True Crime Vault: Home Sweet Murder

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Speaker 3 Welcome to the 2020 True Crime Vault, where heart-stopping headlines come to life.

Speaker 3 So you've lost your husband, you've lost your son, and now your daughter is clinging to life. Are you saying this is just a coincidence?

Speaker 6 This is by far the most shocking case I have ever been a part of. It was unlike anything we had ever seen here.

Speaker 9 It felt extremely surreal to know that I was, you know, somehow connected to these heinous murders.

Speaker 11 I didn't want another one to die in the house.

Speaker 9 And why is that?

Speaker 13 Because houses are nasty after somebody's died in it.

Speaker 14 I went to her house and asked her what happened.

Speaker 14 And she proceeded to tell me like she was giving me a recipe to a cake.

Speaker 14 No emotions, no nothing.

Speaker 15 She must be in great shock. Of course you're in shock.

Speaker 15 Who thinks of walking in and finding their son dead?

Speaker 12 How much bad luck can one family have?

Speaker 16 It's not if Sarah is going to die, but when Sarah was going to die.

Speaker 12 She was clinging to life. Her brain function is failing.
Her liver function is failing.

Speaker 17 I just felt like I want to strangle my mom because of what she did.

Speaker 3 So, are you a killer?

Speaker 19 Diane Stouty for about eight years, ever since she confessed to killing members of her own family. She's never talked publicly about how and why.

Speaker 19 Until now, we're actually headed to the Chili Cocky Prison in Missouri, where she's been held for the last six years to hear her story.

Speaker 20 Hello, Diane.

Speaker 3 I'm Deborah Roberts. This is a chance for you to speak,

Speaker 3 which, you know, you haven't done, I guess.

Speaker 21 No. Ever.

Speaker 3 Do you find yourself wondering how you wound up here?

Speaker 21 You, a nurse, a mom, a wife,

Speaker 3 a woman who had a full life? Do you think you deserve to be in prison?

Speaker 18 Yes and no.

Speaker 12 Springville is a charming town.

Speaker 12 Everyone is really warm and kind-hearted.

Speaker 22 We have a church and Chinese restaurant on every corner.

Speaker 7 It's definitely conservative, you know, it is definitely the buckle of the Bible though.

Speaker 7 We pray to thee our God this

Speaker 12 So whenever things like the stouty case happens, it really rocks the tight-knit community.

Speaker 3 Diane and Mark had been married for 26 years and had four children.

Speaker 3 Sean was 25, the eldest. Then there was Sarah, Rachel, and the youngest, Brianna, who was 10 years old.

Speaker 12 Mark, her husband, was super active in his band, musically musically inclined, was fun, lovable.

Speaker 25 Mark, growing up, developed a very early ear for music, and he wrote very good songs.

Speaker 1 You're just a female Judas.

Speaker 1 You want to see me

Speaker 1 crucified?

Speaker 3 How did you come to meet Mark?

Speaker 28 At the time I was looking for new band members. He was just the perfect guy I would want in my band.
And actually, we became fast friends.

Speaker 14 Mark was so easy to get along with, our band just jailed immediately. And he was a great front man.

Speaker 28 He was always a very positive influence in my life.

Speaker 14 He was always happy with the kids. He was always happy with his wife.
He loved me. He loved this family.

Speaker 3 Diane and Mark Stouty met in 1984 at a bluegrass music festival.

Speaker 3 Tell me about Mark and meeting him and what those early days were like.

Speaker 20 Oh my.

Speaker 18 He was a different person then.

Speaker 18 Very outgoing,

Speaker 18 very nice.

Speaker 3 What attracted you to him?

Speaker 18 We both like music.

Speaker 3 Music was big for both of us?

Speaker 18 Music was big for both of us.

Speaker 3 Did you fall for him? Did he fall for you?

Speaker 18 Kind of both, I would say.

Speaker 3 We hit it off.

Speaker 25 The first time I met Diane, she was pregnant. So maybe the marriage was

Speaker 25 because of that.

Speaker 25 But Mark seemed to be excited about them getting married. They seemed to be growing into a relationship.

Speaker 3 The peace of the Lord be with you always.

Speaker 3 The Stouties were members of the Redeemer Lutheran Church in Springfield.

Speaker 31 The Lord bless you, and the ushers will direct you.

Speaker 22 I came to know the Stouties right away, and then they allowed me to be a part of their family.

Speaker 32 May you rejoice in this intimacy with your Savior.

Speaker 22 Music in a church can really be a place where community connects.

Speaker 22 Diane and her daughter, Rachel, were very involved in our music ministry. Tom can rise from the

Speaker 7 Diane was involved with everything when it relates to music in church.

Speaker 7 I played with Diane and with her daughter, Rachel, and the praise band, and for almost two years, Diane played at the church organ on Sundays and I played a bass guitar.

Speaker 7 I was excited to play up next to Diane Satic.

Speaker 9 I was honored.

Speaker 7 because I knew she was the consummate musician.

Speaker 3 When did music become a part of your life?

Speaker 18 I started playing piano when I was three. My mother taught me.
It's soothing.

Speaker 3 How important was your faith to you?

Speaker 18 Very important.

Speaker 3 You liked going to church? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 By all accounts, Diane was a busy person. Aside from attending church on Sundays, she was a trained nurse.
She worked full-time in the health insurance industry and looked after her four children.

Speaker 22 Diane is very earnest. It was very important for her that things were organized well in advance.
Very, very diligent. And Diane was a devoted, involved mother.

Speaker 3 Let's talk about the children. How would you describe them?

Speaker 18 All my kids were a joy. Have you ever heard of the little professors syndrome? They all have their little special interests.

Speaker 3 So in Sean's case.

Speaker 18 Sean enjoyed reading about Sweden, architecture, mechanics.

Speaker 3 What about Sarah?

Speaker 18 She spoke French. Rachel was into Japan.
She plays multiple instruments.

Speaker 3 So she played in the church band as well, the two of you.

Speaker 3 Was she talented?

Speaker 18 I think so, yeah. Very talented.

Speaker 3 And Brianna?

Speaker 18 Brianna was into dinosaurs and cats.

Speaker 18 She was gifted with computers.

Speaker 3 By all all appearances, Diane seemed to love her children.

Speaker 28 An outside looking in, you'd think it was a picture-perfect family.

Speaker 3 I mean, it looks like a very settled, happy family.

Speaker 18 Those are the good old days.

Speaker 3 You're smiling, and the kids look pretty happy. Mark looks content.

Speaker 3 When you say the good old days,

Speaker 21 how good were they? Really good.

Speaker 3 Then on Easter Sunday, 2012, tragedy strikes when Diane's husband, Mark, dies.

Speaker 3 Diane then posts this on her Facebook page. For all my friends on Facebook this past Sunday evening, Mark, my husband of 27 years, reached his eternal home.

Speaker 28 I was absolutely shocked.

Speaker 14 He's older than I was, and this guy was on the front stage performing like he was 21.

Speaker 3 But is there more to Mark's death than meets the eye?

Speaker 21 You're a nurse.

Speaker 21 Why wouldn't you call 911?

Speaker 18 I was told: no hospitals, no doctors, no nothing, or, quote, I will kill you.

Speaker 12 We're in the north side of Springfield. This is the neighborhood where the Stouties spent most of their marriage.
A lot of the homes around here are humble homes.

Speaker 3 In 1994, 18 years before Mark's death, the Stouty family first moved to the Springfield area.

Speaker 12 This home here, where Mark and Diane lived with their four children, 900 square feet. Six people inside, that's a tight fit.

Speaker 12 And what we came to learn was that Sean was autistic and this family had a lot of issues.

Speaker 3 So you and Mark are this young couple with this baby. Was he diagnosed with autism?

Speaker 18 He wasn't formally diagnosed until he was in fifth grade.

Speaker 25 My family's impression was that Diane

Speaker 25 really did not want to admit that he had a problem.

Speaker 3 Not long after that, Sarah comes home.

Speaker 3 What was she like as a baby?

Speaker 18 A lot of separation anxiety. She would scream, throw temper tantrums.

Speaker 3 Are you working at that point?

Speaker 18 And I'm working full-time. I was the breadwinner.
I've always been the breadwinner. Mark could never hold a job very long.
He would either play music or basically he stayed at home.

Speaker 25 Diane was bringing in the money for the household, but Mark was not

Speaker 33 someone who

Speaker 34 could keep a house.

Speaker 25 He did not do housework. He was a bit of a slob, unfortunately.

Speaker 3 So Rachel and Brianna come along. Now you have four children.

Speaker 3 What is life like in the household?

Speaker 9 Too busy. Very busy.

Speaker 18 It was a very small home for a big family. Just chaos.

Speaker 22 I could see that Diane was hurting and lonely.

Speaker 22 I could see that Mark was a dear soul that

Speaker 22 was not overly able to provide for his family.

Speaker 3 Was Mark helpful?

Speaker 9 For a while.

Speaker 18 And then he started drinking.

Speaker 22 I could see that it was a family in stress and a family that was overwhelmed. But I never heard Diane say to me, Mark is abusing alcohol.
She never said to me, I need help. I need prayer.

Speaker 22 I'm having troubles.

Speaker 3 Was he much of a drinker?

Speaker 14 No, because he blew harmonica and he sung. So drinking wasn't his thing.

Speaker 3 He made friends in the band. He was close to some of his band members.
Did you get to know them?

Speaker 18 I really didn't get to know them. And, you know, by this time, he had his other friends that he'd run around with.

Speaker 3 Other friends?

Speaker 19 What do you mean?

Speaker 18 Let's just say they were heavy into drugs.

Speaker 22 I had coffee with Mark Wednesday of Easter week 2012. He asked me how I viewed him.
Did I see him as crazy? And I said no, and I didn't. I didn't see him as crazy.

Speaker 22 I saw him as a person who struggled in life.

Speaker 3 Then on Easter week 2012, Mark's bandmates started noticing some unusual changes in his behavior.

Speaker 3 You saw Mark that Friday before Easter.

Speaker 24 Right. What was he like?

Speaker 14 Well, we were doing a recording session. We never got the recording done because he was just so out of whack.

Speaker 14 And I'm like, Mark, come on, we're trying to do a recording here. It didn't even click to him that we were trying to record.

Speaker 14 One thing struck me so out of place. His skin color.

Speaker 3 What did it look like?

Speaker 7 Yellow.

Speaker 14 His skin was actually a yellowish color.

Speaker 3 So something was wrong with him.

Speaker 33 Something was wrong with him.

Speaker 14 That was the last time I seen him.

Speaker 3 His children are also becoming concerned about their father.

Speaker 34 On April the 7th, Sean writes, my father is slowly getting sicker.

Speaker 6 His voice is slurred.

Speaker 6 His walking is wobbly.

Speaker 3 Tell me about that weekend.

Speaker 18 He had gone to band practice, like usual. He came home, he was stumbling about.

Speaker 18 I finally got on bed,

Speaker 18 and he just slept.

Speaker 3 Were you worried about him when you went to church?

Speaker 21 Not really,

Speaker 18 because I've seen him do that before.

Speaker 3 So you come home from church. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 18 And what do you find? He was still sleeping in the bed. And your husband's bleeding? And he wasn't breathing.

Speaker 3 You know why he's died?

Speaker 18 No.

Speaker 3 What did you think when you heard that your pal had died?

Speaker 5 Sorry.

Speaker 5 I'm sorry.

Speaker 14 It took my breath away.

Speaker 3 You lost your husband.

Speaker 3 You've got four children.

Speaker 3 What are you thinking? What are you making of this?

Speaker 18 It hadn't really sunk in.

Speaker 3 How did the kids handle this?

Speaker 18 Nobody was really surprised.

Speaker 18 We knew he was getting worse and worse.

Speaker 26 I talked to Diane.

Speaker 14 I went to her house and asked her what happened.

Speaker 14 And she proceeded to tell me like she was giving me a recipe to a cake.

Speaker 5 No

Speaker 14 emotions, no emotions, no nothing.

Speaker 3 You thought something was odd?

Speaker 14 I knew something was odd about the way she's acting.

Speaker 36 So you try to cope with this and you go to the memorial service.

Speaker 14 Yes.

Speaker 3 What was that like?

Speaker 14 It just felt like I I lost my best friend. I was sitting there in tears.
When I looked at her, kept looking at her, and she wouldn't even acknowledge me, and she just kept looking ahead.

Speaker 14 I thought that was strange.

Speaker 3 Not long after the memorial service, Diane gets a $20,000 payout from Mark's life insurance policy. So she decides to move the family into a bigger house in a new neighborhood in Springfield.

Speaker 25 She had moved into a different house by that point,

Speaker 25 which was good because the house they were living in was rather cramped with

Speaker 5 four children.

Speaker 26 So we thought, well, good for her and hope that it would help them move forward.

Speaker 3 Incredibly, Diane and the family have only been living in that new home a few months when tragedy strikes the Stouty family again.

Speaker 15 What is your emergency? It was Sunday, September 2nd, 2012, and there was a couple of police cars out front.

Speaker 38 We all stood there watching and waiting.

Speaker 15 And finally, a policeman came out and he said there was a death in the home, but he would never tell us who it was.

Speaker 12 How much bad luck can one family have?

Speaker 3 By 2012, Diane has settled into her new home. She's no longer working at a hospital as a nurse.
She's got a job where she can work at home as a consultant for an insurance company.

Speaker 22 It seemed like a new beginning, and though I had conflicts of my own, those are the type of things I typically celebrate for people.

Speaker 12 This neighborhood has a completely different feel than the first neighborhood that the Stouties lived in. This neighborhood, the homes are a little bit bigger.

Speaker 12 The neighbors, a lot of them have their homes decorated. Just seems like a perfect neighborhood for the Stouties to move to after such a tragic loss.

Speaker 3 You've moved to a new home.

Speaker 3 You're in a new place. Are your neighbors aware? Do they know you've lost your husband? Nope.
Why not?

Speaker 9 I've never met some of the neighbors.

Speaker 15 They'd never seemed like they wanted to have conversation. Every time I saw them drive in, they would start to walk over to say, oh, hello, the garage door would go down.

Speaker 15 It was just that kind of a feeling of,

Speaker 15 leave us alone.

Speaker 15 So I didn't try to go to the door anymore.

Speaker 15 But we did see the boy who we found out later was Sean.

Speaker 15 We saw him mowing the lawn quite often every few days he was out there mowing

Speaker 5 after Mark died

Speaker 22 I called upon Diane

Speaker 22 and we would have coffee and I would inquire how are you doing how is your grief I would listen but there was never any statement I need help I need prayer I'm having troubles

Speaker 22 so I struggled with knowing why we were meeting and I don't remember ever talking about

Speaker 22 matters of life in a significant way.

Speaker 3 Then a few months later, Sean is very sick.

Speaker 3 How sick was he?

Speaker 9 I'm trying to remember.

Speaker 18 I know he was having some stomach issues.

Speaker 3 And then there's one weekend

Speaker 21 where he's writhing in pain.

Speaker 3 You go off to church and he's really ill.

Speaker 21 Were you worried? A little bit.

Speaker 9 A little bit.

Speaker 15 It was Sunday, September 2nd, back in 2012, and our neighbors across the street called us and said, something's going on. There is a coroner's van in the driveway of the new family next door.

Speaker 15 So I came over to their front door. I said, I'm Rhonda Anderson.
I live across the street. We saw there was a coroner's van

Speaker 15 and I just want to know what happened, if there's anything we can do. And she said, oh, my son died.

Speaker 15 Oh, caught me off guard. Your son died.

Speaker 9 Okay.

Speaker 15 Was he sick? Was there something wrong?

Speaker 3 Sean is found dead in his bedroom. And just like his father, he too has an odd bloodstain around his mouth.

Speaker 3 You said that you didn't take Sean to the hospital when you should have.

Speaker 21 Why didn't you?

Speaker 18 Because he didn't want to. He didn't want me to.

Speaker 3 But you're his mom. You're a nurse.

Speaker 3 You know when somebody needs medical attention.

Speaker 3 You could have overruled that.

Speaker 18 I could have, but I chose not to.

Speaker 3 What's really heartbreaking about the death of Sean is that the family didn't do much to commemorate his life.

Speaker 3 There was no obituary, there was no funeral, a little gathering at home, and then he was cremated.

Speaker 22 There was three of us in the living room, and I don't remember the children themselves being there.

Speaker 22 I remember Diane being there, and this director of ministries, and myself. In In that moment, I was there to care for the grieving mother in whatever way she presented herself.

Speaker 5 That's what I was there to do.

Speaker 40 And was it hard? Yes, it was.

Speaker 25 We found out that Sean had died from a posting in Facebook from Diane.

Speaker 3 After an autopsy, the medical examiner determines that Sean apparently died because of prior medical issues related to a history of seizures.

Speaker 26 With his history of mental and physical issues, it seemed just a spade of bad luck for Diane.

Speaker 3 So now you've lost your husband and you've lost your son.

Speaker 3 Then, nine months later,

Speaker 18 Sarah is seriously ill.

Speaker 3 How do you explain that?

Speaker 3 By the fall of 2012, Mark's been gone since April. Sean's passed away in early September, and it just leaves Diane with her daughters.
Sarah, Rachel, and Brianna.

Speaker 22 In my 30-some years of ministry, I've never had two family members die in the same

Speaker 32 type of situations ever.

Speaker 3 After a tough year, finally, a bright spot for the Stouty family. The eldest daughter, Sarah, is graduating from college, which Diane celebrates on Facebook.

Speaker 41 Sarah was a hard worker.

Speaker 42 She went and got a degree. She,

Speaker 42 you know, was well-liked, had a lot of friends.

Speaker 3 But in June 2013, the stouty curse strikes again.

Speaker 3 Sarah is seriously ill, and this time the family is rushing her to the hospital.

Speaker 43 When Sarah came to the hospital, she was the sickest of the sick.

Speaker 43 She was in what we call multi-system organ failure. and she needed life support from every organ.

Speaker 3 The doctors told Diane that Sarah's organs were shutting down, that she was hemorrhaging, her brain was shutting down, and they couldn't figure out why.

Speaker 25 Sarah being ill and in the hospital was once again relayed through Facebook.

Speaker 25 Again, it was, boy, she's really having bad luck with this family. What's going on?

Speaker 3 You took Sarah to the hospital.

Speaker 3 What are you expecting is going to happen? Do you think you're about to lose her?

Speaker 18 I didn't know.

Speaker 18 I didn't know how bad it was till they told me her lab results.

Speaker 43 She's the sickest 24-year-old that we've ever seen.

Speaker 24 I've never seen a case like that, and I really don't know what's going on.

Speaker 43 Then the detective came, and then I said, thank God.

Speaker 42 When Sarah went to the hospital with the same kinds of symptoms that had taken both Sean and Mark,

Speaker 42 warning bells went off.

Speaker 22 Now I see someone fighting for their life in circumstances and events that are just completely foreign to me.

Speaker 44 There was an anonymous call made to the Springfield Police Department, alerting them to the suspicious character of both Mark and Sean's death.

Speaker 22 I shared that I am a pastor and I have a family who's experienced two

Speaker 22 deaths

Speaker 22 in a short proximity of time and now has another family member in ICU.

Speaker 22 I believe that these were circumstances that needed to be investigated.

Speaker 3 The pastor suspects he's got a dangerous sinner in his own flock and he can't, in good faith, keep quiet about it.

Speaker 16 When I first read the tip, it was just kind of like, no way, you know,

Speaker 16 this couldn't be, this isn't something that would go on in our town or our city.

Speaker 6 So it was kind of shocking, but something they, of course, had to look into just to see what the tip was about.

Speaker 3 How are Rachel and Brianna taking this now? They've got their sister who's in the hospital having lost their father and their brother.

Speaker 3 How are they reacting?

Speaker 21 They really didn't say much.

Speaker 18 You know, they've always kept to themselves.

Speaker 6 When I read the report about Mark, it appeared that it was natural causes related death, and that's what it was ruled at that point.

Speaker 6 But when I reached out to the officers that were there on scene, One of the officers had actually witnessed Diane step over the body of Mark while he was on the ground.

Speaker 6 And he said that they just really stood out.

Speaker 6 When I read Sean's death report in both reports, it noted a small amount of blood around their mouth and so it raised some red flags.

Speaker 44 You don't typically see that in a natural causes, death.

Speaker 6 When I went in the hospital, the doctor told me a bunch of tests had been performed, but they weren't able to figure out what was going on.

Speaker 43 Because she's young, we start to suspect drugs. Maybe she took a drug overdose or something, but there was nothing.
And we say maybe it's an infection.

Speaker 20 Came back negative also.

Speaker 43 We didn't know what's going on.

Speaker 43 That same day, the detective came and talked to me. My nurse told me the mother was not concerned at all.
She wanted to stop the treatment.

Speaker 42 Nurses told police Diane was too lighthearted. She was joking around with people.

Speaker 42 She was talking about a vacation and that Sarah's situation, as she called it, was not going to keep her from going on vacation.

Speaker 6 And she said it just didn't seem, the words that she used was how a mother would act.

Speaker 42 So the detective goes to the doctor who's taking care of Sarah, and they basically come to the same consensus.

Speaker 43 He said, okay, I received a tip from somebody

Speaker 43 that Sarah's father and brother died suddenly.

Speaker 43 So he said, do you suspect something weird? I said, yes.

Speaker 21 Are you worried not only about her, but also about

Speaker 3 how this looks?

Speaker 21 Were you thinking about that at all?

Speaker 18 Actually, I was worried about why

Speaker 18 my back was hurting, why my head was hurting, why I couldn't pee.

Speaker 3 So you were feeling symptoms?

Speaker 18 I was feeling symptoms too.

Speaker 43 The first thing come to my mind was heavy metal poisoning,

Speaker 43 lithium

Speaker 43 and arsenic.

Speaker 43 But because it's very rare, you have to send it to a special lab, or not any lab will have that test.

Speaker 6 Based upon all the tests that they had run, he believed there was a possibility that it could be a poisoning.

Speaker 22 I waited for about one week for them to continue with their tests, but everything that they were testing for came back negative.

Speaker 43 She required life support to support all her organs in order to stay alive.

Speaker 3 After several days in intensive care, Sarah's condition is beginning to stabilize, but there were still very urgent concerns about the rest of her family.

Speaker 6 I was definitely in fear for the other members of Diane's family. It was definitely time to talk to Diane to get get her side of the story to try to figure out what was going on.

Speaker 9 I'm here to listen. I'm here to

Speaker 16 you tell me about it, Diane.

Speaker 47 Tell me everything that was going on.

Speaker 3 Over the course of 14 months, the quiet, God-fearing Stouty family seems to be cursed. Member after member, stunningly struck down.

Speaker 3 Mark Stouty, who fronted a blues ban, and 26-year-old son Sean, both suddenly dead. And now 24-year-old Sarah lying in the ICU, her kidneys and brain failing.

Speaker 3 So you've lost your husband, you've lost your son,

Speaker 3 and now your daughter is clinging to life.

Speaker 3 Are you saying this is just a coincidence?

Speaker 18 I don't know.

Speaker 3 Now police want to know, is this just a matter of bad luck or bad intentions?

Speaker 34 Well again, Miss Dally,

Speaker 47 I appreciate you being willing to come down and speak with us.

Speaker 48 You're very helpful on your department.

Speaker 35 I'm trying to be.

Speaker 6 It was one of the most stressful interviews I had ever done because going into it, there was no physical evidence at that point.

Speaker 34 When did all this come about?

Speaker 18 She started feeling sick Saturday.

Speaker 6 I started asking Diane about herself, how involved in the church that she was.

Speaker 16 So it was just kind of a general conversation about her family.

Speaker 29 Was Mark, was he active in the church as well?

Speaker 52 Not as active, but he went.

Speaker 6 And in that, there was also strategy in trying to get her to talk about the two previous deaths in her family.

Speaker 34 Do you have a son as well?

Speaker 51 No, not anymore.

Speaker 35 He died.

Speaker 53 He died.

Speaker 3 He had a seizure disorder.

Speaker 3 Diane does not seem to be nervous in this police interview. She's quiet.
She seems to be answering the questions.

Speaker 3 The detective is very delicate with her, and he knows he has to be because at any point she could just walk out the door. She was not under arrest.

Speaker 3 After about 45 minutes, Detective McCamus then reveals that Sean's autopsy is being re-examined.

Speaker 6 I got a hold of the medical examiner's office and luckily they still had some tissue that was that was still being held.

Speaker 35 We've spoken with the medical examiner about that.

Speaker 34 So they're going to do a bunch of tests on his stuff as well.

Speaker 31 Okay.

Speaker 30 So if his stuff were to come back with anything

Speaker 55 like that, something similar to maybe what Sarah might come back with.

Speaker 32 How would you explain that?

Speaker 3 It's from this point that Diane begins to change her story about how Sean and Mark might have died.

Speaker 52 I don't know about my kids, but Mark had a lot of

Speaker 52 weird friends, well, I don't know if I'd call them friends, acquaintances.

Speaker 51 He

Speaker 51 would,

Speaker 52 you know, they were into drugs and all that, but

Speaker 52 that wouldn't surprise me

Speaker 6 throughout the investigation it it might have come up that mark would drink on occasion and and would smoke marijuana but in terms of of harder more illicit drugs there was absolutely no evidence or any kind of mention whatsoever that that mark was involved in anything like that as far as sean

Speaker 52 Sean had been looking up things on the internet.

Speaker 52 He'd been threatening to kill himself.

Speaker 52 And you don't know whether he's crying wolf or not.

Speaker 6 As the interview progressed, there was a point where Diane said something about Sarah also possibly wanting to harm herself. And it was during this discussion that Anna Freeze was mentioned.

Speaker 30 So tell me about it, Diane.

Speaker 51 There's a lot of arguments.

Speaker 51 And cut it really short and sweet.

Speaker 9 I knew they were drinking antifreeze.

Speaker 51 And I was so mad at them,

Speaker 52 I didn't want to take them in.

Speaker 3 She suddenly just offers, very quietly, I knew they were drinking antifreeze.

Speaker 29 It's like,

Speaker 3 what?

Speaker 3 Are you talking about?

Speaker 48 Nobody just drinks antifreeze.

Speaker 5 Okay, this could be our poison.

Speaker 49 This could be what we are looking for.

Speaker 6 I just continued to lean on her about doing the right thing.

Speaker 32 Diane, right now is your chance to

Speaker 55 make some of this somewhat right.

Speaker 50 Because you're going to want people to see that you're remorseful and that

Speaker 32 you're sorry for what you did.

Speaker 3 He used religion. He's like, look, I'm a Christian, you're a Christian, you know, I'm a believer, almost in the sort of priest-penitent way.
And it worked.

Speaker 54 Diane, you knew

Speaker 50 that they were drinking antifreeze.

Speaker 35 You knew that.

Speaker 32 They didn't.

Speaker 51 We both know that.

Speaker 51 You knew, Diane,

Speaker 50 that they were drinking antifreeze

Speaker 55 because you were giving it to them.

Speaker 55 I didn't know what else to do.

Speaker 55 I really didn't.

Speaker 52 He says to her,

Speaker 38 You knew they were drinking it because you put it in their drinks.

Speaker 37 And instead of like shock, horror, I would never do that, she says yes.

Speaker 35 What were you putting it in?

Speaker 35 Coca-Cola.

Speaker 32 How much would you put in?

Speaker 32 Just a little bit.

Speaker 56 From the poisoner perspective, this is a great poison.

Speaker 38 It doesn't have any real smell.

Speaker 56 You can't taste it.

Speaker 38 You can put it in almost anything, and it's acutely poisonous.

Speaker 3 That's the lethal drink she gave to her son and daughter, Coca-Cola and Antifreeze, for days, and watched them get sick

Speaker 3 and did nothing

Speaker 21 you admit

Speaker 3 that you poisoned your family with antifreeze

Speaker 18 I said what I was told to say

Speaker 3 who told you to say this I can't tell you

Speaker 3 okay

Speaker 47 so if you can stand up for us we're gonna put some antos on you we're not gonna

Speaker 50 put them on tight, but I've said it on the mankind.

Speaker 18 I'm saying there's more to that than what people know.

Speaker 3 Well, tell us, because we...

Speaker 18 I really can't go into that for safety reasons.

Speaker 3 At the time, Springfield police felt pretty confident they had their killer.

Speaker 3 But they were about to uncover more evidence that would turn this case upside down.

Speaker 6 The journal was found in the Southeast bedroom.

Speaker 3 And that journal has some sinister secrets.

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Speaker 3 This is a story about a wife, a mother of four, who went off the rails. How is it that you could kill your own family, your husband, your son, almost your daughter?

Speaker 6 Diane was eliminating family members one at a time.

Speaker 58 And basically, what has happened is your mom has admitted to killing your dad and your brother and trying to kill your sister.

Speaker 51 You killed.

Speaker 6 It's just so crazy. You think to yourself, what is going on here?

Speaker 15 That does not happen here. That doesn't happen anywhere, does it?

Speaker 50 Diane, they were drinking antifreeze because you were giving it to them.

Speaker 3 What are you talking about?

Speaker 48 Nobody just drinks antifreeze.

Speaker 3 You can't make this up. You tell the police that you poisoned your own family.

Speaker 18 I'm saying there's more to that than what people know. There is more involved.

Speaker 3 After two hours of questioning, an astounding confession from Diane Stouty, she admits to poisoning her own husband and children with antifreeze.

Speaker 3 So at this point, Diane's arrested.

Speaker 3 Sarah's in the hospital, but Rachel is home with her younger sister, Brianna. And the police need to break the news to Rachel that her mother's under arrest for the murder of her father and brother.

Speaker 58 And basically what has happened is your mom has admitted to killing your dad and your brother and trying to kill your sister with poison.

Speaker 58 Just take some time and

Speaker 58 mom said this too, but obviously I have to ask you these questions.

Speaker 35 You didn't have any involvement in any of this stuff.

Speaker 58 Don't take it the wrong way, but I have to ask those questions, okay?

Speaker 58 Mom never confided in you that she was doing this. Never.
And from what I, the kind of feeling I get from you, that thought didn't even enter your mind that mom was doing anything.

Speaker 58 I know you said she was frustrated, but I kind of take it as you didn't think she was frustrated to the point where she would do something like this, right?

Speaker 3 With Diane now in custody, police begin a search of the family property. They're looking for any evidence that might explain what had been going on.

Speaker 49 Later on the night of the first interrogation of Diane, we had our crime scene guys out here.

Speaker 3 During the search, the police find a house that really is in disarray.

Speaker 3 In 2016, lead detective Neil McCamis took us back to the Stouty family home to show us what police found.

Speaker 29 So this is obviously the living room of the home. It wasn't clean and orderly like it is now.
It was a little messy. There were couches, there were papers just kind of strewn about.

Speaker 3 There's stuff all over the place and on the floor. There are a lot of computers.
Everybody had a laptop.

Speaker 3 The search moves to the garage and that's where they hit Pater.

Speaker 3 On a counter, there's antifreeze and very close to it, Coca-Cola.

Speaker 3 Exactly what Diane said she had done to both Sarah and Sean. She fed them antifrees in their Coke.

Speaker 3 Mark got it in his Gatorade.

Speaker 34 This is the bench, obviously.

Speaker 29 There's different things on here now, but that is the bench

Speaker 29 where it was located. The positioning of the Coke bottles was very odd.

Speaker 29 A bunch of household cleaners, whatever you can think, and then right in the middle of a six-pack bottle of Coke, which was just completely out of place.

Speaker 6 One thing that I noticed immediately just seemed to be a lot of journals, writings, notebooks.

Speaker 3 One journal in particular was discovered. During the search of the house, the police recovered in one of the bedrooms a purple journal on a shelf, just sort of thrown haphazardly on the shelf.

Speaker 49 The initial impression from the journal is, you know, what in the world is going on here?

Speaker 30 It's just placed right there, right along with everything else. Nothing to signify its importance, just it's right there amongst everything.

Speaker 29 When Detective Cole got down to the police department, he was flipping through, and he came across that and realized that it was a key piece of evidence.

Speaker 3 The journal is like a smoking gun, revealing that Diane wasn't the only stouty involved in the plot to poison the family.

Speaker 29 There was a journal entry that talked about Rachel's knowledge of the upcoming deaths of Mark and Sean.

Speaker 3 These entries showed evidence of premeditated murder and that Rachel knew about it.

Speaker 36 It's sad when I realize how my father will pass on in the next two months. Sean, my brother, will move on shortly after.

Speaker 16 Who would think that a daughter would be assisting her mother in the killing of the rest of their family?

Speaker 3 Now with this new discovery, Officer McCamus brings Rachel back in for questioning with a new agenda. He wants to confront her about that journal.

Speaker 46 Were you ever suspicious of your mom?

Speaker 51 No. No.

Speaker 54 It sounds like you and her from talking to her that you and her were pretty good buddies.

Speaker 55 Is that right?

Speaker 35 You guys were real close.

Speaker 46 Mama's best friend, kind of.

Speaker 47 Did she ever mention anything at all?

Speaker 18 No.

Speaker 34 So she never told you specifically that she wanted to hurt your dad, your brother, or your sister?

Speaker 51 No.

Speaker 6 During the interview, I just slid the journal entry over to her. I wanted to see her reaction upon looking at that.

Speaker 6 There was an immediate sense from Rachel. You could just see the look on her face of, it was, uh-oh.

Speaker 35 Do you

Speaker 47 recognize this?

Speaker 16 You could see the wheels turning, literally.

Speaker 6 You could just see her processing of how am I going to explain myself out of this.

Speaker 51 Yeah, I remember this. Okay.

Speaker 55 What is that?

Speaker 51 A little journal thing.

Speaker 32 A journal thing.

Speaker 55 Whose journal?

Speaker 32 Mine. Your journal.

Speaker 34 So you wrote this then, is what you're telling me?

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 6 Rachel, at that point, I think she realized

Speaker 22 I'm caught.

Speaker 6 And she began to tell her story.

Speaker 35 No more

Speaker 30 lies or untruths.

Speaker 34 We need to be honest about everything.

Speaker 47 You understand?

Speaker 54 What is this?

Speaker 53 I'd had a lot of really bad dreams about them dying.

Speaker 51 I talked to mom about it

Speaker 55 and she mentioned

Speaker 9 she was thinking of hurting them.

Speaker 6 I pressed Rachel in terms of, hey, this isn't a dream. This is something much

Speaker 6 worse than that, and you are involved.

Speaker 34 So, you said you'd been having some dreams about them dying,

Speaker 47 and you told your mother about this.

Speaker 47 What did you tell your mother?

Speaker 1 That it would be quick,

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 It'd be easy.

Speaker 32 That they'd be to heaven soon and

Speaker 32 we could move on.

Speaker 6 That was the huge moment in terms of Rachel's involvement in the crimes with Diane.

Speaker 5 It told me that Rachel was just as involved as Diane.

Speaker 3 They were a killing team, a mother-daughter. I mean, this is unheard of.
Who does that?

Speaker 6 It still is just beyond comprehension to think that a mother and daughter, you know, systematically poisoning off each one of their other family members.

Speaker 36 Rachel is just as evil as her mom.

Speaker 34 You're saying Mark is the first one.

Speaker 35 There's nobody before Mark.

Speaker 47 Not in your past life or not in... Okay, Mark's the first one.

Speaker 34 And it just got started. You said you hated his guts and

Speaker 35 you

Speaker 35 couldn't take it anymore.

Speaker 3 Once the confessions began, it was just one shocking revelation after another.

Speaker 3 But the strangest one was yet to come.

Speaker 45 My name is Mark Safrick. I am retired FBI criminal profiler.
I was in the FBI's behavioral analysis unit for almost 13 years of a 23-year FBI career.

Speaker 45 When you look at Diane, you see an individual who has

Speaker 45 no remorse for the actions that she's engaged in.

Speaker 51 By then I hated his cuts.

Speaker 55 Hated his guts.

Speaker 55 I understand that.

Speaker 55 I mean, I hated his cuts.

Speaker 45 She's very upfront with what she did and why she did it.

Speaker 52 Sean would be interfering with whatever I would do

Speaker 51 to the point where he was getting into my work.

Speaker 52 And I would have to tell him you need to leave, you know, go to your room,

Speaker 52 go do something.

Speaker 52 You get to the point where you just pull out your hair.

Speaker 45 That interview is all happening before she's had a chance to talk to anybody else. So that's really your best information.

Speaker 52 I couldn't figure out a way to change.

Speaker 60 You know, I couldn't get them out of the house. I couldn't leave the house.

Speaker 60 Okay.

Speaker 60 I think I snapped.

Speaker 3 You said

Speaker 3 I couldn't figure out a way to change. I couldn't get them out of the house.
I couldn't leave the house. I think I snapped.
I really do. I just lost it.

Speaker 18 I don't remember that.

Speaker 3 Is that what happened?

Speaker 18 I don't know. I don't remember that.

Speaker 3 You don't remember saying that?

Speaker 3 You said you hated your life.

Speaker 3 So, have you just decided not to remember?

Speaker 18 No, I don't remember.

Speaker 3 It started with mom because she just wanted to find some way

Speaker 53 to make it simpler.

Speaker 30 And the reasoning to get rid of your dad, tell me why

Speaker 50 for him and then tell me why for Sean. Why did you guys want to get rid of those two?

Speaker 53 Dad

Speaker 53 was basically a drain on her, on us.

Speaker 51 Money,

Speaker 53 He had no concept of money.

Speaker 52 He would always be out partying, always be out.

Speaker 51 Sean, we argued on a lot, because

Speaker 60 I still think we could have put him in

Speaker 19 like an assisted living, but

Speaker 19 she wanted him out.

Speaker 10 So clearly Diane is the ringleader here.

Speaker 45 But I think it's extraordinary that she draws her daughter in to this plot and that Rachel goes along with it.

Speaker 30 So when did the plan to kill Sarah come about?

Speaker 51 May, June.

Speaker 32 May or June.

Speaker 34 And so why was it decided to kill Sarah?

Speaker 60 Other than the fact that she basically lived in the back bedroom and didn't like

Speaker 53 have any gunption to get a job, I'm not certain.

Speaker 53 Mom probably has her own

Speaker 18 issues with her.

Speaker 9 What about you?

Speaker 53 She's annoying, yes, but

Speaker 53 I don't know.

Speaker 3 Unbelievable motives. And she vocalized them.
She said these things.

Speaker 34 And what did you guys finally decide upon on how you were going to kill them? You poisoning, I know you said that, but

Speaker 34 how were you guys going to poison them to kill them?

Speaker 53 Mom decided on antifreeze.

Speaker 46 Antifreeze.

Speaker 34 And why was antifreeze decided?

Speaker 53 Because in general, you could put it in something and you couldn't taste it.

Speaker 38 The chemical that we're talking about is ethylene glycol.

Speaker 56 which is the alcohol component in antifreeze. And when we metabolize ethylene glycol, our body will eventually turn that into a couple of very dangerous elements that attack organs of the body.

Speaker 56 They slice and dice where they land. They're really bad for you.
You do not want to drink antifreeze.

Speaker 47 Would you put the antifreeze in the drinks whenever you gave them to your dad, or how would that go?

Speaker 53 She would mix them and then just pass them out.

Speaker 47 So if the tops were already unscrewed, that's how you knew not to drink them.

Speaker 61 Women are far more likely than men to use poison.

Speaker 61 Women tend not to use overtly violent guns, knives, bludgeoning to kill.

Speaker 30 How much, though,

Speaker 55 did it take to

Speaker 35 when you were you putting in cokes for him also?

Speaker 46 Or what did you put it in for him?

Speaker 51 Gatorade.

Speaker 32 Okay, so you put it in Mark's Gatorade?

Speaker 50 And was it Cokes for both Sean and Sarah?

Speaker 50 Okay.

Speaker 46 And when did Mark start to get sick?

Speaker 46 He got sick on Friday.

Speaker 46 Okay.

Speaker 35 And when did he die? On Sunday.

Speaker 45 I think they knew what kind of poison they wanted. They knew what they wanted the poison to do.

Speaker 45 And they knew that they didn't want the poison detected.

Speaker 54 And you say you expected the antifreeze to after they drank it, that it would be quick and it would kill them right away.

Speaker 34 Were you surprised when it took a while?

Speaker 50 Is that why you continued to give them more?

Speaker 9 No.

Speaker 52 Because I didn't know what else to do.

Speaker 45 Sometimes we say it's easy to take candy from a baby, but it's actually easier to give candy to a baby.

Speaker 45 And in this case it's easy for Diane because her husband her son, and her daughter trusted her implicitly.

Speaker 61 For them to witness the demise of three family members who they were poisoning slowly over time, it's not just that they're cold and calculating, but they have become completely immune to the suffering of others.

Speaker 56 When a poisoner has to be cold to the bone, because every step of this process, they're planning to kill someone.

Speaker 37 That's okay with them because the focus is how do I get away with it?

Speaker 3 What Rachel tells police next may be the most heinous of all.

Speaker 29 There was a plan that Brianna was going to be killed as well.

Speaker 3 They were going to kill the little girl as well? What's wrong with these people?

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Speaker 62 I'm John Quinones. Vanessa Guillen, a 20-year-old soldier, vanishes while on duty at an Army base in Texas.
Her family demands answers.

Speaker 18 How can she go missing on a military base?

Speaker 3 That's ridiculous.

Speaker 62 The search goes on for months.

Speaker 33 And a dark story starts to unfold.

Speaker 63 She told her family that she was being sexually harassed and wasn't reporting it out of fear of retribution and retaliation.

Speaker 62 What investigators finally uncover is horrifying. Find out how one soldier, a beloved sister and daughter, ignited a movement and sparked a reckoning in the U.S.
military.

Speaker 62 Listen to Vanished, What Happened to Vanessa, a new series from ABC Audio in 2020. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 6 The stouty case in my career is by far the most shocking case I have ever been a part of.

Speaker 60 Have you ever woken up and your life is so bad that you can't stand to be in it?

Speaker 6 Are you asking me?

Speaker 60 Yeah, because that's what I felt like.

Speaker 9 Okay.

Speaker 3 When you hear about a case as diabolical as the Stouties, you have to ask yourself, how does it all start?

Speaker 12 I want to know a song.

Speaker 7 Music was their outlet.

Speaker 8 Rachel was a great musician, a very talented singer.

Speaker 7 Rachel played in the church for almost two years.

Speaker 7 They were two peas in a pot. They were mother and daughter team out of all the kids.
You know, Rachel was the closest to her, and they definitely had a, you know,

Speaker 7 a relationship that was tighter than any other person in that family.

Speaker 22 They were very close, mother and daughter. And I think that they became alliances to each other.

Speaker 16 During my interview with Diane, especially when we were talking about Rachel, I just got this really odd sense

Speaker 6 because of the way she would talk about Rachel. She would light up.
It was obvious that Rachel was the pet.

Speaker 3 Did you have a favorite?

Speaker 21 Not really.

Speaker 18 A lot of people think I did, but not really.

Speaker 33 Who was more like you?

Speaker 21 Rachel.

Speaker 3 How about Rachel as a child?

Speaker 20 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 How How was she?

Speaker 18 She's my first one that actually talked.

Speaker 18 I really didn't have much problems with her.

Speaker 6 Rachel had discussed with me that they were just kind of like a matched pair. They understood each other.
They got each other.

Speaker 6 And Rachel said that that's why she just wanted it to be her and her mother.

Speaker 61 There is some kind of psychological chemistry between the two of them that could explain the foliadue or how the two of them fed each other psychologically into committing this crime together.

Speaker 45 Rachel always looked up to her mother, and her mother groomed her for this in terms of how she saw her father, in terms of how Diane saw Mark.

Speaker 45 And so, when Diane thinks Rachel is ready to be brought into this to help her out, she does, and Rachel acquiesces.

Speaker 22 But once that

Speaker 22 was set in motion,

Speaker 22 clearly it was a path that

Speaker 22 they could not veer from.

Speaker 22 That they did not veer from.

Speaker 54 When were you guys gonna

Speaker 9 feel Brianna?

Speaker 11 Sometime after Sarah.

Speaker 27 And how are you gonna do that?

Speaker 9 Well, she liked root beer.

Speaker 13 Could easily have gone the same way that we did with the others.

Speaker 13 We didn't really go into any new ways.

Speaker 29 She had described Brianna as a burden they didn't want around the house. That was her explanation.

Speaker 3 Four people. They would have killed four people in this house if they could have.

Speaker 20 Correct.

Speaker 29 Rachel said that her mother was the only one that understood her. They could relate to each other, and it was just going to be those two.

Speaker 29 I guess the ultimate goal was that it was just going to, you know, she Rachel was the the golden child.

Speaker 32 I'd like to know why you guys eventually took, you know, when Sarah got so bad, I know you guys said you thought that she was pretty much dead, but why did you take her to the hospital?

Speaker 11 I didn't want another one to die in the house.

Speaker 9 And why is that?

Speaker 13 Because houses are nasty after somebody's died in it.

Speaker 9 This is really

Speaker 61 just a different way of saying that guilt is knocking on the back of her brain.

Speaker 61 Her own culpability, her own responsibility, her own role for their deaths is making it impossible for her to feel comfortable in the house where her crimes occurred.

Speaker 3 Fortunately for Sarah, She got to the hospital and got treatment just in time to save her life.

Speaker 31 We thought initially she's not gonna make it, but then after 24 hours, thankfully, she started to get better.

Speaker 3 Sarah makes a pretty miraculous recovery and a shocking revelation.

Speaker 3 So, you read in her journal

Speaker 3 that Sean had died, and that your name was listed too?

Speaker 23 The news of murder charges against a church organist and her bright, creative daughter came in June.

Speaker 64 Police reports say Diane and Rachel killed husband and father Mark last April, son of brother Sean last September.

Speaker 42 Both Diane and Rachel facing numerous charges of first-degree murder and assault on Sarah. Now in the hospital, seriously ill.

Speaker 64 As for the youngest daughter of the Stouty family, who is about to enter the sixth grade, church officials informed me she's currently in foster care.

Speaker 47 Anything you say can and will be used against you in a corner of law.

Speaker 7 When Diana was charged with murder, it was tough for me to wrap my head around that.

Speaker 8 It was surreal.

Speaker 15 We were just totally shocked about that. That does not happen here.
That doesn't happen anywhere, does it?

Speaker 14 This don't make no sense at all. Why she would even go that far.

Speaker 24 If you don't love your husband, divorce him.

Speaker 14 But to sit there and literally about how you're going to get rid of your family?

Speaker 25 I was like in shock.

Speaker 25 How could she do that?

Speaker 6 What was the reason? Why would you kill your own husband, your own son, and attempt to kill your own daughter with the help of your other daughter?

Speaker 35 That's incredible.

Speaker 25 I was sitting in the audience. Rachel and Diane were brought in.

Speaker 25 She never looked at me, either one, Diane or Rachel.

Speaker 42 Diane and Rachel plead not guilty for first-degree murder.

Speaker 6 Sarah was in really bad shape. Doctors and everybody else, they thought that Sarah was going to die and

Speaker 6 it was miraculous that she survived.

Speaker 42 Sarah fortunately survived, but she will never be the same. She suffered a lot of brain damage because of the antifreeze and organ damage.

Speaker 42 She had to start from scratch, learning how to do the most basic things.

Speaker 3 It is a miracle that Sarah survived, but how will the poisoning impact her in the long term? I met Sarah in 2016 while she was still recovering, living in an assisted living facility.

Speaker 3 It was the first time she had ever spoken publicly about how she survived a vicious poisoning at the hands of her mom. What were you feeling in that hospital bed when you woke up?

Speaker 17 I just couldn't move.

Speaker 18 I was bedridden.

Speaker 59 Clearly the ethylene glycol and the antifreeze, when it's metabolized, it creates an acid that has fairly significant effects, obviously on the kidneys, on the brain.

Speaker 59 And in fact, Sarah had a brain bleed.

Speaker 12 Sarah had to relearn to walk. Now she's reliant on full-time around-the-clock care.
It's just heartbreaking.

Speaker 3 Did you think you would live?

Speaker 17 No, but I had this will to live.

Speaker 17 I did not want to die at a young age, and I thought that my mom is going to

Speaker 17 kill me after my dad and brother died.

Speaker 3 You thought your mom was going to kill you?

Speaker 17 Because she had this journal that she wrote. She wrote like deaths of Sean, my brother, and me.

Speaker 3 So you read in her journal

Speaker 3 that Sean had died and that your name was listed too?

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 21 And what did you think when you read that?

Speaker 3 I was worried

Speaker 17 because I don't want to die.

Speaker 3 Did you say anything to her?

Speaker 17 She told me you're not going to die.

Speaker 3 Did she explain what this was all about in the journal?

Speaker 17 No.

Speaker 17 She just told me, don't read it.

Speaker 6 Throughout the investigation, there was talk that Sarah had knowledge of the events that were taking place.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 it's hard to say exactly how much that Sarah did know.

Speaker 3 How about your mom and your sister Rachel? Do you still consider them family?

Speaker 17 Not anymore. I just don't consider them people.

Speaker 17 I consider them as killers.

Speaker 17 who hate me.

Speaker 3 And what would you have somebody say to Rachel and to your mom?

Speaker 17 I just felt like I want to slap both of them and calling them B-words.

Speaker 3 Sarah said after learning what had happened that she wanted to slap you, she wanted to call you a certain word, that she was very, very hurt and angry. What do you say to your daughter?

Speaker 3 who is damaged because of this poison.

Speaker 18 I'm sorry for what she went through,

Speaker 18 but I'm sorry for what everybody goes through. I'm sorry for what I had to go through.

Speaker 3 Are you saying that you were poisoned as well?

Speaker 18 I can't rule it out.

Speaker 61 Diane is turning it into all about her. It's me, me, me.
Sarah wasn't just sick. I was sick too.
I mean, this isn't just deflection. This is really squarely returning to the thing of I'm the victim.

Speaker 6 Diane did not have any appearance whatsoever of being ill during our interviews.

Speaker 32 Sean, you say he wasn't too much into church. No.
Neither was Sarah.

Speaker 6 Not really. And she seemed totally cognitive throughout.

Speaker 6 There was nothing at all to indicate that she was anything other than fine.

Speaker 55 Were they sinners?

Speaker 52 I hate to use that term.

Speaker 3 Diane, you understand that this sounds like a woman who doesn't want to take responsibility for

Speaker 3 what she confessed to doing, which is killing her family.

Speaker 18 That's not what happened.

Speaker 3 Does your family believe that you're innocent?

Speaker 18 I don't know about innocent, but I don't think they think that I'm totally guilty.

Speaker 3 So are you partly guilty? I can't tell you.

Speaker 36 Her inability to actually answer a question, her inability to show any emotion.

Speaker 61 It could be a ploy to explain away a psychopathy, an antisocial personality disorder at the very, very basic level, a level of narcissism, which is very consistent with her.

Speaker 3 So what do you say to Rachel then?

Speaker 18 I think Rachel doesn't know the whole story.

Speaker 3 But as the trial draws even closer, It isn't long before one defendant turns on the other.

Speaker 42 When you have two people, she said, she said,

Speaker 42 usually someone takes a deal, and it's the first person that takes a deal that gets the lesser sentence.

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Speaker 41 Prosecutors say Rachel and her mother Diane used antifreeze to poison her father Mark and to poison her brother Sean.

Speaker 3 Virtually undetectable in taste, making them sick until their organs failed.

Speaker 12 The state wanted the death penalty for Diane.

Speaker 29 Diane's case was death penalty eligible just because of the extensive research that she had done in planning it out, the torture that she put them through.

Speaker 32 What were you putting it in?

Speaker 9 Coca-Cola.

Speaker 6 I felt it was important that she be held responsible for what she had done.

Speaker 50 How much would you put in?

Speaker 50 Just a little bit.

Speaker 3 The state wants the death penalty for Diane, but for Rachel, life imprisonment.

Speaker 45 This was Diane's idea. Diane is the one that

Speaker 45 has the motivation for doing it.

Speaker 9 Clearly in this case, Rachel's the follower.

Speaker 42 We get word of another hearing, both for Rachel and Diane. And the big announcement is made is that Rachel has not only pleaded guilty, she pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against her own mother.

Speaker 42 That was a bombshell.

Speaker 12 It was always something that, you know,

Speaker 12 us in the newsroom, we tossed around the idea of what if Rachel testified against her mom.

Speaker 42 We always assumed one was gonna go against the other. When you have two people, she said, she said,

Speaker 42 usually someone takes a deal, and it's the first person that takes a deal that gets the lesser sentence.

Speaker 41 Now that Rachel has pleaded guilty to her role in the crime, she's looking at two life sentences plus 20 years, avoiding the death penalty.

Speaker 12 There's so much evidence against Diane, it doesn't look good for her. She could face the death penalty.

Speaker 42 She knows her daughter is going to testify against her, so she finally agrees to plead guilty.

Speaker 40 Based upon her plea of guilty to the class A felony of murder in the first degree,

Speaker 40 she is sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole in the Missouri Department of Corrections.

Speaker 3 You pleaded guilty to murder.

Speaker 21 Are you a a murderer?

Speaker 18 No.

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 18 And I didn't plead guilty. I took an offered plea.

Speaker 18 That's what I was told to do.

Speaker 18 I was told that it was not considered a guilty plea.

Speaker 3 So you took a plea.

Speaker 21 You acknowledged

Speaker 3 that you killed your family members.

Speaker 18 I said what I was told to say.

Speaker 42 An offered plea, which means she is not technically saying,

Speaker 42 I did this, I am guilty, but she is saying the evidence you have is enough to convict me of this charge. And I agree that that is the truth.

Speaker 44 So we looked across and we weighed all the costs and benefits of whether to continue to seek the death penalty or to accept that plea. It simply made more sense to take the plea.

Speaker 6 I did not like the Alford plea. I personally thought that Diane should have faced the death penalty in this case.

Speaker 42 Life in prison, no possibility of parole for Diane. She's going to die in prison.

Speaker 3 It is now Rachel's sentencing. Unlike her mother, she apologizes to her older sister, Sarah.

Speaker 68 I'm sorry that I couldn't find the courage to stand up for what was right.

Speaker 68 To go for help, to protect you, our siblings.

Speaker 68 I was scared. The things scared us us to excuse me.

Speaker 6 I sensed a little more

Speaker 6 remorse, maybe, with Rachel than with Diane, but I also noticed a lot of attempted remorse, I guess maybe you could say, with Rachel. There was crying at times, but no tears.

Speaker 44 She won't be eligible for parole for 42 and a half years, around age 65.

Speaker 3 And I just want to be clear on this. You confessed to killing your own family.

Speaker 18 Yep, to save my family. They were being threatened.

Speaker 21 Threatened by whom?

Speaker 9 Somebody.

Speaker 3 But Diane, many people would say this makes no sense.

Speaker 18 Lots of things don't make sense.

Speaker 45 She has zero remorse, zero empathy. She doesn't take any responsibility

Speaker 4 for her actions.

Speaker 61 She wants to control things, but she doesn't seem capable or willing to actually put the story out there herself. It's like pulling teeth to get any kind of answer from her.

Speaker 3 You've essentially taken responsibility for killing your family. And people would ask you, how is it that you could kill your own family? Your husband, your son, almost your daughter?

Speaker 3 How does a mother kill her own children?

Speaker 18 That I can't tell you.

Speaker 3 We We pushed for more than an hour thinking Diane might finally own up to her crimes. But you did it.

Speaker 18 No.

Speaker 3 Then she blew us away, spinning one bizarre alternate theory after another.

Speaker 3 What is the truth, Diane?

Speaker 3 Many times throughout our conversation, Diane pointed the finger at some mystery person, saying he or she forced her to falsely confess.

Speaker 18 I said what I was told to say.

Speaker 3 But our investigation found no basis for this. Diane never once claimed this in court or reported it to police or anyone else.

Speaker 3 She also touched on Mark's alleged drug habit, but now she's beginning to suggest that he was more involved in the drug trade than anticipated.

Speaker 18 Mark was with some people that are very dangerous. People have disappeared.

Speaker 3 You're saying that someone in Mark's world tried to poison him.

Speaker 18 I was told in jail that Mark had been greenlighted.

Speaker 21 Greenlighted. Greenlighted.

Speaker 45 Greenlighting means that somebody's been authorized to be killed. It means to take the shot, take the person out.

Speaker 8 They're greenlighted.

Speaker 6 There is nothing whatsoever to show that

Speaker 6 anybody was involved in this case other than those mentioned already, Diane and Rachel, the ones that killed their family.

Speaker 3 Who poisoned Sean and who poisoned Sarah?

Speaker 18 Sean left a note.

Speaker 3 So you're saying that Sean took his own life?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Sean did not commit suicide.

Speaker 5 He was murdered.

Speaker 6 Quite the fairy tale, I would say, that she has concocted.

Speaker 16 It really is astonishing.

Speaker 3 Diane agreed to talk with us to give her side of the story, but her version of events seemed less and less credible.

Speaker 61 I find everything that she says in this interview to be incredibly contrived, very carefully controlled, very well scripted, and not forthcoming.

Speaker 3 Rachel says that you were poisoning and killing your own family, that you might have even poisoned Brianna before it was all over.

Speaker 9 Nope.

Speaker 3 Were you going to? No.

Speaker 3 How are we supposed to believe that?

Speaker 18 I don't know.

Speaker 3 What is the truth, Diane?

Speaker 18 The truth is out there.

Speaker 61 Because this person has recreated their truth in a way that is necessary for self-preservation in prison. She may not even be clear in her own mind what the truth is any longer.

Speaker 3 What about Sarah? Sarah is now living in a group home. She's been permanently injured.
This is a fairly recent picture of Sarah.

Speaker 18 Oh wow, she's gained weight.

Speaker 3 What do you want to say to her?

Speaker 18 That I hope she's happy. I'm sorry for what all she's gone through,

Speaker 18 but I hope she's happy

Speaker 18 and content.

Speaker 3 How hard is it to think back on what has happened to you and to think about Rachel and your mom at this point? It was very hard.

Speaker 17 At the same time, I

Speaker 17 love them, and at the same time, I hate them.

Speaker 3 Conflicting emotions? Yes. Do you see yourself at any point forgiving?

Speaker 17 Yes. I had forgave them for what they did

Speaker 17 because forgiveness is the right thing

Speaker 17 to do.

Speaker 20 I forgive my mom for what she did to me.

Speaker 3 Will you ever admit to killing your family?

Speaker 18 No, not like that, no.

Speaker 9 I will go to my grave.

Speaker 12 It's just a sad story. I mean, at the end of the day, you have a family broken because of why? Hate?

Speaker 42 Sarah fortunately survived, but everything that Anaphreece did to her, that's lifelong changes. That is the life-altering event.
She will never never be the same.

Speaker 3 I bet this one you pointed out who is who here?

Speaker 18 That little boy here is my brother, Sean.

Speaker 12 That's me.

Speaker 3 You're such a cute little girl.

Speaker 3 What are your fondest memories of hanging out with your dad?

Speaker 18 Oh, I love going to concerts with him.

Speaker 3 Mark Stouty's music may have been more prophetic than poetic. Just listen to the lyrics of his final song, Female Judas.

Speaker 3 To this day, bandmate Charles Alexander, still hearing those haunting lyrics in his head.

Speaker 14 I just wish I could have helped him. I wish I could have saved him.
Who would do that to their family?

Speaker 27 Why?

Speaker 14 there's bad relationships everywhere, but you don't destroy your own family.

Speaker 3 You've been listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault. Friday nights at 9 on ABC, you can also find all new broadcast episodes of 2020.

Speaker 9 Thanks for listening.

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