True Crime with Kendall Rae - Six-Figure Wedding Leads to a Deadly Attack?! The Reuschel Family Nightmare

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

After divorcing his wife of 20+ years, Mike Reuschel met another woman named Sue, and they quickly hit it off. They got married, and together, they enjoyed the finer things in life: luxury cars, traveling, and more. But when Mike's daughter from his first marriage had a wedding of her own... Well, that didn't go over so well with Sue. The wedding, which was estimated to cost $100,000, went over budget by a LOT, and Sue was not happy about it. So much so that their marriage started to crumble. After taking some time apart, Mike and Sue tried to rekindle things, but Sue just could not get over how much her husband spent on his daughter's wedding. The same night they got into this fight, Sue ended up with several stab wounds, almost ending her life. So who was responsible for this attack? Was it Mike who first attacked Sue? Or Sue, who first attacked Mike? Donate to NCMEC through my campaign! https://give.missingkids.org/campaign/kendall-rae/c438796 This episode is sponsored by: Quince ZocDoc Check out Kendall's other podcasts: The Sesh & Mile Higher Follow Kendall! YouTube Twitter Instagram Facebook Mile Higher Zoo REQUESTS: General case suggestion form: https://bit.ly/32kwPly Form for people directly related/ close to the victim: https://bit.ly/3KqMZLj Discord: https://discord.com/invite/an4stY9BCN CONTACT: For Business Inquiries - [e-mail]

Hello everyone and welcome back to True Crime with Kindle Ray. I'm so happy to have you here today to discuss yet another case. And if you're new, then welcome, be sure to subscribe. So today's case is, wow, it's a lot. And I think you guys are going to have many different thoughts. I kind of, I know where most of you are gonna lean, but I'm curious to see your opinions on this one. Today, we're gonna be talking about two people

who have two very different stories about what happened on a specific night. This case was actually submitted through my members only request form. And as soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted to look into it more, I was intrigued. If you aren't a member yet or you didn't know, my members have access to a members only request form which is much smaller than my general request form. The general request form currently has 90,000

submissions in it. So as you can imagine, it's much more likely that your case submission will be seen if you submit it through the members only form and Possibly be chosen as a member you also get access to my episodes 24 hours in advance and add free Plus 10% of your membership every month is donated to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and you're supporting me and my team on the Projects that we're working on like my documentary right now Which has been very costly to produce, but I'm so, so excited about it. I am hoping to be able to tell you the release date for that pretty soon.

So look forward to that. Anyway, let's go ahead and jump into things today. The two people that I'm going to be telling you about are Michael and Susan Rouschel. And while normally I try to do my best to give you background information on the people involved in the cases I cover, that information on my consume ended up being extremely limited. A huge reason that I really like to give as much background information as I can on the people involved in the cases I cover, is so that mostly you can get to know the victim and get a real sense for who they are or who they were and connect with them in a different way.

But in this instance, I think you'll have a pretty good sense of who Mike and Su are without knowing too much information about their past. What you do need to know about their past is how the two of them came together. So let's jump into that and let's start with Mike. So at age 19, while attending the University of Florida, Mike Rushell met a woman named Dede Hoffman, and their young love sparked a 25-year marriage. Dede, who says that Mike is a gentle and kind man, was the father to their two daughters, Caroline and Kate.

And despite their marriage not working out, the two of them had a pretty amicable breakup. And the reason they actually got divorced was because Mike was a millionaire working in the tech industry and seemed to want to prioritize work and travel Over his family. I do want to say that despite their issues Didi said that Mike never had a history of abuse or violent behavior He may not have always been around when she wanted him there But when he was around she said he wasn't some terrible person.

So when they got divorced in 2005, D.D. moved out and allowed Mike to stay in the home, so their college-aged daughters could always return to the house that they were raised in. And it wasn't long after D.D. moved out, that 49-year-old Mike met a 38-year-old registered nurse named Susan on match.com. And they hit it off incredibly quick and she ended up moving into his home not long after. And according to D.D. when Susan or Sue moved in, it felt like she sort of just took over everything, including their family dog. She said that everything that was once hers was now

Sue's. And even though she only knew Mike for a short period of time at this point, she became very possessive over him his time in their home. The two of them ended up getting married in August of 2007, and shortly after that, Sue quit her jobs in nurse, and Mike significantly scaled back his traveling for work and even bought a local dental practice. And I think saying they lived luxurious lives is really an understatement. Mike made millions of dollars and with that money, they traveled all the time.

They took tons of really fancy vacations. They were able to do a bunch of renovations on their home, really expensive renovations. They never seemed to be short of anything. And that's how they both liked it. Mike actually called Sue his trophy bride. and I think that speaks for itself. They lived in a wealthy upper-class neighborhood called Hail Plantation, which is just southwest of the city of Gainesville, Florida,

and at least for a little while, things between them seemed well...perfect. But by 2015, texts between them showed that their relationship was anything but perfect. And one of the biggest problems in their relationship was that Sue seemed to have a big issue with Mike's daughters, specifically his daughter Caroline. These days I've been trying to focus on buying. These days when it comes to my closet, I've been trying to focus on buying pieces that are going to last me a long time that are good quality and are also ethically made. And that's why I love Quince so much.

Quince creates timeless classics that never go out of style, and you'll have them in your closet forever. Quince's capsule wardrobe must have like 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters from $50 and washable silk tops and dresses, and flattering pants make putting together any outfit that much easier. And the best part, all quince items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. By partnering directly with top factories, quince cuts out the cost of the middleman and passes the savings on to us. And what I really love about it is quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical, and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. And you can just tell,

with the cold weather coming in, I've been investing in some warmer pieces. And I gotta say, their cashmere sweaters are unbelievable. They're so soft and they hold up really well in the wash. I really recommend checking Quince out. I think you will love it. You can get affordable luxury with Quince. Go to quince.com slash TCKR for free shipping

on your order in 365 day returns. That's Quince spelled q-u-i-n-c-e.com slash TCKR to between the two of them, but I would say they had a pretty mutual dislike for one another. Sue would text my calling his daughter's cuss words and frequently complained about the relationship that they had, and for that reason alone, I can see why Caroline didn't think too fondly of her dad's wife. Caroline claims that things got so bad that Mike could only answer the phone and talk to her when Sue wasn't around because she didn't like him spending time speaking to her. And things continued to just get worse and worse and they sort of hit their peak, so to speak, in November of 2017 when Caroline got married. For some context,

Mike told Sue that the wedding was going to cost $100,000, which is insane. And it gets crazier because it went significantly over budget $150,000 over budget. So this whole wedding cost like $250,000. And Sue was not happy about it. Honestly blew my mind hearing how much they spent on this one day. But it was held at the Oheka Castle on the North Shore of Long Island. And it seemed to become the straw that broke the camel's back in Mike and Sue's relationship. And what's interesting is Sue and Caroline seem to have somewhat of a bonding moment over her dress.

And Sue had gone shopping with her and told her, you have to have this dress, this is your dress. And she bought it for her. She bought her an $11,000 burgdorf goodman dress with no problem. But she was really enraged at the idea that Mike spent way more than he said he would. Some sources say that Caroline and her husband paid for a lot of the wedding on their own, not really sure of the details on that either way Sue was not happy with how much was being spent on this wedding. And you know, she's entitled to her opinion,

but what she wasn't entitled to was being physically violent with Mike as a result of her anger. Three weeks after the wedding, Mike confided in his daughter Caroline that Sue had been not just recently violent towards him, but that it had been going on for quite some time. And it didn't take much for Caroline to be convinced of this because on her wedding day,

she'd actually noticed a long white scar going down the side of her dad's face. And he told her it was from one of the instances where Sue abused him. And Caroline strongly believed her dad was telling her the truth because he actually sent her photos as further proof, not that she really needed it. And the confessions about his relationship didn't stop there because Mike also told Caroline that Sue had recently been arrested. Apparently when Sue found out how much the wedding actually cost, she went crazy on him.

She threw her phone at him, she began beating on him, and what's interesting is she was actually the one who called 911. Things had really escalated, and apparently she thought that officers would help de-escalate things, and I mean, yeah, they definitely did. When officers got there and talked with Mike and Sue, they came up with a solution that they thought would help. She should go spend some time at their beach condo and cool down, which sounds pretty nice. She agreed, but after 30 minutes when she didn't leave, they ended up arresting her and charged her with domestic battery. Not only that, she was also ordered to stay away from him, at least temporarily. So Mike tells his daughter Caroline that he was scared to tell her about all this,

because at first, he and Sue agreed to keep this a secret, but the more he thought about it, he felt like it's something that his daughter should probably know. As for her arrest, the charges were dropped when Mike decided he didn't want to press charges, but the chaos didn't end there. And I'll get into that in a minute. So moving forward a little bit, Sue did end up moving into the beach condo by herself, so that she and Mike could take some time apart.

And during this time, she also sought out alcohol and anger management counseling. Not surprisingly, the more she drank, the less she was able to control her anger, which is very common. And she decided that she wanted to work on herself for the sake of their relationship, and I definitely respect that. And it wasn't too long until they started seeing each other again. By January of 2018, they were beginning to rekindle things. And from what I can tell, everything was going well, until it wasn't. On the night of Friday, February 2, 2018, Mike invited Sue to come to their house for the weekend, and she agreed, and they decided to go to dinner that night in hopes to get things

back on track. And I don't think it'll surprise you to hear that dinner went very poorly while they were discussing things Caroline was brought up and they began fighting just like they had many times before. Sue just could not get over how much money Mike spent on Caroline's wedding. You just could not get over how much money Mike spent on Caroline's wedding. And based on the text that she was sending to Mike about Caroline before the wedding, it's very clear that she had a problem with his daughter long before this. I mean, Sue literally called Caroline a bitch to her own father. And I mean, that's fact. She has admitted to it and yeah, it'd be hard hearing that as a father. And I mean, that's fact. She has admitted to it. And yeah, it'd be hard hearing that as a father.

So dinner ended badly. And Mike left. He drove home on his own and Sue followed behind in an Uber. Surveillance footage from his home security system shows them both entering the house through different doors. And once they were inside, they went into separate bedrooms. Mike went to their bedroom and Sue went to the guest bedroom. And this is when the story gets muddled by lies and a whole lot of he said she said around 3 30 a.m. on February 3rd, Mike called 911 and said that he and his wife had been stabbed inside of their home by an intruder. Now we'll move on to our emergency. I don't know if I need an ambulance from the community. I don't know.

I just, uh, someone's in the house. The next I have a way up. The next I have a way up. When first responders arrived, he shared that a masked intruder entered their home and the next thing he knew, they had been attacked. And he noted that his wife sustained more serious injuries than he did. And it was clear, by Sue's condition, that her injuries were significantly worse. She was immediately brought to the hospital to be treated for life-threatening injuries,

meanwhile Mike escaped with minor cuts and bruises. But here's where things get really weird. When officers began surveying the crime scene, they noticed that there was no sign that an intruder had entered the home. What's so ever? There were no broken windows, there were no broken locks, no sign of forced entry at all. So you guys know how much I love Zock-Dock and how long I've been using it far longer than they have been sponsoring this show. I truly recommend it. I've gotten so many my friends and family to use ZockDock and recently, just a few weeks ago, it came in handy for me because I was having some health concerns that I needed to have addressed right away and my doctor wasn't able to get me in. So I went to my handy Vandy ZockDock app and I was able to find another doctor who could get me and immediately had great reviews and was nearby and took my insurance.

So I took a chance and went ahead and saw her and I loved her so much that I may even just see her from now on instead of the other doctor that I was seeing, which I did like them, but I fit even better with this doctor. And finding the doctor that is the best fit for you is absolutely crucial. And these days we look for reviews on everything,

everything from movies that we see, restaurants we go to, anything that we buy. And so with ZockDock, which is a free app, you can find amazing doctors and book appointments online. And we're talking about booking appointments with thousands of top rated patient review, doctors, and specialists. And you can filter for ones that take your insurance,

are located in your U, and treat almost any condition you're searching for. All of these docs have verified reviews from actual real patients, not bots. I can't recommend it enough. You gotta get started with ZockDock. Just go to ZockDock.com slash Kendall Ray and download the ZockDock app for free. Then you can find and book a top rated doctor today at zoc.com slash Kendall Ray, ZockDock.com slash Kendall Ray. candle ray, sock, sock, dot, comm slash, and array. Now, maybe it was possible that the intruder got in through an unlocked door. And because they saw the house was equipped with

10 security cameras, they hoped this would give them an answer. But it didn't take long. And by the next morning, the police were no longer concerned with this anonymous assailant, because after Sue woke up from surgery, she told investigators the truth. Mike was her attacker. There was never a home invasion to begin with. According to Sue, the two of them got in a fight at dinner and things escalated. She had sent some angry text to him about his daughter, saying,

Good luck with your bitch. She will ruin any relationship you have. And also said, I'm filing for divorce. I will leave in the morning. And the last of these texts was sent at 10, 13 PM, and it reads, you have serious boundary issues with your daughter. I will not tolerate this behavior.

After returning home and sending these text messages, Sue said that she went and slept in the guest room and then had plans to leave in the morning. Like she said, but as we know, there was a lot more that happened that night. According to Sue, in the middle of the night, Mike came into the guest room and got on top of her. And that's when she said she felt a sharp pressure in her stomach, and she looked down and saw that she had been stabbed. And she asked Mike if he stabbed her and he said yes. From there, she says a fight broke out between the two of them and they were struggling and struggling. And she ended up getting stabbed a few more times in her wrist, in her thumb, and in her neck. She believes that Mike did this because he didn't want to get divorced. And she says she believes this because,

according to her, that's what he said while he was doing it. And not just that, but while Sue is begging him to call 911, he says, no, we're just going to lay here until you die. And keep in mind, this is well before midnight. And he didn't call 911 until about 330 in the morning. Sue claims that she just did her best to stay awake while she's laying there bleeding profusely. And eventually she decides that maybe it will save her if she just tells him what he wants to hear. So she tells Mike that she won't leave him, that they won't get divorced and, according

to her, this worked. But when Mike finally decided that he was going to get his wife the help that she needed to survive He panicked because he realized that he'd probably get arrested for what he had done and that's when according to Sue He came up with the intruder story and that he made her agree to lie so that he would be protected and as they were thinking about it She voiced some obvious concerns that they had a security system. They had cameras on the inside and the outside of the house. They're going to see all of this. But Mike had a solution for that. He decided to go and turn off the system for a period of time. I'm guessing he's hoping it'll look like the intruder

turned the system off, disabled it, whatever. I don't know. It doesn't make much sense. And Sue, you know, to save her life agrees to go with this lie. But as soon as she has the chance, she tells investigators what really happened. But if you're thinking this sounds like an open shut case, you'd be wrong. Because Michael Shell pleaded not guilty to the charges and awaited his trial at the Alakshua County Jail. His daughter Caroline says she remembers that day vividly. She was in Chicago with her husband when she got a collect call from the county jail. She was confused and accepted the call only to hear her father's voice on the other end.

And in the short amount of time that he had on the phone, he briefly explained his point of view and also asked that she contact his lawyer. And from the beginning, Caroline believed that her dad was innocent. And she's not the only one. His ex-wife, D.D., and many, many others, including friends, and colleagues all say that Mike is not the type of person who could do something like this, that they just don't believe he was capable of doing this.

They say that he had always been a reasonable, kind, and nonviolent man, so why would he all of the sudden snap like that? Well, according to prosecutors, Mike snapped when his wife told him that she wanted a divorce because he couldn't stand the idea of losing half his fortune to her. And when the trial began, that was the motive that the prosecution drilled into the jury. A Gainesville man is on trial this week accused of trying to kill his wife last year. She survived multiple stab wounds and could take stand to testify. At trial, Mike and his defense team had a pretty tough road that they were looking down. Because now

that people knew that there wasn't an intruder, he needed an explanation for how and why Sue was stabbed. And while on the stand, Mike admitted that the intruder story was a hoax and that the real story is nothing like Sue had been saying. So here's Mike's version of events. On the night of February 2nd, Mike says that they came home from dinner where they had been fighting. They go into the separate rooms just like she said, but he decides that he wanted to reconcile things with his wife.

So he goes into the guest room a little after 10 pm and this is when he sees Sue kneeling at the end of the bed holding a knife. He says that he feared that she might hurt herself or even him with the knife. So he asked her to just give him the knife so they could talk. And this is when he says they broke out in a struggle on the bed for the knife. He says that as they fought, he feels the knife go into her stomach. And that's when he immediately rolls off of her to make sure that it didn't puncture her any further. Then they continue to fight over control of the knife until he was able to get it from her and put it out of reach of both of them, and by this point they had both sustained wounds from the knife. And here's where his story gets even more

interesting. Mike says that he was the one who was begging to call 911, and that Sue told him not to. He said that she was worried that she would get arrested because she had that prior arrest for domestic battery. And this is when, again, according to Mike's story, she came up with the plan to say that an intruder entered the house and attacked them both. And as for the obvious discrepancy in time, Mike claims that they'd just laid in bed for hours having, quote, the best conversation of their lives. He talks about how they talked about their future travels, how they're going to go to Tuscany and Greece and these places they haven't gone. And it was one of the best conversations of their marriage, which I am just as confused about this detail as you

probably are. I mean, here was his wife, laying in bed with him, bleeding out from her stomach, and he claims that they're just having one of the best conversations they've ever had. And his version of events don't end there, because Sue sustained one more extremely life-threatening injury I have yet to tell you about, and that was the cut to her wrist.

Sue's wrist had been slashed down to the bone. I mean, literally cut through an artery which is almost fatal. And how she sustained this injury would be, well, the million dollar question. Mike says that after they talked, they came up with the plan to blame the attack on an intruder, and that their dog wandered into the room sometime around 3 a.m. And when he went to make sure that the dog didn't jump up on the bed, he says that's when Sue took the knife and cut her own wrist.

And this is when he says he needed to stage the break in. And so he runs out of the room to disable the security system. And then after turning them off, he claims he waited an additional 25 minutes before calling 911. But like we already know, when first responders get there, the scene tells a much different story. Because there was more than just blood in that room. There was feces and vomit as well. A detail that Mike and Sue leave out of their stories. And his story also didn't include any explanation for how she ended up with a

cut on her collarbone. And these are all things pointed out by the prosecution, leaving the defense the difficult job of trying to prove Mike's innocence. So let's talk about what they argued. The defense had two pretty big strategies that they used to argue their point. The first being that this was not the first time that Sue had threatened to divorce Mike. And as we know, the prosecution is arguing that the reason Mike snapped that night was because Sue threatened to divorce him and take half his money. But if this wasn't the first time that she threatened to leave, why would he suddenly snap? What makes this night so different from all the rest where she made the same threats to leave him? And the second part of their strategy was to paint Sue as a woman with a violent past.

Of course, they pointed to her previous arrest and Mike's claims of repeated physical abuse, not to mention that his computer search history shows multiple times where he looked up resources for battered husbands. They brought up her angry and violent text messages, and they also brought up the idea that she had previously experienced suicidal intention. And I mentioned the suicidal intention only because it would corroborate Mike's claims that she was the one to cut her wrist so deeply, but Sue and her lawyers deny all of this. And Sue took the stand as well and shared her version of events, which I've already

shared with you, but she also shed light on some other important things. She says that she had never been violent with her husband and because he never reported the abuse that everything he's saying is a lie. Now I don't know how they got around the fact that he did look up resources for battered husbands, but I'm guessing they just really honed in on the fact that he never reported that abuse. And I do want to be very clear that just because abuse isn't reported doesn't mean it didn't happen.

And even when those photos of his injuries were shown in court, the prosecution waved those off as instances where Sue had to protect herself against Mike, not the other way around. Now we can all tell this is a classic, he said, she said, situation. So we really need to get into what the actual evidence said, which brings me back to the blood. According to the defense who brought in their own blood pattern analyst to testify, they argued that the spurt patterns and timeline clearly show that Mike was telling the truth. And it all goes back to the cut on her wrist. Their analyst says that Mike's story of Sue cutting her wrist around 3am has to be true because if her wrist was cut around 10.30 pm, as Sue says, she would have died within an hour. They argued that because she was still alive when EMS

got there, that she must have sustained that injury very recently. And they argued that if we can't trust Sue's timeline, then we can't trust anything else she says either. And not only that, but their expert testified that blood patterns found on the pillowcase and nightstand had to have come from her wrist, because blood would have spurt out causing the patterns they found. So that was their big argument, and the prosecution refuted the expert's testimony adamantly. First and foremost, they brought into question the character of this expert.

It turns out that this guy had his medical license suspended after get this storing body parts in Tupperware containers in a refrigerated storage unit. Yeah, I actually wish I was making that part up, but I'm not. That is true. The prosecution also argued that those blood stains on the pillowcase and nightstand actually came from cast off from the knife as Mike was violently attacking Sue. To them, this proved that he constrained her and held her down during a violent struggle, and not just that, but they pointed out that it would have been very difficult and unlikely

for Sue to have cut herself that deeply on her own because it's sort of against human nature and your own instincts to inflict a knife wound that severely to yourself. And of course, it's possible and it happens, but again, I am just relaying what the prosecution was trying to yourself. And of course, it's possible and it happens. But again, I'm just relaying what the prosecution was trying to argue. They also noted that Mike's lack of injuries should be considered as well. If Sue was really the assailant, then how come Mike

walked away with very minor injuries, cuts and bruises, and she was the one with life-threatening injuries? Sue even testified that Mike put the knife in her hands and then proceeded to cut himself so that his story looked more believable. The prosecution also went on to share that Mike clearly didn't want to fix the relationship and that he had been done with Sue for quite some time. They pointed to the fact that during their brief time apart, he visited three dating sites, to which he claimed he just wanted to look at profiles and see their response to how they would quote, treat a man. But after all was said and done and the jury heard all the facts and both sides, they

came to the conclusion that Mike Rouschell was guilty. Emotions erupted from Michael Rochelle's family inside the courtroom Thursday night. As a jury found a 63-year-old Gainesville man guilty of attempting to kill his wife, Susan O'Brien Rochelle, the night of February 2, 2018. And it only took them four hours of deliberation

to come back with that guilty verdict. Michael's found guilty of attempted murder, false imprisonment, tampering with evidence, refusing medical care to a victim of a crime, and intimidating a witness slash victim. In December of 2019, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the charge of attempted murder and five additional years for each additional charge.

However, those will be served concurrently or at the same time. And he has also been asked to pay an unconfirmed amount of restitution. Now Mike's story doesn't quite end there, because after trial it came out that an informant came forward and claimed that Mike tried to hire a hitman to kill Sue while he was in jail awaiting trial. And it's unclear if there was enough evidence of this for another conviction, but considering his age 64, he is going to be in prison pretty much the rest of his life.

Mike is serving his 30 year sentence at the Gulf Correctional Institution in Florida. And to this day, his family and friends believe he's innocent. As for Sue, she has since filed for divorce and is living life out of the spotlight. And even though she sustained some really serious life threatening injuries, it is always a blessing when I don't have to report

that someone's life ended. But I definitely wanna hear from all of you on what you think of this verdict and what you think really happened that night. Who do you think was telling the truth? That is gonna be it for me today, guys. What you think really happened that night? Who do you think was telling the truth? That is going to be it for me today guys. Thank you for joining me for another episode and make sure you follow the show on Spotify and Apple podcasts. It really does help me out. If you want to watch the video version of this show, you can find it on my YouTube channel,

which will be linked, or you can just search Kendall Ray. I will be back with another episode soon, but until then, stay safe out there.