped while jumping on a trampoline. Those sharp trampoline edges, we all know about those, they really cut you. If he had his arm in a cast, you'd say I fell off a trampoline, not a cut on your face. If he came in with torn meniscus,

that might be a trampoline. Limpin'. And then they found out that he used to rent the trailer from the Davises as well. They look at his, they said all he does, he drinks a little bit, he's had a marijuana charge, he had a breaking and entering charge, that's something, that's close, but nothing violent.

He kept up steady work, he paid his bills for his wife and his two daughters, so no one really ever looked, no one was looking at him at all. They would have never thought to match these prints up with him, because you couldn't run it through the computer and get a big thing like that back then.

So, 19, talk a little bit more about Philip here. Two weeks after the Davis murders, he, the first set, he tried to check himself into the state mental hospital. Doctors examined him, told him he should seek treatment for alcoholism and sent him home. Really? Yeah. So that's a problem here. They said in the system, it's very difficult because basically the substance abuse people and the mental illness people don't diagnose each other crossways very well or treat each other. So if you go to a mental institution and you say I have and you have a substance abuse problem they go oh you do that.

Then if you have a substance abuse problem with mental illness which a lot of times helps cause and foster substance abuse then they go well go get mental illness to help. So it's tough. They said, unfortunately, one of the things that happens in drug and alcohol abuse is that drug and alcohol abuse can mask pathology, so mental illness people don't see it. They shake each other's hand. Yeah, and the other thing about Philip Engel,

both his mother and grandfather were schizophrenic as well. Really? Which is a problem. Yeah. So he comes back September 12th here. The guy, the long haul truck driver, Hauser's his name, he said that his, Philip came back to his house on September 12th, so a couple days after the Easy and Sarah Willis murders, and he had a black eye.

And he said that he fell and hit a doorknob. Oh, he did that old chestnut. Yeah, he did that. I mean, I fell down the stairs. I mean, his friend didn't believe him and said, I don't believe you. Yeah, I think your wife's kicking your ass at home. Yeah, what's happening here? Ruth beating, or not Ruth, her name's Stephanie, I think.

Stephanie kicking your ass. You're getting beat up by Stephanie again so she said then he brought up again Engel says you're still having trouble with that neighbor neighbor I'll take care of him for you he said quote I'll kill his whole family oh my god I'll get a stick I'll beat them to death then he said I love to watch people dying in agony pain suffering okay what a weird conversation now he still hasn't been arrested yet I love to watch people dying in agony, pain, suffering. Okay. What a weird conversation. Now, he still hasn't been arrested yet.

I'm giving you the background here. They're discovering this all as we speak, okay? Wow. Nancy's love story could have been ripped right out of the pages of one of her own novels. She was a romance mystery writer who happens to be married to a chef. But this story didn't end with a happily ever after. When I stepped into the kitchen

I could see that chef Brophy was on the ground and I heard somebody say call 911. As writers we'd written our share of murder mysteries so when suspicion turned to Dan's wife Nancy we weren't that surprised. The first person they look at would be the spouse. We understand that's usually the way they do it. But we began to wonder, had Nancy gotten so wrapped up in her own novels... There are murders in all of the books. ...that she was playing them out in real life?

You can listen to Happily Never After, Dan & Nancy, early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. If you're listening to this podcast, then chances are good you are a fan of the Strange, Dark and Mysterious. And if that's the case, then I've got some good news. We just launched a brand new Strange, Dark and Myster mysterious podcast called Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries. And as the name suggests, it's a show about medical mysteries, a genre that many fans have been asking us to dive into for years. And we finally decided to take the plunge and the

show is awesome. In this free weekly show, we explore bizarre, unheard of diseases, strange medical mishaps, unexplainable deaths, and everything in between. Each story is totally true and totally terrifying. Go follow Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're a Prime member, you can listen early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, available exclusively on Wondery+, 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, Shnook is available exclusively and ad-free on Wondry+. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts. Now September 19th, 1991, Douglas Shank Tipsck Tips, they call him Schenck, that's his nickname, T-I-P-P-S. He's 84 and his wife Elizabeth Tips is 81. Okay, they live about 20 miles outside of Cherryville in a mobile home. They have no telephone or indoor plumbing. Now, old Shank is a character. He is what they called in this area what the sheriff called a nightclub entrepreneur.

What is that? Well, quote, he had an old house and he stuck a jukebox in it and he brewed up a little Squeezins to sell out there. A little Squeezins. He brewed up some Squeezins, Jimmy. Everybody out there, you guys brewing up some squeezens tonight? He's got a jukebox and homemade hooch. Come on over.

Homemade hooch. Yeah. Well, cause this, think about it, he's 80. He was born in like 1910, so he's doing this like in the thirties in the middle of nowhere in a rural area. He's brewing up orange slices. Yeah. He's making a juke joint basically. Yeah, sure is. He said, quote, it wasn't exactly legal, but it's accepted in this part of the country. That's what the sheriff said. So in their trailer they had a television, and they had heard all about the murders

and gotten terrified, this couple, because they fit the exact profile of people who've been murdered so so much so that old tips old shank tips started sleeping with a loaded rifle by his bed so one night on September 19th he heard a noise and felt a hand on his leg so he grabbed the rifle and started firing off into the dark and struck his wife with a bullet and killed her. Oh my god, shank. She was coming back from using the shit pot. Oh, don't worry baby, it's just me. And he shot her? Shot her to death.

Oh my god. And then he's alone. This is horrible. Just him and his squeezens now. Him and his squeezens, that's six dead now in this tale, including Joey, Jimmy and her. Is that a justified? Wow. The sheriff said, Shag's a good old feller.

That's literally what it says. I didn't put that in there. Good old apostrophe feller. I didn't say good old feller. Good old feller and he was extremely remorseful. He had just seen all this stuff on TV. I think he'd seen something that same night and he just got spooked. We used to go over to his place and break up a few fights now and then, but that shank never meant nobody

no harm. I think he meant when it was a juke joint. He's still living over there in that trailer by himself. The whole thing's just a shame and that's about all there is to it okay what's going on yeah he was terrified this fucking town went nuts they went nuts so they just go no harm no foul he murdered a woman but it was in the dark at night and they thought it was an accident he said I he was yeah sitting there live with that sitting there with yes with his tears coming down his face, his wife's blood all over him going, I thought she was, I saw a thing on the news.

I thought she was gonna kill us all. He might've just been smart and been like, hmm, I know of an excuse that'll get me out of. I maybe didn't like her. That's what I mean. They were married for, I wanna say, like 68 years or something. He might've just got tired of her after a while years of shit

Yeah, 64 years or something. He just lost it. So they bring in Philip Lee Engel for a questioning session. Yeah, and according to this He immediately confesses to everything when they bring him in really not even a second of trying to hide it He gave it his fuck right Dave gave a detailed account of what happened at both crime scenes, directed police to the tire iron he used to kill the Willis's, which conveniently was still in his car, so he could just get it right out there. Kept it.

He said, they go, why'd you do this? Did you hate the Davises? Did they fuck you over? And he said, no, I like them. They're nice people. Well, what the fuck? He said, I rented a trailer from them and they were nice. And he said, also after the Willis's died,

I learned they were my third cousins. So, you know, I had no beef with them. Yeah, he's, and his aunt, while this is all going on, his family's like, well, no one would help him when he needed help. So yeah, his aunt said he needed help. He went to Broughton, which is the mental institution, two weeks ago and they sent him home.

So the Davis murders, yeah, he said, yeah, I used to rent from him, but he said also the Davises, he lived in the mobile home park across the street from the church they went to. Or that's what the Willis is, I'm sorry. That's how he found the Willises. So he said between 6 p.m. and

8.45, this is with the Davises, the first murders, he was driving around the area of the Davises' home between 6 p.m. and 8.45 p.m. He knew the Davises from renting the mobile home. He went to the house and drove his car around to the back of the house. He parked his car, he took an axe handle from it and entered the house through the unlocked back door walked right in Mrs. Davis was in the kitchen He approached her from behind and began to beat her on the head with the axe handle until she fell to the floor After doing this he went into the den where mr. Davis was sitting in his recliner watching TV Because he was hard of hearing television was blaring and he had no

idea he was even there. He moved to the den, attacked him, he said he beat him over the head with the axe handle and that was that. He said he then left the house taking the pocketbook and the floral pattern dress that belonged to her, so that question answered there. He went on, he said, to an area about three miles away from the house, threw away the dress and set fire to the pocketbook. He went on, he said, to an area about three miles away from the house, threw away the dress and set fire to the pocketbook. He then just departed the area, but then he returned to the same area to pick up the pocketbook because he said, I should probably get rid of this. It says ID and shit in it. So he then threw the pocketbook and the axe handle into the creek. He led law

enforcement officers to the spot where he threw them out, but they said it was the pocketbook is discovered on the bank of the stream, but the axe handles never found. It's who knows how far. It's in the bottom of the water somewhere. So police searched some fields where he said he dumped an axe handle he allegedly used, but nothing had been found here. They found traces of the Willis's blood in the treads of the tennis shoes he was wearing when they were interviewing him.

Still wearing it. Still fucking wearing them. He told the police that they'd been his landlords and you know, he's fine. He said he got to know the Davises very well. So he knew them. He said if he had any quarrel with the couple, it was nothing he knew about. That's what he said, don't know. He said this is what the cop said. Engel told me he was glad he knew about. That's what he said, don't know. He said, this is what the cop said.

Engel told me he was glad we caught him. He told me, quote, I would have killed again. Yeah, I believe that. Yeah, he's like, glad you caught me. He said, I'm totally convinced he would have. At one point he said that he thought they were demons with glowing red eyes also. That was a problem.

The cops? No, no, the old people he killed. While he was killing them. Because beforehand they were fine. No, no, the old people he killed while he was killing them because you know beforehand they were fine. Yeah So also, uh, he right after this he he went to a highway one night after killing the davises and tried to kill himself That's where he was trying to get people to hit him with a car where people were swerving out of the way So that episode landed him in a state mental hospital, but they released him the next day saying his abuse

His problem was substance abuse and they kicked him out So if they would have kept him, he obviously wouldn't have killed the other people. So his stepfather CF Engel here He said that Philip kept to himself and he offered often suffered blackouts when he drank too much But he never seemed the violent type. He said we just don't understand it. I weep for him but he never seemed the violent type. He said, we just don't understand it. I weep for him. So there you go. Now some of the members of the Engel family gathered

at the home of his grandmother, Maxine Willis, who her husband is Eze Willis' first cousin. Wow. Yeah, they're all related in a way. A relative said, we're confused. I'm fucking confused by the family tree. First of all, so if I'm confused, you gotta be confused here. Um, yeah. So if the farmer Siebert McGee who said the law killed that boy about Joey,

Jimmy said, quote, they ought to give them a fair trial and then hang him. That's what they said. Yeah. The uh. Joe Jimmy. The Davis's friend Jim Davis everyone's name is Jim or Joe or something. Jim around here. He said they're going to get that boy out of this somehow.

They're going to get him a lawyer and make him out like he's crazy and it ain't right. He killed four good people. You can't kill him but once. Okay now the daughter Sheila who found her parents she says that she's opposed to the death penalty. She said I used to think the death penalty didn't do any good but if you had seen your parents the way I saw mine that's what he said. So Ingalls family has called and said he was suicidal when they locked him up and they say he doesn't know

why he did it and he wants my forgiveness, Sheila said. I told him it's not my forgiveness he needs. So, the Davis trial's up first, six man, six woman jury, death penalty on the table. Hell yeah. He admits to everything, it's all right there, he's obviously convicted, there's no real trial. What are we gonna do? They just go over the evidence and they go over his statement saying yes

I beat them with an axe handle it all matches up. We kill him Sentencing comes around and the prosecutor said there's never been a more clear-cut case for a death penalty here Yeah, this guy's gonna kill more He said if this isn't the case then there's never been one and there never ought to have been one in the past He said that his only motive was blood lust and perversions. Yeah, that's it. That's just, yeah, that's to put some extra stank on it. He said Philip Engel authored and wrote his own death warrant. We're simply asking you to affix your signature to the warrant he wrote with the choices he made and the life he had. Philip Engle should never

be allowed to make those choices again. Enough is enough. Defense attorney said, oh, he said ... You heard what that guy said, shit. That was pretty convincing. I don't know. But let me try. I say don't affix your name. He said don't. He said said it's not a question of whether Philip will be punished, it's a question of how he's going to be punished. This man has been punished from the day he was born and then cited all of his things. What child tries to hang themselves

when they're six? That's a bad life. It's bad. Psychiatrist testified that he had borderline personality disorder that could have been the result of a psychiatric trauma experience as a child, testified that the psychotic episode experienced at the time of the murders was a feature one would expect to see associated with what he's got going on here. He said that the defendant told him that he looked in the window at the Davises before entering the house. After doing so, he returned to his car to retrieve an axe handle and they said that that could have been the grandmother thing, could have whatever. Either way, jury takes three hours in deciding here because the mitigating

circumstances are that he confessed and helped them find the person, all that. Also that as a child, he saw his mother try to kill herself on multiple occasions by cutting her wrist, saw his mother overdosed on drugs multiple times, and he tried to hang himself as a child and all that kind of thing. And he has daughters that are nine and two at this point. And they say, you sir, may fuck off two death sentences. Two of them. Having a deuce here.

That's two. Holy. It's the first death sentence delivered by a Cleveland County jury since 1963. That's a long time. It's almost 30 years at that point. Tina, his sister, while leaving the courtroom screamed, they're murderers too. Now, at the Willis trial, he pleads insanity. He pleads insanity. Now they're saying he's schizophrenic here. And they show in this they show one of the things is they show a videotape

of the kitchen where they found the people where they found the victims here, the Willis's. And Sheila, the daughter said that was the cane my daddy made himself that was on the ground. Oh for God's sake. As she grasped she had it with her they let her even though it's during the trial so it's evidence so yeah but she allowed to touch evidence I guess once it's there. She said that's when I started screaming when she saw that. They tried to get the videotape put out of the case, but the judge said, well,

that's as gruesome as it looked on the scene. So that's what it is. So the case here, it's obvious they have a ton of evidence. They have the tire iron even in the car. They have a palm print. Not looking good here. All they have to depend on is a psychiatrist who says that he has hereditary schizophrenia. Said that he, you know, goes over the same thing, tried to kill himself, tried to hang himself. He Engel talked about demons and Lucifer's army around the time that he was killing people. But they said that he did make numerous references to demons during the interviews as well, very much into demons.

Really? Yeah. They said that he often referred to his belief in an army of devils controlling the world and that he blamed his violent impulses on voices in his head. Fascinating fellow. Yeah. They said these are symptoms of schizophrenia and they said both his mother and his maternal grandfather had been diagnosed with the same illness

and that his prison nickname is Psycho. Come on, that's what they said, literally. They said the people that live with you all day long sometimes are better diagnosticians than anybody, including the prisoners. Yeah, they're pretty good at this. Prosecution closing said he shouldn't be able to avoid responsibility for what he's done

by saying I'm sorry and claiming insanity. They said they're seeking the death penalty again and that's what they want. The defense said if the prosecution had been reading your life, had been reading you the life story of Philip Engel, he would have only read you the last two or three pages of the last chapter. You're going to have to read the whole book. Said he grew up with the mother with, you know, all the things we told you about. He said Philip Engle was in a psychotic state. He was in, had an obsession with demonology. He did not understand

the quality and nature of his actions. He didn't know the difference between right and wrong. Philip Engle's life was a perfect recipe for disaster. He's crying out for help. So that's what they said. They said guilty as fuck is the verdict. I mean it's obvious he's guilty. It's just whether they say not insane, too, just guilty. He knows right and wrong. He told the man, I'll kill people for you. I love watching people suffer in agony.

He knows it's not right. I'm only telling you because I trust you. This is one of those things where it's so fucked up. Obviously this guy had no control over the horrible things that happened to him when he was younger, but at the same time, as a society, we also can't have him just walking around. Yeah, yeah. You're a master of your own being.

You have to absorb the consequences of your own behavior. Whether or not we should kill crazy people is a whole separate argument that we definitely don't have time for because we're wrapping this up. I had an entirely fucked life and I'm not hurting people. That's, yeah, and then you go, well, this, who knows? So they say, you, sir, may fuck off two more death sentences. Jesus. So he's got four.

There's the initial appeal that's the law that you have to do that's factual stuff, that just to see if they didn't railroad you. Then he refused any post-conviction review and he wanted all his appeals dropped. Oh, let's do it then. He told his lawyer that he wanted to help North Carolina with what he was calling their state assisted suicide program. Oh great, okay. His lawyer says that it's a miscarriage of justice. His client belongs in a mental institution, not on death row.

It goes all the way to 1995. Now the two that led to this are the Davis murders. The Willis murders are under mandatory appeals review at this point in time, but he's still up for execution before the wallets are gone. We'll figure those out later. Let's just execute him. Which means, honestly, if they execute him, then those, actually, those convictions would be expunged. Yeah, he's not those out later. Let's just execute them. Yeah. Which means, honestly, if they execute him, then those, actually, those convictions would be expunged.

Yeah, he's not guilty for those. He wouldn't be guilty of those at that point. But I don't think they care if he's dead. Doesn't matter. So there's a sort of an appeal to the governor here. A 56-minute videotape is sent to the governor. Engel says that he needed psychiatric help all his life. But he says basically, he says says what we're asking is,

quote, if possible after viewing this tape to consider having me placed in a mental institute lockup ward where I can probably get the help that I've tried to get all my life and was never able to get, which he did try several times. If you are not able to have me placed in a mental institute for the rest of my life, I do not want to go back out on the street. If you can't put me in a mental institute for the rest of my life, a lock-up ward, I ask to be executed." Okay, great. He said, I'm done. So September 22nd, 1995, execution day. That's fast. They oblige. Yeah, they oblige. He said, during the last four weeks, I felt more loved and more cared for than I have my whole life, is what he said. He told the ward. Not the press.

He told the warden that, that they were nice to him the last few weeks. And that's been great. Wow. So, because I would imagine in death row, the people you're going to kill soon, you're probably nicer to them, just because you kind of feel bad. Just for like the, and just as a person. If you're not a murderer, that'll be on your conscience that's what I mean yeah if you're if you're a half decent person you try to be nice to a guy even though he's a piece of shit so he said

that he told I guess his his attorney said that if he changed his mind the procedure was in place to get a stay but he didn't think that'd be happening by the way the Supreme Court rejected a petition for a stay anyway, so the lawyer tried to file one. He said he was looking forward to his execution. Oh, his sister filed the last minute request to stop it, and they denied it. So she said that she recounted three generations of her family, including her.

They all suffer from schizophrenia. She viewed her brother's choice to drop his appeals as yet another suicide attempt by a man plagued by mental illness hallucinations and breaks insanity and reality And all they also say that they've been keeping him calm with Xanax in prison. Oh, yeah, and he craved Xanax That's why he wants to keep this going because he can get Xanax if he just gets good until he gets executed a lot of people have done more than that for Xanax and Yeah if he just gets, until he gets executed. A lot of people have done more than that for Xanax than I know, so. Yeah.

His last meal comes along. Okay. He gets a medium rare steak, baked potato, tossed salad, and butter pecan ice cream. Pretty good choice! That's a goddamn good last meal. Fuck man, where's your mac and cheese and you just wrapped it up, babe?

He didn't go crazy though. He went on like a corporate retreat at the Outback. That's what he got. Everyone can get a steak, a baked potato, a salad. Let's get after it. Here's your desserts that you're allowed to have. I'll have the ice cream. I'll have the butter pecan ice cream.

Good choices. Good choices. I got a $100 gift certificate to the outback meal right there. That man just negated all I'm insane arguments also by having a very sane. He should have been like I want a shoe sole and some raccoon poop. I want a Jordan three full of cottage cheese. That's what I want.

And I want to eat me a shower curtain. All right, line it up. Both full of shower curtain rings, please. Please, I want it served on top of a toolbox. All right. That would have been crazy. With only 9 16ths wrenches in it. Oh my God.

Just those though, and filled to the top. Filled. He spent his afternoon with his wife Sandy and their two daughters. That's nice to bring your nine year old to death row to see dad. That's terrific. Dad, say goodbye to dad kids. They won't be fucked up or anything. They won't be fucked up or anything.

No, never. We won't be doing a story about them someday, I hope. Jesus Christ. Then they went outside to join the death penalty protesters after they were forced to leave. Speaking of last meals, there's a really weird thing where an inmate who was like a trustee on death row said this was in the 2000s or the early 2000s, late 90s, that whenever there was an execution,

they had a big staff party beforehand. And they said it was a big meal and they had extra staff on hand. So he said, I understand that you have to feed them and you have a big spread, but they also had a big sheet cake. Like it's not a birthday party. It's very weird to put a cake out there.

Everybody gets a slice. Yeah, with what do you put on it? Yeah. It's weird, what do you write on that thing? Yikes, so that's a good one to write on it perfect From corner to corner just yikes So as the year wheeling him in on the gurney to the execution room, he shouts quote. I'm going to heaven Okay Then he said I'm not shaken. He tells the warden. I'm not shaking

I've been put to sleep and the I'm going to be put to sleep and the angels are gonna pick me up and take me to heaven Okay, one of the reporters said yeah, he was very chatty right up until the time he became unconscious which will happen One of the Witnesses said he kept talking about being saved. He said I'm saved. you? I'm doing this for y'all and my family and my children, talking about the families of the victims that were there. He said, I forgive you and everyone and I ask that everyone who I have trespassed against to forgive me.

He said that to the victims' families. Then he said again, I want to say I forgive you all. He said, life without parole is worse than the death penalty. And then he said, I love you, I love you all. And then at 2 14 he was dead. It feels like he had a lot of thoughts. He kept saying, and then he had a long written statement he gave to warden too. That was just the shit he was spouting as he was laying there, just talking.

That wasn't one of your last words. He was just like, ba ba ba baub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-bub what happened or what happened if this happened to their family their minds would be changed in a split second. He knew the family for five years and lived in a mobile home they had rented out and he was riding around drinking and smoking pot and said the devil told him to kill an old couple and he came up with the Davises. He made the statement he was glad he got caught because he made plans and already made plans for the next victim but this will deter crime because he won't do it again. Now the guy outside who's a pastor, reverend or something, who's the anti-death penalty guy, he said there's nothing

in the death penalty that will bring the Davises or the Willis's back. So there you go. We're not going to solve this argument. Strange thing happened, by the way. Sheila, the Willis's daughter was at Walmart buying Christmas presents and a woman she recognized but couldn't place came up and hugged her tightly and quote, she asked me how I'd been and said she was hurting for me and said she was hurting too. She said she couldn't know how I felt and she said she was praying for me. After she left, she realized it was Philip Engle's mother. We both lost people.

Oh my God. In the wrap up here, Joel Long is a Cherryville native, an ordained minister who works for the National Trucking Concern, the Carolina freight carriers there. And he says that when he drives the Cherryville streets, he says he notices little stakes with signs on them out by all the flower beds saying this house is protected by some burglar alarm system company. He said Cherryville has always armored itself against the outside world, but somebody penetrated the armor, pierced the shield. When the invisible force field we put up was broken, another one took its place.

So there you go. That's Cherryville, North Carolina. That's crazy shit. That's a wild ass episode. Unbelievable. 10 pounds of murder in a two pound bag here. Jesus. If you like that, we got to buzz through this quick. If you like that, please, please get on whatever app you're on. Give us a review. It helps a lot. Five stars are nice. Doesn't matter what you say. Just say something good. Also shut up and give me murder.com tickets to live shows. Durham, North Carolina, triangle

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