True Crime Vault: Home Sweet Murder

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

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?

This is by far the most shocking case I have ever been a part of.

It was unlike anything we had ever seen here.

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

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

And why is that?

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

I went to her house and asked her what happened.

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

No emotions, no nothing.

She must be in great shock.

Of course you're in shock.

Who thinks of walking in and finding their son dead?

How much bad luck can one family have?

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

She was clinging to life.

Her brain function is failing.

Her liver function is failing.

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

So, are you a killer?

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.

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.

Hello, Diane.

I'm Deborah Roberts.

This is a chance for you to speak,

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

No.

Ever.

Do you find yourself wondering how you wound up here?

You, a nurse, a mom, a wife,

a woman who had a full life?

Do you think you deserve to be in prison?

Yes and no.

Springville is a charming town.

Everyone is really warm and kind-hearted.

We have a church and Chinese restaurant on every corner.

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

We pray to thee our God this

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

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

Sean was 25, the eldest.

Then there was Sarah, Rachel, and the youngest, Brianna, who was 10 years old.

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

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

You're just a female Judas.

You want to see me

crucified?

How did you come to meet Mark?

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.

Mark was so easy to get along with, our band just jailed immediately.

And he was a great front man.

He was always a very positive influence in my life.

He was always happy with the kids.

He was always happy with his wife.

He loved me.

He loved this family.

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

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

Oh my.

He was a different person then.

Very outgoing,

very nice.

What attracted you to him?

We both like music.

Music was big for both of us?

Music was big for both of us.

Did you fall for him?

Did he fall for you?

Kind of both, I would say.

We hit it off.

The first time I met Diane, she was pregnant.

So maybe the marriage was

because of that.

But Mark seemed to be excited about them getting married.

They seemed to be growing into a relationship.

The peace of the Lord be with you always.

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

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

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

May you rejoice in this intimacy with your Savior.

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

Diane and her daughter, Rachel, were very involved in our music ministry.

Tom can rise from the

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

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.

I was excited to play up next to Diane Satic.

I was honored.

because I knew she was the consummate musician.

When did music become a part of your life?

I started playing piano when I was three.

My mother taught me.

It's soothing.

How important was your faith to you?

Very important.

You liked going to church?

Oh, yeah.

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.

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.

Let's talk about the children.

How would you describe them?

All my kids were a joy.

Have you ever heard of the little professors syndrome?

They all have their little special interests.

So in Sean's case.

Sean enjoyed reading about Sweden, architecture, mechanics.

What about Sarah?

She spoke French.

Rachel was into Japan.

She plays multiple instruments.

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

Was she talented?

I think so, yeah.

Very talented.

And Brianna?

Brianna was into dinosaurs and cats.

She was gifted with computers.

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

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

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

Those are the good old days.

You're smiling, and the kids look pretty happy.

Mark looks content.

When you say the good old days,

how good were they?

Really good.

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

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.

I was absolutely shocked.

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

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

You're a nurse.

Why wouldn't you call 911?

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

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.

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

This home here, where Mark and Diane lived with their four children, 900 square feet.

Six people inside, that's a tight fit.

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

So you and Mark are this young couple with this baby.

Was he diagnosed with autism?

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

My family's impression was that Diane

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

Not long after that, Sarah comes home.

What was she like as a baby?

A lot of separation anxiety.

She would scream, throw temper tantrums.

Are you working at that point?

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.

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

someone who

could keep a house.

He did not do housework.

He was a bit of a slob, unfortunately.

So Rachel and Brianna come along.

Now you have four children.

What is life like in the household?

Too busy.

Very busy.

It was a very small home for a big family.

Just chaos.

I could see that Diane was hurting and lonely.

I could see that Mark was a dear soul that

was not overly able to provide for his family.

Was Mark helpful?

For a while.

And then he started drinking.

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.

I'm having troubles.

Was he much of a drinker?

No, because he blew harmonica and he sung.

So drinking wasn't his thing.

He made friends in the band.

He was close to some of his band members.

Did you get to know them?

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.

Other friends?

What do you mean?

Let's just say they were heavy into drugs.

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.

I saw him as a person who struggled in life.

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

You saw Mark that Friday before Easter.

Right.

What was he like?

Well, we were doing a recording session.

We never got the recording done because he was just so out of whack.

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.

One thing struck me so out of place.

His skin color.

What did it look like?

Yellow.

His skin was actually a yellowish color.

So something was wrong with him.

Something was wrong with him.

That was the last time I seen him.

His children are also becoming concerned about their father.

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

His voice is slurred.

His walking is wobbly.

Tell me about that weekend.

He had gone to band practice, like usual.

He came home, he was stumbling about.

I finally got on bed,

and he just slept.

Were you worried about him when you went to church?

Not really,

because I've seen him do that before.

So you come home from church.

Mm-hmm.

And what do you find?

He was still sleeping in the bed.

And your husband's bleeding?

And he wasn't breathing.

You know why he's died?

No.

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

Sorry.

I'm sorry.

It took my breath away.

You lost your husband.

You've got four children.

What are you thinking?

What are you making of this?

It hadn't really sunk in.

How did the kids handle this?

Nobody was really surprised.

We knew he was getting worse and worse.

I talked to Diane.

I went to her house and asked her what happened.

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

No

emotions, no emotions, no nothing.

You thought something was odd?

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

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

Yes.

What was that like?

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.

I thought that was strange.

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.

She had moved into a different house by that point,

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

four children.

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

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

What is your emergency?

It was Sunday, September 2nd, 2012, and there was a couple of police cars out front.

We all stood there watching and waiting.

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.

How much bad luck can one family have?

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.

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.

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.

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.

You've moved to a new home.

You're in a new place.

Are your neighbors aware?

Do they know you've lost your husband?

Nope.

Why not?

I've never met some of the neighbors.

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.

It was just that kind of a feeling of,

leave us alone.

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

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

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

after Mark died

I called upon Diane

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

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

matters of life in a significant way.

Then a few months later, Sean is very sick.

How sick was he?

I'm trying to remember.

I know he was having some stomach issues.

And then there's one weekend

where he's writhing in pain.

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

Were you worried?

A little bit.

A little bit.

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.

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

and I just want to know what happened, if there's anything we can do.

And she said, oh, my son died.

Oh, caught me off guard.

Your son died.

Okay.

Was he sick?

Was there something wrong?

Sean is found dead in his bedroom.

And just like his father, he too has an odd bloodstain around his mouth.

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

Why didn't you?

Because he didn't want to.

He didn't want me to.

But you're his mom.

You're a nurse.

You know when somebody needs medical attention.

You could have overruled that.

I could have, but I chose not to.

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

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

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

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.

That's what I was there to do.

And was it hard?

Yes, it was.

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

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

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

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

Then, nine months later,

Sarah is seriously ill.

How do you explain that?

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.

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

type of situations ever.

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.

Sarah was a hard worker.

She went and got a degree.

She,

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

But in June 2013, the stouty curse strikes again.

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

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

She was in what we call multi-system organ failure.

and she needed life support from every organ.

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.

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

Again, it was, boy, she's really having bad luck with this family.

What's going on?

You took Sarah to the hospital.

What are you expecting is going to happen?

Do you think you're about to lose her?

I didn't know.

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

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

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

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

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

warning bells went off.

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

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

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

deaths

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

How are they reacting?

They really didn't say much.

You know, they've always kept to themselves.

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.

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.

And he said that they just really stood out.

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.

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

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.

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.

Came back negative also.

We didn't know what's going on.

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.

Nurses told police Diane was too lighthearted.

She was joking around with people.

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.

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

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

He said, okay, I received a tip from somebody

that Sarah's father and brother died suddenly.

So he said, do you suspect something weird?

I said, yes.

Are you worried not only about her, but also about

how this looks?

Were you thinking about that at all?

Actually, I was worried about why

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

So you were feeling symptoms?

I was feeling symptoms too.

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

lithium

and arsenic.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

I'm here to listen.

I'm here to

you tell me about it, Diane.

Tell me everything that was going on.

Over the course of 14 months, the quiet, God-fearing Stouty family seems to be cursed.

Member after member, stunningly struck down.

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.

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?

I don't know.

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

Well again, Miss Dally,

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

You're very helpful on your department.

I'm trying to be.

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

When did all this come about?

She started feeling sick Saturday.

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

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

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

Not as active, but he went.

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

Do you have a son as well?

No, not anymore.

He died.

He died.

He had a seizure disorder.

Diane does not seem to be nervous in this police interview.

She's quiet.

She seems to be answering the questions.

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.

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

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

We've spoken with the medical examiner about that.

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

Okay.

So if his stuff were to come back with anything

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

How would you explain that?

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

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

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

He

would,

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

that wouldn't surprise me

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

Sean had been looking up things on the internet.

He'd been threatening to kill himself.

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

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.

So tell me about it, Diane.

There's a lot of arguments.

And cut it really short and sweet.

I knew they were drinking antifreeze.

And I was so mad at them,

I didn't want to take them in.

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

It's like,

what?

Are you talking about?

Nobody just drinks antifreeze.

Okay, this could be our poison.

This could be what we are looking for.

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

Diane, right now is your chance to

make some of this somewhat right.

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

you're sorry for what you did.

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.

Diane, you knew

that they were drinking antifreeze.

You knew that.

They didn't.

We both know that.

You knew, Diane,

that they were drinking antifreeze

because you were giving it to them.

I didn't know what else to do.

I really didn't.

He says to her,

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

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

What were you putting it in?

Coca-Cola.

How much would you put in?

Just a little bit.

From the poisoner perspective, this is a great poison.

It doesn't have any real smell.

You can't taste it.

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

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

and did nothing

you admit

that you poisoned your family with antifreeze

I said what I was told to say

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

okay

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

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

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

Well, tell us, because we...

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

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

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

The journal was found in the Southeast bedroom.

And that journal has some sinister secrets.

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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?

Diane was eliminating family members one at a time.

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

You killed.

It's just so crazy.

You think to yourself, what is going on here?

That does not happen here.

That doesn't happen anywhere, does it?

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

What are you talking about?

Nobody just drinks antifreeze.

You can't make this up.

You tell the police that you poisoned your own family.

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

There is more involved.

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

So at this point, Diane's arrested.

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.

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.

Just take some time and

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

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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

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.

There's stuff all over the place and on the floor.

There are a lot of computers.

Everybody had a laptop.

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

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

Exactly what Diane said she had done to both Sarah and Sean.

She fed them antifrees in their Coke.

Mark got it in his Gatorade.

This is the bench, obviously.

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

where it was located.

The positioning of the Coke bottles was very odd.

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.

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

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.

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

It's just placed right there, right along with everything else.

Nothing to signify its importance, just it's right there amongst everything.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Were you ever suspicious of your mom?

No.

No.

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

Is that right?

You guys were real close.

Mama's best friend, kind of.

Did she ever mention anything at all?

No.

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

No.

During the interview, I just slid the journal entry over to her.

I wanted to see her reaction upon looking at that.

There was an immediate sense from Rachel.

You could just see the look on her face of, it was, uh-oh.

Do you

recognize this?

You could see the wheels turning, literally.

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

Yeah, I remember this.

Okay.

What is that?

A little journal thing.

A journal thing.

Whose journal?

Mine.

Your journal.

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

Okay.

Rachel, at that point, I think she realized

I'm caught.

And she began to tell her story.

No more

lies or untruths.

We need to be honest about everything.

You understand?

What is this?

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

I talked to mom about it

and she mentioned

she was thinking of hurting them.

I pressed Rachel in terms of, hey, this isn't a dream.

This is something much

worse than that, and you are involved.

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

and you told your mother about this.

What did you tell your mother?

That it would be quick,

that

It'd be easy.

That they'd be to heaven soon and

we could move on.

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

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

They were a killing team, a mother-daughter.

I mean, this is unheard of.

Who does that?

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.

Rachel is just as evil as her mom.

You're saying Mark is the first one.

There's nobody before Mark.

Not in your past life or not in...

Okay, Mark's the first one.

And it just got started.

You said you hated his guts and

you

couldn't take it anymore.

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

But the strangest one was yet to come.

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.

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

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

By then I hated his cuts.

Hated his guts.

I understand that.

I mean, I hated his cuts.

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

Sean would be interfering with whatever I would do

to the point where he was getting into my work.

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

go do something.

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

That interview is all happening before she's had a chance to talk to anybody else.

So that's really your best information.

I couldn't figure out a way to change.

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

I couldn't leave the house.

Okay.

I think I snapped.

You said

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.

I don't remember that.

Is that what happened?

I don't know.

I don't remember that.

You don't remember saying that?

You said you hated your life.

So, have you just decided not to remember?

No, I don't remember.

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

to make it simpler.

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

for him and then tell me why for Sean.

Why did you guys want to get rid of those two?

Dad

was basically a drain on her, on us.

Money,

He had no concept of money.

He would always be out partying, always be out.

Sean, we argued on a lot, because

I still think we could have put him in

like an assisted living, but

she wanted him out.

So clearly Diane is the ringleader here.

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

So when did the plan to kill Sarah come about?

May, June.

May or June.

And so why was it decided to kill Sarah?

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

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

Mom probably has her own

issues with her.

What about you?

She's annoying, yes, but

I don't know.

Unbelievable motives.

And she vocalized them.

She said these things.

And what did you guys finally decide upon on how you were going to kill them?

You poisoning, I know you said that, but

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

Mom decided on antifreeze.

Antifreeze.

And why was antifreeze decided?

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

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

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.

They slice and dice where they land.

They're really bad for you.

You do not want to drink antifreeze.

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

She would mix them and then just pass them out.

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

Women are far more likely than men to use poison.

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

How much, though,

did it take to

when you were you putting in cokes for him also?

Or what did you put it in for him?

Gatorade.

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

And was it Cokes for both Sean and Sarah?

Okay.

And when did Mark start to get sick?

He got sick on Friday.

Okay.

And when did he die?

On Sunday.

I think they knew what kind of poison they wanted.

They knew what they wanted the poison to do.

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

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

Were you surprised when it took a while?

Is that why you continued to give them more?

No.

Because I didn't know what else to do.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

They were going to kill the little girl as well?

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

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

Are you asking me?

Yeah, because that's what I felt like.

Okay.

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

I want to know a song.

Music was their outlet.

Rachel was a great musician, a very talented singer.

Rachel played in the church for almost two years.

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,

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

They were very close, mother and daughter.

And I think that they became alliances to each other.

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

because of the way she would talk about Rachel.

She would light up.

It was obvious that Rachel was the pet.

Did you have a favorite?

Not really.

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

Who was more like you?

Rachel.

How about Rachel as a child?

Mm-hmm.

How How was she?

She's my first one that actually talked.

I really didn't have much problems with her.

Rachel had discussed with me that they were just kind of like a matched pair.

They understood each other.

They got each other.

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

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.

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.

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

But once that

was set in motion,

clearly it was a path that

they could not veer from.

That they did not veer from.

When were you guys gonna

feel Brianna?

Sometime after Sarah.

And how are you gonna do that?

Well, she liked root beer.

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

We didn't really go into any new ways.

She had described Brianna as a burden they didn't want around the house.

That was her explanation.

Four people.

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

Correct.

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.

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

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?

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

And why is that?

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

This is really

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

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.

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

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

Sarah makes a pretty miraculous recovery and a shocking revelation.

So, you read in her journal

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

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

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

Both Diane and Rachel facing numerous charges of first-degree murder and assault on Sarah.

Now in the hospital, seriously ill.

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.

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

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

It was surreal.

We were just totally shocked about that.

That does not happen here.

That doesn't happen anywhere, does it?

This don't make no sense at all.

Why she would even go that far.

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

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

I was like in shock.

How could she do that?

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?

That's incredible.

I was sitting in the audience.

Rachel and Diane were brought in.

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

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

Sarah was in really bad shape.

Doctors and everybody else, they thought that Sarah was going to die and

it was miraculous that she survived.

Sarah fortunately survived, but she will never be the same.

She suffered a lot of brain damage because of the antifreeze and organ damage.

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

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.

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?

I just couldn't move.

I was bedridden.

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.

And in fact, Sarah had a brain bleed.

Sarah had to relearn to walk.

Now she's reliant on full-time around-the-clock care.

It's just heartbreaking.

Did you think you would live?

No, but I had this will to live.

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

kill me after my dad and brother died.

You thought your mom was going to kill you?

Because she had this journal that she wrote.

She wrote like deaths of Sean, my brother, and me.

So you read in her journal

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

Yes.

And what did you think when you read that?

I was worried

because I don't want to die.

Did you say anything to her?

She told me you're not going to die.

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

No.

She just told me, don't read it.

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

And

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

How about your mom and your sister Rachel?

Do you still consider them family?

Not anymore.

I just don't consider them people.

I consider them as killers.

who hate me.

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

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

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?

who is damaged because of this poison.

I'm sorry for what she went through,

but I'm sorry for what everybody goes through.

I'm sorry for what I had to go through.

Are you saying that you were poisoned as well?

I can't rule it out.

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.

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

Sean, you say he wasn't too much into church.

No.

Neither was Sarah.

Not really.

And she seemed totally cognitive throughout.

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

Were they sinners?

I hate to use that term.

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

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

That's not what happened.

Does your family believe that you're innocent?

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

So are you partly guilty?

I can't tell you.

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

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.

So what do you say to Rachel then?

I think Rachel doesn't know the whole story.

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

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

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

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

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

The state wanted the death penalty for Diane.

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.

What were you putting it in?

Coca-Cola.

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

How much would you put in?

Just a little bit.

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

This was Diane's idea.

Diane is the one that

has the motivation for doing it.

Clearly in this case, Rachel's the follower.

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.

That was a bombshell.

It was always something that, you know,

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

We always assumed one was gonna go against the other.

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

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

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.

There's so much evidence against Diane, it doesn't look good for her.

She could face the death penalty.

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

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

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

You pleaded guilty to murder.

Are you a a murderer?

No.

No.

And I didn't plead guilty.

I took an offered plea.

That's what I was told to do.

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

So you took a plea.

You acknowledged

that you killed your family members.

I said what I was told to say.

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

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.

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.

I did not like the Alford plea.

I personally thought that Diane should have faced the death penalty in this case.

Life in prison, no possibility of parole for Diane.

She's going to die in prison.

It is now Rachel's sentencing.

Unlike her mother, she apologizes to her older sister, Sarah.

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

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

I was scared.

The things scared us us to excuse me.

I sensed a little more

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.

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

And I just want to be clear on this.

You confessed to killing your own family.

Yep, to save my family.

They were being threatened.

Threatened by whom?

Somebody.

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

Lots of things don't make sense.

She has zero remorse, zero empathy.

She doesn't take any responsibility

for her actions.

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.

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?

How does a mother kill her own children?

That I can't tell you.

We We pushed for more than an hour thinking Diane might finally own up to her crimes.

But you did it.

No.

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

What is the truth, Diane?

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

I said what I was told to say.

But our investigation found no basis for this.

Diane never once claimed this in court or reported it to police or anyone else.

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.

Mark was with some people that are very dangerous.

People have disappeared.

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

I was told in jail that Mark had been greenlighted.

Greenlighted.

Greenlighted.

Greenlighting means that somebody's been authorized to be killed.

It means to take the shot, take the person out.

They're greenlighted.

There is nothing whatsoever to show that

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

Who poisoned Sean and who poisoned Sarah?

Sean left a note.

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

Yeah.

Sean did not commit suicide.

He was murdered.

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

It really is astonishing.

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

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

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

Nope.

Were you going to?

No.

How are we supposed to believe that?

I don't know.

What is the truth, Diane?

The truth is out there.

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.

What about Sarah?

Sarah is now living in a group home.

She's been permanently injured.

This is a fairly recent picture of Sarah.

Oh wow, she's gained weight.

What do you want to say to her?

That I hope she's happy.

I'm sorry for what all she's gone through,

but I hope she's happy

and content.

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.

At the same time, I

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

Conflicting emotions?

Yes.

Do you see yourself at any point forgiving?

Yes.

I had forgave them for what they did

because forgiveness is the right thing

to do.

I forgive my mom for what she did to me.

Will you ever admit to killing your family?

No, not like that, no.

I will go to my grave.

It's just a sad story.

I mean, at the end of the day, you have a family broken because of why?

Hate?

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.

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

That little boy here is my brother, Sean.

That's me.

You're such a cute little girl.

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

Oh, I love going to concerts with him.

Mark Stouty's music may have been more prophetic than poetic.

Just listen to the lyrics of his final song, Female Judas.

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

I just wish I could have helped him.

I wish I could have saved him.

Who would do that to their family?

Why?

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

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.

Thanks for listening.

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