Small Town Murder - #561 - Losing Streak Lois - Blooming Prairie, Minnesota

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

This week, in Blooming Prairie, Minnesota, a beloved local is found, brutally murdered, and his wife is missing. Detectives quickly realize she isn't a victim, and start a manhunt for the seemingly mild mannered Grandma. But she is anything but mild mannered, as she stays one step ahead of the law, looking for people that resemble her, to steal their identity. Which leads to more murder! Will they get this Grandma on the run???Along the way, we find out that these "new" 4th of July displays are simply no good, that worm farming is big business, and that even you can't just kill people who look like you, until your identity is "clean"!!New 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.

So, get this, the Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Cromby as their new leader. Bonnie who? I just sent you her profile. Her first act as leader, asking donors for a million bucks for her salary. That's excessive. She's a big carbon tax supporter. Oh yeah, check out her record as mayor. Oh get out of here. She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes. She sounds expensive. Bonnie Cromby and the Ontario Liberals.

They just don't get it. That'll cost you. A message from the Ontario PC party. This week in Blooming Prairie, Minnesota, a beloved local man is found dead, leading to a nationwide hunt for who police are calling the killer grandma, but her path of murder and cruelty doesn't end there.

Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello everybody and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay! 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 on another absolutely crazy, insane edition

of Small Town Murder. If you listened to the intro, you went killer grandma. Yeah, it's going to be a weird one, man. It's a lot of... There's a lot of crazy stuff there. Before we get to that though, head over to shutupandgivemurder.com. Tickets are for sale for 2025.

We're very excited. First up, Pittsburgh. Get in there. If you're near or around or nearby. Get your tickets now. Get tickets, let's go. February the 7th, we are in Pittsburgh. We cannot wait, so get in there.

We enjoy Pittsburgh a lot, so please sell it out so we can go back to Pittsburgh at another time, because we'd like to come back, because we like it there. And then Columbus the next night, also get your tickets right now. You are first up, so we can't wait for that. Shutupandgivememurder.com. You also should obviously listen to our other two shows,

Crime and Sports and Your Stupid Opinions, which are goddamn hilarious, and we think you'll enjoy them. You don't have to like sports, you can just, it's fun. And then, if you've got enough of this, you need more, we have got Patreon for you. We'll give you all the bonus episodes you could want here. Patreon.com slash Crime in Sports is where you get all the bonus episodes. So much. Anybody $5 a month or above, you're going to get not only an absolutely enormous back catalog of hundreds of bonus episodes immediately

upon subscription, but new ones every other week. One Crime and Sports, one Small Town Murder, and you get. You get it all. All of it. That's right. This week we're going to talk about for Crime and Sports. And you don't really have to care about sports for this. We're going to talk about Travis Rudolph, who

was a recent NFL player in 2017, 18, and just finished up a murder trial as well. So we'll get into all of that. And then for Small Town Murder, we're gonna do part two of the West Memphis Three, and we'll find out how the hell we even ended up where we ended up. How did they even need a documentary team

to come on down there and check all that out? We'll talk all about it and more patreon.com Slash crime in sports and not only that you get a shout out at the end of the show Jimmy will mispronounce your name horribly probably but he wants to get it right. That's the important part So that's that said I think it's time for the disclaimer It's a comedy show everybody. This is. It's a comedy show. Everything is true. That's the sad and sick part is that we unfortunately none of this is made up for any kind of comedic effect or to make it more entertaining or interesting or anything like that.

You don't have to. These stories are absolutely insane and you might say well how the hell do you make true crime and comedy go together? I think it's pretty easy actually. To me it makes it more digestible. It's a little easier to take than somebody, and then her head was removed from her body. That's a little creepy to me.

And also, there's another way you do it, and this is what we do here, is we don't make fun of the victims or the victims' families. Why, James? Because we're assholes. But? But we're not scumbags.

See how that works? Deal. It's super easy to do there So if you think that that sounds like a good time to you and you know you want to hear a crazy story This is for you if you think that true crime and comedy should never ever go together You might not like the show but no complaining later because we warned you that said I think it's time to sit back everybody Let's all clear the lungs. What do you say here arms to the sky and let's all shout? Give me Let's do this everybody go let's go on a trip shall we let's do it. We're going to Minnesota We like Minnesota a lot we really really do. This is Blooming Prairie, Minnesota

Where we've never done a show out in the prairie there. We mainly stick to Minneapolis, but hey It's all right. This is in southern, Minnesota It's about an hour and 20 minutes to Minneapolis and also an hour 20 minutes to our last Minnesota episode Which was in Woodbury, Minnesota that That was episode 516, The Office Stalker. I remember that was freaking, that was freaky weird story there. This is freaky weird. This is in Steele County,

Steele with an E on the end of it there. Steele County next to it. It's also a little bit of this town edges over into Dodge County as well. So, a couple of counties. Area code 507. The motto here, this is, over into Dodge County as well. So, couple of counties. Area code 507. The motto here, this is, you are really, really,

really optimistic motto. A great place to spend the next 100 years. Wow, I mean, shit, if you got it in you, sure. You got it in for 100 years. 100 years, well you're gonna be there for 100 years, apparently, if you move there. That's a very optimistic motto. History of this town.

1868 it started. They took the name of the surrounding Blooming Prairie township. And they were like, let's just knock the township off. Very creative people. Very creative. Now before prohibition came into effect here. Very creative. Now before prohibition came into effect here, Blooming Prairie's presence near the intersection of all these counties made it a big time place to stop and buy alcohol. Oh.

Yeah, in 1917, Steel County was the only one of the four around it, Mower, Freeborn, Dodge, and Steel to have alcohol for sale. So you could both own and consume alcohol, but you could also sell it there too. So that was a big deal. So during the Prohibition Act, several tunnels were dug under the businesses on Main Street. They tunneled under Main Street for the purpose of making moonshine and being able to move it back and forth without being seen on the surface, which is pretty goddamn funny.

Because you picture that in Chicago, there's things. In New York, it's always an old place to run. They snuck the liquor in. You don't think of it in Blooming Prairie, Minnesota, of like, let's dig a hole under Main Street so we can get the rum out. Reviews of this town here, there are only three reviews and they're all five stars, which is crazy. We've never seen that before. So people seem to really like it here.

Let's find out. Five stars, I really like Blooming Prairie because all the people are kind and there's a very strong sense of community. Everyone looks out for one another. It is a small town, but they have everything you need. Okay. Everything, there's not a lot of community. Everyone looks out for one another. It is a small town but they have everything you need. Okay. Everything. There's not a lot of people. For a hundred years evidently. All you're going to need for the next hundred years everybody. Five stars. I like living

here. I know everyone and everyone knows me. All right. It is a super friendly town where if something is happening then everyone will find find out fast gossip. In other words, that's what that says to me. And then five stars, amazing little town with lots to offer. There's a park, a small pool, smaller class sizes, which means more one-on-one time with your children. There's even a small gym, which is helpful. All right. To get more kids. Again, I don't know what there's, There's even a small gym, which is helpful Yeah, all right people Yeah, I don't know what there's I guess the school

Small pool smaller class, I guess I guess so I guess the teacher gets to spend more time with their kids I don't know population here 2074 Great, that's a tiny town. That was really little here more females and males by a pretty decent amount actually That was really little here. More females than males by a pretty decent amount actually. Median age is just about around the national average. It's usually about 37 here. It's 36 and a half.

About 50-50 married, just like kind of your typical suburb type of a place. Less people are single with children. More married with children type of people here. That's the type of place this is and the burbs out here. Race of this town, 92.8% white. 0.3% black, 6.7% Hispanic, and 0.2% tour of war races. So it's Minnesota.

I mean, outside of Minneapolis. It's small town, southern Minnesota. Very religious here. 72.3% of the people here are religious, which is... Regularly. That's like Utah numbers. That's really high. And most of the highest here is Lutheran, of course.

It's gonna be Lutheran, if you've seen Drop Dead Gorgeous, the Lutheran, the Girls Lutheran Gun Club, or whatever they had there. It's all that stuff. The unemployment rate here is about the national average. It's pretty close. It's right around a little under five percent median household income here. Rest of the country. It's about 69,000 here. It is 57,625. So a little bit lower than the national average. And that's not great. But cost of living is also lower. So I think it works out here.

Cost of living, 100 is regular. Here it's 83. So a little bit lower. Median home cost here, $212,800, which is lower. This is why everybody loves it. Yeah, it's cheap. It's nice. I mean, and it's like an hour 20 from Minneapolis.

So if you really, really wanted to live here and work in Minneapolis, you could. Easy. You could. I mean, I understand in the Midwest, I don't know if that's really a desirable commute, If you really, really wanted to live here and work in Minneapolis, you could. Easy. You could. I mean, I understand in the Midwest, I don't know if that's really a desirable commute, but in a lot of places, that's nothing an hour 20. I mean, if you live in New York or California or something, Florida or Atlanta, it takes

you an hour 20 to get to work. That's so you can make the money so you're going to do it. Why not, right? So anyway, we've convinced you. We've already, we've got you locked in. We know that what you're doing right now You're about to head over and find a place to live in Blooming Prairie, Minnesota Well, this is what you want. We're one step ahead of everybody we have for you the Blooming Prairie, Minnesota real estate report

Okay, your average two bedroom rental here goes for $990, which is about $300 under the national average. That's not bad at all. Here's a four bedroom, three bath, 1710 square foot house, which sounds great. It's not bad. Yeah. Not bad. I mean, enough. I got some kids or something here. Yep, there's room. But the problem is, this house looks like

it's an abandoned murder shed. It's terrifying looking. Yeah, the paint's peeling off, there's shit overgrown. It looks like definitely there's a body or something bad happened there. It's not, on Zillow on the listing, they highlight the quote, hardwood floors. But the hardwood floors are plywood.

What they mean is hardwood floors. Yeah, hardwood floors. Very funny farmers here. But it's plywood, it's shit. Somebody also wrote, there's a door in the house where someone wrote, beware of the ghost on it. Oh boy. There's shit like growing on the front of the house.

This place is terrifying. It's a terrifying horror house. If you wanted to make like a haunted house for Halloween or something, that'd be nice. And they want you to know, but if they miss you, they wrote it on the door. They wrote it on the door, just in case. $84,900 for this house.

Wow. And I wouldn't put anything past it. I'm sure there's probably a ghost doing all sorts of shit in there. You know what? You walk in, it's two ghosts doing it doggy style on the fucking couch. You're like, oh God. I love it. It's a weird looking house. Here's a four bedroom, two bath, 2160 square foot house. Really boring, really basic. The kitchen was recently redone, you could tell. Everything else is like 2004 style in there. It's just not anything exciting.

You'd say, tell me about your new house. She'd go, that's got four walls and a roof. You know, pretty, pretty dull. There's nothing else to write home about here. 199,900900 though. $2,160 square feet in four bedrooms for under $200 grand. That's not bad. You've got some kids and you need bedrooms for them. That's not, that's going to be a good place to do it. Here's a three bedroom, two bath, 1,734 square feet. This house is a goddamn shame because it's built in 1890. Which means it's probably got some cool original shit that is completely

stripped away. Everything is gray and white and HGTV four years ago. They have gray laminate floors. Those fake wood floors they have. That house probably has amazing original hardwood floors and they're like, let's put laminate over it. Probably, yeah. We don't wanna buff anything, so.

Just buff it, fine. Let's do that. Oh, they're not into buffing, they're into that. So, that house, 289,900 bucks. And that's a redone kind of new house. So, that's only 1,700 square feet. There isn't a lot of big houses here. There's not a lot of mansions in this area. This is kinda. It's all 2,000 square feet. There isn't a lot of like big houses here.

There's not a lot of like mansions in this area. This is kind of- It's all 2000 square feet-ish. Yeah. And three bedroom, two bath. I feel like that's why everybody gets along, maybe in this town. Maybe everybody gets along because there's not like-

There's no haves and have nots. Those rich assholes in that neighborhood. They don't have that. It's just everybody has some, you know what I mean? Everybody haves a little. Yeah, no one's starving, no one is fucking driving around a Ferrari, everybody kind of feels like they're in the same

socioeconomic area, that could help. Things to do here, there's only one thing to do that we could find here, and it's the old fashioned Fourth of July. Old fashioned. None of this newfangled Fourth of July bullshit. I don't know why. The men sit and the women make us a grill

What's more old no matter what the 4th of July is fireworks, which are very old-fashioned They've been around since the 1800s and what? Fashion yeah sitting around that's pretty parades again There's really nothing Parades again very old-fashioned. I know there's really nothing of the new school. I don't know but come on out to this it's their 49th annual old-fashioned 4th of July and There's a 5k race got to be in that there's a street dance Okay at J&H liquors Yeah, I mean you got to get drunk before you dance. That's obvious. That's where you smile the most I don't know if it's in the liquor store

Maybe like in the in the white wine aisle or if it's in like out front of the place. Yeah, there's a volleyball tournament after that also a tractor pull This is a really there's a lot going on here summertime fair is what this is is what this is. Beer gardens, bounce house, you know, like the pioneers did on the 4th of July. They had a bounce house with a video game trailer, you know, like the old fashioned 4th of July. None of this new bullshit. Yeah, that's what they had back in the day,

video game trailers when they wanted to celebrate the birth of our nation. Generator powered TV is in 1776. Oh, it was there. Cornhole tournament, which obviously dates back. 1777, yeah. Dates way back. George Washington was the foremost cornhole

in the entire country back in the day. We all know that. There's a chicken fry at BP Serviceman's Club. What? At the gas station? Chicken fry over at the gas station. I assure you, gas station chicken is a bad idea. We've told you exactly how bad of an idea that is.

Not a good idea. A kids pedal tractor pull obviously. A family youth dance with mobile DJ. You know, just like the old pioneers used to do on the 4th of July. Youth Dance, an antique tractor show, a beer garden at City Park, no outside alcohol allowed. You have to buy it from them. Several beer gardens. I love them. Several of those.

First Lutheran Church music in Gazebo and beer garden. First Lutheran Church music and Beer Garden. DJ on the lot behind J&H Liquors. I just picture, this poor bastard's in a parking lot behind a liquor store. I picture nobody there, just a guy standing in front of his turntables going, I set up for this. The poor bastard, J or L, has people behind him

making music and people in front dancing. Poor bastard can't sell anything. That's the only way he sells any liquor, bro. Maybe so. They come in and get drunk. Food trucks, bounce house, kids races, pony rides, gotta have those. A dunk tank, again, just like the pioneers used to do. Then there's a parade and then live entertainment gets there.

Oh, here we go. Right after the parade. Travis Thamert. Mamert? Thamert. T-H-A-M-E-R-T. Travis Thamert. I don't think he's going to make it with that name.

Thamert? No. You've got to change that shit. Go with your middle name, Travis. Travis John. Travis Paul. Something other than this. Something. You know, it's something like that here. This will be at the State School Orphanage Museum. Yeah.

Where all the hot gigs take place. The State School Orphanage Museum. See how bad the orphans used to live. Here's a picture of an actual bastard. It's well they have they have a this is the fucked up part too. They have tours of historic areas and shit like that. They basically play old timey orphanage for the day. They have kids. Look at this. What?

Thank you, sir. I have another. They have children dress up in time period clothes. An old timey orphan time period. And pretend to be. Orphans. Unwanted. And they have like scripts in their hands to say like their tragic life and my mother died of cholera

and my father died in an explosion. Just didn't want me. At the molasses factory. And my dad didn't have mammaries to feed me. He couldn't feed me. So that's how that goes. There's a screening of a 1930 film, and also a genealogy research assistant

will be there to help you. See if you're a bastard too. From the orphanage, yeah. See if you ever started out there. Crime rate in this town, what we are interested in here, is very low. Property crime is about one quarter of the national average. Great. So very low, and then violent about one quarter of the national average. Great.

So very low. And then violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course assault. The Mount Rushmore of all crime is about one third of the national average. Wow. So this place is pretty safe, I gotta say. Wow, everybody just doing well

and being nice to each other. Nobody's angry that they're, someone else is much richer than them. I think that's what it is. So. Minnesota nice as fuck. I think that's what it is. Minnesota nice as fuck. Let's talk about some murder here. Okay.

Oh my goodness, do we have some crazy shit to get into. All right. All right. Have to give credit to the Atavist Magazine, atavist.com. An article by John Rosengren. Really good article. Really comprehensive, put everything together and got a lot of information out of it that was available other places and they kind of really made it an easier

place to find some of the core of the story. So good job. Centrally located. Got to give credit where credit's due here. Let's talk about some people, shall we? All right. All right. Dave Reese here.

R-I-E-S-S. There's some places it's spelled R-E-I, but it's R-I-E is what I've seen in all the legal things here. Yeah, Dave Reese, he's born in Rochester, Minnesota, which is just off to the east of where we are here in Blooming Prairie. He's born on April 24th, 1963, and kinda grew up in Rochester.

He went to Mayo High School, which I believe is all that Mayo shit is the Mayo Clinic and all that kind of shit. Oh, is that right? Yes, yeah, that was, you really, you dug deep for that one, Jim. Yeah, yeah, but is that real? Yeah, the Mayo Clinic is from Minnesota.

The person? Oh, I didn't know that was a person. I don't know either. I did they name it Mayo I don't know if they're just really excited about mayonnaise up there or not Just name everything after fucking best foods After governor Hellman if you remember from back in the day So he's the in the class of 1981 at Mayo High School, known as a real prankster, old Dave. Was he?

A little cut up there. Yes, kind of a fun loving kind of a guy here. So he enlists in the Navy when he graduates. Which, 81, not a bad time to enlist in the Navy. Vietnam's over, we're not real into any big wars at this point. That is a good one, 81 to 85, that's a solid service year. That's not bad, that's not bad.

No problem. I think Grenada might have been in there or something, but other than that, you're good. You're pretty good here. So he's stationed in San Diego also, so not too shabby there. Get the fuck out, Jesus. Good decision there.

He's doing that, he puts the park away and goes down to San Diego to look at some bikinis. So there's a friend of his named Denny, so we got Dave and Denny here, and Denny describes meeting Dave and he said that they became friends because I guess Dave was a friend of a friend and somebody offered him the very attractive offer of, hey, would you like to go over to this guy's house who you don't know and lay some carpet for him as a favor today? And Dave said, sure.

Like a more unattractive offer, I don't think, could be put on the table. He's got one of those claws with the padded thing you throw your knee into? I guess so. I don't even know if he has that or if it's just like a carpet laying party. Do you call that a carpet stretcher or some shit like that? Yeah, those things that you put on your knees and pull them out, I guess.

I don't fucking know. I've seen people lay carpets without that shit though. They just put them down. Really? Fuck yeah, they're lazy. Oh, you just leave it wrinkly? We don't know what the hell kind of fucking... I don't know how this guy's living his life this we don't even it's not Dave or Denny. It's Dave and Denny's friend

So anyway that Dave agreed to come over and do this So, you know, he's a nice guy right away No shit cuz I'd laugh right in your face if you said you want to go to a stranger's house to lay carpet No, thank you Neighbors house and you know what that sounds neighbor's house and. You know what that sounds like? That sounds like a job is what that sounds like. Going to a stranger's house to do work sounds like a job to me.

Doesn't that come with the carpet? Why are you buying it sans installation? Installation. Because it's cheap, that's what I mean. I guess. Cheap, cheap, cheap. And this is when he's young too, so I don't know if this is some 24 year old guy

putting his carpet down and doesn't have enough money or whatever the deal is. Or if he's putting it in because he's soiled it and he wants to hang onto his security deposit. That's possible. So anyway, Dave and Denny got talking about fishing, which they're both real into fishing, and they become very good friends.

And if you judge all of Minnesota off grumpy old men, as I do, everybody does nothing but try to get walleye all the time and musky. That's all, it's your whole point of your life. Sure, you guys work and you go to school and you do things, but it's really just to get to fishing time, isn't it? Well, there's some bluegill around there too, but. Well, that and chasing around hot old ladies,

I believe, is what you guys do over there. Eight hours of work and then fill the rest of the time chasing skirt and fishing. Chasing old skirt and fishing, that's what you're doing. Quite the lifestyle I have up there. So Dave and Denny ended up renting a trailer home right on the Mississippi River. And they used that as a, not to live in,

but as a base camp for their fishing. Hell yeah. Yeah, they literally rented a fishing trailer. That's how much they like to fish. That's incredible. That's quite the life they're putting together here. They entered competitions too, fishing competitions, and actually won some money and were on ESPN at one point

in one of their fishing tournaments in the 80s, which is pretty cool. ESPN in the 80s on a weekend from about 7 a.m. to noon, it was nothing but fishing. There was the guy with that fucking, that blonde bowl cut there. The hell was his name? It was Jimmy something, I can't remember.

It was Jimmy something. But he catch, he go, that's a Nass fish right there. Nass fish, and my dad would say that shit all the time. That's a Nass fish every time you see any kind of fish as a joke. He go, that's a Nass fish right there. Every single time. That's a nice fish every time you see any kind of fish as a joke. Here you go. That's a nice fish right there. Every single time. Is it Jimmy Houston? Jimmy Houston! There you go. Jimmy Houston with his fucking bowl cut. His big stupid sunglasses.

Yeah, and that's a nice fish. That's a nice fish. Every time. That's a nice fish. No matter what. The fish could have had one fucking eye and an arrow sticking in it he would have said that's a nice fish right there. Loved fish. Somebody speared this one years ago. Oh that's a nice, that's a tough and a nice fish I'll tell you what. So they're doing good.

Denny said there was a lot of laughter in that boat. Being out there it didn't take a whole lot to get him laughing. He was just a happy guy. Dave's just a big happy guy. That's what he's known as here. Now during this time when he's laying carpet and fucking pulling fish out of lakes and rivers and shit. It's not even a euphemism. He's really doing it. He's really doing it. That's what I mean. This is not, hey, my man's laying carpet. He meets a young lady that he's quite smitten with.

He meets a young lady named Lois Whitty, W-I-T-T-E, Lois. Lois has some older sisters named Kim and Cindy, and they'll come into the story later on too, so you need to know that. They get married on September 17th, 1982. He's 19, she's 20. So this guy. Oh, got some older gal chasing that old skirt.

The old skirt right there. See, Minnesota, this is what happens. What does he do? Fish and chase older women. Just what I said, man, I'm telling you. We nailed it. Nailing it, yeah. Nailed it. So yeah, he and Lois here, I said, man, I'm telling you. We nailed it. Nailed it, yeah. Nailed it, so yeah, he and Lois here, I guess, he's got quite the life.

He's 19 years old, he's got a fishing trailer, he's laying carpet, he's got a wife already. Man. That's so much money. He's moving fast here. Lois is also from Rochester here. Five kids in her family. She's got, like we said that she's got two older sisters She's the fourth of five children. So kind of a middle lower child. I guess you'd call that

Yeah, her father was an I an engineer at IBM Her mother is a bit of a mess. She's got some there's some stuff floating around in her family Obviously and we'll find out later on her mother's a hoarder really bad. Oh, boy. Really, really, really bad. Like the house is destroyed. Lois never had a friend over the house because she was so embarrassed by it.

Unlivable. Like none of the kids could bring people over the house or anything like that. They never had company, they never had anything because her mother was a hoarder. The whole house was taken over. I'd never heard of it until the show. I mean, obviously, it had to have been a thing a hundred years ago

But I've heard of like people that and I remember because I remember hearing about the Collier brothers Yeah, and I knew there was people like that or I was like, oh there's these people and they just keep a bunch of shit And then there's dead cats everywhere and like yeah, and then the TV shows again those people And there's so many of them though. There's so many. I'll show you a new one every week. It's so fucking sad, you know what I mean? It's so sad and we don't know the,

there's always, and on Hoarders they'll always find the trigger like, oh she was fine and then her son was hit by a Mack truck and they're like okay, well then she started collecting things and then it got weird. There's always some trigger to it. Yeah, she started collecting mementos that reminded her grandmother that spontaneously combusted.

That's what I mean. So there we don't know what her mother's trigger is or what happened or what tragedy happened, but it was whatever happened. It wasn't while Lois was around. So she never found out what the hell caused her mother's problems. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America, problems. A special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. Megan Stoner was a young, passionate Republican and a self-proclaimed advocate for mental health, but behind her public persona lurked a master of deception. I'm Tiffany Reiss, host of Something Was Wrong.

In Season 22, we're diving into the twisted world of a con artist who's been allegedly scamming and making false claims for over a decade. From the U.S. to Canada, Megan Stoner has left a trail of devastation for her victims. But after a brief period of incarceration, she's now back out on the streets. And although she's free now, we're actively working with law enforcement to further justice for the victims of her alleged crimes. This isn't just another true crime story. It's a wake-up call about trust, deception,

and the power of community to fight back. Follow Something Was Wrong on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Something Was Wrong Season 22 ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus. But Lois ended up leaving high school after the 11th grade. She dropped out. It's a weird time to quit.

Strange thing after the 11th grade. So I guess she figured it's not working out or I don't know. If you have a home life like that, who knows what was going on in her brain here so following the wedding in 82 she and Dave have three kids in four years That's fast. Wow. They are pumping fucking kids. They talk about so he is 23 and They talk about so he is 23 and she's 24 and they got three kids a fishing trailer a fucking Marriage all this that's a lot of responsibility at that age and you don't have a kid every time you fuck these they do They do I think they have a kid every time they fuck these two are

Man, the cold gets those sperm swimming. You know what I mean? That's how it works. That's fascinating. This will swim slower, not here. No, no, no, no. When guys have problems with that, they put a fucking cooling, they get a cooling underwear. Really? Yes, because it makes your sperm work better.

Really? Yeah, the heat makes them lethargic. Like salmon. Yeah, so that's why they'll tell you wear boxer shorts, don't wear anything that keeps your balls tight to your body because that'll keep the heat in and keep your sperm dying. Really?

Yeah, so I think this guy's cold environment and loose pants is the best explanation I can have for three kids in four years. I didn't know that. Yeah, I heard, I, what the fuck, it was a sitcom where somebody was trying to get somebody pregnant and that was one of the things they tried. I don't remember what it was. They would sit on peas all the time. I remember there was a motor in his underwear is all I can remember out of the thing and that was a joke as they kept hearing the motor.

It's like no nothing's going on. I can't remember what it was. So that's a lot of kids. They had a boy, a girl and then a boy again. Bang bang bang. Now her youngest boy said she was caring about Lois. She was caring, always put herself second and us kids first. Sure, so you gotta do it.

Not bad, yeah. So Dave finishes his stint in the Navy, because remember he's in the Navy this whole fucking time. Yeah, wow. He was in Guam after a while, so he was stationed well far away from his family here. And once he gets done with that, the whole family moves back to Rochester.

So I think they ended up having those kids in San Diego and all that stuff. So Dave gets a job at Crenlo, which is a manufacturer of metal equipment. That sounds fun. Sounds like a place that does that. It really does. He drove a forklift.

Awesome. So that's fun, that's cool. It really does. He drove a forklift. Awesome. So, that's fun. That's cool. That's cool. Yeah. He eventually opened a small bait shop called The Bait Box. There you go.

He has a real love of fishing and what bait goes for what. He's a real expert angler. Guys that really, really know what they're doing with that they know like oh well it's it's fucking July and you're over here so you need this exact worm they don't like those they like these. You don't go fishing after 10 a.m. Oh Jesus what do you fucking well until sunset until sunset then you get back out there once you know they're getting the flies off the top of the water at that point so. At 10 a.m. you're just going to drink buddy. Yeah, you're just dicking off at 10 a.m. here. So yeah, they do that.

The bait box he opens where he sells live bait and fishing tackle. That's what he's doing. Lois ran a daycare center out of their home, which they had an above ground swimming pool in the backyard and you know, the kids I guess would swim in there and all that kind of shit.

So that's what they're doing, which I guess if you have three kids that are that close in age and that young, it's a great idea to start a fucking daycare. Unless other people drop their kids too. It's already a daycare. Yeah. You're like, I'm sorry.

Just bring strangers' kids too. Might as well drop, throw them in the fucking mix, who cares? So in 2005, they moved to Blooming Prairie. And this is, they move here for a specific reason. So Dave could pursue his dream. Of? His dream, and his dream is much like our dreams, Jimmy.

We've had many long conversations where we've drove from like city to city to do shows. Your dreams, your ambitions, and things like your desires, your deepest inner desires come out. We all, including Dave, have a dream of opening a wax worm farm. That's been our, I know that's our dream. Hold on.

Yes, wax worm farm, breeding wax worms. Oh, those are, like these are real worms. Worms, yeah, they're just a type of worm, a specific type of worm that's very good for fishing. Those are the ones that the fish really like. That's they like. That's that's how specific he is about it So he moves here to his his dream is to open a wax worm farm That's awesome. What year is this 80? Oh, this is 2005. Oh, okay That's all it. I got worms. I got worms. I got

Oh, okay. All right. That's all it. I got worms. I got worms. I got Dumb and jumber joke wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah, totally. So it's maybe there's that or maybe I Don't know you could sell them on the internet at that point. Yeah, you know that's Do it so their home is out in the country a mile It's a two eighteen on 218 is the road, and they say you pass six massive grain bins that sit on the edge of town, and then go another mile, and you'll find their house. Small town directions.

And their wax work far. You got six, no, six of them, make sure you count. Six, yeah, you pass five, buddy, you've gone too far. But that, you get to the edge of town, which you're supposed to know what that is. And then there's six of those. Now there's a couple in town, so you want to make sure those six pass the edge of town. And then you're, okay, more funny farm thing.

Make a left where the old Johnson barn used to be. So Dave is known throughout the land as a swell fella, let's just say. Yeah. Known as a good guy. Everybody in Blooming Prairie tells you Dave is just a cat's meow. Waxworm and some bitch.

You need waxworms, you need this. They said he's quick with a tip on a fishing spot. Oh. Good with that stuff. He has, this isn't by the way just a wax worm business where he does everything himself. He has employees. This is an operation. Absolutely.

They said that all his employees say he's very generous. He's not cheap. He's not stingy. He likes to tell stories, be silly and make up funny songs and laugh his ass off. He's just a big goofy guy. Love him. And he's happy. He's fucking, he's making worms.

I mean that's his, so he can fish with them. That's his ambition. He's happy. Yeah, he's making worms fuck for Christ's sake. It's great. He's got a, we've got kind of a big husky Minnesota frame on him. You keep those cold winters out. So everybody said though, you couldn't be around Dave for a long time without laughing

because he was just a laugher and his laugh would make you laugh because he's just a happy guy. And Lois is also considered a mighty fine lady around town, a cool lady, a nice lady. They said around town the consensus was, this is from that article, Lois was nice. She kept a clean house, she could be thought, don't say whether she's gregarious, funny, I'll tell you what about her, she keeps a clean house that one. She knows how to operate a mop, I'll tell you. Something else boy, her vacuum gets a lot of use.

She could be thoughtful, giving some friends who liked horses a set of tumblers frosted with equine figures. So she's just a nice lady. There's a couple named Tess and Rod Coaster, Koster, K-O-S-T-E-R. They invited Lois and Dave to their lake house along with another couple and they had a good time. They said Lois had brought steaks with her for dinner and they got up the next morning and she's making breakfast for everybody So good people. Yeah is what they're getting at here now February 16 2006

They have some seriously bad luck this family here The fire destroys their home No, their whole house burns to the fucking ground. They lost everything, including their cats. Everything. So it sucks. No one was hurt in the fire. Everybody gets out except for the cats.

And the worms are in another building, though, by the way. So the worms are alive. Those wax worms, they'll melt to nothing, obviously. And they turn right back into a worm. Yeah, but in a clump, it's really tough, rock hard. So. In actual, those gummy worms. Yeah, yeah.

The cause of this, they decide, may have been, it wasn't arson or anything like that, they thought it might have been some faulty wiring, and Dave did the wiring. So, Dave feels terrible about this. He feels like he fucking, his family is homeless because he's an idiot and he didn't do something right. So he feels really fucking bad. And so the, everyone in town felt bad for them as well. So they all took up a collection for him, for the family. It's really nice.

A neighbor here, or this is the executive director of the Blooming Prairie Chamber of Commerce said that's something our community does for people, whether they know them or not. Apparently very nice people here. Minnesota nice. That's it right there. So they rebuilt their house and moved back in here. It's three bedroom, two bath and Lois same lot. Well, yeah, they just rebuilt the same house because they have the worm

farm up front there too. Lois set up a daycare center facility there as well. So now she did that. All the parents said she was great. They dropped the kids off. A lot of times she'd have hot sandwich like an egg sandwich for them there to the parents not even for the kids in the morning on the word You drop your kid off. She's like want to bake an egg and cheese on a hard roll. He's like Yeah, I guess so fuck. Yeah, why not? Leave your kid I just made you $20 worth of sand That's what I mean for free do you add an extra20 at the end of the week for sandwiches or what? Because that's fucking awesome though.

Truly, yeah. How great is that? I don't even care how you treat the kids. I get fucking sandwiches. Beat them if you want. I don't give a shit. Jesus, legit. Don't let them get in the way of making those sandwiches.

Let's just say that. Whatever you have to do, keep them away from you. I want sandwiches. So that's obviously, that'll get you some repeat customers. I would say Once her children now they move out. They have kids of their own. They become grandparents Wow, they're gonna have five grandkids here. Oh boy, and they said Lois just Spoils those grandkids like crazy. And that's what happens. Grandparents are like that. Lois would buy them cell phones, ATVs.

They could ride around the property. That's more than spoiling, James. That's fun. That's a fun fucking grandma. That's the greatest. When they come over, they have ATVs to ride around and shit. She's trying to make it so the grandkids want to come over and hang out at the house and she can see it That's awesome. That's not giving them an ice cream when mom says no she bought him ATVs

She bought him a fucking ice cream truck at that point So She would do all of this she joined a women's bowling league at Bunkies Which is a four-lane bowling alley on Main Street. That is a very small bowling alley. It's a lot of, sounds like a lot of weight on that one here. That's rough. Jesus Christ.

She would travel to tournaments around the state with a group of about three dozen women, bowling tournaments. 36 gals. Oh yeah, that's right, man. That's it. The Chamber of Commerce lady said she was fun-loving She had the cutest smile meaning Lois did so she's a good cook Everybody knows that a couple times a week. She would bring lunch over to the five guys who worked at the worm farm

She just come out got lunch for you guys. She would bring out like big hunks of lasagna and shit like that. Here you go Fuck yeah, that sounds great. She knows the path to friendship leads from the belly. If you give me food, I'm going to have a very hard time not liking you. That's the thing. Especially if it's good food. If you lead with food, especially, that's the thing. If you lead with food, we're going to be friends probably.

Even if I don't like you, will eat you I do like food I don't know many people that I've that have been in my life that brought me food that I was like that guy's a piece of shit yeah fucking fuck him in his food look at this asshole in his lasagna thanks a lot all right with me I don't know how much I want Minnesota lasagna but I'm sure it's the effort that matters. You know what I mean? Probably American beauty noodles. Probably. Yeah.

I don't think she's getting to check out here, but that's fine. It's still, it's the effort that counts. Yeah, she did it. Yeah. It's the effort. So she stopped running the daycare around 2014 and she would help out with the farm kind of here and there, the worm farm and do all that. But the worm farm became a lucrative business.

They're actually they're selling mad worms here. The staff made weekly deliveries to Walmart, quick trip bait shops throughout the area. They're selling them to fucking Walmart. I mean, I don't know what, what's the gestation period of worms that you can move that many. You can't move. They don't die fast. They don't die fast.

They last a long time worms. They last weeks and weeks and weeks. How fast do they make new worms? I don't know. Good question. I mean, quick enough to make a business out of it. You gotta have billions of worms, right? I would say that's why it's a whole farm, I think.

A whole worm operation. You can't just have one bucket there with going, well, they're working on it. You know, when you buy bait, it's like a scoop of dirt and it's just got worms in it. How do they know how many are in there? I think they pick the worms out and just put them in the dirt.

Yeah, I don't think they scoop the dirt. And they just bury themselves? Yeah, then they bury themselves in the dirt. Yeah, that's. I guess that makes sense. It's not, there's usually about a dozen per scoop, so. There's a guy with an ice cream scoop who's like, I don't know, it's got dirt and worms in there somewhere.

Meanwhile, every time it's always 12, you're like, man, they're good. Fuck they're good. So in addition to the local places, they also delivered bait throughout Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa. So they were really doing that. They also shipped boxes of wax worms.

Apparently wax worms are an excellent bait for panfish everywhere. Anywhere there's panfish, that's where wax worms are. So see, they're sending them out all over the place. And winter was their biggest and busiest time, actually, because there's a really high demand for these type of worms for ice fishing apparently. Okay. So Dave's friend said of the farm quote that place was a money-making machine. If you said you can you make a great living off

worms I'd say of course not. I mean you'd probably be alright. Yeah but you picture like the worm guy. And it's probably some like hunched over guy that goes out with a bucket in the morning and a little shovel and picks him out. No, this is an operation. This is a whole deal. I didn't realize that.

So yeah, he treats his employees well. I guess these are young guys he hires, guys in their early 20s and that kind of thing. And they all look up to him. And they think he's a nice guy. He would give them a little extra money here and there. Here's 20 bucks, go put gas in your truck or something like that. Nice guy, take them fishing just to be camaraderie.

Gotta check if these things work. Do it. His friend Denny said he was kind to people he didn't even know. That's nice. Now their lifestyle, Lois and Dave, they have a fun little lifestyle. They do. Remember these BP Servicemen's Club? I remember that. I don't think it's a gas station.

I think it's something else because Lois and Dave often ate dinner at these Servicemen's Club. I think it's like a naval thing. It's for like ex-Navy people. He volunteered on the board there and looked after the books as well Okay, he's doing that. He actually discovered someone was embezzling funds and Stopped them from doing it and turned him in and all this shit. So Dave's a very upstanding guy. That's the thing here He also campaigned for the club to start selling pull tabs

To raise money which are like lottery tickets basically Sure are. They're little tabs you pull them in and match a three you win. That's it. He pushed it through. He's a good bowler. He likes pool better than bowling though. He likes to shoot pool at the pizza seller or the back. This J&H Liquors is an enigma or the back room of J&H liquors is a an enigma or the back room of J&H liquors they've got one this is a liquor store with a pool table in the back room a DJ in the parking lot and street dancing out from this place is fucking crazy the craziest liquor store in town man is this a liquor store you can actually do you could you buy that's a bar? I guess J&H Liquors what they call it a fucking liquor store. It's weird so he'd go there have a few beers he drank Miller Lite and he'd hang out around the pool table and

you know bullshit with the other pudgy fishermen I would assume. Sure yeah. They'd end up back at the worm farm a lot of times and they'd hang out in his office. Dave had a good stereo in there. They'd be drinking Miller lights, talking about fish and worms. Oh boy. And that shot he just hit on the pool table. We are absolutely right to basically say whatever lifestyle Dumb and Dumber, fucking grumpy old men had, that's pretty much how people live. Even if they're not 75 apparently. Because he's in his 50s at this point, he's doing this. On Sundays, the group would gather in some other guy's

house, which was basically a shed behind his house that he turned into a TV room, turned into a little cave there, and they'd watch the Vikings game, of course, on the big screen TV, and Lois usually, she'd send along a cake or deviled eggs or something that she'd make. This is so folksy. This is so Midwestern.

What a great life it is too. Wholesome and fun. It is and that the lady from the Chamber of Commerce said, you know, Lois seemed like a real regular gal. She said she was funny. She was cute. They said she quote, she was a little round, blonde hair, kind of piercing eyes.

They were both fun. Dave was really nice and witty. Lois was just bubbly. So that's who we're dealing with here. We're dealing with a couple who everybody seems to like. And that's how you want to be described, by the way. A little round. A little round.

A little round. Feels very common. So they said there's never any problems there. There's never, cops are never called to the wax farm, the wax worm farm or anything like that. They said no domestic violence or no giant blow ups of holy shit, these two are gonna kill each other out here. Nothing like that.

You know, she would, she'd go out fucking bowling and he'd do his serviceman's club stuff and they would hang out and they'd go boating or fishing or hung out with Tess Rodkoster or whatever, that was their day. So 2018 comes around here. Now Thursday, March 8th, 2018, let's talk about. Dave's friends saw him at the old J&H Liquors, obviously, shootin' some pool, havin' some Miller Lights on Thursday evening, March 8th,

and they're bullshittin', shot some pool, and we're talkin' about, are the Vikings gonna suck next season, that's what they were talkin' about. And they were saying that Dave and Lois were gonna go to Wisconsin to see their grandson play in a basketball tournament. That's what the plans were. So totally nothing crazy going on here.

So that's Thursday, March 8th. Now, Monday, March 12th, after this weekend, Lois stops by the worm farms office They said instead of usually like she would greet the workers real warmly and how you had everything go You have a nice weekend. Did you did your kid have that thing that you're talking about all that kind of shit? They said instead she came in and kept her head down and all she said is Dave's not feeling good I've got to take care of him. And then they didn't see Dave or her Tuesday or Wednesday of that week.

Okay. So they, they know how to run the worm farm. I guess it can run whether Dave's there or not. So then on Thursday she came back down to the office and they're like, Hey, how's Dave? You know, Jesus, he's three days. We haven't seen Dave. He hasn't even walked out to the worm farm. This is crazy. He's going to have worm withdrawals here. So she said, no, how's Dave? You know, Jesus, he's three days. We haven't seen Dave. He hasn't even walked out to the worm farm. This is crazy. He's gonna have worm withdrawals here. So she said, no, he's still sick. She goes, we have an appointment.

I'm taking him to the doctor tomorrow because he just can't kick this thing. Yeah. So they were like, that's weird. The employees thought it was really weird that he was doing this, but they also knew that Dave had a long history of stomach troubles, different problems. So they thought maybe something coming to...

Miller Lite will do that to you after a while. Miller Lite in Minnesota, Lausanne, he'll get you. That'll get you. But they didn't want to bother him because they thought maybe he's really sick, but they just kind of left him alone. They said that Lois would sit at the desk in the office at his desk and stare out the window and all that. They said at one point she put her head in her hands and elbows on her knees like you

do in here. Exhausted. Like I do at the end of every day. Oh God, why? How did I get here and how do I get away from it? I've got so much to do and no time to do it in. Oh God. One of the employees said are you okay? And she said yeah fine. I didn't sleep good last night

So yeah, that's um, that's kind of how that goes and this goes into the next week Really the next week Lois says that tells the guys that he's still sick But the doctor cleared him to compete in the season opener of the Cabela's Masters Walleye Circuit, a fishing competition. That is a big, dude the Cabela's Walleye? Oh boy, that's a... Cabela's is involved, you better bring your own name. It's a big day.

It's a big fucking day here, man. God, Jesus, that's so funny that Minnesota really is a grumpy old man. Just the whole, that's exactly what's going on there. So that meant he's supposed to leave that Tuesday morning, that would be March 20th I believe, and pick up Denny Clark and they're going to drive five hours down to the Illinois River to compete in this fishing competition. So that's what all the employees said, oh, they figured that that's what's going on here.

Oh, Dave, now he's going to his fishing tournament. Until the employees saw Lois drive off in the Cadillac Escalade. Now that is what Dave would take on fishing trips, would be this Escalade. And this was two days after Dave was supposed to be away at the fishing tournament. So like he didn't take his truck, that's weird. But they see Lois pulling away and that's that. So interesting.

Now Thursday, March 22nd comes around. It's been almost two weeks since anybody's talked to Dave. Yeah. At all. None of his employees have talked to him, which is odd. He has a business partner that hasn't seen or talked to him in almost two weeks as well. They're all kind of getting together and going, when did you talk to Dave last? I haven't talked to him in a while. Oh, it's been since then. Oh shit, me too.

That's a long time. So they all kind of get their stories together. They said he hadn't, they call him. He doesn't pick up. He doesn't return calls. They said they did receive responses to text messages, but they thought their responses were really weird because Dave doesn't type his text. I guarantee you he has fat fingers.

I'm not saying that in a bad way. He's got like old man thumbs probably, not a big texter. So they said he dictates all his messages. Oh, voice to text. Which means you, you, all the words, some of the words run together and there's no punctuation also. That's what happens. So they said these replies use like proper punctuation and somebody typed them

like they wrote a letter, like they were writing a letter. Yeah. Comma this. And they're like, that's not Dave. So they were like, that's weird. But maybe because he's just sick and has time to do it. Who knows? knows who knows he was supposed to have left for a fishing tournament on March 20th And he was you know would have taken the Escalade which is what he used to pull his 20-foot boat But yeah, like I said they saw instead Lois pulls out the Escalade and then they don't see Lois either So they don't know what to do. They're like, Lois is gone, he's gone, what the fuck do we do now?

Like, this is, what do we do? We need a boss. Yeah, so that day that she takes off and they don't see her anymore, they're worried about everybody, and so they call the police to do like a check on everybody. Can you make sure Lois is okay and make sure Dave is like fishing and all that shit?

This is the employees that call the police. Fascinating. So Friday, March 23rd, 2008, the police department decide they dispatch two officers to do a little looky-loo here on Dave and see if he's all right. So they drive up, the house was dark. They said, okay, they said that the wax worm farm is about 50 paces from the front door. So I mean, if he can't go 50 paces out there,

he must be really sick. Real sick, yeah. That's really sick. So they visit at night to do this, the cops. It's dark and cold, there's snow on the ground. They said no one answered the door. We gotta go do a creep thing. Let's go do it at the creepiest time ever. Cre creepiest time. Yeah. So just in case anyone is there,

they'll see us like looking in the window, fogging it up with our breath. That won't be weird or anything. This is a weird and creepy line. It's not fog fucking come broad daylight and the fucking first thing in the morning or anything. Yeah. So the officers in the pitch dark in the snow and everything else they're walking around the house and they noticed a light coming from a window. They went and the bathroom window was open. Which is not normal I would say for you know when it's cold out there's snow on the ground to have your bathroom window open. Unless you're super sick and you got to get some of that smell out man.

Something you know that yeah you're someone is shitting that thing up. Yeah. If you want to sit in a 30 degree bathroom you are really shitting it up good. So the bathroom is above the height you can see from standing so they boost each other. One of the cops boosts the other cop up which is really hilarious. Yeah, to watch armed adults boosting each other. Give me a boost. Not fucking nine-year-olds trying to go over a fence. Put your hands together and I'll step in them and then you push me up. Come on, you can do it.

It's either that or he got on his shoulders like a fucking chicken fight, which would have even been funnier. Bend over, I'll stand on your back. Come on, do it So one of them looks in and he appeared he sees a blanket on the floor of the bathroom With something under it. Oh Something that appears to be in the shape of a human. Oh, it's a big bump It's a big bump in a big blanket So they get two more deputies out here who went inside the house

They actually go inside the house and they find Dave on the bathroom floor under this blanket. Very dead. His stomach is really fucked up. When you have a blanket covering your whole body just lying on the bathroom floor with the window open, you know your stomach's fucked up. You're sick. So, yeah, no, he is on the ground, on the floor.

He'd been shot twice with a.22 handgun. Wow. Once in the chest and once in the floor. He'd been shot twice with a 22 handgun. Wow. Once in the chest and once in the back. And none of the employees have heard gunshots. None of the neighbors, there's not a lot of close neighbors, but no one's heard any gunshots or anything like that here. A bullet had pierced clean through his forearm. So it's probably a defensive and then went into his chest. So it looks like he was holding up trying to block it. And they said he has been dead for a long time. Oh no. They're thinking around 10 days at this point, maybe long. He was never sick. That man was never sick or that or he was really sick. Yeah. So they said his body had already it's decomposing and bloating and I mean it's even with the window open, it's his body had already, it's decomposing and bloating.

And I mean, it's even with the window open, it's still, you know, it's not that cold in there. So they're looking around, trying to find Lois. It's saying, oh my God, maybe she's going to be in another room. We're going to find her fucking dead covered up somewhere too. So they're looking for her and they don't know where she is. They can't find her. The Cadillac's gone. She's gone. Everybody's gone.

One of, by the way, one of Dave's friends, Jerry, said he was my best buddy. Every day I go by their house and I wonder what the hell happened up there. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them.

Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more.

Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Being an actual royal is never about finding your happy ending, but the worst part is,

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exclusively with Wondery Plus. I would say so. So they had to find Lois to find out what happened. So basically all they know about Lois is they find out from her friends that she is known to frequent casinos. Oh, so they said we're looking for this lady. She might be in trouble. You know, she might be kidnapped. She might be, you know, in peril or she might be a criminal. Either way, she's a person of interest that we'd like to talk

to. So if you're in a casino and you see this lady, give us a shout. So they're a cute, smiled round lady in the casino that's looking for her. It warned that she might be armed as well because we do know she owns a gun. Her father had given her as a collector's item, his Colt Woodsman 22. So we know she has a 22 handgun as well. So yeah, then now the officer assigned to this had discovered here, he looks into this whole thing, where's Lois, because you know, first thing you look for

if you're looking for someone is their banking activity. That's a good idea. Phone and banking activity in 2018, that's what you're looking for, you should be able to track anybody through that. Both of those ought to do it. Nobody keeps enough cash to not have to use a card and nobody fucking doesn't use their phone.

So they found out that in the previous week, Lois had deposited two business checks that were missing from the worm farm. One for $8,684.80, it's a lot of worms, and the other for $1,209.60 into her husband's personal checking account at Citizen State Bank in Glenville, which is a half hour drive away. So, she did that. She had then cashed three checks drawn on his account for $2,500, $7,500, and $1,000.

$11,000. $11,000. On March 23rd, the last of those came out. So judging by that, basically, because she did that through the business and she's not on the business, this is not her business, they put out a warrant to arrest her for felony theft. Fraud. Yeah. Fraud. So they can at least now they can find her and bring her in because now there's a warrant to arrest her for felony theft. Fraud, yeah. Fraud.

So they can at least now they can find her and bring her in because now there's a warrant. It's not just a bolo. So that's different. A warrant, people are really looking for it. So and it's in the computer, you'll punch it up and it'll be there. So there and also a US Marshal assisting with the investigation said all signs of meaning of the murder pointed immediately to her, obviously.

But they didn't understand why this would happen. Like this is- Over 11 grand? This doesn't make much sense at all. So they're really trying to figure this out because they're like, this doesn't add up exactly. Much like his checking account, this is not adding up. So they said, that's what everyone in town

was talking about. It's all anybody was talking about, was they said the forensics class in Blooming Prairie High School discussed the case for several weeks. Which I mean, if you're a forensics class, that makes sense. Not bad, if that's not the high school's doing that. I wish we had a forensics class in high school, I never had that, that would've been fucking awesome.

And taking real cases and being like, solve this shit, 11th grader. Or just looking over them? That's fucking cool as shit. I would have loved that shit, man. It would have really, it would have given me a path. Yeah, at least given me an idea of something to do. Hey, I'm interested in murder, I guess.

Yeah. So. I just learned I like this. They look around. They said, OK, there's's gotta be an affair happening here. Either she's having an affair running away to it or he was having an affair. She's had enough. She's had it. Yeah. Nobody's having any affairs. They look into it. 11 grand is not forever money. What the fuck is going on?

I mean, and neither of them are having any affairs. There's never been any domestic abuse. There's never been any strife, trouble. There's no reason as far as that this makes no sense of why she would do this. They said that It's just weird so one They think that this might be because she's a gambling addict That's all they could think but because that's all they could really find is she is a big gambler outside of that There's really nothing to her. There's no vices. There's nothing secret outside of that there's really nothing to her. There's no vices, there's nothing secret.

One of the cops said, this was a new one for me. It was hard for me to wrap my head around someone committing a murder just to feed a gambling addiction. So he's like, I didn't know if I was buying that because that seems odd, very weird. And one of the other US Marshals says, she's not the common murderer. She doesn't portray that image.

People just don't think of a grandmother being a cold not the common murderer. She doesn't portray that image. People just don't think of a grandmother being a cold blooded murderer. You hope not anyway. So small. It's very small to do for anything like that. Now, murder. The other thing is she doesn't. This is the odd part is usually gamblers.

There's gambler profiles. Basically, there's only a few different types of gamblers. Oh? Yeah, your brain, much like a drug or a food or something like that, your brain reacts a certain way and there's only a few different kind of ways your brain really reacts to gambling. And the people who get addicted to it

and get really into it, it affects them in one of a few ways, basically. They said there are basically two categories, and there are little bits, you know, little things off of this little estuaries probably that lead to other things but the two basic categories that encompass 98% of the gamblers are thrill seekers. Yeah. That's usually men that play skill based games with high stakes. Think about Texas Hold'em. Texas Hold'em or the guys doing high level fantasy shit too. Okay yeah yeah. Because gambling most of the time it doesn't

involve sports because they're usually not good at it but most of your gamblers it's other people playing sports not them. Right right. So but like a gambler like that it's a thrill seeker that's what Jordan is exactly but this is like you know skill based games with high stakes. They want to win big and also escape artists or the other type of person. These are people trying to escape life. Oh, gambling helps them escape the boring monotony. It gets them out of everything. They say these are often people who play slot machines, but they don't even play them to hit a jackpot, they said.

That's not what they're there for. It's to enter a trance state that makes them disconnect from the world. Just pull the knob, just pull the lever. Just pull the knob, just pull, and you just concentrate cherry, seven fucking gold coin. Pull again. Cherry, cherry, gold coin, fuck.

Pull again. That's it, and after a while, your whole life, your whole shit becomes that, and you forget about what your troubles are. Holy shit. So that's what they do. They said women with gambling habits are more likely to fall into the second category, the escape bars. They're not usually that there are some but they're not usually, you know, 95% of the thrill seeker gamblers are men. That's just how it is. One 2005 article about female gambling published in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction said that electronic slot machines like alcohol and drugs can be used for mood

management. Wow. Yep. It's just it'll regulate you. They said many women with gambling problems are seeking a way to numb emotions, shut out the world, and orchestrate a timeout. Just basically, this is I'm here now and you can't get me type of thing.

They said in the article, as the gambling problem progresses, many women become more and more isolated as well. And this exacerbates feelings of loneliness and shame and guilt that they have from gambling in the first place. Okay. So it's just a big snowball that goes down a hill and at the bottom of it.

That has nothing to do with winning. Nothing to do with winning for them. For men, it has everything to do with winning. The stakes, the high stakes are big, but only because that gives them more adrenaline. It has nothing to do with the actual money. It's not like I'm going to do that so I can buy that fucking condo for my mom down in Boca Raton. Yeah, that's not what they're doing.

They just want to win. They want the feeling of the win. That's why they're if they win a hundred grand, they just don't go awesome and leave. They're like, if a hundred of winning, if winning a hundred grand feels like this, what's winning a million feel like I gotta Find out and they do that. That's why I'm not a gambler because I go a hundred grand a hundred grand And I've you know, I'd be gone. You'd never see me again. I'd never gamble again No, that's because we're not gamblers. We don't have that thing. Yeah, we don't have that

So and they during the investigation they figure out that Lois has withdrawn from friends and family in the last couple months. So they're thinking this might be part of their, and this is all just a theory they have at this point, because they don't have Lois. They don't know where she is. So they have to talk to people and try to put together a psychological profile of her, essentially. And they think because she's, has been withdrawing, maybe that's because she's been gambling more and more and maybe that could have caused this who knows that's what they're trying to figure out

so one of the Family members said I don't know if it was a condition of her addiction But she'd cut ties with a lot of people family and friends a lot of people we talked to said yeah I know Lois, but I haven't talked to her in a while. That was the general consensus. Okay. Now, there's a place they go,

and I'll show you a picture of it in a little while, called Diamond Joe Casino, and Diamond J-O, Joe. And it does not look like a casino. I believe it, yeah. It looks like a rural gas station without the gas. That's what it looks like it looks like we drive by one of those in Oklahoma. Oh, yeah. Oh god No, it was in uh, yeah, I was it was on the way from Kansas City to Oklahoma City and we were like, that's a casino But imagine that what shitty looking to but run down really? Yeah, it was it's not good the Diamond Joe casino Dave occasionally went with Lois to the diamond Joe

But he's not a real big gambler. That's not his thing. It's her thing. So they said that it had been a Problem Lois they found out had built several worm farm employees out of some money How much can you make on the worm farm to be built from out of money? That's terrible. Why? Well apparently she was getting quote donations from them to everybody pitch in to get a golf cart for Dave so he could shuttle around the property and go back and forth from the business to the house and all that shit. So a lot of the employees pitched in for this and then she never bought it. So she, nothing, she just got a bunch of money and gambled it away. That was it. That was her way of scamming money. One family

member suspected that she went to the casino with money designated for the interment of her father's remains. Okay, there's gambling problems and then there there's taking the funeral money and gambling at gambling problems That is wild Is it hmm? That is a place to put ashes or was it an actual grave? No, it's ashes Oh, boy, they're supposed to be a thing So his ashes had sat in her house for many months after his death Because she was supposed to do something else with it, instead she's sitting there with the poor guy's

fucking ashes in a bag, and she gambled away the money she was supposed to use. This was in 2014, so this was four years earlier. Her son, Braden, says that, and this is insane, after her father died, she got a half a million dollar inheritance from her from the father she gambled it all away no gambled away a half million dollar inheritance this guy saved up this money his whole life his whole life gave it to her and she pissed it away and she got nothing like nothing the son brayden said it was all secrecy gambling is a terrible thing where it can suck people in and destroy lives

Yeah Gambling's worse than drugs. It's worse than drugs. It is it's worse lives so much worse. Yes to me. It's like this Carnivorous fucking like a carnivorous worm that because I go on to talk about worms here Carnivorous worm that can just get in and eat everything. It's like a carnivorous worm, because I wanna talk about worms here, carnivorous worm that can just get in and eat everything. It's like a locust. It might be worse because you don't see when somebody's fucked up on it. That's the thing.

You know what I mean? You can see when somebody's fucked up on drugs or alcohol. You can see it. You can see it. They go to work and go, Jesus Christ, Dave, you have a problem, man. You can't, I don't know why you use Dave, but you can't show up smelling like this and doing all gambling until you see who they've been

stealing from or whatever you don't see that it's a problem and if you have half a million dollars it's not a problem you're not yeah that that's legal for you to piss your own money away that's the other problem there's nothing illegal or immoral about it even it's more of a disease and an awful disease because when you have a half a million dollars You don't have to gamble anymore. And then you make you made that disappear gamble. How why trance like state? God number it's not about the big win and it's it's crazy. I don't get it at all. I Really don't but that's just me. But to me, yeah gambling is uh, and I don't care if you know It's legal people should you want to fish your money away? Go ahead. I don't but that's just me but to me. Yeah gambling is uh, and I don't care if you know

It's legal people should you want to fish your money away. Go ahead I don't fucking care you can there's tons of shit to fish your money away on You can buy a bunch of cars that you can't afford you could buy a bunch of whatever you can't afford So that's not my fucking place to tell you where to use your money But it's even worse now because it's right on your phone. You can just Pick up you don't have to go anywhere. You can do it from your couch, watching, whatever the fuck you're gambling on. Dude, there's people that, like I read this book

about draft kings and all that kind of shit, and dude, there's people that lose everything over this shit. Everything. Every fucking thing. They are obsessed with it, and it can't be stopped. It's right on their phone, so it's, you know, at all times of day, and it's crazy, dude, it's crazy. I hate it so much. It's right on their phone. So it's, you know, at all times of day. It's crazy, dude.

It's crazy. I hate it so much. They found some other shit here. They found out that her oldest sister, Kim, Lois' oldest sister, Kim, in October 2010, Kim's marriage was falling apart and she had a fucking mental breakdown. Just boom. So Lois and Dave let Kim live with them before they ended up, her breakdown was so bad

they had to place her in adult foster care. What is that? I've never heard of that before. Apparently that's like a- Isn't that rehab? Like a halfway house for mental illness or something. I don't know. I can't deal with her, you guys take her?

It's not a hospital, but it's like adult foster. I've never heard of that before. So in February 2012, claiming that her sister was unable to perform tasks for daily living or make decisions regarding her medical needs, Lois applied to be Kim's legal guardian and conservator. That's how bad that she took that breakup, Kim. Wow. Wow.

So she said that she applies for that. According to the forms that she filled out, her sister suffered from bipolar disorder as well as clinical depression and had the cognitive capacity of a 10-year-old. I don't know if she always had the cognitive capacity of a 10-year-old or just this mental breakdown caused this I'm not sure So there's required annual filings

I guess if you're someone's conservator like that so Lois reported that her sister's emotional mental and physical states had deteriorated and she noticed that Kim had she noted on the the, on the forums that Kim had, Kim had schizophrenia and Parkinson's disease. And she got this from a breakup. Wow. That is, I don't think you can get Parkinson's from a breakup. Maybe all the mental stuff, but please don't break up with me. I don't want to shake for the rest of my life is a really, that'd be weird. So, um, she also declared that Kim had obsessive compulsive disorder that go caused her to go on shopping sprees and spend lavishly.

All right. So that's they gave Lois control of Kim's finances then because of this. This included a $200,000 inheritance from their father. Oh, no. Lois withdrew thousands of dollars at a time from an ATM at the Diamond Joe Casino. What'd she do with it, James? God damn it. She gambled it. A court audit dated September 15, 2015 showed that Lois' fiduciary shit was insane. All this bullshit included a payment of $14,070

on an alleged debt to their already deceased father. She said that she paid $14,000 out of it as a debt paid back the father who's been dead for three years. Three years. Supposed gifts to Lois' three children totaling $15,000 and almost $8,500 in reimbursement for undocumented expenses purportedly paid by Lois. So Kim has a social worker advocate that requested suspension of Lois' role as guardian and conservator.

Lois tried to explain it all away but the court said said nah, no, no paying bills. You don't yeah guardianship was suspended and four months later She was discharged as the guardian and Kim remained under state's care like to this day from what I understand Oh my god, she that divorce broke her fucking brain. That's that broke her broke everything broke everything These account the steel County Attorney's Office decided not to press criminal charges against Lois Because a judge ordered her to repay $100,000 to Kim So they said alright, that's fine. They got reimbursement and retribution whatever so that's I mean just adding all these dollars up James that's so much money

that she gave to Diamond Joe. So much Diamond Joe is collecting and it dude you could build five Diamond Joe's for a hundred thousand dollars places a dump it's a like a looks like a one-room fucking dump it looks like a shithole so now Lois's attorney from this time said that, quote, Lois is a really pleasant person to be around. She's friendly, caring, warm. She said she really liked her. Now, she's got some other issues, Lois here.

Lois has her own bout of depression. In 2016, two years before Dave was found dead, Lois just went missing at one point. This was right after the theft from her sister was exposed here. Dave came home from lunch at Dairy Queen with a coworker. Very good choice, Dave. Those cheeseburgers are excellent. I think it's because the pickles are a little thicker.

I think it's something about those pickles being a drop thicker and not so thin and shitty that makes them delicious. I don't know if it's that the fucking cheese the butter sauce I want it obviously a lot of things that they do that just they do the right things It's a good little cheese lettuce big thick tomato, too. It's just a good goddamn burger. It's a goddamn good burger So he asked the co-worker We went to have Dairy Queen with to drop him off at the house instead of the worm farm so he could use the bathroom

I mean the Dairy Queen went through it will go at the house instead of the worm farm so he could use the bathroom. I mean, the Dairy Queen went through him. It will go through you. That is one thing. It is delicious. It does move. By the time you get from the Dairy Queen to your house, you're going to need to make a pit stop.

It's like a large coffee in a burger form. It's what it is. So he walked in the house to go take a dump. Now this is the thing. I got to use the bathroom quick, which I'm sure there's a bathroom in the worm farm. That meant he's got to drop a deuce, right? That means this is going to be a sticky deuce. He comes in with a hot double burger deuce cooking in his fucking, in his belly here.

He's got a real ice cream sundae brewing in there. There's a blizzard going on. And he walks inside and finds Lois unconscious in a chair. Oh my god. Yeah she overdosed on pills. That's the thing. Oh Jesus. Do you call 9-1-1 as you're shitting? What do you do? You're like you gotta come here oh god and they're like are you okay sir? Yeah no I'm fine I just had D Queen, but she's the main problem. Is she breathing Christ, I hope not through her nose. Jesus, I don't know, man.

Thank fuck, we always keep this bathroom window open. So she had overdosed on pain pills, on purpose, clearly. He calls 911, first responders come, they do CPR, she's helicopter airlifted to the St. Mary's Hospital in Rochester. Dude, clearly. He calls 911, first responders come, they do CPR, she's helicopter airlifted to the St. Mary's Hospital in Rochester. Oh yeah, after almost two weeks she recovered. She was in the hospital at the Mayo Clinic for two weeks. She just kinda laid low in Blooming Prairie for a while

and basically then started going out, acting like nothing happened, everybody else ignored it because it is small town America. They'll talk behind your back, but no one's gonna be like, so I heard you're all fucked up. They'll just pretend everything's fine. Heard you tried to commit suicide,

110 grand is a lot of money. That's a lot of money there, Chickie. So yeah, and Dave tried to protect her from the gossip and all that kind of thing here. He would just make passing comments saying, you know, she's doing better and, you know, trying to help out the gambling and all that kind of thing here. He said later on though, about this day that he found her unconscious, Dave said, quote, that was one of the biggest mistakes of my life going up to the house that day.

Yeah. Whoa, Dave. mistakes of my life going up to the house that day. Yeah. Whoa, Dave! One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was finding her unconscious and saving her. He said that to a friend of his. Wow! And that, he said, it's just damn it.

Life would be easier if that would've happened. That's some really, really dark shit to say out loud. It is, if somebody would've just cooked this burger to proper temperature, I'd be. I'd be one widowed son of a gun. Man, so the cops obviously think that she has something to do with the death here at this point, clearly, and they're looking, they have the,

there's a US Marshal's North Star Fugitive Task Force based in Minneapolis, which sounds really official. It's like the Texas Rangers, right? It's like the North Star Fugitive Task Force. We find everything like the North Star. Minnesota Texas Rangers. Oh shit.

So they heard speculation that Lois was siphoning money from the worm farm and that Dave was aware of the gambling habit. They said maybe Dave caught her doing this and you know, something like she's squandering all his money and he confronted her and maybe that's what happened. And one of the cops said after that, the husband said, I'm done, I'm cutting you off. If you want more money, you can work for me in the business,

but I'm not giving you anymore. Maybe she got pissed off and whatever. Like I said, going around town, it was difficult because everyone in Blooming Prairie just said, oh yeah, they're a nice couple. They're great. Yeah, they show up down at the bowling alley and all that kind of thing here. And people who knew things about Lois's past, like the theft from her sister and the attempted suicide and all that. They just wouldn't say shit, these people. None of my business, they'd say.

Just, I don't know, they seem nice to me. It's interesting. One person, Scott Carlson, who's one of Dave's real close friends, said, Lois was likable, but you always knew she was a click off. She did some oddball shit. Which means, I think I would like Scott because of the way he said that. He some oddball shit. Which means I think I would like Scott because of the way he said that. He said she did some oddball shit. That's his quote to the newspaper,

which means I like this guy. He's not. I don't care what you're writing for. She did some oddball shit and that's how I'm going to put it. You can write that if you want. Yeah. You go ahead and put that in there. I don't give a shit. Right in the Charlie Brown spellings. I don't care, but she did all the shit. So apparently they talked about in July of 2016 she had disappeared for three days. This is a wild story. This was another time. So Dave discovered some new deaths she had incurred

and was so concerned that he reported her missing to the sheriff's office. And when Lois returned, she said she'd been visiting a girlfriend in Minneapolis and acted like it was no big deal. Like normal people just disappear for three days. It's okay. It's fine.

I can't imagine if I disappeared for three days and just came home. Sara would be like, where the fuck have you been? What is wrong with you? It's okay, I was visiting a friend in Jersey. I just went, oh yeah, I got a guy friend down in Jersey I've been visiting, up in Albany, yeah, I just went. It's about an hour and a half away,

so I just went up there and yeah, what's the big deal? It's a problem, I was in Newark. I don't get it. So media outlets across the world are really enjoying this story because. Yeah, because it's juicy. It's juicy as shit. They nickname her because all these publications and different sites have to give her a different nickname

So she's either killer grandma. Yeah gambling granny or my personal favorite losing streak Lois That is awesome The name of this episode has to be losing streak Streak Lois, because that's fucking awesome. That's a great one. Who the hell wrote that one? I don't know, but hats off to you, ma'am or sir,

because that's fucking awesome. Good. That's the best one by far. Granny, who cares about granny and grandma? Losing Streak Lois sounds great. Who cares how old she is in the alliteration you can do there? Losing Streak Lois is everything. That's everything all wrapped up into one. Who cares how old she is in the alliteration you can do there?

Losing strength, Lois is everything. That's everything all wrapped up into one. I fucking love it. Yeah, so they said that, you know, Dave, everybody's very sad about Dave. One of his friends who goes duck hunting and fishing with him said that, you know, this is, the whole town is stunned and no one wants to say anything about Lois because nobody talks shit here because it's Minnesota.

Even if they think she killed your friend, they're like, well, I don't wanna say anything about her, but let's just say. They almost say that to their better half in bed when nobody can hear it while they're reading books. Let's just say that I don't have anything nice to say about her, so I'm not gonna say anything at all. That's the worst you're gonna get out of somebody.

One guy said, it's been traumatic, I never saw any trouble with his wife, I just don't understand it, maybe he just wanted to see the best in her. Like maybe there was something wrong and he didn't see it. He said there was just no sign something like this could happen, it's devastating. So where the fuck was Lois when she took off?

Where'd she go? Well, on Friday, March 23rd, while they were finding Dave in a bathroom, shot twice, Lois was at the old Diamond Joe. Right down the road? Right down the road. Check this out, it's a 45 minute drive from Blooming Prairie. So no. Down the road!

This is the Diamond Joe Casino, Jimmy. Holy fuck. That is the Diamond Joe. Yeah. Dude, it's in a, that's, this is the diamond Joe casino Jimmy. Holy fuck that is the diamond Joe. Yeah, dude It's it's in a that's the front and then it's a rusty Corrugated steel warehouse building literally they turned into a used to be a farm It's a far used to be for like, you know storing wheat and now it's fucking a casino That's it's happening there and you can come there and piss away your inheritance. And your sisters.

And drive her even more mad. All your husband's worm money down the tubes here. So she went there all the time. It's a farm themed casino just across the Iowa border. It's a defunct farm. Stop it. It's a fucking defunct farm. Don't act like you built this from scratch to look like an old farm. This is just a building that you could put fucking slot machines in. It's about a fourth.

It's like saying this is a KFC and it clearly used to be a Wendy's. I was gonna say, it still has the atrium out front. Yeah. Yeah. All those defunct Wendy's. It's a Wendy's themed KFC. You know how it is.

No, that's just an old a Wendy's themed KFC. You know how it is. Nope, that's just an old one. So, she's there. She liked to play the slot machines in the high roller room, which are like, you know, $5 and $1 slots. That's the high roller. Keeps you away from the penny riff raff, I think, is what's going on there. Keeps you away from the ones that are waiting on that bucket to fill.

When they hit it big on the nickels. Oh, here it comes. Here it comes. I'm winning all these nickels. Then you got to do math. Well, 20 of them equals a dollar, so this isn't a lot of nickels, I guess. This isn't a lot of money at all. I won 500 nickels.

Great. So at 6.30 PM, she bought a pre-made packaged sandwich from the come and go gas station next door. Gross. Disgusting. Jesus Christ. Video surveillance shows her, 5'5", 165 pounds, dressed in white slacks, black and white striped cardigan, unbuttoned over a purple t-shirt.

Her hair was like Ric Flair bleached to the point of being white like boom. Eating that don't have to chew it sandwich those things are so wet. Those are so gross. I've eaten exactly one of them and threw the rest of it away. Like why'd I do this? That meat that all that even the like you bite it and it all feels like it has skin on it. Yeah it just moushes. You don't even have feels like it has skin on it. Yeah, you have to punch your skin

This is gross. Yeah nasty So she as she's buying the salmon She said say if you want to start heading south, would you just take the 35 south to keep going down to the next state? Is that the way is that the way to go you think and the guy said I think so I work at a fucking gas station I don't go anywhere. I Make 750 an hour. Where do you think I'm going here? Here's where I go back. Yeah, I live at the Diamond Joe so They don't even know it I shovel hay for them in the morning

She said I think so. She said okay. Well, thank you and yeah, she was going and wow. So all of the criminal, the Dodge County Sheriff's Office, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, they all arrive at the Diamond Joe the next day because they tracked Lois' cell phone there.

But she was gone by then, obviously. So now her children are freaking out. Dad's dead, mom's disappeared. These are all, what do you tell the grandkids? Oh, I know we're supposed to go to grandma's and ride the ATVs, but one's dead and one's missing. We got a lot of shit going on here. And we don't even know if they're still there.

She may have sold them by now. Totally. And they have no idea where Lois is one of her sons told a cop that she hadn't even opened the snapchat C Center Which she shouldn't be opening snapchats at her age anyway, but still Know what that is she go, what's that dear? I don't know. That's it I know she's only in her 50s then, but still, 55 in 2018, 57 in 2018 is too old for Snapchat, period.

For sure. Because 37 in 2018 was too fucking old for Snapchat. 100%. April 2nd, 2018. So that was March 23rd. Wow. We're talking 10 days later here. This is Fort Myers beach, Florida. Okay. Yes. Um,

Tess Koster, remember Tess Koster, their friends. Yeah. The couples party at the cabin. Absolutely. Where the stakes were going. Well, Tess is down there and, uh, she has a, she comes down here also. She's got different places. They live in Minnesota and Florida. She's got a place down here in Fort Myers Beach and Tess was cleaning the garage of one of the five rental units that her and her husband owned on Fort Myers Beach where they wintered. And they take their winter seriously. It's April 2nd. They're still there.

Well, Minnesota is not thawed yet. No, no, no, not at all. But I mean, honestly, if you're going for when it's cold in Minnesota, what do you go from like October to June? How fucking, how long are you there? That's a seven month wintering. It's like an eight month fucking winter. So the rest of the year, they owned a car dealership

in Blooming Prairie. Wow. This day though, their daughter Brianna contacted them to say that a woman had called the dealership and said that she was a friend of hers and she was going to be down in Fort Meyers Beach and knew that they were down there too and wanted to meet up with you. So she said that she gave her the address there. Now she ends up, by the way, Lois is the woman looking for them. Lois bought a cheap cell phone under the name Stormy Liberty.

That is her alias, Stormy Liberty. Which is really is really funny because in 2018, anybody calling themselves Stormy Anything would have had plenty of jokes to come of you, you know, were a porn star. Terrific, yeah. Yeah. So, she ends up finding the address there. It's in a development where they own a bunch of condos and and this is 883rd Street, and Lois goes and finds there, and the Costars were always inviting people to visit them down there, so they didn't mind at all.

Yeah, a bunch of, earlier here, they had sat next to Dave and Lois at a wedding and said, yeah, you should come down to Florida sometime, stay with us down there. So this is about 1.45 p.m. on April 2nd, and Tess sees a woman with a white ponytail at the end of the driveway checking a notebook in her hand and then looking at the house number.

So Tess takes a step toward her, thinking it's some lady there to inquire about one of the rentals. She says, can I help you? And the woman looked up and Tess goes, oh, it's Lois. Yeah. I know Lois. You know what I mean?

So Lois seemed to recognize Tess as well. And then she ducked her head down and muttered, wrong house and power walk away. Okay. So Tess watches this crazy woman walk down the street, climb into a white escalade and drive away. She's like, there's Lois getting into Lois' car with Minnesota license plates and everything. Driving off being all Lois. Well yeah, what the fuck man.

So she and Rod called 911 because they knew that she was being looked for. Oh, that's great. So after an hour and a half, two deputies showed up from the Lee County Sheriff's Office and they knew that Lois was wanted on felony theft charges and also for questioning with Dave's death. But they figured that maybe, probably that Tess saw her. They said that probably spooked her out of here. She's probably long gone by now.

Long gone. So yeah, they said no problem. They said they provided a couple extra patrols in the neighborhood. They said, we'll send a car by every once in a while, but they're not gonna stake out anything or do anything crazy. They said she probably left from here

and took the fucking bridge right over to the mainland and is just gone out of here. So by the way, one of the kids said, the police down there did a horrible job. Because that really is a horrible job. They went, I'm sure she's gone by now, right? Most assumed, yeah. Yeah, well it's the beach.

It's a real laid back environment. I think the cops have the beach attitude too. That's all they're like, yeah, she's gone now, right? I don't see her, she's clearly gone. She's probably gone, I don't know. I'm gonna go do some oyster shooters. So. The bunch of girls from Bama. Yeah. Jesus. So with some Bama fucking sorority members.

So April 3rd, 2018, the next day, Fort Myers Beach, a woman named Pam Hutchinson arrives. Now Pam Hutchinson arrives in Fort Myers Beach. This is on Estero Island, I guess, Fort Myers Beach down there. There's a little island down there in the Gulf of Mexico, April 3rd, 2018. She is there with her longtime friend Donna Fetro, whose husband recently committed suicide. Jesus. So what makes you feel better? Florida. Let's go to the island and it's five o'clock always.

Wow, so this Donna planned to spread his ashes on an island nearby. So now this, the woman who's with the dead husband, she stayed with her family on Sanibel, which is that island that they're going to dump the ashes on, and Pam Hutchinson checked into condo 404 at the Marina Village at Snug Harbor, which is a timeshare complex. She's staying alone. Now, she is 59 years old, very similar physically to Lois. Very similar. Blonde hair, big smile, outgoing, little roundish. It's literally they're very similar physical descriptions. Like if you were

going to describe one, you describe her and they go, is that Lois or Pam? Lois or fucking, yeah, Pam, who you talking about? So now Pam Hutchinson, Hutchinson, is they said on the verge of change, this article called it. She just got out of a 20-year marriage, just got a divorce. Yeah, she was living in North Carolina here in Columbus, North Carolina, which is a small town of about a thousand people. Not much, she's known for being very outgoing. She is a car salesman. That's what she does, salesperson.

She was the top ranked car salesperson in Virginia Beach. So she's killing it here. That is where she made a life with her old husband, James Hutchinson, and they went boating, and they would go out marlin fishing all the time. They had quite the life together. But they said, her ex-husband said though after the divorce she just wanted to get out of here. Small little country town, that's where she's from. Of course she had no desire to go back there so she went to

Florida instead. She'd been trying to buy her own place in Bradenton at the Riverview condos overlooking the Manatee River, which is a short walk from where she worked catering at an upscale restaurant on called Pier 22. So her friends are her ex-husband said the dust had settled in her life from the divorce and she had finally found a place that was going to be hers. Okay, now they said everything was really coming together for her and that's what her friend says. So she there's a lot of pictures of her down there and she's you know looking happy she's hanging out at one time she was down there at the Sarasota Christmas boat parade and you know St. Patrick's Day and an Irish pub

and you know, just having a good time. Doing real Florida shit. She loved to fish for Marlin, stay out late and vacation in Mexico. Okay. She's like Hunter S. Thompson or something, this lady. She sounds like she's fucking, sounds cool. She likes all the cool shit.

She likes cool shit, yeah, she's a partier. She's been successful and now she wants to party a little bit here Her friend said she's real easy to talk to real, you know friendly person Her one friend said she's one of these people that she was too friendly for her own good trusted everybody She meets somebody for five minutes if they seem nice then they must be a wonderful person And that's her best friend and she trusts them and that's not good for everybody, I would say here. So Hutchinson here, Pam, she gravitated to Florida

and she liked this kind of old timey Florida shit there. She liked this bar called Old Florida. It was an atmosphere and bar, kind of atmosphere there she liked and sure for this she made friends with somebody sitting on a stool I guess he asked her to move one stool over so he could sit with his friend and this guy that she met and they started talking and she was a very nice lady. He said she wanted to know about everything around it where the nice places were to go

where to eat where to dance and so this guy said he told her where they had good live music and all that kind of thing. And after a while they had mutual friends and all that kind of thing. And before long she was joining in on pontoon boat rides. Wow. So she's very friendly. She had rented for a year in one of Bradenton's gated communities, but her ultimate goal was to own a condo. That's what she was trying to do here. She spent part of 2018 vacationing in Mexico and, um,

she sublet a room to somebody else in Florida while she did that. And, um, you know, she makes all sorts of friends. Talking away onto boats. Fuck. Yeah. Talking around the boats. The woman she sublet a room to here in Florida said, we got along like mother and daughter. She called me mommy mom and I called her a girly girl. How old is this fucking lady? Cause she's 60.

So how old are you? 90 fucking two? Yeah. You're 60. No one's mommy mom at this point. Yeah. Even your mom is not mommy. It's just that's weird Linda. Yeah. Hey listen when I start collecting Social Security your Linda That's how it works now We're doing the same exact shit. We are So they said we we jabbered and talked away half the night

they said Hutchinson made for her her famous corn chowder and introduced her to all of her friends. She said we joked and laughed and had fun and we got to know each other so well in such a short period of time. So I guess this person that she rented a place to had had a time share down there for a long time and all that kind of shit.

So Hutchinson arrived this time on April 3rd posted on Facebook about the amazing time she was having on the beach listening to music at Nervous Nellie's from her room. I guess it's a bar watching the sunsets and joking she'd be returning to Bradenton on one of those fancy yachts dock next to her condo. She traveled to Fort Myers Beach. She found a condo in Bradenton she wanted to buy too. And on Tuesday evening, she had dinner on Sanibel with her friend with the dead husband

and watched the sunset. On Wednesday, the dead husband's wife there made a short drive to short Fort Myers Beach and they had lunch outside at a restaurant. And that evening, Hutchinson said, she passed on an offer to join her friend for dinner on the other island. She said, I'm gonna stay here. Okay.

You're gonna be over there spreading ashes and shit. That sounds depressing. A little, yeah. I don't wanna cry tonight. I'm good on that. So while she stays here on Fort Myers Beach, she meets another lady Pam does. Yeah. She meets another lady, Pam. I don't want to cry tonight. I'm good on that. So while she stays here on Fort Myers Beach She meets another lady Pam does she meets another middle-aged wait lady that looks very similar to her

Yeah, and it's Lois is who she meets they meet at they went to the smoking oyster brewery to get some food together Yep, and Lois tells Pam that she's recently widowed, which technically is true. Yeah. They spent about three hours drinking together and a security camera films them walking toward Pam's condo after that. She apparently, Lois stays with her at the condo that night. Oh. She offers, if you need a place to crash, come to my house. That's how nice she is. She meets a person in a bar,

has a couple of drinks with them, and offers for them just to crash out at her house. Come to my house. I mean, she goes and gets on people's boats, so. Yes, I mean. I mean, to invite someone to your house after drinking for non-sexual purposes is very trusting.

Really trusting. So Pam had intended to leave on April 5th, that's a Thursday, but decided to stay another night. That evening she ate an early dinner with her new friend here, that's the night where she ate at the Smokin' Oyster, so she was supposed to leave and stayed. Hangs out with Lois, they have dinner at the smoking oyster, and they're leaving, they're sitting at the bar, Hutchinson is in a pink camo baseball cap and a white blouse, and Lois is wearing a blue t-shirt and green colored slacks. So they're very friendly though, and no one is, no one's surprised at that at all.

One of her friends said, she met a lady and that, she said they were gonna go out to eat that night and that the lady was single too and that's really all she said about her. That's it. So I met some other single lady, we're gonna go out and party. So I'm not gonna go, listen depressy over here,

you're gonna go spread your husband's ashes, I'm gonna go hang out with another single lady. Someone who's been single a little longer, you know, they're not quite as depressed as you. She's a widow too and she's not not one tier, just a lot of margaritas. That's it. Jesus. So at 730, not one tier, at 737 PM Hutchinson paid for a Long Island ice tea, a watermelon margarita, a sweet tea, a Bloody Mary, and a Bahama Mama. God damn. Wow, that is a variety of all shit that gives you a headache.

It's vodka, tequila, rum, she's going nuts. But all outside the Bloody Mary, all of those are headache, like asking for a headache. Long Island ice tea's all sugar, it's all headache. And all booze. All booze and all sugar. Watermelon margarita sounds for a headache. Long Island iced tea's all sugar, it's all headache. And all booze. All booze and all sugar. Watermelon margarita sounds like a headache waiting to happen to watermelon lot of sweet.

A Bahama mama sounds like it's rum. 4,000% fucking sugar with rum. A Bloody Mary's the only one, that's what you'd have after all of that shit to try to feel better. To try to calm down. Megan Stoner was a young, passionate Republican and a self-proclaimed advocate for mental health, but behind her public persona lured a master of

deception. I'm Tiffany Reese, host of Something Was Wrong. In season 22, we're diving into the twisted world of a con artist who's been allegedly scamming and making false claims for over a decade. From the U.S. to Canada, Megan Stoner has left a trail of devastation for her victims. But after a brief period of incarceration, she's now back out on the streets. And although she's free now, we're actively working with law enforcement to further justice for the victims of her alleged crimes. This isn't just another true crime story. It's a wake-up call about trust, deception, and the power of community to fight back. Follow Something Was Wrong on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can binge all episodes of Something Was Wrong Season 22 ad-free right now by joining Wondery+. UFO lands in Suffolk, and that's official, said the News of the World. But what really happened across two nights in December 1980? right now by joining Wondery Plus. UFO lands in Suffolk and that's official, said the News of the World. But what really happened across two nights in December 1980, when US servicemen saw mysterious lights in the forest near RAF Woodbridge and claimed to have had a close encounter with an actual craft?

Encounters, a new podcast available exclusively on Wondery Plus, takes a deep dive into one of the most famous and still unresolved UFO encounters to ever take place in the UK. Featuring shocking testimony from first-hand witnesses, hosts, journalist, podcaster and UFO researcher Andy McGillan – that's me – and producer Elle Scott take us back to the nights in question and examine all of the evidence and conflicting theories about what was encountered in the middle of a snowy Suffolk forest 40 years ago. Are we alone?

Encounters is a podcast which is going to find out. Listen to Encounters exclusively in ad-free on Wondry+. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or in Apple podcasts. She also pays for a half pound of peel and eat shrimp, a side of chard and a small chowder. She's living. No shit. Hutchinson is living.

That night, her friend, the ash spreader, texted Pam from the beach where her family was spreading her husband's ashes but got no reply. She said she didn't think much of it at the time. She said she knows her friend, you know, goes out and she might have had a couple of drinks and she's having fun. She's looking for fun. This isn't fun. This isn't fun. Come talk to me while I do some depressing shit. So Hutchinson's realtor in Braden, Julie Keene, sent her an application required by the Homeowners Association for

the condo she was set to purchase as well. They traded text messages, but then this real estate lady didn't hear anything back from Hutchinson after about 7 p.m. And the client, she said, you know, she didn't return her texts over the weekend either. So she thought Pam was having buyer's remorse and changed her mind. Basically, that's what she thought. So Friday, April 6th here, this is at 830 AM. This is the day after the smoke and oysters at 830 AM.

Lori Russell, who's the manager at the Marina Village where she's staying the timeshare received a call at the front desk from condo 404. Okay. She says, the caller says, oh my gosh, I slept until 4 p.m. yesterday and then I went out and met some great people and I'm going to go boating today. And she said, is there any way I could stay for the weekend? And the lady agreed to work it out so she could stay for another few days and they just put it on her credit card that they are She already paid for it with so that's no problem Shortly after 11 a.m. That same day a woman walked up to the Wells Fargo

Bank in Fort Myers Beach wearing a white fedora with a black ribbon around the rim there She withdrew five thousand dollars from Hutchinson's account Making small talk with the seller, saying she was staying in a nearby hotel, but had just bought a house in Bradenton. Sounds just like Pam, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's not fucking Pam at all. This woman left the bank, but instead of going boating, she started driving north in Pam

Hutchinson's white Acura TL. Oh, wow. She went past Bradenton, drove all the way to Ocala, which is 130 miles away from, yeah, drove all the way there, 130 miles away, and checked into a Hilton hotel that evening. Okay. Under the name Pam Hutchinson. Also got room service, two different room service deliveries, paying with Pam Hutchinson credit card and left the next morning.

Shortly after 10 30 AM she used Pam Hutchinson's credit cards to make three withdrawals of $500 each at a bank of America drive up ATM in Ocala. She then continued going north Eventually turning west and crossing the state line heading for the Cushada casino resort off highway 165 in the town of Kinder which boasts the most slots in Louisiana That's where she's headed Okay, all right listen That's where she's headed

Next okay. See you all right listen She stole this she's found a woman who looked like her right fucking killed her and stole her identity Where the fuck is Pam we'll find out here She ends up at the most slots in fucking Louisiana casino here. She wins $1,500 on a $5 play. Nice. She uses a driver's license and social security number to collect her winnings at 135. Those both belong to Lois. It's fucking Lois. And they found her.

April 7th, that's when she was at the Ocala Hilton, got room service and all that kind of shit. That's just fucking crazy. Now, when they're fine, later on when they're discovering this, the marshals who are looking for her said, my belief is she was like, you know what? I've got nothing to lose. I'm going to jail. Hell, I might as well enjoy myself on the ride.

That's what he thinks. There's that she can't escape. She doesn't have a passport. So they're like, stay in mainland. There's nowhere for her to go really. She can't, you know, they don't know. So anyway, she won her jackpot and all that kind of thing. She spotted at the casino there.

Later that night, the Acura was spotted by a license plate reading camera in Texas. They have those now. So soon they put up a wanted poster, a $6,000 reward, multi-state billboard campaign sponsored by the US Marshals Service to find the woman they dubbed Losing Streak Lois. Help us find Losing Streak Lois. She's going to turn herself in for the reward money. My name's Pam. So April 9th, 2018, Lori Russell is checking the units at Marina Village for a possible water leak.

So now this is the time when she's still supposed to be there. So Pam's supposed to be staying there. She enters room 404 and noticed that it smells not good in there at all. She figured it was sewage which maybe was the source of the water problem. Now it's all making sense. But something seemed very strange. So she went outside the room, found two male guests who were walking by and said, I'm a little freaked out.

Would you guys mind coming in here with me? I don't like finding dead bodies do you guys mind? So I'm so freaked out I'm gonna head into a dark hotel room with two strange men. That's how freaked out I am I'm less scared of that than I am of this. Wow. That is something. So they look around in the bathroom they find a woman lying on the floor with towels covering her up bathroom floor

Short blonde hair wearing a pink camo baseball cap white blouse blue Levi shorts and Tiva flip-flops a Pillow which is perforated by a bullet is on top of her legs The shot that killed her sliced through her lower lung, her heart's right atrium and aorta, her esophagus and her upper right lung. 22 caliber bullet by the way. What a terrible way to go. Ended up lodged in the right cup of her bra. From the back huh? From the back. She had collapsed while her stomach and intestines filled with blood and she's been dead for several days her toothbrush was in the sink it looked like she got shot while she was brushing her teeth chicken shit chicken shit then covered she got covered with a

towel by the way then there was a towel against the crack under the bathroom door. Trying to stop the smell? Stop the smell. Then the thermostats turned down to 61 as well. So as long as it can go before this is discovered here, which is fucking wild. She's been shot twice, once in the heart, once in the side. Wow. Two shots with a 22, bathroom floor covered up. Samesies. Samesies. That's your

thing. That is. The detectives wrote in the report a bath towel was placed on the floor outside the bathroom and shoved up against the void creating a seal and all of, by the way, Pam's credit cards, car keys, driver's license, gold rings, everything of any value is missing. So they found the body, they called 911. They learned that Pam Hutchinson had been staying in room 404 and so the deputies called her ex-husband in Virginia Beach to tell him about it. They interviewed other guests at the Marina Village as well as Pam's friends. They followed her credit card trail which led them to surveillance videos

from the Smokin' Oyster, the Wells Fargo, the Ocala Hilton, and they said same woman in all the footage. They said, looks like Pam, right age, similar hair color, comparable complexion and build, but by then the deputies said, well, this is Pam Hutchinson, so that ain't fucking Pam Hutchinson. Yeah. Because when they were watching the videos, they go, okay, this is Pam Hutchinson. Yeah. So that ain't fucking Pam Hutchinson. Yeah. Because when they were watching the videos, they go, okay, here's Pam.

There she is. There she's going here. So she must've been alive that day. She must, and then finally they're like, hold on a second. She couldn't have been alive yesterday because this body's been here a couple of days. So who the fuck is this? And why is she looked just like Pam Hutchinson?

So the more video surveillance they watched, the more they saw of her, they started saying, that just like Pam Hutchinson? So the more video surveillance they watched, the more they saw of her, they started saying that isn't Pam Hutchinson. That's some other lady that just looks like Pam Hutchinson. What the fuck? So it even placed her in room 404 at the time of the murder. Footage stamped 7 46 p.m. shows them approaching the condo at 8 34 p.m., a camera captured the woman walking by herself toward the building's fourth floor elevator. She stood in the landing area for 13 minutes,

appearing distraught and upset and perhaps crying, then went back to the condo. Oh my God. She was so, sometime between 7.46 and 8.34 is when she killed this poor lady. Yeah. The the next morning video Footage captured this woman in the marina village parking lot backing up Hutchinson's Acura next to a Cadillac Escalade

Then transferring luggage and other items from the Escalade into the sedan This is unbelievable Wow the evening before she was found murdered, a sergeant with the sheriff's office had come across a white Cadillac Escalade with Minnesota plates at Bowditch Point on the northern tip of Fort Myers Beach. It had been abandoned. So that was, she ended up dumping that too.

He ran the registration, found out it belonged to Dave. It's Dave's truck. Investigators didn't know what to make of it until they watched the surveillance video, and now they're starting to put it all together. And then they talked to Tess Coster, who had called the cops, and that kind of connected all the dots of who it is there.

So they said they showed her, they called Tess down to the police station, showed her three video clips and two photos of the woman making bank withdrawals and Pam's name, and said, do you recognize her? And she said, that's Lois, it's Lois Reese. I know exactly who that is. I know that gal.

So Pam's friends here, man, that's, they're all bummed out, obviously. They had planned, they had plans with her and shit like that. They were like, oh my God, two friends of hers said they were going down to Florida. Ellen Britt-Watson, her husband, said they were planning their annual trip and they planned to stop in Bradenton

to have dinner with Pam, and she wasn't answering her phone. The woman said, I kept telling my husband something's wrong. Now, you're supposed to have plans with your wife's friend. They're not answering the phone. She's like, I know something's wrong. You're like, shut the fuck up. You're like, they're fine.

What are you talking about? She's a flake, that's the problem. Yeah, just because your friend's a flake, I gotta worry about it now all night? No, this is crazy. So yeah, they ended up going to a Satter Soda hotel room that night and they said, we didn't hear anything on Monday and I kept telling my husband, you need to reach out to Pam.

By Tuesday, the couple was in Key West and finally her husband's starting to worry too after three days. It takes us three days to come around to that kind of shit. So they got off a trolley tour to get a slice of key lime pie when her husband noticed that he'd missed a phone call. They're really worried. It sounds like they're really burning the midnight oil looking for this lady. Let's get some key lime pie and if we don't find her by then, then we'll call. Oh my God.

And she got the wife said that I could see the change in his face Literally, he just looked at me and said Pam is dead That's when they found out Pam was dead. So there is a massive grandma hunt going on in this thing here This is horrifying. This is our like there's multiple women that look like grandmas You know exactly she could do this forever She could do this fucking forever. And by the way, the test lady said that she is terrified because she says, I look a lot like Pam.

Oh boy. She was coming to kill me first. That's what she thinks. She was, wasn't she? She said, I know someone who looks like me down there. Oh my. Why else was she going there? There's no other reason for it.

So obviously authorities in Florida sent out a nationwide beyond the lookout and everything like that. Obviously both victims found in bathrooms covered up by convenient things and both shot twice with a 22 handgun. Afterward both times all of their vehicles and valuables were taken. It's pretty sound MO here.

It's wild. And they said that, this is one of the Lee County's under sheriffs said, she looks like anybody's mother or grandmother yet she's a cold-blooded killer. The suspect's resources will run out and she may become very desperate and she could strike again. So watch the fuck out here.

So they elevated their search for Lois to a major case in the US Marshals Department here. They set up a national hotline, posted billboards in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Nevada that wanted murder with Lois' name and photo, $5,000 reward, and then Crime Stoppers put in an extra thousand, making it 6,000. W then Crime Stoppers put in an extra thousand making it six thousand Widespread media coverage comes in and tons of tips come from that and they're sifting through it

But they can't find shit the only thing they can find none of the tips work out to anything the only the last thing they have found of her was the Acura along Texas Highway 77 outside Refugio south of Houston on April 8th at 1160 NPM. Spanish refugee? Is that what that is? That's her. A refugio.

That's her. I'm a refugio. So they figured she's headed to Mexico. So they alert the US Border Patrol and Mexican authorities. They said she doesn't have a passport, but she could be trying to get in with somebody that had the ability to cross the border. And that she'll kill them there and take their identity. Take all their shit and live in Mexico or whatever.

They said find somebody with a passport and assume their identity like she did with the woman in Fort Myers Beach or someone with access to a boat either. That could be her other plan. She's so diabolical and dangerous. Yeah, anything's possible. So they said that the cops were just working on this like crazy, going through anything, bills, statements, receipts, electronic devices that might be able to figure out at least maybe her mindset, something.

So they said that this became personal to them. One of the cops said it became personal after they saw the devastation on Lois's two older children. They said the youngest, Braden, didn't have much to say after his appearance on Inside Edition. Bill and Bria though, though the older ones, declined to talk to the press entirely and cut short phone calls from this reporter here. But they worked closely with investigators to try to locate their mother and find out

what happened. They said that this is the cop said they're really, really nice people. I was highly motivated to bring this case to closure. Everybody seems nice except for Lois. So the day the body was discovered, April 9 9th 2018, South Padre Island, Texas. Oh. All right. Narrow strip of land in the Gulf of Mexico, the southernmost tip of Texas. And it's you know people go there to vacation obviously. April 9th 2018 a middle-aged woman with blonde hair checked into the island's Motel 6.

She requested an out-of-the-way room and paid in cash in advance for a week's stay. Two days later, in the early afternoon of Wednesday, April 11th, she left room 227, which just puts the 227 theme song in my head from the 80s sitcom. Fuck, damn it, now that's in my head for the rest of the day. Room 227 and walked across the parking lot to Padre Rita Grill for lunch. The owner, Kathy Lafferty, described as a friendly 61 year old woman with blonde hair, greeted her and complimented on her cute outfit and matching hat. What's your name?

She says to her. The woman said, La Donna. La Donna? And she said, like Madonna? And she said, yeah. So now she's La Donna. She goes, but I just go by Donna. Oh, okay, got it.

But she literally went to say Lois, and was like, I can't say Lois. Look, Donna, like a cartoon. Homer Simpson. But she literally went to say Lois. I can't say Lois. Look, Donna, like a cartoon. Homer Simpson would be better at getting away with that. That's terrible. So they started hanging out, going around the island. A woman who looks just like her, her age, all that shit. This woman is introducing her to her friends. This is LaDonna, goes by Donna. Ha ha ha. This is, oh, Henry. Oh, Henry, yes.

So she decided to stay for a little while. She said, yeah, I was gonna leave, but I think I'll hang around here. This is pretty nice around here. Donna returned to the grill the next day in the evening. Every day she would come back, and there's live music, so she'd come back at night and eat and do all of that. This Lafferty said she was a happy person, laughed a lot, a delightful person.

I probably would have hired her if she asked for a job. She said Donna liked to sit in the corner of the bar where she could talk to people on either side of her. Stop calling her that. She was sociable, striking up conversations with waitstaff and other customers. She'd mentioned that she'd been in Florida previously, but found it overrun with old people. Yeah. She said she's recently widowed, had come into money and was looking to buy a condo.

She was asking locals about property taxes and homeowners association fees and things like that. She always paid in cash from a large wad and tipped generously. God damn. So the grill staff liked her. They all thought she was cool. One lady, Laura Jacino, who was a waiter there, said, I would have invited her to my house. Well, she said that quote, Donna flirted shamelessly with the Padres Rita's bartender Arnie who was several years younger than she was He he flirted back because he's a bartender and he works on tips his job But then she asked him out and he had to go no no no no oh

She asked him out she was real. I fuck women half my age half your age not twice my age not twice It's different. So she made other friends. She met Isabel Barrero at the Motel 6. Barrero, who was 52 and lived in Alamo, had come to the island by herself for a short vacation. And yeah, she thought, that's nice. Donna's another woman who came here by herself.

That's cool. Another older lady coming out by herself. Someone to talk to, they hit it off, had a couple drinks and sat chatting it up there. Um, Donna quote unquote explained to this lady that her husband had died. And this lady said she teared up as she spoke about her husband dying. And this lady said she didn't ask questions. She didn't want to be nosy, you know, whatever you want to tell me is fine. Over the next two days, they had lunch, went shopping, hung out in each other's motel rooms, sat on the beach.

Donna posed for photos with her new friend. Oh, boy. You are wanted everywhere. You're posing for social media photos like a fucking moron. Her friend here said she wasn't shy with the camera, she wanted me to take pictures of her. Wow. Amanda Camacho, the Motel 6 clerk who checked her in later said that she transformed from

looking like an elderly lady when she arrived into someone more provocative wearing short shorts and tank tops. Oh my god, she's... She is a chameleon this lady. What is going on? A gambling picture of chameleon rolling dice, that would be her logo. And she's trying to be somebody else now

so that she can find that person and just be them. And be them, that's it, and just not be Lois anymore. It's easier. They said also on her stomach, she had what looked like a fresh tattoo. What? She got a belly tattoo? She lost her fucking mind bro.

Depicting a palm tree in a beach side sunset. Cause that's her new life now. She got an island life tattoo. Went from a fucking blue Minnesota worm farm, killed her husband. And a month later she's fucking Mitch miss beach life all of a sudden. She's got salt life tattoo on on her belly. What the fuck is going on? So how does nobody recognize her in South Padre Island? Well apparently this South Padre Island does not nobody watches the news there they don't care. Yeah. They're an island they don't

give a shit they're not here because they're to get away from the outside world so whatever's going on off of this island really doesn't affect me. I don't care. Look at it. Yeah, they don't give a shit So there's literally nobody watching the news Nobody cares That's it. I mean she is 30 miles from the Mexican border by the way. Oh She can smell it She could definitely smell it. I can smell it. She's in Texas so she can smell something April 17th 2018 She's still out here Wow April 17th. She's making all sorts of friend

Friends here April 17th. She meets Ron Mulholland at the Padre Rita bar restaurant there He's a 76 year old man who owns several condos on the island will he fuck her? a 76 year old man who owns several condos on the island. Will he fuck her? Let's find out. He stopped in for dinner at about 9pm and sat near her at the bar. There's a younger lady. I like it. They chatted it up for about an hour at the bar before she accepts his invitation to go

to the Coral Reef, which is a karaoke bar just up the road there. He ends up dropping her off at her motel later that night But gave her his business card and suggested they get together again Some other time. Oh, it's a smooth move How about that right there bow I don't even have to write it down so more people Kept befriending her all the time Bernadette Mathis a 65 year old lady. She's a court reporter She's sitting alone at the bar of Liam steakhouse an oyster bar. They struck up a conversation after dinner

They exchanged phone numbers. Yeah, Lois Texted her Texted her later that night saying I'm bragged about my new friend Be good and safe. I wanna hang out soon. Okay. All right, and this lady said she didn't have a lot of friends outside of work, so she was happy with the prospect of making friends.

A lot of older people don't have friends. Yeah. They move away, their friends move away, their friends die, their friends, they run out of friends, they don't have a lot of friends, they have family, but who the fuck wants to hang out with your grandkids 24-7? You want somebody your own age who gets a reference,

maybe, that you make, you know what I mean? Shit like that. You know, I don't know. It understands your Dick Van Dyke show reference from 1963 something, I don't know. According season two, episode seven of Happy Days. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You remember when Fonzie jumped the thing.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You remember when Fonzie jumped the thing. Yeah, obviously. So the next night, they met again for dinner at Liam's. This lady didn't make it through her second drink though. Normally she could put some drinks away. This is a South Texas lady here. She's a hard drinking gal. But man, this is a drink and a half and she is ready to pass out.

Really? So she's like, I've never been able to not handle my alcohol like this. How strong did you make these drinks? Ha ha ha, to the bartender. The bartender wondered if someone slipped something in her drink because this is real weird behavior.

Later, this math has a fuzzy recollection of how she and Lois ended up back at her house. They sat in the hot tub and Lois spent the night in the guest bedroom. There's security cameras throughout the residence, by the way, inside the house. So if Lois brought her there to kill her, she couldn't because it's all on camera and she saw it. That's why. The next morning, Mathis took Lois out to breakfast at the Rancho Viejo Country Club.

Mathis noticed that Lois took out some pills. She had a few kinds and took one. After breakfast, Mathis drove Lois back to the Motel 6. They already made plans to meet for dinner on Friday, April 20th. She said, she acted like a really nice person and I trusted her. Peggy Houlihan met Lois at the Motel 6 pool one day with Isabel Barrerio. How about just lay low?

You're wanted for fucking two murders in two states. This is 12 people she's hung out with. This is crazy. She's a musician planning to perform that evening at Padre Rita's open mic. Yikes. That's rough. Hula Han had her guitar with her and the three women sang some songs together.

Barrario recorded it. Lois seemed to be happy to be included in the whole situation. Yet this Hula Han, Peggy Hula Han, said something about the situation made her uncomfortable. She said that Lois was pressuring the Barrerio lady to stay on the island longer. Oh, she didn't get it. Yeah. Now this Hulahan said she wondered if the two women might be like together together

or if maybe that's what Lois was trying to do, was trying to hook up with this lady. She didn't know. Later that evening, Lois arrived at the Padre Rita before Barrerio and joined Hulahan at her table. Barrerio had decided to stay an extra night, but according to Hulahan, the open micer there, Lois seemed agitated and seemed upset that this Barrerio lady might have departed the island without telling her. upset that this Barrero lady might have departed the island without telling her. But when Barrero finally got there, Lois took her to a separate table and they ended up leaving later on the two of them without saying goodbye. So the open mic lady here said, I didn't know till the next morning that Isabel was okay.

Okay, now Isabel came to me to say goodbye and, um, you know, she knew that she wasn't dead. So that's good. April 19th, 2018, dirty Al's dirty Al's, which claims to serve the best seafood on South Padre, by the way. Cause I want to name, I want dirty in my name of a seafood restaurant. That tells me how clean it is. Yeah, no shit. Uh, she asked to look at a menu and a waiter chatted with her for a seafood restaurant. That tells me how clean it is. Yeah, no shit. She asked to look at a menu, and a waiter

chatted with her for a few minutes. Across the room, the manager, George Higginbotham, was watching, and he said, the woman looked familiar. The hair, something. He said, I have seen her before. Who is this lady? Then, when she did like, apparently she has a really, really really really distinctive hair

flip that she does all the time. Yeah. And like all the videos they say you can tell it's her because it's her hair flip. You can see you're like is that is that her and then she'll do the hair flip and you go oh it's her. So this guy. Slots James because she has a tell. She has a yeah she'd be terrible at poker. So she he's watching this and he sees her do a hair flip and then it clicked. He said, CBS this morning, I saw her on the fucking news. That's where I saw her. Uh huh. Right?

So, interesting. So she gave the menu back and walked out of the restaurant. She said she didn't want to eat at a bar and D Al's didn't have any seating available only the bar so she said never mind so this the manager told the staff that's her that's the woman who killed the lady in Florida and they were like get the fuck out of here what are you talking about murder I swear it George how many fucking blue drinks have you had already today this is crazy yeah he How many fish bowls you drank. Yeah. He said, it is. I'm serious. He said, go see what kind of car she gets into. Go see what kind of car. So one of the employees goes out and looks and it's a white sedan

and he goes, that's what that fucking murderers driving. They said she's driving a white sedan. So okay. They call the cops and the cops, US marshals, everybody arrives at dirty Al's and not to shut the place down for some kind of health code violation either Which is the surprising part? Yeah, if you're just eating in that restaurant, and you see the whole posse come up. You're like oh god How bad is it in that kitchen? Holy shit their oysters Fucking knew I told you we were shouldn't go to Al's. You said it was kitschy and cute.

Fucking this is bullshit. So this manager, Higginbotham, told the marshals that Lois was wearing a yellow tank top and white shorts and that her car had Florida license plates. They said, do you have surveillance footage? He said, I absolutely do, but I have no idea how to retrieve it. They set it up for me, I don't know how to get it. Thank fuck, I haven't needed it till now. Nothing's happened since I've installed this. I haven't had the look.

No idea. So the marshals were like, okay, well we'll go try to find her. And they said she was looking for a place to eat. So check the restaurants. So they do. They just look in every restaurant till they end up at the Sea Ranch restaurant right next door to Dirty Al's. There's a white Acura parked outside with Florida license plates so they secure the restaurant's exit. Several marshals and local cops enter the Sea Ranch and surround Lois. They said she was sitting at her preferred location, a corner spot at the bar. One of the marshals picked up her purse and said, Lois, we're

going to take you out of here and explain what's going on. Don't make a scene. In other words, they didn't whip the guns out and said, hands on your head right now. Which to me is crazy because you know she has a gun. She's a murderer. And we'll use it. And they just took her purse. I guess they figured the gun was in there and they were said don't make a scene basically

Let's not fuck up this guy's night of business here. Your cult's probably not on you It's probably in here so or or in your room or something So they said Lois complied without saying a word and they said that's really interesting Because the guy said usually a fugitive this kind of fug, will either resist arrest or be like, what are you talking about? Fain ignorance of the innocence of the whole thing or say she's not her. Yeah. This guy said she didn't have a single emotion on her face.

Like she was waiting for it. She was tired. She might as well have said, what took you so long? Like she was that close to just saying that, you know, I was going to have to kill somebody that's friends with open micers for God's sake. I was going to have to kill somebody that's friends with open micers for god's sake. I was going to do it. So they end up, everybody comes in, the crime scene units, everything like that. They took DNA swabs from Lois, obtained warrants to search the Acura, room 227 at the Motel

6. They found Marla Gibbs and Jacque in there. It was terrible. They found a map, a brochure from the Lucky Eagle casino, of course, pill bottles, piles of clothes, including the white fedora she was seen wearing in surveillance videos when she posed as Pam Hutchinson. They found tissues, soap, and a green and white towel stolen from the Marina Village. Wow.

She steals towels. She's a towel soap stealer. That's hilarious. A small stash of Lifestyles Ultra Lube Plus condoms. What? She was planning on getting some action just in case. You never know. Wow.

Hutchinson's checkbook, four credit cards and $548 in cash. That's all she had? Yup that's all she had left. Wow. They found a black bag with bullets, a holster, duct tape and rubber gloves inside. Oh my god. Two handguns by the way. Two a Colt Woodsman 22 that her father her, and a Smith & Wesson 9mm

as well. Oh my, she hasn't even used that yet! Nope, that's what I'm saying. She had plans dude. She was gonna do this for so long. In a blaze of glory! No shit! She was going out.

This is not fucking around here. Then they found a trophy. What? They found a fucking trophy. They found Pam's sunglasses wrapped in a hand towel and hidden That's a trophy. That's not to use Not to use them not that everything else was for utilitarian purposes. This is a trophy You sick fucking lady, man

The Dodge County Sheriff Scott Rose said I think she was just waiting to be caught because she went so peacefully. They said she was just sitting at the bar drinking, having a good old time. Do you ask to down the rest of your drink before you're taking away forever? I did pay for it. I feel like you go, let me finish this, right?

Just bang and then you got me. So yeah, searching her suitcase, that's what they found all of that. And they think she obviously had someone else lined up, Bernadette Mathis here. She had dinner with her, she stayed in her guest room, she believed that she had been targeted as the potential third victim. Luckily, she was caught probably right before she was going to kill her.

Which is, I mean, it was probably that night she was going to kill her. So that's crazy. That's how expensive eating out is too, by the way 11. Oh, it'll burn go through everything. No Especially in resort area resorts at the bar drinking and eating fucking whatever that shit is I was talking to a guy who? Does well for himself and all his shit and him and his wife He's an older guy go they go down to Key West all the time And he said they were in Key West for, what was it, like four weeks or something, and they spent $9,000

on food. Oh my god. $9,000. Luckily, he's a successful guy, he owns a restaurant. $9,000 on food in four weeks. He said it was more than the rental of the place on the beach. That was like $5,000 and the food was 9,000. I was like, holy shit.

One, that's an expensive vacation too. And he goes, that wasn't even like, we weren't eating lobster tails every night. That was you go and eat chicken. It was $48 for a chicken breast and some rice because it's fucking crazy. These tourist spots will fucking get you when you're down there.

Those people are doing great. Those people vacation in Turks and Caicos. Oh yeah, yeah. That's so expensive. The people on those resort places, they go down to Barbados for Christ's sake. Oh yeah, yeah. There's those islands down there too. There's a whole, Anthony Bourdain has this chapter in one of his books where he talks

about going with some lady and he loved this one guy running a restaurant just fucking rich people over. He goes, this little guy, little dirty guy, makes terrible little pieces of chicken on a barbecue, but because he's got this little spot of beach, famous people kiss his ass to pay $150 for 12 cents worth of chicken. It's fucking hilarious. He goes to Thailand for like a sex vacation. Yeah, that's how he gets away. So South Padre Island locals find out and they're like, what the fuck? One person says, well this is the Lafferty lady,

said we had no idea when she was here she was a murderer trying to hide. You just never know people you see on the street or walk into your bar who they really are. We gotta get some TVs with CBS on them. Fuck man, we gotta get some cable in this bitch. Anybody have the internet? No?

It's only 2018. Gotta get some Yahoo news down here or something. Jesus. Jesus Christ, yeah, ask Jeeves. I don't know. Fucking 20 years ago internet gave us. We don't care. So yeah, people on there all freaked out.

Isabel Barrero, Bernadette Mathis Carol Lafferty all women who she fooled and were friends with and they're all like any of us could have been the next victim they're all around her age all and you know it's identity identity stealable range wow it's fucking wild dude it's fucking crazy um this the Mathis lady said that she showed up for their dinner scheduled on April 20. It didn't know she'd been arrested the day before. Hilarious. When she asked around she learned that the woman she knew as Donna wasn't Donna. It was actually the murderer from Florida and Minnesota. She said, I feel felt very betrayed. I feel stupid that I could be so gullible. It's just scary, very scary

to meet a stranger and think they're going to be your friend and they turn out to be a killer Yeah, I would say so the test cost her lady said she was awfully freaked out and Everything like that She said maybe the test cost her lady said maybe Lois was hoping she'd find one of the rental units empty and she could squat there But she says yeah, she says I look a lot, she said I have blonde hair, same age, she was here for a different reason. I know it's up. She said, yeah, she said I was afraid for my life.

She turned me from that small town trusting person to having a loaded gun by my bed. Whoa. That's a big switch there. So yeah, they said that she is now very famous across the country, losing Streak Lois, all this shit, which I love. People didn't understand it. People gave, trusted her with their kids. She did daycare.

They're like, what the fuck? This is crazy. And this level of violence and this level of everything is all very rare for women murderers, by the way. Usually it's a, again, utilitarian, a utilitarian crime. Or, and it's even to get to what, like I gotta kill my husband because I wanna go be with this guy. Or I gotta kill this lady

because she's trying to fuck my husband. Or I wanna kill him for insurance. It's very point A to point B. Don't get rid of the kids because I'm crazy. Or kill him because he's beat. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, exactly. But it's either way killing somebody to go on a gambling spree is a very male thing to do Unbelievable. It's very odd. So I thought that was really weird They said though the cop said it's rare for women to kill at all

But when they do it's often an exceptional event the result of jealous rage or the need to protect themselves or whatever. They said she didn't fit a profile because you don't have enough people to make a profile like this. They said there isn't enough of her to even make a profile of what this is. She's an outlier. She's a total outlier. She turned 16 grand into $5 and thirty eight dollars and that's three weeks Quickly that is from a forensic psychologist of Minnesota named Tricia Aiken said that

Now obviously reactions are pretty crazy Ellen Britt Watts who's Pam Hutchinson's cousin said she's sympathetic with the challenges challengers Here she said she wishes things have gone differently She said nothing against law enforcement because I know they had a real hard job But I think they missed a big opportunity when that couple reported her being on Fort Myers Beach on April 2nd Yeah, it's not for nothing, but she said that she would have been alive. She said that's ridiculous They won't talk about it in detail, but the Fort Lee, or I'm sorry, the Lee County undersheriffs said,

one thing I can tell you, there was no opportunity missed. I know that. Bullshit, you fucking idiot. You're a dummy, Carmine Marcello. You're a fucking idiot. She drove the whole gulf because you fucked her up. Dude, she was on the island for days after that, fucking conning and killing a person and he

said, we didn't miss anything. I'll tell you that much. There's a body because fucking liar. They literally the test didn't call the cops and said there's some lady like they she said it's this lady driving this and this is what she did. And they're like, oh, she's got to be gone by now. You guys suck, man. Holy shit. They said obviously she was arrested So hopefully that'll bring some closure to the family. That's what that cop said

Maybe now they'll shut the fuck up is what he said basically Wow It's very also one of her friends Pam Hutchinson's friends Judy Wilder said it wasn't a man who did it It was a woman this has me like blown away Yeah, you don't expect a woman stranger to do this. That's the other thing women generally don't kill strangers Yeah, it's and there's a lot of emotion and entrenched shit that comes out and you know in like a really scum while she's brushing her teeth Yeah, it's it's fucked up man. It's real fucked up the the chamber of Commerce lady from Minnesota

said, when you're a small town and then somebody does something like that, it just makes you feel creepy. Then you wish you never knew who she was. It scared a lot of people. We had so much anxiety in the community until she got found. It's just weird what makes people snap. After she did that, we thought, thought oh my gosh what would make her do that? And she said how can you be such a nice person and then turn into a monster? True. So did gambling make her do it? That's what they're wondering. What did it? She got a belly tattoo. It's not gambling is it? It's I don't know what the fuck it is and they said that the only most similar case they can find to this is Donna Blanton who in 2003 shot her husband of six months who was a Virginia state trooper with his own 380 pistol

after they argued about her gambling debt but that's not to gamble more right that was just to get out of the getting caught for that so that doesn't make sense's weird. And to flee the state and continue killing to keep doing this. They said it's far more likely for problem gamblers to be violent toward themselves. Okay. They said one in five have seriously contemplated or attempted suicide,

according to the National Council on Problem Gambling. They said one reason we think there's a higher suicide rate is that people with a gambling problem have fewer options, less help and less understanding, because they've already burned all their bridges by the time they get to that point. They said, we don't want the image of the gambling addict to be a homicidal maniac. These are folks who face a lot of shame and stigma. I don't think they face any stigma anymore unless it's from your own family.

Nobody cares what you do. Or they borrow from their friends and their friends are all connected via one common thing. But don't worry, Kevin Hart will still be on television telling you to keep doing it. Keep doing it. It's fine. It's fine. Don't get butterscotch and raw candy out of your pocket. That's just nasty.

He makes jokes about it. It's so fun. Just do that because the NFL hates gambling. That's why they play those commercials. They say a number of our patients have co-occurring disorders. It's not a singular dimension illness, talking about gambling.

And so they said that this often clusters in families and things like depression, anxiety, bipolar, obviously. And they said her mother probably had some kind of problem because she was a hoarder and Her mother was eventually committed to a state hospital for the mentally ill as well. So that's two in the family that's two and Kim obviously we talked about her and Then we'll talk about her sister Cindy also had an incident. We'll talk about that in a second She in court she goes to make her initial thing

and she pleads not guilty, her initial appearance pleads not guilty, Lois, and says she has been taking medication for a mental condition. Okay. She said, so they don't know. Who knows? They said, could it be possible

that she just started having a mental condition in the last few years? I guess only 10% of bipolar cases occur in people over the age of 50. So usually if you're not bipolar by 50, you're not going to be type of thing. They said all these pieces together give you a lot more confidence that there was an acute manic psychotic episode.

That's a guy who is a forensic clinical neuropsychologist who has examined 700 murder cases named John Fabian. Okay. Now March of 2019, she's waiting for court her sister, Cindy. That's Cindy with two E's by the way. Cindy. Um, Cindy's at her house about 10 miles Southeast of Rochester, Minnesota, arguing with her 37 year old drunk son who was currently drunk. He shoved her. Cindy and her husband kicked her out. Kicked him out. So you gotta leave. Shortly after she found him lying in the driveway

and told him to go get the car so she could take him somewhere. I'm gonna take you to a, go get the car, I'm gonna take you somewhere, this is crazy. He refused. So she went and got in her 2004 Ford Explorer and ran him over. Oh my God. In her own driveway, her own son on purpose. Oh boy.

He suffered a badly fractured pelvis and head injuries. When a deputy asked if Cindy meant to run over her son, she said, and I quote you bet Which is so Minnesota oh you bet sure Wow How Minnesota is that how funny? Oh my god has a gambling problem, she still says you bet. You bet. Everyone does.

Wow. She was charged with second and third degree assault, criminal vehicular operation, and domestic assault. The morning of August 5th, 2019, she quarreled with her probation officer. That afternoon, she went to a hardware store in Rochester and purchased a clothesline, then drove to Quarry Hill Park near where she and Lois grew up, walked through the woods to a pedestrian bridge spanning a deep ravine and hanged herself. So this family has got issues.

There are some mental health issues going on here clearly The one sister went completely, you know balls out wacky when she got a divorce this one. This is a lot This is a lot what's going on with them. So why the fuck did Lois do this? Okay? There is a all we have is theories But there is a forensic psychologist here named David Thomas who theorizes that when she snapped, she was broke and fiending, which you normally hear for drug addicts, but it can also be applied to gambling addicts. He says, when you get into serious financial trouble like that and there's no way out, at some point your significant other's got to go, you know what, there's nothing more

I can do for you, so you're left out on your own. The husband says, nope, I ain't going to do it anymore. You've messed up my business. You're stealing my money. If I lose my business, I have nothing left. So I'm cutting you off. And now she's on her own and she's like, I can't control this. So I'm going to do what I need to do.

And that's what she does because she's desperate. That's his thought is that she gets cut off and then she, still why would you kill? That's a what's way over the top December 2019 Lois goes to court and The they want to try her she's being tried first in Florida because that's where they have her right and They're saying you're gonna get the death penalty that little lady and she says well, can I make a deal? So to avoid the death penalty they allow her to make a deal and that's that's all she's going to get is guaranteed is no death penalty she is going to admit to shooting Pam Hutchinson with a firearm and plead guilty to first degree

murder okay also pleads guilty to grand theft of a motor vehicle and other property criminal other property criminal use of a personal identification information of a deceased individual She does not provide a statement but answers the court's questions and they said I will judicate adjudicate you guilty you Low losing streak Lois. Yeah may fuck off life in prison without parole and orders her to pay $38,556 in attorneys fees and other expenses Which she's like I'll go double or nothing. Hold on. They're like no, this is the prop. No

I could double it. I'll play you for it so I'll play you for it. So August 2020, she has to go for Dave's murder now up in Minnesota here. Her court appointed public defender worked out a deal with the attorney general's office here. She'll plead guilty to first degree murder of her husband. And the judge tells Lois that because this is during COVID. Right. She says, remove your mask and let me hear your responses here.

Then there's a bunch of questions that we'll talk about here in a second. She said she was satisfied with her defense, was thinking clearly, was unaffected by medication she took for arthritis and high cholesterol. By the way, no mention of antidepressants or any other medication to treat mental illnesses like she said before. And she said she was pleading guilty because she was indeed guilty. And so anyway, then the judge gets to ask shit. They asked her, how and why did you do this?

Why did you kill Dave? She said after she and Dave on March 11th, that's the Sunday, she and Dave had attended their grandson's basketball game in Wisconsin. So they did do that. Lois wanted to stay with her family, but Dave wanted to leave. They left and argued on the drive home. They continued to argue in their bedroom, according to Lois. And then Dave, she says, took a loaded handgun out of the dresser offered it to her

and said quote why don't you just kill yourself maybe you'll get it right this time. Whoa Dave. I don't put an ass in. It's what I'm saying he told the other I mean he might have just fucking lost it and said here instead she said she took the gun aimed it at his chest and fired twice. But that we know she didn't do that right? Well no he fired once and then he probably spun to get away and hit him in the back. It makes perfect sense. So that actually sounds right. That could have happened. So they said did you know Dave was dead? And she said yes.

They said what did you do then? And she said, I laid down with him. Oh, the judge said, what was that? Pardon. Yeah. And she said, I laid down with him. I closed my eyes and the prosecutor said, you made the decision to shoot him. And she said, well, he was right in front of me. And I looked at him in the heart and shot him. So it was on purpose. The family in attendance did not react at all to this,

but they made their feelings known during impact statements here. This is a social worker, read the first one on behalf of Dave's elderly mother, who couldn't come herself. When you killed David, you took my heart. David was this family's ray of sunshine. I will never forgive you. Um, said that she's just such a cold blooded murderer. She could satisfy her gambling addiction and that she left him laying dead while she partied and gambled just like before.

Oof. Lois is first born. Bill, that's her son, approached the podium. He said, you stole something from us, we'll never get back, I'll never be able to forgive you. Then he said, to the hurt you've caused my kids, your grandkids, God, they loved you so much. Loved, that's painful. Then her daughter was the last to speak and she said, losing my dad at the hands of my mom is something I'll never be able to process. If I could go back in time to make sure my mom got the help she needed

and never killed my dad, those are thoughts that constantly haunt me. Wow. Lois speaks. She's got it. Cause right now she just looks like a cold blooded psychopath. So she's got to say something. She says quote, what I did is an unpardonable crime. Solitude is forever. I feel I deserve this. I will have no reprieve. My life without David is my sentence, my penance. Our children are loving, caring, strong people.

It's because of David's strengths that they are the way they are. My best accomplishment was having our children. She then apologized to the family saying that she felt bad from taking him from you and then turned to her children and said, I feel I need to say this. I didn't know how much pain I was in until I wasn't anymore. The judge says, you sir or ma'am or, or grandma, you gambling granny, may fuck off. Mandatory life sentence without parole. So she got two of them. Two.

And the deal is she'll be able to serve her time in Minnesota, because that's closer to her family. That's part of the deal she made. She doesn't have to do it in Florida. And so yeah, she set aside the charge of felony theft and left open the question of restitution to be determined later, because that's not really important right now. Obviously, the reaction here,

Pam Hutchinson's best friend said she was thrilled that Lois was sentenced, but would have preferred the death penalty. Sure. She said, oh my God, I'm so happy. This will give the family some type of closure. I'm just glad she didn't say she was crazy. I'm kind of disappointed, but you got to trust our system.

I would like to have seen the death penalty. Now the lawyer, this is her lawyer, said, I know she killed two people and it sounds kind of weird, but I genuinely liked her. Yeah. She said that, then they asked her, do you believe Lois, everything she said? And she shrugged her shoulders and said, that's her story. That's the story she's been telling all along.

But then the reporter says she then flicked my elbow with the back of her hand as though he shared a confidence and added, why would she lie to me? Like in other words, it's a murder fucking suspect. So you know know take that with what it is the daughter tries to explain it Brayden she gave an interview to Inside Edition and she said that it's he or he I'm sorry he said that it's like living in a bad movie to see his mother who always put herself second accused of killing two people he said it's fucking

crazy he said she literally snapped my whole family is in shock nobody ever put herself second accused of killing two people. He said it's fucking crazy. He said she literally snapped. My whole family is in shock. Nobody ever suspected anything like this. It has devastated our family. He said, talked about the, all of this, you know, his mother being a suspect. He's like, it's like a bad movie. I feel like I'm going to wake up and it's going to go back to normal, but it's not.

She was caring and never put us second he then said gambling is a terrible thing where it can suck people in and destroy lives and They said as it he said that as the cops spread out looking for her He said I just felt really bad for my mom. I felt like she was alone and desperate Which happens when you're a double murder. That's the thing that happens pretty well alone. Yeah so yeah, she's also they're wondering about later on about the money and all that kind of thing and The kids don't really care They said they haven't spoken to their mother since their father's death and he says this Braden said if he ever does get the chance To speak to his mother. He said I just tell her that I love her

Okay, she's got everything's gone. It's all gone. She's fucking done. She has two states worth of life without parole. Tess Koster, the woman who almost got it too, said I'm happy to be alive and I feel lucky. That's what she said. So holy shit. That's you know it's a lot here.

The sheriff said that you know we took our time to build the strongest case against Lois for David's murder, so they were kind of happy Florida did their thing first, because then they could build it more. Because there was no doubt what happened down there, all the surveillance footage and all that kind of shit. So they wanted to do that. Yeah, the test said we even invited them to come stay with us in Florida a couple years ago, but they didn't come.

I'm so glad she was caught. The owner of a motorcycle and all-terrain vehicle dealership that knows them in Blooming Prairie said, everyone is speculating. She snapped. What can you say? There's no explanation. Everybody says that because of that fucking show. It has to be, right? Has to be.

Well, she didn't kill Tess because she would have had to kill a guy, too. I think that's what that is. Possibly, or she could have taken her away, but I think she... I am not sure what was going on. I don't know if she was gonna try to sneak in, sneak up to her and fucking...

Maybe she was just doing recon, looking by, and then was like, oh, shit, she's in the driveway and didn't expect it. So it's weird. They likened here her personality split to a switch getting flicked saying that she went from being a really nice person to being a monster. That's what they said.

Now, speaking of that, HBO put out like a three-part documentary on this whole thing called I'm Not a Monster. Well, I don't know. Yeah. And Lois talks for the...she didn't talk to anybody since she got caught. She did no interviews. She turned down everything.

She does an interview for this documentary. And this is what she says. They said, what the fuck, lady? Why? She said it was just the perfect storm. That's what she said. It was just years of abuse and years of giving and giving and neglecting my own mental health and needs.

And I don't know. I think the word is psychotic break. I just snapped. Oxygen, I need a contract. Wow. She said I was very intimidated by him. I didn't think I had a way out or could defy him because he was a big man and he was very, very aggressive. Lots of verbal abuse, which I feel is worse than physical abuse.

Well, you're an asshole. It's not worse. But what about the lady in Florida? You can't blame him for this. You can blame him for all you want up there What about her? That's what I'm saying. I don't go up there great. We'll let you have that yeah You're you're innocent all cleared up ladies. That's fine Okay, now get the Florida and finish out your life without parole stupid you fucking moron

So anyway, I'm about Pam She said never I had never anticipated hurting that woman Horseshit Absolutely haunted her. She said she reached out to me to be my friend I just wish I could have been in a better state of mind. I could have been her friend Are you out of your fucking mind? She says she does not remember killing Pamela and doesn't know why she did it. Please.

You went right to the ATM and took five grand. Fucking liar. Exactly. Yeah, I went right to the casino. She said it's truly a puzzle because I don't have all the memories and all the answers for that. It was shown to me that I took her life. I still don't know the reason why it happened.

I feel absolute remorse and shame. I feel terrible that I took her life and David's life five grand Lois five grand and continued use of her car and credit cards She then said she just got caught up in my breakdown and it was awful bullshit Bullshit, then she goes on to say, you know, my mother died in a mental institution I didn't want to die in a mental institution And that was my biggest fear if I had to go to trial because I felt mentally incompetent

I was in the middle of a breakdown, and I felt that's what would happen. I'd end up just like my mother Don't worry. We have maximum security prison for you. That'll make you beg for a fucking mental institution dummy you fucking asshole Dude, I that's the biggest cop out ever. You're in for life without parole in two states. Just be fucking honest. Yeah, just say it. Just say what you did. It's one thing to say, maybe, okay, anything could happen.

We don't know what happens behind closed doors with people, so maybe that is what was going on as nice as they both seem. But then when they get to an inexcusable one, she can't say Pam was abusing her. No. So they get to that and then it's just, well, I don't remember what happened then. So I must be fucking out of here. Your sister recognized her mental break and went to Ace Hardware and solved the problem. Fucking, that's what I mean.

If you would have done that, I am very, we're both extremely anti-suicide. 100% against 99%. You say therapy is a great thing. If you're going to start killing people, find the nearest pedestrian bridge and hang yourself off it. Take yourself out before anybody else. 50 feet of clothing line. That'll solve the trick. Make sure, yeah, you want to get the drop so your neck snaps.

Help me with my fucking fall. You're gonna help me with my fucking fall. God, I love Deadwood. So Lois is now in prison at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Shakopee, 30 miles southwest, no, Shakopee, of Minneapolis, 80 miles north of Blooming Prairie. So not even that far from home. No kidding. And there you go, everybody.

That is Blooming Prairie, Minnesota, and a fucking twisted, wild, weird episode I gotta say. She's out of her fucking mind. She's dangerous. And refuses to admit she's an asshole. She would have went on killing women that looked like her and using their money until she got caught. As long as she got away with it, yeah. Period.

That's it and that's all. It would have never stopped. So there you go. If you like that story, I got an idea what you should do. You should head over to whatever app you're on and give us five stars It helps to show out immensely really does help strive helps drive us up the charts So thank you for everyone that does that also follow us on social media We are at small town murder on Instagram small town pod on Facebook

You certainly want to go to shut up and give me murder calm You certainly want to go to shut up and give me murder calm Tickets to live shows everybody get your asses out here for live shows. We can't wait February 7th, Pittsburgh Oh boy get in there Pittsburgh get your tickets. I'm gonna be very honest with you guys We're coming to Pittsburgh in February, you know few people want to go to Pittsburgh in February We go we'll go to Pittsburgh in February? We go, we'll go to Pittsburgh in February. Now, right now, Pittsburgh, we're going to be very honest and let you in. You are the worst selling show we have

in the country right now. There are shows 10 months from now that are almost sold out, and you guys are really doing this slow. So I'm going to say this, if you'd ever like us to come back to Pittsburgh, because I'll tell you what, we don't go places where we don't sell out.

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Anybody $5 a month or above, you're going to get a gigantic back catalog of bonus episodes you've never fucking heard before, but you're gonna get a gigantic back catalog of bonus episodes you've never fuckin' heard before but you're gonna wanna hear big time. So get in there and hear those new ones every other week, including this week when you get one crime in sports, one small town murder, crime in sports, Travis Rudolph, a recent NFL player who just finished up a murder trial. We'll talk about that and then small town murder,

West Memphis 3 part two, how the fuck did we end up here? Who else coulda done it? We'll talk all that and then small town murder West Memphis three part two How the fuck did we end up here? Who else could have done it? We'll talk all about that stuff patreon.com slash crime and sports But you also get a shout out at the end of the show Jimmy hit me with the names of the most wonderful Goddamn people in the world who would never steal our identities for the purposes of gambling hit me with them right now This week's executive producers are Neil and Gretchen Jones Holy shit. Thank you, Joneses. You're wonderful.

You're fantastic. I can't say it enough. That's so kind of you. No one's keeping up with you, Joneses. Nobody's keeping up with these Joneses. But these people are trying. Andrea Fellows, Jill King, Gary Howard, Meredith McClure, Kevin Brown, and Amanda Clayton.

Thank you all very much for going above and beyond. You didn't have to do that and we really appreciate you. Other producers this week are Beth Buell, Janice Hill, Tiffany Gonzalez, Amanda Mason, Jesse with no last name, Courtney Doar, Andy Cote or just Cote or maybe Cody, Kimberly Brown, V Chobney, I believe, I don't know, Zachariah Ward, Celery Stock 13, Jesse Struthers Hannah franzy frans, maybe frons Lisa But oh boy Bastas to Bastas check Bass check best to stick that to that to stick is there two s's that are silent. We'll never know fast frog double-oh-seven prankster zero three Madeline

Victoria Tori Ludwig charry 7 Prankster 03, Madeline Victoria, Tori Ludwig, Chari, Shari, Shari with no last name, Brittany Davidson, Billy Welch, Cody Bryant, Miss Taylor XO, thank you Miss Taylor, Kaitlyn Bear, Bear, yes, Natalie Arensebia, Arensebia, thank you Natalie,, with no last name, John Hollamby, Junan, Junan Hayes, Jacob Troublefield, Pam W. Casper, the spicy ghost, Daniel Davis, Melissa Zenzin, Cassie with an ass, James, Griffin. Is she a friendly ghost, though? She might be a spicy ghost. I imagine she's telling us that it's not Casey, but Cassie. I think that's what she was trying to help me with,

but she's also got an ass. All right, Tim Dennis, Jenny would know last name, Tara Hodgson, Bo Billy Lover, Michelle Bingham, Sabrina Snowden, Maria Tamanaka, Lazera, Jill Crouch, Jay would know last name. This show brought to you by the letter J. Karen Turner, Mandy Colvin, Devin Berenger, Sonia Alega, Aliiyah, okay, Courtney

Derek kitchen Christina Franklin Jennifer Newsome Hunter Pickett Aaron Lily Christina Marie Cory Gainis you boy Wow, is that a wonder is he trying to make me say something with that? I don't know Sophia It helps. If you wanna do that, get someone who's a real good reader probably. Sophia Kudike, she could be making me say something gross. I don't know. Taylor Kennedy, S.J., Nikki Young,

Mams McGuire, Richard Lee, Jim McKee, Rachel Sanborn, Ray Early, Kim P, she's an LPN in Oklahoma, Casey with no last name, S and C, the letters, S, C, Steven Charles Walter, Stacey Lee, Amanda Zerringer, Chocolate Diesel, all right, Crystal, Abby with no last name, Amanda Rodin, Anne Hank, Louise Rosalie, Gabriel Smith, Aistey Aste, Sean McCloskey, Todd Winneger, LR and H, LRH, I don't know what that is, Lauren Ray, Jim Montgomery,

Lacey Fithian, Haley Henson, Dara Jordan, Maddie Brown, Lizzy with no last name, Tonya Knight, Mark Langworthy, Sinead Feeney, Carissa Tucker Ellis, Cindy Jensen, R. Brown, Shermaine Steves, Alec Cornelison, Amanda Thomas, Jennifer Bruno, Stephanie May, Giancarlo Ruffino, look at me getting good with this Italian shit. Brooke Bullard. Giancarlo would probablyino, look at me getting good with this Italian shit. Brooke Bullard. Giancarlo would probably be best, but that's fine. He just pronounced it wrong and then said, look at me getting it right.

Did I say it wrong? Giancarlo would probably be better. Oh, okay, Giancarlo sounds fucking great. Giancarlo's fine, but it's probably like a Giancarlo type of thing. Is what you'd call him in America. Getting real good at this shit. Jimmy's got his fingers out.

Jesus Christ. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha surprise. Laura Collins, Catherine with no last name, Kyrie Jensen, Winosor, Winosor, very funny. Kate McD, Samantha Coleman, Tanya Martinez, Aaron Logan. Michael with no last name, Dustin Kessley. Devolved. You're fucking just disapproval College of Warska Kimberley Cuneap fell she may be trying to make me say something dirty Matthew marks mill hollow maple Callie Swanson Kenzie money

Kimber Herzog Aaron would know last name Steve Richmond Steve Richmond, Jill with no last name, Kaitlyn Allen, Mitch Hanlon, Eric Just Eric, Gorgon, Gorgon Z. What, didn't we just, the wrestler's last name was Gorgon? That is fucking crazy. All right, that's weird. Phoebe Cox, that's bizarre, right? Ibo, elbow, elbow, grease. All right, spelled like French, elbow.

That's why you're ruining my life. Joy or Irwin? Alex Barlow, Kristen Canlin, Canton, C-A-N-T-I-N, Buffy and Chauncey Cote, Buffy, that's wild. Kerry Rawman, I didn't know that was actually somebody's name. Romain Rawman, Brian Hoffman, Andrew Campbell, Desmona Shaw. Somebody just texted me and said they were sitting on a plane, James, next to iced tea and cocoa and their kid. That man still flies fucking a regular commercial. It's bananas.

Brian Hoffman, Andrew Campbell, Desmona Shaw. I said that. Quizical Queen, and Spikinger. Spikinger? Spikinger? Spikinger, oh boy. Vicki Hay, Phil Barrera, Logan Armstrong, Beth with no last name, Nate with no last name, Eric Beacon, Roderick Rose, Brent with no last name, ChefBlake1016, Holly Hagman, Leah Stanulson, yikes, Katie Tracy, Micah Tetrault, and all of our patrons.

You guys are amazing. Thank you so much, everybody. We appreciate everything you do for us. Fuck you guys are awesome. Thank you. And keep hanging out with us. You want to follow us on social media, head over to shutupandgivemurder.com. Drop down menus will take you anywhere you want to go.

That said, until next week everybody, it's been our pleasure. Bye. If you like Small Town Murder, you can listen early and ad free now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen early and ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.