True Crime Vault: Murder and Scandal in Chicagoland

Speaker 1 A 20-year-old soldier goes missing from a U.S. Army base.

Speaker 2 How can she go missing on a military base? That's ridiculous.

Speaker 1 What would come to light is horrifying and ignites a movement that sparks a reckoning in the U.S. military?

Speaker 1 Listen to Vanished: What happened to Vanessa, a new series from ABC Audio and 2020, coming September 16th?

Speaker 3 Welcome to the True Crime Vault, home to 2020's most chilling stories.

Speaker 10 You have to be a sociocast in its purest form in order to be able to take another person's life.

Speaker 11 I'm going to zoom in.

Speaker 12 Grabbed her stuff.

Speaker 12 Opened her door.

Speaker 13 And in the shadows, gets hit with seven bullets.

Speaker 13 Forced back into her apartment from the blasts.

Speaker 14 They see pictures of Sean Gale throughout the condominium.

Speaker 14 Sean Gale, number 23, scored the touchdown. Sean Gale is a celebrity.
All the 85 Bears are very well-known celebrities.

Speaker 16 He's dating her.

Speaker 14 She's pregnant with his child.

Speaker 3 In your opinion, why do you think they weren't married?

Speaker 16 I know Ronnie wanted to be married.

Speaker 17 I'm thinking it was probably because Sean wasn't ready.

Speaker 18 He's a guy who has a lot of women in his life. Are there other people who have had relationships with Sean that didn't end well?

Speaker 13 Someone deliberately took that child out.

Speaker 17 If there's some woman out there sending letters, you know, she may want to get rid of the other women in his life.

Speaker 19 So police bug his house. And he's asking her, Do you think these letters were sent from the killer?

Speaker 10 Yeah, I think this person is a little unbalanced. Got a few screws loose.

Speaker 21 When you hit the gun, did you hide it real well?

Speaker 21 Is it gone?

Speaker 3 It sounds very much to me like someone's confessing to a murder.

Speaker 22 This is a story that has shocked an entire city, over and over.

Speaker 23 We start with breaking news. Deadly shooting nearby.
She's there.

Speaker 24 I'll have to have an investigator call you.

Speaker 25 This was an execution.

Speaker 14 A pregnant 42-year-old woman gunned down as she was going to work.

Speaker 14 Was it a robbery, a contract killing?

Speaker 27 Was it revenge?

Speaker 28 It turns out she is the girlfriend of a former Chicago bear, Sean Gale.

Speaker 28 Save

Speaker 28 me.

Speaker 19 Sean Gale was this legendary football player for one of the greatest football teams of all time, the 85 Bears, and his pregnant girlfriend, Ronnie Ryder, when she's murdered.

Speaker 19 I mean, this turned the city upside down.

Speaker 19 This story really starts in 1985 when Mike Didka and the Chicago Bears ruled the town of Chicago.

Speaker 3 Chicago is a huge football town.

Speaker 22 In 1985, the Bears were on fire, and this was something the city had not seen.

Speaker 30 The Chicago Bears, the mighty monsters of Michigan Avenue.

Speaker 22 Well, I was a young local reporter working in Chicago, and I was not a sports reporter. I was a news reporter.

Speaker 31 Byrne takes her unity campaign to yet another swing vote area tonight.

Speaker 22 But the Bears were so big that they were leading the newscast, not the sports cast.

Speaker 32 The 1985 Bears, arguably one of the greatest football teams in NFL history, there's no question.

Speaker 32 Picked up by Dave Newerson, they had just the strangest, wildest group of players you'll ever see on one squad.

Speaker 34 Clay McDonald's playoff payoffs.

Speaker 21 Here's a good time, early break days of victory.

Speaker 32 I venture to say that almost every guy in that 53-man squad did at least one commercial.

Speaker 36 This cat knows exactly what he wants. That's my kind of cat.
Whiskers. That's going to be intercepted.

Speaker 36 Sean Gale.

Speaker 32 Sean Gale was a great contributor, a starter, just a rock-solid, really well-respected player that would knock you out.

Speaker 32 You wanted him at safety.

Speaker 5 Hardigo.

Speaker 5 The kick is blocked.

Speaker 5 Sean Gale, number 23, scoring the touchdown.

Speaker 32 Sean was this charismatic, laid-back, soft-spoken guy.

Speaker 12 We're not going to,

Speaker 37 you know, break our arms patting ourselves on the back by what we've done so far. We know we have a long way to go.

Speaker 32 A little guarded, but of course, he was super attractive. You know, everybody would just fall over him.

Speaker 22 He was very popular among women.

Speaker 38 Sean, of course, you're a bachelor, still a heartthrob among female Bear fans. What do you do after playing? And players.

Speaker 38 You got to watch them.

Speaker 38 Usually the single guys, we just get together, maybe go out and get a bite to eat.

Speaker 22 In 1985, they were perfect through the first 11 games. They won all of them.
So there was this building excitement in Chicago.

Speaker 22 We're going to bring home a winner for them for Chicago and the Panthers, not for anybody else. They'd won 11 straight games.
They only had a couple more to go before the Super Bowl.

Speaker 22 And then they decide to celebrate it a little early by making the Super Bowl shuffle.

Speaker 38 Okay, let's do it.

Speaker 21 We are the bands. Shuffling group.
Shut it all down.

Speaker 32 I'm doing it for you. The corniest, worst

Speaker 32 music video you're ever going to see.

Speaker 22 It was sort of a rap song.

Speaker 7 Not really. Stretting us up on everyone.

Speaker 32 Nobody could dance. And look, Sean couldn't dance either.
He'll tell you he was smooth. You saw him stuck in the back there.

Speaker 7 We're not here to decide.

Speaker 32 He needed to be in the back.

Speaker 40 We're just here to do the Super Bowl soon.

Speaker 32 Everybody assumed they were going to win the Super Bowl, and they did.

Speaker 30 Hungry Chicago, finally champions on this January day in New Orleans.

Speaker 32 They just destroyed the New England Patriots.

Speaker 30 46-10, the final.

Speaker 32 46-10 is a score that no one will ever forget in this town.

Speaker 6 This only happens once in a lifetime. It was sheer ecstasy, delirium, in a city that has waited a long time for a national champion.

Speaker 29 It feels good to be the king. I don't care what it is.
He's the world champion.

Speaker 32 The 85 Bears are still the most popular players in the history of Chicago sports.

Speaker 38 We're number one!

Speaker 32 Most of the players decided to stay here.

Speaker 12 They are indeed Chicago royalty.

Speaker 33 1985 Chicago Bears, we consider him one of us. He was a great group of guys.
We're very.

Speaker 19 The thing you need to know about Sean Gale is after football, he was still a success.

Speaker 29 What do you think about that?

Speaker 19 He was a commentator. He was doing different things in the community.
This was a guy who had a major profile after the game.

Speaker 22 In Chicago, where he lived, he dabbled in real estate.

Speaker 32 He always seemed to know what he was doing. Sean was seen as a ladies' man, very smooth.

Speaker 22 Despite all appearances that he was an eligible bachelor, he actually had a long-term relationship

Speaker 26 Ronnie was from Wisconsin and not too terribly far from Chicago. She's in the area between Bears fans and Packers fans, but obviously she became a Bears fan when she started dating John Gale.

Speaker 22 They met in a Bears charity event.

Speaker 43 Ronnie was in the crowd with some friends.

Speaker 19 Ronnie Ryder was into fashion. She worked at Macy's.

Speaker 3 I first started digging into this story more than 10 years ago. That's when I met Ronnie's family, her devoted younger brother, Thad, and her sister-in-law, Anna.

Speaker 42 She was a big city woman, but she never lost that small-town girl quality.

Speaker 27 She liked her Chicago life, but she knew where she came from.

Speaker 11 I'm going to zoom in.

Speaker 5 You're my sister.

Speaker 17 Really, Ronnie made you feel at ease.

Speaker 14 She could be your friend in an instant.

Speaker 44 You know, she just had a big smile and she would always hug you and greet you and she just made you be comfortable no matter where you were.

Speaker 3 Did you know who Sean was?

Speaker 17 Oh, definitely. I'm a Bear fan, so I mean, I...

Speaker 14 And the Bears practice in our hometown.

Speaker 3 So here's your sister. She's dating a professional football player.
What was your reaction?

Speaker 17 It was great for me, being a Chicago Bear fan.

Speaker 16 We were happy for her.

Speaker 17 I mean, I really just wanted her to be happy. It wouldn't have mattered if she'd have been with a guy who was selling peanuts on the corner as long as she was happy.

Speaker 28 They were together a long time.

Speaker 3 18 years. Was it a true love affair?

Speaker 5 I don't know. I think so.

Speaker 22 Sean Gill and Ronnie Ryder never lived together. They never got married.
Which, according to friends, raised some awkward questions for her family.

Speaker 3 In your opinion, why do you think they weren't married?

Speaker 16 I know Ronnie wanted to be married.

Speaker 17 I'm thinking it was probably because Sean wasn't ready.

Speaker 3 Truthfully. And you never asked Ronnie.

Speaker 17 We had asked her that prior, but at a certain point, you just stop asking. I only saw Sean four or five times the whole time they'd been dating.

Speaker 3 Over 18 years?

Speaker 17 Over 18 years, yes.

Speaker 3 Does that strike you as odd?

Speaker 17 Yes, especially being the way Ronnie was, very family-oriented.

Speaker 3 But then, at the age of 41, Ronnie got an unexpected gift, something she'd always dreamed of, actually. She found out she was pregnant.

Speaker 42 Tonight, ABC's 2020 has an exclusive interview with Sean Gale.

Speaker 6 You can watch Juju's report on this fatal attraction starting at 9 o'clock right here on ABC 7.

Speaker 3 I was the only reporter that Sean Gale granted an interview to in 2009.

Speaker 42 Sean Gale speaks very openly with you, it seems.

Speaker 3 He said he only ever wanted to be interviewed once, to be broadcast and aired once. In that interview, I asked him how he and Ronnie were feeling about the pregnancy.

Speaker 3 Sean told me we were both excited about it. There was some disappointment between the two of us because our relationship wasn't at a point where we hoped it would be in having a child.

Speaker 17 This was a happy surprise for us because we didn't think she would ever have children. Every time you talked to her, that's all she talked about.
She talked about the baby kicking.

Speaker 17 We were so looking forward to her having a kid because she'd never had one and always told us how to raise our kids.

Speaker 7 So,

Speaker 17 I mean, that was what she wanted to be: a mother.

Speaker 19 Ronnie gets the gift of a lifetime. But what comes next?

Speaker 41 Well, it's not wedding bells.

Speaker 43 She's about to open the door to an unexpected visitor. Save

Speaker 43 me.

Speaker 31 It's definitely going to be like summer. It's an incredible stretch of warm days we have coming up.

Speaker 2 October 4th, 2007 was an unseasonably warm day for the Chicago area.

Speaker 2 It's usually starting to get cold around that time.

Speaker 31 So almost like beach weather here. Instead of Oktoberfest, we're calling it Summerfest.

Speaker 2 Ronnie lived in Deerfield, Illinois,

Speaker 2 which is a quiet, affluent, beautiful little suburb of Chicago.

Speaker 22 Lots of people go out there to get away from the city. People flock there to live a quiet life.

Speaker 2 It's a cute place to be and very relatively safe place to be.

Speaker 2 Kids would have been heading off to school.

Speaker 12 Ronnie was in her kitchen on her way out to work, grabbed her stuff, opened her door,

Speaker 13 and in the shadows gets hit with seven bullets.

Speaker 13 Forced back into her apartment from the blasts. Two shots were directly to the fetus.

Speaker 17 It's just, she's executed.

Speaker 17 Ronnie, it's Krista downstairs. Are you okay?

Speaker 24 I heard the woman screaming and head aloud and it's been quiet. Would you give me a call, please? Thank you.

Speaker 36 Dear Phil Police, I heard a woman screaming and then a pop-pop and it went totally silent.

Speaker 9 I called and she does not answer.

Speaker 24 We need an ambulance.

Speaker 47 It's a female down, and I suspect it may be a gunshot.

Speaker 19 When police arrive at Ronnie's apartment, they find a gruesome scene. There she is lying in the floor, riddled with bullets.

Speaker 14 Officers find a lady bleeding in her kitchen. The officers smelled gun smoke and thought the offender was still on the scene.

Speaker 14 The phones are ringing off the hook at the Deerfield Police Department.

Speaker 9 Deerfield Police heard about a shooting.

Speaker 14 Because the town is in a panic.

Speaker 3 Can you tell me what's going on?

Speaker 47 What is it? A helicopter hopes.

Speaker 24 Yeah, some police activity, ma'am.

Speaker 26 There was fear that there was some gunmen running around town on the loose.

Speaker 9 Have they caught the person? I don't have the details on that yet.

Speaker 19 The town was shocked. Even the local junior high school went on lockdown.

Speaker 48 Put that school on lockdown.

Speaker 47 I just put the school on lockdown. I talked to the principal.
They're doing that right now.

Speaker 2 The link to Sean Gale emerged almost immediately.

Speaker 14 When officers enter her apartment, they see pictures of Sean Gale throughout the condominium.

Speaker 14 The officers knew those pictures of Ronnie and Sean Gale because Sean Gale is a celebrity in the Chicagoland area.

Speaker 2 Sean got a phone call by a sports reporter who had heard that a pregnant woman in Deerfield had been murdered.

Speaker 29 So Sean calls Deerfield Police.

Speaker 36 Deerfield Police Department, I'm calling about that shooting in Deerfield. Yes.

Speaker 9 Listen, I've been getting calls from the media. This is Sean Gale, and they're trying to say they're naming me as a suspect.

Speaker 24 Hold on, please.

Speaker 9 Was it Ronnie Ryder?

Speaker 36 Is she okay?

Speaker 24 Yes, it was Ronnie, and no, she's not.

Speaker 21 She's dead? I have the news for you.

Speaker 21 She's dead.

Speaker 21 Sean,

Speaker 24 don't go to her house, okay?

Speaker 24 Sean,

Speaker 24 come to the police department. Do you know where it is?

Speaker 24 Yes.

Speaker 47 Okay.

Speaker 51 I gotta call it parents.

Speaker 17 My father called my cell phone and I just figured it was another call from dad and mom. They call often.
Um But the minute I picked up the phone and heard my mom crying, I knew that

Speaker 5 something had happened.

Speaker 17 Dad said, You need to come down immediately.

Speaker 5 Your sister has been taken.

Speaker 7 And I dropped my phone and

Speaker 7 headed out the door.

Speaker 5 It's just something you never think is going to happen to your family.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 17 I still think I'm going to wake up and it's going to be

Speaker 5 just a dream.

Speaker 17 There were a ton of questions in my mind and

Speaker 17 everything's spinning through my head.

Speaker 5 What could have happened?

Speaker 17 What happened? You're thinking, well,

Speaker 17 was she downtown shopping as this happened?

Speaker 44 We just knew she was gone and we didn't understand why.

Speaker 3 When did things start becoming a little bit more clear?

Speaker 17 Actually, after I got to mom and dad.

Speaker 3 What did they tell you?

Speaker 17 That she had been taken inside of her apartment.

Speaker 29 Right in front of, well, I know exactly where it was.

Speaker 17 Right in her kitchen.

Speaker 31 Is that from Rachie? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Did it cross your mind, like, did she have any enemies? Did was anyone out to get her? No.

Speaker 17 If you knew Ronnie there's no way you could do something like this if you really knew her.

Speaker 19 There was no sign of a robbery. There was no sign of forced entry.
So that led police to think maybe the killer is somebody Ronnie knew.

Speaker 13 We had to look at Sean. Sean Gale was the first guy.

Speaker 14 You'd be foolish to not look at him.

Speaker 16 He's dating her.

Speaker 14 She's pregnant with his child. Does he want to eliminate her from his life? Does he not want this pregnancy?

Speaker 19 Police find Ronnie's purse at the scene and inside that purse is a letter.

Speaker 19 That letter might provide clues as to what really happened here.

Speaker 28 Good morning. It is Thursday, October 4th, 2007.

Speaker 5 This is ABC7 News 11.

Speaker 23 We start with breaking news right now from North Suburban Deerfield.

Speaker 23 A woman was shot to death in Deerfield this morning.

Speaker 2 This was one of the biggest stories I've seen in many years.

Speaker 11 Police say the victim was the girlfriend of former Bears player Sean Gale and that she was pregnant with his child.

Speaker 11 Her friend also tells us, and I am quoting him here, that Sean Gale was her whole life, that he meant everything to her.

Speaker 31 No suspect information is available at this time.

Speaker 32 Well, people jump to conclusions all the time when you first read something like this. You know, wow, breaking news, this is crazy, and it involves a former bear, let alone an 85 Super Bowl bear.

Speaker 16 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 32 I think people were shocked and horrified just by the act itself.

Speaker 26 It seemed obvious from the beginning, it wasn't a random crime.

Speaker 26 Whoever did this was after not only Ronnie, but after the unborn child.

Speaker 13 Someone deliberately took that child out.

Speaker 26 The Lake County Major Crimes Task Force headed up this murder investigation.

Speaker 3 The shooting sparked a heavy police response.

Speaker 26 The Deerfield Police is not a very large police force, but when you call in the resources of the entire county, it can make a big difference.

Speaker 22 So as the detectives are out there gathering evidence and talking to neighbors, some puzzling questions emerge.

Speaker 11 Investigators say that someone reported seeing a teenager running across the street shortly after she was shot.

Speaker 26 Several witnesses apparently told police that they saw a young African-American boy in the area right after the shooting.

Speaker 2 Another witness said this person was wearing a disguise and that it was a very petite person.

Speaker 18 Maybe around five feet tall, baggy tracksuit, something dark possibly over the person's face.

Speaker 13 We get a report of a small black cart leaving the scene.

Speaker 14 Was it a robbery? Was it a contract killing? It just didn't add up. It didn't make sense.

Speaker 19 Police want to question Sean about the crime. Now, remember, Sean called police to find out about the crime, and that's when they told him about Ronnie.

Speaker 9 Deerfield Police Department, I'm calling about that shooting in Deerfield.

Speaker 18 The police are going to look at Sean calling them from sort of two different directions. It's a logical thing to do.
A loved one's been harmed or killed.

Speaker 9 Was it Ronnie Ryder? Is he okay?

Speaker 18 You know, the other side of that is with him reaching out to them, is he saying, I need to cover my tracks.

Speaker 9 Listen, I've been getting calls from the media. This is Sean Gale, and they're trying to say, they're naming me as a suspect.

Speaker 14 Sean Gale calling us right away within hours of this murder was a little suspicious.

Speaker 19 So Sean hangs up the phone with Deerfield Police and he voluntarily goes down to the station.

Speaker 47 I can't believe this!

Speaker 24 I mean, it's so good!

Speaker 14 Sean Gale was questioned for 10 hours.

Speaker 13 You know, it's hard because being an avid sports fan, I really had to focus on the fact that he was just another individual and that he wasn't a sports figure. I had to forget his celebrity status.

Speaker 13 You know, we essentially have to treat him as he is the suspect.

Speaker 14 He was visibly upset. He was shaken.

Speaker 3 But by the time he sat down for questioning, Detective Scott Frost said that Sean Gale had become strangely composed.

Speaker 13 You know, I figured I would see more of

Speaker 13 a sobbing Sean. He was very reserved, very calm.

Speaker 13 We were having issues with his timeline. from what he did the night before, what time did he go to bed, what time did he leave? He seemed like he was off in his times.

Speaker 13 And it's just like, well, you know, I'm not asking you what you did two weeks ago. Okay.
I'm asking you in the last 24 hours. Like, you know, something doesn't seem right.

Speaker 13 We need to really research things.

Speaker 18 The day that Ronnie was killed, the police obviously need to know where Sean was.

Speaker 3 On the morning of the murder, Sean says he slept in, worked out with the trainer,

Speaker 3 and then went and got a haircut mid-morning in a barber shop about 10 minutes from Ronnie's house.

Speaker 18 The problem is, it's not airtight exactly where he was when she was killed. And so as a result, the police are really going to have to nail that down.

Speaker 3 The police were trying to figure out if Sean had a motive.

Speaker 53 They talked to a lot of Ronnie's friends. They found out or they heard from different people that maybe he wasn't 100% thrilled about the pregnancy.

Speaker 13 We're starting to hear that this was a surprise and that basically Ronnie had given this ultimatum of, listen, you either want to be part of the child's life or

Speaker 13 you don't. I'm still having the baby.

Speaker 19 During the questioning of Sean, police learned that Ronnie wasn't the only woman in his life.

Speaker 29 He was playing the field, so to speak.

Speaker 13 Here he, you know, kindly enough gives us, you know, a list of almost 18 or 16 different women that he either went on a date with, you know, got a phone number from, or had something romantically involved.

Speaker 13 He's given us, here you go, talk to everyone. You know, these were 18 women over a three-year period.

Speaker 7 Granted, it's still a lot.

Speaker 3 When the fact came out that Sean had lots of relationships with lots of other women, this was news to Ronnie's family.

Speaker 17 I wouldn't think that my sister would have put up with that sort of relationship.

Speaker 44 No. She loved Sean with her whole heart, and I think she expected the same back.
I really didn't see any other people in the picture at all.

Speaker 3 But Sean has said that as close as they were in their relationship, for him, it wasn't exclusive.

Speaker 18 He's a guy who has a lot of women in his life. And so to be thorough, you're going to have to look at each one of these women that he dated or has had a relationship with.

Speaker 14 You have several women that could have been jealous of Ronnie.

Speaker 3 Sean staunchly maintains his innocence with police. So they ask him who he thinks might be responsible.
And he says it might be a woman he had a relationship with the year before.

Speaker 19 She's beautiful, she's a trainer.

Speaker 3 A relationship he says ended badly.

Speaker 54 When you have a high-profile former pro athlete like Sean Gabe living in a city like Chicago, there's a whole world that exists for these former players. I'm talking charity events, fancy dinners.

Speaker 22 Any of them walk into a restaurant. They can get a table anytime they want to.

Speaker 54 And wherever you go, lots of beautiful women.

Speaker 19 Killing y'all and it won't stop.

Speaker 7 Uh-huh.

Speaker 32 The 85 Bears, to this day, they are still perceived as iconic legends. I mean, people go nuts when they see them in person.

Speaker 55 We've got it locked.

Speaker 7 This team ruled the city.

Speaker 57 It riveted the country.

Speaker 43 And while Sean had been in a long-term relationship with Ronnie, there were a number of other women that he was seeing.

Speaker 43 And now, he's sitting in the Deerfield police station and his whole life is under the microscope.

Speaker 3 During Sean's marathon 10-hour questioning with police, they eventually asked him who he thinks could have killed Ronnie.

Speaker 12 And he gave them the name of Monica Kuroska, who was a woman that he had had a relationship with in the months prior to that.

Speaker 19 Monica Karoska was from Poland. She was beautiful.
She was very, very fit. She was a personal trainer and a model.

Speaker 3 Sean said he dated Monica for about six or seven months.

Speaker 19 But here's the thing: it didn't end well.

Speaker 40 He said that she was sort of harassing him.

Speaker 3 In fact, Sean Gale got an order of protection against Monica and in court papers makes a number of allegations.

Speaker 26 At one point, she was outside his apartment and was hitting the buzzers of some of his neighbors and it was causing a problem.

Speaker 26 And then he found her outside his apartment and saw that her arm or hand was bloody.

Speaker 26 And then he eventually found that it appeared that she had punched through a window and was apparently trying to get into his apartment or at least get his attention that way.

Speaker 26 That caused a lot of concern for Sean.

Speaker 3 Monica told ABC in a statement she was upset when she got to Sean's house and saw him with another woman. She said she wanted to speak to him, but he wouldn't open the door.

Speaker 3 She knocked on his window, and in the heat of her frustration, she says she accidentally broke it. She says she decided to end the relationship and she never saw Sean again.

Speaker 3 Sean also told police that he believed that for months Monica had been sending a number of harassing letters to a variety of women in his life.

Speaker 26 It was a situation where these letters were intended to tell all of these women that, oh, by the way, you're not the only one dating Sean.

Speaker 26 In fact, there's this whole list of other women.

Speaker 26 One of the reasons that he thought these letters were written by her was because they were kind of written the way she spoke, which was in broken English.

Speaker 3 One of the letters read, I think maybe you would like to know what your boyfriend Sean is doing with a lot of other women.

Speaker 3 He will lie to you and tell you a lot of stories and try to make everything sound like your fault, like he does to me.

Speaker 3 Those letters caused an enormous amount of trouble in Sean's personal life. Ronnie received one.
Her mother did too. In fact, Ronnie's mom went so far as to call Sean about it.

Speaker 17 She wanted to know if Ronnie was safe.

Speaker 59 That's what she said.

Speaker 3 Because?

Speaker 17 If there's some woman out there sending letters, you know, she may want to get rid of the women, other women in his life.

Speaker 3 And so what did Sean say when she asked the question?

Speaker 17 Don't worry about Ronnie. This is a craze fan that, you know, has made up these letters, and Ronnie's very safe.

Speaker 26 Ronnie had one of those letters in her purse at the time she was killed.

Speaker 3 What would Monica's motive have been?

Speaker 12 Anger at Sean would have been the obvious motive. You know, there had been this stalking behavior, and they had to believe that she was very angry at Sean, I guess, for not being monogamous.

Speaker 3 She was a very suspicious character.

Speaker 12 She was definitely a very suspicious character, yes.

Speaker 3 Well, who did you suspect?

Speaker 17 Monica, obviously, because we thought, well, it's probably

Speaker 17 whoever's responsible for sending these letters.

Speaker 12 I mean, one of the first things that you're doing when you're investigating a murder is seeing if somebody has an alibi, a legitimate alibi.

Speaker 12 And it turned out that Monica was a personal trainer at the time, and she had been trading an older gentleman.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I guess

Speaker 13 we got to mark her off.

Speaker 3 Police cleared Monica Karaska, who denied ever writing or sending those letters. But if she didn't send those letters, who did?

Speaker 3 Funeral services for Ronnie Reuter were held in Wisconsin Monday morning.

Speaker 17 We were preparing to bring a new life into this world. We were preparing a celebration, and we ended up preparing a funeral, a double funeral.

Speaker 3 When Sean arrived at the funeral, there were those who were consoling him and there were those who were looking at him with suspicion. Meanwhile, the police were watching his every move.

Speaker 3 Why did you go to Ronnie's funeral?

Speaker 13 We wanted to see if he was going to show up, how he was going to react, how he was going to handle himself. You know, would he say anything?

Speaker 3 So you're keeping a watchful eye on him?

Speaker 13 Killers and murderers have been known to make confessions at the casket.

Speaker 3 When I interviewed Sean and asked him how people looked at him, he said, At that moment, in my grief, I did not care.

Speaker 3 He said, I asked the funeral director if I could see the baby, but he said he would really warn against that because he thought that would be an image I would never be able to get out of my head.

Speaker 20 And while the family's grieving, police are still looking for leads.

Speaker 18 At the scene were shell casings. Shell casings tell you the caliber of the weapon.
In this case, it's a 9mm.

Speaker 18 You then have some interesting comments by neighbors in close proximity to Ronnie's apartment who described, yes, a loud bang, but it sounded muffled.

Speaker 13 You have the one neighbor who hears a pop-pop sensation, which she later figures out from watching a crime show that it was from, sounded the same as a silencer.

Speaker 18 The idea that there could be a silencer in this case adds another element in my view that this was planned.

Speaker 18 Are there other people who have had relationships with Sean that have ended that didn't end well?

Speaker 3 Suddenly, there are three hot tips that come into the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force. They're all urging police to look at the same woman, another woman that Sean Gale had a relationship with.

Speaker 3 Her name? Marnie Yang. And police learned she's someone Sean saw the night before the murder.

Speaker 38 Basically, I just want to find out your association with Sean, how you know Sean.

Speaker 26 At some point, Marnie Yang's name surfaced as someone who had had a previous relationship with Sean Gale.

Speaker 26 Marnie was a single mother who was very devoted to her children. She was a hardworking woman.

Speaker 42 She was an intelligent woman.

Speaker 60 My mom had three jobs at one time.

Speaker 31 She was a real estate agent.

Speaker 55 She was an aspiring fitness model.

Speaker 60 She worked as a cocktail waitress.

Speaker 31 My mother has always tried her best for us.

Speaker 52 I wanted to provide my children as much as I possibly could. I didn't ever want them to feel a lack of anything.

Speaker 60 My brother and I, we played tackle football. My mom was like

Speaker 22 a hardcore football mom.

Speaker 15 My mother picked up scuba diving as a hobby.

Speaker 55 She paid for classes for me to take,

Speaker 15 and that was always fun.

Speaker 60 She juggled it all.

Speaker 2 Marnie met Sean at a Bears convention.

Speaker 26 She was working as a security person at that event and would have had access to some of the celebrities and Sean was certainly one of those.

Speaker 52 And I just remember him approaching me, introducing himself just by his first name. I didn't know who he was.
And I just kept bumping into him throughout the course course of that weekend.

Speaker 52 I remember him mentioning that he was looking for some investment property because it had come out that I was a real estate broker and I just remember giving him my business card.

Speaker 52 About two hours after the event was over, my phone rang and it was him. We really didn't discuss very much other than what type of property he might have been looking for.

Speaker 52 We made arrangements to meet.

Speaker 19 So they meet, they start talking, and they start doing real estate deals together.

Speaker 13 She was spending a lot of time with Sean because they had this real estate transaction that she was basically brokering.

Speaker 3 Two months after the murder, the police called in Marnie to answer some questions.

Speaker 52 I absolutely did not see a problem with, you know, going in and sitting down and talking to them.

Speaker 38 How you doing?

Speaker 38 I'm Marnie. Yes.
I'm Detective Chuck Schwetz.

Speaker 38 Chuck's going to ask you some some basic questions about who you are, where you live, stuff like that.

Speaker 7 I didn't feel like I needed an attorney.

Speaker 52 You know, it was pretty much just anything I can do to help.

Speaker 38 Basically, I was just going to find out your association with Sean, how you know Sean, when you first met Sean.

Speaker 63 I've probably known him for about six years. We met at a convention.

Speaker 52 I think I had been given enough

Speaker 61 advice about

Speaker 52 the fact that everybody that was connected with him was probably going to be questioned at some point.

Speaker 38 Marnie, you know, obviously you know why we're talking all

Speaker 38 this is about.

Speaker 63 Probably not too many people.

Speaker 38 Right. They don't know.
Yeah,

Speaker 19 they talked to her for about an hour and a half.

Speaker 38 Did you know or any extent of his relationship with the victim?

Speaker 63 I didn't know the extent of the relationship. I know he had told me that he had gotten somebody pregnant.

Speaker 19 And she seemed relaxed and comfortable. Sort of with the attitude of, I just want to help.

Speaker 3 What Marnie doesn't know at this point is that three tips have come into police urging them to look at her.

Speaker 38 If there's anything else comes up or we have any information that we get, you know, you don't mind coming back in or talking to us.

Speaker 62 Okay.

Speaker 62 Is this okay?

Speaker 5 Is this kind of close or not too far? Okay.

Speaker 19 After speaking to Marnie, police continue their investigation.

Speaker 3 The police said they started talking to everyone and they kept hearing a similar story. People who knew Marnie said that she was telling everyone that she was Sean's girlfriend.

Speaker 12 She bragged about it all the time. She was very proud of it and she made a lot more out of the relationship than it actually was.

Speaker 52 Yeah, that

Speaker 52 was not what I was referring to him as. I don't think the word boyfriend was ever used, really.

Speaker 3 I asked Sean back in 2009 if Marnie had been his girlfriend and he emphatically said, no, she was not.

Speaker 3 He said, not even the craziest stretch of the imagination. But he did admit to me that their professional relationship did get friendly.

Speaker 53 Night before the murder,

Speaker 53 what we found out was that Marnie was at Sean Gale's house. They engaged in sexual relations.

Speaker 3 Police issue a search warrant for Sean's house, and after accessing his computers, they drop what must have felt like a bombshell on Sean.

Speaker 19 online.

Speaker 3 Investigators believed that Marnie had been tracking Sean and Ronnie. Marnie has denied these claims.

Speaker 19 And those letters that Sean thought came from Monica, police believe they actually came from Marnie.

Speaker 12 Marnie Yang discovered through her penetration of his email account, this Polish woman's emails.

Speaker 12 She would then study them, master the broken English with which the Polish woman spoke, and write the letters in that broken English in an effort to frame her.

Speaker 19 Police continue to investigate Marnie, but here's the thing. There's no physical evidence tying Marnie to the crime.

Speaker 3 Now remember, Sean has always maintained his innocence. And finally, after weeks of investigating him, police clear him.
Once they do, they have a proposition for him.

Speaker 3 They want his help on getting information about Marnie.

Speaker 13 And we're basically telling Sean, we want to set up some wires in your house. We want to see if you can get her to talk about her involvement.

Speaker 19 So police bug his house, and then they take positions all around his house.

Speaker 18 You have to set up safeguards when you build these type of operations. You don't want anybody to get hurt.

Speaker 13 We basically have to put security up and downstairs. We got coppers hiding in closets just in case things go south.

Speaker 19 During his conversation with Marnie, he's asking her about these letters that were sent to women he dated. And he's asking her, do you think these letters were sent from the killer?

Speaker 21 I'd say possible.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I think this person's a little unbalanced. Got a few screws loose.

Speaker 3 Now, remember, police believe it was Marnie who sent those letters, not Monica. So, in their view, she's talking about herself.

Speaker 64 My whole point of what I'm trying to bring up: anyone who takes someone else's life, there's got to be some

Speaker 64 really lasting effect. That

Speaker 10 I would imagine so.

Speaker 10 You have to be a sociopath in its purest form in order to be able to take another person's life.

Speaker 3 In the end, Marnie admitted to nothing.

Speaker 18 So one of the things the police do is they start pulling her trash, looking for incriminating information.

Speaker 19 And they hit some pagers there.

Speaker 53 They find a bank statement that they read and it says, purchase on her debit card, Ray Rowling's arms.

Speaker 53 So they call Ray Rileen's Arms and that's when they find out about the book How to Make a Disposable Silencer and the fact that she ordered volume one and volume two.

Speaker 14 She actually went to Home Depot and purchased the items to build a silencer.

Speaker 53 She's got you know the drill, the circular clamp, a one and a quarter inch metal pipe, some PVC piping and the duct tape and a hacksaw.

Speaker 3 So even with these new discoveries, the police still need more information. So they set up another sting operation.
And now it's another woman, a so-called psychic, who will upend the investigation.

Speaker 61 She may be goofy, but she knows how to press record.

Speaker 26 Do you give your permission for the following conversations to be overheard and recorded?

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 21 This overherable outcomes.

Speaker 3 And what unfolds inside this unassuming Denny's will surprise investigators.

Speaker 53 Very chilling.

Speaker 2 It was surreal.

Speaker 7 Save

Speaker 7 me.

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Speaker 23 We start with breaking news right now.

Speaker 11 A woman was shot to death this morning and police say the victim was the girlfriend of former Bears player Sean Gale.

Speaker 12 If you want to commit a murder and get away with it, keep your mouth shut.

Speaker 3 But some people just can't keep from talking.

Speaker 21 When you hit the gun, did you hide it real well?

Speaker 21 And we did another time story.

Speaker 18 This is good chocolate.

Speaker 2 Talking about a murder like it was going grocery shopping.

Speaker 19 Police say that they realize that that question

Speaker 19 was actually code for I did it.

Speaker 41 I killed Ronnie.

Speaker 65 She started screaming. I took the first shot.

Speaker 3 She's being recorded by her friend Christy.

Speaker 9 I don't remember where the hell I was, Monnie.

Speaker 3 The one who says she's a psychic, one who didn't see the trouble ahead. This will be an interesting conversation.

Speaker 3 You basically described the perfect crime.

Speaker 52 I knew perfectly well that I was being recorded.

Speaker 61 I saw the wire.

Speaker 55 He slammed his hands onto the desk and told me it's either going to be you or your mother that's going to go down for this.

Speaker 3 So you're saying you lied then, but how do I know you're not lying now? It sounds very much to me like someone's confessing to a murder.

Speaker 3 A former pro football star in the middle of an explosive murder.

Speaker 28 Police are searching for a suspect in the murder of a pregnant girlfriend of former Chicago Bayer Sean Gale.

Speaker 29 The city was shocked.

Speaker 22 Here's Sean Gale, one of the good guys, always pleasant. And then suddenly there were a lot of people who thought maybe Sean's involved.

Speaker 34 Sean Gale has been subject to rumors and watched his reputation become blemished.

Speaker 12 In the months following the murder, I would say that the general public opinion was that it was him.

Speaker 3 Sean bore the brunt of the suspicion for Ronnie Ryder's murder.

Speaker 3 But what people didn't know was that behind the scenes, he was working with law enforcement because they believed Marnie Yang was obsessed with him. So now, Marnie Yang was the prime suspect.

Speaker 19 Think of the evidence prosecutors lined up here against Marnie.

Speaker 41 She buys a book online about a silencer.

Speaker 19 She goes to Home Depot and shops for all these items. Now that police have all this incriminating evidence, they bring Marnie back in for questioning.

Speaker 3 She's pretty smart.

Speaker 13 You weren't going to just be able to put her in a room and say, Did you do it?

Speaker 13 And she confessed out again. You know, we know that wasn't going to happen.

Speaker 18 One of the early questions you ask someone is, is, where were they at the time this murder was committed?

Speaker 48 What happened?

Speaker 48 Well,

Speaker 66 I looked at my phone and there was a message there. Andrew was calling me from the basement to let me know that he was not home.

Speaker 52 And I remember checking to see if he had a fever or not and he felt warm. So he stayed home from school that day.

Speaker 22 After checking on her son, Marnie says she went to the garage to try to get her truck to work, and it wouldn't.

Speaker 14 Marnie Yang said that she was home during the murder and interviews with her son revealed that she was not home.

Speaker 18 Police then introduce the information they have about that she had ordered this book about how to make a silencer.

Speaker 47 Purchase

Speaker 9 this book? Yes I did.

Speaker 9 Now

Speaker 9 why would you purchase a book on how to make disposable silencers?

Speaker 7 It was a joke. Marnie Yang

Speaker 2 justified having those books by saying that they were for her longtime cop boyfriend.

Speaker 61 That was a gag gift that was supposed to be for Sal.

Speaker 52 Firearms are a hobby of his.

Speaker 26 She gave it to him and he was like, what is this? And ended up just leaving it at her house. He said he had no idea why she would have given that to him.

Speaker 48 Did you ever

Speaker 47 make one of the things?

Speaker 66 Um, no.

Speaker 51 So

Speaker 66 it actually gave me a really good idea for putting together

Speaker 66 a science project.

Speaker 52 It turned out to be

Speaker 48 probably a little bit more complicated than I was prepared to get involved in.

Speaker 14 There was no science projects for her kid at that time.

Speaker 17 That was a lie.

Speaker 19 As the interrogation progresses, police ask her about owning guns.

Speaker 21 I have a part of them, actually.

Speaker 66 My face is a 40 caliber, my murder is a 40 caliber, and my mint is a 380 million.

Speaker 3 Police already know that Marnie owned another gun, a 9mm Beretta, which happens to match the caliber of the gun that killed Ronnie.

Speaker 13 She leaves out the 9mm and all of a sudden it was...

Speaker 13 You sure that there's no more guns? Oh, you know what?

Speaker 48 I think there was another one that was black.

Speaker 47 It was coming out of the mic. I don't know what it was.

Speaker 48 What is that one then? That one?

Speaker 66 I do not know. I want to say about a year and a half ago, some things disappeared out of my house.

Speaker 19 So in that interrogation, police confront Marnie with a damning piece of evidence.

Speaker 3 Police had conducted a search warrant in Marnie's house. So they say to her, in your home, we found mailing labels with the names of the women in Sean's life who received those harassing letters.

Speaker 48 Bianca, Cameron, Amina.

Speaker 21 These are all the

Speaker 48 women who sent the letters.

Speaker 66 Copies of the links.

Speaker 48 You don't have any idea why these labels or packets of letters will be in their house.

Speaker 66 You know, you just send it if there was a question that I didn't feel up to answering that I couldn't. Okay, that's fine.

Speaker 18 They introduce the photograph of the unborn child.

Speaker 66 This little girl,

Speaker 66 this child will never get to see her life or have her dreams or ever do anything.

Speaker 18 They don't really get a reaction. I mean that's very telling.

Speaker 52 They held me for what I now know to be three days.

Speaker 53 We had the evidence of the silencer. We had the evidence of her having had a nine millimeter.
It still wasn't enough.

Speaker 18 The reason it's not enough, it still does not link Marnie to shooting Ronnie.

Speaker 53 And she knew it wasn't enough. Because after they questioned her for a few days, she still was able to walk out the door.

Speaker 12 If you want to commit a murder and get away with it, keep your mouth shut.

Speaker 19 They have to let Marnie go, but police are gearing up for another sting operation.

Speaker 19 When you hit the gun, did you hide it from your well?

Speaker 19 Is it wrong?

Speaker 13 After we have to let Marnie Yang go, we spent a good year and two months revisiting everything. Now

Speaker 13 we're looking really hard at Christy Passion.

Speaker 55 Christy Passion was a close friend of my mom's.

Speaker 45 I know that Christy was involved with like, you know, terror card readings.

Speaker 52 I wouldn't refer to her as a friend at all. She was an acquaintance.

Speaker 3 An acquaintance? But clearly there seems to be a long record of pretty intense friendship.

Speaker 52 Well, I mean, I was looking at real estate for her as well.

Speaker 53 Marnie had said that she was going to go over and stay at her house on on October 3rd, the day before the murder, and that she had chosen not to.

Speaker 52 I was scheduled to take some real estate listings over there. That's when I began having car troubles.

Speaker 53 When law enforcement initially talked to Christy, Christy, you know, followed through with that story. Law enforcement never really believed it, but they didn't know how involved Christy Passion was.

Speaker 3 As police start digging into Christy Passion, they learn about this phone call, which she gets from Marnie on the day of the murder at work where phone calls are recorded.

Speaker 53 Christy Fashion, how can I help you?

Speaker 28 Do you want to go to dinner?

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 52 That's fine.

Speaker 16 Is everything all right? Yeah, I'm fine.

Speaker 50 Okay.

Speaker 35 Okay. Um

Speaker 53 not a problem.

Speaker 65 All right, I'll call you later.

Speaker 37 Okay, bye-bye.

Speaker 13 Do you want to go to dinner?

Speaker 13 That statement bothered me for a year because because it just didn't make sense.

Speaker 19 In the months that police spend investigating this crime, they start thinking about that black car that was seen fleeing the scene. But that car doesn't match anything that Marnie has.

Speaker 18 And so a logical thing to do is see if they can find a car that Marnie may have rented in or around the area.

Speaker 53 They got lucky.

Speaker 18 Police find a record of a car that's rented in Marnie's name, but using Christie's address.

Speaker 2 Marnie Yang rented a car two days before the murder. It was a blue sort of bright color.
The next day she decided she wanted a darker car.

Speaker 13 She didn't like the first rental car, thought it stuck out too much, and sends it back to get something that's going to blend.

Speaker 26 The rental car that she had at that time was a Volkswagen Rabbit.

Speaker 19 That was similar to what they found on surveillance video near the area of the scene around the time of the murder.

Speaker 14 This car was used for 40 miles. That is exactly from the rental place to Christie Passions, to the murder scene, back to Christie Passions, and then to the rental for the drop-off.

Speaker 14 It is exactly 40 miles.

Speaker 53 They decided to interview Christie first because her address comes up on the enterprise location.

Speaker 2 Investigators approach Christie Passion

Speaker 2 and tell her that she's going to be a co-conspirator in murder if she doesn't work with them.

Speaker 13 My feeling is that Christy just got tired of lying. She realized that we'd obviously done our homework and I just think she just had enough.

Speaker 3 She was going to go ahead and kill Ronnie. I was like, don't do this.
You know, what are you going to do?

Speaker 21 Go kill all the women?

Speaker 3 But she's the one that he spends all of the time with. So she's got to go.

Speaker 26 Christy tells police that Marnie had come to to visit Christy at her house the night before the murder, told her that she was going to kill Ronnie.

Speaker 12 Marnie said, if I do this in the morning, I will call you at work after I have done it and I will ask you out to dinner.

Speaker 29 Police say that they realize that that question, do you want to go to dinner, was actually code for, I did it.

Speaker 19 I killed Ronnie.

Speaker 13 And it was like, okay, now this makes sense.

Speaker 26 Police convinced Christie to start cooperating with them and they got her to make several phone calls and record several phone calls with Marnie.

Speaker 24 What?

Speaker 50 Relax, will you?

Speaker 24 I got a call from Mr. Wonderful.

Speaker 50 Oh, really? What do you want?

Speaker 66 He wants to talk to me now.

Speaker 9 I don't remember where the hell I was, Monty.

Speaker 9 Wait, what are you talking about? When?

Speaker 66 The night of the

Speaker 66 night before that stupid murder. Oh,

Speaker 9 they're not really calling you in because they think you were or were not where you said you were the night before.

Speaker 34 Okay.

Speaker 61 That is the ruse.

Speaker 9 They're gearing up for some.

Speaker 19 Police want Christy to do something else for them.

Speaker 29 They say, okay, now set up a meeting with Marty.

Speaker 2 The two ladies meet at Denny's. But unbeknownst to Marty, there's a full sting operation that's about to take place.

Speaker 26 Today's date is March 1st, 2009.

Speaker 26 For voice identification, please state your name.

Speaker 3 Christy Passion.

Speaker 53 Christy Passion's there. There's two police officers undercover at another booth somewhere.

Speaker 47 I'm scared, Marnie.

Speaker 65 I helped you do something you knew

Speaker 65 I didn't want any part of

Speaker 65 when you hit the gun.

Speaker 65 Did you hide it real well?

Speaker 65 I put it into a bucket of cement.

Speaker 65 I threw it in a dorm store.

Speaker 21 It is gone over a year and a half's worth in Chicago garbage at the city doctor.

Speaker 18 This is good chocolate.

Speaker 2 They're sipping tea and eating ice cream and talking about a murder like it was going grocery shopping. It was surreal.

Speaker 53 We walk away from that and we're like, there has to be more.

Speaker 18 Christy then goes back to Marty and said, I really need to talk to you again.

Speaker 3 They sent the psychic back to Denny's the next day. Do police see a full confession in the cards?

Speaker 32 Mother's dead. He shot two men.

Speaker 42 I had no idea how deep this would go.

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Speaker 22 I had to do what they wanted me to do.

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Speaker 28 He saw God was talking to him.

Speaker 42 What just made him snap?

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Speaker 68 Eight years ago, I blew my football career.

Speaker 7 He dropped it it at the one-yard line.

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Speaker 32 From executive producers Eli and Peyton Manning.

Speaker 28 Remember, you're wearing a prosthetic mask. This is acting.

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Made of fish.

Speaker 32 The Hulu original series, Chad Powers, premieres September 30th. Streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers.
Term supply.

Speaker 34 You know me.

Speaker 60 Comes up when I'm asleep.

Speaker 34 What came up, what woke me up,

Speaker 34 was

Speaker 53 we dumped the wig,

Speaker 65 we dumped the pipes, we dumped that stuff for the gun.

Speaker 19 We learn in this conversation that Christy and Marnie actually went on this dumpster tour, going around the night of the murder, dumping all the evidence.

Speaker 29 And then Marnie starts sharing the details about how she says she killed Ronnie.

Speaker 2 Ronnie was leaving for work and she was met at the door by Marnie Yang.

Speaker 2 Thanks to the navel,

Speaker 2 okay?

Speaker 3 Marnie is describing her elaborate disguise, which seems to match witnesses' description of the suspect on the day of the murder.

Speaker 65 She started screaming. I took the first shot.
It was at that point and I realized

Speaker 65 we are recording the door

Speaker 65 and I just started emptying it.

Speaker 12 The matter-of-fact tone with which she described it is terrifying.

Speaker 65 I took maybe one or two steps into the kitchen.

Speaker 21 to

Speaker 21 finish the job

Speaker 53 right around the head of Ronnie are live rounds. There was some jamming occurring, probably because she had the silencer on, and those live rounds were falling out until it didn't jam anymore.

Speaker 65 Then when she went down, she took her foot and she took one good kick at me, got me in the shin.

Speaker 65 I was like weak. By that time, I was like, ugh, like that.

Speaker 65 That was it. I just took one last shot.

Speaker 53 The final wound, the kill shot to Ronnie itself was right at the head.

Speaker 53 You see your share of cold, calculated, evil people in this business, but it really is hard to wrap your head around a mother of three who's going to execute a pregnant woman.

Speaker 53 Two shots right to the abdomen, right to the fetus. It's extreme.

Speaker 22 With Marty's confession securely on tape, they now have enough evidence to move in and arrest her.

Speaker 17 When they told us that they had made an arrest,

Speaker 17 it was just like, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 43 She eluded police for nearly a year and a half.

Speaker 23 Marnie Yang, the 41-year-old, has been charged with the murder of Ronnie Ryder.

Speaker 13 Marnie, can you have a seat over here, please? Thank you.

Speaker 32 When we arrested her,

Speaker 13 we brought her into the station. We provide her a segment of the wire with her and Christy.

Speaker 7 While she was doing the screening to assume the count,

Speaker 52 I would like to talk to my attorney.

Speaker 13 She basically lawyers up and is done with us.

Speaker 13 And she's seen on tape after we leave the room, curling up in the corner of the room, practically in the fetus position.

Speaker 13 She was obviously defeated, and I think she realized she lost. Was like,

Speaker 27 gotcha.

Speaker 13 Finally.

Speaker 28 She is charged with killing the girlfriend of former Chicago Bayer Sean Gale.

Speaker 42 Nearly three and a half years after the murder, Marnie Yang is going to trial.

Speaker 59 And when I really sit down and just think that this all happened because someone had a crush, it makes no sense to me.

Speaker 11 Yang has pleaded not guilty.

Speaker 3 If convicted, Marnie Yang faces life in prison.

Speaker 12 Marnie Yang's main goal was to eliminate the competition, and the evidence showed that she was obsessed with Mr. Gale, and her obsession was mainly directed at the other women.

Speaker 12 She wanted to get rid of them so that she could have him for herself.

Speaker 23 Former Chicago Bears player Sean Gale takes the witness stand this morning.

Speaker 30 Gale testified that he had sex with Marnie Yang the night before she's accused of the 2007 murder of Ronnie Reiner.

Speaker 26 The fact that he had slept with Marnie the night before the murder raised a lot of eyebrows, but it wasn't enough to change the narrative.

Speaker 3 Prosecutors wanted to portray Marnie as a jealous woman.

Speaker 19 A big part of the prosecution's case was that Marnie sent these letters to other women that Sean was seeing.

Speaker 29 And as part of that, they put Marnie's daughter Emily on the stand.

Speaker 19 And she says exactly that.

Speaker 60 I do remember being on the stand.

Speaker 38 I was really hesitant.

Speaker 3 Emily says that her mom had told her that she had sent those letters so that the women could find out about each other. That said, testifying could not have been easy for either mother or daughter.

Speaker 60 It hurt to see her there.

Speaker 11 The court heard testimony today from Christy Pashtun who says that she's a psychic and a friend of Yang's.

Speaker 12 She was on the stand for a day and she said a lot and much of it was damning evidence against Marnie.

Speaker 12 The next day when they cross-examined her and started asking her about being a psychic and a hypnotist and being a POW,

Speaker 12 you get the feeling that the jury didn't necessarily believe the truth of those things

Speaker 12 and that obviously affected her credibility.

Speaker 2 But as Ari Fizz said, she may be goofy, but she knows how to press record.

Speaker 3 Marnie's defense at the trial was that she had no idea she was being recorded, but that she was just spinning a tale for her friend, Christy Passion.

Speaker 65 She started screaming and it just started emptying her.

Speaker 2 I'm the mother of three girls. Seen baby Schuyler with a bullet

Speaker 7 that ran through her,

Speaker 2 I just have chills.

Speaker 2 I will never get that picture out of my head.

Speaker 44 Ever.

Speaker 11 A jury finds Marnie Yang guilty of first-degree murder and intentional homicide of an unborn child.

Speaker 25 I can't even begin to tell you how difficult this has been for me and, of course, Ronnie's family. At least I feel that, you know, Ronnie and Baby, they're at peace.

Speaker 19 Marnie is sent away to life in prison.

Speaker 3 But now, eight years later, Marnie has filed a petition saying she was wrongfully convicted. Among her claims, that her daughter was pressured and her son threatened by police.

Speaker 55 He slammed his hands onto the desk and told me, it's either going to be you or your mother that's going to go down for this.

Speaker 67 Marnie Yang has already served eight years in prison.

Speaker 49 She was sentenced to two life terms for the murder of 42-year-old Ronnie Ryder and her unborn baby.

Speaker 3 It took a jury only four hours to convict Marnie Yang. Today, she continues to maintain her innocence.

Speaker 3 Now, she has a high-profile lawyer and a team of experts committed to proving the state got it wrong.

Speaker 7 We filed a petition for post-conviction relief, alleging Marnie's actual innocence.

Speaker 19 Tonight, one of Ryder's friends

Speaker 43 says she believes Yang is innocent of murder.

Speaker 63 The real killer is out there, and that person needs to be held accountable.

Speaker 3 The petition filed by Marnie's new defense team includes a number of allegations from Marnie's children about the investigation and about the case against their mother.

Speaker 62 My mother was forced to confess to something she didn't do. Things just need to be set right.

Speaker 4 Much warmer conditions will be with us all weekend long. The thaw has begun.

Speaker 55 So the morning that the Lake County Task Force came to serve the search warrant, I was dead asleep in my room.

Speaker 15 They were knocking on the door. I was only 11.

Speaker 15 I told them about my brother and sister who were sleeping in the basement.

Speaker 60 I woke up to a bunch of police officers yelling, search warrant, get up.

Speaker 3 Marnie's children were home alone when they say their house was ransacked.

Speaker 60 I was just watching them tear our house apart.

Speaker 41 Emily and Andrew were 16 years old, children, when this occurred.

Speaker 60 They took Brandon and I into one squad car and Andy in another.

Speaker 3 The children were separated and taken to different police stations.

Speaker 60 They bring me into an interrogation room.

Speaker 3 I didn't know anything.

Speaker 60 They wouldn't accept that. And the mental frustration, it really broke me.
And it got to the point where I started banging my head on the table.

Speaker 19 It's like I'm there and I know what's going to happen.

Speaker 60 How maybe I could have stopped it,

Speaker 60 but I can't.

Speaker 55 One of the task force investigators came came into the room. It was like a movie almost.

Speaker 55 He slammed his hands onto the desk and told me, it's either going to be you or your mother that's going to go down for this. And that's when I really started getting scared.

Speaker 3 Marty's children are turning the tables on the police, using the way in which they say they were interrogated as a weapon to fight to free their mother.

Speaker 60 They told me to write that I had seen my mom write these letters to Sean's 16 other girlfriends, which I had never seen these letters ever in my life.

Speaker 7 The only way that I got out of that situation was to write down a statement that my mother wasn't home the morning of the murder, but she was home that morning.

Speaker 62 She was.

Speaker 60 Later on at the courthouse, Some lady came in the room and told me, you're gonna testify what you wrote.

Speaker 60 And I'm just like, I can't. It's all made up.
It's not true. And she's like, well, if you don't, you're gonna get in trouble.
So I testified.

Speaker 3 The state attorney's office denies the children's statements were coerced. They say Emily's lawyer wouldn't allow prosecutors to talk to her until she took the stand.

Speaker 3 And when she did testify, she never said her statement to police was a lie. As for Andrew, the state said they repeatedly told Marnie during her three-day interrogation that he wasn't a suspect.

Speaker 55 I had a nervous breakdown.

Speaker 3 Andrew says that as a result of the police questioning, he had to be placed into a mental institution.

Speaker 45 I was hospitalized.

Speaker 55 I was put on a psychiatric unit for probably a good like month and a half.

Speaker 3 The Major Crimes Task Force has told us they can't comment on the petition because of the pending court case.

Speaker 7 So now we're in?

Speaker 3 Every prison has a different look.

Speaker 3 We went to see Marnie at this Illinois women's prison where she sat down with us to speak on camera for the first time.

Speaker 7 Hello, Marnie.

Speaker 3 This will be an interesting conversation.

Speaker 3 You haven't spoken about any of this for more than a decade. That is correct.
Why speak now?

Speaker 52 I feel like prior to this, I don't think it would have mattered.

Speaker 61 I feel like there is a time.

Speaker 52 That time is now.

Speaker 3 Before discussing her new defense, I asked Marnie about Sean. Remember, police believe that her motive for murder was jealousy.
You never sent menacing letters to the women in Sean's life. I did not.

Speaker 52 I was one of the recipients of them.

Speaker 3 Were you obsessed with Sean?

Speaker 52 I'm not. Being in a relationship was one of the biggest mistakes that I ever made.

Speaker 61 I regret it.

Speaker 52 I wish that I had never met him.

Speaker 26 The crux of Marnie Yang's defense at this point is that she claims that she falsely confessed to Christy Passion in order to protect Andrew, her son.

Speaker 3 What made you think that the police were going to be able to pin it on your son?

Speaker 52 That's what they told my children.

Speaker 3 You met up with Christy McDennings. You basically described the perfect crime.

Speaker 52 I knew perfectly well that I was being recorded. I saw the wire.

Speaker 65 We may have trouble, folks. The police came out and was hanging down.

Speaker 19 We hear on the tape that Christy was having trouble with the wire.

Speaker 3 I don't know if she saw it or not.

Speaker 11 Only she didn't say the case.

Speaker 3 You're a very convincing actress because on that tape, it sounds very much to me like someone's confessing to a murder.

Speaker 52 I wasn't confessing to her. I was confessing directly to law enforcement.

Speaker 3 Marnie claims that even before the meeting at Denny's, she told Christie in a phone call recorded by police that she was going to falsely admit to it.

Speaker 14 She told Christie she was just going to make some up, pardon my word.

Speaker 50 All right, once they're making up.

Speaker 3 This is the transcript of the entire conversation. You mentioned just the last line.
There's no mention of her son. There's no mention of her falsely confessing to save her son.

Speaker 49 We have statements from Francine Marar and from Larry Marar, divorced parents of Marnie, before this conversation took place.

Speaker 14 She said, I'm just going to go meet Christy and make up a story that I committed the murder and let the attorneys sort it out with the police.

Speaker 7 The lawyers will take care of it. Oh, what a stupid idea.

Speaker 52 It was a rash and ill-conceived decision to protect my children.

Speaker 41 Marnie took a polygraph, and the polygrapher said she's being honest in her answers.

Speaker 19 The state attorney's office says this whole idea of Marnie just making stuff up is nonsense.

Speaker 3 They say days before Christy and Marnie met at that Denny's, Christie had already given police all these details about what Marnie had told her in the past about the murder.

Speaker 19 And then when she and Marnie meet, Marnie's repeating the same details.

Speaker 29 How would she know unless she did the killing?

Speaker 3 Jed, if you're facing life in jail, wouldn't you say, you know, guys, I was kidding. I was confessing on behalf of my son.
But that was never brought up at trial.

Speaker 49 I can't account for the trial lawyer's strategy at that trial.

Speaker 3 You're telling me now that you lied when you confessed to all those things that led up to the murder of Ronnie Reuter and the cover-up.

Speaker 52 I did. I lied.

Speaker 3 So you're saying you lied then, but how do I know you're not lying now?

Speaker 7 I have nothing to lose at this point.

Speaker 3 But you have everything to gain by lying.

Speaker 52 I mean when you say that I have everything to gain by lying, I don't think that the evidence lies.

Speaker 3 Part of the evidence?

Speaker 26 Her defense says that there's evidence that the gun that prosecutors claim was used wasn't even in her possession at the time.

Speaker 19 And they have a witness coming forward on video saying exactly that.

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Speaker 3 It was one of Chicago's most sensational murder trials.

Speaker 25 This was an execution, a cold-blooded murder.

Speaker 3 With a Super Bowl-winning bear on the stand. And now, nearly a decade after Marnie Yang's conviction, she is throwing what some see as a Hail Mary pass.

Speaker 26 Prosecutors talk about how this is all coming forward now after Marnie Yang has exhausted every other type of appeal that she can.

Speaker 14 But Marnie Yang's defense team is pretty convincing as well.

Speaker 49 The Major Crimes Task Force got it wrong. I filed a petition.
We're going to present the evidence of actual innocence.

Speaker 14 No DNA, no fingerprints.

Speaker 59 She was at home.

Speaker 17 She wasn't there.

Speaker 26 They point out all the time the long history in Lake County of wrongful prosecutions. They would like everyone to believe that Marnie Yang is one of those wrongly prosecuted people.

Speaker 26 One of the key pieces of evidence that the defense is talking about is that police said that there was surveillance video from the gas station of the car that Marnie Yang had rented, the Volkswagen Rabbit, leaving the neighborhood right about the time after the murder.

Speaker 46 We didn't know that whether or not this was or was not a Volkswagen rabbit. So we wanted to test it by renting an identical vehicle, which we did.
This was ours.

Speaker 46 You could see they're different shapes. This has a longer body

Speaker 46 and this is a shorter body. This one looks like it's a little taller.
This one's a little shorter to the ground.

Speaker 46 It's been examined by forensic experts and they looked at this and they concluded that these are different vehicles.

Speaker 3 In response, the state attorney's office says that Marnie's defense made similar arguments during the trial and the jury rejected it.

Speaker 19 Regardless of the video, it's not like she's been consistent with her story on it.

Speaker 52 The purpose of the rental car was for a photo shoot. Do you have the name of the photographer? I don't remember.
I just remember he was from Wisconsin.

Speaker 3 Here's a guy who could potentially clear you of murder and you can't remember his name?

Speaker 52 No.

Speaker 52 It was that long ago.

Speaker 19 Another point the defense is hammering on is that their experts are saying you can't attach a silencer to this kind of gun.

Speaker 46 It's got a little tiny barrel on it and you can see when this gun comes forward

Speaker 46 this is a moving piece. You don't have enough to attach it to.

Speaker 3 We talked to Peter Dycchek. He's a firearms expert and a forensic science professor who's taught at both Penn State and John Jay College.
We asked him for his insights on the competing arguments.

Speaker 20 The length of the barrel is quite short, but can accept a homemade suppressor, but it may interfere with the function of the firearm and it may not remain attached properly.

Speaker 29 The state attorney's office says she could hold the silencer up to the barrel while she's shooting it.

Speaker 20 If this thing is just held in place sort of superficially, you're putting yourself in grave danger.

Speaker 3 The big point of the gun in the defense's petition is that they claim she didn't even have possession of the gun at the time of the murder.

Speaker 38 May I have your name please? My name is Jesse Delgado.

Speaker 3 They have a person who claims he told police that he stole that gun from Marnie's house months before the murder.

Speaker 38 I was like, is this about the gun I stole? And they were like, well, what are you talking about now? She's like, I stole a gun from Marnie.

Speaker 38 I remember there was a party and everybody was there and especially this one guy that's always there and

Speaker 38 he's a sketchy guy but in reality I guess I was a sketchy guy. There were so many people in the house nobody knew who took it.

Speaker 3 When you realized your gun was missing did you report it to the police?

Speaker 52 I remember calling my insurance company and talking to them about it. The insurance company told me that my policy did not cover personal items.
other than the house itself and so I didn't bother.

Speaker 19 The prosecution's point of this is if Delgado is her son's friend,

Speaker 3 wouldn't that be something she would have known about at the trial and that's the state's main argument that many of the claims raised by Marnie's current legal team could have been raised at the trial but weren't or had already been argued at trial

Speaker 49 i think the strongest piece of evidence that we have is the scientific evidence of the bullet trajectories showing that marnie yang because of her height could not have fired the bullets that killed ronnie ryder The defense's argument is the shooter had to be 5, 10 or taller and Marnie's only five feet.

Speaker 69 We're looking at the mannequin that we developed that represents Ronnie.

Speaker 67 These are rods, our protrusion rods.

Speaker 69 We place them on the bullet path that the medical examiner has identified in his report. This is Marnie's shot.

Speaker 69 But this line right here goes to the heart of the matter because if she had been the shooter for this wound, it would come out in a different place completely.

Speaker 3 There's a lot made about wound bead.

Speaker 49 That wound is a downward angled wound fired by a taller person than Marnie, someone who's at least 5'10.

Speaker 3 And yet, when the ME testified after examining the tissue, the ME said it was actually going upward.

Speaker 6 He's wrong.

Speaker 31 Here's the thing.

Speaker 19 When somebody is getting killed, they don't stay stationary. Think about what must have been going through Ronnie's mind.
Was she begging for her life? Did she get on her knees?

Speaker 19 Did she try to move away? All of that would affect Marnie's positioning relative to Ronnie's.

Speaker 3 I know that you've taken apart each and every piece of evidence that was presented.

Speaker 3 And it's everything from the fact that she told friends that she had access to Sean's emails, the fact that she bragged about him and her relationship with him every chance she could, that she purchased those suspicious items at Home Depot, that she rented a car, that she told Christie that she wore a disguise, her own words on tape about Ronnie Reuters' murder.

Speaker 3 Any one of those details you could pick apart and say, okay, maybe.

Speaker 3 But in total, doesn't it paint an alarming picture to you?

Speaker 40 Yes,

Speaker 41 it does.

Speaker 49 And that that is why it's so important to adversarially test those little pieces, find out the truth of them, and then put the picture back together showing actual innocence.

Speaker 3 But will Marnie Yang get a new trial?

Speaker 26 It's a terrible tragedy for really everyone involved, certainly for Ronnie's family.

Speaker 26 But it's also a tragedy for Marnie Yang and her family. Her kids have grown up without their mother.

Speaker 62 I would just say to her that no matter everything that she's been through, you know, be proud that she's raised a really good young man.

Speaker 55 And that's all thanks to her.

Speaker 38 I'm glad you're still here.

Speaker 38 And that

Speaker 38 I know I haven't been there,

Speaker 60 but I'm hoping that we can all get through this together.

Speaker 3 Could it be that Marnie's lying to her own children and using them for her defense?

Speaker 49 She loves and loved those children. I reject that as a possibility.

Speaker 42 I don't think Marnie was using her children as pawns.

Speaker 19 I have to ask you, Did you kill Ronnie Ryder?

Speaker 52 I did not, and I am not capable of doing anything like that. I'm a mother myself.
Like, that's unconscionable to me. Absolutely not.

Speaker 3 The state's attorney's office filed a motion, as you well know, to dismiss your petition, and they described it as skillfully, lawyerly rebranding of the facts and the overwhelming evidence against Marnie.

Speaker 49 I agree that it was skillful. It's not a rebranding of the facts.
It's a taking a look at the facts and putting them in a light of truth.

Speaker 3 The state also argues that many of the statements that were filed as a part of Marnie's petition are not notarized or are not sworn to, and that those claims should therefore be dismissed.

Speaker 3 It's now up to a judge as to whether or not Marnie Yang deserves a new trial.

Speaker 2 Ronnie's family said that this was finally over as soon as she was convicted, so it's difficult to see that Ronnie's family will have to go through this again.

Speaker 17 Ronnie was kind of the hub of the family.

Speaker 5 She brought us all together.

Speaker 3 During our interview, one of the most poignant answers Sean gave me was to the question of whether he blamed himself.

Speaker 3 And he told me, the issue was not so much blame, it's the fact that I have to live with knowing that Ronnie and the baby died because I knew this morning, yang.

Speaker 7 She took a piece of all of our lives.

Speaker 17 She took a piece of all of our hearts.

Speaker 22 You've been listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault.

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